-What does America mean to you, how do you tell its story, and what do the next 250 years look like through your eyes?

Those are the questions the Clark County Public Arts Office asked local artists, and their responses are on display now at the Clark County Government Center.

-You know, I hope someone comes here and sees something they didn't expect.

-UNLV Associate Professor of History A.B.

Wilkinson juried Expressions of Clark County: America's 250th Anniversary Showcase.

That means he reviewed the submissions and selected which to exhibit.

(A.B.

Wilkinson) There were a number of pieces where I really did take some time to think about, wow, what is this piece saying?

How might people interpret this piece?

You know, would it ruffle any feathers?

There are some really fun pieces, too.

I like the Uncle Sam hat mirror.

-Titled Sam's Vanity, you can imagine yourself as Uncle Sam.

I want you to visit the Clark County Government Center.

Clark County says the installation's goal is to invite the public to reflect on the nation's complex historical past and create discourse in the present as we imagine a more perfect Union in the future.

Wilkinson says some of the submissions that helped him accomplish that came from immigrants.

-That see themselves as American and then really talk about what the founders saw for America.

And so it's very interesting to me that immigrants in some ways encapsulate what it means to be a citizen of the United States in some ways even better than some of us who have been here many generations.

-And when the County first approached Wilkinson for this project, he says he felt conflicted, not about evaluating other people's work, but about how to represent his own relationship with America.

-As a person of African-American ancestry, Native American ancestry, and European ancestry, I, personally, within just my own family's history have different people coming from different regions of the world and contributed to the United States in different ways.

Wilkinson is actually a slave name.

So when my students say Dr.

Wilkinson, it's a title of honor, being a doctor, but it's also a reminder that my people were enslaved.

And so for me curating a little bit of art myself became a way for me to kind of work through some of those feelings around America 250.

And then last, my partner, also who has some pieces here displayed, she's of Southern Paiute ancestry, Nuwu.

And so even for her to approach America 250 means something different to her as well.

-Wilkinson's partner is Fawn Douglas, an artist, activist, and enrolled member of the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe.

(Fawn Doublas) When it comes to celebrating here in Clark County, America 250, of course they have to know about Southern Paiute history.

And we're able to present that with some of the basket work, some of my artworks, and some other things that really draw towards our language retention and who we are in the contemporary.

And it's so subtle but so beautiful.

-And in the contemporary, Douglas says she's working to reclaim her culture.

-This right here is a reclamation of language.

I've created a language flash card deck.

It's Nuwu Umbuhgah, learning how to speak Southern Paiute.

-This part of the exhibition pairs Douglas's language flash cards with the designs found in these Southern Paiute baskets from the Clark County Museum.

Some of them date back to the 1890s.

-Literally, this is my people's DNA, because when they're making baskets, it's not just like putting some water and making the things go.

You're using your teeth.

Sometimes you're cutting yourself with an awl or whatever.

So there's literally blood, saliva.

There's parts of my ancestors' DNA that is woven into each of these baskets.

So to be next to it is like to visit a relative.

-For Douglas, reclamation also includes owning some of the land the Southern Paiute people once inhabited.

She and Wilkinson co-founded Nuwu Art on Maryland Parkway in the historic Huntridge neighborhood.

They're also expanding into downtown Las Vegas.

-The Nuwu Art Gallery + Community Center is land back.

It's us purchasing back Southern Paiute land and really doing what we want to with it.

-And it's that kind of progress that Wilkinson says this flag represents.

-When Barack Obama was elected as President, I was actually waving that flag in the street.

-The flag is one of several pieces he curated for his own contribution to the exhibition.

-This is a pocket Constitution that I use in class while teaching at UNLV.

Railroad spikes that are pulled from very close to the Moapa Paiute reservation.

They represent manifest destiny, kind of the growth of technology to the West, but also land dispossession of Native American and Indigenous peoples.

And then, of course, the shackles.

I do believe that they may have been from a plantation in the South or they were used with convict labor after the Civil War.

-Wilkinson says deciding how to represent the United States' complicated history was difficult but considers the process worthwhile if his exploration of America at 250 or those of the other artists presented here leads to learning and the pursuit of improvement.

Expressions of Clark County: America's 250th Anniversary Showcase concludes on Thursday, July 16, with a reception that's open to the public.