New Lehigh Valley sculpture meant to promote unity
Nonprofit group says artwork needs financial support, a place to showcase it
Her name, “Unci Owanzila,” stands for “Grandmother Unity” in the Lakota Indian language.
She’s barely 5 feet tall, yet firmly rooted in a way, holding a staff with an eagle’s head at the end, wearing rainbow hair and sporting four-colored feathers. Part of her body includes a tree stump and spirals and openings that reflect DNA, symbolizing everyone’s beginnings.
And she’s made from stainless steel, even her big, red heart.
This grandmother is the concept of Robert Christopher, a member of an Easton-area indigenous-people group known as Paza, Tree of Life. He has taken the concept of Unci Owanzila from drawings to the 5-foot prototype to the next goal: a 7- to 8- foot sculpture that he and Paza members envision placing in a prominent location, with an intreperative sign, educational events, perhaps festivals — all in the name of oneness among people.
“It’s about bringing indigenous American culture and the quality up to the surface,” said Christopher, who showed the prototype Wednesday outside his Williams Township home with Maria Ragonese, who is Paza’s administration director. “It’s always being suppressed, sort of forgotten or neglected.”
The group, which includes non-native area residents such as Christopher and Ragonese, wants the finished artwork to be placed somewhere in the Lehigh Valley to promote unity among all people. Easton has been considered at the forefront of locations.
Christopher, who is the city of Easton’s conservation manager and forester, and Ragonese have had interest in Native American cultures. They connected with Delwin Fiddler, a Lakota Sioux Indian who also lives in Easton and founded Paza, a name drawn from Native American symbolism that man can stand together as a tree of life bound by common roots.
The organization learned about nationally known Oklahoma artist Gene “Ironman” Smith, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation, who took Christopher’s drawings and created the 5-foot prototype of Grandmother Unity. “It came out better than we expected,” Christopher said of Smith’s model.
Christopher envisions Grandmother Unity as bringing together both Native American and a non-Native American people to represent all cultures, noting, “We’re all related.”
The Paza group had hoped by now to have a place for the sculpture in Easton, ideally along Scott Park, which sits at the forks of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers, and where, according to Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr., various Indian tribes would meet.
Panto said he supports the project and hopes it can come to fruition in the city. Paza, which formed in 2019 as a nonprofit, has held various events in the city, at least with Lafayette College students. In late October, members held a dedication ceremony for an Indigenous Medicine Wheel Garden at Hugh Moore Park.
“I think, when we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, we have to remember we’re on Native American ground, not European ground,” Panto said.
Christopher acknowledged until the money is raised and the sculpture is completed, it would be 2024 at the earliest, before everything comes to fruition.
He estimated the artwork will cost up to $75,000. So while organizers prefer Easton, they have begun casting for alternate sites to place the artwork as well, he said.
Paza plans to hold a fundraising event in late March in trying to gain more awareness and finding financial supporters. The group is registered as a nonprofit with the IRS, and is working toward its charitable organization registration with the Pennsylvania Department’s Bureau of Corporations and Charitable Organizations.
The group registered in 2019 with the state, Ragonese said, then the pandemic hit.
“There was not much we could do,” she said. “But what we could do is help natives.” They worked with other groups to supply aid to western Native Americans on reservations that were also locked down, she said.
For more information, contact Ragonese at pazatree@gmail.com. Its website: pazatree.org.