First American Art Magazine No. 2, Spring 2014

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

Art of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas

Spring 2014

Da-ka-xeen Mehner Allan Houser Remembered Carla Hemlock Native Artists in China Radmilla Cody Cuzco School Painting in Peru Ben Aleck Art Therapy in Indian Country

65 Roses

by Benjamin Harjo, Jr. Commissioned by Dick and Jeannette Sias

Inspired by the story of young children, who, not able to clearly pronounce “cystic fibrosis,” renamed their disease “sixty-five roses,” artist and philanthropists collaborated to create an opportunity to share in the quest for a cure for this fatal disease.

Purchase yours today!

65 Roses

All proceeds (100%) from the sale of any

item will benefit the

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Sooner OKC Chapter Beautifully framed original: $20,000 Signed/numbered limited edition giclée 20” x 20” prints: 65 available at $650 each Note cards: $20 per package of 5 cards To purchase:

call (405) 787-0056 or email Oklahomacity@cff.org Allow 4–6 weeks for shipping. Shipping charges apply.

For federal income tax purposes, the deductible amount is limited to the excess of contribution over the values of goods received.

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Arctic and Indian arts for the 21 century st

26 Maine Street Kennebunkport, Maine 207 967-2122

First American Art Magazine, LLC Issue No. 2, Spring 2014

Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Copy Editor: Meghan Cunningham Proofreaders: Samonia Byford (Cherokee Nation), Mary Ellen Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Stephen MacMurray, Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa) Layout and Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa) Advertising Representatives: Nancy Fields (Lumbee), Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent) Social Media: Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation), Staci Golar (Cornish-Welsh-American), America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa)

Hogan Teapot with Sheep Amelia Joe-Chandler

2013 Santa Fe Indian Market Award Sculpture | Prints | Jewelry |Beadwork |Baskets shop online: www.homeandawaygallery.com

Contributing Writers: Jeanine Belgodère (French), Gloria Bell (Métis), Kelly Church (Odawa-Ojibwe), RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo), Suzanne Newman Fricke (Ashkenazi-American), Staci Golar (CornishWelsh-American), Reid Gómez (Navajo Nation), Teri Greeves (KiowaComanche), Emily A. Haozous (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache), Anna Hoover (Unangan), Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi (Alutiiq), Melissa Melero (Fallon Paiute-Modoc), Arvo Mikkanen (Kiowa-Comanche), David Winfield Norman (American-Norwegian), dg nanouk okpik (IñupiaqInuk), Stephanie Pratt (Eastern Dakota), Jessie Ryker-Crawford (White Earth Chippewa), Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa), and Matthew Ryan Smith (Canadian) Editorial Advisory Board: Emily A. Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Maggie Ohnesorgen (Mestiza) Paula Rivera (Taos Pueblo) Ken Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho-Seneca) Thanks to: Jacquie Archambeau (Cherokee Nation), Leatrice A. Armstrong, Annick Benavides (Peruvian), Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation), Carleen Burger (Cherokee Nation), Callie Chunestudy (Cherokee Nation), Jill Dupont, Joseph Erb (Cherokee Nation), Lara Evans (Cherokee Nation), Tom Farris (Otoe-Missouria-Cherokee), James Fendenheim (Tohono O’odham), Jennifer Foerster (Muscogee Creek), John Hagen (Aleut-Iñupiaq), Renate Hugel, Linda Eben Jones (Northern PaiuteModoc), Peter B. Jones (Onondaga), Elizabeth Kirrane, Tim Landes, Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi-Choctaw), Iris McLister, Sheridan MacKnight (White Earth Ojibwe-Hunkpapa Lakota), Carl Milam (Cherokee Nation), Nancy Marie Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache), Peyton Wright Gallery, Henriette Pleiger, David Rettig, John Running, Heather Shannon, Deborah Schroder, Gabriel Lopez Shaw (Pyramid Lake Paiute), Janet Lamon Smith (Cherokee Nation), Rick Stivers, Marcia Swain, Ellen Taubman, Magdalena Velasco (Yaqui-Kickapoo), Mary Jo Watson (Seminole Nation of Oklahoma) Subscription services, changes of address, and wholesale inquiries: First American Art Magazine 1000 Cordova Place #843 Santa Fe, NM 87505 Telephone: (505) 473-0149 www.firstamericanartmagazine.com First American Art Magazine welcomes queries about editorial submissions. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, or artwork. First American Art Magazine is not responsible for the content of any article or for the statements of any advertiser.

Copyright © 2014 by First American Art Magazine. Cover and contents are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or part by any method without written permission, except those specific images listed with Creative Commons licenses.

First American Art Magazine is a Papyrus font-free publication.

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ISSUE NO. 2, SPRING 2014 FEATURES

14

DEPARTMENTS

Allan Houser: Reflections on My Grandfather Emily A. Haozous (Fort Sill Chiricahua Apache)

36

Recent Developments

8 10

The Theme of Dance in Allan Houser’s Sculptures Jeanine Belgodère

40

Guest Editorial Sustaining Black Ash Traditions Kelly Church (Grand Traverse Odawa-Ojibwe)

Healing Through the Creative Process: Art Therapy in Indian Country RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo)

44

Travels to China: Artists Sustain Traditions Using the Universal Language of Art Staci Golar

48

Cuzco School: Andean Visions in Oils and Gold America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

52

Seven Directions 11 heather ahtone (Chickasaw-Choctaw) Exploring Native Graphic Design Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Chippewas of Rama First Nation) 18

ARTIST PROFILES Ben Aleck 14 (Northern Paiute) Melissa Melero (Fallon Paiute-Modoc) Radmilla Cody (Navajo) Reid Gómez (Navajo)

18

Carla Hemlock (Mohawk) Teri Greeves (Kiowa-Comanche)

24

Da-ka-xeen Mehner (Tlingit-Nisga’a) Anna Hoover (Unangan)

30

24

12

Advice—Art and Object 74 Conservation: Caring for Featherwork Jessie Ryker-Crawford (White Earth Chippewa) Poetry dg okpik (Iñupiaq-Inuk)

76

Photo Essay Chilkat River Studies John Hagen (Aleut-Iñupiaq)

76

Book Reviews

69

In Memoriam Sherman Chaddlesone (Kiowa) Arvo Mikkanen (Kiowa-Comanche)

78

LaVerna (Laverne) Goldtooth (Navajo) Leatrice A. Armstrong RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo)

REVIEWS

30

Cover: Carla Hemlock (Kahnawake Mohawk), Tribute to the Mohawk Ironworkers, 2008, quilt: cotton cloth, glass beads, sequins, cotton and nylon thread, 62.36 x 49.75 in., National Museum of the American Indian 26/7164. Image courtesy of NMAI.

Dena’inaq Huch’ulyeshi Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi (Alutiiq)

60

Blok P: Final Salute David Winfield Norman

62

Greenland: Head for the Centre of the World David Winfield Norman

63

Baby Blue: Work by Chandra Melting Tallow Gloria Bell (Métis)

65

Lovesick Child

Matthew Ryan Smith

66

Indian Candy Gloria Bell (Métis)

67

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Editor’s Greetings

C

AN THE ENGLISH WORD “ART” be stretched to include Indigenous American concepts of art? I believe so, but the first step is to acknowledge that “art” means different things to different peoples. In Native communities throughout the Americas and the world, art is integrated into every aspect of daily and ceremonial life. As we collectively shape Native American art history and critical theory, we must keep art relevant to our communal lives. We cannot allow it to become a rarified, esoteric intellectual pursuit for the few; we need to ensure that our art keeps its living heart and soul and resonates with the people. For the public to understand Indigenous art, we need to articulate the values that our art embodies, which is the goal of First American Art Magazine.

This issue is strategically eclectic. We want to introduce different communities within the Native art world to each other and to the public. By showcasing artists and art from diverse times, geographical regions, media, and approaches, First American Art Magazine reflects the complexity and depth of our Native art world to stoke curiosity and elicit questions.

Unknown Ka’apor artist, Pu’ir (necklace), 1955-1962, macaw and toucan feathers, cotinga scalps, tree gum, cordage, Pará, Brazil, National Museum of the American Indian 23/3269. Image courtesy of NMAI.

A heartfelt “thank you” goes out to all the people who support this magazine and make it possible, especially you, our reader.

—America Meredith

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Letters to FAAM Pilot Issue I found this Native American magazine was a new change. Usually Native American art magazines only present art in a romanticized and stereotypical way, such as animals beside a woman, or man with a six-pack in a warrior outfit. Those magazines have few pages for upcoming artists. They mainly show pieces to be sold rather than showing artists’ backgrounds and what they feel passionate about.

F E S T I VA L

I am always fascinated with cultures I have not heard about, such as the Greenlandic art and their people’s history. Also different media like fashion, or stories dealing with blood quantum and Natives trying to keep their culture alive through their art. With all that I have read, I see that many artists out there really hold on to what they have left within their culture to pass onto future generations.

I hope to read about more upcoming artists or different cultures in future issues.

—Julia Edmonds (Kiowa-Caddo), Santa Fe

“Protectors Waiting” by Raymond Nordwall

I really enjoyed the interview with Anita Fields by Denise NeilBinion. The interviews focused more on the artists than the work.

Even though the art is really good in each magazine, I felt that this magazine offers more material for upcoming artists. I could relate to some artists and learn something new about different cultures.

JunE 5-7, 2014

REMINGTON PARK • OKlAhOMA CITy ART • DANCE • FOOD • MusIC

(405) 427-5228 • www.redearth.org

Nani Chacon I enjoyed the interview with Nani Chacon by Suzanne Fricke.

Murals and street art have always intrigued me; even as a young child in Santa Fe, I was drawn to this art form. As a child, I felt a connection with these murals. They depicted images from a culture and time that was familiar and safe to me. I would carefully observe the New Deal era pieces located throughout the city, and admire the murals as I walked down Alto Street.

Chacon says she “wants her art out in public spaces where many different people can see it.” As I studied her mural titled She Taught Us to Weave, all those familiar childhood memories came back to me. The mural flows smoothly, and each detail incorporates and softens the raw elements of the building.

Chacon’s remarkable murals and works of art embody the female essence, culture, and street art design.

In most cities, murals and street art are visible to everyone to see and connect with. Sometimes it is the only art that people are exposed to. Murals are usually themed and illustrated with images of common people and communities. Street art is truly for the people. I thought that murals were a thing of the past, as I slowly watched them painted over by a growing and changing Santa Fe. It is refreshing to see a young artist like Nani Chacon who is passionate about this art form.

—Angelica Gallegos, Santa Fe We welcome letters to the editor! Please mail them to: First American Art Magazine, Attention: Editor 1000 Cordova Place, #843, Santa Fe, NM 87505 or email to info@firstamericanartmagazine.com.

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Contributing Writers JEANINE BELGODÈRE (French) is an Associate Professor of

English at the University of Le Havre, France. She has studied and lectured extensively about dance, Allan Houser, and Phillip and Bob Haozous. In 2005, she was a visiting professor at the IAIA. In 2009 and 2010, Belgodère was a visiting professor at the University of New Mexico. Her published works include: “Tradition et évolution dans l’art du Powwow contemporain,” “An Apache Artist and the Santa Fe School of Traditional Indian Painting: Allan Houser’s Alternative Vision,” and articles on Allan Houser as well as on the Sun Dance (Dictionnaire Larousse).

GLORIA BELL (Métis) is a writer and researcher based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She earned her Master’s Degree in Art History from Carleton University. She has served most recently as the web editor for the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective and as an intern at the School of Advanced Research. Her research interests include First Nations and Aboriginal histories and art practices, as well as debates surrounding the term “Indigeneity “ within the global art world. Bell has heritage ties to the Métis at Red River Settlement and Cree in James Bay.

KELLY CHURCH (Grand Traverse Odawa-Ojibwe) is a fifth-

generation black ash basket weaver from Michigan. Her cousin John Pigeon and her father Bill Church taught her how to harvest, process, and weave black ash. She collaborates with her daughter Cherish Parrish in weaving, birch bark biting, and textile arts.

Church earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan. She is an outspoken activist and educator about saving the black ash tree from the emerald art borer.

at the University of Oregon, she completed an arts management internship at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts on the Umatilla Reservation and then went to work for SWAIA’s Santa Fe Indian Market and, later, the IAIA. She has served as a public art program and grant panelist and as a freelance arts and public relations consultant. Currently, she is the Associate Director for the International Folk Art Market–Santa Fe, as well as a freelance writer and an artist.

REID GÓMEZ, PhD (Navajo Nation), is the Mellon Visiting

Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Kalamazoo College. She is currently working on The Navajo Slave Project and finishing her fourth novel. Her work addresses extermination and slavery in the borderlands and bloodlands and language revitalization.

TERI GREEVES (Kiowa) is a beadwork artist who grew up on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Currently, she lives in Santa Fe with her husband and two sons. Greeves graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a degree in American Studies. Her work‚ which is in the British Museum, Museum of Art and Design, and other major collections, combines Kiowa oral history with her personal and family experiences.

EMILY HAOZOUS, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache), is an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico College of Nursing. She received her nursing training and doctoral degree at Yale University. Passionate about American Indian health, she links indigenous methodologies to intervention research in an effort to improve cancer outcomes in Native people. Haozous is the granddaughter of Allan Houser, one of the most celebrated American Indian artists of the 20th century, and daughter of Bob Haozous, a renowned sculptor.

ROSEMARY DIAZ (Santa Clara Pueblo) is a freelance feature ANNA HOOVER (Unangax) earned her Master of Arts degree writer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her book in progress, entitled The Diaries of Sunshine YellowStar, is an exacting and epic tale of historical trauma, unraveled through the daily entries of its title character. Diaz studied literature and its respective arts at the IAIA, the Naropa Institute, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her feature articles have appeared in numerous publications.

She is also an award-winning and anthologized poet and holds the copyright to the Mylar Tipi, the Indi’n Housewarming Kit series, and the Native Foodways: New Seasons food series.

SUZANNE FRICKE, PhD (Ashkenazi-American), completed

her Doctorate in Art History, with an emphasis on 20th-century Native American pottery, at the University of New Mexico in 2003. For the past 20 years, she has taught art history at the University of New Mexico, IAIA, Santa Fe University of Art and Design, and Central New Mexico Community College. In 2012, she curated the exhibit Octopus Dreams, which traveled throughout Russia and to 516 Arts Gallery in Albuquerque. She is currently curating a show of Native photography that will travel to Russia.

in Native American Art History and Master of Communications degree in Indigenous Documentary Filmmaking both from the University of Washington. She is an artist, curator, filmmaker, educator, community organizer, and the daughter of the widely respected late sculptor John Hoover.

NADIA JACKINSKY-SETHI, PhD (Alutiiq), is an art historian and an adjunct instructor at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. She works as a program officer for a grant program dedicated to supporting Alaska Native artists at the CIRI Foundation. Her research interests include Alaska Native art, cultural revival, and identity.

MELISSA MELERO (Northern Paiute/Modoc) is a mixed media artist living in Hungry Valley, Nevada. She is currently a fulltime artist and works part time for a non-profit arts organization in Reno, Nevada. Melero has a BFA from IAIA and a Bachelor of Science from Portland State University in Oregon. She exhibits her art nationally.

STACI GOLAR (Cornish-Welsh-American) holds a BFA ARVO from Eastern Oregon University and a Master’s Degree in Arts Administration from the University of Oregon. While studying 6 | W W W.F I R S TAM E R IC AN ARTMAG A ZI N E.C OM

QUOETONE

MIKKANEN, JD (Kiowa/

Comanche), has served as a private practice attorney, tribal court judge, and adjunct law professor. Presently, he is a federal prosecutor

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and liaison to Indian tribal governments in western Oklahoma.

He is the founder and President of the Oklahoma Indian Bar Association. Mikkanen graduated from Dartmouth College and earned his Juris Doctorate from Yale Law School. Recently, he received the US Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service in Indian Country. He is interested in and a collector of Indian art and formerly served as Chair the Board of Trustees of the Jacobson Foundation in Norman, Oklahoma.

DAVID WINFIELD NORMAN (American-Norwegian)

is a writer and art historian living in Oslo. He has studied at the University of Glasgow and the University of Oslo where his focus was contemporary art and culture in the circumpolar North and North Atlantic regions. His writing on Greenlandic art and exhibition strategies is in CONDITIONS and the catalogue to the Danish-Greenlandic pavilion at the 13th Venice Biennale.

DG NANOUK OKPIK (Inupiaq) is originally from Alaska’s

Arctic Slope, and her family lives in Barrow. She earned a BFA in Creative Writing from IAIA and an MFA in Creative Writing from Stonecoast College. okpik was awarded the Truman Capote Fellowship. Corpse Whale (University of Arizona Press, 2012) is her first full-length book. Her poetry has been published in Touchstone, Ahani: Indigenous American Poetry, Many Mountains Moving, Poet Lore, Washington Square, Red Ink, and Sentence.

Her work has been anthologized in Effigies: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from the Pacific Rim (Salt Publishing, 2009) and Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas (University of Arizona Press, 2011).

