This Land Calls Us Home: Indigenous Relationships with Southeastern Homelands is an exhibition featuring the work of 26 contemporary Native American artists and designers that conveys the relevance of their personal and collective Indigenous relationships with their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States.
The show includes more than 60 works of art that express the visions and voices and authentic perspectives of their Southeastern Indigenous heritage.
It invites viewers to identify with their stories, their challenge to remain connected to their roots and feel at home in a mainstream society that often alienates them. This show suggests that these artists return to their origins, spiritually and literally, to reconstruct an identity fragmented by history.
This project was conceived in 2019 by the Rev. Chebon Kernell, a Seminole/Muscogee scholar and educator who then led Native American programming for Global Ministries and who now serves as executive director of the Native American Comprehensive Plan. Kernell recognized how his people, deeply rooted in this region, must continually assert their heritage and destiny as did their ancestors. He also knew that Muscogee, Cherokee and other peoples indigenous to the Southeast do not define their presence here as past history. Thus, he set out to propose an exhibit that conveyed their ongoing and evolving relationships with their homelands maintained from near or afar. In 2020, with the support of Global Ministries and its related Native American programs, and after consultation with ATL Airport Art, Kernell led a team of museum professionals and other Native American scholars to conceive the exhibition concept that has evolved into the exhibition This Land Calls Us Home.
NOTE: “Muskogee” is the way the tribal name is often spelled in Oklahoma while “Muscogee” is the form often used in the homelands of Georgia and Alabama. Alternately, the Native American language spelling “Mvskoke” is often used today. All forms are often followed by the term “Creek” the name given to the tribal group by Europeans long ago and still familiar to many. You will see all forms used throughout this website.
This Land Calls Us Home explores and reveals some of the significant contemporary relationships that many Native Americans indigenous to the Southeast Woodlands region maintain with their homelands.
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This Land Calls Us Home is presented by the General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church (UMC), in collaboration with the UMC’s Native American Comprehensive Plan. The exhibition exemplifies a longstanding United Methodist commitment to Native American and Indigenous peoples.