Vail canceled her summer residency, but artist Danielle SeeWalker still got to speak in the valley this week (2024)

Danielle SeeWalker took to the Vail Symposium stage on Wednesday to share her art, work, voice and culture in a conversation with Clay Jenkinson at the Vail Golf Club.

The conversation occurred during what was supposed to be a two-week residency in Vail for SeeWalker, a Denver-based Húŋkpapȟa Lakȟóta artist, muralist, writer and activist.

SeeWalker’s body of work encompasses fine art and murals across Colorado and the world; a book entitled “Still Here;” a storytelling creative endeavor, “The Red Ribbon Project;” and an exhibit at the History Colorado Center in Denver and more.

Addressing the ‘elephant in the room’

Earlier this year, SeeWalker was selected to participate in Vail’s Art in Public Places Artist in Residency summer program, where she was scheduled to spend two weeks creating a mural in Vail Village and participating in a variety of community events.

But 30 days out from the residency, the town canceled the program over what town officials claimed were concerns from residents over a piece of artwork SeeWalker posted to Instagram.

Entitled “G is for Genocide,” the piece was created for a group show in Denver. Seewalker said the piece of art drew parallels between the experience of her ancestors and the conflict in Israel and Palestine. Seeing images of women and children amid the Middle Eastern conflict in the “name of suppression oppression, war, land issues,” and more, led to the creation of the piece, SeeWalker told the Vail Daily in May.

“It got me thinking, this is a modern-day situation very similar to what happened to my ancestors; being forced off their land, being killed or taken as prisoners in a way, forced onto reservations, having your whole identity and culture being eradicated,” she said.

The town said that concerns were brought by community members and local faith-based communities around “SeeWalker’s recent rhetoric” regarding the Hamas-Israel war, ultimately resulting in the cancellation of this summer’s program.

In her initial Instagram post announcing the cancellation, SeeWalker wrote that the town was “silencing a Native American woman artist, which ripples down to silencing people of color as a whole.”

Vail Symposium attempted on a few occasions to steer the conversation away from the Middle Eastern politics at the heart of this controversy. When opening the program, DaleMosier, the organization’s chairman of the board, said, “we don’t expect any interaction relative to the controversy that did occur relative to Israeli Hamas issues,” adding that it wouldn’t “entertain any questions during the Q&A” relative to the issues either.

Mosier went on to state that individuals could discuss the topic after the program with SeeWalker and then promoted two programs the Symposium is hosting this summer that deal with the topic.

However, despite its attempts, the topic did come up during the evening’s Q&A segment when SeeWalker was asked about what overlaps she sees between the Indigenous Peoples’ struggles and the Palestinian struggles.

Although Jenkinson tried to steer the conversation away, SeeWalker took the opportunity to address the “elephant in the room.”

“I’m happy that I’m here. I was supposed to actually be here creating a mural at Vail Village this week,” SeeWalker said. “I’m just really grateful that I have the opportunity to come into the community and be able to still have a voice, which was something I wasn’t given the opportunity to do. I’m happy that I get to talk about my art, which is what it was supposed to be about.”

In answering the question directly, SeeWalker said her piece, “G is for Genocide” was “very much aligned with parallels that I personally see and experience and that many other Native Americans see and experience.”

These parallels align “with what’s going on, not only just with Palestinian people, that just happens to be current events, but also with many other groups and individuals and populations around the world that have struggled with genocide,” she said.

The loss and theft of Native culture

SeeWalker began the conversation Wednesday by introducing herself in her Lakota language, which “is on the verge of extinction as many Native languages are today,” she added.

“I’ve been told several times by our elders that if you don’t know your language, you can’t fully know your culture and who you are,” SeeWalker said. “It’s really important that we have our language.”

The loss of language represents a broader issue and theme expressed in SeeWalker’s art as she seeks to show how Native peoples are still here.

“There’s been a lot of stolen lands, a lot of stolen culture, stolen languages, a lot of things ripped from our people,” SeeWalker said. “And I want to say Native American is not a hom*ogenized group of people. We are currently 574 different federally recognized tribes each with our own language, our traditions, cultures, food and ceremonies.”

Want the news to come to you? Get the top stories in your inbox every morning. Sign up here: VailDaily.com/newsletter

Her work in art and “artivism” as she called it has been centered on sharing and preserving not only her voice and culture but other Native peoples’ stories, something spurred by her own experiences as well as by something her dad told her as a teenager.

“If you don’t speak up no one is going to do it for you,” she recalled.

In speaking to the way that silencing of Native voices and culture occurs today, she emphasized she is “the first generation born in my family who fully has the legal rights of everybody else in this country.”

In looking through her body of work on Wednesday, Jenkinson and SeeWalker discussed and read passages from her book, “Still Here: A Past to Present Insight of Native American People & Culture.” The book is just one example of how SeeWalker’s work strives to share an accurate narrative of Native American life, both today and historically.