3.625" x 4.75" H STEPHANIE PRATT , PhDW(Eastern Dakota), descends from the Sisseton-Wahpeton band by her paternal grandmother, Rosa Daisy Fleury. Pratt taught art history at Plymouth University for 19 years. Her book, American Indians in British Art, 1700–1840 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2005) resulted from her doctoral research on the visual representation of Native Americans in European Art. She lives in the United Kingdom.

JESSIE RYKER-CRAWFORD (White Earth Chippewa) is Chair of the Museum Studies Program at the Institute of American Indian Art. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Washington, where she earned her Masters Degree in Sociocultural Anthropology.

NEEBINNAUKZHIK SOUTHALL (Chippewas of Rama First Nation) is a graphic designer and artist, working in portrait photography and body painting. She earned an honors BFA from Oregon State University’s Graphic Design Program and the University Honors College, with a minor in Fine Arts. She created the Native American Graphic Design Project to increase the visibility of North American Indigenous graphic artists.

MATTHEW RYAN SMITH, PhD (Euro-Canadian), is a writer, independent curator, and sessional professor at the OCAD University and the Haliburton School of the Arts, Fleming College. Currently based in Toronto, Smith’s writings have appeared in several Canadian and international publications including Canadian Art, C Magazine, FUSE, Afterimage, and ArtUS. SPRING 2 0 1 4

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Recent Developments MUSEUMS

ART FAIRS

The Briscoe Museum of Western Art in San Antonio opened its doors in October.

The new, spacious museum features American Indian, colonial Spanish, Mexican, and other art of the American West. The opening celebrations included Comanche brothers Tim and Calvert Nevaquaya painting a tipi.

The 2013 Best of Show winner of SWAIA’s Indian Market is Jackie Bread (Blackfeet). The best of classification winners are Earl Plummer (Navajo) for jewelry, Troy Jackson (Cherokee Nation) for pottery, Norma Howard (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) for painting, Bryant Honyouti (Hopi) for wooden Pueblo figurative sculpture, Larry Yazzie (Navajo) for sculpture, Isabel Gonzales ( Jemez) for textiles, Carla and Babe Hemlock (Mohawk) for diverse arts (see page 24 of this issue), Jackie Bread for beadwork/quillwork, Jamison Chas Banks (Seneca-Cayuga-Cherokee) for moving images, Shan Goshorn (Eastern Cherokee) for basketry, and Jason Youngblood Lugo (Santa Clara) for the youth classification.

The Nattilik Heritage Centre of Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, Canada, also opened in October and features local Ullulaq Inuit arts. Exhibits include traditional summer and winter camps and Netsilik tools collected by explorer Roald Amundsen.

The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino in Santiago reopened after a two-year hiatus for major renovation. A large newly built space houses Chile Before Chile, an exhibition of 300 precontact artworks arranged as a microcosm of the country.

The Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma, has a new executive director, Candessa Tehee (Cherokee Nation), who previously served at the Cherokee Nation’s Cherokee Language Program.

The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe is building the Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry, scheduled to open in 2015, with two galleries for permanent and changing exhibitions, thousands of pieces of Southwest jewelry, and a research archive, including John Adair’s papers.

Alvin Marshall (Navajo) won Best of Show at the Cherokee Art Market. Best of Category winners are Tony A. Tiger (Sac and Fox-Muscogee-Seminole) for painting, Alvin Marshall for sculpture, Jackie Larson Bread (Blackfeet) for beadwork/quillwork, Shawna Cain (Cherokee Nation) for basketry, Chase Kawinhut Earles (Caddo) for pottery, Margaret Roach Wheeler (Chickasaw) for textiles, Antonio Grant (Eastern Band Cherokee-Navajo) for jewelry, and David Scott (Cherokee Nation) for diverse arts.

The Best of Show winner at the Autry National Center’s American Indian Market is John Spotted Eagle Bradley (Cherokee-Comanche). Emil Her Many Horses (Oglala Lakota) won the Purchase Award. Best of Category winners are Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy) for baskets, Emil Her Many Horses for beadwork/ quillwork, Lisa Hageman Yahgulanaas (Haida) for clothing, Ken Humpherville (Métis-Tsimshian) for diverse arts, Priscilla Nieto Abeyta (Santo Domingo) for jewelry, Michael M. Chiago Sr. (Tohono O’odham) for painting, Peggy Fontenot (Patawomeck-PotawatomiCherokee) for photography, Harlan Reano (Santo Domingo) and Lisa Holt (Cochiti) for pottery, Joseph Begay (Navajo) for sculpture, Etta C. Peacock (Navajo) for textiles, and Harry Benally (Navajo) for woodcarving.

The second annual Fiesta Nacional de Arte Indígena (National Indigenous Art Festival) was held in early December in Quitilipi, Argentina. Sponsored in part by the Chaco Cultural Institute, the festival included artists’ forum, a gathering of aboriginal woodcarvers, and workshops for arts and Qom language preservation.

Red Earth, Inc., is moving its annual June festival to Remington Park, owned by the Chickasaw Nation, in northeastern Oklahoma City. New board members

In October 2013, the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles opened Four Centuries of Pueblo Pottery, its first art exhibit since 2006. Supporters of the Southwest Museum hope the museum will be open more often.

The Joslyn Art Museum of Omaha, Nebraska, reorganized and reopened its balcony galleries of contemporary and historical American Indian art.

New Executive Director of the Cherokee Heritage Center, Candessa Tehee (Cherokee Nation).

Image courtesy of Tim Landes.

8 | W W W.F I R S TAM E R IC AN ARTMAG A ZI N E.C OM

Billy Luther (Navajo-Hopi-Laguna), Patrick Makuakane (Native Hawaiian), Nora Naranjo-Morse (Santa Clara Pueblo), Da-ka-xeen Mehner (TlingitNisga’a), Israel Shotridge (Tlingit), Brooke Swaney (Blackfeet-Salish), and David Treuer (Ojibwe).

The Mercado Nacional de Artesanías Tradicionales de la República Argentina or MATRA (National Market of Traditional Crafts from Argentina) created two national awards for Indigenous Argentinean artists, the Certificado Nacional de Artesanías de Pueblos Originarios.

2013 Jackie Autry Purchase Award Winner at the Autry’s American Indian Market: Emil Her Many Horses (Oglala Lakota), Native American Church Instruments, 2013, peyote-stitched staff, macaw-feather fan, and gourd, rattle. Image courtesy of the Autry National Center.

include Harvey Pratt (Cheyenne), Jeff Hargrave (Muscogee Creek), and David Reynolds (Muscogee Creek).

The Feria de Artesania Indígena, or Indigenous Art Fair, held in late December in San Lorenzo, Paraguay, featured works by Indigenous Paraguayan artists. Established in 1990, the fair is sponsored in part by the Guido Boggiani Anthropological, Archaeological and Ethnographical Museum.

The Roraima Indigenous Fair surpassed all expectations and closed early when the entire fair sold out. Held in early December in Boa Vista, Roraima, Brazil, the fair includes Yanomami, Taurepang, and Wai-Wai artists.

The Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City hosted its inaugural Indian Art Market in mid-October.

Twenty artists participated in the market.

ART SHOWS Michelle LaVallee (Ojibway) curated 7: Professional Native Indian Artists, Inc., the first major retrospective of the “Indian Group of Seven.” The show opened at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, in September.

The first incorporated First Nations artist organization in Canada, the Professional Native Indian Artists, Inc. included

Alex Janvier (Dene Suline-Saulteaux), Daphne Odjig (Odawa-Potawatomi), Joseph Sanchez (Tewa-descent), and the late Norval Morrisseau (Ojibway), Eddy Cobiness (Ojibway), Jackson Beardy (Anishinini), and Carl Ray (Cree).

Featuring 120 artworks, 7 will travel throughout Canada.

GALLERIES The Indian Art Center in Los Angeles remains open, despite ongoing disputes with its insurance company after a violent daytime robbery of $150,000’s worth of Native American art from the gallery.

Located in Studio City, the Indian Art Center has provided movie and television set-designers with Native art for over four decades. Loyal customers made donations to keep the gallery open.

AWARDS & GRANTS Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) honored 16 Native artists with its 2014 Artist Fellowships for visual arts, film, music, literature, and dance. These are Keola Beamer (Native Hawaiian), Raven Chacon (Navajo), Eddie Chuculate (Muscogee Creek-Cherokee), Kaili Chun (Native Hawaiian), Santee Frazier (Cherokee Nation), Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy), Shan Goshorn (Eastern Cherokee), Melissa Henry (Navajo), Micah Kamohoali’i (Native Hawaiian),

Pauline Hillaire (Lummi) and Ralph Burns (Pyramid Lake Paiute) won two of nine National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) National Heritage Fellowships.

ORGANIZATIONS Centro de las Artes Indígenas (CAI), the first national Indigenous artists organization in Mexico, is founding an educational center in Takilhsukut Park, near El Tajín, the pre-Columbian site in Veracruz near the Gulf of Mexico.

SCHOOLS For the spring semester of 2014, Bently Spang (Cheyenne) will be the Eminent Artist in Residence at University of Wyoming and will teach a class in the American Indian Studies Program.

Conceptual artist Spang will also have a solo exhibit at the UW Art Museum.

REPATRIATION The Annenberg Foundation purchased sacred cultural items from a Paris auction house to return them to their tribes. These include 21 Hopi Friends and three San Carlos Apache items the charitable foundation purchased for €390,000 (US $530,000). The Hopi Tribe, Survival International, and other groups have tried to legally block these auctions of sacred cultural patrimony using international and French law.

The Annenberg Foundation, a family foundation headquartered in Los Angeles, is dedicated to social justice, education, arts, culture, medical research, animal welfare, and the environment.

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Sustaining Black Ash Traditions

By Kelly Church

I

N THE COMING DECADE, black ash split baskets, bark the interest of the next generation. The laborious work and easier baskets, and hand-carved ash cradleboards will become some ways to make a living have also played a part in the knowledge being of the most collectible pieces of Native art. Black ash (Nigra lost. fraxinus), also known as brown ash, is a tree that only grows in the As a culture bearer of my people, and all of our relations, I northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. The tribes in take the responsibility of teaching and sharing the knowledge with these areas, including the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Wabanaki, others very seriously. I travel extensively to wherever I’m asked to Ho-Chunk, and other First Nations, have been using the black ash teach. I work with youth to ensure the knowledge is passed onto tree for thousands of years to weave utilitarian baskets, and after future generations. Most important of all, work that can be done contact, fancy baskets to support their communities. today is seed collection to ensure the continuation of these traditions In 2002 Deborah McCullough and a group of researchers in future generations. from Michigan State University discovered the emerald ash borer I began sharing with other weavers at shows I attend about (EAB) in southeastern Michigan. The beetle, Agrilus planipennis, was the EAB and what they had coming their way. In 2006, 2008, and introduced to Michigan by infected ash pallets on ships from China. 2011, we held national conferences in Michigan, bringing native Thousands of ash trees were discovered dying and dead, and today practitioners, researchers, and experts together. I will hold another Michigan has lost over 400 of its conference this year. Over the 803 million ash trees due to EAB. past year I have been assisting The Department of Agriculture institutions and individual predicts the loss of the entire collectors in attaining complete ash resource of North America. collections of black ash baskets Once EAB infects an ash tree, or before it is too late. worse an ash stand, the trees will In the last decade Les die in three to five years. EAB can Benedict, Mike Benedict, fly about a mile a year, but with Richard David (Iroquois), the movement of infected logs Jennifer Neptune (Penobscot), and firewood, the spread of EAB and John Pigeon (Potawatomi), is happening at an even faster and I have worked together rate. Over 21 states are infected teaching and sharing all we know with EAB, with more added to about black ash trees and seed the list each year. collection. By working together, Scientists believe the we will ensure the continuation EAB reached Michigan in 1992. Emerald ash borer on a damaged black ash tree. Image courtesy of Kelly of this tradition.

First discovered in eastern Church (Odawa-Ojibwe).

Even with the collection Pennsylvania in 2006, the beetle of seeds, the fact remains that the has been present since 2000, as a study of growth rings on infected tradition will not be passed on for decades, as it has for centuries, trees determined. The size of the borer and number of years it due to lack of basket trees, and the planting and regrowth of the takes to visually see the signs of EAB in infected trees makes it hard trees. To ensure the knowledge is not forgotten and able to be passed to discover the infestation when it first happened. Black ash trees on again, I have focused teachings on youth and have documented normally grow on grounds with higher water tables. Black ash trees with videos the entire identification, selection, and harvesting of a seed only every five to seven years. A good basket tree is 30–50 years black ash tree, as well as, in entirety, how to process the materials old. In a stand of 50 black ash trees, maybe five to 10 will be good and weave baskets from the finished products. These recordings will basket trees. be stored among tribal communities and can be used to bring the I come from an unbroken line of black ash basket makers knowledge and teachings back when we are able to safely replant going back centuries. We have a picture of my family working and regrow ash trees in the future. baskets from 1919, but as my grandmother said, “We made baskets Seeds, seeds, seeds. This is the most valuable aspect before they made cameras.” I learned how to harvest and process the of the process today. For more information on how you can tree from my father Bill Church and cousin John Pigeon. I know help, visit emeraldashborer.info to learn more about EAB, approximately 40 weavers in Michigan, and about 20 are from my nsl.fs.fed.us/GeneticConservation_Ash.html to learn more family. We teach other nations in the Great Lakes and in Canada about collecting ash seeds and woodlandarts.com for more how to harvest and weave since the knowledge has been lost by information on the 2014 EAB Effects on Black Ash Traditions many nations with the passing of an elder who was unable to spark Conference and Black Ash Collection Consultations. Miigwetch!

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Seven Directions: heather ahtone Serving as the James T. Bialac Assistant Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, heather ahtone (Chickasaw-Choctaw) researches intersections of Indigenous art, tribal cultures, and traditional knowledge. She curates art exhibits, teaches Native science and art history, and researches the evolution of tribal designs and materials. ahtone is developing an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing Indigenous art that integrates tribes’ place-based environmental knowledge and its representation in their cosmology and designs.

EAST: National Science Bowl for

Middle School Students in Washington, DC. This annual spring event, hosted by the US Department of Energy, brings together competitive teams of middle school students from across the country. The American Indian Science Club that I run as a parent-volunteer, sponsored by the Norman Public School’s Indian Education Program and the OU School of Geology and Geophysics, has a team of smart middle school students. With their coaches Silas Wolf (Chickasaw) and Melanie Lawson (Choctaw), last year they qualified through AISES’ Intertribal Bowl and went to the nationals. Native cultures have long bound our traditional knowledge of sciences and arts together. Supporting our club and team of Native kids to succeed in the sciences is critical to valuing our traditional knowledge in the 21st century.

SOUTH: Betsabeé Romero. I have been

following this artist from Mexico and always keep my eye open for opportunities to bring her to Oklahoma for an installation. The first time I saw her prints using old tires, I wondered how far she could take that.

She continues to amaze! She does for relief printing what Rauschenberg did for screenprinting. See: www.betsabeeromero.com.

WEST: This May Be the Last Time (2013),

by Sterlin Harjo and Matt Leach, is Sterlin’s fourth film in the Sundance Festival. The film focuses on the ceremonial music of the Creek Nation dating back to the early 19th century that combines Creek, Scottish, and African influences. In the film, historian Hugh Foley posits that the Creek hymn may be the first true American music due to its multicultural composition. Sterlin reflects the honesty and integrity that thrives in Oklahoma within our Native communities.

materials or forms. Recognizing that as we continue to thrive as cultural people, our artistic expressions must be free to reflect the vibrancy of our imaginations.

ABOVE: Beyond Buckskin, online at

beyondbuckskin.com. For those who didn’t know how exciting the Native fashion industry is before Patricia Michaels’ glorious stint on Project Runway, Dr. Jessica Metcalfe (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) has organized plenty of reading and shopping to soothe your craving for all things beautiful!

BELOW: Toi Maori Aotearoa, an arts

organization located in Wellington, Aotearoa (New Zealand), established an international reputation as being the “go-to” source for all things Maori arts. Sandy Adsett and June Grant are currently cooperating with me to bring three artists to Oklahoma in 2015 (pending funding—fingers crossed) for an Indigenous printmaking exhibition, titled Enter the Matrix.

CENTER: Eiteljorg Contemporary Art

Fellowship 2013 and RED. This exhibition of five amazing artists continues the good work of the Eiteljorg museum’s commitment to supporting Native contemporary art. I was honored to be one of the contributing authors to the catalogue writing about Shan Goshorn.

The other fellows are Julie Buffalohead, Nicholas Galanin, Meryl McMaster, and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun.

FROM TOP: heather ahtone. Poster for This May Be the Last Time. Betsabeé Romero, Ciudades que se van, 2004, carved tires, relief prints on cloth. All My Relations Gallery, courtesy of the gallery (www. allmyrelationsarts.com).

