 Good evening, everyone. I'm Ellen Meyers, the Programs and Communications Director for the Newton Free Library. Thanks for tuning in for this program. We're calling Cyrus Dallin, Sculpture and Service of Social Justice. We, the people who reside, work and engage in Newton, acknowledge that this city is located on the traditional territory of the Massachusetts people. We are grateful to Arlington Community Media for providing the live stream and to the following organizations for co-sponsoring this event. Historic Newton, the Newton Art Association and the Newton Human Rights Commission. Just a few housekeeping notes. Everyone will remain muted during the session as well. I've turned off all of your videos. We'll take questions at the end via the chat feature, so please hold them until then. Please know that this program is being recorded. Remember to visit our virtual events calendar at newtonfreelibrary.net where we have a broad array of programs for all ages. And please be sure to sign up for our weekly email blasts. Tonight's speaker, Heather LaValle, is the Director and Curator of the Cyrus Dallin Art Museum in Arlington, Massachusetts. Prior to taking the position in 2014, she served as the curator for the Peabody Historical Society for nine years. She has a BA in Art History from Boston College and an MA in Art History and Museum Studies from Tufts University. I'll turn the session over to you now, Heather. Thank you so much, Ellen. Thank you everyone. I'm really thrilled to be presenting tonight. And so happy that there's so much interest in Cyrus Dallin and his representations of Indigenous people. I'm going to just share my screen and start my slides. Just one moment. The collaboration, this program collaboration came about as a result of a mystery that we were trying to solve. Cyrus Dallin did a bust of the Reverend Francis B. Hornbrook for the Channing Unitarian Church in Newton. And one of our board directors, Andrew Jay, was trying to track it down. And he discovered that it was no longer in the possession of the Unitarian Society. And Gail Smalley from the historian from the church did some digging for us and discovered that the society had donated it to the library in the 1940s, I believe. So I will show you. Here's a photo of the Hornbrook bust. It's carved in marble, which is very unique for Dallin. It's really worked in bronze and plaster. And Newton also has another piece by Dallin. On the right, it's a bronze plaque. It's a list of Newton High School students who died in World War I. And it used to be on display in the Newton High School, the old one. I'm not sure if it currently is on display in one of the present-day buildings. So that is another mystery that community is welcome to help us solve. I'd like to start my talk by sharing the land acknowledgement that we created with the help of the Massachusetts tribe. This is for the land acknowledgement for the Cyrus Dallin Art Museum. We acknowledge that the Cyrus Dallin Art Museum in Arlington, Massachusetts is located on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts tribe. The tribe of indigenous peoples from whom the colony, province, and commonwealth have taken their names. We pay our respects to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historic Massachusetts territories today. Cyrus Dallin was a celebrated sculptor, educator, and Indigenous rights activist who lived and worked in Arlington, Massachusetts for over 40 years. He was born in 1861 in Springville, Utah Territory, a small Mormon settlement in the shadows of the Wasatch Mountains. Springville is about 15 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. His parents were among the first wave of Mormon pioneers to emigrate to Utah in the 1850s under the leadership of Brigham Young. And that's the painting of the cabin that he was born in that he painted that. In 1880, at the age of 18, with the financial support of two local businessmen and proceeds from his parents' mortgage of the family home, Dallin moved to Boston to study with sculptor Truman Bartlett. As a hub of art and culture, Boston offered many opportunities for an aspiring sculptor and it was natural that Dallin would put roots down here. In 1891, he married Victoria Colonna Murray, an art educator from Roxbury, Massachusetts, and in 1900 the couple purchased a home in Arlington. It was in his studio adjacent to the home that Dallin conceived of many of his acclaimed public works. Also in the year 1900, Dallin became a member of the faculty of the Massachusetts Normal Art School, which is now the Mass College of Art and Design. During his 40-year tenure at the school, Dallin mentored a generation of Boston sculptors. He was a kind and patient instructor and his students fondly referred to him as Cyrus the Great. Dallin was a very prolific sculptor of as many historical subjects. His most famous is the Poverty of Your Monument in Boston's North End. Other well-known Massachusetts works include Anne Hutchinson at the Massachusetts State House and the Mayflower Compact in Provincetown Mass. Dallin also sculpted many memorials. A few examples are his Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Syracuse, New York, the Storo Memorial in Lincoln, and Massachusetts and Pioneer Mothers in Springville, Utah. Dallin received a number of commissions from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though his family left the faith before he was born, they did maintain a relationship with the church. Some of Dallin's most notable commissions include a monument to Brigham Young and the Angel Moroni, an iconic symbol of the LDS that adorns temples all over the world, including those in Salt Lake City and in Boston. You can see the Moroni on the spire behind the statue of Brigham Young. While Dallin worked in many different genres and formats, the subject that he turned to again and again over the course of his 65-year career was this land's first peoples. Interpreting the art and legacy of a white sculptor who depicted indigenous people as a challenging task. There are indigenous people who admire Dallin's representations, and there are others who valiantly feel that these works perpetuate stereotypes and erase contemporary indigenous experience. We honor and respect the full range of responses to his work. These differing views are crucial to understanding how Dallin's art