In Wide-Ranging New Exhibition of Native American Artists, Ancestral Knowledge Animates the Stories of Today

Stories Told By Breath: Native American Voices in North Carolina | Through September 26 | Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh

Preparing work for her first group show at a major museum, just as her tribe was finally receiving federal recognition, was an incredible moment for artist Karina McMillan.

“I had no words,†she said. “We've been fighting for this for such a long time.â€Â 

McMillan, one of more than 55,000 members of North Carolina's Lumbee Tribe, had originally agreed to show 10 pieces in North Carolina State University's Gregg Museum of Art & Design's exhibit Stories Told by Breath: Native American Voices in North Carolina. Inspired by the moment, she created an 11th before the opening. 

Like many of McMillan's other colorful portraits, intricately drawn with Bic pens and finished with acrylic paints or colored pencils, this work depicts a Lumbee woman. She's drawn in profile, a bright red and fuchsia shawl wrapped around her head. 

Three ears of corn are embedded in the shawl, each composed of hatch marks in vibrant jewel and neon tones—easily the most beautiful ears of corn I've ever seen, with the “push and pull†between their green husks and the red shawl elevating the colorful corn to the surface of the canvas. There's more: Within the ears, some of the individual kernels bear the number 575 written in gold. 

The number, which also serves as the painting's title, is, like the corn it depicts, heavy with meaning; with the passage of the Lumbee Fairness Act in December, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina became the 575th recognized tribe in the U.S. 

That it took 137 years for the federal government to recognize the largest Native American tribe west of the Mississippi is, of course, a part of the painting's story. And it's not the only work in the exhibition that highlights this historic moment—“575†is also the title and subject of a beautiful beadwork by artist Ashtyn Thomas, a current N.C. State student who served as Miss Lumbee in 2023 (her beaded crown, made by her, is also on display). 

Thomas and McMillan are among the youngest artists of the 15 included in the exhibition, which features some of the state's most prominent Indigenous artists, including master potters Senora Lynch (Haliwa-Saponi) and Bill Harris (Catawba), jewelry designer Timo Locklear (Lumbee), and interdisciplinary artist Rhiannon Skye Tafoya (Eastern Band of Cherokee and Santa Clara Pueblo), whose works use printmaking, digital design, and basketry techniques. 

Meant to showcase works from both emerging and established artists, the Gregg show encompasses a wide array of mediums, including beadwork, printmaking, sculpture, textiles, and regalia. Such a range, especially all in one gallery, could prove challenging, but the thoughtful presentation offers ample space to engage individual works and learn about the artists behind them. 

None of this was accidental—from the selection of the artists to the display choices, Gregg Director Sara Segerlin and her curatorial team sought as much community input as possible. The process was, as Gregg Curatorial Assistant Meredith Osborne recounted, “all about building relationships and connections.â€

“I enjoyed getting to know each individual artist,†she said. “That really helped with designing the layout and gathering their materials for the text—hearing their community stories of where they came from.â€

Osborne, a former intern at CAM Raleigh, first encountered McMillan's work there when the artist created a window mural based on one of her works for the building.

While working on the Gregg show, Osborne and the rest of the curatorial team traveled to UNC Pembroke's Museum of the Southeast American Indian to see the annual 9|9 Native South Art Show curated by Nancy Chavis. One of McMillan's paintings won first prize there, and the show itself served as an inspiration for what Osborne identifies as “an openness to different mediums.â€

“Often with Native art, you may see beadwork, wood carving, textiles, fashion. However, the way in which [the art] is presented doesn't necessarily tell much about the artist, their lives, and their perspectives on the world,†Segerlin explained. “For Stories Told by Breath, we wanted to lean into the very human aspect of being an artist as well as the challenges that Native artists face.â€

Segerlin, who began her role as director of the Gregg in July 2024, said she is committed to “curation through a community-centered practice, which is all about building relationships and leaning into stories.â€Â 

“When I first came, the challenge was that we know we're a ‘hidden gem,' and that's a good thing, but we don't want to be hidden. We want to be well-known. We want to be a gathering space,†said Segerlin, who is hoping that exhibits like Stories Told By Breath will open the Gregg's collection to more communities and new audiences.  

A Conversation Between Generations and Places

Through its many mediums and voices, Stories Told by Breath evidences two things: one, that contemporary Native art is vibrant and manifold and, two, that the work of many of the featured artists is in direct conversation with preceding generations.

Cultural traditions and ancestors are in the work, whether or not the art looks “traditional†(whatever that means—or as McMillan succinctly put it during an April 8 panel event: “Native art is more than tepeesâ€). Indeed, the show spotlights the varieties of expression in contemporary Native art—a category as big as the land of Turtle Island itself. 

