Dedication
Quapaw Tribe performs at mural ceremony
National Park Rotary Club brought the subject of its 100th anniversary mural to perform live Wednesday at its dedication in downtown Hot Springs.
Dancers from the Quapaw Tribe of Quapaw, Okla., traveled to Hot Springs to perform a tribal dance in front of the mural, which depicts
two Quapaw Native Americans, during a special Rotary meeting held in the Exchange Street Parking Plaza.
“I wanted other people besides the Rotarians and the people who were available in the middle of the day to be able to experience Native American dances,” said Mary Zunick, Visit Hot Springs cultural affairs manager. The club normally meets at noon Wednesday in the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa.
Mike Shawnee, a member of the tribe and drummer for the dancers, said Rotary contacted the tribe for the dedication. Zunick said she also asked the dancers to perform for Hot Springs Intermediate School and Park Elementary School before their Rotary performance. “The students loved it,” Zunick said. “We enjoy doing this,” Shawnee said, noting he and members of his tribe perform their native dance “all year long.”
Shawnee noted the ancestral importance of his tribe visiting Arkansas.
“We can trace my great-, great-grandmother to the Arkansas Post over in southeastern Arkansas — Dumas, that area,” he said. “That’s where she was born, and then when they moved, she moved with them to Oklahoma.”
The mural was painted by Italian muralist Giuseppe Percivati on the south wall of the Simon Mendel Building in the 500 block of Central Avenue in June.
According to Zunick, Percivati’s vision of honoring the role the Quapaw Tribe played in the early establishment of the city was influenced by the work of late Arkansas artist Charles Banks Wilson.
“We wanted a mural celebrating the reason why people come to Hot Springs. That’s up to the artist’s interpretation — it could be history, it could be nature, it could be attractions, it could be lakes,” Zunick said. “Guiseppe selected our Native American history. The Quapaw Tribe is the tribe that ceded the land to the United States government.”
Shawnee said the mural “pretty much looks like the original,” noting his tribe owns the original painting and he personally knows the artist and man who posed for the original work.
Zunick said Percivati had planned to attend the dedication, but was unable to obtain the paperwork necessary to travel internationally in time. She said he will be returning to the Spa City to create another mural soon.
Zunick said she was sending Percivati pictures and video of the dedication as it was happening.
“He just was so sorry that he couldn’t be here and wishes he would be able to be here and celebrate with us,” she said.
“As Americans, we come from so many different directions,” she said. “We sometimes have forgotten or don’t honor our past as much as other cultures do, so I think that having the natives, the Quapaws here, our indigenous peoples here and having the mural honoring the Quapaw Tribe and honoring the first residents of Hot Springs is only appropriate.”