An exhibit which unveils unknown Indiana history and perspective in relation to the state’s native past, present and future is opening today at the Tube Factory artspace.
In Elisa Harkins: Ekvnv (Land), the Sacred Mother from Which We Came, Harkins looks at land in two different ways:
* A path toward healing due to the desecration of burial mounds in New Harmony, Indiana.
* And how the Land Back movement addresses climate change.
Harkins, a multi-disciplinary artist based in Tulsa, Okla., and Tube Factory curator Shauta Marsh researched and worked on this exhibit for five years as part of Big Car Collaborative’s decade-long research project, Social Alchemy, that explores utopia and dystopia with an emphasis on the southern Indiana town of New Harmony that was twice the site of utopian experiments.
In the Main Gallery, Harkins draws attention to settler desecration of Indigenous mounds in the unmarked “Harmonist Cemetery” in the southwest Indiana town on the banks of the Wabash River.
When the Harmonists purchased the land in the early 1800s, they dug up the Indigenous burial mounds, collecting what they considered interesting items for their Cabinet of Curiosities. They then buried their dead over the native people’s remains.
When the Harmonists sold the town to industrialist Robert Owen for his rationalist utopian attempt, the Harmonists took apart their church and used the brick to enclose the mounds with a wall. Today, the burial mounds are not acknowledged on signage for the cemetery.
Harkins brings light to this history and offers healing through the Spirit Houses. These are structures built that provide a protective shelter over the grave of their deceased relative. Harkins could not build them in the “Harmonist Cemetery.” So the photographic wall mural and Spirit Houses in the Tube Factory’s Main Gallery serve as a temporary monument to the native people buried there.
Through the 24 photographs on the wall surrounding the Spirit Houses, Harkins tells the story of the mounds in New Harmony to demonstrate not only settler violence against Indigenous land and bodies but also the presence of multiple tribes at sacred burial sites across time.
In examining multiple histories of mounds, Harkins interrogates whether Indigenous lands belong to one people alone, And her investigation prompts viewers to examine their own ties to land through time – in their lost ancestral cultures, as well as in contemporary society.
The Tear Dress on the north wall of the gallery is one Harkins wears in many photos and in her work in the video room. Cherokee women traditionally wore this dress in the Southeast in the early 1800s. Indian Removal began to take place during this time period in Indiana (land of the Indians). This is also around the time Harmonists sought to build a sort of religious utopia in the town they named New Harmony.
In the video room, Harkins shares a piece on the 200-year-old song, Hesaketv Meset Likes or The One Who Gives us Breath. Though the singing takes place in the present, Harkins seeks to move the audience through time, preserving culture by bringing this new knowledge of ourselves to the forefront.
Leading by example with her works, Harkins uses her Indigenous body as an extension of Ekvnv, “the mother from which she came.” This embodies critical reflection on deep human connections to ancestral lands across time and place. Her cultural references to ancient mounds with intersectional tribal histories – as well as contemporary tribally-specific structures such as Spirit Houses – probe the meanings of “Indigenous” identity and question whether individual tribal nations will participate in intersectional freedom for all Indigenous peoples.
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n the Jeremy Efroymson Gallery, Harkins shares images, sound, and sculpture that invoke definitions of tribal sovereignty – centering land and its protection. Amid a contemporary Indigenous landscape in which tribal activities vary between cultural revitalization efforts and extractive practices at times complicit with capitalist structures, Harkins calls for land protection above all. This shows viewers that the return of Indigenous land protection practices, along with language and cultural revitalization, are inevitable outcomes on Turtle Island (some Indigenous American tribes refer to North America as Turtle Island).
Harkins often encounters tornado shelters for sale alongside the roads in Oklahoma. While dangerous tornadoes traditionally occur in the summer months, recent years have seen an alarming rise in winter tornadoes. By using the image of these Tornado Shelters, she aims to raise awareness about the increasing destruction and loss of life caused by climate change. The shelters, placed in the ground or Ekvnv, serve as a metaphor for the Muscogee origin story, symbolizing their emergence from the earth at the beginning of their civilization.
The light sculptures are in English, Cherokee and Muscogee words:
ᎠᏴᏫᏯ ᎤᏤᎵᎪᎯ ᎦᏓ ᏤᏙᎢ
Este Cate Ekvnv Okharoces
You Are on Indian Land.
The music playing in the Jeremy Efroymson Gallery honors communities destroyed and lives lost through human created climate change. She composed this piece for the tornado shelter sculpture to serve as a poignant tribute to the lives lost, communities disrupted, and environmental imbalances exacerbated by human negligence.
In Ekvnv, Harkins calls for universal participation in and attention to the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous hands, inviting viewers to reckon with the power imbalances that continue between settler colonial structures and Indigenous historical worlds. To Harkins, sovereignty includes care for all–from health care to land protection that reaches worldwide, just as the Sacred Mother receives care from all.
PHOTO ABOVE: Elisa Harkins is a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) artist, singer, electronic music composer, and curator based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work is concerned with translation, language preservation, and Indigenous musicology.
