NMHIM is proud to announce the opening of our latest student exhibit. Removal & Resilience focuses on the displacement and forced removal of indigenous tribes in the United States and New Mexico.
Students at Technology Leadership High School have been hard at work creating this insightful exhibit about The Trail of Tears and The Long Walk, and how indigenous communities demonstrated great resistance and resilience amidst devastating forced removals.
This exhibit opens to the public on Wednesday, May 27. We look forward to seeing you!
Exhibit Overview
On May 28th 1830, U.S. President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 into law, setting in motion the forced relocation of thousands of indigenous people from the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek (Muscogee) and Seminole tribes in what is commonly known as “The Trail of Tears.” Over the next 20 years, the US government would forcibly and often violently remove people from their ancestral homes in one of the largest ethnic cleansings in U.S. history. While traveling hundreds of miles, mostly on foot and in poor conditions, thousands of Cherokee and other native people would die from exposure.
Between 1864 and 1866, famed frontiersman Christopher “Kit” Carson would help General James H. Carleton orchestrate a similar removal in New Mexico. Thousands of Diné (Navajo) and hundreds of Mescalero Apache were forcibly removed from their homes and herded into the Bosque Redondo concentration camp near Fort Sumner. Over four years, an estimated 3,500 people would die from starvation, disease and poor treatment in what has become known as “The Long Walk” of the Navajo.
Our students sought to create some links between these two tragic but deeply important historical events. We invite you to visit and learn about the injustice faced by indigenous and tribal communities during westward expansion, and the perseverance and resilience of the people who had their homes stolen from them and yet bravely continued on.