The Concept

A Spiral of Memory

"When the Earth Remembers" is a site-specific installation in Oklahoma City designed to challenge the one-sided narrative of the Land Run Monument.

Using cast concrete bison bones and bronze bison skulls arranged in a counterclockwise spiral, the artwork re-centers Indigenous perspectives by symbolizing the removal of lands and cultural resilience. By connecting the artwork with the land, visitors experience a reinterpretation of history that honors the significance of our homes, environmental balances, community collaboration, and the sovereign voices of Native Indigenous Nations.

Conceptual Background

Emerging from the desire to acknowledge the ongoing impact of the Land Run on Indigenous nations — between nations of the Southeast, Eastern Woodlands, Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, Midwest, Plains, and Southwest — whose ancestral and federally assigned lands were systematically opened to non-Native settlement through legislative acts (Homestead Act, Curtis Act) and culminating events like the 1889 Land Run.

Drawing on scholarship by Angie Debo (And Still the Waters Run) and Vine Deloria Jr. (American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century), the project foregrounds Native experiences of dispossession and survival.

Isolated rendering of the counterclockwise bone spiral with two bronze bison skulls, shown from above — Every bone tells a story in the counterclockwise spiral of memory.

The Spiral

The spiral itself, a counterclockwise form, references our stomp dance and speaks to reversing or re-examining the celebratory pioneer narrative. While the Land Run Monument dramatically conveys the settler rush for "free" land, the artwork symbolically lays bare the cost of that expansion: dismantled Nations' sovereignty, the near-eradication of bison, and fractured ecosystems.

By employing bison bones — long iconic of Plains life and spiritual practice — the artwork honors the memory of a keystone species integral to Indigenous subsistence and culture.

A shared space of movement and remembrance.

The spiral holds Oklahoma as a meeting ground of many Native histories. Rather than speaking for one tradition alone, the form creates a shared space of movement and remembrance — where many homelands, removals, survivals, and continuities can be present together.

Line drawing of a bison skeleton — The bison — a keystone species of land, ecology, and Indigenous lifeways.

A Collective Act of Remembrance

A living conversation beside the monument

When the Earth Remembers is a community-centered public artwork developed in response to the stories, histories, and living cultures of Indigenous Nations in Oklahoma. The project asks how public art can widen civic memory by making space for Indigenous perspectives on land, stewardship, displacement, survival, and cultural continuity.

Aerial photograph of the Bricktown River Walk site showing the bronze Land Run Monument statues, the canal, and the spiral installation rendered in place beside them — The proposed site — the spiral rendered in place beside the Centennial Land Run Monument statues and the Bricktown canal.

Close detail of the cast bison-bone spiral, showing the arrangement of bones and the bronze skull at center — Detail of the bone spiral — each cast form part of a larger arrangement of memory.

Founded on a simple belief: meaningful public art should emerge through conversation, collaboration, and care.

This project invites Native Nations, Tribes, Communities, Cultural Departments, Artists, Culture Bearers, Educators, Ecologists, and Supporters to help shape an artwork that reflects the complexity of Oklahoma's shared history.

Participation can take many forms. Some may contribute artwork. Others may host workshops, share ecological knowledge, provide guidance, or support the project through funding and partnership. There is no expectation of scale — only an open invitation.

See the four pathways to participate