Reclaiming Home

SELF, FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND GLOBALITY IN SEMINOLE DIASPORA ART

Ola Wlusek

“As part of an ongoing strategy for survival, the work of indigenous artists needs to be understood through the clarifying lens of sovereignty and self-determination, not just in terms of assimilation, colonization, and identity politics.…Today, sovereignty is taking shape in visual thought as indigenous artists negotiate cultural space.”

1

—Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora Nation/Turtle Clan)

The idea for this exhibition began with a trip to Estero, Florida, in 2018 to visit the home and studio of artist Jessica Osceola. Born and raised in a traditional Seminole village among extended family members, today Osceola lives on her ancestral land with her partner and two children. What came to light during the visit was Osceola’s enthusiasm for making her work visible to a nonNative audience, affirming her presence on a wider scale beyond her Seminole community. Osceola’s art embodies a deeply rooted connection to the land and to her immediate family background as well—where firsthand knowledge of sewing techniques and patchwork designs, among other skills, is cultivated and shared. This

ancestral knowledge system is an ongoing expression and an extension of Osceola as an artist, mother, grower, and teacher; her work is embedded in traditional Seminole culture and aesthetics as well as, simultaneously, the contemporary world.

Along with the strength of family bonds, self-determination is at the core of the art presented in Reclaiming Home: Contemporary Seminole Art, with works by twelve Native American artists containing narratives and teachings shaped by Seminole artistic methodologies and resistance to colonialism. The history of the US government’s forced resettlement of thousands of Seminole and Maskókî men, women, and children from their homeland to Oklahoma—a result of the early nineteenth-century Indian Removal Act and later the twentieth-century Indian Relocation Act—is revisited in this exhibition, which celebrates the defiance and interconnectedness of the diasporic Seminole community. Time is collapsed as visual motifs, Seminole symbology, and traditional objects reappear from the past to be made new again—a

Tony Tiger (Sac and Fox/Seminole/Muscogee [Creek], born 1964), Community. Arbor: Safe to Speak Mvskoke, 2020, see page 32

reminder of the cyclicity of social history and the endurance of Seminole cultural legacy. Merging their traditional knowledge of working in fabric, clay, beading, and wood, these Seminole, Miccosukee, Muscogee (Creek), and mixed-heritage artists employ varied media— from photography, painting, and sculpture, to digital, video, and installation—to articulate their diverse experiences of ancestral and diasporic Seminole communities, as well as to share their unique perspectives on social, political, environmental, and health issues across aural and visual landscapes. The exhibition illuminates ongoing struggles for Indigenous cultural and political autonomy while demonstrating the power, perseverance, and subversive spirit of the Native peoples of Florida. Their art redefines the historical and present-day connections to Native communities in an area once known as Indian Territory, now the state of Oklahoma, and beyond.

Hybrid like Me

Professor Jean Fisher defines postcolonial theory as one that “evolved largely by diasporan intellectuals in the wake of the collapse of militant liberation movements, [and] refuses confrontational divisions in favor of discursive practices that speak of pluralized identities, border-crossings, and cultural hybridity. It is nonetheless criticized for privileging cultural and textual analysis over social, political, and historical realities.”2 Hybridity, a term which emerged in postcolonial theory, commonly referring to the production of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization, can also be troubled. According to anthropologist Cynthia Fowler, one

strategy for self-determination is to engage the postcolonial concept of hybridity, which gained prominence in the 1990s and continues to this day, as evident in the artwork in Reclaiming Home. Fowler refers to several theories for historical and visual applications of hybridity in postcolonial studies and cultural criticism, including Gerald Vizenor’s (Anishinaabe) survivance, “a term that combines strategies of survival and resistance to describe the persistence of American Indian culture in spite of attempts at its extermination.” Fowler argues that Vizenor’s concept of survivance “shares with hybridity the notion that cultural exchange creates new contested territories that provide a space not only of survival, but also of self-determination for oppressed peoples.”3 Hybridity is adopted and reflected in the subject matter, process, and materiality of sculptural work by Jessica Osceola and the photo-collage series by Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie. It is also reflected in both artists’ mixed heritages and hybrid cultures, which inform their work.

Born to a Seminole father and an Irish mother, Jessica Osceola navigates freely between the different aspects of her dual heritage, celebrating the Seminole culture in which she was raised. In her ceramic self-portraits titled Portrait One, Portrait Two, and Portrait Three (2017), Osceola looks directly at the viewer. The artist firmly holds our gaze as her likeness is suspended in the bas-relief clay slabs—monumentalized and stilled. Her hair, gathered loosely in a bun atop her head, is reminiscent of the traditional hairstyle adopted by Seminole women in the early twentieth century. Below her chin stretch horizontal rows of yellow, red, and green—an adornment that harkens back to the

import and popularization of glass beads from Italy and Czechoslovakia through nineteenthcentury trade between Native communities in Florida and Europeans. The artist explains: “Molding clay, sculpting wax, and casting metal have become prominent ingredients in my selfexpression. The other half of the recipe, of course, is a unique hybrid culture from which a contemporary artistic perspective is born.”4 Her self-portraits emerge from a ceramic background split into two distinct glazed sections of contrasting colors—a divide that signifies a complex narrative and is a marker of her dual heritage. Hybridity is also reflected in the artistic process, as the impetus for Osceola’s Portraits in clay began as an exercise in photography. Osceola took selfies in her bathroom mirror and, in doing so, the artist turned the lens onto herself in the privacy of her home, enacting her agency and then granting the viewers access to her likeness on her own terms. This practice stands in contrast with nineteenth and early twentieth-century depictions of Native Americans by white settler pho-

tographers, when studio photography and mass consumption of traded postcards resulted in appropriation and fetishization of Indigenous bodies—with a devastating impact on Native identity. Artist and visual historian Jolene Rickard states that “Photographs made by indigenous makers are the documentation of our sovereignty, both politically and spiritually. Some stick close to the spiritual centers while others break geographic and ideological rank and head West. But the images are all connected, circling in ever-sprawling spirals the terms of our experiences as human beings.”5 In the context of exoticization of Native American peoples through ethnographic photography, Osceola’s self-portraits co-opt the colonial framework of photo production and renew a dialogue about agency and power in the twentieth-first century.

