Migration Memorials - Indigenous People

Dignity of Earth and Sky

lijiayi@unc.edu — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 10:29:24 +0000

Description:

Dignity is a 50 feet high statue located in South Dakota in the US. It is a gift from Norm and Eunabel McKie of Rapid City to celebrate South Dakota's 125th anniversary of statehood. This sculpture was designed by Dale Lamphere to honor the cultures of the Lakota and Dakota people.

LocationMem:

Chamberlain, South Dakota, U.S.

Official/Unofficial:

Official

Group Acknowledged:

Lakota and Dakota peoples

Historical Subject:

Native Americans: Lakota and Dakota peoples

Physical Aspects:

Stainless Steel, 32 feed width and 50 feet height.

Date of Dedication:

2016

Place Location:

Files:

Themes:

Indigenous People

Monument for the Whitehorse Residential School Survivors

lijiayi@unc.edu — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 14:29:03 +0000

Description:

This monument is located on the Whitehorse Waterfront, recognizing the Whitehorse residential school survivors. Nine wooden stools circulate the concrete, and each of them is different.

LocationMem:

Whitehorse, Canada

Institution:

Government

Official/Unofficial:

Official

Group Acknowledged:

Canada Indigenous People

Historical Subject:

The Whitehorse Indian Mission School was operated from 1947 to 1960, mainly for the Yukon aboriginals in Canada.

Date of Dedication:

2018

Place Location:

Files:

Themes:

Indigenous People

Indigenous Healing Garden with Indentity Restoration Sculpture

lijiayi@unc.edu — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 14:17:43 +0000

Description:

There is a giant turtle sculpture in the center at the Nathan Phillips Square outside the Toronto City Hall. In recognition of residential school survivors, this memorial is one of the Indian Residential School Survivor Legacy projects.

LocationMem:

Toronto, Canada

Institution:

Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre, the City of Toronto, and the Ontario Government

Official/Unofficial:

Official

Group Acknowledged:

Canada Indigenous People

Historical Subject:

The Restoration of Our Identity Sculpture

Physical Aspects:

A Sculpture

Date of Dedication:

2018

Place Location:

Files:

Themes:

Indigenous People

Effigy Mounds National Monument

jkn2137@unc.edu — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 14:46:36 +0000

Description:

Established in 1949, Effigy Mounds National Monument preserves many American Indian ceremonial mounds found in the shape of animal effigies along the high bluffs and lowlands of the Upper Mississippi River Valley. The 2,526 acre Monument preserves more than 200 mounds, including 31 in the form of bear and bird effigies. The hunter-gatherer culture that built these mounds were known as the Woodland Indians. Archeologists and researchers hypothesize that some of the mounds were built for religious ceremonies, burial ceremonies, as clan symbols, or possibly as a way to connect people to their ancient ancestors and the spiritual world.

LocationMem:

151 Highway 76, Harpers Ferry, IA

Institution:

National Park Service

Official/Unofficial:

official

Group Acknowledged:

Woodland Indians

Historical Subject:

The Woodland Culture, which dates from 500 B.C. to about 1200 A.D., is broken down further into three different sub-cultures: the Early Woodland (also called the Red Ochre), the Hopewellian classified as Middle Woodland, and the Effigy or Late Woodland. Between 800 and 1,600 years ago, in the Late Woodland period, American Indians began building earthen effigy mounds in the shapes of mammals, birds, and reptiles.

Physical Aspects:

There are four type of burial mounds found at this memorial: conical, linear, compound, and effigy. A conical mound is round, dome-shaped and usually about 10 to 20 feet across and two to eight feet high. A second mound type is the linear style: these mounds were two to four feet high, six to eight feet across, and were up to 100 feet long. Sometimes referred to as “cigar shaped,” these elongated mounds are often classified as ceremonial mounds and are generally absent of burial materials. The compound mounds look like a string of beads, where the conical domes are connected by the linear mounds.

Place Location:

Files:

Themes:

Indigenous People

Kindred Spirits Monument

jkn2137@unc.edu — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 11:42:14 +0000

Description:

The sculpture commemorates the generosity of the native North American Choctaw Indian Nation during the Great Hunger in Ireland of 1845 - 1851. Moved by news of starvation in 1847, a group of Choctaws in Oklahoma organized a relief fund from their own meager resources, raising $170 to forward on to the US famine relief organization. That would be tens of thousands of dollars in today's money. It was a show of solidarity with the Irish people, having suffered a similar fate themselves just 16 years before after they were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands.

LocationMem:

Bailic Park (Midleton, Co. Cork in Ireland)

Institution:

Midleton Town Council

Official/Unofficial:

Unofficial

Group Acknowledged:

North American Choctaw Indian Nation

Historical Subject:

The Choctaw were a tribe of Native American Indians who originated from modern Mexico and the American Southwest to settle in the Mississippi River Valley for about 1800 years. After the formation of the Mississippi Territory in 1798 and the election in 1800 of Thomas Jefferson to the U. S. presidency, the federal government had an increasing hunger for Choctaw land. In what became known as the Trail of Tears, thousands of people walked more than 1,000 miles, having been forced to leave without gathering their possessions. Four thousand people died of hunger, cold and disease.

Physical Aspects:

Stainless steel sculpture of a circle of several six meter eagle feathers.

