Reflections of Our People, Our Ways, Our Land

Reflections of Our People, Our Ways, Our Land

An exhibit featuring 24 works of Otoe-Missouria artists

On view at the Great Plains Art Museum September 5–December 20, 2025
Traveling exhibition dates to be announced

Otoe-Missouria artists, ranging from traditional to contemporary and working in any medium, were selected to co-create an art exhibition reflecting on healing, reconciliation, and reconnecting to the land. Reflections of Our People is a key part of the new Mellon-funded initiative "Walking in the Footsteps of our Ancestors: Re-Indigenizing Southeast Nebraska." The initiative, a partnership between the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma and the Center for Great Plains Studies, aims to promote healing and reconciliation in our region by reconnecting the Otoe-Missouria Tribe to one of their homelands in southeast Nebraska and educating non-Native people about the history and ongoing presence of the Otoe-Missouria and other Indigenous peoples in our region. 

As part of the creative process, selected artists attended Otoe-Missouria Day, which was held on September 21, 2024, in Lincoln, Nebraska, and participated in an artist retreat on September 22, 2024, at Homestead National Historical Park in Beatrice, Nebraska. 

This will be the first exhibition to center Otoe-Missouria artists and their creative work. The exhibit will be held at the Great Plains Art Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, which sits on Otoe-Missouria homelands, and then travel to Oklahoma. Jessica Moore Harjo, Ph.D. (Otoe-Missouria/Osage/Pawnee), is the curatorial director for this exhibition.

The Center for Great Plains Studies and the Otoe-Missouria Tribe were awarded a three-year, $1.58 million grant to launch the project. This project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.