has and continues to shape perceptions of native peoples of the past and present. It's also true that perceptions of Dallin's statues have changed over the course of time. Our focus at the museum is to try to understand as best we can Dallin's work within the context of his time. What terrible acts did he witness being perpetrated against native people? What messages did he intend to convey through his statues? How did indigenous people respond to his work and what impact did his art and activism have in its time in his time? In our work to answer these questions, we have come to understand Dallin as a deeply empathetic person who valued truth, learning, collaboration, and equity. These are values that we uphold as a museum dedicated to his legacy. We've also learned that the systems of oppression that Dallin fought against persist today. This knowledge informs our efforts to center indigenous perspectives and discussions about his work so that we can share a more complete and truthful picture of the past and better support indigenous people in their quest for recognition and equity in the present. In a 1931 address to a group of white Boston University students, Dallin said the following. Our race has been one of the most brutal of any in establishing itself, and the great story of the United States will always rest on the blackest page of history. This was really an astonishing statement for that time, especially from a public figure like Dallin who relied on conservative Boston promise for many of his sculpture commissions. How did he come to understand this truth when so many of his contemporaries were blind to it? Unlike the vast majority of non-native artists depicting native subjects in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Cyrus Dallin was a product of the West. During his formative years in Springville, interactions between the Ute and settlers were commonplace. Every spring and fall, the Ute would come down from the mountains and set up camp in the prairie adjacent to the settlement. This is a painting that Dallin did of where he grew up and that arrow points to the location of the settlement. You can see the teepees there. While there they would sell or barter hides game and handiwork to the settlers. Communicating through a combination of English, Ute, and Spanish, Dallin and his Ute friends spent countless hours together playing games and sculpting figures from clay they found along the banks of local streams. His friends even taught him how to ride their ponies and use a long bow. Incidentally, Archery became a lifelong passion for Dallin. He won many awards and even competed in the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis. Dallin developed a deep knowledge of Ute culture and values. He spoke often about their honesty, their humor, the kind and gentle way they treated their children. He admired the way the Ute filled their lives with beauty, a stark contrast to the austerity of the Springville settlement. Their designs are beautiful, he said, their colors beyond description. And he understood how Ute art was meant to be a, quote, expression of the holy things in life. Dallin also grew up on the front line of the government's brutal military effort to subjugate the Western tribes. And this is where he first learned about indigenous resilience. During the Black Hawk War, he recalled having to seek shelter within Springville's adobe fortification when warnings of potential attacks were issued. The war ended in 1872 with the forced removal of many Aryan nations to the Winter Reservation. In the immediate aftermath at the age of 11, Dallin was deeply impacted by a meeting he witnessed between United States General Henry A. Morrow, Mormon leaders, and seven chiefs including Tabiuna, the de facto leader of the nations on the Uinta Reservation. He listened while Tabiuna negotiated the terms of his people's return to the reservation, which would only happen after Morrow's assurances that the deplorable conditions there would be addressed. Another experience that deeply informed Dallin's worldview occurred in 1880 when he spent four days on a train with a delegation of Crow who were traveling to Washington D.C. to discuss land rights. This was his first trip to Boston. The delegation consisted of Chief Tubelli, who Dallin described as a mammoth person over six feet tall, weighing 265 pounds, and he's in the second row in the middle. Then from left to right in the first row, there was Old Crow, Medicine Crow, Long Elk, Chief Plenty Coupe, who was a famed River Crow leader, and I'll be talking about him a little bit more later, and Pretty Eagle, an accomplished warrior. Dallin became very close to these men during their four days. He maintained contact with Plenty Coupe and would go on to produce two portraits of Pretty Eagle. Throughout his lifetime, Dallin continued to listen to and learn from his youth friends, often visiting them at the Uinta Reservation in Vernal, Utah during trips home to see his family. They likely would have discussed with him the catastrophic effects of the Dawes Act, which allowed the federal government to break up reservation lands into small allotments for single family units and saw the rest as settlers and prospectors. Not only was this land theft, but it was also a form of cultural genocide. The intention was to dismantle communal life ways that Native people had been practicing for millennia. This is an image of prospective settlers in Provo, Utah, and they're waiting for the results of the lottery and know whether or not they'd obtain land on the Uinta Reservation. Dallin would have also witnessed the anguish of his friends whose children and grandchildren were taken to government boarding schools where they were subjected to all manner of abuse, forcing them to assimilate by relinquishing all aspects of their culture and traditions. This is what is known today, or this is what was known as kill the Indian and save the man. Dallin bore witness to these horrors. He felt these injustices deeply, and this outrage would drive the direction of his art and activism. Dallin's most well-known tributes to indigenous peoples are his equestrians, which were intended as personal reflections on fellow humans that he admired and public commemorations of their resilience in the face of ongoing subjugation. And these are some of his most well-known