Date of Dedication:

Great Hunger (1845-1851)

Place Location:

Themes:

Indigenous People

Kamui Mintara (Playground of the Gods)

raypalma@unc.edu — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 04:50:52 +0000

Description:

A field of Ainu totem poles at Burnaby Mountain Park, Canada created by an Ainu sculpter from Japan

LocationMem:

Burnaby Mountain Park

Institution:

Individual, Noko Nuburi (Ainu sculter)

Official/Unofficial:

Unofficial (but needed government approval)

Group Acknowledged:

Ainu People

Historical Subject:

The Ainu people are the indigenous people of Japan. The Ainu, led by Shakushain, unsuccessfully revolted against the Japanese samurai in the middle of the 17th century. The people are native to Hokkaido, or the northern most island of Japan. Though only 24,000 Ainu remain today, they finally received official recognition as an indigenous people by the Japanese government in 2019.

Physical Aspects:

The totem poles are carved out of wood and stand 10-20 feet tall. Represented on the poles are a bear, fish, and owl. They stand together in a field overlooking the greater Vancover area at Burnaby Mountain Park.

Date of Dedication:

1990

Place Location:

Files:

Themes:

Indigenous People

Ainu People

Cenotaph for Sakhalin Ainu

raypalma@unc.edu — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 04:29:57 +0000

Description:

Cenotaph specifically memorializing the Sakhalin, Russia roots of the Ainu people in Japan. Located in the city of Ishikari Hachiman cemetary.

LocationMem:

Hachiman Cemetery, Ishikari, Hokkaido, Japan

Institution:

Public government

Official/Unofficial:

Official

Group Acknowledged:

Ainu People

Historical Subject:

Physical Aspects:

The cenotaph appears to be made of granite, standing about 5 feet tall and 3 feed wide. Like any other cemetery stone, the cenotaph is engraved with writing that describes the Sakhalin roots of the Ainu people. Unlike Porotokokan (Ainu musemum) which is on the southeastern corner of the Hokkaido island, this memorial is located on the western coast of the island, closer to the Sakhalin island (now part of Russia).

Date of Dedication:

September 2002

Place Location:

Files:

Themes:

Indigenous People

Ainu

Statue of Grandma Olga Nikolai Ez

jkn2137@unc.edu — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 04:28:55 +0000

Description:

The bronze Ahtna woman in the sculpture is modeled after Olga Nikolai Ezi, a well-respected elder in the Native village of Eklutna known as “Grandma Olga.” She and her husband, who was a Dena'ina chief, are credited with settling into Eklutna and establishing much of the tribal lineage.

LocationMem:

Anchorage, Alaska

Institution:

Ship Creek in Anchorage

Official/Unofficial:

Unofficial

Group Acknowledged:

Eklutna, Ahtna

Historical Subject:

Olga Nikolai Ezi was Ahtna, which are an Alaska Native Athabaskan people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group. She married a Dena’ina chief, Simeon Esia, and had five children. They are credited to have established much of the lineage of the Eklutna tribe, according to interpretive panels accompanying the installation.

Physical Aspects:

Bronze statue of an elderly woman holding dried fish

Date of Dedication:

November 2018

Place Location:

Files:

Themes:

Indigenous People

The Aboriginal Memorial

jkn2137@unc.edu — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 04:09:33 +0000

Description:

The Aboriginal Memorial is a work of contemporary Indigenous Australian art from the late 1980s and is located in the National Gallery of Australia. It comprises 200 traditional hollow log coffins or pole for each year of European settlement, representing the Aboriginal people who died defending their land and denied a proper burial. The poles were made by 43 artists from Ramingining and several surrounding communities in Central Arnhem Land Northern Territory, Australia.

LocationMem:

National Gallery of Australia in Parkes, Australia

Institution:

National Gallery of Australia

Official/Unofficial:

Official

Group Acknowledged:

Aboriginal Australians

Historical Subject:

Prior to British settlement, more than 500 Indigenous groups inhabited the Australian continent, approximately 750,000 people in total. In the 10 years that followed colonization, it's estimated that the Indigenous population of Australia was reduced by 90%. The most immediate consequence of colonisation was a wave of epidemic diseases including smallpox, measles and influenza, which spread ahead of the frontier and annihilated many Indigenous communities. The expansion of British settlements also resulted in competition over land and resources, which quickly resulted in violence. Though some Aboriginal Australians did resist, most were subjugated by massacres and the impoverishment of their communities as British settlers seized their lands.

Physical Aspects:

Collection of 200 decorated hollow log coffins.

Place Location:

Themes:

Indigenous People

Hero Shakushain (Ainu) Statue

raypalma@unc.edu — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:45:46 +0000

Description:

Located at Mauta Park in Hokkaido, Japan

LocationMem:

Mauta Park, Shinhidaka, Hokkaido, Japan

Institution:

Public government

Official/Unofficial:

Official

Group Acknowledged:

Ainu People

Historical Subject:

Physical Aspects:

The metal statue of Shakushain standing roughly 12 feet in height above a stone and cement foundation. On the foundation, is a plaque detailing Shakushain. To the left of the statue, stands a 30+ foot pillar enscribed with characters and symbols.

Date of Dedication:

Place Location:

Files:

Themes:

Indigenous People

memorial of leader