Opening Reception for "Ways of My Ancestors - Lighting the Path to Awareness" by Scott Strong Hawk Foster | Wed. 10/28, 5-7pm

RSM Art Gallery is proud to present Ways of My Ancestors – Lighting the Path to Awareness, a new series by Scott Strong Hawk Foster, a Native American photographer of Hassanamisco Nipmuc, Mohegan, and Cherokee lineage. 

We invite you to two events to celebrate this new exhibit. There will be an Opening Reception in the Gallery on Wednesday, October 28, from 5:00-7:00 p.m. and an Artist Talk on Tuesday, November 17, at 2:00 p.m. in Lindsay 30. 

Ways of My Ancestors - Lighting the Path to Awareness
Scott Strong Hawk Foster
October 28–December 17, 2026

Opening Reception
October 28 | 5:00-7:00 p.m. | RSM Art Gallery

Artist Talk 
November 17 | 2:00-3:00 p.m. | Lindsay 30

About the Artist and Exhibit

This series was shaped by photographs Scott Strong Hawk took of two close family members. During an early morning outing in the Fall, the artist asked his son to gather the most beautiful leaves he could find. As his son held the bright leaves against his black sweatshirt, Strong Hawk took a photograph noting how his son’s hands and leaves dramatically stood out against the dark background. A few days later, he asked his mother, Ocean Sunrise, to don her tribal regalia and photographed her in the soft light of a sliding glass door, the focus was completely on her as the background disappeared. These photographs inspired Ways of My Ancestors, an expansive series that has grown to include over 350 portraits of Indigenous people from southern New England and their traditions that span millennia.

The Ways of My Ancestors – Lighting the Path to Awareness exhibition highlights the Nipmuc People and her sister tribes of the Eastern Woodlands and coast of New England whose voices have been historically threatened, marginalized, and silenced through European colonization. In Ways of My Ancestors - Documenting Divergence, Strong Hawk draws our attention to colonial institutions, documents and policies that were integral in the founding of America at the expense of dismantling Native American cultures, communities, and lifeways. Images of documents and symbols such as The Declaration of Independence, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and experts from Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography are layered with portraits of contemporary Native American peoples who remain on their ancestral homelands today. In their juxtaposition of past and present, the photographs illuminate the rich, resilient, and diverse cultures of the Native American Peoples who continue to live among us and ask us to rethink our national narrative as we question the mythologies of America’s founding and earliest history.

Scott Strong Hawk Foster is a citizen of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Band whose work has been exhibited throughout New England at the ICA Boston, The Danforth Museum, The Worcester Art Museum, The Springfield Museums, The Umbrella Art Center in Concord, The New Art Center in Newton, Great Falls Discovery Center in Turners Falls, Waterfire Arts Center in Providence, and Show Up Gallery in Boston. In 2025 he was commissioned by the city of Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture and funded by the Mellon Foundation, to create large-scale prints (banners) of Ways of My Ancestors – Imagery: Lighting the Path to Awareness at Faneuil Hall – Quincy Marketplace in Boston as part of the city’s Un-Monument| Re-Monument | De-Monument Initiative.