LA GRANDE, Ore. – Eastern Oregon University is hosting “Heads and Hearts: Seeing the Landscape Through Nimiipuu Eyes,” an exhibit from the Josephy Center for Arts and Culture that brings Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) stories and art together with the science of geology. The exhibit is on display in the first-floor foyer of Loso Hall through Nov. 30.
Developed over more than two years by the Josephy Center with geologist Ellen Morris Bishop and Nimiipuu beadworker, geologist, and story collector Roger Amerman, the exhibit sets two ways of reading the land side by side. Geologists use new instruments and techniques to interpret the record held in mountains and valleys, rock and waterways. Nimiipuu oral tradition carries its own long record of that same landscape, including accounts of earthquakes, floods and other cataclysmic events from the distant past, often with Coyote at the center of how people and the natural world relate.
The Nimiipuu hold their landscape in reverence, understanding it as a living being that provides spiritual sustenance as well as food and resources. Through art, photographs, and stories, the exhibit shows that Indigenous stories and place names are far more than myths. They record real past events and landscape features that also inform scientific understanding of the Northwest’s geology.
The exhibit’s creators call this combined Indigenous and scientific understanding “ethnogeology,” an approach also described as “Two-Eyed Seeing”: experiencing a landscape from two cultural perspectives at once.
“Heads and Hearts” is free and open to the public from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.
The Josephy Center for Arts and Culture (JCAC) is a gathering place to celebrate, promote and inspire arts and culture for all Wallowa County residents and visitors.
To learn more about the Native American Program at EOU, visit eou.edu/native-american-program/.
