FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Genia Hesser (701) 328-2102 or Mark Halvorson (701) 328-2101
December 1, 2011
BISMARCK – A little more than 200 years ago, a young American Indian woman and her baby joined a group of about 30 men determined to paddle, walk, and ride from her home near the junction of the Knife and Missouri rivers all the way to the Pacific Ocean and back again. After an arduous journey of more than a year, they succeeded, and the young woman and her child returned to her home. While the men of the expedition were hailed as great adventurers and explorers, the young woman was largely overlooked for almost 100 years. Near the beginning of a new century, however, women of a new generation, determined to create a larger world for themselves (including the right to vote), began to see that young woman – Sakakawea – as a symbol of pioneering female achievement.
The exhibit, Creating Sakakawea, opens Friday, December 9 at the North Dakota Heritage Center. It describes how this young woman became, next to Pocahontas, the best-known American Indian woman in the nation and a symbol of North Dakota. First displayed at the North Dakota Heritage Center from October 2010 to April 2011, the exhibit briefly moved into storage during the initial construction work on the expanded Heritage Center. Creating Sakakawea will replace the award-winning exhibit, How Does Your Garden Grow? Gardening in North Dakota.
The exhibit explores what Sakakawea has meant to different people at different times in history, and how North Dakota’s Sakakawea statue exemplifies some of these different meanings. Creating Sakakawea is produced by the State Historical Society of North Dakota (SHSND).
As women struggled to gain legal and political equality, the Lewis and Clark Centennial of 1903-06 brought Sakakawea to the public’s notice, and she quickly became a symbol of what women could accomplish. The North Dakota Federation of Women’s Clubs decided that Sakakawea should be recognized and spearheaded the effort to raise money for a statue honoring her. The State Historical Society of North Dakota worked with the Women’s Clubs to create as “accurate” and “authentic” a statue as possible – considering that no portrait or good physical description of Sakakawea existed. The Mandan and Hidatsa people of Fort Berthold were consulted as to the proper attire for a young woman of their people; Sakakawea’s granddaughter, Hannah Levings, also known as Mink, was chosen as the model, and Leonard Crunelle (1872-1944), a renowned Chicago artist, was chosen as sculptor. It took five years to raise the money and complete the statue.
On October 13, 1910, a large crowd gathered on the state capitol grounds in Bismarck to celebrate the unveiling of an eight-foot-tall, 875-pound bronze statue of Sakakawea and her baby son, Jean Baptiste. The symbolism of this statue was made clear during the ceremony, when the president of the University of North Dakota, Frank McVey, said that it was not to Sakakawea “as Indian” that the memorial was erected, but rather to Sakakawea as “a type of woman universal” who “rose to her opportunity and accomplished a noble service.”
Featured in the exhibit will be the dress, leggings, belt, and awl case worn by Hannah Levings when she modeled for the statue in the early 1900s. These pieces were created by Hannah Levings and Charlotte Hoffman, wife of the superintendent of the Fort Berthold agency, who relied on the recollections of elderly Hidatsa women to design the pieces in traditional Hidatsa style, using material and techniques that might have been available in Sakakawea’s time. In 2010, they were sent for conservation to the Midwest Art Conservation Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota so that for the first time in a half-century these rare pieces could be on display.
A second Sakakawea statue also grew out of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, this time the 2003-06 bicentennial commemoration of that journey. National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol offers space for two statues from each state featuring illustrious or distinguished citizens. North Dakota had only one statue, and as the bicentennial of the expedition approached, Sakakawea was selected to be an appropriate representative of the state to add to the Hall. The original statue was conserved, a mold made, and a replica statue was created.
On October 16, 2003, this second Sakakawea statue was unveiled in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. At the dedication ceremony, thanks were extended by Three Affiliated Tribes Chairman Tex Hall, “for this honor of one of our own, a Hidatsa woman, Sakakawea.” This 21st Century Sakakawea has been emphatically claimed by her own people, and hailed by others as a symbol of American Indian cultural inclusivity. This Sakakawea has become a symbol of the assistance provided by Indian people that made the expedition’s success possible, and, in her early death, a reminder of the losses that followed the rapid U.S. expansion after the expedition.
Visitors to the Creating Sakakawea exhibit will be able to explore both the history of the state Sakakawea statue and what a young Indian woman has meant to the American people over the past 200 years. She is a blend of legend and mythology balanced on a narrow foundation of historical fact, who remains fascinating to all. The exhibit will be at the North Dakota Heritage Center through September 30, 2012.
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