KC Parade of Hearts Installation

The story of my heart, Confluence, is the true story of , well, my heart. My grandmother Angie and her Native ancestry in the migration and assimilation of her grandparents, of the Eastern Cherokee, Osage and Anishinabe loved the land and the water growing up in Hattie, MO, a town they created in the Missouri Ozarks. Her mother had been taught by her grandmother to assimilate and never share their Native heritage after she was shot in the eye for being an Indian. Migrating from North Carolina and Kentucky they moved into “Indian Territory” with the Osage and Sac and Fox in Kansas where they lived as farmers before her mother, whose family was heavily Quaker, sent her to Missouri to live with a family friend, who would become her husband.



He was of Grand River Band Ottawa and Chippewa lineage and had, in my opinion, found the ultimate solution to the then land grabs, as a mixed Native person. He and his father, claimed homestead land in Missouri. The irony, it was a shoot Indian on sight state at the time. Hattie would become the home my grandmother lived and grew up in, farming, fishing and navigating floods of the Jack’s Fork River. Her father was the postmaster and after he died unexpectedly, her mother became postmistress, all from their little bedroom in the house they built. Grandma Angie came to the city, Kansas City, for a better life and jobs, and here she met her husband, my grandfather, Henry Zahn. Henry, Heintz, had a different origin story. He came to Kansas City via Ellis Island when they immigrated from Germany in 1923 after the Beer Hall Putsch where Hilter really began to become a dangerous force attempting to throw a coupe on the then German military heads. Henry, became a fine arts illustrator after first learning English and engaging in his lineage of art making, draftsmen and architects back in Germany. He attended the KC Art Institute’s Continuing Education classes to learn figure drawing and was the winner of numerous KC Star movie poster contests that allowed him to have his illustrated posters hung in movie theaters in KC. For 40 years, Grandpa Zahn was THE fine arts illustrator at Vile Goller with Matthew Monks as art director. He created the UCLA Bruin, the first Chiefs promotional items, tons of liquor labels and ads for companies around the country, logos, designs and was an original “commercial artist” in the advertising world before the age of graphic design. My mom followed his footsteps. I chose to be an art teacher, then use art to help folks as an addiction counselor, and finally embraced that I too, am an artist, showing my work around North America. In the process, I create musical compositions and spoken word or expressive poetry that go with my pieces. I’m working on installations and motion graphic media.

Confluence is about coming together from all different places of origin. Even multigenerational families from KC came from somewhere to get here; to build this place called home. Rivers converge here. Paths and trals converge here. Ethnicities, colors, cultures converge here. It is the land and the water that sustains us. We must remember all these things as we walk in this world and go through meeting each other and as Maurcel Proust says, “see through different eyes” . We are ALL part of the web that unites us and what we do to each other, we do to the all of us.

My most impactful moments in KC have not always been good memories. But the ones I hold on to are being a kid visiting Kaleidescope and the magic of wonder and art supplies. Going out on our small family farm in the Northland of KC and sitting… listening to the wind and the leaves, connecting. I learned that from my dad, my mom and my grandma.

We teach each other. What are you teaching future KC? Discover your origin story through the library’s geneology services, Ancestry.com and the Family Search Center. Listen to your elders stories too.