Bronze women keep watch over this corner — Agua Caliente Women, by the American artist Doug Hyde, installed in Palm Springs. The city commissioned it in 1994 through its Art in Public Places programme at a cost of $141,000. Hyde is of Nez Perce, Assiniboine and Chippewa descent, so the commission placed a Native artist's work on a downtown corner in a town whose downtown sits on Cahuilla land.
The figures are women, and that is the detail worth pausing on: the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians has been led by women through much of its modern history, including the tribal council that fought the federal government over how Section 14 was managed. That fight ran through the 1950s and 1960s and ended in allotment, which gave individual tribal members title to parcels held until then in trust and, eventually, the ability to lease them. The bronze in front of you is a civic commission, but what it marks is a far older claim.
Their gaze runs out to the street, and their claim is far older than the city.