Húŋkpapȟa Lakȟóta painter Danielle SeeWalker has settled a civil rights lawsuit with the town of Vail, Colorado, more than a year after the municipality cancelled her artist residency over a pro-Palestine artwork. Brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado, the suit claimed that the town had violated the artist’s constitutional right to free speech.
In last week’s settlement, Vail agreed to several concessions, including funding an art program “for underrepresented and economically disadvantaged people” and hosting a powwow led by SeeWalker every year for the next five years.
“The intention is to allow other underrepresented artists, including Native American people, to have the opportunity of creating art in the town of Vail in place of my own missed opportunity,” SeeWalker said in a statement.
The settlement also included Vail’s commitment to sponsor a “community forum” on Israel and Palestine that would include interfaith leaders and host an annual Indigenous-led cultural sensitivity training for employees of the municipality’s Arts and Public Places Department.
A spokesperson for the town of Vail did not respond to Hyperallergic‘s inquiries about when or how it would implement the terms of the settlement. The ACLU of Colorado has not yet responded to Hyperallergic‘s inquiries.
In 2024, SeeWalker was awarded Vail’s Art in Public Places (AIPP) artist residency, which had only been held once before, to create a public mural during the following summer. Months later, however, the town of Vail rescinded the opportunity after she posted an image of a pro-Palestine artwork on her Instagram that she said was unrelated to her public commission. In a public statement, the town said it removed SeeWalker from the project because it would “not use public funds to support any position on a polarizing geopolitical issue.”
The painting “G for Genocide,” however, was created on SeeWalker’s own time and had not been submitted as her design for the public mural. She told Hyperallergic in an earlier interview that she created the work after observing common threads between Israel’s assault on Gaza and the history of Native Americans in the United States. The artwork was included in a December 2024 collaboration between Hyperallergic and Jewish Currents that highlighted artists who had been silenced or censored over their support of Palestine.
SeeWalker told Hyperallergic that settling with Vail was advantageous in that it allowed her to secure programming that other artists can benefit from, whereas a trial might only have yielded a financial result, if any. She said the settlement could have included additional terms she bargained for, but she intended to maximize community benefit over her own grievances.
“Even if one other person is impacted in a good way, that is enough for me,” SeeWalker said. “My dad once told me, ‘Danielle, if you don’t speak up, no one will do it for you.’ I carry that with me everywhere I go.”