Similarly, artist Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie embraces hybridity: “To think positively about hybridity of race, techniques for survival, hybridity in art, hybridity to create work on and off the reservation, digital, pottery, sound, video, light,

Jessica Osceola (Seminole/Irish, born 1984), Portrait One, Portrait Two, and Portrait Three, 2017, bas-relief ceramics, each panel: 197/8 × 123/8 × 13/16 in. Collection of The John & Mable Ringling Museum, Florida State University, Museum purchase, 2022, 2022.8.1–3. Courtesy of the artist and The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art © Jessica Osceola

Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (Taskigi/Diné [Navajo]/Seminole, born 1954), Portraits Against Amnesia: Dad, 2002, digital platinum Lambda print, 30 × 20 in. Collection of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Museum purchase from the Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, 2003.14.1. Courtesy of the artist and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN. © Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie

conceptual art…the list is endless.”6 While Osceola represents a younger generation of urban Indigenous artists grappling with issues of selfrepresentation, Tsinhnahjinnie employs lensbased and digital media to confront early stereotypical depictions of Native Americans, while celebrating her own Taskigi/Diné (Navajo)/ Seminole ancestry. In her photo-based series titled Portraits Against Amnesia (2002–23), Tsinhnahjinnie turns to digital print technologies to repurpose vintage postcards acquired on eBay. The artist transforms the postcards into luminous sepia collages with depictions of her relatives and members from her community. But unlike the myriad of early portraits of Native Americans

dressed in ceremonial regalia and tribal clothing, the artist focuses on depictions of Native individuals wearing Western fashions. For example, in Portraits Against Amnesia: Dad (2002), Tsinhnahjinnie’s father, the late artist Andrew Tsinajinnie (Diné [Navajo], 1916–2000), is seen wearing military attire surrounded by his own artwork, which is arranged into a commemorative halo collaged around him. In her seminal essay, “When Is a Photograph Worth a Thousand Words?,” Tsinhnahjinnie states: “Native people, photographed dramatically in appropriate savage attire, vanishing before one’s eyes, Native people photographed in suits of assimilation tailored to the correct perspective of a progressive new world. Such schizophrenia lamented the disappearing of the ‘Indian’ and yet celebrated images of ‘Indians’ accepting progress. That which could not be scrubbed with soap and water, dressed properly, beaten, or destined for extinction was and is the persistence of the indigenous soul, the persistence to exist, the strength of endurance to be faithful to Native intelligence, Native religion.”7 Portraits Against Amnesia is a powerful reminder of the intention to control, exploit, and erase Native cultures and individuals. At the same time, the series offers a recontextualized point of view from the artist’s perspective as a steward of this fraught collection of found images.

Tsinhnahjinnie, who works across boundaries of land, time, identity, and technology, also uses humor as a device to explore challenging circumstances in Native realities—the defiant spirit of laughter to deal with a painful history—and to disturb colonial narratives. Portraits Against Amnesia: Hoke-tee (2002) shows a child hovering above the surface of the moon, with an astro-

naut walking away toward the abyss. Tsinhnahjinnie’s sense of humor grants us an alternative version to colonialism: “Man going to the moon trying to claim it, but when he gets there, there is a little aboriginal baby floating around on her little space scooter. So colonismo spaceman picks up his bags and takes off because it is just too much!”8 Perhaps Hoke-tee represents all the under-recognized Native Americans of the space age, such as Mary Golda Ross (Cherokee, 1908–2008), the first known female Native American engineer who made significant contributions to the Gemini program in the 1960s.

Photography is often weaponized by governmental agencies as a supremacist tool to study

and surveil—and in turn disempower, objectify, and hurt—Native American individuals and communities. However, both Osceola and Tsinhnahjinnie explore these lived realities in the context of Indigenous sovereignty, or nationhood. They apply current image-making technologies to reposition and shift power structures, turning the camera’s lens onto themselves and onto their communities, emphasizing their unique perspectives and cultural self-determination.

All My Ancestors Are Here

Centering stories of their Native predecessors’ survival and resistance, the works by artists Tony Tiger, Alyssa Osceola, Noah Billie, and Wilson Bowers contain symbols and narratives that retell and reclaim popular stories of Seminole and Native heroism. In so doing, they further reveal personal aspects of their kinship as well as their ancestors’ significance to their creative and technical processes.