SeeWalker wrote the book in 2020 when her two sons were in middle school. She said the book arose from frustrations over the way Native history and culture were being taught in schools today. The book is designed for a middle school reading level but also gives a good entry point for readers to do further research into its many topics.

“I feel like a lot of our curriculum is based on Natives as we are in the past. We’re not teaching children that we still exist today. We’re thriving, successful community members that live amongst everybody in our communities. I think it’s important to teach about contemporary Native American people, culture, and communities,” SeeWalker said.

The book shares various elements of Native American history and culture as well as the country’s many attempts at “cultural genocide” including assimilation efforts, forced relocation, language loss, the reservation system and more, she said.

One such example discussed in the book and on Wednesday was the Native American boarding schools, which were created in the late 1800s and many of which ran until recently. The “schools” were “very traumatizing” and represented “a turn and shift in our culture,” SeeWalker said.

“Boarding schools are at the root of many of the issues we’re continuing to face today,” she said. “I don’t know a Native American that exists today that doesn’t have some sort of tie to boarding schools.”

For SeeWalker, this includes her grandfather and father, both of whom she said were “boarding school survivors.”

The schools were more “assimilation camps” than places to educate children, SeeWalker said.

“They stole the children, completely ripped culture away from them. They cut their hair. They punished them for speaking (their) languages. They weren’t able to practice their culture or their own ceremonies, see their families,” she described, adding that the stated mission of Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of the first school, was “kill the Indian, save the man.”

Merging past and present

In addition to the book, SeeWalker shared how her visual art explores the past and present of Native culture and identity. When asked by a young audience member what her favorite piece of art was, SeeWalker pointed to her piece at the History Colorado Center that states in Neon (and is adorned with elk teeth), “This is Native Art.”

“I’ve come to the realization people are not used to seeing Native art as it looks like this. I’m Native American, I create art, and therefore, it’s Native American art. It doesn’t always have to be a Chief on a horse or in the mountains or a piece of pottery. It can be this,” SeeWalker said.

Through SeeWalker’s visual art, she shares parts of her culture. One of SeeWalker’s projects has included a portrait series (predominantly of Native women) inspired by a dream.

In this series, the subjects are often wearing elk teeth adorned clothing (a symbol of status), many have long braids with spirits of their own, squiggly lines representing “the journey of Native people,” with all the chaos, trauma, resiliency, ups and downs that come with that as well as symbols of silencing and censorship (whether its pixelated colorful squares or boxes over the subject’s mouth).

Weaving traditional materials and culture with contemporary art palettes and style, SeeWalker’s visual art connects to the notion of showing Native cultures as they exist today.

This is also explored in her multi-media initiative called the Red Ribbon Project, which SeeWalker has collaborated with artist Carlotta Cardana on since 2013. Through photos, videos and words, the project documents Native American stories.

“I interview a lot of Native people from all over — whether it’s urban areas to reservations and everywhere in between — because I’m really trying to highlight what needs to be native in the 21st century,” SeeWalker said.

A significant part of this project is around shifting the traditional canon of Native American portraits by giving agency to the subjects.

“We want Native people to represent themselves how they want to be represented,” SeeWalker said. “Every photograph is not curated. It is us telling them to wear what you want to wear, present yourself in whatever way you want to be presented and pick a spot where you want to be photographed that’s meaningful to you.”

Forging a new path

Some of the discussion on Wednesday — whether through the lens of allyship, reconciliation or framed within the “Land Back” movement — centered on how the United States moves forward from the trauma inflicted on Native Americans in the past.

“It’s really about what actions are you taking to hold space for Native Indigenous people? What are you doing to create opportunities? There’s more action that can be taken than just simply checking a box off and reading a land acknowledgment,” SeeWalker said.

As an example, SeeWalker called attention to the land acknowledgment read at the program’s start by the Eagle Valley Land Trust. The acknowledgment did more to promote the organization rather than to promote the “stolen land and the people that resided here,” she said.

In a broader sense, looking to the future requires acknowledgment of what has occurred.

“The first step is to recognize and admit that this happened in this country, and our government hasn’t really done that yet,” SeeWalker said when speaking about the boarding schools.

SeeWalker shared various ongoing efforts that are beginning to build understanding and create space for Native history, stories and culture.

This includes Lakota Language Immersion Nest programs aiming to rehabilitate the language. In Colorado, this includes state legislation passed in 2022 establishing a research program for boarding schools located here. Other state legislation formed the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives task force created by the state to address that growing crisis.

It also includes a nonprofit, People of the Sacred Land, which released a report detailing the land displacement and genocide of Native people in Colorado. The report provides details on every land cession in Colorado, whether legal, illegal or coerced.

However, there is still a lot of work to be done.

“We’re not even acknowledging what happened to Native people, we’re not supporting, we’re still facing just keeping the culture alive in many ways,” SeeWalker said.

“We’re only 2% of the entire population in the U.S., so even if all of us scream at the top of our lungs about what we need help with and what we’re struggling with, we’re still not loud enough so we do need allies” she later said. “Offer to help Native people, Native organizations with what your assets and skills are … take action.”