INSIDE NMAI


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or strips, with which to weave the baskets. On other splints and the baskets’ rims are written words from Pratt’s infamous 1892 speech, during which he argued for killing the Indian in a child in order to “save the man in him.” Inside each basket, printed on a deep red background and held protectively within, are the names of some of the 8,000 children who attended the school before it closed its doors on September 1, 1918. Perhaps most painful of the enduring


traumas inflicted by the Carlisle Indian school is that nearly 200 children died there and were buried in a cemetery on its grounds. In an act of remembrance and mourning, Goshorn collected donated cedar, sage, sweetgrass and tobacco along with handwritten notes to the children, which she and her daughter pre- pared in bundles that they laid on each of the children’s graves. Today, some of the children’s remains are being repatriated to their com- munities and families, returning home at last. In September 2018, The Trout Gallery, the


Instead of more traditional plant materials, Shan Goshorn’s baskets are woven with strips of archival watercolor paper on which are printed reproductions of historical photographs or other documents.


to mid-20th centuries, devastated individuals and families and contributed to a multigen- erational loss of language and culture. When Goshorn was awarded a prestigious


Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in 2013, she was enabled to study the designs and techniques of Cherokee baskets in Smithson- ian collections as well as the archival materi- als at NMAI’s Cultural Resources Center, the National Anthropological Archives and the National Archives. During her research, she was deeply moved by the photographs of Na- tive children at Carlisle and other boarding schools operated by U.S. government and church authorities. The experience was more


28 AMERICAN INDIAN WINTER 2019


personal because several of her own relatives had attended Carlisle. Following her fellow- ship, Goshorn continued her research in the photographs, student rosters and other docu- mentation of the Carlisle school’s archives in the Cumberland County Historical Society. For “Resisting the Mission,” Goshorn


selected seven pairs of photographs taken of Native children just after their arrival at Car- lisle and again a few months later. Goshorn reproduced the photographs on archival watercolor paper and sent or carried them to Native communities, asking people to inscribe them with personal messages to the children. The photographs were then cut into splints,


art museum at Dickinson College in Carlisle, marked the centennial of the Carlisle school’s closing with an exhibition of works address- ing its lasting impacts. The exhibition featured 37 of Goshorn’s baskets, with the “Resist- ing the Mission; Filling the Silence” set as its centerpiece. As each basket towers 21 inches in height, together their collective presence dominated the room, says Trout Gallery Di- rector Phillip Earenfight, “They draw you in from a distance. And as you get closer and you are inches away from the baskets, as you read the text and you see the photographs, and you see the ‘before and the after,’ each wave [of emotion] comes crashing over you, one after another, and it doesn’t stop. Few works have that kind of power.” Goshorn spent more than two years mak- ing the baskets, and she labored to finish the collection in time for the exhibition’s open- ing. She was able to attend but died only weeks later on December 1, 2018, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was 61. “Shan Goshorn was an accomplished art-


ist who used Cherokee basket techniques to create powerful statements about cultural memory and social justice,” says David Pen- ney, NMAI’s associate director for research and scholarship. “She completed the Carlisle


PHOTO BY ROSE MCCRACKEN, COURTESY OF SHAN GOSHORN'S STUDIO


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