DelawareScene: We Were Always Here @ The Delaware Contemporary

We Were Always Here

The Delaware Contemporary is participating in Delaware’s 250th anniversary with a group exhibition of indigenous artists of the Eastern Woodlands. This exhibition is a sibling to the Our Sun Is Rising — Our Sun Is Setting exhibition, they are two halves of a whole story of our nation and the stolen land it exists on. We Were Always Here celebrates the art, craft, language, regalia, origins, and stories of indigenous people of this region. Together, the exhibitions will observe undeniable truths about the land and our country.

Contributing Artists: Kesha “Quiet Medicine Tree” Bruanskill, Robert Cole, Denise Bright Dove Dunkley, Melissa “Quiet Thunder Turtle” Jackson, Farrah Stigall, Maggie Stigall, Rebecca L. “Little Turtle Who Sees” Jackson-Square

From Rebecca Jackson-Square and Denise Bright Dove Dunkley:

Long before the Declaration of Independence, before Wilmington rose along the Christina and the Brandywine, this land was already tended, storied, and known by Indigenous hands. We Were Always Here draws on wood, bone, hide, bead, cloth, and reclaimed materials — the same substances our ancestors shaped for generations — to insist that the Nanticoke, Lenape, and the many other tribes whose pathways cross this land were never erased, only unseen. Each material carries memory: gathered from the earth, passed down through families, or salvaged and remade to speak of survival as much as craft.

This exhibition lifts Indigenous voices as the original storytellers of this land, tending a history that stretches back centuries before any nation was declared. The work gathered here is not meant to be read piece by piece, but felt as a whole — a living record of continuity through 250 years of upheaval, erasure, and endurance. Our continued existence in this place celebrates the lifeways and traditional ecological knowledge that will guide the next 250 years, not only as survival, but as a duty of stewardship and care for the land. We invite you to sit with these objects, to notice the hands and histories behind them, and to recognize that the story of this place has always included us, still unfolding today.

Exhibitions Museums 250th Anniversary Northern Delaware