Who’s sorry now? Artist Layli Long Soldier deconstructs President Obama’s apology
Published in Indian Country Today in 2013. For more on topics like this, see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle....
Time-lapse photographs snapped
every 10 minutes in Red Cloud Indian School’s Heritage Center, on Pine Ridge
Indian Reservation, document visitors inscribing messages on an art installation, then three months later painting them over.
Writer and artist Layli Long Soldier projected onto the gallery’s white walls
three sections of President Obama’s December 2009 apology to the Native people
of the United States. For the last quarter of 2012, she offered viewers markers,
pastels, paints and brushes and invited them to respond by writing and drawing directly on the walls.
“Most Native people had never heard of the apology,” said
Long Soldier, who is Oglala Lakota and French American and now lives and
teaches on the Navajo reservation, where her husband is from. “Its text was
folded into a larger piece of legislation that was signed over a weekend. It’s
a national apology but has had no public attention.”
Long Soldier, who is an
M.F.A. candidate at Bard College, in New York State, wanted to remedy that. She
ran by Heritage Center director Peter Strong and curator Mary Bordeaux, Oglala
and Sicangu Lakota, the idea of promulgating the apology in a way that would allow
people to have their say about it. Strong and Bordeaux offered to host an installation.
The
Heritage Center has one of the country’s major collections of fine Native art
and crafts—primarily Lakota and drawn from historic and modern periods. Each
year, the center welcomes as many as 12,000 art lovers from around the world to
exhibits drawn from the 10,000 pieces in its collection.
Visitors—from Pine Ridge and
beyond—reacted vividly to Whereas We
Respond. They declared, “Give us back the Black Hills.” “We are ready for
action.” “Don’t tell us, show us!”
This was Long Soldier’s
second appearance at the center. In 2010, she participated in the show
Making New Traditions, which commissioned thought-provoking work by Northern
Plains artists. Her Dis/con/nect—a stunning red and silver jingle-dance dress, made of metal
mesh and coiled cut-outs of Coca-Cola cans and backed up by three large
text-covered panels, shown right—dominated the Heritage Center gallery, then went on tour
with the other artworks to museums in the region.
Much
of Native art—like Long Soldier’s and the other contemporary pieces in Making
New Traditions—includes cultural and community references, said curator Strong.
That content defines both traditional and modern Native art and gives the
entire body of work a sense of continuity and shared concerns, Strong said: “The connection to community may be obvious, or it may
be abstract or subtle.” National Endowment for the Arts
chairman Rocco Landesman agreed, calling the Heritage Center an institution
where you see art that’s quintessentially tied to its surroundings.
A portion of the Obama
apology, each section of which begins with “Whereas,” deals with a critical
community matter—a century of forced attendance at boarding schools where
substandard education, physical punishment, compulsory conversion to
Christianity and sexual assault devastated Native individuals, tribes, lifeways,
spiritualities and languages nationwide. This made developing Whereas We Respond at Red Cloud Indian
School—originally Holy Rosary, an early Catholic boarding school— resonant for
Long Soldier. “It was powerful to have Lakota people write on the walls and, at
the end of the exhibit, paint them over.”
Long Soldier spoke about her work:
Right before the 2012
national election, some Republicans interpreted the installation as anti-Obama
and patted me on the back for that. I’m a declared Independent and never
imagined anyone would think the work was about party politics! On the other
hand, a Native mentor criticized me for not being condemning enough. I was
hurt, then thought, ‘I’m an artist, not a politician. I’m creating a space for
people to respond as they wish.’
Any surprise participants?
Pine Ridge community members who may not speak up in political forums wrote on the walls. It was rewarding to see the project appeal to them. I think it allowed people time to consider their responses and contribute at their leisure—artistically and intellectually. Foreign visitors left their mark as well; one wrote,
‘Free Palestine!’
Tell us about choosing materials for the jingle dance
dress shown in 2010.
I’m obsessed with the metal mesh
I used for it. As a material, it is both durable and transparent, and I find
that paradox interesting. I recently built 21 buffalos out of very fine silver-colored
metal mesh for a show that’ll open at the Heritage Center in February. That
piece has associated text and is called Buffalo
Book.
How do you unite innovation and a traditional-seeming
devotion to craft in your pieces?
I take time with my work. Art
is a process of learning and discovery. It’s not just about the finished product,
but about an exploration the viewer can see or even be a part of.
Your writing and artwork inhabit large spaces, with
references to big events and sweeps of history and public participation. How do
you accomplish this?
An idea starts
small and expands into something much bigger. You can look to our language for the
model. In Lakota, for example, He Sapa are
two small words. Sapa means “black,”
and he means “mountain” or “horn.”
The Black “Hills” were never hills in
our language. They are our sacred mountains, a distinction and rank that is important. This raises questions, such as, what happened in the
translation to English? And as a poet, I muse on the imagery of a mountain as a
black horn. Through two words and their pairing, through reflecting on their meaning
and history, a vast world opens up.
Text and photos c. Stephanie Woodard.