On January 16, 2025, Terra Engagement Fellow Teagan Harris gave a virtual talk placing Shan Goshorn’s Cherokee Burden Basket: A Song for Balance (2012) in dialogue with Louise Erdrich’s novel The Night Watchman, the 2024-2025 One Book, One Northwestern selection. This talk is the second in a series exploring connections between works in The Block’s collection and The Night Watchman. This year’s full list of teaching works, selected by The Block’s staff to align with themes in Erdrich’s novel, can be found here.

Title: Cherokee Burden Basket: A Song for Balance

Date: 2012

Medium: Arches watercolor paper, archival inks, and acrylic paint

Artist: Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band of Cherokee, 1957 – 2018)

Dimensions: 24 in. x 19 in. (diameter)

Credit line: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, purchased with a gift from Sandra Lynn Riggs and members of the Block Leadership Circle

Object number: 2017.3

Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band Cherokee, 1957–2018) was a highly respected artist whose multimedia work told stories of Indigenous histories and contemporary identities. She is particularly known for her basketweaving. Her work Cherokee Burden Basket: A Song for Balance incorporates text from documents that represent the burdens Cherokee women carry with them today in the United States, such as the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, which sold 7 million acres of Cherokee ancestral homelands to the US government and resulted in the forced removal of the Cherokee people along the Trail of Tears. Goshorn “balances” these burdens with Cherokee songs and prayers for healing written in Cherokee syllabary on vibrant bands around the basket, which represent the traditional Cherokee directional colors. In her talk, Teagan Harris discusses the documents and symbolism present in Goshorn’s work, and compares them to narratives present in Erdrich’s account of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa’s struggles against termination in the 1950s.

The words on this basket are overwhelming. When they’re placed together, their weight is immeasurable. I’m reminded of Louise Erdrich’s words from the epilogue of her book The Night Watchman: “If you should ever doubt that a series of dry words in a government document can shatter spirits and demolish lives, let this book erase that doubt. Conversely, if you should be of the conviction that we are powerless to change those dry words, let this book give you heart.” (pg. 451).

Teagan Harris, Terra Engagement Fellow