Gallery Conversation and Play Reading on Feb. 21 Explore Native American Family's Complex Legacy

Photo Submitted

Mary Kathryn Nagle

An influential Cherokee family's legacy with ties to Fayetteville's past and present is being featured in a series of free events culminating on Thursday, Feb. 21 with a gallery conversation and staged reading of the full play Sovereignty by Mary Kathryn Nagle.

"Gallery Conversation: Portrait of John Ridge by Charles Bird King" will be from 6-6:45 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 21 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in the Early American Gallery.

The event will precede the evening performance of Sovereignty, and during the talk Crystal Bridges Curator Mindy Besaw and Art Bridges Assistant Curator Ashley Holland will discuss European depictions of indigenous peoples, including this painting.

Then, after the gallery talk, "Sovereignty, a play by Mary Kathryn Nagle, presented by TheatreSquared" will start at 7 p.m. in the Great Hall at Crystal Bridges.

The reading of Sovereignty will be performed by TheatreSquared with support from the Department of Theatre at the University of Arkansas. Tickets are free, but please register online or with the museum's guest services.

In Sovereignty, Sarah Ridge Polson, a young Cherokee lawyer fighting to restore her nation's jurisdiction, must confront the ever-present ghosts of her grandfathers.

With shadows stretching from the 1830s Cherokee Nation (now present-day Georgia) through Andrew Jackson's Oval Office to the Cherokee Nation in present-day Oklahoma, Sovereignty asks how high the flames of anger can rise before they ultimately consume the truth.

These events are part of a series of events centered on modern-day playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle, her ancestor John Ridge and his influential Cherokee family's legacy.

Partners and sponsors for these events include Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, TheatreSquared, the Northwest Arkansas Center for Sexual Assault, the U of A Chancellor's Innovation and Collaboration Grant, University Libraries' Special Collections and Mullins Library, and the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences' Indigenous Studies Program, Humanities Program and Department of Theatre.

About Mary Kathryn Nagle: Playwright Mary Kathryn Nagle is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She currently serves as the executive director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program. She is also a partner at Pipestem Law P.C. in Tulsa, where she works to protect tribal sovereignty and the inherent right of Indian Nations to protect their women and children from domestic violence and sexual assault. Her play Sovereignty premiered at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 2018.

About John Ridge: John Ridge signed the bitterly divisive Treaty of New Echota in 1835, which removed the Cherokees from their land in the eastern United States. While many view Ridge and the other Ridge-Watie family signers as traitors, others see them as dissenting patriots who were willing to sacrifice their own lives to preserve the Cherokee Nation - having no idea of the atrocity that was to come through the Trail of Tears. After Ridge was killed in the Indian Territory, his widow, Sarah Bird Northrup Ridge, their five children and a teacher, Sophia Sawyer, moved to Fayetteville in 1839. Their home, The Ridge House, located just off the downtown Fayetteville Square, is the oldest house still standing in Fayetteville.