NORTH: All My Relations Gallery in

Minneapolis. Few galleries make me want to drive 12 hours; this is one of them. Their exhibits don’t shy away from nontraditional SPRING 2 0 1 4

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Exploring Native Graphic Design

Design in Academic Settings By Neebinnaukzhik Southall

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N HUNDREDS OF COLLEGE CAMPUSES every term, a flurry of activity within Native student clubs and associations, cultural centers, and academic programs, presents an opportunity for Nativemade design. For every student group, a chance for a logo exists. For every powwow, guest speaker, community gathering, or other event, a flier or poster needs to be made. And indeed, a wealth of Native-made design on campuses can be found, created by amateurs and budding professionals alike.

Designs involving Native imagery serve an important role in campus settings where, aside from entities such as tribal colleges, Native students and faculty are often a small minority.

By and large, such schools can be culturally alienating – references to Indigenous cultures and people are few and far between. In a social climate where Native people have

Freelance flier/logo design by the author for CU Boulder’s Native Student Welcome

been long misrepresented, where nuances in Indigenous visual meanings are not part of the mainstream cultural vocabulary, Natives designing for and representing Natives is a needed form of self-agency and empowerment.

For beginning or student designers looking to put their design chops to the test, campus settings provide a

good opportunity to do so. While I don’t generally wave around the often-exploitative phrase “it will build your portfolio,” designing within the campus setting is a good way to get your feet wet and has its benefits, in spite of low to no budgets. The creative freedom to experiment exists with relatively low risk involved. A more personal connection and passion for the subject matter, in tandem with skill, can produce some very good work. Having your work seen in public or having even hundreds of people attend an event thanks to a design you created is rewarding and encouraging. For those wishing to do future work for Native entities, it’s also helpful to have relevant examples to show. Seeing early work such as powwow fliers in the portfolios of budding professional Native designers is not uncommon. Ideally, the experience will also provide future connections in what can be a tightknit community. For the designerin-training, organization logos are

2012 NASA Convocation Program cover by Donovan Pete (Diné), freelance work

Poster/painting created by JayCee Beyale (Diné) as an alumni of UNM

Even in more inclusive settings, good design by Natives for Natives provides a sense of familiarity, community, and understanding; serves as a visual refuge; and operates as a source of pride. Design can serve as an important reinforcement of identity – for example, a logo for a Native student association essentially represents those students and carries emotional weight as well. Designing for one’s Native community builds meaningful connections and is a way for individuals to use their skills to give back to the community as well as speak for themselves as Native people.

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Logo Designs for Various Native Schools, Clubs, Associations, and Centers

Institute of American Indian Arts logo by Larry Desjarlais (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), updated

by Kilmer Kilmer Marshall Duran

Native American Cultural Center at Colorado State University logo, drafted by Ty Smith (Diné) then digitally recreated by one of the center’s designers

Diné of UNM club logo created by JayCee Beyale (Diné) as a student

Diné Speakers of UNM logo created by JayCee Beyale (Diné)

Society of Native American Graduate Students logo

by Ivan Eagletail (Tsuu T’ina)

Kiva Club logo by Patrick Willink (Diné)

Natives at Penn logo by Jiles Pourier (Cheyenne River Sioux) and his grandmother

The Longhouse Education and Cultural Center at Evergreen College logo by Diane Devlin (Chehalis)

Northwest Indian College logo by Sean Brown (Lummi), an NWIC alumnus

Created by Native and non-native students and faculty from the law school and main campus

an opportunity to explore more conceptual approaches to previously created designs, whether by Natives or non-Natives, to improve and refine where needed.

Native student association logos trend toward imagery, which, while culturally significant, veers toward the expected. Literal representations of war shields, eagle feathers, and the four directions appear frequently.

Given that campus communities are tribally mixed, one can understand a tendency toward Pan-Indianism, but my challenge is: What unique visual insights and combinations can one bring to the table as a designer?

So far, I’ve focused on students, but what opportunities are there for design professionals? For those occupying administrative positions on campus, if you have a design need relating to Natives, it’s a vital chance, if not a no-brainer, to seek out and support dedicated Native professionals in their careers. Whether you need an updated, refined logo for your tribal college; an identity for your Native studies program; need advertising and marketing done; or otherwise could use design skills for your school or department Native designers would be happy to take on the challenge. As Native people themselves, they have

unique insights to bring to their design work to effectively represent the school, reach the target demographic, and resonate with the subject matter.

Indeed, good conceptual design skills in tandem with cultural literacy will yield results that go beyond the expected and mere superficial.

At times when excellent Native design professionals are passed over by even tribal entities in favor of non-Native designers and firms, how are we to create a climate of success for Native designers, who are greatly underrepresented in the field?

The answer is simple – hire Native designers!

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PROFILE

Northern Paiute Painter & Draftsman

Ben Aleck Interview by Melissa Melero

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YRAMID LAKE, 40 miles northeast of Reno, Nevada, is home to the Pyramid Lake Paiutes, the ancient cui-ui fish, and the oldest documented petroglyphs in North America.

Pyramid Lake is also home to its very own Ben Aleck, a Pyramid Lake Paiute tribal member and a lifelong artist. Proficient in both drawing and painting, Ben creates works inspired by the beautiful landscape of his home and his people, the Paiutes of Northern Nevada. Ben attended the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) in San Francisco, California, in the late 1960s during the height of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and an arts and culture boom in San Francisco.

Ben has been at the forefront of Native contemporary art in Nevada for many years. He co-curated and exhibited in Under One Sky: Nevada’s Native American Heritage at the Nevada State Museum in Carson and recently participated in the contemporary group exhibit The Way We Live: American Indian Art of the Great Basin and the Sierra Nevada at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. In addition to his endeavors as an artist, Ben also works as the Collections Manager at the Pyramid Lake Museum and Visitors Center, educating the public and future generations about Northern Paiute history, art, and culture.

Born in 1949 in what is now the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Ben was one of nine children. His artistic abilities were recognized early, and he refined his drawing skills at public schools in Reno and spent time with

fellow art buddies on the Colony.

With key support from art teachers and art contests in the community, he began selling his work locally in order to pay for basketball trips and contribute necessities to his large family.

In 1968 after graduating high school, Ben thought he was headed to Vietnam, like so many other young men being drafted around him. Due to losing his brother in the war already, Ben received a draft deferment to attend college.

The Upward Bound program of the University of Nevada, Reno, presented him with the opportunity to attend art school. The Upward Bound program provided college preparation and support for firstgeneration and low-income high school graduates.

At the time, when young men were

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getting drafted and going to Vietnam right out of school, Ben’s art teacher and supporters urged him to pursue art school. Ben had his choice of art schools, from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the Chicago Art Institute in Chicago, Illinois, but ultimately he decided to stay closer to home and attended California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California.

At this time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the San Francisco Bay Area was, as Ben says, “booming with creative people” active in music and art to the changing atmosphere of the Civil Rights Movement. “There were a lot of Natives in the city at that time,” Aleck says. Some were there for school, but most were placed in the Bay Area by the US Bureau of Indian Affairs Urban Relocation Program active in the 1950s.

BEN ALECK

ABOVE: Kooyooe Panunadu (Pyramid Lake), 2012, mixed media: painting, willow twigs. Image courtesy of the artist.

OPPOSITE: photo of Ben Aleck by Gabriel Lopez Shaw (Pyramid Lake Paiute).

In 1952, the federal government initiated the Urban Indian Relocation Program. It was designed to entice reservation dwellers to seven major urban cities where the jobs supposedly were plentiful. Relocation offices were set up in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Dallas.

Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) employees were supposed to orient new arrivals and manage financial and job training programs for them. Other BIA officials recruited prospective “Relocatees” from many of the reservations around the country. Over the years, it’s estimated that as many as 750,000 Native Americans migrated to the cities between 1950 and 1980. Some came through the Relocation Program. Others came on their own.1 Other Natives had gathered in the San Francisco Bay Area to join the Indians of All Tribes (IAT), which ultimately led to the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 through 1971, and later to join the American Indian Movement (AIM). Ben participated in the Indian Occupation

of Alcatraz and rallies held by the American Indian Movement.

Inspired by the atmosphere of civil rights activism, Ben started to integrate political and cultural commentary and images into his work. One of his student works, titled The War Machine, portrays a horrifying image of a child soldier holding two heads like trophies, similar to a familiar Vietnam photograph he saw in a magazine at the time, layered into an image of a one dollar bill and machine gun bullet casings. Ben’s work, while in the Bay Area, fluctuated from the political symbolic realism that reflected the country’s current events to cultural imagery and figurative work.

Ben graduated from CCAC in 1972 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and was on his way to graduate school at Mills College in Oakland, California, when he decided to go back home to Nevada for a change.

Making a living took over for Ben as he stayed in Reno, was married, and started working in education and other

1. “Assimilation, Relocation, Genocide: The Urban Relocation Program,” Indian Country Diaries, PBS, last modified 2006, accessed December 6, 2013.

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PROFILE

Untitled, pencil on illustration board. Image courtesy of the artist.

various professional jobs on the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony. Over the years, Ben has combined his talent as a draftsman, oil painter, and mixed media artist, with working in his community in education and giving back by getting involved with the current Upward Bound program that led him to attend college.

In 2000, Ben was hired by the Pyramid Lake Museum and Visitors Center, located in Nixon, Nevada. Currently serving as the Collections Manager, he organizes and protects the rare and unique pieces of Paiute culture housed in the museum.

The Pyramid Lake Museum has received much recognition lately, since the nearby petroglyphs have been acknowledged as the oldest known petroglyphs in North America. In August 2013, news outlets reported that recently tested coating from the rock art dates back at least 10,000 years and possibly back 14,800 years.

Some Pyramid Lake Tribal members are concerned about the ongoing battle against vandalism of petroglyphs and important sacred places at the Lake. Ben says all of the attention brings some negative with the positive. He acknowledges that the discovery of the dates and increased public awareness is good for the museum and the tourism 16 | W W W.F I R S TAM E RI C AN ARTMAG A ZI N E.C OM

for the Lake. He hopes it will encourage further education and support for such an important cultural resource in the community and not further disrespect from those who come to the lake and deface our precious cultural history.

Ben’s current artworks, recently exhibited in The Way We Live, have a rich storytelling flare to them. They depict Nevada’s landscape and its importance to the Paiute people.

In the pen and ink drawing Mount Rose, Ben illustrates a familiar Nevada mountain ridge top with an image of a woman’s face in the peak of the Sierra Nevada range.

He says the view of the valley in the drawing is of a time before the masses took over and shows the pristine beauty of the foothills to Mount Rose.

Have you traveled very much? What do you think about the different places you have been and how it has affected you as an artist?

I enjoy traveling to other places in this country. Chicago Art Institute. Washington, DC, the National Gallery of Art, and all the art museums on the Mall. IAIA in Santa Fe, [New Mexico], the Bay Area, Oakland, San Francisco [California], museums and galleries.

BEN ALECK

Mount Rose, pen and ink on paper. Image courtesy of the artist.

Also Indian Country: South Dakota, Arizona, California, New Mexico, most of the western states.

for Native artists. This was the first show of Native American art on the new grounds of the NMA since 2003.

How did you get involved with The Way We Live at the Nevada Museum of Art show and Under One Sky? (Two major examples of the very few Native art shows in Nevada)

What other artists, Native or non-native, inspire you?

By working at the Pyramid Lake Paiute Museum, I was asked to participate on a planning committee for the Under One Sky exhibit. I helped organize the Native American art exhibit by contacting Native contemporary artists and traditional arts and crafts people.

I also helped organize the Nevada Museum of Art [NMA] show by contacting Great Basin contemporary Native American artists to show their work in this major show. I worked closely with Ann Wolfe, who curated the exhibit.

David Walker, the Director of the Nevada Museum of Art, was very supportive of the show and opened doors

I enjoy Picasso’s work and also Van Gogh. I also like the Impressionists and artists from IAIA from the 1960s such as T.C. Cannon.

Where do you see the future of Native art going?

I think there will be a combination of the traditional and contemporary. I incorporate traditional techniques as well as contemporary techniques. I’m really excited about the future of Native art. I am inspired by abstracts and mixed media, and I would like to branch out into many different mediums as well as combine those with political statements, which was not as popular to do or try and make a name from years ago. Now, I see a lot of art out there being celebrated for its free opinions, and it is encouraging.

Pyramid Lake Museum and Visitor Center: www.plpt.nsn.us/museum SPRING 2 0 1 4

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PROFILE

Navajo Singer & Activist

Radmilla Cody

R

Interview by Reid Gómez

ADMILLA CODY’S CAREER began in a sheep corral—out back of bimá sanií’s home on the Navajo Reservation. The sheep were her first audience; the land her inspiration. Since then she has sung to audiences worldwide.

an amazing voice and style to her music that I enjoy and am inspired by. My post-Grammy nomination goal is to get this album done with the right people so that the positive, beautiful, and energy of love will breathe life into these songs of truth, hope, and empowerment for all to enjoy!

Ms. Cody is Tł’ááschí’í (Red Bottom People), born for Naahiłii (African-American). Her album Seed of Life won the NAMMY for Best Female Artist. Her fifth album, Shi Kéyah, was nominated for Best Female Artist, Record of the Year, and Best Traditional Recording by the Native American Music Awards, and won the Record of the Year.

Shi Kéyah was also nominated for a Grammy, making Cody the first Native American to be nominated in the Best Regional Roots Album category and the first to present (at the pre-telecast). She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Public Relations with a minor in Sociology from Northern Arizona University. NPR selected her as one of the 50 Great Voices in Recorded History, and she was recently honored with the Black History Makers Award 2012 by Initiative Radio.

How has the audience been? Have there been different reactions from your listeners, and do you find yourself bringing in new audiences with your music?

I caught up with her after her recent performance at the “For The People” Flood Relief Benefit Concert in Shiprock, New Mexico. This concert was the second in a series of concerts Cody has been co-organizing and performing at to support and gather supplies for the communities affected by the recent monsoon floods on Navajoland. The concert’s Facebook page declares the inspiration behind the events: “This is what K’é is about as we come together ‘AS A PEOPLE FOR OUR PEOPLE!’ Nizhoni, Nizhoni, Nizhoni!”

I am always composing music. The material I have for the next album has been in place since 10 years ago, with new material that has been recently written. I am excited about what this next album is going to bring and what life will extend from it musically and truthfully.

The reaction from people has been very positive and encouraging. Crossing over into another genre can be a little tricky because of the current fan base that an artist has built through a specific genre of music. In this case, traditional Navajo music. The Diné people have been very supportive and open to what I have presented to them in my crossover music so far. It’s fun taking on new challenges and reaching beyond the boundaries. So yes, reaching new audiences is definitely in the works and I look forward to seeing where my newfound music will go as a result of that.

Are you composing right now?

What are your plans for continued collaborations with your uncle?

What direction are you taking in your music? And what are your post Grammy nomination goals? Your sound and feeling? Anyone you’re particularly influenced by at this moment?

My uncle Dr. Herman Cody will always be a part of my musical journey. He is working on translations for songs on this next album as well as composing songs for another traditional album. Our collaboration is ongoing—I am blessed and grateful to have a talented and knowledgeable person in my life whom I continue to learn from.

My crossover album is a blend of folk and world music. An acoustic guitar will accompany most of the music. Other songs will have the flute, percussions, violin, cello, and other worldly instrumentations. These are the ideas that are in place right now and could possibly change into another direction, musically. My sound and feeling is world music with the Diné language still strongly expressed and vibrant.

Right now, I am loving me some Emeli Sande! Emeli has

Cody’s strong relationship with her uncle is reflected in their music. The humor of the “Old School Sheepherder’s Rap,” featured on the album Precious Friends (Songs for Children), is a wonderful example of their work together.

Dr. Cody characterizes Radmilla’s music as “Navajo soul” pointing out the way she is able to bring the traditional and the contemporary together in one song and one performance. His desire, in working with his niece was to “make these albums

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just as a grandpa would walk behind the hogan, sit down, start making a moccasin, and then, he just goes at it.”

Strong family ties are the hallmark of Radmilla’s life. She was raised by her grandmother, the late and beloved Dorothy Cody. Like many Diné and other Native Americans today, her life has been touched by domestic violence (what many of our elders call “today’s monsters”), and for the last decade she has dedicated her life to ending domestic violence.

What has been the most powerful experience you’ve had in your work to address domestic violence?

Healing has been the most powerful experience in my work as a survivor and advocate against domestic abuse and violence. My healing process is ongoing on a personal, spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical level.

It has been quite a journey on each level to get to where I am today. My music plays a significant role in my journey of discovery alongside the genuine love and support that I have from my family, friends, relatives, and beyond. Each time I share my personal experiences about domestic violence, I gain the strength to continue forward.

In the process I hope that someone also connects with the strength to do the same or get involved with bringing about the necessary “positive” change where domestic abuse and violence is a concern.

The babies seem to love you, and you seem to love the babies.

How can we all continue to heal ourselves and our communities from “today’s monsters” (domestic violence among them)?

Ohhh… I do love children! Someday, I hope to have some of my own.

Everything starts in the home. As a society we have to educate ourselves about domestic violence and how we can contribute to the solution

Radmilla and friend. Photo: © 2014 John Running.

versus the problem. As parents, grandparents, friends, or concerned citizens, we should be talking to our children about good touch/bad touch early on and what healthy versus unhealthy relationships entail. When you teach and exemplify healthy communication in relationships within the home, children see and hear what encompasses that, normalize it, and apply it to their lives. Knowledge is

power when applied and so is healthy communication. We must acquire tools and knowledge to slay today’s monsters.

