Julie Buffalohead

All Are Welcome

Conceived shortly after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police in 2020, All Are Welcome features characters from Indigenous folklore. Buffalohead is referencing the Ponca tradition of oral storytelling, which features animal characters interacting with one another. The work’s title references yard signs that Ponca artist Julie Buffalohead saw cropping up across her neighborhood in St. Paul. She felt that their message, "all are welcome,” contradicted her experience in the community. Buffalohead has explained that the fox, who has cut off his own tail and offers it to the ermines that exclude him, represents the sacrifices she made to fit in as a child.