CHERRY RIVER: WHERE THE RIVERS MIX, 2018, a temporal public art project by Indigenous scholar and musician Shane Doyle (Apsaalooke) and artist/director Mary Ellen Strom, was a live music and culture event, located at Headwaters of Missouri River, where Indigenous people call WHERE THE RIVERS MIX. Musicians performed on boats floating on 3 rivers (Jefferson, Madison, Gallatin) toward the confluence of the Missouri. Doyle and Strom worked with the 3 rivers to create a narrative structure and cultural bridge. A name change ceremony, returning the East Gallatin River to its Indigenous name CHERRY RIVER was central to the project, recognizing the enduring nature of Indigenous history and knowledge on the Northern Plains. The event venerated the ecology of running water and the biotic interactions among plants, animals and micro-organisms that make up the ecosystem of this treasured river.
This inter-tribal project was conceived, researched and produced over a 2-year period that involved retreats, community meetings and social gatherings, research in Indigenous and non-Indigenous archives, engagement with musicians, conversations with tribal historians, politicians, Amskapi Pikuni/Blackfeet, Apsáalooke/Crow, Ojibwe and Tsistsistas/Suhtaio, Northern Cheyenne scholars, a geologist, an archeologist, a water lawyer, conservationists and ranchers. CHERRY RIVER understood collaborative inquiry as a method to generate new knowledges of our region’s most salient cultural and environmental issues. CHERRY RIVER put a spotlight on the Indigenous cultural and environmental narratives of the Headwaters State Park location. At this historic moment, diverse knowledges are required to work toward comprehensive and informed solutions about our water resources.
CHERRY RIVER: WHERE THE RIVERS MIX was commissioned and produced by Mountain Time Arts with generous support from ArtPlace America and the Willow Springs Charitable Trust.