LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – In a state rich with Native American history, a local organization is helping Nebraska acknowledge its past.
Mannequins at the Great Plains Art Museum hung two handmade coats and a robe created by an Otoe-Missouria artist from Oklahoma that highlights Nebraska history.
One represents the missing and murdered indigenous people. The others represent the children who were killed or went missing at residential schools, like ones in Genoa.
The artist, Tammy Faw Faw, said this isn’t just a crisis of the past.
“It’s every day here in Oklahoma. We can’t, you can’t get away from it. There’s somebody gone everyday from somewhere,” Faw Faw said.
Through her artistic experience, she was able to take her pain and turn it into something beautiful, honoring those who were murdered or are missing, including her cousin that has yet to be found.
“When I was sewing I would think about them and, and I would get sad and sometimes, you know, a little angry you know because nothing ever came of their death. Nobody ever really knows what happened,” she said.
With Otoe-Missouria roots in Lincoln, it was important to the Great Plains Art Museum that they held pieces honoring and representing a nation that was forced out of the city nearly 200 years ago.
“It’s kinda a combination of admiring the work of the artist and the beauty of the piece, but also sadness about the heaviness of these issues.”
The exhibit is free and open to the public every week from Tuesday through Saturday. It’ll be up until the end of October.
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