Mississippi Dialogues is a public art project reimagining possibilities for Mississippi River flood management through situated cartographic design. I am mapping community dialogues about flooding into a Mississippi transformed by Indigenous ways of talking about water and flooding, in collaboration with the Nations whose homelands include the Mississippi. The destination is a series of large-format map panels to be installed at outdoor, publicly-accessible venues along the river (parks and exterior walls), with an accompanying guidebook.

I spent most of 2019 on the road, working on this project as I visited people and places up and down the river, and in Oklahoma. I continue the work now from home, interviewing from a distance, listening and studying, and bringing together a first design of the panels. I hope to return to the river in 2021, as so much depends on being present and listening.

I'm grateful to Yaddo, Art Omi, the American Philosophical Society, CNAIR / Northwestern University, The Anderson Center, A Studio in the Woods, and the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund for supporting me as I began this project.


MEDIA

Proximal Braveries, with Kelly Wisecup. For Indigenous Mississippi: Indigenous Art & Activism of the Mississippi River. A Humanities without Walls project.

Adaptations Residency video produced by A Studio in the Woods.