ones I'm showing you. There's Signal of Peace, which is in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Medicine Man in Fairmont Park, Philadelphia. There's the protest, which was never cast in bronze and permanently placed. He did that 1904 for the St. Louis Exposition. There's, of course, appeal to the Great Spirit in front of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. We'll discuss that more soon. And the scout in Penn Valley Park in Kansas City. Dallin created these equestrians during a time of intense public ambivalence towards Native people. This was when Custer and others were held as heroes for their bravery in battle against the, quote, hostile Indians. Dallin chose the equestrian, a form historically reserved to pay tribute to Anglo-European military figures to make Native peoples the focus of public remembrance of the history of Western expansion. And I'm showing this, Custer, with Chief Washakie. Dallin also did many equestrian portraits in addition to his more idealized figures. Dallin's work does not commemorate the heroism of the United States military, but rather the indigenous response to the actions of colonizers. His figures are actively expressing resistance and modeling resilience. They're negotiating peace, issuing warnings, expressing defiance, assessing their environments, and seeking guidance from a higher power. We see this perspective even more clearly when we look at the appeal next to James Earl Frazier's end of the trail. Dallin is portraying a man who has experienced unimaginable adversity. The emaciated torso and the weary horse make this clear. But despite those circumstances, this man projects great physical and spiritual strength. He's praying to the Great Spirit for help and support, but he is not defeated. Okay, we'll take a closer look at the appeal right now, the history of the statue. Dallin's initial concept for appeal to the Great Spirit was it included a figure on either side of the rider. This is an image from 1907 Boston Sunday Post showing Dallin's original model. He would later use the pose of the standing figure with folded arms for his 1911 statue of Chief Joseph, who was an important leader of the Nez Perce who in the 1870s organized a resistance against his people's force removal from Oregon to Idaho. For the lunching figure, Dallin drew on an earlier work called War and Peace. This figure holds a piece pipe in one hand and a tomahawk in the other indicating a readiness to fight but also a willingness to negotiate. Dallin sought advice on his composition from his friend and mentor, sculptor Daniel Chester French, who said, take the figure with the tomahawk out. It makes for a conflict of ideas. While Dallin was probably using the additional figures to tell a broader story of colonization, he ultimately agreed with French and took both figures out. In 1908, Dallin entered the Completed Plaster Appeal in the National Sculpture Society exhibition in Baltimore where it received high praise. It was cast in bronze in Paris after that and then the statue was actually cast in 13 separate pieces. Dallin exhibited the bronze at the Paris Salon of 1909 where it won a gold medal and sealed his reputation as an internationally acclaimed sculptor. In the fall of 1911, the statue was transported to the U.S. and shown in the winter exhibition of the National Academy of Design in New York. Then in May 1912, it was brought to Boston and placed temporarily in front of the New Museum of Fine Arts building on Huntington Avenue. That spring, a group of Bostonians began a campaign to raise $12,000 to purchase the statue for the city. Their fundraising plan was endorsed by the Boston Arts Commission and the Metropolitan Improvement League. The proposed permanent site for the statue was in the Fenway at the corner of Boylston Street and Charles Gate West. The group began fundraising in the spring of 1912. Not great timing considering that was exactly when all the wealthy Bostonians began leaving the city for the summer season. By the fall of 1912, only $3,500 had been raised and Boston faced the real possibility of losing the statue. Louisville, Kansas City, Washington, D.C., Salt Lake City, and Baltimore were also interested in buying it, and several of those cities were close to having raised the full purchase price. Museum of Fine Arts director at the time, Arthur Fairbanks, made the following plea in the Boston Herald. It's the work of one of our best artists whose statues now stand in the parks of other cities, while there is none in our parks. Losing the statue would have been a huge embarrassment for the city. But fortunately, wealthy Boston philanthropists, Peter and Sarah Brooks, contributed the remainder of the funds necessary to keep the statue in Boston. The Brooks gift came with an important stipulation that the appeal to the Great Spirit become part of the MFA's permanent collection, and Dalin officially transferred title to the museum in December of 1912. Because of its beauty and emotional impact and its prominent placement in front of one of the most important temples of art in the country, appeal attained iconic status almost immediately. The statue was reproduced in countless ways, including bronze and plaster statuettes of various sizes, inexpensive bookends, lithographs, postcards, company logos, and even a musical score. We've got the Beach Boys logo, and that's the musical score. Appeal was also prominently displayed in President Clinton's Oval Office. Throughout the 1910s, Dalin continued to develop Native American themes in his art. In 1911, the Robbins family, sorry, his most masterful work from this period is the Monotomy Hunter in Arlington. In 1911, the Robbins family commissioned Dalin to create a memorial statue for town benefactor, Winfield Robbins. Knowing that Mr. Robbins would quote, never approve of an effigy of himself, and that he especially delighted in this phase of my work, Dalin chose to pay tribute to Arlington's first people, the Massachusetts, whose name for this land is Monotomy. The Hunter situated in the Winfield Robbins Memorial Garden between Robbins Public Library and the Town Hall, two beautiful civic buildings donated to the town by the Robbins family. In 1911, the architect R. Clipston Sturgis began drawing up plans for the Town Hall. Dalin collaborated with Sturgis on the design of the water