We had parked our car at the Poughkeepsie train station and took a Metro North train into the city. I was driving when we passed these teepees along the New York State Thruway so I couldn’t very well snap a shot. On the way back Peggi was behind the wheel and I was looking down at my iPad when she said, “There are those teepees again.” I fumbled for my camera and got this shot. They looked so beautiful.
When we returned I searched “Teepees Interstate 90” and discovered they are part of an art installation by members of the Oneida Indian Nation called “Passage of Peace,” ten teepees , some on each side of the thruway. The installation is ongoing through the holidays and if you drive by at night you will see them lit in different colors. Two are illuminated in orange, the color used by advocates to raise awareness around the impact of the forcible removal of Native children to attend residential boarding schools.
From their website – “Between 1869 and the late 1970s, hundreds of thousands of Native American children attended boarding schools far from their families and tribal communities. These schools sought to achieve assimilation through denial of Native culture and language.”
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This is so eerily like what happened with some Aboriginal Australians, even up to 1970 also! White missionaries and the government kidnapped aboriginal children and put them to work as laborers or domestic servants. I knew some of these stolen children thirty years later when we lived in Western Australia. They had managed to get back home…. they were officially now of ‘The Stolen Generation’ and some became artists. One of the best, and kindest, at least to me, is Annie Walsh: https://www.wirndabarna.com.au/collections/elizabeth-annie-walsh