This Monday is Columbus Day in the United States, a date that celebrates the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World in 1492. But the darker story of Columbus, and all the Conquistidors and settlers who followed him to the New World, is one of deliberate and incidental genocide, slavery, starvation through the slaughter of plains animals, such as the American bison, theft, and the death of a 10,000 year-old way of life, of the indigenous people who lived in the Americas long before the Europeans came.

With few exceptions, there has been little or no attempt to achieve truth and reconciliation with the tribes, a shameful legacy for America.

Artist Douglas Bane of Orr’s Island focused on the Plains Indians in his new show, “100 Native Americans: Their Spirit Lives On,” opening Sunday, October 12, with a reception from 1-5 p.m. at Gun Point Cove Gallery, 1241 Harpswell Islands Road, on Orr’s Island. The show will continue through December.

The portraits are 100 haunting pen and ink drawings that Bane has done since last winter. In fact, he has done 157 portraits of native peoples of many tribes over that period.

“I have always felt a deep connection with Native Americans. Their faces from the past have continually haunted me and made me wonder about who they really were as people and how they fought and endured the American Nation’s conquest of their homelands. What were their lives like beyond the post card images and the blanketed huddled souls pushed onto reservations?

“Moved by these reflections I decided to bring them back to honor them as people of soul, spirit and power, as individuals and as indigenous cultures who cannot be denied,” he said.

The exhibit is haunting, as the eyes of every face follow the viewer throughout the show. Bane’s handcarved and stained frames are almost as stunning as the portraits themselves.

“I had some paper left over from illustrating a book,” he said. “And I wanted to do this … create real portraits of these people.” He said he wanted to make sure that the characters and spirits of the people came through. “I didn’t want to create more caricactures of ‘Indians’,” he said. “I wanted these people to live again. I think their spirits helped me.”

Bane said that every day he performs a ceremony for his portraits, burning sage, which is a purification ritual in many native tribes, and reciting a prayer for their spirits to be at peace.

Each of his portraits is a real person, whose photograph had been taken during his or her lifetime, some dating back to the mid-1800s as settlers moved west and Natives fought with soldiers to retain their homelands. The struggle was over far too quickly for the native people, who were forced into reservations or simply killed because they tried to remain in their homes and hunting grounds. In a remarkably short period of time, from 1848 to 1886, the native population in the west declined by more than 90 percent.

Bane says that he is hoping that several museums are considering taking the whole collection for display after the exhibit closes at Gun Point Cove, although nothing definite has been decided. “We’ve had some responses,” he said. “We’d want the collection to stay together and be displayed together, and that has a certain space requirement.”

For more information about the show, telephone 833-7303.

ghamilton@timesrecord.com

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