Art can help tell the story of Ohio’s indigenous peoples. The Great Circle Alliance is a local nonprofit dedicated to this form of storytelling.
The organization’s name comes from the Great Circle Earthworks in Licking County, built thousands of years ago by the ancient Hopewell peoples, said co-founder Marcus Boroughs.
““We are a museum without walls. We have no infrastructure or collections. But we work in the community in the same way that some museums do,” Boroughs said.
The organization was officially founded in 2021. Co-founder Belinda Gore said they wanted to help raise awareness of Ohio’s Native American cultural history – hence the name.
“None of us are Native people, so we wanted to make sure we were involving Native people, artists, scientists and community leaders and bridging the gap between art and cultural history. So for us, ‘alliance’ was a word that meant collaboration and partnership,” Gore said.
The Alliance offers a variety of programs, including exhibitions, presentations and self-guided tours.
Adriana Martinez-Smiley
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WYSO
It will next be shown as a traveling exhibition at the Belmont County Heritage Museum and can be viewed there starting August 21.
Recently, artist residencies have become the organization’s primary focus. Carey Newman is an interdisciplinary First Nations (Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw and Coast Salish) artist and the Great Circle Alliance’s first artist-in-residence.
Newman said that in Ohio there is a very visible indigenous presence on the land itself.
“These sites are artifacts. They’re not artifacts in the sense of the earth that you think of, like an object that you dig out of the earth. But they’re certainly culturally significant,” Newman said.
Newman is not from one of Ohio’s displaced tribes, but he helped develop the newest residency program, called “Recovering Ohio’s Indigenous Voices.”
This is an artist residency program open to the descendants of Ohio’s displaced tribes. Three artists nominated for the program were announced late last month. They will come to Ohio in October to visit the earthworks, celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and showcase their current artwork.
Later, they will create artwork inspired by their time in Ohio. The residency is funded in part by the America 250 initiative.
One of the three artists featured in the residency program is Eastern Shawnee photographer Holli Margell.
Margell said she first learned about the opportunity through her tribe’s newsletter. To apply, she submitted work from a recent portrait project that focused on her indigenous heritage. She says the universe gave her this opportunity to expand her work even further.
“When this call for artists came, I thought, wow, this is an incredible opportunity, first of all, to visit the hills. I’ve read about them and I wanted to visit them,” Margell said. “And also to share a personal project, maybe with a larger audience, something that’s very visible, that can open the door to a conversation about why I made some of these images.”
The artwork created during the residency will be assembled for an exhibition at Denison University next year. Newman’s work will be on display at the Denison University Museum in January.