Talk a little bit about Strong Spirit... Life is Beautiful Not Abusive.

The Strong Spirit... Life is Beautiful Not Abusive campaign objective is a collaborative effort between the SPRING 2 0 1 4

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FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Radmilla’s grandmother, Radmilla, her mother, and her little sister. Photo: © 2014 John Running.

Arizona Coalition against Domestic Violence and the Navajo Nation domestic violence organizations to educate and spread the awareness on teen dating violence through the philosophy of traditional teachings, values, and the maintaining of cultural identity. Abuse and violence is becoming more prevalent in the school systems throughout the country and even more so within Native American communities. Young teens who are victims of abuse, or who are abusers themselves, are more likely to be victims or abusers in the future. This cycle of relationship abuse (for victim as well as abusers) makes prevention even more critical. By educating our youth about abuse, we increase the awareness of domestic violence and bring domestic violence to light and give voice, hope, and knowledge to the those who remain silent to this epidemic along with the courage to step up and be a part of making a difference in ending the cycle of abuse and violence!

The Strong Spirit Goal: Through the Strong Spirit... Life is Beautiful Not Abusive campaign, teens identify various types of abuse and learn about intervention/prevention strategies, gain insight, and knowledge on the issue of abuse and violence along

with the provided literature, lectures, motivational speeches, material, and available resources. Research shows that programs focusing on reducing violence in teen dating relationships, and promoting healthy respectful relationships, show promising results toward eradicating domestic violence. The majority of these successful programs have focused on increasing students’ awareness and knowledge about dating violence and have proven to change attitudes and norms that condone violence, while building conflict resolution and communication skills.

Given that many of these prevention programs have only been short-term intervention, the results are particularly encouraging and demonstrate a potential to impact public health. Clearly the prevention of dating violence requires a commitment (both financial and otherwise) with the goal of establishing a consistent, coordinated, and integrated approach in every school system and community.1 Through the Strong Spirit….Life is Beautiful not Abusive campaign it is our goal to empower the youth to make sense of their lives by allowing them to explore the various fundamentals of self-respect, respecting others, and recognizing the importance of self-worth to promote healthy dating relationships and prevent dating abuse. It is our duty to make our youth truly feel that they matter, that their spirit can

1. Maura O’Keefe, “Teen Dating Violence: A Review of Risk Factors and Prevention Efforts,” Harrisburg, PA: VAWnet, 2005, PDF. 2. Radmilla Cody, “‘Strong Spirit…. Life Is Beautiful Not Abusive’ Campaign,” Radmilla Entertainment, 2012, web.

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RADMILLA CODY

be strong, and that their lives can be beautifully balanced and safe without abuse or violence.2

message that encompasses all the above because the film will have done its job either way.

The Strong Spirit Campaign is not just for students; presentations are offered to school officials and communities as well.

At each event those who participate are taught the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy relationships. They are also taught to identify the warning signs of relationship violence. The goal is to help prevent teen relationship and sexual violence. Participants are also provided with resources and given time to discuss the presentation and ask any questions they may have. Participants celebrate the sharing of knowledge with a performance by Ms. Cody.

When Ms. Cody was named the 46th Miss Navajo Nation on September 6, 1997, she proved herself in several areas, but her eloquence in Diné Bizaad (the Navajo language) left a strong impression on the judges; when she spoke, they knew they had found their winner.

What has Diné Bizaad given you personally?

Diné Bizaad is who I am as a Nihokaad Diyin Diné. It is my foundation of who I am as a Diné Naahiłii woman.

It is my prayers, songs, and way of life. My grandmother (who only spoke and understood Diné Bizaad) always stressed to me the importance of speaking Diné Bizaad. To her the English language sounded like “Wala,

Radmilla and her grandmother. Photo: © 2014 John Running.

Cody’s activism has found extended reach in Angela Webb’s documentary film, Hearing Radmilla. Webb’s film exposes the habits racism and domestic violence have of intimacy—twisting and turning on each other to shape our daily lives. The film offers no easy answers and requires emotional attention and fortitude. Few films address any one of these complex subjects (racism, domestic violence, and beauty in Native America) in isolation—this film does it all.

What has the film, Hearing Radmilla, given you? And what do you hope the film can give to others?

The film Hearing Radmilla produced and directed by Angela Webb has given me hope and empowerment as I pray that others also relate to the various elements to the film in regards to racism, domestic violence, etc.

The purpose for this film is to create dialogue on issues that impact our families, communities, and society as a whole within Native communities and beyond. So far, the film is doing what it’s supposed to do and that is making people reflect, understand, and be empowered! I am very grateful to “Angel Angela” for creating a solid SPRING 2 0 1 4

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PROFILE

Julius Badoni (Navajo), detail of Radmilla Cody, 2014, oil on panel. Image courtesy of the artist.

Wala, Wala.” So, when I stumbled on my words in Diné, she would get on my case and tell me in Diné, “I don’t ever want to hear you saying ‘Wala, Wala, Wala!’” So, I see it as my identity, shield, healing, and protection.

you seen the term affect nihi’diné, the young, your contemporaries, and the elders?

The Diné language plays a significant role in my work as a musician. My uncle Herman Cody and I have been collaborating for the past 13 years musically because we believe in the importance of our Diné language and preserving it. When you hear the youth singing in Diné, it lifts your spirits because of the interest that is in place and the strong connection to their identity. The Diné language for me is not going anywhere. It will always be a part of my life and my music.

The term Naahiłii came about during a time in my life when I felt there had to be a more empowering term to use to describe African-Americans. The old term “zhinni” or “Nakai Lizhinni” over time became a demeaning and derogatory term. I sat down with a hataalii (Native practitioner) and asked him what name we could come up with to better describe African-Americans, so that we empower versus disempower our younger generations of Diné and Black heritages. He shared with me the term Nahilli or Naahiłii. I then shared the new term with an educator from Shiprock, New Mexico, and she researched the term and provided the following information and definition to me:

Why was it important for you to search out a way to name all of your ancestors in Diné Bizaad—and pursue discovery of the term Naahiłii? What has the use of that term meant for you personally? And how have

Na (Naa): those who have come from across.

Hił (slash in the L): dark, calm, have overcome, and we have come to like.

Ii: Oneness.

What role has your language fluency played in your work as a musician?

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RADMILLA CODY

As I repeated this new term Naahiłii, I begin to feel empowered. This is how I knew this was a term that created balance and harmony.

You always remind nihi’diné about the importance of K’é (Kinship), keeping that language and that philosophy at the center of your work and personal relations. Why is that so important to you?

My grandmother Dorothy always emphasized the importance of K’é as it is the foundation of who we are as a Diné society. K’é is understanding who you are and your connection to your immediate family, relatives, community, sacred elements, all life forms, and the Diné Nation as a whole. As a Diné Nation we are communal. We are taught that all that we do and say will affect all that we coexist with in this world.

Our Diné language is the foundation of our identity as Diné. It is our source of communication with the Holy People as well as our protection. Why is it important to me?

Because it is who I am as a Diné woman, my way of life, and what I continue to draw strength from everyday.

You won Miss Navajo Nation 15 years ago—a lot has happened since. There are many ways to embody a certain idea of a good woman, in Navajo and in the black community; I see you carrying this on with your work, especially with your constant attention to the youth (I’m thinking of your recent appearance at the Little Miss Southwestern Navajo pageant and your work in the schools). Miss Navajo is a sort of diplomat, ambassador, and ideal woman.

Looking back what would you tell yourself, knowing what you know now, about this title and the role?

Looking back at my Miss Navajo Ambassadorship, I would say that it definitely opened doors of opportunity for me, yet in the process life allowed for me to grow, heal, and become a better person than I was before. Being Miss Navajo Nation was a childhood dream that became a reality, but thereafter my reality was life and what I had to overcome before, during, and after my reign as Miss Navajo Nation. I appreciate the role and the title of Miss Navajo Nation because I feel it allows the person to fully practice and reiterate the importance of K’é and the philosophy of the Diné way of life.

How do you see yourself carrying on that role in the future? What expectations and aspirations have you set for yourself, in relationship to this legacy, as Miss Navajo Nation?

My role was set as a Diné woman the moment I came into

this world, and more so when I embraced womanhood.

The title of Miss Navajo Nation enhanced that role in a public way. My expectations and aspirations that I have set for myself in regards to the relationship to this legacy is to continue to excel and give back to the Diné people however I can. Whatever I accomplish in my life, the Diné people are and will always be a part of that accomplishment. This all goes back to the teaching of K’é, which plays a key role in my legacy as a former Miss Navajo Nation.

What do you see the title, the role, of Miss Navajo,

We as Indigenous people need to look into our traditional lifeways and teachings to guide us through the effects of colonization which is the root cause of many of our social ills. bringing to nihi’diné? Why is it such an emotionally, politically, and culturally strong position?

The role of Miss Navajo Nation is very significant and meaningful because of its connection to our deity Changing Woman and White Shell Woman. The Diné society is matrilineal, so the women are to be held in high esteem and respected as such. Unfortunately, much of that has changed due to western and patriarchal influences.

Despite such influences, Diné women remain strong and continue to make their presence evident within our society through their education, cultural, social, political, and environmental movements. Woman in the Diné culture are the essence of life and are at a place where they are reviving that in every aspect, i.e. professionally, family, politically, etc. The position of Miss Navajo Nation I believe helps to reinforce all that we have forgotten or neglected about our Diné women and her role within our Diné society.

Final words. Anything I didn’t ask that you want to say?

We as Indigenous people need to look into our traditional life ways and teachings to guide us through the effects of colonization, which is the root cause of many of our social ills. We must continue to rebuild our relationships with each other and with the earth, for it was this strong sense of kinship that has helped us to endure and persevere. We are a strong people in mind and body, natural critical thinkers, and we must never forget that.

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PROFILE

Mohawk Quiltmaker

Carla Hemlock

I

T STARTED AS A WAY OF GIFTING—gifting of something within herself and gifting out of love for her family and her people. These early handmade clothes and blankets, made for the new life born into the Haudenosaunee, began Carla Hemlock’s work with cloth, ribbons, and beads. Today she chooses to address stories that are alive, and in doing so, they become a dialogue with the world about what it is—in blood, in history, in a life lived—to be Mohawk. This gifting of herself, this gifting of her love, makes what she does more than a simple term like “art” could ever define.

Coming from a line of craftswomen, Carla Hemlock has chosen to, in her words, “play.” Play until a new and innovative form of self-expression has become real, beyond the function or utilitarian purpose of the original idea. And in the Native world, in her Mohawk world, there is room for what many call innovation. In truth, there has always been room, as it is the very lifeblood of Native survival.

Hemlock tells us her stories of being Mohawk and being on the front lines of issues that affect the wellbeing of not just her people but humanity. These stories are the leading edge of a contemporary world. It is the men of her Haudenosaunee people who built, out of steel and iron, one of our modern world’s most important cities. It is the use of racially charged names in modern America’s most followed sport and in the United States’ national capitol. And it is the continued ignorance and rejection by the nation around the Haudenosaunee to recognize, at its heart, a people who were here millennia before the first white man set foot upon these shores.

What is your tribal affiliation? Clan? Indian Name?

I am Mohawk of the Bear Clan. My name is Konwenni, which was given to me by my great-grandmother. My mother went to her grandmother to get my name, as I have gone to my grandmother to name all of my children. Unlike many in my generation, my children only have Mohawk names; they don’t have English names. My home is in Kahnawake, Mohawk Territory, located outside of Montreal. I am not Canadian. I am not American. I am Mohawk.

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Interview by Teri Greeves When and how did you start working with cloth?

What other media do you incorporate into your work? How long does it take to make a piece?

As a child I was always around the women in our family, doing some sort of handwork. My mom and ladies in our family made things, but when you grow up with it, it doesn’t seem like work; you just do it. I don’t really consider it “art.” It’s just something that you do. You grow up with it, and it’s a part of you.

I really started to apply myself to this work in my early 20s. I made blankets and clothes for my children and family. My kids were always growing out of their ribbon shirts, so I was always making them new ones. I ended

When you grow up with it, it doesn’t seem like work; you just do it. up doing quilts, because I went to so many baby showers.

You are forever going to baby showers! The ladies like to make something handmade for the baby. I preferred to bring handmade gifts, and quilts were something I wanted to try.

I’ve started using ribbons in my work pretty recently.

Because I was making so many ribbon shirts through the years, I have tons of ribbons. I decided to start incorporating them into the quilts. Using beadwork in my pieces came about as a complete accident. My nephew had a baby, and I made [the baby] a bear quilt.

When I finished it, I left it on my table and there was a pen under it that left an ink spot. In the morning, when I saw the ink, I knew I had to fix it, so I ended up putting beadwork over the spot to hide it. When I brought it to the baby shower and all the ladies saw it, they were, “Wow! You put beadwork on a quilt!”

I find that if a subject in a piece is going to work for me, it’s going to come out fast. No mistakes; it will roll out. If there are lots of mistakes or it’s blocked or I start

CARLA HEMLOCK

Carla Hemlock and her award-winning Bear Quilt at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market, Phoenix, AZ, 2008.

Photo: Babe Hemlock (Mohawk).

ripping out stitches, then I put it away. I won’t force it.

When I start on a quilt, it’s been in my head for a while.

I’ll think about it for a long time; it’s going to whirl around, and when I finally apply myself to do it, it will take me close to a year to complete. Everything I do, I do by hand if I want to do it right.

Is there a history among the women of your people to make this kind of work?

The ladies here are known for the raised beadwork. We are really close to our sister community, Akwesasne.

They are the basket makers and quilters. My community is known for their beadwork, and that beadwork goes back to the tourist trade. By the late 1890s, they were flooding state fairs, world fairs, and the like—sending it out by the boatloads. The ladies made these things from early on, and it still continues to this day, but it’s not as significant or family sustaining as it used to be. The ladies on my maternal side were part of that trade. They were known for doing rose purses but also whimsies. It was

a cottage industry. One aunt would cut them out and have them stacked in boxes and then would send them to another sister who would do the beadwork and then on to another sister to finish them. It was almost like a little assembly line where they would work from their homes and be known for certain types of work.

How does your tribal identity inform your work and how do you relate that to the non-Indian world?

I’m Mohawk, and I’m a traditional person. I follow the ceremonial calendar. We all follow the moon, which gives us the cycles of our ceremonies. I’ve always been active in our community and with the issues that face us.

You can’t avoid these issues; they are always front and center, and they are reflected in my work. I don’t think about the audience for my work; I think of the issue. I feel like I want to have a dialogue with the pieces I make.

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PROFILE

Redskins, 2013, quilt with ribbons. Photo: Peter B. Jones (Onondaga).

don’t see that in the other people’s quilts. And quilts are really non-threatening; they are comforting. They say, “My grandma made these things.” It makes them open to the dialogue I want to have, even if the story I want to talk about is difficult.

With the Treaty Cloth Shirt, no one knew what Annuity Cloth was.1 It was like a foreign language to them, and the piece educated them on what it was. For the Tribute to the Mohawk Ironworkers quilt, I was giving a profile to the men in our community who had worked on high steel.

The piece I am bringing to the show at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, this weekend is about the Washington Redskins. And I’m sure it will start an interesting dialogue. When I showed it to my sister, she just had a smile on her face. She said, “They’re going to throw you out of there!” My response was, “Hey, we are going to have this dialogue.”

For me, those stories are who we are. It’s of us; it is in us.

How did you move from making functional work to what could loosely be termed “art ”?

I started exploring different methods of making quilts early on. They started to evolve. I wanted to try something different, to play with the form, and not just make something solely functional.

At the time, around 2000, I was still mainly gifting them, but I was trying these new things and bringing them to local powwows.

People liked what I was doing. But it was the 2004 opening of the National Museum of American Indians that really pushed me.

NMAI brought me and my husband, Babe, in with 35 other artists to set up for a whole week. We just wanted to see if people liked our work. And it was the people we met and their responses to our work—those contacts set us on a new path.

Today, NMAI owns two of my pieces and one of my husband’s pieces in their permanent collection.

1. Annuity cloth is cloth provided to the Haudenosaunee Nations by the United States Federal Government every year, as guaranteed by treaties.

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CARLA HEMLOCK

Treaty Cloth Shirt, 2012, cotton treaty cloth, broadcloth appliqué, glass beads, quahog shell wampum, silk ribbon, stencil, cotton thread, dimensions variable, National Museum of the American Indian. ABOVE LEFT: back with text from the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua. ABOVE RIGHT: front. LOWER RIGHT: collar and yoke with beadwork, wampum, and ribbon. BELOW: detail of sleeve with beaded lined appliqué with linked human figures from wampum belt designs. All photos: Greg Horn.

1794 TREATY OF CANANDAIGUA ARTICLE 1 PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP are hereby firmly established and shall be perpetual between the United States and the Six Nations.

ARTICLE 2-3-4 The United States acknowledges the lands that belong to the Six Nations— Seneca, Oneida, Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga and Tuscarora, and agree to never claim or disturb them.

