11 NOVEMBER 28-DECEMBER 4, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | dresses, their hot-pink hair braided, stand close to each other, arms tensely crossed over their bodies. One woman’s eye looks to her friend, as if asking whether she is thinking the same thing, while the other’s eye is fi xed forward with a steely gaze. “I’m constantly looking through old im- ages of people from my tribe,” SeeWalker says, “just studying it and thinking, ‘What are they wearing? What’s their facial expres- sion? I wonder what they were thinking or going through in that moment.’” In another work, the eyes of two children show fear over “what they were seeing and experiencing during the colonization, or if they were about to be taken away to go to boarding school,” SeeWalker says. “The eyes set the tone of what is going on in the piece.” For her exhibit at History Colorado, the museum invited SeeWalker to look through its archives to fi nd pieces that might inspire and link to her work. For some mixed-media works, she referenced historic photos of tribes lining up for food from the Food Commod- ity Program run by the federal government. While tribes at the turn of the century were used to relying on traditions such as hunting, now they were eating what they were given, including canned meat and dried eggs. See- Walker decorated drums with colorful sym- bols surrounding the labels on such provisions — “Pork with juices” above the silhouette of a pig, “Wheat (square shaped) cereal — Ready to eat” above an illustration of a cereal bowl. “I remember growing up having to eat this. I’ll never forget the canned meat,” she says. Because tribes had only eaten dried, hunted meat and other fresh food, before, the canned food had a negative impact on the people’s health. “The foods that they gave us — fl our, large amounts of sugar, dairy — were things that we had never been exposed to, and this was only a few generations ago. So to this day, we Native people have the high- est rate of diabetes in the country. There’s probably not a Native person I know that isn’t lactose-intolerant.” Much of what she saw from the museum’s inventory gave her mixed feelings. “I re- member thinking, ‘Some of these are sacred objects that should be given back,’ or seeing some pieces that were misidentifi ed,” she says, recalling a hair piece that was labeled as a belt. She pointed that out to the museum, and then used it in her show. Still, “to be the first Native woman to show my artwork in that institution is a good accom- plishment in terms of resistance,” she notes. “If my grandmother were still alive, she would be in disbelief that there’s, like, a woman in the Cabinet that’s Na- tive, or that we have people who are Native in offi ce. I don’t know that she would ever believe that her granddaughter would be able to show in a museum and to talk about these topics out loud.” Her grandmother had been sent to boarding school, and would only speak her native language with friends; she would not teach it to her children or grandchildren. “When she went to boarding school...if you spoke your native language, you were beaten,” SeeWalker says. “She never wanted to speak about her ex- perience there; she and her brother were orphaned in those schools, so they didn’t know anything outside of being in a boarding school. That’s where the pivotal turn was in my family, of losing our language, losing a lot of our cultural aspects, because she grew up in these boarding schools. ... When she went back to the reservation, I’m sure she felt, ‘I’m not Indian enough, but I’m also not white enough.’ So there was this struggle.” SeeWalker can empathize with that. There was a time she pushed back against expressing her heritage because of the bul- lying she endured in a predominantly white school. Her Native father was only educated through eighth grade and “was a very huge proponent of education,” she says. She split her time between the reservation and school in Bismarck, about ninety minutes away. “My parents wanted me to go to school in Bismarck because the education on res- ervations isn’t always the best, I guess,” she explains. “I always had to wear my long braids, and that was just a very big target. I remember people would say, like, ‘Oh, your parents are probably drunks,’ stuff like that. How would a ten-year-old know that unless their parents are refl ecting that on them?” While her father, who passed away in 2010, always reinforced pride in her cul- ture, the bullying still caused SeeWalker to become “traumatized with my identity,” she says. “I was feeling ashamed with who I was.” During her senior year of high school, she and her mother moved to Pennsylvania, and SeeWalker decided to attend college in that state. When she moved outside Philadelphia to study at Albright College, she cut her hair and bleached it blond. “I was wear- ing makeup a shade lighter,” she recalls. “I wanted to not be identifi ed as Native in any way.” She says that this “identity crisis” lasted until her mid-twenties. It didn’t help that there weren’t many Native people on the East Coast, despite those people who might say they were one-sixteenth Indigenous — “and it’s always Cherokee,” SeeWalker laughs. But through studying anthropology and sociol- ogy after moving to Kutztown University, as well as having “deeper conversations about identity and culture” with her profes- sors, SeeWalker embraced her heritage. She graduated in 2010. Since then, her art has become a method of healing. Through the Red Road Project, she’s heard other Native people tell stories similar to hers: internalized shame, shoul- dering generations of trauma, but also a tremendous appreciation for the richness of their culture, and a goal to sustain it. “There’s all this shitty stuff that’s happened to me, my fam- ily, my ancestors,” SeeWalker says. “I could sit here and dwell upon it and let it ruin me, or I can say, ‘I acknowledge that this hap- pened, but I don’t have to let this defi ne me.’ I can be a person that speaks up about it, but it also cre- ates this narrative of these other great things that Native people are still doing. We’re still here, and there’s a reason we’re still here.” She wants to set an example of pride for younger generations so they never have to feel the shame she and others did. Hav- ing such representation in the arts is important, SeeWalker says. “If I would have seen Native art in a mural or had a Native person come in and talk to my whole class, I would have been like, ‘Wow, I’m proud, this is my culture. This is who I am.’ But that was not the case,” she says. “So I really want kids today to feel proud of who they are, to not feel ashamed. I try to work really hard to make the opposite of what I went through.” Young girls who follow her art will ap- proach her, ask her for selfi es, “and they are just so inspired,” she says. “And that’s what really drives me forward.” At this point, it’s hard not to look at the smiling girl in the portrait that her father painted. The woman she became is sur- rounded by art that presents striking truths and proudly displays the resilience of a dignifi ed culture with signifi cant symbol- ism. SeeWalker smiles when she looks at the painting. “My dad always instilled in me, ‘Get an education. You need to help your people. You need to speak up,’” SeeWalker recalls. “And I just remember him always talking about these things my whole life. Refl ecting after he passed away, especially, I realized that I do have a responsibility to speak up and do what I have to do.” Email the author at emily.ferguson@ westword.com. Culture continued from page 8 “G .s for Genocide,” by Danielle SeeWalker.
