Pokto Cinto (Serpent Twin)

In 2019 Santiago X (or X) was commissioned by the Chicago Public Art Group and The American Indian Center of Chicago to pay homage to the original inhabitants of Illinois. X is an Indigenous futurist artist and a citizen of the Coushatta of Louisiana and CHarmoru from the island of Guam. Pokto Cinto is the Koasati (language of the Coushatta) translation of Serpent Twin. The effigy mound is made in collaboration with various artisans and community members such as Nilay Mistry (landscape artist) and honors the ancestral practice of mound building by using soil from various tribal lands. Located in Schiller Woods, Pokto Cinto marks the Des Plaines River on one end of Irving Park road and is bookended by a forthcoming Coiled Serpent mound in Horner Park.

Pokto Cinto and Coiled Serpent Mound are the two ends of the forthcoming Northwest Portage Walking Museum which aims to show the connection between Indigenous cultures in Chicago and the land which surrounds it.

Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.

Sources:

“Pokto Cinto (Serpent Twin),” Studiox.
“Our Story,” Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana.
“Our Language,” Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana.
Darcel Rockett, “A Serpent and mounds: Artist Santiago X connects us to Illinois’ indigenous past,” Chicago Tribune.
Evelyn Moren, “Honoring Indigenous Heritage in Chicago,” National Park Service.