The mixed-media paintings of Sac and Fox/ Seminole/Muscogee (Creek) artist Tony Tiger, such as Mvskoke Boys (2020), and his threedimensional constructions, such as Community Arbor: Safe to Speak Mvskoke (2020), which contains lyrics from a Mvskoke hymn “Mekusape Fullvnna” (Praying People), are composed of images of his Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole family from the early 1900s to 1980s. The works are inspired by their lived experiences in the newly forged Native communities in the United States, as they navigated the modernity of a colonial place. Tiger’s oeuvre is inspired by his family’s resistance to forceful removal and assimilation into a settler society, affirming their

Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (Taskigi/Diné [Navajo]/Seminole, born 1954), Portraits Against Amnesia: Hoke-tee, 2002, digital platinum Lambda print, 30 × 20 in. Collections of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Museum purchase from the Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, 2003.14.9. Courtesy of the artist and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN. © Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie

Tony Tiger (Sac and Fox/Seminole/ Muscogee [Creek], born 1964), Community Arbor: Safe to Speak Mvskoke, 2020, etching, elm branches, ink, serigraph, copper wire, sinew, popular wood base, and family photos, 30 × 24 × 24 in. Private collection. Courtesy of the artist © Tony Tiger

Tony Tiger (Sac and Fox/Seminole/ Muscogee [Creek], born 1964), Beneath the Surface, 2022, etching, ink, serigraph, and acrylic paint on paper, 22 × 30 in. Courtesy of the artist © Tony Tiger

enduring presence in the Seminole diasporic community. As the black and white images of his relatives permeate the vibrant surfaces of his paintings, Tiger fondly recalls a photograph from his youth, now embedded into an abstract piece titled Beneath the Surface (2022): “The young boy is me in 1978, while living on the Standing Rock Reservation at Fort Yates, North Dakota. My father took a pastoral position at the Baptist mission, and although we were Indigenous, we were still outsiders. Our inclusion in the community was due to our athletic ability, such as track, football, and basketball.”9 Cropped and collaged images of Tiger’s Seminole grandmother, his

Seminole and Muscogee (Creek) grandfather, along with his sister, brother, and father, commingle with the work’s patterned background while bridging memories from Florida, Oklahoma, and North Dakota. His work demonstrates his family’s interconnectivity across state lines and their avid participation in and important contributions to the fabric of their Native and non-Native communities—as athletes, teachers, preachers, parents, and elders.

Tiger’s heritage and his connection to the land are firmly grounded in abstract patterns of pulsating Seminole patchwork designs, coalesced with Woodland ribbon appliqués of the repeated

diamond shape, rain motif, and four-directional cross—a symbol of the unity of the four directions in the Medicine Wheel—all of which recur throughout his oeuvre. These geometric motifs, as seen in Time and Place: Egmont Key-Indian Territory-LA-Oklahoma (2019) and Transformation: State of Being (2017), signal the Sac and Fox’s visual symbology and appear in the community on various utilitarian textiles, such as blankets and clothing. Meanwhile the undulating patterns of vivid colors borrowed from nature, including butterflies, represent his personal interest in hunting, fishing, and spending time in Oklahoma’s natural habitats.

Similarly, Seminole artist Alyssa Osceola’s series of painted portraits forms a chronological representation of her matriarchal family tree. Osceola commemorates the lineage of women from her family who fought for liberation and dignity for the Seminole people. Her portrait of the Seminole heroine Polly Parker (d. 1921), mother of the modern Seminole Tribe of Florida, also known by her birth name Emateloye or Madee-lo-hee,10 is based on a mass-produced postcard. In Osceola’s painting, Parker is depicted clenching a bundle of herbs and plants, wearing traditional Seminole dress and beads, eyes sharp and alert, as she walks in the lush forest under the cover of night. Parker is tremendously significant to Seminole survival and resistance, and her recent representation in Osceola’s series serves as a reminder of the sacrifices made by earlier generations. One of many Seminole Tribe members forcibly taken from their homes, Parker was captured by the US Army during the Third Seminole War (1855–58) and imprisoned at Egmont Key near Tampa, Florida, a site of immense importance to the Seminole story, where significant

archaeological discoveries are made to this day that shed light on the brutal treatment and extermination of Florida’s Native communities.11 While awaiting to be transported via the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi River to the Trail of Tears, on a ship along with hundreds of other Seminoles destined for removal toward Arkansas, Parker disembarked the vessel under the pretense of collecting plants for her medicine, successfully evading guards to make her way back to Florida’s Okeechobee region.12 Today, Parker is credited with rebuilding the Seminole presence in Florida and contributing to the survival of Seminoles more broadly. The incredible four-hundred-milelong journey back to her ancestral land is commemorated through this powerful portrait by Osceola, one of Parker’s direct descendants who

Unknown photographer, Aunt Polly Parker, the Oldest Seminole Indian in the State, Florida, ca. 1900–1920, colored photo postcard, 53/8 × 31/2 in. Publisher: The Cochrane Co., Palatka, FL. Collection of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, ATTK Catalog 2003.15.49. Courtesy of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, Big Cypress Indian Reservation, FL

brings her courageous life story into the lexicon of contemporary art.

Other Seminole warriors, historical figures, and elders are depicted in paintings by the late Noah Billie, an army veteran who passed away in 2000. Regarded as one of the most acclaimed and influential Seminole painters in Florida, Billie’s artistic legacy constitutes a significant body of work based on his observations from nature and a committed practice to honoring members from his Seminole community through portraiture and narrative figurative paintings. His figures are suspended in mammatus clouds or emerge from abstracted treed backgrounds, reminiscent of Big

Cypress National Preserve, as seen in Sam Jones Stand (1993) and Seminole Warrior (1993), where the subjects’ formal poses and dominant placement in the compositions bring a sense of dignity and permanence. Untitled (1988), however, is a powerful reflection on Billie’s time spent in the army and offers a glimpse into the artist’s inner psyche. During the Vietnam War (1955–75), more than forty-two thousand Native Americans, including Billie, joined the United States Armed Forces, most of them as volunteers. In this painting, two figures converge in a mountainous landscape as an army-green helicopter hovers above the grassy valley. A soldier wearing a conventional army uniform is seen marching forward while clenching his gun. Above him, a longhaired figure emerges from the clouds, wearing Native dress. Billie was known to have suffered from illnesses related to Agent Orange, a deadly chemical used during the conflict in Vietnam.

