Amid the removal of historic Works Progress Administration murals from schools in Oak Park following complaints that they do not reflect the community’s diversity, a Park Ridge WPA mural depicting Native Americans and white government agents is staying put inside the city’s library — but getting some additional historical context, the library’s director says.
Heidi Smith, executive director of the Park Ridge library, said printed pamphlets describing the history and restoration of the “Indians Cede the Land” post office mural will be updated to include expanded historical context of the scene based on information provided to the library last year by Julie Pelletier, an associate professor of indigenous studies at the University of Winnipeg. Pelletier served as acting director of Newberry Library’s McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies.
The additional information explains that when U.S. government treaties were signed with Native American tribes, they often were not honored by the government, Smith said. Such information was recently added to the “news” section of the library’s website.
“The act of ceding land by Native Americans was involuntary and typically done under duress,” Pelletier’s information states. “In return for vast tracts of land, tribes might be promised goods, money, reserved lands (reservations) and protection from encroaching settlers …. The Treaty of Chicago gained over a million acres of land for the United States. In return, signatory tribes received $100,000 in trade goods, $280,000 in twenty annual payments of $14,000 each, and $150,000 for the erection of mills, houses, etc. The treaty does not list any land to be held for the tribes so one wonders where the houses and mills would be built. The United States government often did not honor its treaties with Native Americans and most tribes do not receive what they were promised as payment for land cessions.”
Officials said they did not yet know when the library’s informational brochure on the mural would be updated to include the new language.
The oil on canvas mural, painted by George Melville Smith and restored in 2013 through a volunteer-led fundraising campaign, hung for many years in the former Park Ridge Post Office at 164 S. Prospect Ave. According to the New Deal Art Registry, it was created in 1940 as part of a government program that commissioned art to be created for federal buildings.
Three other New Deal-era murals, created through the WPA Federal Art Project, have been or are in the process of being removed from schools in Oak Park after complaints were raised that the 80-year-old paintings featured no children of color, even though the school district today is diverse. The first mural to be removed depicted a scene of white children and parents enjoying winter activities. It was painted in 1937.
Smith acknowledged that upon joining the Park Ridge Public Library last year, she initially found its own New Deal mural— which shows a white uniformed officer in a handshake with a bare-chested native man — to be “a very beautiful, but challenging, piece of art” due to the subject matter.
“I think it has cultural and historical significance here in Park Ridge,” Smith said of the mural. “I’m thrilled we have it here in the library, but I also strongly feel it’s our responsibility to educate and share the context — both when the portrait was created and the historical period in which it is meant to portray.”
Smith said she reached out to Pelletier last summer around the time that moving the mural to the Quiet Reading Room was briefly considered. It was also around this time that a patron inquired if the mural was insulting to Native Americans and questioned whether it should have a “place of honor” in the library, Smith said.
Pelletier recently said that the library’s initial description of the piece included wording that “acted as if the tribal people of that area had either simply handed over their land or been beaten into submission. I really encouraged [the library] to put context in place, to look at the long period of colonization — not just the unfair, but illegal, ways in which territory was taken from indigenous people — and to really keep that context clear so that people looking at the mural would understand it expressed a particular moment in history from a particular perspective.”
That perspective, Pelletier said, is of white America, which, in the 1930s, was experiencing a time of “nationalistic fervor.” Such feelings are reflected in the “Indians Cede the Land” mural, she said.
“The expression of Manifest Destiny is clear to my eyes. While the indigenous men are painted as physically powerful, they are bowing to the military might and right of settler colonial society,” Pelletier said.
Pelletier acknowledged that the portrayal of Native Americans in such a prominent piece of art was “unusual” for the time it was created, but it was not necessarily an accurate portrayal.
“It shows them as ‘noble savages’ and that they have willingly moved out of the way for progress,” she said.
It also shows indigenous people living in the past, in a seemingly different world than the white men, Pelletier said, although by the 19th Century, native people wore modern clothing of the time, spoke multiple languages and were “politically savvy.”
“American Indians in the Great Lakes area had been intermarrying with, trading with and negotiating with settlers for 200 years,” she explained. “So it’s not like these folks showed up in this community and the natives didn’t know who they were. They had a pretty good idea of what the desire was: Land and for peaceful movement in the territory. They would have known they didn’t have a lot of options.”
The mural can also be viewed as offensive to native people, Pelletier acknowledged, which is why it is important to “put the mural into perspective” by considering the heightened nationalism of the period when it was painted and actual history of government treaties, she said.
Pat Lofthouse, a former library trustee who was involved in the mural’s restoration effort, said she fully supports additional historical context accompanying the mural. At its dedication in 2013, the restoration group invited a Native American scholar who pointed out the “romanticism” of the piece and the fact that the indigenous people did not give up their land happily.
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“It was always my intent that it be used for educational purposes to demonstrate Manifest Destiny,” Lofthouse said of the mural.
The painting also reflects the attitudes of the time when it was created, she said.
“Now, with our heightened sensitivity, we realize the sacrifice of all people of color,” Lofthouse acknowledged.
For Smith, the mural is one of many different viewpoints reflected among the materials that are available within the library.
“It’s just such an exciting time to talk about what we believe in, why we believe in it and what we are going to do about the past that didn’t respect many of those beliefs,” she said. “We certainly don’t want to forget it …. The more we talk about it, the more likely it is we can shed light on the actual experiences of the people who lived at that time.”