feature for the garden. The water was meant to flow into the Hunter's hand and trickle down into a long rectangular shaped pool. I think to have it appear as though the Hunter had run down through the trees on the hillock, paused for a drink, and with every line conveying the sense of poise and readiness to be off in an instant, said Dalin. Dalin had his clay model cast in September 1911 and entered the work in the winter exhibition of the National Academy of Design, where it won a gold medal. The dedication ceremony for the Hunter, the New Town Hall, and Dalin's Robbins Memorial Flagstaff, which I'll show you in a minute, was held in June of 1913. Lawrence Cyrus' son unveiled the statue, possibly because of his own minor contribution to it. He had etched his name into the base of the clay model and Dalin liked it and had it cast that way. It's very hard to see in this photo. You might just have to come visit it in person. In his dedication speech, Dalin spoke of, quote, the great historical crimes of the white man. Describing how Squawf Aquama of the Massachusetts tribe was forced to forfeit tribal lands to colonizers in an attempt to ensure the survival of her people. She spent the remainder of her days in the praying town of Nadek, where she would have had to suppress every aspect of her culture and convert to Christianity. And I'd like to note that the term Squaw is offensive to many Indigenous people. But we consulted with the Massachusetts tribe and learned that Squaw is actually a Massachusetts word and they prefer its usage in this instance. Dalin closed his speech by making a passionate plea to the citizens of Arlington that they changed the town's name back to monotomy. And I've shown you a couple photos, one of the flagstaff and one of the hunter that were taken by Ferris Grave, a Sagamore of the Massachusetts tribe, when he came to visit the museum. Today, the monotomy hunter remains a beloved symbol of Arlington, but like the appeal, it has also been caricatured and used as a mascot or logo. The use of native imagery in this way has been an ongoing discussion in Arlington and across the country. The photo on the bottom is from a panel discussion the museum participated in in Arlington that sought to educate the community on the harmful impacts of Native American imagery by centering the perspectives of the Massachusetts tribe and Indigenous residents of Arlington. I spoke earlier about Dalin's strategic use of the equestrian as a form of Indigenous commemoration. Dalin also adopted the heroic nude to communicate this message too. His Massesoya to Usimiquan of 1920 and passing of the Buffalo of 1929 show Native leaders as counterparts to Michelangelo's David, drawing a parallel between the story of David and Goliath and that of Indigenous peoples and colonizers. Explaining why the figure in passing of the Buffalo is resting his foot on a Buffalo's skull, Dalin quoted his old friend Chief Pleniku, who he meant on the train that day, on his way to Boston, who said, When the white man destroyed the Buffalo, our hearts fell upon the ground and they've remained there ever since. In 1911, the same year that he received the Monotomy Hunter Commission, Dalin was asked by the improved order of red men to produce a monument to the famed Poconochite leader to commemorate the Tercentenary of the Landing of the Pilgrims. The monument was to be placed on Coals Hill overlooking Plymouth Harbor. The Mayflower Society donated the site and agreed to care for the monument in perpetuity. The Order of the Red Men was a fraternal organization that appropriated rituals and regalia of Indigenous cultures but did not actually allow Indigenous people to participate. Alvin Weeks, the former Grand Chieftain of the Great Council, the national branch of the IORM, explained that the statue was, quote, to pay deserved but belated tribute to the great chief that he may forever stand guard over the gateway through which the pilgrim bearers of the Torch of Liberty first entered New England. As we are more likely to acknowledge today, this was a narrative justifying English colonialism and the destruction of Usimiquan's people. For his first clay prototype of Usimiquan, Dalin followed the advice of Arthur Lord, the president of the Pilgrim Society. Lord furnished Dalin with descriptions of the Wampanoag written by William Bradford and Edward Winslow and published in Mort's Relation. Quote, Usimiquan was described as, quote, a very lusty man in his best years, an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech. In his attire, little or nothing differed from the rest of his followers, only in a great chain of white-boned beads about his neck. And at it hangs a little bag of tobacco, which he drank and gave us to drink. His face was painted red and oiled with both head and face. The king had, on this was, on his bosom, hanging in a string a great long knife. So Dalin's first model of Usimiquan follows this description fairly closely. He also consulted with anthropologist Charles Willoughby at the Peabody Museum at Harvard on ethnological details. The feather is probably an intentional reference to Usimiquan's name, which means yellow feather. In an effort to raise the funds to erect the monument, the improved order instituted a campaign in 1915 featuring Dalin's model of Usimiquan on advertisements and tokens. The order's fundraising activities were stalled by the outbreak of World War I. Throughout this time, Dalin continued to revise the work. By 1920, he had eliminated many of the details of the earlier model. Like most of his other native figures, Usimiquan grew increasingly to look like the people of the plains and great basin that he knew best. Usimiquan's hair is now braided, and the animal skin and breeches have been removed. Dalin retained the moccasins and modified the pipe design to look more like the one purportedly having belonged to Usimiquan. And sources are conflicted regarding the origin of the pipe he viewed. Dalin may have seen the one at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York, and this pipe was recently repatriated to the Wampanoag Confederation and reburied in 2017 at Usimiquan's burial site in Warren, Rhode Island, along with other remains and funerary items. Dalin's model for the revised statue was Thomas McKellar, a young black man who worked with John Singer Sargent on