‘Who Controls the Board?’ - Individually sculpted original chess set by CWY ‘Cherokee’ artist Karen Sixkiller

‘Who Controls the Board?’

The ‘Who Controls the Board?’ chess set is an original, one of a kind set of ceramic sculptures created by Karen Sixkiller in the summer of 2022. She describes  the project as follows:

“Similar to the game of chess, the conceptual impetus of the set and each of its pieces is complex and multi-faceted. The genesis for this elaborate sculptural piece began with a new flush of United States (US) school shootings resulting in senseless deaths of innocent children. This resonated with me as being connected to the deaths of Indigenous youth in the US, Canada and elsewhere, while being incarcerated at church run, government boarding schools. How are they the same? 

Are they the same? I taught at a distinguished Indian School for five years; whenever  ground was broken to build anything, graves were found. Random, anonymous graves with children in them. After talking to a colleague, we decided the Native and contemporary children had several things in common: they were all killed while at school and they died because the overall societal norm was one of greed and power that reduced them to mere pawns. The dead Native children were collateral damage to the Western greed for expansion and the Christian ideals of conversion. They were literally trained and rented out as low level workers and servants at a time when slavery was ending and different labor force options were in demand. 

Contemporary children were not killed by government and church run establishments, but by individuals seeking the most notoriety for the least investment. But how are these individuals able to be in positions of power? Gun lobbies turn even these tragedies into fear campaigns to sell more guns, (arm the teachers!). Political machinations fueled by money keep effective legislation paralyzed. The historical/“Black” set of pieces represent  ghosts of America’s past, with 4 boys and 4 girls modeled after Native children from across America. Artistically, I chose to paint the pieces on this side with black clay slip, which fires to a slightly brown hue. This choice serves to reinforce the double entendre of “Black” people actually being brown and marginalized children various hues of brown. The brownish quality also emphasizes the historical sepia-like coloration of the photos from the past. The contemporary/“White” set of pieces represent the 21st Century, with 4 boys and 4 girls modeled after an average mix of modern American school kids. Each student wears a backpack that eerily resembles angel wings. The white side of the board also references the dominance of the “White race” and adds color, as is available in  contemporary photos. But who would the other pieces be?

“The kings were easy to figure out and are both based on past US presidents. On the historical side, the king is represented by Andrew Jackson. He signed the Indian Removal Act while president, setting the stage for “saving the savages,” while simultaneously incarcerating and killing them. On the white/contemporary side the king is represented by a recent American president who vocally supported racism and white supremacy, and encouraged a violent attack on the nation’s capital. The historical bishops are a Catholic bishop and an American Methodist minister as these were the predominant churches involved in the residential Indian schools. (churches bid to the government and paid for the rights to run each new Indian school.) Contemporary bishops are represented as televangelists holding a bible in one hand and a microphone in the other. All the bishops have wads of cash spilling out of both pockets. The rooks were easy too; as buildings instead of people rooks or castles were replaced by stylized school houses planted all around with white crosses. Knights were a little trickier. At first I considered soldiers, but the military is one institution that seems to be a little divorced from both situations. Assault rifles, on the other hand, are ultra present. The contemporary knights became ball cap wearing “Proud Boys” hefting assault rifles that look like they could be flamethrowers. An African American friend supplied the historical ‘black knights’ by commenting, “That’s what the upper, mucky mucks in the KKK call themselves sometimes.” Historical knights became black caped KKK members, each hefting a hangman's noose.

“The most difficult character was the queen. In the game of chess she is actually the most powerful piece, able to move in any direction for as many squares as needed. But women have always been, and still are, marginalized with only a veneer of power. However, powerful ideas are often depicted as women; Lady Liberty, Justice, Manifest Destiny. Women’s bodies are co-opted by men and money in power to help sell their ideas. Women’s power and freedom is a farce, an illusion to help maintain the status quo and women often become the most staunch supporters of their gilded cage of misogyny. So, who are the queens in this looking-glass world? For the historical side, which women were the most oppressed, the most enslaved by the power structure? Literally slave women. Beautiful and noble in her white cloth crown and holding on her hip a white baby, I sculpted this symbol of the most oppressed women in US history. Now for the contemporary, who should she be? Who is most similar to the Black slave mammies of our past? Missing and Murdered indigenous Women (MMIW). Indigenous women who we know are the most targeted for modern sex slavery and dis-proportionately murdered by non-Natives while everyone else is most likely to be killed by someone they live with or know well. Who better to represent the most repressed, the most used and, in fact, actually the most enslaved in modern America but the thousands of MMI Women? She is tall and proud, hair flowing, wearing a long jingle dress and a choker (a collar?) and a ceremonial fan of eagle feathers with the initials MMIW beaded on it. All of the pieces are faceless, but hers has a bloody red handprint across it to make sure even those unfamiliar with the movement for recognition of these women will be able to recognize there is something very wrong here.

“I’ve included the source images I used to model each character. The most compelling were photos of Native children when they first arrived at Bureau of Indian Education residential schools. Finding these images of children looking so lost and forlorn in their Native clothing, and the typical matching photos of the same children a few weeks later “Westernized/civilized” was heart wrenching. It was difficult to choose only 8 tribes to represent. What about all the hundreds of tribes who lost children to this mass abduction? What about all the other children who shared similar fates in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South and Central America, the Caribbean, Scandinavia, the Russian Federation, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East? Only 8 little figures to represent a global atrocity. I decided to just do my best, to try to find source photos of children from a scattering of regions across the US. An “Eskimo” child (that is how the source photo describes the children pictured), to represent all the many tribes in the coldest parts of the US and Canada. A boy in bark clothing and a woven hat to represent all the Northwest Coastal people. A girl in an elk tooth adorned dress described in her photo as “Sioux.” My teaching experience with New Mexico’s Native populations helped me understand that tribes currently residing in the Southwest were originally more widespread. I sculpted an Apache boy in his woven belt and headband, a Navajo girl with her distinctive belt and hair knot, and a Hopi girl with her amazing Squash Blossom or Butterfly Whorl hair buns. There were so many similarities between various Northeastern tribal clothing that I finally settled on a boy identified as “Saskatchewan”. He was amazingly dressed in a fur fringed coat and trousers, beads, an intricately embroidered loin cloth, and fur wrapped over his braids. You can still see his proud spirit in the “after” photo despite the grief in his eyes. And, of course, being of Cherokee descent myself, I included the most famous period picture of a Cherokee girl. I remember seeing this girl’s photo when I was a child in an encyclopedia at the library and finding her so beautiful! She has floral decorated ribbons in her hair and a thick collar of shell beads twisted into thick ropes around her neck and large shell or bone disk pendants on her beaded necklaces. Sculpting these children was an emotional rollercoaster; I felt honored and horrified, elated and intimidated. I hope I have provided them and the countless children lost to boarding schools a small spark of justice through this tribute and recognition. 

First Nations Development Institute: Social Justice Through the Lens of Native Artists