Earth Day Intervention
This project was highly influenced by Decolonize Liberty (2012), a photo by Steven Paul Judd depicting a hand holding up a drawing of a jingle dress to the Statue of Liberty so it looks like she is wearing it. After I saw this photo and realized there were over 50 replica Statue of Liberty sculptures in Kansas and Missouri made by the Boy Scouts of America in the 1950’s, I immediately though, “Hey, I can do that for real! How cool would that be?” I refer to this event in 2016 as a pilot or test run. My hope is to work with a team to realize this on a much greater scale in the future. There are over 200 replica Statue of Liberty sculptures in the United States and U.S. territories.
This was a one day pop-up art event occurring in the Kansas City greater metropolitan area on Earth Day, 2016. The goals of the project were:
To promote Earth Day and highlight an Indigenous responsibility to and respect for the land
To counter stereotypical representations of Natives through self-representation
To empower Indigenous women
To represent various Native American cultures and traditions through different regalia styles
To appropriate the Statue of Liberty which symbolically serves as a welcoming beacon to the United States and subvert it to reflect the descendants of the original inhabitants of this country
The locations and tribal affiliations associated with the 4 Statues that were dressed include:
Seminole (blue cloth dress with patchwork on bottom) - Meyer Boulevard & Prospect Avenue
Ioway (purple and chartreuse appliqué skirt) - Franklin Elementary School
Three Affiliated Tribes (buckskin dress with red shawl) - Shawnee Mission North High School
Potawatomi (red and blue appliqué skirt) - North Kansas City High School