Mikayla Patton

Visitation (2021)

I call them traveling trunks, paper vessels resembling rawhide suitcases that once stored Indigenous belongings in transit. Now these forms serve as archival ancestors holding space for stories and dreams to travel through. In 2021, I was given permission to temporarily relinquish a beaded Lakȟóta dress from the Roswell Art Center’s permanent display of the West of Beyond: The Rogers and Mary Ellen Aston Collection of the American West. Like many exhibits of Indigenous belongings, a thick glass wall separated us. It is important to mention that at the time I was also far away from home and felt strongly connected to the dress, knowing that it has not been danced in or fed with care. 

Lakȟóta adornment practices have taught me that the love for our people is represented on our clothing and the Lakȟóta dress, artist now unknown, was covered in a constellation of glass beads. The symbols alone told me that we belonged to the same people, the Lakȟóta oyáte. As an act of reciprocity, I repurposed paper collected from the RAC’s library archives as they were getting rid of outdated research and misinformation regarding Indigenous peoples from North and South America. As I shredded the sheets of paper by hand, I read names given to nations of people who did not identify themselves as and so on. I pulped the paper until it no longer resembled a document and through a rigorous process of straining and pressing, the paper trunks took form. 

Visitation (2021), was the ephemeral act of making space for our belongings to feel close to home. Although repatriation tells us that there's hope in the return of our stuff, old and new museum protocols continue to restrict our access creating another barrier of colonial walls. Like our ancestors belongings, the presence of the traveling trunks have material agency to move beyond our understanding of these restrictions. Through this visit, these non-human forms make it possible to embody closeness to our communities, to our bodies, to us and for us.