Wunnegen Mehquontamuonk– The Memory Pile at the Living Village

Yale University acknowledges that Indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land. The Divinity School recognizes the role that Christianity played in colonization movements and repudiates the use of Christianity (or any other religion) for the purposes of oppression. We encourage all to work for justice in the aftermath of colonization and to reject racism and anti-Indigenous attitudes in all forms.

Yale Divinity School also honors the Indigenous students who have worked with us and enriched the YDS community in countless ways. Students have graduated from YDS in recent years from the following Indigenous nations. (If you know of others who should be added to this list, please contact tisa.wenger@yale.edu.) 

1. Anishinaabe (Wabaseemoong Independent Nations)
2. Chickasaw
3. Chowanoke
4. Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian)
5. Mescalero Apache
6. Mohegan
7. Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo 
8. Osage
9. Quechan
10. Sac and Fox
11. Taino

Symbolic Meaning of the Basalt Vessel at Yale Divinity School

The basalt vessel stands as the central carved element within a five-stone memory pile located on the grounds of the Yale Divinity School’s Living Village. This sculpture is a gesture of recognition and spiritual grounding for Indigenous students, faculty, and visitors. It honors the histories, presence, and futures of Indigenous peoples at Yale and within the surrounding region, while also creating a contemplative, sacred space for all who seek connection, reflection, and remembrance.

The vessel is shaped in the form of a communal offering bowl, a form deeply rooted in Indigenous ceremonial and social life. Offering bowls have long held the purpose of holding food, medicine, and symbolic gifts during gatherings and rituals. In this context, the bowl holds small offering stones placed atop the memory pile. These stones symbolize ancestral grandfathers; elders of the land who have shaped and witnessed time through their geologic endurance. Their presence reflects a continuity between land, memory, and spiritual care.

Carved from basalt, a volcanic stone, the vessel evokes the resilience and enduring strength of Indigenous communities. Basalt is formed through heat and pressure, mirroring the transformative journeys of Indigenous survival and resurgence. The choice of this material grounds the sculpture in the natural and geological history of the land while aligning with traditional stone working practices used to create tools, bowls, and ceremonial objects across many Native nations.

On the inside of the bowl is an incised image of a cedar leaf, a sacred medicine among many Indigenous nations of the Northeast and Great Lakes. Cedar is used for protection, spiritual purification, and balance. It is burned in ceremonies, used in bathing, and offered in prayer. Its presence within the bowl signifies healing and guidance, and it reflects a direct link to the local ecosystems and the living traditions that continue to honor the medicine’s power.

The rim of the bowl is carved with the pattern of a braided sweetgrass strand. Sweetgrass, often referred to as the “hair of Mother Earth,” is braided in ceremony to represent unity, strength, and the interwoven connection of mind, body, and spirit. It is burned for smudging to invite positive energies and cleanse spaces of negativity. The sweetgrass braid in this vessel not only purifies the space but also serves as a welcoming gesture, inviting spiritual presence and cultural continuity.

Inlaid into the outer wall of the bowl are 28 round, purple wampum shells arranged in a ring. This number refers to the 28 minor scutes on the back of a turtle, a sacred being in some Eastern Woodland stories of creation. These scutes correspond to the lunar calendar, marking the moon’s cycle and women’s cycles of life and renewal. Wampum, made from the quahog shell, carries profound significance for many Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Seaboard. Traditionally used in ceremony, diplomacy, and record keeping, wampum encodes stories, agreements, and truths. Their presence here acknowledges the spiritual technologies of memory, listening, and care that Indigenous communities have carried forward across generations.

The interior lip of the vessel includes a design motif inspired by both medicinal plants native to the region and the gesture of an elder’s embrace. This symbolizes the nurturing, protective, and intergenerational care Indigenous students and community members bring with them and seek in spaces of learning and spiritual growth. It is a quiet but powerful reminder of the importance of belonging, relationship, and Indigenous kinship structures.

