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Trail of Hope, the Building of a Ceremonial Earthwork

Produced and directed by Jean Donohue

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When KayLynn Sullivan TwoTrees first visited Oxford University in the Ohio River Valley, she felt a sadness in the landscape. She began to wonder about the first people who lived there, wondered who the original guardians of this land were. Everyone told her they were gone - the Miami, the Delaware, the Shawnee - all removed. In the four years it took her to research this question, she found guardians in the Shawnee people, the Shawnee United Remnant Band, and she found other people who cared about the land but whose stories were new, were not really part of the landscape.

When the opportunity arose for TwoTrees to make a piece of art in Oxford, the idea of creating a space where the people who were here now, and who loved the land, could literally plant their stories in the landscape gradually took root in her heart. An earlier trip to New Zealand had introduced her to the Maori concept of stories in solid form, a way to pass on stories visually, and so the idea of the Trail of Hope was begun. TwoTrees chose a shape found abundantly in nature - the spiral - as the negative image, and the mound surrounding it became the positive image, at once an homage to the ancient moundbuilding peoples of the region as well as a celebration of the people who now live there.

She met with local people who expressed an interest in re-enlivening the land, listened to their stories, why they felt a connection to the land, then guided them in putting their stories down on paper, and finally in making three-dimensional symbols of their stories, ceremonial poles which would ultimately be "planted" in the mound surrounding the spiral.

The building of this ceremonial earthworks was a monumental undertaking, not only physically, but also spiritually. TwoTrees was very concerned about cutting into land that she was not a child of, so she gave offerings of tobacco, grown on that land, and said thanks every time they made insertions into the ground, a request to allow them to dig respectfully there. There was a groundbreaking ceremony, in which all the communities of the people participating were represented, and which consisted of song and prayer for the creator to look down and bless the endeavor.

In digging the center of the spiral, they struck water at five and a half feet (the original plan was to dig to seven feet), but TwoTrees counted this as a blessing - "We do something, and the earth responds," she says. So now water was part of the piece, and the following winter, the entire Trail filled with the water, giving further proof of a kind of blessing - the earth had responded with a solution to the erosion that was beginning to crumble the walls of the spiral.

Since its completion, the Trail of Hope has brought people from all over who have left offerings, planted corn, had ceremonies there, found peace and quiet there, and perhaps hope. As the sign at the gate of the earthworks says, "Hope is the beginning of change, and change is now."

Aralee Strange