Another painting, Osceola Wearing an American Flag (1990), portrays Osceola (1804–1838), the renowned Seminole and mixed-heritage resistance leader of the Second Seminole War (1835–42), wrapped in the US flag—not to be confused with signaling defeat. Rendered in primary colors with bold outlines, the work contains the postwar context of the pop art movement merged with Native iconography. Decorating Osceola with Seminole and US insignia reflects Billie’s own sense of duality of self in relation to his military service, as both a Native person and as an American—two identities carried within one body.

Chief Osceola is also the subject of abstract digital prints tilted Fire Feather or Warrior Within (2020) and Joke-ceola (2020) by Seminole muralist and graffiti artist Wilson Bowers. In these linear works, Osceola is reduced

Noah Billie (Seminole, 1948–2000), Untitled, 1998, acrylic on canvas, 54 × 42 in. Collection of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, ATTK Catalog 2011.11.1. Courtesy of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, Big Cypress Indian Reservation, FL

to flat pools of black, red, and yellow borrowed from the Seminole Tribe’s flag. Osceola was easily recognizable due to the wide circulation of his image during the antebellum era, as settlers engaged in fantasies of images of Native peoples as specimens. Bowers’s and Billie’s depictions of Osceola remove his image from the past and readdress the significance of depicting Seminole heroism as a symbol of Native resistance and strength across generations.

Chief Osceola’s reign came to a tragic end when he was captured and imprisoned at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida. His image became quickly associated with defeat and contributed to the propaganda of the “vanishing Indian” among the non-Native population. As Shari Addonizio writes, Osceola’s death in 1838 “confirmed the belief of white America that the ultimate result of the failure to accept civilization was death, no matter how heroic or romantic. This view provided further justification for removal of the Indians to the frontier of Oklahoma where the Native peoples theoretically would be protected from extermination while they were given another chance to adopt white culture.”13

With his silhouetted Osceola, however, Bowers reclaims the image of the leader in a visual language associated with street art. The artist uses a similar style of reduced outlines and bold colors to portray individuals from his community. Bowers’s interest in the history of the dissemination of imagery of important Seminole figures is replicated in his approach to presenting his work, which claims space in profound ways: some of his outdoor murals or skateboard wall installations, which depict community members or illustrate the Seminole Tribe’s clan creation stories, demand a large footprint, whereas his postcards with digital designs reference

Noah Billie (Seminole, 1948–2000), Osceola Wearing an American Flag, 1990, acrylic on canvas, 361/2 × 301/2 in. Collection of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, ATTK Catalog 1990.1.1. Courtesy of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, Big Cypress Indian Reservation, FL

Wilson Bowers (Seminole, born 1985), Joke-ceola, 2020, digital design. Courtesy of the artist © Wilson Bowers

the mass production and public consumption of Native imagery on a grand scale. Using manufactured utilitarian objects, such as skateboards or spray paint cans, Bowers plays with the boundaries of what constitutes Native art, challenging the authenticity of Native artifacts and what it means to be “Indian” in contemporary North American society. Bowers’s multidisciplinary approach to artmaking also echoes aspects from Native visual and traditional cultures and carries the memory of Native resistance and survival; the artist borrows these aesthetic elements and infuses them into fresh art forms.

Knee-Deep in (Hot) Water

In 2009, the US federal government apologized to the Native peoples, inaugurating an American context for reconciliation. Along with outlining several resolutions, the apology “expresses its regret for the ramifications of former wrongs and its commitment to build on the positive relationships of the past and present to move toward a

brighter future where all the people of this land live reconciled as brothers and sisters, and harmoniously steward and protect this land together.”14 The work of artists Noah Billie, Houston R. Cypress, Pedro Zepeda, and Brian Zepeda illustrates the importance of the natural environment to the survival of Native communities, as well as calls to action for environmental protection and accountability for the land we inhabit.

…what endures… (2021), a film by Reverend Houston R. Cypress, a two-spirit Miccosukee artist and environmental activist, can be considered both a poetic response to the federal government’s proposed resolution and an ode to the Florida Everglades. The film centers on the breathtaking beauty of the artist’s ancestral land, inviting us on a visual journey across the Miccosukee Indian Reservation, Big Cypress National Preserve, Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, and Greater Everglades Ecosystem. Shot over a period of several months at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film evokes spirit, care, joy, and faith—aspects associated with Cypress’s environmental activism—as it presents magnificent vistas of the Everglades, which constitute 1.5 million acres of land and a major source of drinking water for over seven million Floridians.15 As the founder of the Love the Everglades Movement, an organization that champions environmental and cultural preservation, Cypress advocates “for demonstrating, modeling, and enacting the sense of love that we can achieve for our friend, the Everglades.” A paramount sense of interconnectedness drives Cypress to raise awareness about issues that impact the environment today, such as urban development, water pollution, and agricultural industry. The artist

Houston R. Cypress (Miccosukee, born 1980), …what endures… [video still], 2021, digital video with sound, 5:30 minutes. Courtesy of the artist © Houston R. Cypress

reminds us: “Even though we’re the only humans in the space, we can be in community with the lightning bugs, the bats that you can barely hear, the stars that signal their affection for you. We’re not necessarily the culmination of things, but we do have a responsibility, as people, to the Circle of Life.”16 Coming together as a community is at the heart of the movement, and his captivating film invites us to consider what it truly means to steward and protect the Everglades ecosystem as a collective. It also poses a wider question: How can we hold ourselves and each other accountable for protecting the health of our planet?

