© Ken Marchionno
Lancaster Museum of Art and History presents Conversations on the Future Generations Ride.
Conversations on the Future Generations Ride is a series of discussions between the riders and originators of the Oomaka Tokatakiya, Future Generations Ride, a continuation of the original Si Tanka Wokiksuye, also known as the Big Foot Memorial Ride. The Future Generations Ride is a nearly 300-mile memorial horseback ride across the South Dakota winter from the site of the killing of Sitting Bull to the site of the Wounded Knee massacre.
An interview with Ken Marchionno will be conducted by artist, curator, writer, and farmer Barbara Benish, the founding Director of ArtMill in rural Bohemia, Czech Republic, an international eco-art center. Ms Benish is a long-time supporter of the project and made possible an exhibition of the work and talk at the US Embassy in Prague by two teens from Standing Rock in 2011.
Ken Marchionno is an artist, writer, and curator living in the Los Angeles area and is currently a Professor in Photography and Imaging at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. His work has been presented in Dr. Betty Ann Brown’s Art and Mass Media and Robert Hirsch’s Exploring Color Photography. He has been a stringer for the Associated Press and his photography has been featured in a number of magazines and newspapers including the contemporary art quarterly, X-TRA. His creative writing has been included in the literary journals Errant Bodies and Framework. His ongoing project, 300 Miles to Wounded Knee: the Oomaka Tokatakiya Future Generations Ride has been exhibited in The Smithsonian Institution; the U.S. Embassy in Prague; and Yuchun Museum, Suzhou, China.
300 Miles to Wounded Knee: the Ookmaka Tokatakiya Future Generations Ride is a community-engaged photography project that documents the three hundred-mile memorial horseback ride to the sight of the Wounded Knee massacre. Often braving the piercing South Dakota Winter, the journey to Wounded Knee is meant to be an homage to the Lakota people who lost their lives one hundred and thirty years ago, but riders also regard it as a spiritual, cultural and intellectual experience. Machionno’s portrayal of the event strays from the typical exploitative depiction of stoic, poverty-stricken Native Americans and reservation life and offers an empowering representation of their journey. His documentation offers a contemporary lens that highlights the autonomy and self-empowerment of the Lakota people.