Lewis & Clark Kaw Point Mural Project

Trail Teens Bring Parakeets Back to the Missiouri River

Green and yellow parakeets will soon fly from the Missouri River bottoms. Exotic visitors? No, the Carolina Parakeet was once native to the Missouri River valley. A large flock surprised the members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition when they camped at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers in 1804.

Teenagers from the Kansas State School for the Blind, who traveled the Lewis and Clark Trail last summer, will bring the birds back with a public-participation mural for visitors to the Lewis and Clark Expedition commemoration at Kaw Point Bicentennial Park, Saturday and Sunday, June 25th and 26th.

The teens, together with Trail friends from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, will prepare more than 200 feet of concrete floodwall with primer and outlines of the birds against a background of blue. On the weekend, the teens will distribute paints and oversee the public in painting the parakeets’ portraits. Brochures prepared by the U.S. National Fish and Wildlife Service will give details and pictures of the parakeets, which were hunted to extinction in the early 1900s to provide plumage for ladies’ hats. Some templates on the mural depict the hats.

The Kansas State School for the Blind teens will contribute to two other activities during the commemoration at Kaw Point, June 25th-27th. In the Tent of Many Voices, sponsored by the National Park Service, the teens will present a video documentary of their Lewis and Clark travels. And in a wooded area of the park, the teens will join Indian youth from North Dakota, Missouri and Kansas in a drumming, singing, dancing circle led by Choctaw singer Jay Mule.

The general public, especially families with school age children, will find much to inspire and entertain at Kaw Point Bicentennial Park June 25th-27th.

For further information, go on-line at www.lewisandclarkwyco.org and www.journey4th.org.

To volunteer for this project, contact Eleanor Craig: ecraig@accessiblearts.org or 913/281-1133