ARTICLE 7 Note: Annual payment of annuity goods —treaty cloth shall be provided to bind this Treaty.

Signed in New York Nov 11, 1794

TREATY CLOTH SHIRT

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Haudenosaunee Passport, cloth with appliqué and beadwork, passport.

Image courtesy of the artist and Henriette Pleiger.

How do you decide upon a story for a piece?

I choose stories from my everyday life—what is happening to me and my family and my Haudenosaunee community. It is easy because these are things that are happening to us right now.

My son traveled to Bolivia with two other men from Kahnawake in 2010 for an environmental conference.

They had no problems traveling to Bolivia on the Haudenosaunee passport.

When they tried to come home, they were detained in El Salvador for close

to a month. Both Canada and the United States refused to allow them to come home unless they signed for either Canadian or American documentation. After one month, the United States accepted them back through Miami [Florida] on our own passports.

That same year, the Iroquois lacrosse team was preparing to travel to the UK for the World Lacrosse Championship. At the last minute the UK denied them entry into their country. They were told that they needed an American or Canadian passport. The team refused to travel on anything other than our own

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documentation.

With my son’s experience of not being able to return to the United States from El Salvador with his Haudenosaunee passport and then our lacrosse team being unable to enter the United Kingdom and not being able to participate in the World Championships all because our passports wouldn’t be recognized, I knew I had to raise sovereignty issues around our status. This is why I made the Haudenosaunee Passport quilt.

Continuing the Legacy is the first collaboration that I did with my husband Babe. After the incidents with our son and then the Iroquois

CARLA HEMLOCK

National Lacrosse team being challenged to travel on our own documentation, we started to toss around ideas on how to bring this issue to light. We finally settled on a cradleboard. Babe wanted to do a timeline on our game of lacrosse, starting from the fire within the Longhouse, which represents our internal fire, and how the game has been handed down through the generations. He ends it with the game being handed down to the young men today. Their travel bags have the stickers of all of the countries that have accepted our passports, passports that say “Haudenosaunee.”

These men are continuing the legacy of our game and travel the world competing as Iroquois Nationals.

I chose to combine our traditional style of Mohawk raised beadwork for the upper portion of the wrap to honor our old ways. Under that, I incorporated a contemporary style of beading, blending the past with the present.

This cradleboard generated much discussion on the game itself as well as the Haudenosaunee people who have chosen to travel on our own passports.

Do you have a piece you are most pleased with?

I’m really pleased with Tribute to the Mohawk Ironworkers.2 I was so happy about how it came out, and I had never done something like that before. I had never done the men in beads, and I had no clue what I was doing. I was just playing and playing, but I wasn’t making mistakes, and I kept working.

Carla’s husband Donald “Babe” Hemlock (Mohawk), with their collaboration cradleboard, Continuing the Legacy, 2013, pine, white ash, maple, acrylic paint, beads, thread, cotton, and wool cloth, 28 x 17 x 11 in. Photo: Stephen Lang.

When I finished, I showed it to my father and father-in-law who were ironworkers. When I saw their reaction, I knew I had made something. My community’s reaction was also so positive. Many people from our community wanted a photo of the quilt, and our local bank published it in a calendar so that it was accessible for everyone.

It said so much about what our men go through in this trade. We have lost so many men to it, and I don’t know—without them working in high steel—I don’t know where our community would be today.

Do you have any future pieces you would like to talk about?

The Heard Museum Fair in Phoenix [Arizona] is my next show. There is

an idea I’ve been throwing around, but I have to figure out how I will do it. It’s an important issue that I want to have a dialogue about: fracking.

For Native people, we turn on the news, we watch the Internet stories, and for us, it is front and center.

Our people are standing on the front lines—up against paramilitary forces.

It’s such a tough issue, and I want people to talk about it.

We need to realize that this type of gas extraction doesn’t just affect Native American people or their communities—it affects everyone.

They think they can hide from it or ignore it, but they can’t. And it ends up putting our people in such a tough place, literally on the front lines.

2. See cover image.

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PROFILE

Tlingit-Nisga’a Photography & Interdisciplinary Artist

Da-ka-xeen Mehner

By Anna Hoover There was always an intention and purpose with work made by Native peoples; that’s where the power of the work lies, and the vehicle for getting that intention out can be anything.

—Da-ka-xeen Mehner

Inspiration and Influence

I

NTERGENERATIONAL CONNECTIONS and honest self-reflection resonate in the multimedia work of Da-ka-xeen Mehner.1 Representing himself in media as diverse as cast concrete masks, human-sized welded raw steel daggers, and Photoshop creations, Mehner employs self-portraiture to explore themes of governmentprescribed quantification of Native-ness. Through programs such as Certificate of Indian Blood (CIB) cards and the regulation of natural resources being tied to blood quantum, issues of imposed governance structures threaten the future of Native subsistence rights in Alaska. Because of this, people are painfully aware of how Native they are, at times discriminating within home communities, equating blood quantum to belonging.

I consider myself to be a contemporary Alaska Native artist that is inspired by traditional material culture. But that is just one element of the work. Inspiration comes from everywhere: historical works, popular culture, old cars, rusting things I find in the woods, and talking with other artists.

Other active Native artists James Luna, Nicholas Galanin, Erica Lord, and Wendy Red Star also employ self-portraiture as a catalyst for social commentary and observation about their modern Native experiences. In addition to these artists, Mehner credits his uncle Larry McNeil as a great influence on his development as an artist: “I have early memories of visiting Uncle Larry; he always had cool things and gadgets.” Boise State University professor, artist, photographer, and scholar Larry McNeil is best known for his satirical and witty Photoshop creations.

Mehner still uses the classic camera Pressman 4X5 gifted to him by his uncle back when he was a student at Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA).

A skilled craftsman long before he became a professional artist, Da-ka (as his friends and associates refer to him) 1. “Da-ka-xeen Mehner” is pronounced “Day-kah-heen Mayner.”

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Image courtesy of the artist.

employs his knowledge of materials such as raw and diamond-plated steel and cast cement in large-scale works, both wall-mounted and free-standing. Themes vary widely in this 21st-century Native’s work, including commentary about international warring nations, local Alaskan environmental degradation, and finding exceptional daily strength in cultural values.

Intergenerational shame of cultural ancestry is one result of decades of blatant racism experienced by colonized peoples. Symptoms of this cycle hinder some community members from passing on traditions such as language and ceremony. As young people, Da-ka and his generation were not particularly encouraged to learn their Native languages and cultural practices. The present generation

DA-KA-XEEN MEHNER

Da-ka-xeen, The Thlinget Artist, 2007, digital photograph. Image courtesy of the artist.

of artists and visionaries has been set up with a remarkable Indigenous strategy: the brave souls who stood before to speak out expressively for our peoples’ cultural beliefs and worldviews were destined examples for the future. Native artists like Allan Houser, George Morrison, Bob Haozous, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Kay WalkingStick, and many more paved the way through eloquent visual descriptions; proving to public audiences Native people were still around and had something to share.

We are coming into a time of cultural renaissance; students in the classroom introduce themselves in their own language, and more and more are joining Native dance groups. A general sense of pride for their Alaska Native culture allows students to find value and importance in it.

“There was a feeling of victimization and a general sense of loss, back when I was a student at IAIA. It seems like today we are more able to embrace what we have, rather than mourning what we’ve lost.”

Higher Education

Cultural identity is one of the many challenging topics Mehner faces in his work. At times, he takes advantage of an archival black and white photo with his Tlingit namesake pictured, acting out a ceremony. The artist is pictured, equipped with his modern medicine maker (film camera) as compared to the animal bone in his ancestor’s hand; the artist holds a similar energy and facial expression, seemingly assessing his patient’s situation and needs. Mehner challenges the viewer to relate his 21st-century Tlingit name and role to that of his forebear, and perhaps to compare the contemporary societal role of the artist with the before-defined role of object maker, healer, seer, and medicine man.

Mehner’s early work, from the 1990s while he was a student at IAIA in Santa Fe, examined the theme of identity.

Growing up in high school, I would tell people ‘I’m Alaska Native,’ but never really thought about what it meant to be a Native person. I grew up outside of a cultural center, not speaking my Native language, though Native food was a main cultural practice along with art, and art is culture.

Trying to think about this idea of being an artist who is Native, when earlier I was trying to play that down and make that less of a forefront in the work, trying to lose that lens that people look through. After coming back to Alaska, I realized how ridiculous this was, and that I needed to define myself as an artist.

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Finding My Song, 2012, installation with steel sculptures, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

Keet, Da-ka watched his son beat his first drum for days, until, with great enthusiasm, he finally punched through the skin surface. This is the inspiration for Da-ka’s 2012 installation Finding My Song. Eighteen hand drums, each hand-molded with the artist’s face emerging from the skin surface, further enunciate with a video projection. They seem to randomly alternate while a singing Da-ka is seen on the surfaces of the drums; his voice resonating through the gallery. A new dimension of life comes out when incorporating moving images with sculptural objects.

The sense of walking through a miniaturized village setting is created with this installation, with a southeastern Alaskan-style house-front just large enough for viewers to walk through. A powerful image of the artist, this time, eyes closed, silent, holding a large yellow brick of soap in front of his mouth, contrasts with an action shot of a dance celebration well under way.

Coast. Dance groups perform almost nonstop for three days in multiple venues. In 2010 I brought my new son to his first Celebration. Just a year-and-a-half old, he fell in love with song, dance, and drumming. He carried his drum with him everywhere and eventually broke though the drum skin playing continually, and I began thinking about my own connection to songs and language. I don’t speak Tlingit, but I do know a few words and phrases that we use in our family on a daily basis. This brought me to the Finding My Song body of work, an installation that features video projection of me singing one of our clan song projected onto a drum with my face coming out of the skin. It’s a work that is about learning our songs to pass along to my son.

When congratulated on the beauty and power of this installation, Da-ka responded he “felt like he came across something and was happy to share that with everybody.”

This type of intergenerational event brings together old and young under one roof and encourages connection to one another, to ancestral composers, and the forces that inspire us. Gatherings like Celebration and the Alaska Federation of Natives are integral to our future as Native people. We can gain equal knowledge and wisdom from listening to and observing our youth and our elders.

Every two years Sealaska Heritage Institute hosts an event called Celebration in Juneau that brings together dance groups and artists from around Alaska and along the Northwest

I’m not musical at all; I can’t keep a beat. I would dance hard so people wouldn’t notice I wasn’t singing. I took charge of learning the work for my son.

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DA-KA-XEEN MEHNER

Finding My Song, 2012, installation with sculpted hand drums, hide, wood, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

Contemporary Existence

otherwise natural scenery.

Living in the woods on the edge of the Arctic is not for the faint of heart. Cutting trees for firewood, growing a garden, and dipnetting for salmon in the summer provide Da-kaxeen with a year-round physical connection to the land, warmed and nourished by its bounty.

Native artists the world over act on impulses to heighten awareness of both threats to natural resources and generational ways of living sustainably. In Mehner’s My Right-of-Way series, a natural landscape is juxtaposed in geometric pattern, with inlaid images of environmental destruction. He admits the role social media tools such as Facebook play as his primary means for Native art research; through these tools Da-ka gains much inspiration from peers producing work today.

You have to pay attention, be in tune with the weather, know when animals and fish are moving. You can’t ignore the environment here, and I like that feeling—knowing I am a small part of this greater place.

My Right-of-Way is a series inspired by the artist’s great respect for his surroundings and acknowledgment of the responsibility that comes along with subsistence living.

Works with titles like Winter and Summer pay homage to the distinct seasons of the subarctic and the lessons learned and challenges faced. Winter consists of a stark white snowscape juxtaposed with black oil-barrels that flank the center image of an oil pipeline. Pipeline Cuts Through the Landscape is another, with the artist’s hands holding copper Tlingit daggers along the base of the image. It speaks of the tension created by an oil pipeline that blatantly occupies the

Raising a family as well as nurturing the next generation of Alaskan artists graduating in the Native arts field, Da-ka says: I think it’s very important that we as Native people take leadership positions in education—going through the process and becoming educators ourselves. I think we can affect change from within the system.

Mehner further follows in his uncle Larry McNeil’s footsteps, as a Professor of Art and Director of the Native Art Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF).

This is one of the few programs in the country where

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Finding My Song, 2012, installation with video projections and steel sculptures, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.

students can earn a BFA or MFA in Native Art. Founded by Iñupiaq artist and professor Ron Senungetuk in 1965, the university has an art department that is used as a tool toward economic development in rural communities. In the 1980s the program was recognized for its successes and became a degree-granting program. A visiting artist program brings prominent Alaska Native Artists to teach and share their expertise in the classroom. In 2012, the Native Arts Center expanded the program, partnering with the College of Rural and Community Development to provide workshops on UAF rural campuses around the state.

Joel Isaak (Kenaitze), a 2012 graduate of the Native Arts BFA Program, reflects on his time at UAF: I enjoyed studying with Da-ka. He has a wonderful ability to provide positive critical feedback that as a student made me want to push myself further. Da-ka develops a learning environment in the studio, always a place to go to exchange ideas, process, and have good discussion. He is great at keeping students informed about opportunities for grants, scholarships, fellowships, and much more. Da-ka is approachable and gave me good advice as well as other artists to talk to as I looked at graduate schools.

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Isaak, also interested in teaching in the future, is in the process of applying to some of the top MFA programs in the country, including Maryland Institute College of Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, Alfred University, and Virginia Commonwealth University. He looks forward to exploring new materials and observing developments and changes in his artistic voice as he spends time in new environments.

Through his position at the university, Da-ka has been integral not only in assisting young artists to situate themselves within the national arts scene, but also in recognizing strides made here in the Alaskan community.

He was an active member in planning for the first ever Alaska Native Studies Conference held last year in Anchorage and slated for Juneau in 2014. Included last year was an all-day symposium at the Anchorage Museum dedicated to Alaska Native art. A roundtable of the founding generation of contemporary Native artists was one of many highlights during the three-day gathering.

The public acknowledgment of this generation of trailblazers and the intellectual space that is a result of their decades of hard work are integral for both Native and non-

DA-KA-XEEN MEHNER

Native art appreciators. Conceptual work like Mehner’s is essential as we look to a future facing challenges together.

There is suggestion of a cultural renaissance happening in Alaska; with art, language, and dance all having resurgences, especially with young people. Not-for-profit organizations and foundations provide broad economic umbrellas for Native social agency:

ABOVE: Evolution, 2006, digital photograph.

BELOW: Detail of Weapons of Mass Defense, 2007–2012, installation with steel daggers, concrete. Both images courtesy of the artist.

The Rasmuson Foundation here in Alaska is a huge supporter of arts and culture. They provide grants, fellowships, and residencies for artists. I think every practicing artist I know in Alaska has benefited from one of their programs. They are definitely a contributing factor to the work coming out of Alaska right now. It is support like this that gives me an opportunity to share my vision with others. Putting on large solo exhibitions is a considerable investment of time and money, and without the generous support of organizations like the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, the Rasmuson Foundation, and the Alaska Native Arts Foundation, I don’t think my work would have made it out of Alaska.

A recipient of the 2014 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist Fellowship, Da-ka intends to invest toward his upcoming solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art (MoCNA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in August 2014. Keep an eye out for the next visual manifestation by Da-ka-xeen Mehner, one of Alaska’s top active visionary voices.

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Allan Houser Reflections on My Grandfather

By Emily A. Haozous, PhD, RN

A

CERTAIN GROUP OF PEOPLE who, when learning I am Allan Houser’s granddaughter, will ask me with a hungry gleam in their eyes whether I am also an artist. “No,” I reply. “I was a musician, but now I am a nurse.” They always look a little disappointed and then find a reason to talk to someone else—someone more interesting, I suppose. They never ask about the nights we used to stay up late playing music in our living room while the fire roared in the fireplace or how I used to sit in his lap and watch him sketch. Some will reminisce about those few times late in his life when we used to play blues at parties, my uncle Phillip on guitar, friends filling in the rhythm section, Grandpa on harmonica (or as he called it, blues harp), and me on saxophone.

But most will find an excuse to move on, looking for another family member with whom they can discuss collecting, building their assets, and appreciating the massive oeuvre of Allan Houser.

Not long ago friends visited from out of town—friends who were relatively new to the Southwest and inexperienced in the world of American Indian arts. As part of our brief tour of Santa Fe, New Mexico, I first shared a meal with my friends at one of my favorite downtown restaurants, and then we visited the Allan Houser Gallery on Lincoln Avenue. In that little space, I could show them my grandfather’s life’s work, spanning a career of almost 60 years. During our visit, three acrylic paintings from the 1970s hung on the wall, released from our family archives for sale during Santa Fe Indian Market. It was saddening to know that these pieces were to be sold; original Allan Houser paintings are unusual and rare on the open market. And these three pieces were particularly special. It was a shame that they had to go into someone’s private collection and couldn’t be in a museum or part of our tribal collection, so that the works could be studied and appreciated by students of art for many generations. Instead they will eventually hang

Lee Marmon (Laguna Pueblo), Allan Houser in His Studio, 1991, photograph. Image © Allan Houser, Inc.