Our communal responsibility as caretakers and stewards of lands and waterways is also expressed in the three-dimensional work of Pedro Zepeda, a Seminole and Mexican artist. Zepeda considers himself a modern canoe carver who carries out the thousands-year-old Seminole and Southeastern Woodlands tribes’ wood-carving tradition passed down to him from his ancestors and teachers, including his grandmother, uncle, elders, and older brother Brian Zepeda. The intergenerational importance of maintaining this knowledge is a way for him to understand who he is as a Seminole: it allows Zepeda to con-

nect with the past and to honor his ancestors as well as the creator, or “the breath-maker,” as the artist calls him. As Zepeda explains, “Canoe carving, basket making, gathering medicine, and leatherwork are all very directly connected to the environment. How can we fully appreciate the environment if we don’t know how to use it? Simply having a tactical connection to the natural world gives so much understanding and knowledge. Water quality and supply is becoming increasingly important. I think more and more people are realizing that clean water isn’t an infinite resource if not cared for properly.”17

For Zepeda, making traditional dugout canoes and using them in the Everglades maintains a strong connection to the water and reaffirms the vehicle’s importance as a tool for survival. Dugout canoes have always been part of Seminole culture and vital to daily life since time immemorial. The canoes allowed Seminoles to navigate the shallow waterways of the Everglades. Today, rather than using time-consuming traditional methods— burning wood and using shells or other natural scraping tools—Zepeda opts for modern steel tools to carve his canoes. When the Europeans introduced steel, an efficient material that is eas-

Pedro Zepeda (Seminole/Mexican, born 1982), Cypress Canoe, 2022, cypress wood, 198 × 21 × 19 in. Courtesy of the artist © Pedro Zepeda

ier to control, Seminole canoe designs became more intricate and even ornate. Zepeda began learning about wood carving as a teenager under the mentorship of Ingram Billie Jr., an elder who shared with the artist various techniques for identifying trees and their characteristics (e.g., which trees are better for spoons, stickball sticks, or canoes).18 Zepeda admits that his cultural and technical journey was based on trial and error: “My ancestors used the most modern technology hundreds of years ago when they began using steel tools in place of stone and shell. And I use electric and gas-powered tools to carry out some jobs, especially when making canoes. Even though we may not need baskets and canoes for our daily lives at this point in our history, the knowledge and stories they have to teach are still so important.”19

Local fauna and flora are at the forefront of paintings by Seminole artist Noah Billie, whose expansive canvases such as the triptych Everglades Scene with Seminole Camp (1992) and

Grandma at Cook Fire (1994) are layered with depictions of his immediate environment; today, they constitute an important record of daily life in traditional Seminole camps in Southeastern Florida. Hunting in the swamp with long paddles sticking out from beneath wooden dugout canoes, tracking animals in the tall grasses, preparing food in an open kitchen, and congregating around a fire close to a chickee: all of these are painted scenes that Billie sets against fiery sunsets, the lush green interiors of the Everglades, and blue cascading skies filled with bulbous milky clouds. In the context of the long-standing presence of Native American communities, Billie’s paintings reclaim the sublime of his land and his Seminole ancestors, disputing the fraught anecdotes regarding the discovery of Florida perpetuated by white settlers. By filling his landscapes with Native life, Billie’s work disrupts the false narrative of empty land and indicates that his ancestral soil is not for the taking by any operation of imperial power.

A deep connection to nature and appreciation of the vital resources provided by land and water are reflected in the landscape photography of Seminole artist Brian Zepeda, who also works in beadwork, textiles, and wood carving. While his brother Pedro Zepeda treks into the swamp in search of cypresses for his woodwork, Brian Zepeda ventures at sunrise to lessfrequented spots on the Florida shore. Searching for undisturbed areas, including where the sea oats still support the sand dunes, Zepeda sets up his camera equipment under the coastal hammock of sabal palm, gumbo-limbo, and sea grape trees. He is careful not to interfere too much with the natural environment when capturing dawn’s fleeting moments, the crashing waves, or the stillness and tranquility of the freshwater

Noah Billie (Seminole, 1948–2000), Grandma at Cook Fire, 1994, acrylic on canvas, 511/4 × 751/4 in. Collection of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, ATTK Catalog 1994.20.1. Courtesy of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, Big Cypress Indian Reservation, FL

marshes. Many of Florida’s natural habitats and the subjects of his photographs are currently protected areas that contain plants and animals indigenous to the region.

Zepeda’s photographs lack human presence and present the landscape of Barefoot Beach County Preserve and the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, among many special areas, as unspoiled and wild. But unlike the myth of the frontier and Manifest Destiny in the nineteenth century, which purported the inevitability of the disappearance of Native cultures, and where nature was portrayed as virginal within the Western canon of art and literature, and specifically within the landscape painting tradition, Zepeda’s ancestral connection to the area’s swamps, wetlands, and highlands roots his work as meaningful and demystifies these fraught colonial belief systems. As Gerald Vizenor suggests: “the absence of natives was represented by images of traditions, simulations of the other in the past; the presence of natives was tragic, the notions of savagism and the emotive images of a vanishing race.”20 Zepeda’s ancestors resisted giving up their homeland while combating the lingering mythology of the “vanishing race.”

