The Wyandots
Every city, village and hamlet in America, including our city of Wyandotte, was built on Indian land. Hundreds of years ago the Wyandot nation lived along the banks of the Detroit River. The Wyandot villages stretched from Georgian Bay in Canada, south along Lake Huron and Lake Erie, all the way east to Niagara, New York. The rivers offered a good lifeway – fishing, hunting and fertile land to grow corn, beans and squash. The village of Mongnagon was located in present day Wyandotte, on the Detroit River waterfront. Through a series of treaties, starting in 1795, the Wyandot lost their land in Michigan, and later in Ohio. The Wyandots were removed to Kansas, and twenty years later some moved to
Oklahoma.
Today, the Wyandots of Anderdon still live in the Downriver area. Other branches of the Wyandot nation live in Canada, Kansas and Oklahoma.
The Commission
The Wyandotte Street Art Fair was formed in 1962 to promote and expand community awareness of the creative arts through quality exhibits that provide meaningful cultural enrichment. In 1997, the Wyandotte Street Art Fair Committee embarked on a quest to create an artistic Millennium Gift to the community – a tribute to the city’s founding people, the Wyandots. Giorgio Gikas, President of Venus Bronze Works, Inc., was hired to be a consultant to oversee this project to commission and create a bronze sculpture of a Wyandot Indian Family for the citizens of Wyandotte.
The Sculptor
Over 40 Michigan sculptors submitted project proposals and in July, 1998, after a careful selection process, Michaele Duffy Kramer was selected to create the artwork. Her major artistic focus has been traditional figurative sculpture. She hopes to bring to her more public sculpture a feeling of accessibility to the bronze and strives for the connection between the metal and the warm human touch. Michaele has been creating sculpture for over 20 years. She began this commission in her Port Huron studio in February, 1999, and completed the clay models in December. The Fine Arts Sculpture Center in Clarkston cast the work into the finished bronze.