Celebrating Student Art,

On the evening of Wednesday, November 9, student artists, their friends and family, along with art museum supporters and guests attended a reception and awards presentation in celebration of the FOCUS-themed exhibition Interconnected: Land, Identity, Community. In this eighth juried Student Response Exhibition (SRE), Miami University students were called upon to creatively respond to the Miami University 2022-2023 FOCUS theme of Tribal Sovereignty. Interconnected was developed in collaboration with the Myaamia Center, with whom the Art Museum has joined efforts on several exhibitions over the past 14 years. The Myaamia Center’s George Ironstrack, Director of Education, and Kara Strass, Director of Miami Tribe Relations, assisted Art Museum staff with the development of the exhibition. In the context of the 50th anniversary of the relationship between the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and Miami University, we reflected on the often unseen reality of tribal sovereignty in North America. Here, sovereignty includes inherent and retained political rights and cultural integrity. Three key factors in maintaining sovereignty are land, identity, and community.

Joining the celebration, in addition to colleagues from Miami University’s Myaamia Center at Miami University, were Chief Doug Lankford of the Miami

Tribe of Oklahoma, Julie Olds, an artist and the Miami Tribe’s Cultural Resource Officer, as well as other Tribal Council members including: Second Chief, Dustin Olds, Secretary/Treasurer, Donya Williams and First Councilperson, Tera Hatley.

It was such a wonderful opportunity for the student artists to have important members of the Miami Tribe present for the event. Tribal council members, staff of the Myaamia Center, along with John Weigand, Acting Dean of the College of Creative Arts were at the museum prior to the awards reception for another special event. Staff of the Art Museum worked in collaboration with Myaamia Center staff and Tribal Council members to prepare for the unveiling of a Land Acknowledgement panel now displayed prominently in the museum’s Williams Foyer. The panel, which presents Miami University’s Land Acknowledgment, also emphasizes, for all to see, the Art Museum’s commitment to vibrant collaborations with the Myaamia Center and the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma through community-curated exhibitions and programming. This approach provides the opportunity for Myaamia to provide the authentic and authoritative voices that deliver the content for exhibitions celebrating the richness of their culture.

To find out more about spring events and lectures related to the FOCUS theme of Tribal Sovereignty at Miami University, visit MiamiOH.edu/Focus