Artwork description: St Regis 30 reflects on the history of residential boarding schools Native American children were forced to attend over a span of 150 years. The work gives children who attended these schools a chance to reclaim their visibility and ensure their story is not forgotten.
Artwork description long: In over four hundred years of colonial contact in the Americas, Indigenous peoples have been moved and killed as a means of obtaining the land that they once lived on. Over the span of 150 years, half a million Indigenous children were forced to enroll in residential boarding schools as a means of assimilating them into American culture. In these schools, children as young as four were subject to abuse and neglect, at times resulting in death of the child. Today, 54% of US public schools do not mention Native Americans in their curriculum. When creating this work, community came together to both learn and support the message. Families brought their children into the studio for a brief casting session. For some children, this is their first exposure to Native history, while others have ancestors who attended the boarding schools. In this melting pot of knowledge and cultural exchange, the children’s stories become one with the work and in turn the children are given an experience to learn about Native history. In participating in the process, each child has a permanent connection to the story they helped represent, and long-lasting awareness of Native identity. In this work, the 30 cast glass hands represent the 30 children who were forced to attend the St. Regis Seminary in St. Louis. The soil the ghostly hands are emerging from was collected from the land St. Regis once stood upon 200 years ago — the soil 30 children were once forced to tend to as slaves, instead of learning in schools as they were promised.
Artwork description long: In over four hundred years of colonial contact in the Americas, Indigenous peoples have been moved and killed as a means of obtaining the land that they once lived on. Over the span of 150 years, half a million Indigenous children were forced to enroll in residential boarding schools as a means of assimilating them into American culture. In these schools, children as young as four were subject to abuse and neglect, at times resulting in death of the child. Today, 54% of US public schools do not mention Native Americans in their curriculum. When creating this work, community came together to both learn and support the message. Families brought their children into the studio for a brief casting session. For some children, this is their first exposure to Native history, while others have ancestors who attended the boarding schools. In this melting pot of knowledge and cultural exchange, the children’s stories become one with the work and in turn the children are given an experience to learn about Native history. In participating in the process, each child has a permanent connection to the story they helped represent, and long-lasting awareness of Native identity. In this work, the 30 cast glass hands represent the 30 children who were forced to attend the St. Regis Seminary in St. Louis. The soil the ghostly hands are emerging from was collected from the land St. Regis once stood upon 200 years ago — the soil 30 children were once forced to tend to as slaves, instead of learning in schools as they were promised.