“IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas,” a Smithsonian Institution traveling display focusing on African-Native American people, will be exhibited at the Schingoethe Center for Native American Cultures at Aurora University from Dec. 17 to Feb. 27.
The 20-panel exhibit, part of the museum’s 20th anniversary celebration, is free to the public at the center in Dunham Hall at 1400 Marseillaise Place in Aurora.
Hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday; 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday. Free parking is available adjacent to Dunham Hall.
A reception for “IndiVisible” will be held from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Jan. 13 at the center. The public is invited. Call (630) 844-7843.
‘We are so pleased to be able to bring this exhibit to our campus and our community to shed light on an area of Native and African American studies that is not known to most Americans,” said Meg Bero, Schingoethe Center executive director,
The exhibit was produced by the National Museum of the American Indian in collaboration with the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service.
Generous support came from Akaloa Resource Foundation and the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center.
Through the themes of policy, community, creative resistance and lifestyles, the display includes stories of cultural integration and the struggle to define and preserve identity.
The daily cultural practices that define the African-Native American experience through food, language, writing, music, dance and the visual arts, are also highlighted.
The exhibition was curated by leading scholars, educators, and community leaders. The display addresses the racially motivated laws that have been forced upon Native, African American and mixed-heritage peoples since the time of Christopher Columbus.
Since precolonial times, Native and African American peoples have built strong communities through intermarriage, unified efforts to preserve their land and by taking part in creative resistance.
These communities developed constructive survival strategies over time, and several have regained economic sustainability through gaming in the 1980s.
A 10-minute media piece is featured with interviews obtained during research and work on the exhibition with tribal communities across North America.
The museum’s 20th anniversary celebration continues Feb. 8 at 6:30 p.m. with the lecture “Black, Red and Deadly: The Cherokee Frontier Police of the Indian Territory Cherokee Slave Revolt of 1842” by author Art Burton.
The museum opened in 1990 as a place to display some of the 6,000 artifacts donated by collectors Herb and Martha Schingoethe.
The late Aurora couple also funded the construction of Dunham Hall and the museum on its lower level.
Call (630) 844-7843, e-mail museum@aurora.edu or visit aurora.edu/museum.
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