Through January 8th, the AT&T Discovery District exhibition, YAHVLANE & HA ĮLÈ – ART WITHOUT BORDERS, honors and commemorates the Indigenous peoples of North America, respectfully acknowledging the Caddo, Wichita and Kickapoo tribes who were the original stewards of the land we now call Dallas, Texas.
The original inhabitants of North Texas, the Caddo, called the banks of Arkikosa home, what we now call the Trinity River. The Anadarko people had been settled in the Dallas area for centuries by the time that George Childress inked the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. They were forced to move multiple times during the years of the Republic of Texas (1836 – 1846), and the period after Texas was granted statehood. Sam Houston held a positive view on the Native Americans in Texas, having spent nearly three years on Hiwassee Island with the Cherokee, the island lies between Chattanooga and Knoxville. However, Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar, Texas’ second president, perused relations with much less nuance, vowing “to push a rigorous war against them; pursuing them to their hiding places without mitigation or compassion, until they shall be made to feel that flight from our borders without hope of return, is preferable to the scourges of war.”
Lamar would use 56 Texas Rangers to exact revenge on the Comanche and Cherokee for their support of the Córdova Rebellion in Nacogdoches in 1838. Sam Houston would increase the number of Texas Rangers threefold to 150 during his second term. The Texas Rangers would go on to commit various terrible crimes against Native Americans as well as Mexican peoples living in Texas.
To mark the important history of this area of North Texas, which provided seasonal homes and trading exchanges for multiple American Indian groups along the Trinity River, this exhibition presents the work of Dallas artist Brian Larney, a Choctaw of Oklahoma, and a citizen of the Seminole Nation. His tribal family name of five generations is Yahvlane, meaning Yellow Wolf in Seminole. Larney’s paintings and illustrations explore racial identity, cultural struggles, and the rich history and traditions of the Choctaw and Seminole nations. The artist aims to eliminate stereotypes, be a voice for American Indians, and encourage cultural preservation through forward thinking and a contemporary lens. Larney is the chair for the American Indian Heritage Day in Texas (AIHD).
Part of AIHD’s mission is to reclaim Arkikosa as the original namesake of the Trinity River, and to present Texan and Native American history in a way that doesn’t whitewash or erase the lives and contributions of original ‘Texans.’ With SB3, which passed a senate vote on July 9, 2021, but has not made its way to the governor’s desk, would strip out many mentions of women and people of color in school studies-more than two dozen requirements that include Native American history, civil rights activists Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, historical documents related to the Chicano movement and women’s suffrage, and writings by Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. The bill would also remove “the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong.” Since we’ve moved into the information age, the battle for history and how it is taught is quickly becoming vitally important. Which is why exhibitions such as YAHVLANE & HA ĮLÈ – ART WITHOUT BORDERS act as a primary document of history personified.
The space will also exhibit Ha Įlè, an augmented reality sculpture project by Texas artist Eric Wagliardo and First Nations interdisciplinary artist Casey Koyczan from Yellowknife, Canada. The shared iconography of the petroglyphs and hummingbird are intended to further the cross-border cultural dialogue. This project was sponsored by the Consulate General of Canada in Dallas and the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture and was created in collaboration with C2, an art advisory firm with offices in Dallas and Houston..
The multiple international voices in this exhibition represent the cultural dialogue among Indigenous peoples from all regions of North America, for whom no national boundaries or borders exist. The exhibit is free and open to the public, at the AT&T Discovery District, now through January 8, 2023.