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in someone’s living room or study for appreciation by one family and their guests, admired over their limited lifespan, and hopefully not sit in storage, or end up ruined by the elements, faded by sun and smoke and dust. Not that I begrudge the private collectors, but as a person who cannot afford to own one of my own grandfather’s pieces of artwork, I am among those socioeconomic mortals who can only appreciate those pieces when they decorate the walls of a gallery or museum.

I can only see the true breadth of my own grandfather’s work when I read one of the two books written about him and run my hands over the glossy pages of the works reproduced in miniature. Most of his tempera and gouache paintings I’ve never seen in person, as those were made early in his career and now hang in private collections, behind locked doors.

My friends and I walked through the gallery, discussing the content and range of my grandfather’s art. On one pedestal stood Mountain Spirit Dancer, in full realist form, appearing as though the dancers do in ceremony in those traditional poses that last for a brief second but captured in bronze as though frozen in time. The next pedestal had the same iconography but abstract, yet the motion and expression of the subject was still present. On the wall, a sketch from much earlier in his career was that image and pose. We talked about how my grandfather worked from his memory, bringing to life those dancers. The Houser Gallery employee and my friends speculated why he focused on the Mountain Spirit Dancer, and I remind them that this is a living tradition, that my grandfather was a Chiricahua Apache, and this is part of who he was. That he revisited the Mountain Spirit Dancer in his art wasn’t because he was haunted by the image or because he was working it out as an artistic subject, but because it was part of his life throughout his lifespan as an Apache. He created Mountain Spirit Dancers the way Renaissance artists painted the saints; the way Latino artists lovingly depict the Virgin Mary, as a figure of spiritual gravitas, prayer, and graceful artistic poetry.

We discussed his range and styles. My grandfather never put himself in a box, instead taking himself where his inspiration drove him. When he died, he had art books by his easy chair, so he could easily reference the art that inspired him, the artwork of Henry Moore, Jean Arp, and Isamu Noguchi.

He was known for a particular style of sculpture, but when one looks at his oeuvre, it is remarkable that he had mastered sculpture as a medium, approaching his subjects to create what he wanted to create, and not being constrained by a particular artistic style. He sculpted to answer a question. When I look at his work, there are times when I see that he was solving a puzzle, answering the question, “How will I be able to make that thing that I see out of this object?” Sometimes I see that he was driven by the form, answering the question, “There is a thing of beauty driving me, and I need to bring it into being in all its incarnations.” Other times, I see that he was responding to a drive to bring into being an abstract thought, “How can I represent with a sculpture what I see in nature?” His work has humor, when he answers his questions, “How can I create this

Emily and the bronze statue, Allan Houser Haozous: 1914-1994, sculpted by Philip Mangas Haozous (Chiricahua Apache) in 2001, Allan Houser Gallery, 125 Lincoln Avenue, Santa Fe. Photo: A. Meredith.

thing I am thinking of, but do it in the style of that artist?”

In the blues form, musicians will trade solos in a call and response, picking up melodic lines from the previous solo and turning it into a new melody, back and forth through the chord changes in the I-IV-V and then back to I, back to the tonal home again when they resume the melodic foundation of the tune. When that beautiful musical chemistry happens between musicians during the exchange of solos, there is a lighthearted joy woven through the collective solo as the music speaks its own language. My grandfather’s art traded solos in this way with the artists with whom he jammed in his blues call and response, trading the thematic melodies with Rodin, Moore, Calder, Lipchitz, and Arp. As children, we all used to sit in the living room at Grandma and Grandpa’s house and watch TV. They were the only people we knew who had cable TV, and in my house idle television watching was strictly forbidden, so this was a special treat.

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where the people attending are the friends and family of the artists, people who really love the artist and want to see that person succeed, people who really love the art and will overlook their interpretation of burnt sienna and will be forgiving in their overuse of triangles, because they are there for the people, and therefore, they are there for the art. The second best openings are the ones for the deceased artist, when their mastery is already established and the jealousy is moot.

In the last few weeks before my grandfather died, I was told to sit with him and be his right hand for a short time, to help my grandmother, and to be a general companion. I had no idea what I was doing. I showed up, tried to make small talk, and watched hours and hours of CNN. Visitors would come, I would bring them a Pepsi, and visitors would leave. I was not an ideal companion. At that time, my grandfather spent a lot of time sitting in his easy chair, watching the birds visiting the feeders strategically placed just outside the living room window.

Emily and her sons at the Allan Houser Gallery. Photo: A. Meredith.

brother, my uncle, and my grandfather, and we were having a terrific time talking at the TV. My uncle and brother were taking turns critiquing the program, criticizing the acting, the writing, and the costumes. It was an exercise in finding fault, and it was hysterically funny. My grandfather sat in silence in his big easy chair until he had had enough, when he just yelled, “Can’t you just watch the show?” We all shut up. When Grandpa yelled at you, you felt that burning shame for days. I immediately felt terrible for not allowing Grandpa to relax and enjoy his program.

It was only later that I appreciated him for teaching me that being a critic can detract from the simple pleasures of life.

As an adult I have purposely not studied art. I never took an art history

course, and I try not to surround myself with art critics. When inexperienced people deconstruct art, that pretension can sour the appreciation for art and remove all the joy. I learned from my grandfather that underneath any art form, be it the visual arts, music, or the performance arts, at some level one should relax and relish in the simply beauty or joy of the work. There should be balance, and critique has its place, but with all but the worst of the arts comes a joy of creation.

I have never enjoyed attending gallery openings, because they tend to be populated with certain groups of people: the critics, the collectors, and the social climbers. The best gallery openings are the small openings for the new artists,

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One afternoon, a van pulled up driven by one of the men from the foundry. They had a sculpture they needed him to proof before it could have his name etched to the base as an official “Allan Houser” sculpture. At this point, he wasn’t feeling well enough to leave the house, and the sculpture was too heavy to bring inside, so he asked me to go outside and proof the sculpture for him. I panicked.

“What?” I remember squeaking, “How do I do that? What do I look for?”

This had been a summer of many new experiences, for most of which I was poorly trained. Giving the final approval on a sculpture created by the master was definitely way outside my skill set.

“Look at the sculpture,” he told me.

“Make sure the patina is consistent throughout the entire piece. Make sure there aren’t any scratches or dents or strange lines that shouldn’t be there.

Run your hands over the piece and feel for anything that might be out of place.

Feel the face, and make sure that nothing

snags on your hands. Take your fingers and feel the eyes and the mouth and make sure they’ve finished the details on those parts, so it feels right.”

And he sent me outside. My hands were his eyes, feeling the piece to give that final approval. The foundry man followed me, and he nudged the piece here and there to help me to run my hands over the entire sculpture, as though it were my own child, and I were giving it a bath; as though it were a lover, and I was caressing her gently. I went over the piece, asking for some sort of divine intervention to help me see what it was that he saw, feel what he felt when he critiqued his own work before sending it out into the market, to become him for those few short minutes before I decided that one piece was up to his standards, and we could quit this charade and send the worker back to the foundry.

A few days after he died, a reporter from a major national magazine called me at my home to ask me some questions about my grandfather for their profile on his life and death. I wasn’t sure what she wanted, but whatever I was telling her wasn’t print-worthy, and I could tell. She asked me leading questions about him, but I couldn’t use the sound bites that everyone had already said about this man, that he was the “Indian Michelangelo” and “The Greatest 20thCentury Modernist Artist.” Instead, I just cried. When she asked me what I wanted him to be known for, I told her, “He was the best grandfather a person could ask for.” And that is who he was, to me. Of course, that never made it to print.

On August 22, 2014, we will observe what would have been his 100th birthday. Understanding his birth can only be in context to who he was in his family and tribe. On March 7, 1914, the Chiricahua Apaches were released from a grueling 28 years of imprisonment as prisoners of war with the U.S. government. The newly released Fort Sill Apaches were given land allotments in Apache, Oklahoma, just a stone’s throw from Fort Sill, where they had been

held during part of their captivity. Allan Capron Haozous was the first Apache child born free to the tribe following release. He was raised at what the family still calls “the farm” near Apache, in a little house filled with family. I had the good fortune of visiting the farm in the fall of 2013 to see this home where my grandfather spent his youth. I had grown up hearing stories of my dad playing in the river with the Comanche kids who lived nearby; hearing stories of my Grandpa playing harmonica to the cows in the pasture and walking to the bus to ride to the public Boone School, where he would meet the boy who would become his lifelong friend and doctor, and who would eventually deliver the information that would signal the end of his life, that he had cancer. I heard from my grandfather about how his father wanted him to stay and be a farmer, but my grandfather wanted to be an artist, and when the opportunity to come to Santa Fe and study with the Dorothy Dunn Studio arose, he went against his father’s wishes and left Oklahoma.

Whether he came to New Mexico as an Apache, returning to our homeland is only speculation. We do know he loved New Mexico and loved the southwest.

He also loved Oklahoma. There is a reddish tint to the soil in Oklahoma, you can see it, and smell the richness of the soil as you leave the Texas Panhandle and drive into Oklahoma on your way to Apache from New Mexico.

In the fall before his final year, I was brought back from college to drive my grandfather and grandmother from New Mexico to Oklahoma for what would be one of his last trips back to his birthplace.

Grandpa loved to drive, but he didn’t have the stamina for that long nine-hour drive, and he wouldn’t stand for having Grandma drive. So he settled for having me join them, and he would nap in the back seat while I traded shifts with him; meanwhile, Grandma sat in the passenger seat. We stopped at his favorite restaurants, fueled up at the same gas stations at which he had always stopped, and made the same migration he had made his whole life, between Santa Fe, Los Angeles, Brigham City, and Apache, Oklahoma.

But this time, just as we reached that spot when the soil turns red and the grass turns verdant green and lush and the rolling hills of Oklahoma signaled to him that he was close to the farm, he had me pull over so he could get out. Alone, he walked down the side of the two-lane strip of road as Grandma and I watched, and then he surprised us as he reached down, picked up a handful of that soil, and held it to his face and breathed in.

He inhaled that smell of dirt and home and rich humus that we never have on the best of days in New Mexico. Then he walked back and silently got back into the car, and we moved on.

The original barn of the farm where Allan Houser was born, near Apache, Oklahoma. His father, Sam Haozous, planted the trees on the property. Image courtesy of Emily Haozous.

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The Theme of Dance in Allan Houser’s Sculptures

By Jeanine Belgodère

D

EEPLY INSPIRED by his Chiricahua heritage, Allan Houser’s sculptures are rooted in oral tradition.

They are a vibrant tribute to dance, which pervades every aspect of life in Native culture. Dance is an all-encompassing act, embracing movement, singing, and music. As the prime medium of Native American worldview and spiritual and ethical values, dance has always been a vehicle for conveying Indian cultural identity.

By making dance one of the main themes of his sculptures, Houser highlights the living memory and enduring spirit of Native Americans who, by continuing to hold their dances, overcame conquerors’ singleminded determination to annihilate them.

Houser features dance in an explicit way, either figurative or semi-abstract,

by capturing singing and dancing figures. In such sculptures as Spirit of the Buffalo, Abstract Crown Dancer II, and Ready to Dance, he illuminates the specific aspects of Apache and Pueblo cultures as well as of Native American cultures at large. In so doing, Houser went against the stereotyped images of the Indian conveyed by Hollywood movies until the 1970s and inherited from the Beadle dime novels and captivity narratives. Either portrayed as noble savages or as bloodthirsty brutes, Native peoples have long been depicted in a distorted and Manichean view. By shattering clichés as well as a homogenized image of Indians, Houser artfully recreates multi-faceted identities of Native Americans whose strength, dignity, and beauty he emphasizes. He does it partly through the theme of dance.

Western dance, especially ballet, in

Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache), Dance of the Eagle, 1986, bronze, Allan Houser Foundation.

Image © Allan Houser, Inc.

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which dancers take off to conquer the sky, tends to overlook the ground as a core element of choreography. It thus conveys a skyward-orientated spirituality. The vertical emphasis of ballet, with its floating and aerial body movements, creates an aesthetic which may be interpreted as reflecting a JudeoChristian perspective, according to which the earth is associated with dark and demonic forces whereas the sky is equated with good and the heavens.

If in the Western world, the word “dance” often conjures up images of a light and ethereal creature embodied by the ballerina; Native American dance, in contrast, evokes images of groups of dancers who, firmly rooted in the earth, assume a solid presence. It is such a resilient presence that strikes us in Houser’s sculptures dealing with the theme of dance. The figure of the dancer is never a fleeting one. Rather, tied to the earth, he is fully embodied.

Such a representation reflects in which terms Native Americans view and experience dance. Through dance, Native Americans first express their deep reverence for the earth, often referred to as Mother Earth, the lifegiving and nourishing mother who embodies the cycles of generation, destruction, and regeneration. From the regenerating earth from which everything springs, Native Americans draw sustenance, support, and identity.

For such tribes as the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona, the earth also stands for the Place of Emergence.

It is thus little wonder that Native American dance, as a vehicle of Native worldview, conveys a strong sense of being connected to Mother Earth by emphasizing weight and gravity. Dance

solemnizes the vital bond with the earth whose heartbeat is echoed by the drumbeat and the rhythm of the feet striking the ground.

Houser’s realistic Eagle and Buffalo Dancers exemplify this age-old and special relationship, which has its roots in Native philosophy. Through his portrayal of dance, Houser gives us insights into its forms and nature, eventually bringing out some aspects of Native worldview and ways of life. By featuring Buffalo and Eagle Dancers, Houser emphasizes the pivotal role of animal dances in numerous tribes whose lifestyles were traditionally based on hunting. He further hints at how the specific ritual practices of tribes evolved from their lifeways. Animal dances both reveal the closeness between humans and animals and the use of dance— central to the tribes’ wellbeing and survival—as a powerful vehicle through which Native Americans send their prayers to the spirit world of which the animals—including the eagle, deer, and buffalo—are part.

In Spirit of the Buffalo, Houser praises the Buffalo Dance, a dance for rain, prosperity, and good health, traditionally performed for hunt on Pueblo land in the early Spring and Winter. Though hunting is no longer their chief means of subsistence, Pueblo people continue to hold their ancestral ceremonials. In contrast to the less realistic Buffalo Dancer1 characterized by latticed forms, this sculpture is a realistic and kinetic depiction of a male Buffalo Dancer captured while he is engaged in motion. Houser also reproduces the ceremonial regalia of the Buffalo dancer: men’s kilts painted with the serpent, the Avanyu, which has the power to cause rain; jinglers tied around the bottom border; the distinctive realistic headdress made of animal hide and two horns with feathers attached; and a shell necklace. The Buffalo Dancer also carries the small gourd rattle, traditionally held in the

Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache), Spirit of the Buffalo, 1989, bronze, 53.5 x 28 x 23 inches, Allan Houser Foundation. Image © Allan Houser, Inc.

right hand, as well as a set of bow-andarrow in the left hand. He is wearing moccasins and jingles below the knees.

Of particular appeal is Houser’s artful rendering of the spirit of the Buffalo: indeed, in Pueblo animal dances, the identification of the dancers with the animal they embody is so bewildering that they do evoke the spirit of the Buffalo. The dancer has internalized the buffalo’s way of being, thus giving evidence of Pueblo empathy with the animals. In this sculpture, the resemblance with the buffalo’s gait is striking. Houser conjures up the heavy

tread of the buffalo dancer, sinking into the ground and rebounding off it, making artifice—behaving like a buffalo—natural. He further shows how the feet synchronize with the knee flexions and arm and hand gestures, thereby featuring the dance’s character with accuracy. Houser’s portrayal of the dancer stamping his left foot is so vivid that we can almost hear the drumbeat to which the steps are tied. Moreover, Houser succeeds in capturing the reverent mood of the dance by depicting the figure fully absorbed in prayer, inwardly focused.

1. Buffalo Dancer, 1969, welded steel, 15.5 x 13 x10 inches, collection of the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona.

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with four public days, celebrating womanhood, the young girl embodies White Painted Woman—also called Changing Woman—the Holy One from the Apaches’ creation story. White Painted Woman retains the power to cure the sick and grant longevity. The annual summer ceremony also brings relatives together and renews ties. The Gaan dance vigorously around the fire.

The motif of Abstract Crown Dancer II reminds us of the profound significance dance has in Native American culture.

The Gaan’s role is to bless the people.

Therefore, dance is invested with both a protective and healing function.

Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache), Abstract Crown Dancer II, 1991, bronze, 42 x 16 x 14 inches, Allan Houser Foundation. Image © Allan Houser, Inc.

Spirit of the Buffalo documents a specific Native dance, which though performed

by Comanche and other Plains tribes, is here featured in its Pueblo context.

In some of his sculptures, Houser portrays dance in relation to a particular background. Another example is the sculptor’s focus on the motif of the Gaan dancer, which he explores in both narrative and abstract forms.

He then draws on and brings out the

mythological background of dance.

As mountain spirits, the Gaan once lived close to the Apache people before taking residence in mountain caves. The Gaan are the Apaches’ protective spirits.

