In deference to the Cherokee, no items in disagreement are on public view. Instead, there are undisputed objects associated with Will West Long, a late 19th- to early 20th-century Cherokee who worked with institutions for the preservation of Cherokee culture.
The exhibition commissioned contemporary Indigenous artists and artisans to make original work for display. Among them is “I Am More Than Fluff,” a bronze figure in a glass bell jar stuffed with feathers. Artist Holly Wilson, of the Delaware Nation, describes the piece in opposition to the idea that Indigenous people are “lost to a romanticized ideal of who the Native Americans were.”
“I am more than the view that my people are frozen in time,” she said.
Another contributor to the exhibition, Bradley Hicks, of the Muscogee Creek, made stickball sticks. Unlike the sport once commonly played by urban kids in Philadelphia streets, the Muscogee stickball is more similar to lacrosse, going back thousands of years.