But for every artist in the show, there's an act of claiming, or reclaiming, a link from their practices today to the ancestral knowledge of the past. These ancestors are not passive characters but integral to the story—stories that aren't simply ancient or contemporary but instead alive and animate in daily life. 

“I always say that the clay gave me a voice, and the voice that it gave me was for all those people who had only heard of the Cherokees [to have] an opportunity to hear about the Haliwa-Saponi, because I represent my people—I represent my tribe,†said Lynch, speaking from her dining room table in Warrenton.  “We've always been here, but the history books have not always told it. I believe that [my ancestors] are speaking this out of me: We are the original potters. We are the original ones from the dirt, from the land, from the earth, from the plants, and I'm honored to be able to carry this. … I truly believe my grandma, my grandmother's mother's mother's mothers are speaking to me.â€

“Sometimes I say I hope I don't make any enemies trying to say what my grandma wants me to say,†Lynch continued. “She was a sweet person, but she also knew her history.â€

Lynch's first memory of pottery comes from her grandfather, who had a piece of pottery and showed her the texture, which had been created by rolling a corncob back and forth. Today, her hand-coiled pots and other clay works incorporate intricate etching of corn and other symbolic plants and animals, like turtles, dogwood flowers, and tobacco. 

The corn isn't just a symbol; it's a thread, and Lynch's mention of it calls me back to the colorful pieces of corn in “575.â€Â 

“As long as I can remember, I've been drawing,†McMillan said. “One of my core memories is my dad telling me, ‘If you can't spell it, draw a picture.'â€Â 

Making the Museum a Better Home for Native Art 

Stories Told by Breath is in conversation with the other two exhibitions currently at the Gregg, both of which center Native art and themes of reclamation. 

In the gallery next door is a solo show of works by Bobby C. Martin (Muscogee Creek), A Creek in Carolina, that explores, via family photos and archival materials, the pathways between ancestral Mvskoke homelands and the Indian Territory, where Indigenous tribes were forcibly removed to during the Trail of Tears. His works expand the scope geographically from Stories Told by Breath, which is focused on Southeastern tribes. 

Martin's show has a haunting proximity and is hardly a backdrop—I found the two shows to reverberate the power of the art in both rooms—hearing from the ancestors of the people who never left, and from those whose ancestors were forced to, all living survivors of colonial genocide. It made the artistic revelry and reverence of Stories Told by Breath even more remarkable. 

The third show at the Gregg, Through Our Eyes, in Our Hands: Prioritizing Indigenous Knowledge in Museums, examines the process of repatriation and foregrounds Native perspectives on how artworks and cultural belongings in museum collections should be cared for—opening the museum's processes up for community dialogue. For Segerlin, repatriation is about doing the work beyond the legal requirements to address the museum's collection and be transparent about its choices. 

“It's important to share this process with the public, whether through publications in our exhibitions or labels,†Segerlin said, adding that she hopes the exhibit can spark conversation about what ethical stewardship and care for objects can look like in the future. 

Back to the Breath

For a working artist, Lynch spends a lot of time in schools, volunteering as an educator. (Her artwork is also literally in schools—the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's American Indian Center has her work “The Gift†installed in its building.) 

She takes her pots and explains their stories and the process of making them to schoolchildren across the state. 

“It's crazy, the stereotypes and ideas that they have of Native Americans,†Lynch said. “We always say we walk in two worlds anyway, in our Native world and in this modern world. So [the kids] have ideas of the past and don't hardly know that we're still here.â€

“I'll ask, ‘Are there any American Indians in your school?' And they're like, ‘We don't know.' They're never exposed to or see American Indians, even though we have the highest population in North Carolina on this side of the Mississippi. But, you know, because of the history books, they don't know. Or they'll say that all the Indians left and went to Oklahoma. And I'll say, ‘Well, why am I still here?'â€

It's a rhetorical question that works—the physical presence of the artist reclaiming the space history has written her out of. But here's the deal: It was her place all along, and just because it's been actively erased for centuries doesn't mean it hasn't existed all along—this long, generational connection, rooted in the earth. We have ample evidence, of course, but the very pot Lynch passes around to the children tells the story. 

What Lynch does with her work in schools is what the Gregg's exhibit does for the museum: It is a physical reminder of the wealth of Indigenous knowledge that is still very much alive and present today, represented here in powerful and dynamic art. 

“I'm blowing away the dust, but I'm also putting my breath into that piece of artwork,†said Lynch, who recounted how title discussions went “around and around,†as she considered “what it means to put your inner self on the outer self, to blow art into existence.â€Â 

Ultimately, Lynch's process of blowing on the pottery inspired the title's exhibition. 

“We blow it from nowhere sometimes. Puddle of clay and chunk of paint that's nothing but a chunk until you put it on your canvas,†she said. “Our breath is carried on through art and into the future.â€

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