The masked dancers who embody them appear at night during events including the girl’s Na’ii’ees or Coming of Age Ceremony, the major ritual of the Apaches. During this 12-day ceremony,

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The Gaan dancers are evoked in Abstract Crown Dancer II, a baroque sculpture where the realism of the figure stands in contrast to the volumetric schematization of forms. Moreover, following the example of Henry Moore, Houser perforated the figure with holes, thereby creating a contrast between positive and negative spaces.

The central opening right at the level of the chest helps heighten the dynamism of the figure, while lending movement an emotional intensity. It also allows for a lightening of the forms. The void may also assume another symbolical meaning; we can interpret it as the vital emotional place where the energy of the warrior/dancer concentrates itself and from where it radiates. Moreover, the hollowed-out volume can be seen as the sign of something missing— the negation of an identity that was reduced to silence. In the 1880s the US Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a set of regulations for the purpose of forbidding performances of songs and dances and eradicating certain Native practices such as the Ghost Dance and the Sun Dance. The restrictions were part of the assimilationist policy that the Federal government was implementing at the time. The Sun Dance was banned in 1881. The Ghost Dance Movement faded after about 300 Minneconjou Lakota, including women and children, were massacred by the US army at Wounded Knee Hill on the

Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890. Despite the fact that most religious dances were not authorized, Native Americans continued to hold their dances in secret or adapted them to the new rules that were forced upon them. However, by putting restrictions and bans on dancing, the Federal government struck Native culture right in the heart.

Ready to Dance, a monumental sculpture, is another overt reference to dance. Though the figure is not dancing yet, we sense her whole body is already in motion; her face drawn within, completely absorbed in the solemn mood of the dance. Wrapped up in a shawl, the woman slightly opens it, thereby suggesting she is about to move and to reveal more about the dance, its forms, and rhythms.

they convey the idea of dance as a self-contained expression of harmony.

The sculpture further points out the elegant lines of female dance style and its strong sense of stability that may be a reflection of women’s role in Native American traditional communities.

Through the theme of dance, Allan Houser solemnizes the spirit of Native America while praising the universal: dance as defining Native American cultural identity; the power of dance that survived colonization; and dance as the most intense expression of life, never to be subdued. Unconquered, dance survived Wounded Knee; the

imprisonment of the Chiricahua Apaches in 1894 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma; the Long Walk of the Navajo; and the Cherokee Trail of Tears. It is the triumph of life over greed and death and more largely the sacred character of life within the borders of Native America and beyond, which Houser coaxes out of bronze; ultimately reaching out to universal humanistic values. If Allan Houser’s sculptures forcefully speak of Native American heritages and illuminate specific cultural traits, they are also unquestionably universal in their power to capture and reveal motion, the essence of dance.

Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache), Ready to Dance, 1988, bronze, 76 x 34 x 31.5 inches, Allan Houser Foundation. Image © Allan Houser, Inc.

In the context of Native America, dance is the medium through which people convey dimensions of their culture, even unveil their essence. As often in Houser’s sculptures there is a play on the visible and the invisible.

Ready to dance, but not dancing yet, the figure shows the dance and disguises it at once. Houser gives us an insight into it while keeping part of it secret. Such a device makes room for the imagination to soar. However, the sculpture signals what the quality of the dance is likely to be: a wavy movement.

The sway of the dance is suggested by the curved lines that go through the woman’s body, thereby exemplifying a graceful aesthetic. In Apache social dances, the women move clockwise and in unison to the sound of the drum and singers. They dance in the outer ring around the Gaan dancers at night.

They face the fire and the Gaan dancers.

The undulation of the shoulders sends ripples through her ceremonial skirt. Ready to Dance also hints at the manner in which Indian women express themselves in traditional dances. Stately, proud, and demure, SPRING 2 0 1 4

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Healing Through the Creative Process Art Therapy in Indian Country

By RoseMary Diaz

M

ORE THAN 150 YEARS AGO, Sunshine YellowStar and her sister, Snowflower BlueRaven, were stolen from their family and taken to a place more than five days’ journey by covered wagon. They were taken from their home, made from warm, thick hide and long, thin shore pine poles, to a large, multi-storied building made from grey bricks and steel framing, whose walls were cold to the touch.

The sounds of breezes rushing through tall grasses and the calls of slender, white geese flying overhead were replaced by the rumbling groans of a coal-burning furnace, the low hissing, snake-like sounds of oil lamps, and the clinking of cast-iron keys hitting against each other on the waists of their wearers as they walked through the dimly lit, dark-paneled corridors of the building. Each step of their thick, black shoes upon the creaking wood floors paced out time in a way that was completely foreign to the sisters; the silence between each meeting of sole to floor was stretched-out beyond even measure, and then pushed into the next step’s thin, jagged echo.

Gone, too, the sounds of celebration that filled their camp when elk-hunting time drew near, and the happy excitement of waiting for the feasting, drumming, singing, and dancing that would soon follow. Now, the sisters sat in silence in a large hall whose dark walls were decorated with portraits of thin, unhappy faces with close-set, piercing eyes that looked down upon them with judgment and disdain. Plates of strange-looking victuals were set upon the heavy wooden table before them—things they did not recognize; things of odd shape and color; food with no happiness in it that made their stomachs hurt.

The sisters could hear some of the younger children crying late into the night; some of them, unable to withstand the effects of the unusual foods being processed through their tiny, so-far-from-Indian-ness bodies, were taken by Creator just before daybreak. Some of the children also died from the sadness of missing their families. Here they drifted into sleep not to the comforting song of a bright, evening fire or the soft words of a nighttime blessing, but to the furious voice of the headmaster wafting toward them from some distant

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corridor as they cowered in fear in the musty darkness of their room. He was furious not because of anything they had done, only because of who they were.

No longer were their mornings greeted with the smiling faces of Mother, Father, or Grandmother as the day’s first light filled the tipi and the scent of cedar smoke swirled upward and out into the cool morning. Now it was the cold, stern gaze of the school teacher. Her sharp, dagger-like voice spat out words unknown to them, and the black scent of soot broke the dawn.

Gone was the touch of Grandmother’s soft hands as she helped the sisters to smooth their long hair into braids with

ABOVE: Sheridan MacKnight (White Earth Ojibwe-Hunkpapa Lakota), Before They Left, 2013, gouache on ledger paper.

OPPOSITE: Sheridan MacKnight (White Earth Ojibwe-Hunkpapa Lakota), Boarding School Girls... Strength Through Endurance, 2013, gouache on paper, 38 x 30 in. Both images courtesy of the artist, www.sheridanmacknight.com.

a brush made from dried reeds tied together with strips of smoked elk hide. In its place was the spiny clutch of the teacher as she spun them around to face the wall, pulled their hair back into one big bunch at the base of the neck, and sliced it off in one hard chop of the scissors; a quick lightning flash of silver across the color of night.

Instead of clothing made of fine buckskin and trimmed with delicate beads that reflected the sun just so and scattered tiny spheres of light in all directions, they now wore stiff burlap pants and drab, canvas-like tunics. Some of the older children were given suits and ties or flowery dresses to wear on Sundays during the school’s church services, where they were made to worship faces, figures, and ideas of which they knew nothing.

The children were all given new names, and from then on the sisters were called Mary and May. They lived in the cold, grey building for many years; long enough to see Sunshine YellowStar and Snowflower BlueRaven fade into silhouettes of memory; long enough to forget their own language which had words for every color of cloud and for the different way light reflects on the surface of ponds according to the seasons or time of day—a language which they had secretly whispered to each other at night for the first few years, until being caught and punished by the headmistress; long enough to forget the taste of elk meat and the sounds of drums; long enough to never see Mother, Father, or Grandmother again, even in their minds’ eye; long enough to become Mary and May; long enough to recall the sound of thick, black soles upon creaking wood floors many, many years later.

This and countless other stories of loss, separation, trauma, and forced or necessary forgetting and the resulting assumption of a new identity span the globe from curve to curve. These many stories define a vast, somewhat timeless universal human experience. This is where memory becomes cellular and where the foundation is lain for what Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart, PhD, formally conceptualized in the 1980s as historical trauma, that is, “the cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations emanating from massive group trauma… resulting from a cataclysmic history of genocide.”1 The trauma is passed down the generational line of descendants, a grim inheritance, indeed, many of whom often experience what Braveheart termed historical unresolved grief, which is the grief that accompanies the trauma.

Finally, the historical trauma response presents an array of disparities, including unresolved emotional trauma, depression, high rates of alcohol and substance abuse, high rates of domestic violence, poverty, illness, overdose, and suicide. The historical trauma response can result wherever there has been committed violations of the body, mind, or spirit, wherever the right to just be has been confiscated, wherever the fundamental principles of the soul and the convictions of the heart have been compromised. Historical trauma response is a parasite of sorts that feeds on the residuals of sorrow, cruelty, and injustice.

On this continent, this is most notably observed among Native Americans and survivors of the Japanese internment camps; abroad, among Jewish Holocaust survivors, and survivors and refugees of the numerous invasions, over-takings, and civil

1. Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart, “The Return to the Sacred Path: Healing the Historical Trauma and Historical Unresolved Grief Response Among the Lakota Through a Psychoeducational Group Intervention,” Smith College Studies in Social Work 68, no. 3, (1998) .

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LEFT: Cousins Jacquie Archambeau, left, and Janet Lamon Smith, right, both Cherokee Nation. Photo: Michael Smith (Cherokee Nation).

RIGHT: Southwestern College campus and students, 2013. Photo: Jill Dupont. Image courtesy of Southwestern College.

conflicts that have occurred over generations. From Albania to Afghanistan, Czech Republic to Chechnya, Serbia to Syria, historical trauma recognizes no boundaries, geographical or otherwise.

Making numerous short starts and stops since the 1960s, perhaps most notably at the Free School in San Francisco, California, and among a handful of psychiatric treatment programs scattered throughout the United States, art therapy took a serious hold in the 1980s and became a major contender in the healing arts when various degree programs began to provide it long-due validation as a tool both for personal introspection, in the pursuit of emotional harmony and wellbeing, and for more clinical-oriented analysis within the scope of the therapist-patient relationship.

As Lloyd Kiva New, co-founder and creative director of the Institute of American Indian Arts, asserted almost five decades ago, “the process of art-making has inherent therapeutic value,” and is perhaps the singular most important factor in preserving and evolving American Indian culture and lifeways.

In February of 1969, New wrote to the Special Sub-committee on Indian Education, US Senate: The American Indian suffers severe psychological trauma and, by now, we must surely have gathered sufficient proof of the fact that the cure does not lie in dosing him doubly with the same old medicine… Simply enough, it is the wrong medicine for the Indian patient. We need to jolt ourselves out of our comfortable line of patterned thinking in order to make room for new concepts and the definition of new goals.

And, indeed, we have made room for new concepts and for the definition of new goals. Enter, art therapy, stage right.

First American Art Magazine queried two prominent art therapy practitioners on the significance of this relatively new addition to the healing arts. Here are some of their reflections.

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A

MERICAN INDIAN ART THERAPY is based on the four components of the Medicine Wheel: Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, and Physical, and on the model of the Sacred Tree. Art therapy is like a shortcut; some people can talk and talk around [issues], but when you see [something] on paper it can be like opening a door, or like a light coming on. To me, there is no better therapy, and it doesn’t matter if you can draw or not. It can be used with any population and with any issue.

Personally, art therapy deepened my connection to my own art and art-making process. I began to move into a different area, a more spiritual place, with my drawing and painting. Being creative can unlock us emotionally and help move us forward.

Our development can become arrested because of trauma. If we never work through it, we can get stuck there, at that age when the trauma occurred. Renowned art therapist, Myra Levic, said that when we draw or paint, we’re just dreaming with our eyes open. I believe that. American Indian people have always used dreams.

Understanding the symbolic meanings of our dreams can help us heal and move past emotional blockages. In art therapy, the symbolic meanings are contained within our drawings and paintings.

—Janet Lamon Smith (Cherokee Nation) Turtle Art Works Studio Wagoner, Oklahoma

A

RT THERAPY HAS ITS ROOTS in ancient civilization and at the same time is a relatively new field. This is a special contradiction that I hope current clinicians honor. It can be easy to view art therapy as yet one more facet in the counseling or mental health provider world. It’s important to remember the ancient traditions of art-making that wisely supported the connections among mind, body, and spirit. When we make art, when we express ourselves creatively, we feel

better. When imagery appears, many of us believe that the art comes from a deep, unconscious, soul place. When considered as a more recently developed field, art therapy has grown out of the worlds of science and art, which aren’t necessarily disconnected but can seem that way in terms of learning to do the work.

Sheridan MacKnight (White Earth Ojibwe-Hunkpapa Lakota), Pretty Shield, 2013, gouache on ledger paper, 38 x 30 in. Image courtesy of the artist, www.sheridanmacknight.com

Art therapy has traditionally held two main ways of working: art as therapy and art psychotherapy. People who believe in art as therapy believe that making the art is enough. That the physical, mental, and spiritual process of making art is what heals. Art psychotherapy supports the idea that it is important to find meaning within the art and talk about the symbolic meaning and metaphors within the imagery. I believe in both ways of working.

Art therapists work today anywhere that “verbal therapists” can be found, including in-patient, day treatment, schools, community agencies, and private practice. Art therapy is perhaps most well known as a way of working with troubled children.

While it is true that art therapy is a wonderful way of working with kids who are reluctant or unable to talk about issues, art therapists work with people of all ages… individual clients, families, couples, and groups.

Adults sometimes are hesitant to try art therapy because they quit making art when they were kids and hold the belief that they “can’t do it.” Part of an art therapist’s job is to help people move beyond that limiting belief and reconnect with their creativity. We try [to] introduce a wide variety of materials and ways of making art, including working with clay, collage, found-object art, fabric art—the list is really endless. There are numerous ways for people who initially say “I can’t draw” to engage in art-making. Actually, no one has to draw in order to benefit from art therapy.

—Deborah Schroder Program Chair of Art Therapy Southwestern College Santa Fe, New Mexico

In remembrance of Sunshine YellowStar and Snowflower BlueRaven, we offer in closing the American Indian Art Therapy Constitution of Operating Principles: In indigenous cultures ceremony and dream mediate imbalance and illness.

Through ceremony Native cultures come together as one mind and one breath to participate in the healing process.

Ceremonies involve song/prayer, dance/movement, and image-making, which follows the principles of ceremonial structure. This is a means through which the individual communicates and connects with the spiritual aspects of life.

American Indian Art Therapy is developing directly from the philosophy and the ceremony of indigenous cultures. American Indian art therapy facilitates our expression of who we are in relation to our ancestors, creation stories, life cycles, the sacred cardinal directions and our individual experience.

Personal wounds and hardships are acknowledged as teachers directing us to principles of balance and harmony. The healing process is an evolutionary process in which the individual learns to live in good relationship with all elements of the universe.2 For more information, check out:

American Indian Art Therapy

www.americanindianarttherapy.com

Art Therapy Without Borders

www.arttherapywithoutborders.com

Southwestern College www.swc.edu

2. “American Indian Art Therapy Constitution of Operating Principles” (printed flier from Annual Conference of the American Art Therapy Association, Albuquerque, NM, no date), 1.

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Travels to

China

Artists Sustain Traditions Using the Universal Language of Art

By Staci Golar

Y

EARS AGO, when artists Steve Wikviya LaRance (Hopi-Assiniboine), Marian Denipah (Ohkay Owingeh-Navajo), and Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi-Choctaw) were just starting their careers, they had no idea that their art would ultimately serve as a passport to the world. But in October 2013, the three, along with experimental Diné weaver Melissa Cody, were packing their bags for yet another international art journey.

This time their plane would be landing in Hangzhou, China, so they could participate in the West Lake Expo on Traditional Craftsmanship in the Asia-Pacific Region and Workshop on the Safeguarding and Sustainable Development of Traditional Craftsmanship in the Asia-Pacific Region.

In a world where limited character sound bites via electronic

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devices are more popular than time and skill intensive artistic traditions, a major expo centered on the importance of protecting and promulgating unique cultural expression is an anomaly.

However, the event, organized by the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Culture and Hangzhou Municipal Government, had the backing of leading cultural groups such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, designator of World Heritage sites, among other things) and the China National Center for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage, brought international artisans and scholars together for important discussion and intercultural exchange.

For LaRance, Denipah, and Lomahaftewa, all based in New Mexico, their story of being the first American Indian people to join the hundreds of representatives from more than 30

countries who were converging in Hangzhou started in an unlikely place: Santa Fe’s Asian Restaurant. Owner Kevin Zheng had met a group of Chinese delegates, some who were West Lake Expo organizers, while they were in town to attend the International Folk Art Market—Santa Fe, an annual event that features master folk artists from all over the world. After talking with the event organizers, he felt it was of utmost importance to bring Native American artists to China.

“He believes that Native American art is something that most of the world doesn’t know about,” said Zheng’s son Xue. “But we feel more of the world should know about it and see how similar American Indian art and culture can be to some of the cultures in China.” The Zhengs reached out to the Institute for American Indian Arts (IAIA) for artist recommendations, and Ying Zhang, a poet and IAIA’s first Chinese student, helped to coordinate the recommendations. The Zhengs also organized a benefit event at their restaurant to raise travel money, donating 25 percent of proceeds from an evening’s dinner hour, and acted as tour guides when the artists finally made it to their expo destination.

