Post-election challenges notwithstanding, one of the great developments of our present time is the emergence of widely unknown stories from communities whose voices were previously excluded from the American historical narrative.
The current issue features several articles that fill important blanks in that narrative, through new projects instigated by Native artists. Our writer Emily Spradling takes a deep dive into the activities of KU-based Native film producer Rebekka Schlichting, whose film company, Deer Woman Productions, is currently working with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on “Walking in the Footsteps of our Ancestors,” a film about the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma returning to their ancestral homelands in Nebraska. Schlichting is also an impact producer on the film “Bring Them Home,” chronicling the Blackfoot Tribe’s efforts to rewild buffalo in partnership with Yellowstone National Park.
Equally fascinating is Randy Mason’s report on a new public art project commemorating the extraordinary efforts of three Wyandot women to protect the tribe’s burial ground in KCK. Titled “Trespassers Beware! Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors,” the mobile multimedia production is a project of Monumenta, a public art initiative dedicated to presenting the nation’s collective stories as monuments in public spaces. Artists Betty Zane, Justine Smith and Rain Wilson, all enrolled members of the Wyandot Nation of Oklahoma, are collaborating on the production, which will launch at the Wyandotte County Historical Museum in fall 2025.
Complementing these efforts is “Knowing the West,” a major exhibit at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art offering new perspectives on American history through artworks representing the full spectrum of creative expression in the West, including works by Native artists and Asian immigrants, slaves, soldiers and others, especially women. Their collective contributions counter an understanding of the American West defined by what author Brian Hearn describes as “a decidedly masculine, ‘dude energy’ of conquest, exploration and extraction.”
Those of a certain age may remember the furious pushback encountered by the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s 1991 “The West as America” exhibition, an early effort to critique the accepted version of the settlement of the West, mounted at the height of the culture wars. The Crystal Bridges exhibit both validates and expands these ideas at a time when a fuller understanding of American history is more urgent than ever.
Not to be missed on KC Studio’s website is a major compilation by Grace Suh of Kansas City Asian women’s responses to the Unicorn Theatre’s fall production of “The Heart Sellers.”
The title reflects the play’s focus on the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, which “repealed the discriminatory quotas that had long effectively barred immigration from Asia.” “Their responses were deeply emotional and animated, informed by their personal immigration experiences,” notes Suh, whose article encompasses another cache of stories that need to be told, especially in light of the intensified discrimination against Asian Americans fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The current issue’s Artist Pages recognize the indefatigable determination and dynamic aesthetic evolution of Korean immigrant, mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter and internationally exhibited artist Ke-Sook Lee, a longtime member of the Kansas City art community now resident in Berkeley, California. Lee too has a story to tell, as seen in our selection of compelling images from her new book, “Ode to a Seed,” a metaphor of her personal journey as a woman and an artist.