his murals for the MFA Boston. Dalin described McKellar as being, quote, a magnificent figure. I was wanting a model, he said, and happened to be calling on John Sargent, who was at work for his decorations for the Art Museum. Why not use my model, he said? The model was Apollo in the forenoon and Massasoit in the afternoon. And you can really see McKellar's influence on both men in this image. The nine-foot seven-inch bronze statue of Usimiquan was unveiled on November 5, 1921. The improved order of red men badgered Charlotte Mitchell, Wutong Kenuski, an eighth-generation descendant of Usimiquan to attend the unveiling. She's in the middle of this photo turned to the side. She reluctantly consented and was tasked with releasing the huge American flag that covered the statue. The moment was an extremely difficult one for her. She told the Boston Herald, quote, they say around here that I have money. Look at all you made down at Plymouth. I'll tell you what I made at Plymouth. The red men of Whitman gave me a $10 gold piece as a memento. As a matter of fact, I was heartily ashamed of myself, couldn't have taken money down there, helping celebrate the killing of my own people. And she did say that she made it a point that day not to look directly at the camera. Dalyn kept his remarks at the unveiling fairly brief. Excerpts from his monotony hunter dedication speech several years earlier might give us a sense of his state of mind that day. In that speech, she recalled a visit in 1913 to the home in Lakeville, Mass of Wuchon, Kenoski, and her sister Melinda, Tiwi Lima. Quote, once Massesoya, proud chief of a free people, was the undisputed possessor of fertile lands and fast hunting grounds. Now these aged women eke out a scant living from a little farm of about 12 acres, the last remnant of 600 acres, which was the original holding. And I cannot express how profoundly the realization of this has moved me. And I have recently had the honor of making the acquaintance of Deborah Spears-Moorhead, a direct descendant of Usimiquan. She has written a wonderful book on the history and resilience of her people called Finding Balance, the genealogy of Massesoya's people and the oral and written history of the Sikonk, Poconokit, Wampanoag tribal nation. This book is truly a gift and I encourage everyone to read it. Throughout the 1920s, Dallin became increasingly critical of United States government's treatment of indigenous peoples. In his work, Dallin expressed these views through a series of portrait busts, commemorating icons of indigenous resistance, including Chief Joseph, who I spoke about earlier, Geronimo, the Apache chief who led campaigns against colonizers in the Southwest, famously avoiding capture and embarrassing the U.S. government, and Chief Sitting Bull, whose warriors defeated Custer's troops in the Battle of Little Bighorn. We also recently discovered the identity of the woman in this portrait by Dallin. She is Zikala Sa, Redbird, a Yankton Dakota Sioux, author, musician, and one of the most important indigenous rights activists of the early 20th century. Her American name was Gertrude Bannon. Dallin did not just let his work speak for itself, though. He often sought out opportunities to educate people on indigenous issues and correct misconceptions of them, a result of the general public being, he said, quote, overwhelmed by the great amount of literature against the Indians. On March 29, 1921, seven months before the unveiling of Usimiquan at the Tersentenary Celebration, the Lola Sun described a spellbound audience as Dallin held forth with a quote startling a reamant of white complacency and self-righteousness. It was an interrogation of our founding myths and a calling out of the racism, calling out of the racism of, quote, invading Christians. He said, we have dishonored ourselves, distorted the facts, and turned the Indian from a friend to a foe. Then we have fought him with immeasurably superior numbers and arms. Never in the history of nations in all probability has there been so strong a race prejudice as subsists in the Anglo-Saxons. During a lecture at Sanders Theater in Cambridge, she called treaties mere scraps of paper and said that the United States deliberately and knowingly tricked them, the native people, out of their lands by making treaties which we never had the slightest intention of filling. He informed readers of the Boston Herald that scalping was not accustomed until the, quote, white man offered bounties for Indian scalps. He told the Boston Globe that the reservation system was, quote, a diabolical invention in destroying human beings and went on to say that the attitude of white people toward Indians in general is one of supreme arrogance. And really, this is just a small sampling of his public statements. Dalen spent the latter 25 years of his career passionately advocating for indigenous rights. In 1923, he became chairman of the Massachusetts branch of the Eastern Association of Indian Affairs. This group worked to protect land rights, improve healthcare, and revitalize Native arts among indigenous populations in the Southwest. This is a photo of one of a number of exhibits of Navajo Pueblo and Hopi art that Dalen helped organize to assist tribal nations in growing their creative economies and garner support for federal appropriation to sustain this work. And Dalen and other non-native activists in partnership with indigenous leaders succeeded in this goal with the establishment of the Federal Indian Arts and Crafts Board in 1935. The Eastern Association also partnered with groups across the country on a series of policy recommendations to the Department of the Interior that would preserve and strengthen tribal sovereignty, traditions, and cultures. These recommendations served as the original framework for the Landmark Indian Reorganization Act, which was passed thanks to the efforts of Dalen and others in 1934. One provision of the act was to halt the land allotment process that I discussed earlier. None of this reform work would have been successful without the partnership of Native peoples, and this is the All-Indian Pueblo Council who closely worked with the Eastern Association to fight legislation threatening their sovereignty. And the Eastern Association exists today as the Association on American Indian Affairs, and I'm showing you their website. This