On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Mandan Woman
Karl Bodmer Swiss
Not on view
Nueta (Mandan) women sustain community life in the Heart of the World. Nueta women built our fortified towns and were brilliant riverine agriculturists, producing such an abundance they co-established a powerful matrilineal nation and continental trade center. My Nueta grandmother Inez (Prairie Chicken Clan from Midi Dohe [Blue Waters]) was born the year the Mandan became US citizens (1924). Before bridges, Inez’s sister swam a horse across the Missouri River to help when Inez was pregnant with my father, something that became impossible to do after the US government’s coercive, purposeful, and devastating flooding of our reservation. Today, Inez’s daughters, my aunties, are strong voices protecting our remaining ancestral lands through the Fort Berthold Protectors of Water and Earth Rights (POWER).
—Aaron Bird Bear
(Mandan Hidatsa and Diné; citizen of Three Affiliated Tribes)
Tribal Relations Director, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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