North Carolina is celebrating its under-told stories with public art

A new mural was recently unveiled in Greensboro to recognize the role Indigenous people have in the area. It’s a collaborative project led by a Native American artist whose family, like dozens of others, originally migrated in the 1960s to the region.

Efforts to celebrate untold stories through public art are going on throughout the Tar Heel state.

At a small community center in Greensboro’s diverse Glenwood neighborhood just south of downtown, a traditional Lumbee Indian blessing ceremony is under way. It's led by local elder and community advocate, Daphine Strickland. She begins speaking as the sounds of traditional Native American wooden flute performed live by Ray Silva die down. She's holding a hand-sized half-shell emitting a winding stream of smoke.

"Creator, today we offer burning of tobacco, sweet grass, cedar and sage," she begins. "Just as  the Jews went into the synagogues, and burned incense, so have Native Americans long burned these incense, and had a smoke going."

The object being blessed is a crosswalk mural by Lumbee artist Tamra Hunt, who speaks next.

"I wanted to tell the untold stories of the native and Indigenous families — and many are here today — that a lot of people in this neighborhood do not know," says Hunt.

The Lumbee Tribe is North Carolina’s largest with 55,000 members mostly in Robeson and surrounding counties near Fayetteville — rural, agricultural communities in the eastern part of the state. But in the 1960s, as farm work there began drying up, many Lumbee moved to Guilford County in search of better-paying, blue-collar jobs.

And they brought with them stories — stories that they shared with artist Tamra Hunt during her listening sessions at the People’s Market in Glenwood. She says she attempted to weave the recurring themes she heard into her public artwork.

"Everything that they did together from even sharing a meal, being part of sports groups, going to school together, riding your bikes through the neighborhood, was real significant to all of them when it came to being a part of their own families, and also growing in community with other Indigenous folks," says Hunt. "And it’s always been about community. It’s always been about family. And a circle really is how I think about that visually in that circle of connecting."

The result is a brightly colored mural at the intersection of Haywood and Neal Streets that’s approximately 35 feet long and 12 feet wide and features three objects, each encircled and set against a turquoise background: two human figures standing side by side, a ceremonial eagle feather, and hair braid.

And the significance of these symbols is not lost on Glenwood native and Lumbee Indian Perry Hunt. In the late 1950s, his grandparents and their family moved to Greensboro from the tobacco and cotton fields of Robeson County in search of opportunity and they found it here. His grandfather began a small tree service business that’s now third generation.

"It represents that our fathers and grandfathers and grandmothers, you know, came here with nothing," he says. "And they were able to establish a new family and a new community here."

As the honor song concludes people gather briefly to reconnect with friends, and neighbors over traditional potato bread before heading out to the crosswalk a half mile away, where Tamra Hunt thanks her supporters. The stories of Native American Indians who continue to call Glenwood home centuries after their ancestors’ arrival here linger as the artist bends to sign her name on the enormous mural.

It’s an emotional event, and tears are shed by the artist as well as her local community leaders, neighbors, and friends. Among them is Patty Murphy.

"If it weren’t for Tamra — and she’s a great art teacher and has become a good friend — I wouldn’t have known about this at all," says Murphy. "And so it is interesting to see the Native American community that’s here that I never knew was here."

Guilford County resident Darlene Demarest is a volunteer who helped with some of the painting.

"The overall sense of community that you get around this project, and the community that came out, and the sense of community and the recognition of indigenous families in this community I think is just absolutely fabulous," she says.

This project was funded by Creative Greensboro, and these are the sorts of conversations organizers there hope to spark.

Joy Vermillion Heinsohn would like to see them happening across North Carolina. She’s the executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, and its Inclusive Public Art Initiative. It recently awarded $1.6 million to organizations and affiliated artists whose work reflects little known stories of women and people of color in the Tar Heel state.

"Whether that is aural storytelling or visual storytelling, they shape our understanding of the context of who we are and where we come from," says Vermillion Heinsohn. "They are very much a part of how we build culture."

Vermillion Heinsohn says when stories are missing from public spaces, trying to understand whose story is centered in a community is critical. Another goal of the project she says is doing this work collectively.

"We believe that there are conversations and new relationships that result from those processes that can really provide healing in communities which, at a time when communities and the country as a whole feels so divided, we think finding ways for communities to come together is really important," she says.

Lumbee artist Tamra Hunt says the opportunity to honor her people, her culture, and this community has been life changing.

"And there’s a sense of hope in that," she says. "That this is my identity, and I can stand strong in who I am as a Lumbee woman and a Lumbee artist."