Zepeda’s admiration of nature is also evident

in the bold colors and traditional, curvilinear beadwork that activate the negative space of his eye-catching bandolier bags, such as The Riddler (2016) and Fertility (2003). The bags, popularized by the European militia during the Seminole Wars, were originally used to carry ammunition, but later the shoulder pouches were adopted by

Brian Zepeda (Seminole, born 1971), Naples Sunset, 2021, photograph on aluminum, dimensions. Courtesy of the artist © Brian Zepeda

Brian Zepeda (Seminole, born 1971), Fertility, 2003, wool, felted wool, cotton, canvas, and glass beads, 33 × 16 in. Collection of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, ATTK Catalog 2003.287.1. Courtesy of the artist and the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, Big Cypress Indian Reservation, FL

Native men in Southeast Florida in the 1800s. As Beverly Gordon explains, “After 1841, the sword or bayonet was hung from a belt rather than a bandolier, but the straps were still seen on both the northern and southern army uniforms during the Civil War, especially on the outfits of specialized units such as the Zouaves and marching bands. They remained visible on some military uniforms as late as World War I.”21 Today, bandolier bags are a popular part of Seminole attire, however they are never used to carry or store ammunition. Rather, they strictly hold items associated with personal use, including tobacco and other plants for ceremonies and healing, as well as mobile phones and keys.

According to artist and art critic America Meredith (Cherokee), “The ‘Golden Era’ of Southeastern Woodlands beadwork was the late 18th century until the Removal Era in the 1830s. Alabama, Koasati, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee Creek, Natchez, Seminole, and Yuchi people were forcibly removed from their southeastern homelands to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. Some tribes stayed in the southeast, and today Southeastern Woodlands tribes are headquartered in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. Mississippi Choctaw have beaded baldric sashes continuously to the present. Florida Seminoles beaded bandolier bags until the 1920s.”22 Brian Zepeda’s interest in bandolier bags arose in the late 1990s, when the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum on the Big Cypress Indian Reservation commissioned him to make reproduction items for display. As the artist explains, “No one I knew was making bandolier bags, so I learned how to make them myself… My late uncle taught me to make specs for them, and I found images from other

museums, made a lot of mistakes on the first one, so I took it apart again and again until I figured out how to do it.”23 Most of the eastern tribes— including the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Mohawk—have different versions of the bandolier bag, so Zepeda reached out to fellow artists from different tribes for advice and for comparison.

Bandolier bags are tremendously significant in Native culture and further demonstrate the resilience and innovation of Native peoples. As scholar Beverly Gordon points out: “even though the bandolier bag developed at a time when native culture was severely disrupted and Indians were thought to be ‘disappearing,’ and even though it was made entirely from non-indigenous materials and was worn with non-native or ‘American’ garments, it was nevertheless an expression and affirmation of distinct, deeply rooted Indian values and ideas, and it was quite different in both form and meaning from its counterparts in mainstream (Western) dress.”24 Instead of ornately used porcupine quills, the bags today are made from commercially available cloth, including felt, trimmed with silk ribbon, and decorated with glass seed beads, as illustrated by Zepeda’s meticulously hand-sewn borders running along the rectangular silhouette of his bags. The free-flowing imagery on his bags is also inspired by popular culture, including The Mandalorian (2019) space western television series, which informs the bags’ aesthetic of fluid new forms—an attestation to Native innovation, imagination, and endurance.

Watch Your Tongue

During the 1950s, Seminole communities in Oklahoma experienced the systematic removal of children to boarding schools and assimilationist programs, predicated on the US government’s pretense of education. Artist, writer, and curator Gerald McMaster (Plains Cree) reminds us that, “The intent of the boarding school was to remove children from their families in the hope that it would be easier to eradicate Indian culture from them than from adults.”25 Recent discoveries of mass graves containing the remains of Indigenous children, found on the sites of several residential boarding schools in Canada and the United States, bring to light the dark history of “cultural genocide.”26 Mary Annette Pember (Red Cliff Ojibwe) provides a detailed account of her mother’s “pain of those lessons,” which included “introducing Native children to ‘the habits and arts of civilization’ while encouraging them to abandon their traditional languages, cultures, and practices.”27 Today, artistic Indigenous voices speak out against the systemic colonization and erasure of Native cultures and peoples, as seen in the work by artists in this exhibition, including Corinne Zepeda, Elisa Harkins, and C. Maxx Stevens. Their work is a powerful statement in response to Native language extinction, violence against Indigenous women, and health, bringing awareness to ongoing issues that affect Native communities locally and across borders which have resulted from government policies of assimilation, dispossession of lands, and discriminatory laws and actions.

