INSIDE NMAI


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America Meredith (Swedish/Cherokee), Mary Golda Ross: Ad Astra per Astra, 2011. Acrylic on canvas, 30" x 40" (26/8630).


MARYGOLDAROSS: T


ADASTRAPERASTRA


his portrait of Mary Golda Ross, by Swedish/Cherokee artist Amer- ica Meredith, honors the Cherokee woman known as the first female American Indian engineer. Ross


(1908–2008) was the great-great-granddaugh- ter of Chief John Ross, who led the Cherokee Nation from 1828 to 1866, a period that includ- ed its forced removal to what was then known as Indian Country. Mary Golda Ross was born and raised in


Oklahoma. A strong student with a love of math, she earned bachelor’s and master’s de- grees in mathematics, while also taking courses in astronomy. Ross worked as an educator and at the Bureau of Indian Affairs before going to work for Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in 1942. At Lockheed, she worked on missile and other defense systems, and early design con- cepts for orbiting satellites and interplanetary space travel. She was one of the authors of a


84 AMERICAN INDIAN SUMMER/FALL 2014


NASA planetary flight handbook addressing travel to Mars and Venus. Painter America Meredith creates thought-


ful, detailed portraits of friends, family and historical figures whom she admires. The Cherokee syllabary, which she describes as the strongest visual imagery unique to her tribe, often figures prominently in her work. The title of Meredith’s portrait of Ross is a


play on the Latin expression Ad astra per aspera (“to the stars through hardship”) and Cherokee origin stories stating that the Cherokee people came to Earth from the Pleiades. The constel- lation, also known as the Seven Sisters, is repre- sented in the painting by a seven-pointed star, a symbol that also references the seven clans of the Cherokee and the seven directions in Cherokee cosmology. At right, Meredith depicts the Agena spacecraft, a part of the Gemini and Apollo space programs that Ross was instrumental in developing during her time at Lockheed.


Ross received numerous awards and honors


for her work and, after retirement, became an advocate for engineering and mathematics ca- reers for American Indians and women. At the age of 96, Ross attended the 2004 grand open- ing of the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall and walked in the Native Nations Procession. In an inter- view, she said she believed the Museum would “tell the true story of the Indian – not just the story of the past, but an ongoing story.” When she passed away in 2008, Ross left a generous gift of more than $400,000 to the Museum’s endowment. Her portrait was acquired by the Museum in 2012.


– Rebecca Head Trautmann


Rebecca Head Trautmann is a curatorial researcher working with modern and contemporary art exhibitions and collections at the National Museum of the American Indian.


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