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NAVIGATING NARRATIVES

This logo consists of three elements. The background is an excerpt from a map that William Clark drew in 1804 and depicts the stretch of the Missouri River that the Corps of Discovery navigated the eight days it was in Titonwan territory that year. The map appears on a field of yellow, a color with two significant references in Lakotan cosmology. One is that it is associated with Inyan, the oldest entity that existed in the Lakotan universe, the entity that power and animating energy to create the earth and the sky. The second reference of the color yellow is that it is associated with the west direction.

Another element of the logo design is the letter N. It is in Monotype Corsiva font which, according to a Microsoft webpage, "is best used to add sparkle to invitations, greetings cards and menus, and to give a sense of occasion to certificates and awards." Its color is blue, which is associated with Skan, the most powereful of the Lakotan entities. Blue is also associated with the east direction.

A third element of the design is the red lettering which is a modified letter N that is the same size and font as the blue N. Its left leg has been represented as a lower case letter i. The rest of the original letter N is thereby split into a swosh at the lower left, and a capital letter V. The "iV" is a Roman numeral reference to the four narrators ⎯ William Clark, Patrick Gass, John Ordway and Joseph Whitehouse ⎯ whose 1804 journal entries are the only published narratives of what happened during the eight days in September 1804 when the Corps of Discovery interacted with Lakotans in Titonwan territory.  

The two Ns are intertwined to illustrate that the narratives are closely related yet distinct; each foregrounds specific information at different times and places.

And the lower case i is a reminder that each visitor to the exhbiition has the opportunity to create her or his own narrative of what happened those eight days in September 1804.

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