Here are some resources to learn more about Norman Akers and his work:

There is some good information in the label, to at least discuss the elk’s presence:
Interference and a Tiny Spot of Hope is a presentation of the past, present, and future. Akers combines flat imagery with illusionistic space to provide an immersive and yet open-ended experience into personal, historical, and cultural issues, such as identity, disruption, dislocation, and belonging. In his paintings, Akers uses Osage stories as metaphors over illustrations, and complexity over a singular, fixed interpretation. The most prominent figure in the painting, the suspended or falling elk, is an important figure in Osage cosmology and becomes a symbol to represent ideas of being between two worlds (Osage and non-Osage), and the precarious place of being between the earth and sky, a fundamental Osage principle of balance in the world. Wind turbines found within the painting and within Osage homelands disrupt the spatial order and space between the earth and sky, and according to Akers, “obscure[d] the horizon….and the blades cut into the earth”. Other features within the painting, including tree stumps and skeletal remains along the riverbed, reference the environmental and cultural disruptions within Osage landscapes.

And here is an article about the artist:
https://www.kansan.com/arts_and_culture/theme-of-lost-identities-within-boundaries-ingrained-in-art-professor-norman-akerss-exhibit-contested-territories/article_93fade32-5e4d-11e5-864f-fb3c6c82acc4.html

And there is this video, and a painting that seems to have some similar themes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MCaPpLxTCI