HUCA Commission: Frank Waln, Waná Wétu Owíčhota Owášta
Frank Waln, or Oyate Teca Obmani (“Walks with Young People”), is an award-winning Sicangu-Lakota hip-hop artist and music producer from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. He uses his music to speak about social issues and injustices affecting the Native community and as a method for healing.
To conclude his residency at the ArtLab, Waln created a participatory gathering of music and storytelling inspired by elements of Lakota culture. As part of We Gather in the Spring to Help in our Healing / Waná Wétu Owíčhota Owášta, Waln premiered a new song written to honor the complex ways that his own family’s Lakota history is intertwined with the history of Harvard University’s anthropological collections. Native students and staff joined Frank at Harvard Divinity School for this public gathering.
This public artwork is a commission of the Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA) and was made possible with the support of the Johnson-Kulukundis Family President’s Fund for Arts at Harvard University. Since 2009, Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA) has advised the president and provost on developing policies and plans that will enhance the presence of the arts at the University and make the arts a central component of the University’s educational mission.
This commission is created in response to Frank Waln’s personal connection to the Woodbury Collection at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. The Peabody Museum at Harvard stewards a collection of hair samples from Indigenous people around the world assembled by anthropologist George Edward Woodbury in the 1930s and donated to the Museum in 1935. The vast majority are from North America, including clippings of hair from approximately 700 Native American children attending U.S. Indian Boarding Schools. Many of those samples have the names of the individuals whose hair was taken, including one sample named Waln.
More about Frank Waln’s residency at Harvard.