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In her latest curatorial project, Fort Lewis College alumna Elise Boulanger (Studio Art, ’21) stands at the intersection of art, Indigenous representation, and land sovereignty. As co-curator of Resounding Sovereign Expressions: Resurgent Indigenuity in Ozark Arts Practice & Scholarship, Boulanger is bringing together Indigenous artists, musicians, activists, and scholars for a four-day gathering at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville from February 27 to March 2, 2025. The event will explore Indigenous peoples’ deep connections to their ancestral lands.

“Returning to Indigenous ways of knowing on the land, listening to Indigenous points of view on ways to move in the future—that will be best for our communities and the land we live on,” said Boulanger, a citizen of the Osage Nation.

The event, supported by a $25,000 Terra Foundation Convening Grant, will center on collective memory and Indigenous relationships with the land. Through panel discussions, performances, and workshops, participants will examine how Native artists view land as a living entity with intergenerational ties.

Boulanger credits her time at Fort Lewis College, where she served as a curatorial fellow at the Center of Southwest Studies from 2021 to 2023, with shaping her approach. “Fort Lewis is such a special and unique place,” she said.

The event will also focus on Northwest Arkansas’s complex Indigenous history, including the forced displacement of Native peoples through the Trail of Tears. A roundtable featuring Cherokee citizens and other Indigenous artists will examine ways to bring that history to light through a Native perspective and how it can help shape the future.

“In our region, we have a particular situation right now with rapid development,” Boulanger said. “Unlike the Southwest, the state of Arkansas pushed out all Indigenous people from their homelands to reservations in Oklahoma. But a lot of Native people still live here, and we’re seeing how gentrification and corporate development are making it difficult to find affordable housing.”

At FLC, Boulanger helped connect multigenerational Indigenous families with their nations’ artworks in the Center of Southwest Studies’ collections. She also organized two student-led exhibitions as an undergraduate and curated As Seeds, We Grow: Student Reflections on Resilience, an exhibition amplifying Indigenous student voices that drew nearly 2,000 visitors, including U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. She later co-developed The Stories We Wear, an installation honoring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives of the FLC community.

Now pursuing a master’s in art history and working as a graduate assistant at the University of Arkansas’s Center for Art as Lived Experience, Boulanger hopes the convening will foster a deeper understanding of land stewardship.

“I hope the conversation around the land will help people understand more deeply that the U.S. and all of North America is Indigenous land,” she said. “And we still have deep connections to it and ways we care for it that are really important, especially right now in a time of chaos.”

For more information visit sovereignexpressions.org.