Seminole and Mexican artist Corinne Zepeda seeks inspiration from her father, Brian Zepeda, whose beading technique is famed for using the smallest possible beads neatly stacked in rows with the aid of thin, custom-made nee-

dles. Even though she is influenced by the delicacy and preciseness of this awe-inspiring technique, her own designs engage with the broader world and respond to issues of systemic injustice. For example, We the People (2020) is a white beaded mask with a red handprint created by Zepeda under the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and amid Black Lives Matter protests for racial justice in response to the prevailing crisis of violence against Indigenous women and girls as well as people of color. The red hand pulses against the luxuriously milky beaded background and corresponds to an image associated with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Trans, and Two-Spirit movement. MMIWG, as it is also known, is “a community-based grassroots movement raising awareness and addressing the lack of response when a Native woman or girl goes missing or is murdered.”28 In 2016, Canada’s National Inquiry into MMIWG brought the issue into the international spotlight and the US Department of Interior Indian Affairs acknowledged that “Native American and Alaska Native communities have struggled with high rates of

Corinne Zepeda (Seminole/Mexican, born 1997), We the People, 2020, seed beads on cotton with elastic, 10 × 51/2 in. Courtesy of the artist © Corinne Zepeda

assault, abduction, and murder of women.”29 The mission of these organizations as truth-seeking bodies grapples with legacies of ongoing violence against Indigenous peoples in settler-colonial states. With this intimate but powerful work, Zepeda brings this urgent issue to the fore within the Seminole community, and now to a wider international audience.

In Cherokee/Muscogee (Creek) artist Elisa Harkins’s video-based work Muscogee (Creek) Hymn (2019), two figures, Harkins and her collaborator Dannie Wesley, appear to be searching for one another in the woods. They cautiously

move along a creek through the treed landscape while tying strips of cotton fabric onto fallen branches, marking the trail. In this work, songs and language from past generations are revived and the connection to the artist’s ancestors is reclaimed through music, which transcends time and memory. The phrase “Espoketis Omes Kerreskos,” which in English translates to “This may be the last time we do not know,” is still sung in Muscogee (Creek) churches today. It is part of a hymn that was an anthem during the infamous Trail of Tears—a series of forced relocations in the early to mid-1800s of Indigenous

Elisa Harkins (Cherokee/Muscogee [Creek], born 1978), Muscogee (Creek) Hymn, 2019, installation and video with sound, dimensions variable, 3:30 minutes. Courtesy of the artist © Elisa Harkins. Photo: Ian Byers-Gamber

peoples from their homelands in the Southeast to territories west of the Mississippi—also referenced by other artists’ work in this exhibition.

As scholar David Warren (Santa Clara Pueblo) explains, “The language movement, however, is important because it is part of this cultural sovereignty issue, this cultural self-determination. The tribes want to maintain that which is critical and important to who they are… it is maintenance and preservation for cultural integrity purposes.”30

Mekusape Fullana (2020), titled after a Seminole and Muscogee (Creek) hymn—which is also a subject of work by Tony Tiger—is the artist’s ongoing song preservation project in which the subjects singing are recorded on video. Members of the First Indian Baptist Church of Brighton on the Seminole Nation reservation gather to sing the hymns, and among them are many elders who know the songs well, though others have passed on. Harkins’s aural and visual work is part of a larger effort to preserve and revitalize the Creek language and songs on the reservation and to pass that knowledge on to future generations, as well as to bring awareness of Christianity’s role among Native peoples, historically and continuously.

By contrast, Seminole/Mvskoke artist C. Maxx Stevens creates “sculptural environments that tell stories about history, the present state, and our hope for the future,” describing herself as “an unspeaking visual storyteller, a practice that was influenced by her father, who often told stories of the history and culture of the Seminole nation.”31 Stevens’s mixed-media installation with sound, titled Last Supper (2011), explores the devastating effects of diabetes on the Native population. This three-dimensional envi-

ronment is composed of a long table holding junk foods that cause major health-related problems in Native communities today, such as various sugary confectionaries and high-caloric products associated with the fast-food industry. Wax casts of doughnuts and cookies, cakes and muffins, hot dogs, hamburgers, and fries shine with sparkles and sand—harmful if ingested—and are spread across a table large enough to seat a party of eight guests comfortably. But there are no chairs; instead, the installation entices us to move around and examine the junk food. Below the table is yet another arrangement of fragmented walking canes and casted feet, a stark reminder of the effects of diabetes. The fragments, along with the title of the work, recall piles of crutches, canes, and braces left behind by pilgrims at basilicas and sanctuaries credited with miraculously curing the sick. In Stevens’s installation, however, the walking devices and limb fragments suggest an outcome of despair; the work is a commentary

Elisa Harkins (Cherokee/Muscogee [Creek], born 1978), Mekusape Fullana [video still], 2021 (detail, page 79)

C. Maxx Stevens (Seminole/Mvscogee, born 1951), Last Supper (detail), 2011, mixed-media installation. Collection of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, IAIA Museum Purchase, 2012, SE-94. Courtesy of the artist and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native

on how diabetes has become an epidemic, with Native communities having some of the highest rates in the United States.32 Stevens reminds us that, “This health issue is important because diabetes has become widespread in the Native nations. More personally, it has been a factor in the health and eventual death of many of my tribal members, my family, and friends. The Seminole Diabetes Clinic predicts that one of every six Native people will develop diabetes… Today, Native people are reeducating themselves and are changing how they eat in order to prevent this disease… Not only do economic conditions within the community make it difficult to make changes in diet, but these changes in eating habits are not second nature to our people.”33

The artwork by artists in Reclaiming Home illustrates the intergenerational connection among the intricate and nuanced subjects of ancestry, identity, and heritage. Their works also make visible the artists’ cultural self-determina-

tion in their traditional homelands and throughout the Seminole diaspora. Seminole and mixed-heritage artists are finding meaningful and brave ways to confront the fraught colonial legacy inflicted upon them, extending their imaginations beyond settler systems of knowledge, representation, and value. Their artworks and daily practices, which offer ways to celebrate Native cultures through a combination of traditional techniques and modern approaches to artmaking, position themselves as ecologies of resistance. While employing concepts of hybridity, memory, humor, and healing as tools of resistance, the artists in this exhibition actualize their Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination in the colonial-settler states of North America and within a global Indigenous context.

n Otes

1. Jolene Rickard, “Sovereignty: A Line in the Sand,” Aperture, Summer 1995, 51.

2. Jean Fisher, “New Contact Zones: A Reflection,” in Vision, Space, Desire: Global Perspectives and Cultural Hybridity (Washington, DC: National Museum of the American Indian, 2006), 43.

