A Celebration of Indigenous Resistance

Image: Ancestral Currents: From Bdóte to the Stars, 2026, augmented reality; layered stainless steel, powder-coated mild steel, and weathering steel by Marlena Myles. Ojichaagobiishin (Reflection in Water) 2026, dry-cast concrete pavers by Natchez Beaulieu.

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As the nation marks its 250th year, Americans are asking what it means to be a person in the United States. The stories we choose to tell shape what America becomes, and museums play a central role in telling them. Over the past year, Minnesota institutions have shared Native and Indigenous histories through landmark exhibitions, including Queering Indigeneity, Dyani White Hawk: Love Language, and Rosy Simas: A:gajë:gwah dësa'nigöëwë:nye:' (i hope it will stir your mind).

The Weisman Art Museum now adds to this wave of Indigenous-led storytelling with a new exhibition of its own. This weekend, WAM debuted 'Merciless': Indigenous Lands Since 1776, which examines the enduring relationship between the original peoples and the Mississippi River in Bde Ota Othúŋwe (Minneapolis). ‘Merciless’ provides a reflective space to acknowledge this history, spanning from the United States’ adoption of the Declaration to the subsequent erosion of liberties for both the land and its original people. Throughout the preceding 250 years, Indigenous communities have demonstrated remarkable persistence; these artistic acts of resilience are intended to fortify their ongoing connection to the land well beyond the semiquincentennial.

 

Image: Promotional image for ‘Merciless’: Indigenous Lands Since 1776.

 

Curated by Dr. Kendra Greendeer, WAM Ihlenfeld Curator, the exhibition features artists Natchez Beaulieu (Anishinaabekwe, White Earth Nation), Marlena Myles (Spirit Lake Dakota, Mohegan, and Muscogee), and Missy Whiteman (Northern Arapaho and Kickapoo).

The show grows out of the museum's own reckoning. Four years ago, WAM received a $239,912 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to launch a Truth and Reconciliation project: consulting Indigenous communities to acknowledge and repair past harm and to decolonize the museum's practices. An Indigenous-led advisory board guides the work, made up of local artists, community members, and representatives from Mimbres-descendant tribes of the American Southwest. Together they are building evaluation practices rooted in Indigenous frameworks. The advisory board's guidance runs through 'Merciless,' from how its stories are framed to whose voices lead them.

What struck me most is its vision of liberty for both Native peoples and the land. In many Native worldviews, personhood is not limited to humans, but extends to rivers, animals, and the land itself. That idea runs through the whole exhibition, inside and outside the museum walls. Outside, on the west lawn beside Wakpá Tháŋka (the Mississippi River), sits Myles's Ancestral Currents: From Bdóte to the Stars.

 

Image: Ancestral Currents: From Bdóte to the Stars, 2026, augmented reality; layered stainless steel, powder-coated mild steel, and weathering steel by Marlena Myles. Ojichaagobiishin (Reflection in Water) 2026, dry-cast concrete pavers by Natchez Beaulieu.

It explores Dakota relationships with the river through three teachings: Wáǧačhaŋ, the Cottonwood Tree of Life; Šičúŋ and Kapémni, the spiritual star gifts and the mirroring of worlds; and Bdóte, the sacred confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers and a place of first breath. The pavement around the steel and glass, Ojichaagobiishin (Reflection in Water), is Beaulieu's design and draws on Anishinaabe star knowledge. At its center, an eight-point star and loom-inspired pattern offer hope and guidance to future generations. Together, the two works connect land, water, stars, and ancestors through a living river that carries memory across time.

Inside, Whiteman's immersive installation Starseeds: Big Lodge People Beesowuunenno combines video projection mapping, 360 video, AR and VR 3D objects, an immersive soundscape, and sculptures by the artist's father, Ernest Whiteman. It honors their Arapaho Hinono'ei ancestors, the Big Lodge People, one of the five original bands.

 

Top Image: Starseeds: Big Lodge People Beesowuunenno, by Missy Whiteman. Photo by Rayshele Kamke. Bottom Image: Ernest Whiteman, Untitled (Spirit Pictograph: A Bountiful Hunt), 1989, iron, neon, and acrylic. Photo taken by William G. Franklin.

Just to the left hangs Ernest Whiteman's Spirit Pictograph. Its red glow recalls the pictographs at Hegman Lake in northeastern Minnesota, rock paintings estimated to be 500 to 1,000 years old. Seeing the work of a father and daughter side by side, each drawing on the same lineage, made the pairing all the more moving.

'Merciless' tells its story through sight, sound, and place, and it carries a message of hope. As the nation asks what it means to be a person in the United States, the exhibition offers an answer that reaches back well beyond 250 years: personhood belongs to the people, the river, the stars, and the ancestors who have carried this land's memory. Liberty is not something we claim alone. It is something we share with everything that sustains us. This is the America and the Minnesota I am proud to call home.◼︎ 

'Merciless': Indigenous Lands Since 1776 is on view through May 16th, 2027 at the Weisman Art Museum, 333 E River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455.

The Weisman Art Museum acknowledges the Dakota peoples on whose land we are on. We thank them and their relatives for their care of the land, and we recognize their continuing connection to the land, waters, and community. We pay our respects to them and their culture; both past and present.

Merciless: Indigenous Lands Since 1776 is supported by the KHR McNeely Family Foundation, Kevin, Rosemary, and Hannah Rose McNeely. This project is also supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and The University of Minnesota Imagine Fund. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through an Art Experiences grant and an Operating Support grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Additional general operating support is generously provided by Ameriprise Financial.