Art exhibit showcases importance of the Mississippi to tribes at headwaters and delta

CATHY WURZER: The Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona has a new exhibit centering on the Mississippi River. It's a collaboration between Native artists of two tribes united by the river, the Ojibwe, at the headwaters in Minnesota and the Houma at the delta in Louisiana. The artists used many different mediums to illuminate the connections across Indigenous and colonial histories in their shared watershed.

The two artists behind the exhibit, called "The Water Flows Continuously" in English, are joining us today. Karen Goulet is an enrolled member of the White Earth Ojibwe Nation. She lives in White Earth, currently director of the Miikanan Gallery in Bemidji-- Karen, I hope I got that right. Monique Verden is a citizen of the Houma Nation and the director of the Land Memory Bank and Seed Exchange. Welcome to you both. Thanks for taking the time.

KAREN GOULET: Thank you.

MONIQUE VERDEN: Thanks so much.

CATHY WURZER: I'm glad you had time to talk with us. I understand you both visited each other when you were creating this project. Karen, was that your first time visiting the Mississippi delta?

KAREN GOULET: No, I had been there one other time as a teenager when our family took a trip around the country. And I had knew I was going to come back. It took a while, but I did make it back.

CATHY WURZER: What was your trip like? What was your trip like?

KAREN GOULET: It was a grand adventure. We left like the day after school got out and came back three days after, before it started. And we went through a lot of states and Canada, but that particular area was very memorable for me.

CATHY WURZER: And how has it changed since that first visit for you?

KAREN GOULET: Well, as an adult person and doing the work that I'm doing, it changed a lot of things. And connecting with Monique and her introducing me more closely to her community was a big difference.

CATHY WURZER: And Monique, what was it like for you to visit the headwaters up here in Minnesota?

MONIQUE VERDEN: Mm, wow. The so-called headwaters, right? There's many, many different beginnings to the river. And I was in my 30s, I think, before I really was like, oh, where is the beginning of this big river that flows by me all the time?

And yeah, the river felt so familiar. So far away, and yet, it was like an old friend or family that-- and also, the kind of connection that people have in recreational spaces in regards to living and being on the river, where, here, we're very much so separated from it, but also at the same time, recognizing that what happens upstream ends up literally in my body, as I'm drinking that water that comes out of the Mississippi River.

So, yeah. And I think that also, just thinking about all of the invisiblized stories, Indigenous stories, and also, stories of women that I learned about, specifically Jane Schoolcraft, who was Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's wife and ghostwriter and the first published Native American poet, and that history of the so-called United States that we never hear about. So, yeah, it's really made a profound impact on how I understand the river and the watershed and the connections between the sky and the oceans of our planet.

CATHY WURZER: Can you explain, both of you, the significance of the Mississippi to each of your Native nations? Karen, how about the significance of the river to the Ojibwe?

KAREN GOULET: Well, the river, we live along that river, and we live along a lot of bodies of water. My culture, the culture that I'm from, our histories, our migration stories, the prophecies all connect us to water. We came to the place where the food grows on water. And we're here now. And much of our traditional ceremonies are seasonal ceremonies that are directly linked to water and the river. So we understand its significance, and it's important.

And the Mississippi, which is our original name, is the one that follows it down to the other end of the river. But there are many other names for it as well. And that's part of this beauty of this project, is that we get to understand how many different ways it's viewed and interpreted and has been part of the history of this continent since before we had human history.

CATHY WURZER: Say, I am so happy that this exhibit uses-- when I was first thinking about this, I thought, OK, when I think of the Marine Art Museum, I think paintings. But I'm glad to hear that you used a lot of textures and textiles, and it sounds fantastic. So, Monique, would you do us a favor? Can you paint a picture of what folks will see at the exhibit when it comes to the textiles and some of the textures that you used?

MONIQUE VERDEN: Yeah. So, Karen has introduced me to the world of textiles and a dear friend and Houma woman, Dr. Tammy Greer, who provided us with these beautiful, naturally dyed fabrics using goldenrod and pokeberry and sumac and black walnut.

And so, Karen was able to take those fabrics, as well as using indigo dyes, to make these beautiful, beautiful pieces that you'll see connecting both ends of the river. You also see a woven tapestry that has been created in community. And then also, Karen, when she was here in the delta, started burying these cotton fabrics and really, along the delta.

So, here, in the Mississippi, Atchafalaya River Basin, which is one of the biggest river basins in the world and also a place that is losing land at one of the fastest rates on the planet. The statistic is that every 90 minutes, a football field or an acre is lost from our coast here. And so, we went from the far edges of the eastern part of the delta, all the way to the oldest distributary of the Bayou Teche on the western edge, where the Atchafalaya swamp meets where once the old, tall prairies once grew.

And so, those imprints of the land and that practice was then brought upriver, and those fabrics were dyed by the land, in collaboration with the land. And then, you'll also see some photographs and collage work that's done using United States geological survey maps and also imagery that's in the public domain that has been layered to tell the multiple stories that exist in place. That has been a practice I've been using over the last couple of years as well. And that's developed through this relationship of going upriver and thinking about home.

CATHY WURZER: Karen, I'm glad to hear that you had the ability to do some work as a textile artist. And I'm wondering-- it feels to me, listening to Monique, that this was real heart-based work for you. Am I right about that?

KAREN GOULET: Oh, absolutely. And all my artwork is heart-based, but our work around the water is our connector. I mean, we're river sisters. I was able to take art forms that have been taught to me by my relatives and use them to create works of art. I work with scraps and recycled fabric and thinking about the impact that actually being down there and seeing the implications of the struggle of the landscape to continue to exist really impacted me as well.

And so, Monique and I really exchanged ideas, and we influenced each other in the work that we've done creatively. And I think it is a conversation and a dialogue that's going on all the time. We also felt it was important to include community voice. And so, we opened ourselves up to this.

There's a piece of work where the viewers can contribute. They can add to the art piece. It sort of opens up this opportunity for people to share stories in written form, add to the artwork, be part of a larger community of people they may never meet, but to honor their relationship with the water as well.

CATHY WURZER: It sounds fantastic. Karen and Monique, job well done. Thank you so much for joining us and talking about this new exhibit.

MONIQUE VERDEN: Thank you so much.

KAREN GOULET: Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Karen Goulet and Monique Verden, they're the artists who created The Water Flows Continuously. That's an art exhibit centered around the Native relationship with the Mississippi River. You can see it on display at the Marine Art Museum in Winona, and it runs through July.