3. Cynthia Fowler, “Hybridity as a Strategy for SelfDetermination in Contemporary American Indian Art,” Social Justice 34, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 65.

4. Jessica Osceola, “At War with Herself: Artistic Reflections of Culture and Identity,” in We Will Always Be Here: Native Peoples on Living and Thriving in the South, ed. Denise E. Bates (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2016), 159.

5. Rickard, “Sovereignty,” 54.

6. Veronica Passalacqua, “Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (Diné/ Seminole/Muskogee),” in Path Breakers: The Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, 2003, by Lucy R. Lippard (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 86.

7. Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, “When Is a Photograph Worth a Thousand Words?,” in Photography’s Other Histories, ed. Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 42–44.

Arts, Santa Fe, NM. Photo: Jason S. Ordaz

8. Passalacqua, “Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (Diné/Seminole/ Muskogee),” 96.

9. Tony Tiger, email message to author, February 2, 2022.

10. Emmett H. L. Snellings Jr., “Historical Figures,” in Seminole Views: A Postcard Panorama of America’s Only Unconquered Tribe (Highland City, FL: Rainbow Books, 2008), 32.

11. Bradley Mueller and Alyssa Boge, eds., Egmont Key: A Seminole Story (Clewiston, FL: Seminole Tribe of Florida, 2019, https://www.semtribe.com/stof/docs/default-source/ default-document-library/egmont-key---a-seminole-story. pdf.

12. Alyssa Osceola, studio visit with author, August 20, 2021.

13. Shari Addonizio, “Osceola’s Public Life: Two Images of the Seminole Hero,” in Dimensions of Native America: The Contact Zone, ed. Jehanne Teilhet-Fisk (Tallahassee: Florida State University, 1998), 93.

14. A joint resolution to acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States, S.J.Res.14, 111th Cong. (2009–10), https://www.congress.gov/bill/111thcongress/senate-joint-resolution/14/text.

15. “America’s Everglades—The Largest Subtropical Wilderness in the United States,” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/ever/index.htm.

16. Monica Uszerowicz, “What We Stand On: Reverend Houston Cypress Interviewed by Monica Uszerowicz,” Bomb Magazine, August 20, 2021, https://bombmagazine.org/ articles/reverend-houston-cypress-interviewed/.

17. Uszerowicz, “What We Stand On.”

18. Pedro Zepeda, conversation with author, November 29, 2021.

19. Interview with Pedro Zepeda, HistoryMiami Museum, 2019, https://historymiami.org/home/south-florida-folklifecenter/artist-in-residence-programs/pedro-zepeda/.

20. Gerald Vizenor, “Edward Curtis: Pictorialist and Ethnographic Adventurist,” in True West: Authenticity and the American West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007).

21. Beverly Gordon, “The Great Lakes Indian Bandolier Bag: Cultural Persistence and Elaboration,” Dress: The Journal of the Costume Society of America 19, no. 1 (1992): 71.

22. America Meredith, “Stitches in Time: The Rebirth of Southeastern Woodlands Beadwork,” First American Art Magazine, March 27, 2015, https://firstamericanartmagazine. com/southeast-beadwork/.

23. Beverly Birney, “Collier County Museum Shows Zepeda Brothers’ Art,” Seminole Tribune, February 25, 2014, https:// seminoletribune.org/ collier-county-museum-shows-zepeda-brothers-art/.

24. Gordon, “Great Lakes Indian Bandolier Bag,” 69.

25. Gerald McMaster, “C. Maxx Stevens: If These Walls Could Talk, Environments That Tell Stories,” in Reservation X: The Power of Place in Aboriginal Contemporary Art, ed. McMaster Gerald (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998), 149.

26. Anderson Cooper, “Canada’s Unmarked Graves: How Residential Schools Carried Out ‘cultural genocide’ against Indigenous Children,” 60 Minutes, CBS News, February 6, 2022, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ canada-residential-schools-unmarked-graves-indigenouschildren-60-minutes-2022-02-06/.

27. Mary Annette Pember, “Death by Civilization,” The Atlantic, March 8, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/ archive/2019/03/ traumatic-legacy-indian-boarding-schools/584293/.

28. PAGE - People Advocating for Greendale Equity, “Tuesday Equity Education, March 15, 2022,” Facebook, March 15, 2022, https://ms-my.facebook.com/PAGE.Greendale/ photos/1650339781989651/.

29. “Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Crisis,” U.S. Department of the Interior, https://www.bia.gov/service/ mmu/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-people-crisis.

30. Nancy Marie Mithlo and David Warren, “Cultural SelfDetermination: A Conversation with David Warren,” in Making History: IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020), 156.

31. McMaster, “C. Maxx Stevens,” 151.

32. C. Maxx Stevens, conversation with author, January 26, 2022.

33. C. Maxx Stevens, “Seeing One’s Creative Process,” Expedition Magazine 55, no. 3 (2013): 32–33.