Indigenous artists lead completion of Vermillion mural
Community participation drives two-year project Public art and community murals have the capacity to tell cap"va"ng stories about South Dakota hometowns—and a twopart mural project undertaken by the people of Vermillion is a perfect illustra"on. The Vermillion Community Mural Project is a subsidiary of the Vermillion Community Project developed by Amber Hansen, an assistant professor at University of South Dakota’s Department of Fine Arts. The goal of the mural project is to create public art spaces for community members to share their stories through visual language. Through par"cipa"on in the crea"on of the murals, community members can see themselves as imaginers and creators, capable of crea"ng the world they want to live in. “Not only is it important that our public spaces are filled with images and stories that reflect the people who live here, it is important to work together to unearth and amplify the stories that are missing,” Hansen said. “The act of coming together to share stories and ideas about what it means to be a part of a place is important to the fabric of that community.” Prepara"on for the mural project began in April 2019 with choosing a loca"on—the back side of the Coyote Twin Theater— making the new mural visible from City Hall. The project was led, designed and created by young community leaders and Indigenous ar"sts Reyna Hernandez, Inkpa Mani and Elizabeth Skye. Page 6
The ar"sts held public mee"ngs, invi"ng Vermillion residents to share their thoughts on what they would like to see repre sented in a mural through workshops that included storytelling, drawings and poetry. From these conversa"ons, the ar"sts found a need to create space for telling the stories of women, specifically Indigenous women. Their full mural design became a twosided diptych to wrap the northeast corner of the building. “Through wri"ng poetry, drawing and conversing, we were able to source broad recurring themes concerning motherhood, lack of female representa"on, untold stories, iden"ty and unknown histories of this place,” Hernandez said. “The mural ul"mately pays tribute to the importance of women in all cultures, while depic"ng the Sioux crea"on story and contemporary Indigenous narra"ves.” The first por"on of the mural was completed during summer 2019—Eúŋkičhetupi, a Lakota word meaning “we are restored” or “we come back to life.” The theme of rebirth encompasses not only the Sioux crea"on story but also the an"cipa"on of restora"on a#er the receding of the floodwaters, which were heavy on the minds of the Vermillion community in early 2019. “Since comple"ng our first communitybased mural, there were many who also wanted to par"cipate in this one,” Hansen said. “Because they had witnessed or experienced the process
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