PUBLIC STATEMENT ON THE DAKOTA 38 EXHIBIT BY WHITE ARTIST KEITH DIXON AT NORTHRUP KING BUILDING IN MINNEAPOLIS.
Native trauma is not a commodity for others to benefit from. Native people have been stolen from long enough.
Nya:weh Sgeno, my name is Rosy Simas. I am Seneca, Heron clan.
I am the Artistic Director of Rosy Simas Danse, a Native-led Non-Profit organization. RSD was founded in 2012 in Mni Sota Makoce. Our primary commitment is to create and present innovative Native contemporary art that connects artists and audiences. RSD makes visible the work of Native artists nationally and internationally to shift the global view of how Native people are seen and to demonstrate that Native artists are contemporary, groundbreaking artists bringing critical Indigenous worldviews to all fields of the arts.
We are located in ArtSpace managed Northrup King Building (NKB) arts campus in the designated Northeast Minneapolis Arts District. RSD has been a tenant of the NKB since the end of 2020. We leased a large studio space in the building to create a safe space during the pandemic and social uprising for Native and BIPOC artists. A safe space with its own bathroom and kitchen where artists could isolate themselves, create, rest, and heal from all that was happening around them.
My first day walking through the building unescorted by white NKB staff was met with questions of “Can I help you?” “Are you looking for someone?” These questions came with a clear attitude of “Why are YOU here?” These were not isolated experiences, and other Native and BIPOC artists in the NKB have experienced these microaggressions as well.
It has been a lot of work for RSD to develop a space where Native and BIPOC artists feel comfortable walking the halls of NKB. That work has been done by making ourselves visible to others in the building and educating others about who we are by inviting people into our spaces for open events.
On May 20, 2023, during Art A Whirl, a large public event that takes over the entire Minneapolis Northeast Arts district, I was made aware of an exhibit by a white artist, Keith Dixon, on the Dakota 38 at Studio Pintura in NKB. The exhibit is a series of portraits of Dakota ancestors who were murdered by hanging in 1862, ordered by President Lincoln.
Many non-Native people from Minnesota, and most non-Native artists in Minnesota, know about the controversy involving the Walker Art Center and Sam Durant's sculpture Scaffold which was supposedly making a statement about capital punishment and honoring the Dakota 38. Most people have learned through that painful incident with the Walker that the story of the Dakota 38 is a story for the DAKOTA people to tell and no one else – regardless of their intentions.
Native artists talked with Studio Pintura management and the artist Keith Dixon. It has been reported to me that white people who were standing by were mocking the Native artists and also adamantly defending Dixon’s right to paint whatever he wanted.
These incidents have created an UNSAFE environment for Native artists in NKB. Those feelings of being unsafe make participation in future NEMAA and other Northeast Arts District events difficult for Native artists.
Northeast Minneapolis - you need to learn where you are, whose land you are on, and find ways to learn about the Dakota people who share their homeland with you.
These relationships are not one-way. It is not up to Native people to educate Non-Native people about this land and who we are. It is up to all citizens of the United States to learn about treaties. These treaties belong to all of us. They are also not one way.
Those who mocked the Native artists need to publicly apologize to the Native people they have harmed. Keith Dixon needs to publicly apologize and halt any more public exhibition of the work. Studio Pintura needs to apologize publically for its role in the harm this is caused.
Rosy Simas