Mel Chin’s “Signal” is a permanent installation that was commissioned by MTA Art & Design as part of the Broadway-Lafayette St. station rehabilitation. [This station is a 10 minute walk north of The Drawing Center.] For this project, Chin’s concept was to insert Native People’s presence, as a living culture, onto the Dutch-derived tile infrastructure found in MTA stations. Broadway follows the Wickquasgeck Trail of the Native Americans that was stopped by the Dutch colonists’ fort wall (Wall Street). For the installation Chin designed light “signals” patterned after "Council Fire" badges, masonic symbols reimagined by 18th Century Iroquois silversmiths. Stainless steel cones at the bases of structural columns burn, or light up, when trains approach. A key element was an authorized contemporary message from the First Nations that needed to come from the Haudenosaunee, or the Six Nations of the Iroquois. Chin appealed to G. Peter Jemison (Heron Clan-Seneca) to work with the Six Nations a...