GLORY LANDIn the introduction to her book The Second Sex (1949), Simone deBeauvoir defined “Otherness” as a fundamental category of human thought. Thus, she wrote, “No group ever defines itself as One without immediately setting up the Other opposite itself.”1 While her observation focused on matters of gender, it applies in other contexts as well. The investigation of “Otherness” is the focus of Nina Staehli’s Glory Land. When European explorers and, later, colonists, arrived on the east coast of what is now the United States of America, they found a worldvastly different from the land and culture they had left behind. Thus, they began remaking the “Other” into the “One” culture they knew. They claimed this new land as their own, assuming the right andexercising the prerogative to transform it and its indigenous peoples according to what they perceived as their enlightened vision. Thepassage and implementation of the Indian Removal Act, signed by President Andrew Jackson in 1830, resulted in the forced relocation of Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Ponca people from their eastern lands to “reserves” west of the Mississippi River. This long walk, known today as the Trail of Tears, was marked by grief,hunger, exhaustion, sickness, and death. Later, a counter response arose: a new sympathy for the so-called “noble savage,” whose inherentgoodness and moral sense were perceived as natural and uncorrupted byculture. This Romantic sensibility informed the writings of Germanauthor Karl May, whose wildly popular, late nineteenth-century century adventure novels were typically set in non-European lands - China, South America, and especially the American “wild” West. The most beloved characters in May’s Western novels are the fictional Apache chief

Winnetou and his German “blood brother,” Old Shatterhand - a school teacher and railroad surveyor.

In the United States, novels like James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826) similarly captured the imaginations of readers, while establishing romanticized images of both the noble American Indian and the courageous settler. More recent books, such as Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1970) andJonathan Lear’s Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (2006) address both the tragic and the hopeful aspects of American Indian people’s experience. John Reynold Gardiner’s Stone Fox (2010), a novel for young readers based on a RockyMountain legend, offers a deeply moving story of compassion and sacrifice on the part of an American Indian. Similarly, S.D. Nelson’s illustrated books for young readers, among them Black Elk’s Vision: A Lakota Story (2010) and Red Cloud: A Lakota Story of War and Surrender (2017), present powerful examples of American Indian integrity.

Perhaps more wide-reaching than literature, contemporary movies like Broken Arrow (1950), The Searchers (1956), How the West Was Won (1963) and Stagecoach (1966), as well as television programs like The Lone Ranger (1949–1957) and Wagon Train (1957–1965) shaped the public’s image of American Indians as either wild and threatening or noble and brave. It is also significant that images of American Indians appear on U.S. coins: the one-cent “penny” (minted 1859–1909); the five-cent “nickel” (minted 1913–1938); and the golden one-dollar coin(minted 2002–2008 and 2012–ongoing), featuring on its face the image of Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who guided the Lewis and Clark expedition across North America, and on its reverse, the image of Sequoyah, creator of the Cherokee writing system.

Ken Burns’ film, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery (1997), retold the story of that momentous expedition, which began in May 1804 in St. Louis and ended in September 1806 at the Pacific Ocean. Supported by the Corporation for PublicBroadcasting and presented as a multi-part series on PBS, the production captivated and enlightened viewers.

It is within this broad spectrum of imagery, stories, and history that we must consider Swiss artist Nina Staehli’s Glory Land project. Supported, in part, by a 2014 grant from Atelier FLEX, Staehli’s Trail of Tears research took her to Cherokee sites in the eastern U.S. states of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, and to two states west of the Mississippi River: Missouri and Oklahoma. The work cycle, which she developed, performed, and documented in photographs and on film, tells a story thatexposes the clash of idealism and realism, compassion and expediency in America. Staehli borrows the title of her multi-part Glory Land project from a traditional American gospel song with variant verses, where“Glory Land” is another name for heaven. Here are the first two verses of Ralph Stanley’s version of the song:

If you have friends in Glory Land Who left because of pain Thank God up there, they’ll die no more They’ll suffer not again.

Then weep not friends, I’m goin’ home Up there we’ll die no more No coffins will be made up there No graves on that bright shore.

In a sense, Staehli’s Glory Land performance is a visual hymn to all who suffer, a recognition of our flawed humanity and a plea to pay attention. More specifically, she focuses on America as a flawed “promised land.” Assuming the role of the “Other”, Staehli wears an enormous “head” covered by a black wig, evoking the image of the displaced American Indian, as she walks or sits on the sidewalks of busy city streets, or rests on motel beds. Some photographs show appropriative signage, as in Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, while others document her performance, capturing images of oblivious passersby, averted or disapproving eyes, and the occasional curiousonlooker. No one inquires of need. No one engages in conversation. There are no tears or empathy for the “Other” (the “Tear Head”) in this Glory Land.

The performative, photographic and video components of Glory Land are complemented by a work cycle created and presented in an exhibition at the Kansas City Artists Coalition. During her residency there, Staehli created her paintings on paper grocery bags. These paper bags also became the “canvases” upon which she drew and painted expressive images of faces and figures. Exhibited together with the performative documents (photographs and video), Staehli’s Glory Land is, simultaneously, heartbreaking and affirmative. It raises questions that each of us must answer.

Jan Schall, Ph. D. Sanders Sosland Curator, Modern ArtNelson-Atkins Museum of ArtKansas City, MO

1Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, Inc., New York, 2011, p. 6.