Water is the first medicine. This is echoed in the symbolic reference to cleansing waters embedded within the design. The vessel, open to the sky, invites rain and touch. Like water held by stone, it becomes a container for emotion, offering, and transformation. Its presence within the Divinity School grounds is an invocation for balance, healing, and relational accountability between the institution and the Indigenous peoples whose lands it occupies.

At the base of the memory pile, full wampum shells rest in a circle. Their placement marks the foundation of memory, grounding the site in sacred cycles and in the offerings of Indigenous nations whose traditions honor place, time, and spirit. The unaltered stones stacked above and below the carved vessel were unearthed during the construction of the Living Village. These stones were shaped only by nature, holding within them the quiet authority of deep time. Together, the five stones form a contemporary Eastern Woodland memory pile, a place to remember and to gather, to speak and to be still.

This sculpture, through its elements, offers Indigenous students a space of cultural affirmation, spiritual grounding, and ancestral connection. It invites the broader Yale community to acknowledge Indigenous histories and knowledge not as static or past but as living presences deserving of reverence, care, and protection.

Inkpa Mani Lara-Ruiz (Masea Mexica – Tarahumara)
May 20th 2025

Memory Pile Artists

Jeremy Dennis is a contemporary fine art photographer, an enrolled Tribal Member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY, and the founder and lead artist of Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, Inc., a nonprofit art space and residency program on the Shinnecock Reservation dedicated to uplifting Indigenous and BIPOC artists.

His work centers on Indigenous identity, culture, and the legacies of colonial assimilation, using photography to stage cinematic, otherworldly narratives rooted in Native oral stories, history, and contemporary experience.

Jeremy Dennis lives and works in Southampton, NY, on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation.

Sierra Autumn Henries has been a multimedia artist for over thirty years and is a member of the Chaubunagungamaug band of Nipmuck (MA) living at the intersection of Passamaquoddy and Penobscot homelands. She and her family care for land and their home in a place that rests at the feet of both Schoodic and Black mountains, and sits alongside Flanders stream, which flows only a short distance to the ocean waters of Flanders Bay.

Consisting primarily of pyrography and birch bark, her art endeavors to honor the beauty of natural color and form while incorporating line work that lives harmoniously with the material. Her Eastern Woodlands culture plays a role in all aspects of her artistic process – from mindset and approach while gathering bark, to the creation and completion of a design. Each piece is meticulously cut, sketched, and burned free-hand, no stencils are used. Every piece of art is unique and comes into being with their own story.

Through intentional process and a reflection of her relationship with land and community (both human and otherwise), Sierra hopes that her art will foster conversation and connection with nature, as well as sparking an interest in others to explore their own creative-self expression.

Her parents are Lisa and Hawk (flutemaker), her sister is Sequan, and her grandparents are Jayne, and Donald who journeyed 2023; Carol, and Little Crow who journeyed 2012; and Theresa Coates.

Inkpa Mani’s painting practice honors the people, places, and spirits that shape his life. Mani (Masea Mexica – Tarahumara) grew up moving between Chihuahua, Mexico, and Minnesota, and will complete his MFA in 2026 at the Yale School of Art. Working with acrylic, oil, and stone, he creates textured, abstract surfaces grounded in Indigenous aesthetics. Drawing from the landscapes and cultural traditions of the Great Plains and Northern Mexico, his work engages the spiritual and material legacies of his ancestors. Through surface, color, and geometry, Mani expands the possibilities of Indigenous art — resisting homogenous flattening, hegemony, and placing his voice within a long and evolving history of abstraction.

Memory Pile Planning Committee

I’noli Hall (’13, ’22 M.Div.) is a graduate of Andover Newton Seminary at Yale and a citizen of the Chowanoke Tribe. During his time at YDS he led the student organization, Native Crossroads, advocating for greater inclusion and representation of Indigenous students in the academics, student life, and physical landscape of the Divinity School. This included spearheading the initial stages of the memory pile installation in the Living Village, an effort he continued to champion as an alumnus until the project’s completion in 2025. I’noli currently serves as the executive pastor and youth pastor of Carpenter’s Shop International Church in northeastern North Carolina.