YOUTH CRAFT KUMEYAAY EXHIBIT
Artwork from Barona Indian Charter School on display at Mingei International Museum through July 31
As the eighth-graders from Barona Indian Charter School prepare for the next chapter of their education, they have a new accomplishment to add to their resumes: an art exhibit at the Mingei International Museum.
Through the project, students combined modern elements with the Kumeyaay traditions, history and storytelling they learned during the cultural classes at the Barona Cultural Center & Museum.
During an unveiling ceremony at the Mingei Thursday, each student received a certificate from the office of Supervisor Joel Anderson, whose district includes the Barona reservation. As part of the event, Kumeyaay basketmaker Eva Salazar from the San Jose de la Zorra Indigenous Community in Baja California wove baskets using pine needles in the entryway of the museum.
The Barona eighth-grade students spent the last few months creating the art pieces for an exhibition titled “Kum ‘Enyaawapch Ewuupch,” which means “The Way We See It” in the Kumeyaay language.
Graywolf Alto, who is Kumeyaay, contributed a diamondback rattlesnake out of chicken wire and papier-mâché to the exhibit. The painted sculpture is decorated with red, orange and yellow tufts of tissue paper in the shape of flames, representing the story of how the Creator — ‘Emaay ‘Ehaa — imparted knowledge to the Kumeyaay people.
Not only did he have fun creating his snake sculpture, Alto said he learned a new respect for his culture.
“I’ll be able to teach my kids one day about my Kumeyaay culture,” the 13-year-old said.
Another student, 14-year-old Reena Lejeck, created two pieces for the exhibit to highlight Kumeyaay traditional medicine and knowledge. In the first, she use a sheet of wood, LED lights and paint to depict three Kumeyaay constellations.
For the second, Lejeck used a medicine cabinet to display modern medicine containers filled with traditional, medicinal plants, writing the Kumeyaay names for the plants like buckwheat — or hemill — on the bottle. Some of those ingredients
are still used for medicine today, both in their traditional forms and as ingredients in pharmaceutical drugs.
“Things we use today were also used back then and were found by Natives,” Lejeck said.
The art pieces created by the class are displayed in glass niches outside the museum for all to see, and are paired with panels about the tribe’s history along with a bronze plaque with a Kumeyaay land acknowledgement embossed on it.
Although the museum does outreach with local schools, this partnership is the first time it has worked with a school located in one of San Diego County’s tribal communities, said Rob Sidner, Mingei executive director and CEO.
Because the museum sits on Kumeyaay ancestral land, Sidner said collaborating with the tribe through this exhibition is one way to uplift their stories and voices.
“This whole area of Southern California is the home of the Kumeyaay people, and yet they’ve been ignored, forgotten, abused,
had land taken away from them,” he said. “These are small efforts — this and there are many going on all over — to start to redress that wrong situation. This is a tiny effort, but we’re pleased to be a part of it.”
The concept for the collaboration started after the Mingei’s education and community programs specialist, Charles Thunyakij, first met Barona Cultural Center & Museum Director and Curator Laurie EganHedley. After hearing her share how the Barona Indian Charter School students learn the Kumeyaay language, culture and history in
a class, Thunyakij was inspired to work with and guide the students to create an exhibit.
But learning wasn’t a one way street, Thunyakij said, as he also learned from the students over the course of the project.
“It grew from being something like let’s put a couple plants into the case to doing something with the community,” he said. “People should come here with a quiet mind and ready to absorb what the Kumeyaay are sharing.”
The Barona tribal council helped in the curation of the information displayed in the exhibit, which EganHedley
said is a sharp departure from how museums used to be designed.
“The trouble with museums is that they’ve always had somebody else interpret other cultures,” she said. “Very recently that is starting to change in the museum industry.”
Barona Tribal Councilman Joseph Yeats, who spoke during the unveiling event, said he and the tribal council appreciated how this partnership with the Mingei helps to show the public that Indigenous people are still a part of the modern world.
“Going through all these museums around here and across the nation as a kid, seeing us referenced in the past tense, was always confusing to me,” he said. “To be able to have the Mingei International Museum reach out to us to partner and contribute to this and have our eighth-graders — our tribal youth — be able to actually contribute to something is incredible.”
The Kumeyaay exhibit will be on display for free outside the Mingei International Museum until July 31, when they will then be moved to the Barona Cultural Center & Museum.