Native American artist showcases Miccosukee Tribe in Wynwood mural before Miami Art Week
The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians are “the original locals” in Florida.
And yet the tribe’s import and its footprints in South Florida have largely been lost on the hordes of international and local visitors who descend on the Wynwood neighborhood annually — especially as the community begins its busiest season with Miami Art Week beginning on Dec. 2, and Art Basel’s four-day run, Dec. 5-8.
This oversight ended Thursday. That’s when members of the Miccosukee tribe, Wynwood business leaders and City of Miami Commission representatives participated in the unveiling of Native American artist Bunky Echo-Hawk’s multi-wall mural.
“Miccosukee Heroes” covers four walls of a warehouse building affectionately known as “the Outfront” in the heart of Wynwood at 2600 N. Miami Ave.
The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians commissioned the mural this summer with several goals in mind, said tribal leader and secretary Talbert Cypress.
“This year, we made a concerted effort to reach out more to the South Florida community and this mural represents that,” Cypress said. “This is us reaching out, like an olive branch, to show that we are still here and this represents us — and not to just think of us as a casino, or whatever. There are people and a community behind it.”
The Miccosukees looked to several artists, about three or four nationwide, to represent them and to fulfill their goals for this first, major entree into the Wynwood neighborhood and to Miami Art Week’s and Art Basel’s international audience.
Echo-Hawk, 44, was their choice, Cypress said, “because he’s very thought-provoking with his art and he’s well known throughout the country.”
Echo-Hawk, a 2016 National Artist Fellowship winner who studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is not a member of the Miccosukee community; rather, Echo-Hawk is a contemporary Native American artist and a member of the Pawnee and Yakama nations who lives with his wife in Pawnee, Oklahoma.
“We wanted to pick someone who would do the best job to represent us,” said Cypress.
It wasn’t easy. The artwork had to entertain and inform. The mural had to be selfie-worthy for the Instagram crowd but also inspire dialog about the tribe and its work as Florida environmental advocates.
“I want them to also see us as protectors of the Everglades and the work we need to do to keep our water clean,” Cypress said. “A lot of time people forget that. Everywhere along the coast people are worried about the algae and we’ve been dealing with that sort of thing for years.”
To capture everything the Miccosukees hoped the mural would encompass, Echo-Hawk painted historical tribal figure representations with word balloons and bright colors. He prominently portrayed a female elder who is given equal, or slightly larger, prominence than her male counterpart.
Miccosukee culture is traditionally matriarchal, Echo-Hawk, Cypress and Miccosukee marketing and communications rep Althea Frye explained. “We get our leadership mostly from our women,” Cypress said.
“I rendered them in comic book-style illustration with them as superheroes,” Echo-Hawk said. “That’s what I was calling this wall. The superhero wall, because they are larger than life.”
The contemporary style is a hallmark of Echo-Hawk’s work. In addition to his acrylic paintings and large-scale works, like the Wynwood project, he’s a singer, dancer and has made inroads into hip hop culture, arts experts say.
“By merging American pop culture with Native experiences, Echo-Hawk ... encourages audiences to reconsider Native American history and position Indigenous peoples as active participants in the present,” arts scholar Olena McLaughlin wrote in the journal Transmotion in 2017.
For his Wynwood installation, which is expected to remain up for about a year, according to tribal and city of Miami officials, two side walls surrounding the building’s courtyard and front showcase an environmental landscape.
One wall features a Native American in an oversize gas mask preparing for battle with an alligator. Man and gator face off along a toxic waterway. One has to wonder which of the two is the bigger threat: the beast or the polluted waters.
“Native American history is American history,” Echo-Hawk said. “Too often, Native people are relegated to the margins. We are a footnote or sometimes not even included at all. We are 2% of the American population but we don’t see parity in representation in mass media and we don’t see parity in the arts. So it’s really meaningful that this project happened for a number of reasons.
“There is a cultural resilience that needs to be celebrated and there’s a need to raise awareness of the environmental impact and responsibility we have as a society to take care of this land,” Echo-Hawk said.
The “Miccosukee Heroes” murals, a joint presentation of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and the Miami Herald Media Company, has another component, too.
“For Wynwood, this is an opportunity to forge a bridge between South Florida’s premiere ancestors, the Miccosukee community, and Wynwood,” said Albert Garcia, chairman of the Wynwood Business Improvement District.
“Wynwood has the distinct pleasure of welcoming millions of annual visitors and locals, alike, and this is an opportunity for the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians to reintroduce themselves to a new generation of international visitors who may not be aware of the importance of their work in protecting and conserving the Everglades, and for their causes and their rich history,” Garcia said.
“They were the ones to truly foster these bridges between past, present and the future and that is critically important,” Garcia said. “A project like this speaks to the next generation’s understanding of this great work. This is of the utmost importance.”
Sure, everyone welcomes people “taking selfies in front of these murals.” But Garcia hopes these same people, enticed by Echo-Hawk’s Pop-Art style, “take a moment to learn about, and understand, the tribe and to connect with them.”
Miami art collector and historian Dennis Scholl, who was not involved in this project, said the pairing of the Miccosukee Tribe and Wynwood and its arts community is significant for South Florida.
“One of the wonderful traditions I learned in working with the Aboriginal Australian communities is that almost every public meeting in Australia begins with the following opening statement to those assembled: ‘I would like to pay respect to and acknowledge the (in this case, Miccosukee) people who are the Traditional Owners of this land we stand on today. I would also like to pay my respects to the Elders past and present.’
“So, I think including Bunky Echo-Hawk in this exhibition is a significant and thoughtful acknowledgment of the Traditional Owners of the land we stand on, and pays respect to all who have stood on the land before us,” said Scholl, CEO of Oolite Arts, a visual artist support organization in Miami.
“This acknowledgment is a tradition I believe we should adopt and embrace in our culture. And we can start here in our community. It also serves to remind the audience of art lovers who will see this work that the Miccosukee people have been thoughtful stewards of the Everglades, long before us,” Scholl said.
Such a tall order for Echo-Hawk. Literally.
As he stood before his murals that towered above him on Thursday, Echo-Hawk chuckled.
“I’m actually afraid of heights and to go on lifts and ladders. My legs are sore. But I’m excited it’s done,” he said.
“I was really humbled to do something every artist dreams of,” Echo-Hawk said. “I didn’t want to fall short. But I put a lot of faith in the creative process.”
This story was originally published November 21, 2019 at 7:59 PM.
