Six Nations artist gets surprise request to recreate father’s pottery for new Obama Presidential Center

The act of multidisciplinary Kahnyen'kehàka ( mohawk haircut) creative person santee dakota ian smith is currently on display at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, after a surprise request came in to recreate her father’s art for the new centre. 

Smith, from Six Nations of the Grand River, is a dancer, choreographer, lifelong potter and the former chancellor of McMaster University. 

One of her creations is currently sitting on a bookshelf in the Obama Presidential Center’s full-scale Oval Office replica, exactly where an original clay vase crafted by her father Steve Smith sat during Barack Obama’s presidency. 

The piece had been on display in the White House during Obama’s presidential tenure but nobody in the family was aware Steve's work had been there at all until Smith received the invitation to recreate it.

“I was a little bit, 'what's going on here? Who are these people and is this a scam?' And I thought it was too intricate and too detailed to be a scam.”

It wasn’t. During the Obama presidency, several items including Steve’s piece, were borrowed from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian to use in decorating the White House. The item was returned to the Smithsonian following Obama’s second term as the 44th President of the U.S.

Tasked with recreating President Barack Obama’s office, the Obama Foundation contacted Smith to produce the replica. 

The centre opened on June 18. Last week, Smith and her daughter, a fourth-generation family artist, travelled to Chicago for a pre-opening event and saw the exhibit in person.

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“It’s made from Indigenous hands, earth, clay from the region,” said Smith about the vase. €œThe reason why we have continued to do pottery is because it has that earth, land-based connection and also it's a storytelling tool. 

“A lot of the designs are encoded with Indigenous knowledge… mostly about connection to natural nature and natural pathways, but politically, historically, the foundation of the United States really referenced a lot of inspiration coming from the [Haudenosaunee Confederacy] and the way that we had developed our true democracy.”

According to Smith, her father handthrew the vase on a wheel in the 1970s with design slips (dedicated paints for clay) from that time. To recreate it, she looked at family practices and clay and slip recipes dating back to her childhood. 

Smith was first introduced to the art form as a child at her parents’ pottery studio.

“My grandmother revived the lost art of pottery in Six Nations in the 1960s,” Smith said. €œShe was researching shards, going to museums, experimenting with colours and trying to recreate some of the vessels that you would see in museums that were from our community and from our ancestors. 

“Once we start using pots and pans and functional wear, people stop making pottery because it's a hard, durational process. And it became lost. People stopped doing it. And so, as a practice, she revived it and started teaching people. She taught my father and my mother and they made a business out of it.”

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Rather than spinning on a wheel like her father, who now lives in long-term care, Smith built several versions of the vase in hopes one would be fit for the exhibition. 

The work was done at Smith’s Talking Earth studio on Six Nations, as well as at the McMaster University Faculty of Humanities’ art studio. Smith said she used some of her father’s old tools in the process, as well as the faculties’ kilns.  

Once complete, the replica was sent to the Obama Center in December 2025. 

When Smith and her daughter travelled to the centre last week for the pre-opening, they had a surprise visit from Michelle and Barack Obama.  

“The announcement came on and they came out and everybody started clapping and screaming and rushing to the stage,” Smith said. €œMichelle Obama spoke first and then Barack Obama, mostly about the importance and the significance of the site itself being in South Chicago and access to museums and spaces that they never had growing up.” 

Located on the South Side of Chicago, the Obama Presidential Center is a 19-acre campus that includes a public library, basketball court, garden and museum. Earlier this year, the former president said the centre was where "hope" would be "getting a permanent home." 

"This is not a monument to the past; it is a living destination for people who refuse to accept the status quo," he said in a media release.

Reporter/editor

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