Madison Hye Long, Tela Wildoni’s Sunrise, 2020

Shelley Patrick, Standing Peach Tree, 2023

From L to R: Tela Wildoni’s Sunrise, Madison Hye Long; Standing Peach Tree Mound Was Here, Shelley Patrick; Metamorphosis, Tony A. Tiger

Nature & Nurture

The “Nature and Nurture” group works reveal how the elements of nature have always sustained and guided Indigenous people through challenges and changes and transformed their personal and spiritual journeys. Southeastern tribes have long shared a story that they originated at a continent-like place called Turtle Island. As a source of their Southeastern ancestors, featured artists suggest they brought harmony to this land. After European contact, land was increasingly seen as property and for the material value of its resources. Here, aquatic motifs of both the land and sea represent how water, long a source of health, wealth, culture and life (mythical and biological) runs in the blood of Southeastern peoples. Since many homeland towns were located on waterways, arteries of life before removal, settlers called Native Muscogee inhabitants “Creek” people. Representations of fire and light are also central as they once dimmed in the sunset of homeland uprooting and removal, also known as the “Trail of Tears.” However, as symbols of purification and renewal, even the sun represents the resilience of life and regeneration. The cycles of life are also represented by creatures of the air and symbolize spiritual and personal reconnection. Instead of being acknowledged as original caretakers of the land, many Indigenous people strive to show that we belong to nature, which nurtures us.

Highlights

Tela Wildoni’s SunriseMadison Hye Long

Highlights

Madison Hye Long

Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Tela Wildoni’s Sunrise, 2020

Madison Hye Long’s photography has gained international attention for its contemporary perspectives of her people, their culture, the natural landscape they inhabit and their presence in the Southeast region. In her work, Long conveys a love of nature that stems from her roots in the mountains of the Cherokee Qualla Boundary in North Carolina. Yet, her images are not mere scenery, they convey real time and space. Such is the case in this photograph, in which the energy of the sunrise, the cycles of nature and panoramic view empower the figure, Tela Wildoni. While rooted in the external landscape, the image conveys Wildoni’s internal experience. The basket suggests her ties with nature, and along with her skirt and leggings, convey pride in her Cherokee heritage. Tela’s shirt speaks of her strength and resilience as a modern Indigenous woman.

Shelley Patrick

Mvskoke

Standing Peach Tree Mound Was Here, 2023

Standing Peach (or “pitch”) Tree mound was located on the Chattahoochee River in what is now the Buckhead district of Atlanta, Georgia. It is believed to be the source of the iconic “Peachtree” place names in and around Atlanta. Centuries ago, the mound is thought to have been adjacent to a Mississippian and later Muscogee “Creek” village of Pakanahuili, a translation of Pvkanv-hvlwe “high (of a mountain or hill) peach.”

The village, located at the edge of the Muscogee Confederacy and Cherokee Nations, was at a crossroads of trade and traffic. Yet in the early 1800s, the expanding Georgia frontier, a U.S. Army fort and the first Treaty of Indian Springs (1821), forced Muscogee “Lower Creek” people from the area to relocate in remaining tribal lands, including “Upper Creek” towns in Alabama. Soon after, a railroad and decades later, an Atlanta waterworks would destroy Standing Peach Tree mound.

Despite these losses, Mvskoke people are increasingly rediscovering and returning to the site as does Patrick vicariously in this work. Here, she integrates site topography, Southeastern Indigenous iconography, Muscogee symbols, and peach imagery to show that the legacy of the site lives on. At top, an ancient sun circle motif blends with peach colors and contours to map the riverside location of the village mound at its center.

The site is the axis of converging tributaries of the Chattahoochee River, ancient Indigenous arteries represented by flowing copper leaf. These branches mirror a tree which is standing, yet bent, representing local Native American trail markers. Beneath the tree motif, a watery mound is signified by contour lines and a layer of sun circles. Behind them constellations are visible, looking back in time to the past as a source for the present and future.

Standing Peach Tree Mound Was HereShelley Patrick

MetamorphosisTony A. Tiger

Tony A. Tiger

Sac and Fox, Seminole, Muskogee

Metamorphosis, 2019

Based on Tony A. Tiger’s contemplation of the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly, this work reflects the evolution of the artist’s Native people, as well as his own spiritual transformation. The top panel signifies early life with shapes abstracted from a caterpillar and textile patterns from Tiger’s Seminole and Muskogee or Creek ancestors on his father’s side in Florida and Georgia. The middle layer represents the chrysalis or cocoon stage and symbolizes the Southeastern homelands and the pervasive influence of European culture. The Muskogee text is the beginning of “the Lord’s Prayer.” The back level features wing pattern abstractions of the emerging yellow swallowtail, the state butterfly of Oklahoma. For Tiger, this process represents how forces of nature and nurture shape our lives.

Exhibition Themes

UpliftedMadison Hye Long