In Our Own Words: Native Impressions

April 3 – May 15, 2016

Artists Daniel Heyman and Lucy Ganje

Master Printmaker Kim Fink

In the summer of 2015, the three artists began an outstanding project that resulted in twenty-six prints that chronicle stories of individual Native people who live within the Tribal Nations of North Dakota. The project includes both portraits and oral history text from a range of people in the community — businesspeople, farmers, ranchers, teachers, politicians, tribal leaders, and community members.

The individual prints tell the story of a people whose historic cultures were overrun by others. In the latter years of the twentieth century, younger generations began the work of reclaiming what had been. It is their stories, or Native Impressions, that fly under banners of sadness, determination, loss, and reverberate through the broadsides:

I Am Not a Politician. I Served My One Term. We Don’t Buy Green Bananas. My Parents Had No Parenting. We Burn All of Their Things. If Your Telephone Rings. They Unearthed 7 Bodies. We Can Be Self Sufficient. It Helped Us to Breathe.

Installation Images