organization now is now run entirely by indigenous people and was instrumental in the passage of such landmark legislation as Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the Indian Child Welfare Act. In 1923, the representatives of 12 New England nations formed the Algonquin Indian Council of New England in an effort to revive their traditions and gain greater public recognition. Dalen was asked to speak at the council's inaugural meeting in Providence, Rhode Island. He talked about the need for Native communities to band together to fight oppressive measures in Congress. The council appointed him as the head of a committee, quote, to investigate proposed Indian measures on behalf of the Algonquin people, because he had a reputation for working on the policy front. And Dalen served in this capacity until at least 1927. And I'm showing you their letterhead here. You can see Dalen's name. It's kind of hard from Zoom, but he's on the letterhead as a committee of laws. But I want you to see to their motto, which is, I still live. And this is something indigenous people continue to say today. We are still here. And I believe the New England Algonquin Council remains somewhat active today. What did Dalen's Native contemporaries think about his art and advocacy? We're fortunate to possess a few perspectives, including the striking image of a visit to the appeal by Chief Bald Eagle in 1923. And during the dedication of Medicine Man in Lincoln Park in 1890, Francis LeFlesh, an Omaha Nation ethnologist, author, and Indigenous rights activist, gave a powerful speech entitled, Who Was the Medicine Man? It read in part, In the serious expression, the dignified bearing, the strength of pose, I recognize the character of the true Medicine Man, he who is the mediator between his people and the Great Spirit. This statuette once brings back vividly to my mind the scenes of my early youth. Sorry, last night, scenes of my early youth. Scenes that I shall never again see in their reality. This reopening of the past to me would never have been possible had not your artist risen above the distorting influence of the prejudiced one race is apt to feel toward another, and been gifted with the imagination to discern the truth which underlies a strange exterior. Another powerful sentiment comes from Aquina Wampanoag Chief Leroy Perry, a New England Algonquin Council board member. Dr. Cyrus E. Dallin, real Perry in 1925, a sculptor who has done more to perpetuate the Red Man in his characteristic poses as hunter, warrior, Medicine Man, and at workmanship than any other living man, a true friend and one whom we honor and respect. Great is Dallin. Cyrus Dallin once said, if Americans are to retain our self respect and continue to hold our place in the world, we must admit our faults and mistakes and do our utmost to make up for them. This quote deeply informs the Dallin Museum's mission and values, and we are also committed to following Dallin's lead of listening and learning to perform equity and inclusion in our museum and in our community. And this is an image of the Lakota students from Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota who visits the museum every year as part of the Lakota Youth Day program, and it's always really a wonderful experience, and we learn so much from them. Dallin made a real difference in his time. There's much more work to be done, of course. The process of change is different today than it was then. In his introduction to the book, A History of Utah's American Indians, Forrest Koch, a member of the Ute Nation and former director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs, writes about the Hopi belief in the four worlds of human passage. Quote, we are nearing the end of the third world and are entering the fourth. Maybe the indigenous people of Utah have endured great suffering, but we are now coming forth in our development. The time has passed for non-Indian people to speak for us about our past and our history. It is now time for us to bring forth the truth as we know it to be and share it with others. Through bringing forth truth and through the earnest discussions about it within our schools and with our neighbors, we will truly heal our wounds and take our rightful place in society. On behalf of the Dallin Museum, we all very much welcome this fourth world. And that is the end of my presentation. I just have one more slide on how you can connect with us. Visit us at Dallin.org and you can donate to the museum or become a member. If you have any questions for me that I don't get to today, there's my email address and then all of our various social media information. And I'm just going to unshare. Well, Heather, I want to thank you so much for that very informative presentation, and I've just asked for folks to put their questions into the chat. I have a couple to start us off with. One person had asked, how did Dallin know horses so well? Primarily because he grew up with them. He learned them very well, and he was actually critically acclaimed in his lifetime for the way he was able to model horses, the authentic way he was able to model horses of the prairie. And another viewer would like to know, did Dallin have anything to do with the image on the buffalo nickel or the logo for Charlotte Bank? Interesting questions. No, he did not. Of course, is it Frazier maybe who did the buffalo nickel? I cannot remember. And no, he did not have. He actually modeled a logo for the Indian Head National Bank in New Hampshire. That looks pretty similar. For those who are wondering, the recording will be available, and in a few days I will send out a link to the recording to everyone who registered for the program. So I appreciate you're asking that. Judy would like to know, how old the museum is? How many visitors do you get? And are there Dallin still living in the Boston area? Yeah, so the museum is quite small. We're four galleries. We're located in Arlington Center, so right at the intersection of Mass Ave. Route 60. We're currently open only for pre-scheduled small group tours. And sorry, what was the, how many visitors do we get? In the past year, very few. Most of our outreach has been online. Basically, we get about maybe 2,000, about 1,000, 1,500 in the museum, and then 2,025 hundred through our programming. Was there another part of that? And I'm not sure you