Tribal voices power public art project on the Mississippi River

GALENA, Ill. — Standing on a bluff above the Mississippi River, cartographer Margaret Pearce read aloud the names that different tribal nations have for the water that flowed below them. Nįįxete. Nyidąna. Nyitanga. Ḣaḣa Wakpa. Medisibowi. Her audience — some who had never said the words before, others who knew them well — repeated them back. They’d gathered here in northwest Illinois to view Pearce’s new public art project. The people who used those names lived with and alongside the upper Mississippi River for thousands of years. Pearce, a Citizen Potawatomi Nation member, contends their knowledge and understanding of the river have been washed over as the U.S. government tries to control and restrain it. Her project, called Mississippi Dialogues, is meant to change that. People walk to the bluff edge at Casper Bluff Nature Reserve in Galena, Illinois, to view the public art project Mississippi Dialogues by cartographer Margaret Pearce, with wood art by artist and Ho-Ch