Home » Kwel’ Hoy Public Exhibit Opening at Watershed

Kwel’ Hoy Public Exhibit Opening at Watershed

by MercerMe Staff

From the Pacific Northwest, a 16-foot totem pole and art instillation will be housed at the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association until late summer, connecting communities to water, land, and our collective futures.

The exhibit arrives Tuesday, April 24, from the Natural History Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, and will remain on display at the Watershed until August 31.

The exhibit’s opening ceremony from 6pm-8:30pm, on Tuesday, April 24, will begin with a blessing by Chief Perry of the Ramapough Lenape Nation, and songs and prayers from members of the Lummi Nation. Speakers from the Watershed Center, The Natural History Museum, Princeton Environmental Institute, and Science for the People will offer brief remarks, and the Ramapough will lead a stone altar ceremony.

The totem pole, created by the House of Tears Carvers of the Lummi Nation in northern Washington State and southern British Columbia, has visited communities threatened or impacted by pipelines over the past six years.

With this exhibit hosted at The Watershed Center, the totem pole connects the science community’s efforts to protect the local watershed from the proposed PennEast Pipeline to the nearby Ramapough Lenape Nation’s struggle to stop the Pilgrim Pipeline, and the Lummi’s struggles to protect the waters of the Pacific Northwest from oil tankers and pipelines.

The exhibit also includes a stone altar initiated by the Ramapough Lenape Nation in northern New Jersey. The exhibit, last at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA, includes displays and stories of local peoples struggling to protect their homes from the impacts of fossil fuel development.

Members of the public are invited to bring a stone or rock to the opening ceremony to contribute to the altar, along with prayers for the water. A reception will follow, and visitors are invited to explore the exhibition inside.

As part of Princeton Migrations, a coalition of 30 area nonprofits, the Kwel’ Hoy exhibit is a migrating symbol of resistance that creates alliances between tribal and non-tribal communities.

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