got to this, because I'm reading questions while you're answering. The person wanted to know, are there Dallin still living in the Seattle? Yes, there are. There are. When they are really involved and wonderful, we have a number of the Cyrus Dallin's grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the area. There are Dallin's in Utah, and California, and Texas, and Illinois. And we love connecting with family, and we learn so much from them. So if there are any Dallin's on this program, please let me know. We'd love to get to know you. Donna says, great talk. Is the original Dallin studio still existing in Arlington? No, it burned down. I think it was in the 1960s. But the house, it still stands. It's privately owned, and the people who live in it are wonderful and supportive of the museum. And their son is actually a sculptor, so there's a nice connection there. Now, Lois would like to know, did he stay in Massachusetts or go back to Yook-Tah? I think you covered that, but let's just visit that a little more. Right. No, he lived in Massachusetts. He lived in Arlington for 44 years, so from 1900 when he was early on in their marriage to his and Victoria's death. And he visited fairly frequently, but no, his home base was in the Boston area. He was really a big part of his career was his teaching. He was a really important instructor at MassArt. I don't think that can be understated. When he died, his New York Times obituary called him the Dean of New England Sculptors. And I think that has a lot to do with the decades that he spent at MassArt. But he did miss home so much, and he tried to visit whenever he could, particularly his mother. He loved his mother so much. So he tried to get home to see her whenever he could. That's a lovely. Stacy would like to know, is Arlington still using the monotony Hunter as the logo? The schools? I guess the town of Arlington. I mean, it pops up here and there. The schools are in the process of phasing it out, and they're still undergoing some dialogue and conversations around that in town. But I think it's fair to say that the community is really learning a lot, and it's on its way out. And the Sagamore of the Massachusetts tribe made it really clear that, you know, it's a beautiful work of art. But if you want to see the art, you need to go see the art. And so our focus is on educating our community about the statue itself and Dylan's legacy. Now, you did talk about his Mormon roots. Did he remain a Mormon in practice? No, his family left the church before he was born. And so they maintained a relationship with the church. When he and Victoria moved to Arlington, they actually joined the Unitarian Church. So they belonged to the UU for their lifetime for their 40 years in Arlington. Larry would like you to know that the Dallin Museum is fantastic and a great tribute to Miss... Thank you, Larry. We love Larry. He's a great friend of the museum. Robert says, do you recommend or sell any specific books with Dallin's art through the museum? We sell... We have a biography on him called Frontier to Fame. And a few copies of the definitive biography of Dallin. Sorry, not... Sorry, Frontier to Fame is the definitive biography of a couple of copies of those. And then there's another biography that we have. The name is escaping me right now, but we have that for sale. So if anyone would like a copy, just send me an email and we can get it to you. Great, great. Now, Caitlin says, did Dallin know the artist, John Jay Boyle? He's... They're thinking of Boyle's Stone Age in America sculpture in Philadelphia that was installed in 1837. No, no, I haven't heard of any connection with that sculptor. Excuse me. Lauren said, you mentioned at the beginning of your talk that Dallin's work drew some opposition. Could you talk about the reasons why some people were displeased with his work? I think, you know, today, I think the perceptions were different during Dallin's time, but today there is this feeling. And I completely understand it that, you know, we have such a proliferation of stereotypes of Native people in this country through mascots, all sorts of imagery. And we, you know, when you stereotype people like that, you're really erasing their existence in the present. You're communicating this idea of them as having existed only in the past. And Native people want us to know that they're here today. And I think that the issue with Dallin's work is that really there's not much else. It's sort of a stand-in for all depictions of Native people. Our institutions need to start investing in, like, in the ideas of repair and acknowledgement and really start funding new artworks in our public spaces that are by Indigenous people and for Indigenous people. So that Dallin statues aren't the only thing we all see that reinforce these stereotypical or these outdated messages. Because right now I think his work is like a sponge for all that sort of absorbs all that. It's the absence of anything else that makes his work, you know, be particularly scrutinized. There just needs to be more balance and more representation. You make excellent points, Heather. Britt would like to know if you know much about the Dallin's family's influence on the expansion of the Arlington Library system. Oh, gosh, I really, well, Victoria was, Victoria, we can talk for hours about her. She was an amazing accomplished woman. She was very, both of them are very involved in the civic life in Arlington. And Victoria was a trustee on the library board and she, there was a branch of the library that was started in her name. And it's now the location of ACMI, who our friends at ACMI are live streaming this today. But she was very involved in the expansion of the Arlington Library. She was also one of the first early board members and helped to found the Arlington Friends of the Drama. Now, Clara would like to know what did Dallin's Anglo contemporaries think of him? Did they try to discredit his views or did they give him free reign to criticize U.S. policy? That's another question. You know, I know that is such a good question. I honestly, I don't know. I have not found in my research any criticism of him by his colleague, from his colleagues. I found little bits and pieces of like bickering over commissions, like who's going to get this commission versus, you know, there's like this competitiveness. But