MISSOULA — Residents of Missoula's northside are improving their neighborhood with the help of Indigenous art and using it to bring the past to the present.
Northside neighbors are taking initiative after securing a grant to add more color to their community
“I mean, basically the northside and westside are parts of Missoula that are not as heavily invested in,” said resident Sam Duncan.
When Duncan saw a need in their neighborhood for improvement they applied for the City of Missoula Neighborhood Energizer grant.
This is their third year bringing public art to the northside.
“And specifically, we've been working in our previous four murals to make sure we're like leveraging public government, money, government grants to pay Indigenous artists to bring indigenous art to our neighborhood,” Duncan told MTN.
“Usually in my art, I try to connect people in place,” said artist Monica Brings-Yellow who focuses her art on representing the aboriginal people of Montana.
“I think it's really important to tell accurate stories and provide accurate representation,” said Brings-Yellow whose work in Missoula highlights Salish people. “There's a lot of people that visited Missoula, but it's primarily Salish homeland."
“It feels like sometimes when you're moving through Missoula that there's not a lot of those older stories being told and not a lot of representation being offered,” Brings-Yellow told MTN. “And so, when I do public art, I like to try and fill in the blanks and start a dialogue.”
Not only is the mural paying respect to the first of the land, but it's also bringing the people now living there together.
“So that was the goal was just to like, allow people to express themselves artistically and to allow neighbors to like come together through making our neighborhood more beautiful, like putting our time and energy,” Duncan explained.
