Poster Image
$20
Item#: 2003SYR11
Purchase Details
11x17-inches, printed on heavy weight (100-pound) Hammermill cover paper. We package each print with a piece of chipboard in a clear plastic sleeve.
You also receive…
An information page with photos of the artist and poet, and hand-written comments from each.
Medium- and large-format posters are available by custom order. Contact us for details.
Poem Inspiration Location
Where the Peacemaker
poster information
Description
Where the Peacemaker
Buried the weapons of war
You might be standing
I was thinking of a time before the city, before the downtown, going back to the original Haudenosaunee, our people. I wanted to juxtapose that with the present, so that people on the street might think, where am I standing? What happened here? Who was the peacemaker?
He was the one who worked to bring together the original five nations (of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy) that were living in this area now known as New York State. I don't know if there has ever been specified a place where we buried the weapons of war, but to my knowledge, it was done here, in Onondaga, by the lake, or near the lake.
When I first read this poem I was excited because I felt it was perfect for the type of work I do. I focus primarily on political art and have participated in community peace organizing.
I understood how the poem was inspired from the Iroquois legend about the Peacemaker and the forming of the Iroquois Confederacy because of a Native American religion class I had taken. I tried to incorporate much of the inspired imagery from this legend with imagery pertaining to the United States and its part in the war on Terrorism. The Peacemaker buried the weapons of war beneath a white pine, for example. Instead of historic Iroquois weapons, I put modern ones such as tanks and bombs. With a closer examination to Native American culture, I feel the United States can lean a lot, particularly pertaining to peace.