nothing that anyone has ever said that has been critical that I have been able to find. I don't know what they thought of him, to be honest. That is a really good question. Here's a short one. Do you know where he is buried? Yeah, he's buried in, I'm blanking on the name. You can tell I'm a little tired here. I'm blanking on the name of the cemetery, but it's the one right in Arlington Center, about half a mile from the museum. Someone in the chat probably helped me out here. I'm going to try to get to it. There's a lot in the chat, so I'm not sure I can kind of pull that one out and also continue to ask you questions. Can you tell us more about Dallin and Daniel Chester French? Yeah, Daniel Chester French was really Dallin's mentor. He, when he first came to Boston, he sought out, and when he first came to Boston, and this is another, could be an hour, two hour long program to give on the story of Paul Revere. Actually, my colleague Nancy Blanton will be presenting a program with the Paul Revere House on the story of that statue. But when Dallin, soon in April, when Dallin first came to Boston, he submitted, he entered a competition for the Paul Revere statue. It was like 1883 or four, and he, on his model, really was unsure of himself, because he was so young. He was in his early 20s, and he sought out the input from Daniel Chester French. So he reached out to French, and he reached out to St. Gaudens, and he got responses back. But Daniel Chester French was really helpful, and actually French submitted a model for that competition as well. So there were competitors in that, and French was still really helpful in giving feedback. And Dallin ended up winning that commission for the monument over Daniel Chester French. And at one point, many years into the process, because it took 50, 54 years for the statue to be erected in the North End. The progress of the commission had really stalled, and French spoke out publicly and said, you know, you got, Dallin is a great artist. People need to fund this, and let's get this going. So he was very supportive, a good friend and a mentor, and older than him. I would say about maybe 20 years older than him. I found it. Thank you, Larry. He is buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Thank you, Larry. Do you know if Arlington or any other local public school departments are teaching about Dallin and their curriculum? You know, I'm really not sure to what extent they are. I think perhaps in third grade they cover him a little bit. We used to have the third grade come to the Dallin Museum, but it can be really challenging because it's such a small space. And that's something that in the future we'd like to revisit, because third grade is the local, typically the focus is on local history. But there are potentially, there are a lot of different connections that could be made to the curriculum, whether it's local history, western expansion, social justice. And so we would really love to explore the possibilities some more with the school district. Is there any connection between Dallin and Edward Curtis, the photographer? That's what Tim wants to know. I think he may have taken some photos of him, but I feel like it may have come across some photos that were snapped by him, but I don't know of any deeper acquaintance than that with him. Do you know if Dallin had any connection to Abbott Henderson Thayer from Dublin, New Hampshire? No, I don't know that one either. Yeah, I don't know. And Dallin, the family did have a summer home up in New Hampshire, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was some connection. So much to learn, always, so much to learn. Always. As a historian. Have there been any recent serious considerations of renaming Arlington to monotony? Oh no, that's a great question too. No, not that we have heard. I believe Arlington was named after Arlington National Cemetery. I could be wrong. Now, Stacy says that we teach about Cyrus Dallin at the Dallin Elementary. Oh yeah. Right. That's right. That's good. Thank you, Stacy. Yeah, I forgot to mention there's a school named after Cyrus Dallin and it's so good to hear that you are teaching about him and there is a model of Dallin's Paul Revere at the school. That's wonderful. There were several more comments. I'm sorry, folks, I will only be able to put forth the questions. Your comments have been wonderful. Let's see, here's one another question. Do you know anything about how the subject boy and dog was selected for the Starro Memorial in Lincoln? Yeah, so Mrs. Storo wrote to Cyrus and said my husband, her husband had been diagnosed with a form of cancer and had a limited amount. They weren't sure how long he had to live. So she commissioned this while he was still alive and in anticipation of it being a memorial, but she said to him they were not very conventionally religious, were spiritual but were not religious. So can you please choose something that would convey a spirituality without it being religious? And he chose the boy and the dog. Do you know when Utah was named for the youth people? Oh my goodness, I do not know that. And we just, and I just saw the chat, we just had Forrest Cutch on here, who I quoted. And Forrest, if you haven't left yet, maybe you can tell us. Not seeing anything come through. I did just post the link to the YouTube live stream. I know people are a little anxious for it. Give it a day or so in case they need to do any post production editing, although the same link that I just put in the chat will lead you to the YouTube live stream and do feel free to share it with your friends. I think we have run out of questions and Heather, I want to thank you very much for bringing this enlightening, engaging and informational program to all who came into everyone who registered. I think we all have a lot to learn here and reflect on. It's been lovely to work with you. Thank you so much. Thanks for the opportunity. Many people are saying thank you in the chat. I do want to invite folks to visit newtonfreelibrary.net. We have programs for people of all ages, every single day. I guess except Sunday. And we love to have you sign up for any one of our email blast that we send out on a weekly basis to keep you abreast of what's happening at the library our services and our programs. And as always, I thank you for attending and wish everyone well. Good night.