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Hena Uŋkiksuyapi: In Commemoration of the Dakota Mass Execution of 1862 will be on view at the Hillstrom Museum of Art from December 17, 2012 through February 8, 2013. Hena Uŋkiksuyapi, Dakota for "we remember those,” features artworks by Dakota and other Native American artists presented in commemoration of the mass execution on December 26, 1862 of 38 Dakota following the end of the Dakota-U.S. War of earlier that year.
The exhibition includes works by artists Janice Albro, Joseph J. Allen, Gordon Coons, Jerry Fogg, Erin Griffin, Jacob Pratt, Mona Smith, Robert Two Bulls, and Gwen Westerman (exhibition co-curator).
Hena Uŋkiksuyapi was organized by the Hillstrom Museum of Art with the assistance of co-curator and participating artist Gwen Westerman. Dr. Westerman is an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate and is a scholar on the faculty of Minnesota State University, Mankato, serving as professor of English and Humanities there. She is co-author, with Bruce White, of the 2012 book Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota, which examines the history of the Dakota people and their deep cultural connection with what is now Minnesota. She wrote an essay for the exhibition about what it means to commemorate the events of December 26, 1862.
