I'M GONNA RUN WITH EVERY MINUTE I CAN BORROW

As part of his 2020 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, Jeffrey Gibson commissioned a pair of beaded moccasins from the artist John Little Sun Murie to adorn this early twentieth-century bronze, which portrays a stereotyped “dying” Native warrior. Through this gesture, Gibson and Murie interrupt the myth that Native Americans were doomed to extinction, one perpetuated by traditional narratives of U.S. history and sculptures like this one.

The title of Murie’s moccasins, rendered in beadwork at Gibson’s request along each shoe’s buckskin edge, comes from Roberta Flack’s song “See You Then.” Gibson and Murie honor the Native subject rendered anonymous by the sculpture’s original artist, reclaiming his story as one of dignity, strength, and survival.