ARTIST STATEMENT

   I am a Korean adoptee raised on Dakota land by 3rd generation Norwegian/Swedish immigrants. In this place I spend a lot of time surrounded by the wind, walking through swirling prairie grasses, flying kites and singing to the clouds. 

UMM’s rural setting was appealing to me. Charmed by their omnipresent turbines and wildflower display garden I learned about their agricultural programs, sustainable farming research and experimental renewable energy studies in wind and solar power. What I found among those I interviewed was not just an educational mission but a passionate and personal vow of stewardship to the land.

   In the same place I read documents from over 100 years ago outlining renaming policies, punitive measures for misbehavior, integration recommendations, the initiation process of for admittance into the Morris American Indian Boarding school, 1887. I reacted strongly with recognition. This system of integration was evident in the remnants of my own adoption. Whatever methods of assimilation were carried out here, while it may not have been where those methods originated, and indeed not where they ceased, it was a place where they most certainly took hold.