To the extent that life’s journey is most truly fulfilled by a return to a “homeland”, Americans are only recently discovering what tribal people have embraced as a sacred pact. The two-century American experiment in colonizing and settling a rugged frontier left an indigenous population in despair visited by detachment from a historical and spiritual “home”.

As an artist reared on the semi-arid plains of SW Kansas, I put forth considerable effort and energy to escape to a more culturally lucrative experience. In the interim I have sat at the feet of Leon Shenendoah, Chief of Chiefs of the Iroquois Nation, watched the sunset over the aqua-tinted coast of SW Australia near Adelaide, sipped merlot and snacked on caviar with ad executives in London’s art district, and shared cheap port and canned beans with homeless men helping to create an earthwork along the Hudson River on Manhattan’s West side.

An installation Herd completed in 1994, Countryside, which was an image of a pastoral Kansas landscape on an acre of property owned by Donald Trump in New York City, is the subject of an independent film by Chris Ordal called Earthwork. The film was a winner at 18 film festivals in 2010 and was filmed on location in Lawrence and New York City.