Word: hawking
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While working on a reservation for blue roan horses—the decedents of original Lakota war ponies—in the 1980s, McLaughlin grew acquainted with Thunder Hawk, the tribal arts instructor at the United Tribe Technical College. The friendship between the two has served as the impetus for the current Wiyohpiyata exhibit, which they co-curated. Its planning required a large team of workers and over four years of conversations and brainstorming, according to Thunder Hawk...
...bridge the potential cultural divide, McLaughlin worked with Thunder Hawk to make the exhibit into a sensory experience that immerses the visitor in the sounds, images, and even smells associated with Lakota culture. “We thought about how people experience cultures,” McLaughlin says. “We decided that it had to be ambient and appeal to people’s senses—[to emphasize] not words and text but colors and shapes and sounds...
Sounds of a thunderstorm fill the small L-shaped room. Out of sight, a scent machine pumps out the smell of white cedar. “We wanted to give the audience a sense of being in the element of a thunderstorm,” Thunder Hawk said...
...warfare as unfolding as a storm—building in intensity,” McLaughlin says. “When that energy reached a certain pitch, [the warrior’s] amulets [representing this bond] would spring to life... opening the passage to the spirits.” Thunder Hawk agreed, noting that the Lakota people draw on these spirits to help them in both the rage of war and quotidian life...
...including an effigy honoring the death of a blue roan horse that appears over fifteen times in the images inside the ledger. According to him, such effigies were created by Lakota warriors who lost their horses in battle, and these objects were later used in ceremonial dances. For Thunder Hawk, who learned his artistic skills from his grandparents, the exhibit was an inspiration; it exposed him to the art of the pictograph—the colored illustrations that fill the ancient ledger...