Transcripts

EDGAR HEAP OF BIRDS: Like how yours is just an unusual shape going up that way.

EUAN KERR: In the art lab at the Walker Art Center, Edgar Heap Of Birds is talking with a group of Indian children from Minneapolis. They've been drawing spirals made of their relatives names, an exercise which Heap Of Birds says helps them understand the native belief that life is circular. It's just one of the classes that the Oklahoma-based artist, himself a Cheyenne-Arapaho, has put on before the dedication of his latest work entitled Building Minnesota.

The installation will commemorate 40 Lakota men hanged after the US-Dakota War of 1862, an event which has been described as the most controversial incident in Minnesota's history. Heap Of Birds says the hangings show the depth of hatred that Minnesotans of the time harbored for Indians.

EDGAR HEAP OF BIRDS: I have it on my mind. And Minnesota meant that to me, I guess, always. When people talk about Minnesota, that's what I thought about. I didn't think about baseball teams or whatever.

EUAN KERR: Heap of birds says he does not try to make accusations through his work. But he does try to inform people about the important but forgotten parts of history. The sculpture will be made up of 40 signs, which, at first glance, may seem little different from regular park signs.

EDGAR HEAP OF BIRDS: And each sign will say honor, and then the name of the Warrior in his own language, and then a translation in English below it. But the translation in English is smaller. So it's obviously trying to say the tribal language is the primary language, not English as a secondary language. And then in English, below that, it talks about who, where the execution took place, what date, and which President ordered the execution or signed off on the execution.

EUAN KERR: Abraham Lincoln signed 38 of the death warrants, Andrew Johnson, the other two. Heap of Birds says he wants to show that while coexistence between White settlers and the Indians was possible, the commercial pressures driving development found the Indians to be an obstacle.

EDGAR HEAP OF BIRDS: And so I chose to place the signs down by the milling district, to try to show that so-called American progress and how it murdered 40 people.

EUAN KERR: The installation was commissioned by the Walker in conjunction with an exhibition of Heap Of Bird's work entitled Claim Your Color. The Walker's Joan Rothfuss says the gallery wanted to mount the show because of the intriguing blend of styles and influences that Heap Of Birds presents.

JOAN ROTHFUSS: He's a young artist who's doing work that's consciously using the very latest kinds of systems in contemporary art, working with language, working in public medium. And yet, Edgar is really very involved in his own heritage and issues for Native American people and for White people.

EUAN KERR: Malom Har and Weewee Camp are both Indian students at the Red School House in Saint Paul. They traveled with Heap Of Birds to the Lower Sioux Reservation near Redwood Falls to meet with direct descendants of some of the hanged men. Har says she found it upsetting because she believes that all Indian people are related.

MALOM HAR: I just want to do a project on it now. We're going to-- me and Weewee are going to do a project on it for a science fair or some kind of fair.

EUAN KERR: Edgar Heap Of Birds says that just as he tries to raise the consciousness of the Indian students, he hopes his work will stop people from viewing Native Americans as one-dimensional stereotypes.

EDGAR HEAP OF BIRDS: I guess my wildest hope, in a sense, is that when they see my work, that they'll maybe look further into the next native they meet. And they won't think that person sweeps up or that person dances with feathers or whatever stereotype they find, that my show will confuse them on a certain level and make them look deeper.

EUAN KERR: Edgar Heap Of Birds. In Minneapolis, I'm Euan Kerr.