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Polishing the Chain: The Art of Dennis Bowen

On view now until November 23, 2025

In the autumn of 2024, Dennis Bowen spent a week as Artist-in-Residence at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute. With funding support from the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, RTPI has expanded its Artist-in-Residence program to include indigenous artists. In partnership with the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum, Denis Bowen was selected to spend a week at RTPI, where he studied Roger Tory Peterson’s personal library collection, as well as many of his watercolor and gouache works of birds. For his exhibition, Bowen chose to focus on the Haudenosaunee family clan system as well as Haudenosaunee cultural, seasonal, and sustaining relationships with birds.

The Clan System of the Haudenosaunee, which translates as “People of the long house,” dates back to the 1000 – 1200s and is based on maternal descent—established by birth to the mother’s side. The Indigenous clan system organizes and maintains positive cultural relationships and social structures. Marriage, inheritance, and kinship are shared community and cultural responsibilities. Kinship in Haudenosaunee thought and teachings is the essential base for all of the clans. Each clan has a Clan Mother, who provides daily clan leadership and decision-making. Clan Mothers teach, raise, and select male Chiefs. Marriage within clans is forbidden, providing unifying alliances and spiritual and cultural connections between the other clans. Dennis Bowen’s clan is the Bear Clan, and his paternal/father’s clan is the Snipe Clan. The Haudenosaunee clans are Deer, Hawk, Heron, Snipe, Turtle, Beaver, Wolf, and Bear.

The exhibition title, “Polishing the Chain”, metaphorically borrows the visual image of Dutch iron boat anchor chains. This diplomatically parallels the Indigenous Haudenosaunee Nations linking arms in unity with the Dutch in 1613 in an international agreement of friendship. The linking of arms or holding hands is a unity symbol depicted on the Two Row Wampum Belt.
The Haudenosaunee created a belt made of white and purple wampum shells, with two purple rows running alongside each other, representing two boats. One boat represents the Haudenosaunee way of life, laws, and people, with the other representing a Dutch ship with their laws, religion, and people: “Together we will travel in Friendship and in Peace Forever; as long as the grass is green, as long as the water runs downhill, as long as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, and as long as our Mother Earth will last.”
Today, Seneca Art links and polishes the relationship with the legacy of Roger Tory Peterson.
Further reading:

The Peterson Preserve and our museum are located within the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee.

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Dennis Bowen is a Haudenosaunee artist with a background in human services, counseling, elementary education, and commercial illustration. He previously served as President of the Seneca Nation, during which time he testified to the Climate Committee of the United Nations about water protection and safety on behalf of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Bowen also served on the board of directors for the SEVA Foundation, a global nonprofit eye care organization developing self-sustaining programs that preserve and restore sight. SEVA provides critical eye-care services to underserved communities— especially women, children, and Indigenous peoples. Dennis served on the SEVA Board from 2000 to 2006.

Polishing the Chain is proudly sponsored by The Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo.