Dakota Elders Will Oversee Dismantling, Burning of 'Scaffold'

"Scaffold" by Sam Durant at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

Sculpture tainted Dakota 38 memory, but Dakota elders say this is a teaching moment

A day before what was to have been the celebrated grand re-opening of the Minneapolis Scuplture Garden, Dakota elders will oversee the dismantling of a painfully controversial piece of artwork held within it that ignited onsite protests and a flood of social media criticism.

At an afternoon press conference Wednesday, May 31, it was announced in the Star Tribune that on Friday, June 2, Dakota elders will oversee the dismantling of a 2-story artwork called "Scaffold," a recreation of multiple historic gallows including that on which 38 Dakota men were hanged in an 1862 mass execution in Mankato, Minnesota. A Native-owned construction company is donating it services to begin taking it apart Friday afternoon; the dismantling will take about f4 days.

At a later time, the structure will be reassembled and burned in the Fort Snelling area.

That's exactly what former Lower Sioux tribal chairman and documentary filmmaker Sheldon P. Wolfchild envisioned. He is 1 of the dozen elders who met for 3 hours on May 31 with representatives of the Walker Art Center, the city government, the Parks and Recreation Board, "Scaffold" artist Sam Durant and mediator Stephanie Hope Smith.

"If it was up to me," Wolfchild said, "I would like to see when that's taken down, that it's re-put up by Fort Snelling, then have a ceremony to remember those who were hung ... then burn that structure in effigy to make a statement."

The point of burning the remade gallows near Fort Snelling would be significant because that is where hundreds of Dakota people were held prisoner after the 2-month long violence near Mankato and New Ulm in 1862, followed by forced removal down the Mississippi River and eventually back up and into South Dakota, separating many communities from their ancestral lands. For Wolfchild, the fort holds particular pain because it is where his ancestor, Medicine Bottle, was hanged along with Little Six; they are the 2 killed after the mass execution and remembered as the Dakota 38 + 2.

Mankato, Minnesota, December 26, 1862

Both artist Durant and Walker Executive Director Olga Viso have apologized for the pain caused by the controversial display of the 2-story artwork, commissioned in 2012 for an art festival in Germany.

At the press conference, Durant further apologized and has committed not to create the gallows again, according to the Star Tribune, which quoted him as saying: "I've done historical and archival research, but I had not met with the people who have been living with this history for 500 years. That was a powerful and moving experience. I just want to apologize for the trauma and suffering that my work has caused in the community. I would say that what we have come together here and negotiated is a path forward and hopefully a path of healing, especially for the Dakota community, and also for building bridges between mainstream, white, Euro-American society and the Native American indigenous communities nationally and on this continent."

"Scaffold" was to be 1 of 18 new pieces added to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, an 11-acre joint effort between the Walker Art Center and Minneapolis Parks & Recreation Board within the 19-acre Walker campus.

The sculpture garden was to have a grand re-opening Saturday, June 3 to unveil the new works but that has been delayed until June 10.

Source: indiancountrymedianetwork.com, June 3, 2017

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