“I’m really grateful to IAIA’s president, Dr. Martin, for recommending us to this cultural exchange,” artist Steve LaRance said. He and his wife, Marian Denipah, an IAIA alumna, were official participants in the expo portion of the trip, showing their jewelry to nearly 50,000 visitors over four days. Steve was raised in the Hopi village of Moencopi, and his wife Marian in Tucson, Arizona, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The couple are known for their distinct tufa-cast jewelry that incorporates Native designs with vividly hued stones.

LaRance said, “The exhibition showcased different cultures throughout the world; Indonesia, India, Russia, and many more—really showing that there are so many thriving art and craft traditions, still. One section of the event included all of the foreign countries and another level had the Chinese artisans. It was great because each morning we’d meet new cultural leaders from all over the world—just over breakfast at the hotel we were all staying in!”

An estimated 300 to 400 artists exhibited at the expo. Steve and Marian did make some sales, but they had to take a bit of

ABOVE: Steve LaRance, Linda Lomahaftewa, Melissa Cody, Marian Denipah, and IAIA alumnus Steven Zheng on the first day of the Expo.

OPPOSITE: West Lake in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province. Photo: Nat Krause.

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ABOVE: Giving a presentation to elementary school students. In the back are Melissa Cody, Marian Denipah, Steve LaRance, and Linda Lomahaftewa. Image courtesy of Steve LaRance and Marian Denipah.

a crash course in negotiating. “In China, bartering is just how you do business. We had to learn how to adjust our prices around that, and learn when to say, no,” Steve said, chuckling.

Linda Lomahaftewa, a painter, printmaker, and professor at IAIA, attended the “workshop” portion of the event, a symposium where scholars presented their opinions and case studies on preserving important arts traditions of the world.

“We were there to come together and talk about how traditional arts and crafts are used to sustain culture,” said Lomahaftewa. She was in good company, sharing a platform with others such as Rangina Hamidi, founder of Kandahar Treasure, a business based in Kandahar, Afghanistan, that

supports the empowerment and livelihood of women through the production of traditional crafts, and Fernando Villafuerte Medina, director of the Regional Center for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Latin America. Other presenters came from as far away as Myanmar, Indonesia, Japan, and even the Marshall Islands.

Lomahaftewa’s presentation revealed how her Hopi and Choctaw heritage informs her work. She also shared an overview of the history of IAIA and how the institution actively teaches contemporary art with an American Indiancentric curriculum, faculty, and staff. Other talks given ranged from the history of ancient Chinese art to how the Oimo

LEFT: Marian Denipah (Ohkay Owingeh-Navajo) and Steve LaRance (Hopi-Assiniboine), Pueblo Sun Face Buckle, tufa cast in sterling silver set with Sleeping Beauty turquoise and Mediterranean red coral. RIGHT: Linda poses with a fellow exhibitor from the Philippines.

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Festival in Kyrgyzstan is revitalizing regional arts traditions.

When they weren’t presenting at the workshop or showing at the expo, the group toured cultural sites and visited arts organizations thanks to Kevin Zheng’s hospitality and UNESCO’s connections. These included the Hualin Temple in Guangzhou, which contains 500 famous Buddha statues, and the Art College of Minjiang University in Fuzhou, where a student cultural exchange program with IAIA is being planned. These extracurricular activities proved to be favorites for the visiting artists.

“One day, we were touring an area with a temple and noticed there were loud fireworks going off at the top of this mountain,” LaRance said. “It was about a 45-minute hike to the top, and, when we arrived up there, everyone just stared at us because they knew we weren’t Chinese. We realized that the people there were writing prayers on paper, and then the fireworks and paper were being burned together. It was obviously a ceremony, and everyone was eating.

There was about a 15- to 20-minute conversation before they showed us where to eat. But once we were sitting down, they were so kind and generous and hospitable, and brought plate after plate of food; it was like going to a feast day here.”

“We were stuffed to the brink!” Marian concurred.

Lomahaftewa, LaRance, and Denipah also visited an elementary school.

All three agreed this was the absolute favorite exchange moment of their trip.

“Every time we showed a piece of art, all of the students would scream,” Lomahaftewa said.

“They would jump up and down,” Marian said. “It was pretty cool.”

Even though the three noticed that the Chinese visitors didn’t seem to know a lot about Native American cultures—

Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi-Choctaw), The Year of the Dragon, monotype, 2012. Image courtesy of the artist.

LaRance said they would often have to explain, via an interpreter, about the Indigenous population of the USA, and that one little boy told him it was very rare to meet a “mystical” Native American—the common bond at the event was that of the artistic expression.

“We didn’t speak the same language, but we could share a little bit about the inner human spirit through the expression of our artwork,” said LaRance. Marian noticed many symbols were used crossculturally.

“When people see a symbol being used that is common in their culture, it opens

a doorway of friendship and discussion,” Marian said. Both she and her husband commented about the amazing work, from laquerware paintings to ceramics, that easily drew in people from any background to learn more.

“I felt like there was a common bond there,” said Linda. “I always think art is the language you speak without using words. To me anything you make by hand is just amazing, so to see other countries’ work made by hand—it just connected us. To share your art like that with people from around the world is just so special. I would love to go back.”

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The Cuzco School F

Andean Visions in Oils and Gold

LAMBOYANT, PARROTWINGED, GUN-WIELDING ANGELS. The Christ Child wearing full Inca regalia and Andean sandals. Dazzling mannerist and baroque paintings, with lavishly detailed brocateado, gold leaf overlay. These are hallmarks of the Cuzco School, an art movement founded in Peru in the 16th century. In colonial Peru and surrounding countries, Quechua, Aymara, and other Indigenous and Mestizo artists created meticulous oil paintings with gold leafing, illustrating Christian themes with a uniquely Andean twist.

The Cuzco School, or Escuela Cusqueña in Spanish, is a “loose term,” as art scholar Annick Benavides explains. It can refer specifically to the colonial artwork produced by guilds in Cuzco or more broadly to works in that style from Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador up to the present.

Currently residing in Lima, Annick Benavides grew up in both Peru and the United States. She is a doctoral candidate, having earned her Masters of Arts degree from University of New Mexico, and her passion is colonial Peruvian visual culture. Benavides generously shared her insights about the Cuzco School with First American Art Magazine.

“What sparked my personal interest in Cuzco School art is that I’d seen a lot of it living here—in my grandparents’ house and museum field trips, yet it was completely excluded from the traditional art historical canon when I went to college,” says Benavides.

“I was fascinated by that exclusion

By America Meredith and wanted to contribute to widening the field of knowledge about colonial Peruvian art in America and also in Peru. Seeing so much of it in my youth definitely got me involved.”

An Ancient Society Peru is one of the world’s few cradles of civilization; that is to say, the earliest Peruvians independently invented agriculture, cities, and government.

Spanning the Pacific desert, the crests of the Andes Mountains, to the deep jungles of the Amazon basin, Peru’s topography is as diverse as its peoples.

Different cultures flourished through the centuries. Quechua-speaking Incas built their empire, or Tawantinsuyu, beginning in 1438. At its height, the Inca Empire spanned 2,500 miles, from the southern tip of present-day Colombia down to northern Argentina. The largest empire of the pre-Columbian Americas was overrun in 1532 by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro and his men, aided by smallpox and other infectious diseases.

“Cuzco was such an ethnically diverse city when the Spanish arrived,” says Benavides. Quechua, the language of the Incas, is the most common, but she continues, “The ethnic range of Peru is fascinating. There are over 150 Native languages.”

In 1542 Spain established the Viceroyalty of Peru, which encompassed most of South America except the Guianas and eastern Brazil. The Viceroyalty lasted until 1824, when wars of independence freed the country from Spain’s dominion.

While the Spanish were a colonial power

in South America, they wanted to reshape the Native cultures in their image, which included converting Indigenous peoples to Christianity. Visual arts, particularly painting and sculpture, were tools in this mass conversion; however, Andean peoples had their own persistent beliefs upon which the Inca Empire had already imposed its state religion.

What Muscogee Creek scholar Carter Blue Clark wrote holds true in Peru as well as the rest of the Americas: “Introduced as a foreign system of belief and behavior, native Christianity developed from the intersection of different traditions. Indians incorporated Christianity into their lifeway through their unique culture histories, often in ways missionaries did not predict or intend.”1 The syncretism, or blending of belief systems, is so complete that University of Florida professor and art historian Maya Stanfield-Mazzi writes, “It is nearly impossible to isolate any purely non-Christian Andean beliefs, just as it is difficult to find Christian practices not informed by the Andean tradition. To use an Andean metaphor, the two traditions have been interwoven into a rich cultural fabric.”2

Imported Styles: Mannerism and Baroque In their quest to convert the Andeans, Spanish colonizers used art as a tool.

Initially, they imported religious artworks from Europe, but Jesuits also asked Rome to send artists to the Americas to share their techniques with

1. C. Blue Clark, “Native Christianity Since 1800,” in Handbook of North American Indians, V. 14, Southeast, eds. Raymond Fogelson and William C. Sturtevant (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2004), 742.

2. Maya Stanfield-Mazzi, Object and Apparition: Envisioning the Christian Divine in the Colonial Andes (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013), 177.

3. Tom Cummins, “A Tale of Two Cities: Cuzco, Lima, and the Construction of Colonial Representation,” in Converging Cultures: Art & Identity in Spanish America, ed.

Diana Fane (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 164.

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descent. Peru was flooded with imported prints and books, providing imagery for new works. Although art historians can often identify specific prints that inspired particular paintings, every Cuzco painting was unique in its interpretation of the material and embellishment of details.

Since Spanish art was heavily influenced

by Italian and Northern Flemish art, styles from all three regions manifested in the Andes.

Bishop of Cuzco Manuel de Mollinedo y Angula (1640–1699) brought his personal art collection with him and became an avid patron of Cuzco School art. On May 31, 1650, a devastating earthquake rocked Cuzco, so Mollinedo commissioned new, locally made artworks to adorn the city and fill the churches.5

Unknown Bolivian artist, Virgen de Pomata y Rosario, ca. 1850, oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Peyton Wright Gallery.

Donors who commissioned paintings were often painting towards the bottom, such as the woman in the lower middle. The suri plumes in the Virgin’s crown represent red for charity, green for hope, and white for faith.

Native peoples. One of the first artists to arrive was the accomplished Italian mannerist painter, Bernardo Bitti, who arrived in Lima in 1575,3 and Juan Íñigo Loyola, a Basque artist from Spain.

The mannerist movement emerged in opposition to the High Renaissance in the 16th century. Less interested in naturalism, that is, realistic depictions, the mannerists exulted in intricate and elaborate details that showcased their artistic skill. Portraits were often elongated. Artists flattened backgrounds and imbued their uncanny compositions with dynamic tension.4 Tenebrism, the

extreme value shift between light and dark with a mostly dark background, was a hallmark of this art movement.

Baroque art followed mannerism. Andean artists made both these European art styles “their own,” says Benavides. “It’s fascinating how quickly they understood the language enough to adapt it and make it locally significant.”

Art Guilds and the Schism of 1688 The Europeans established workshops of artists of Native, Mestizo, and Criollo (Spanish people born in the Americas)

Mollinedo particularly promoted Indigenous artists, such as Diego Quispe Tito, Basilio de Santa Cruz, Antonio Sinchi Roca, Marcos Rivera, and others.

At this point in the 17th century, Native, Spanish, and Mestizo artists of Cuzco belonged to the same guild; however, in 1688 growing tensions and jealousies boiled over. The Spanish and Mestizo artists built a triumphal arch for the Feast of Corpus Christi without including the Indians. They then filed a complaint insulting the character of the Indian artists. The Indians responded to these affronts by dropping out of the guild to establish their own. By founding their own prolific and successful guild, the Indian artists of Cuzco were free to develop their own distinct styles.

“Many Cuzco School procedures were divvied out to different artists,” as Benavides describes the process of the guild workshops. “When we look at a Cuzco School painting, it probably has gone through five or six artists at least.”

“Gold leafing was a profession in itself,” states Benavides. “It did have actual gold in the leafing—part of all the copious amounts of gold being mined out of Peru.

The gold leafing plays with the depth in a painting. It will have some sort of perspectival attempts, and then the gold

4. Ross Finocchio, “Mannerism: Bronzino (1503–1572) and his Contemporaries,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. 2013. Web. 5. Maya Stanfield-Mazzi, Object and Apparition: Envisioning the Christian Divine in the Colonial Andes (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013), 146.

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most popular type of painting.” She continues, “Many artists in Bolivia and Ecuador emulated the style, so that might be why we tend to call all of this art ‘Cuzco School,’ because they do look similar—the same characters, the same gold leafing, the unique perspectival traits.” She explains, “Once the different viceroyalties were established, we can trace the development of each of the schools. Art historians have begun to do that.”

“The Quito School, which was best known for their sculptures,” says Benavides, “had amazing carpenters. Their carvings were imported into Peru. The paintings went north to Ecuador, and the sculptures came into Lima from Quito.”

The carved and painted wooden sculptures representing Jesus, Mary, and the saints were dressed and adorned with gold and jewels. Typically hidden behind curtains, on special occasions the statues were revealed to the congregations, illuminated by candles, surrounded by flowers and ornate feathers, and even carried outside in public processions. Miracles, such as stopping earthquakes, calming storms, and healing the sick, were attributed to the statues, and the churches that housed them became destinations for pilgrimages.

“Artists recreated images of the statues of the Virgin and sent these paintings all across South America.” Benavides clarifies, “So when we look at them now, we see them as representations of the Virgin, but they are in fact representations of statues of the Virgin.”

Annick Benavides visiting a chapel in Rapaz, Peru, located in the Oyón Valley of Peru, 2012.

leafing alongside the halos or on the dresses of religious figures will bring the canvas to the foreground. Some of my professors have said it’s almost like abstract painting before abstraction became a genre. It plays with material and perspective in art in ways that just weren’t happening in other places.”

Oil paintings were painted on canvas, wood, and later copper plates. Some of the frames of Cuzco School painting feature a pre-Columbian technique known as mopa mopa. Also called barniz de pasto, mopa mopa uses a tree, Elaeagia pastoensis, that grows in the jungles of Putumayo. Its resin is processed into thin sheets, dyed vivid colors, cut into shapes, and inlaid into wood.

Evolving Regional Schools “Cuzco might have had three or four guilds over time. As the colonial era evolved, their stylistic tendencies evolved as well. It wasn’t a stagnant school by any means,” explains Benavides. The new painting style developed by Cuzco’s guilds “became the

The statues inspired two major genres of painting identified by art historian Maya Stanfield-Mazzi: miracle paintings, or ex-votos, and statue paintings. Miracle paintings commemorated miracles performed via the statues or were commissioned by a devotee “publicly thanking the divinity after the miraculous event and fulfilling his or her vow to express gratitude. The relationship also drew on an Andean formula of reciprocity between deity and worshiper.”6 Statue paintings allowed the essence of the religious statues into homes, schools, and other collections. Art historians observe that precontact Andean art from the Lake Titicaca region depicts divine beings in two dimensions, while mortals are rendered in three dimensions, so transferring religious imagery to the flat canvas may have emphasized their other-worldly powers.7 Cuzco, located in a high Andean mountain valley at 11,000 feet, was the capital of the Inca Empire. Even today, the precontact Quechua foundations of many public buildings are visible, with Spanish construction added. “The center of Cuzco presented a space for a simultaneous aesthetic experience of past and present that bordered on an entirely new experience: it was neither European nor Andean, but new and colonial,” writes Thomas B. F. Cummins, Professor of Pre-Columbian and Colonial Art History at Dumbarton Oaks.8

6. Maya Stanfield-Mazzi, Object and Apparition: Envisioning the Christian Divine in the Colonial Andes (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013), 119.

7. Ibid. 139 8. Tom Cummins, “A Tale of Two Cities: Cuzco, Lima, and the Construction of Colonial Representation,” in Converging Cultures: Art & Identity in Spanish America, ed.

Diana Fane (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 168.

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Regional art centers developed throughout the Andes, including Lima and Pomata in Peru, as well as Potosí and La Paz in Bolivia. Each of these had miraculous statues that inspired works, such as the Virgin of Copacabana, located on the Bolivian shores of Lake Titicaca. The Cathedral of Cuzco boasted Our Lady of Belén (Bethlehem) and Christ of the Earthquakes, who calmed the earthquake of 1650. Christ of the Earthquakes became a symbol of the city’s Indigenous identity, and over 70 paintings of that statue survive today.

Subject Matter and Artists Besides paintings of celebrated statues, religious processions were popular subjects in Cuzco School art. The crowds included Indigenous, Spanish, and African participants in contemporary dress. Mary as a Shepherdess and the Child Mary Spinning were understandably popular themes, considering the longstanding importance of textiles and herding llamas and alpacas to Andean peoples. Pairs of animals boarding Noah’s ark included turkeys, condors, and armadillos.

Portraits of all the Inca monarchs became popular in Cuzco, and Inca armed resistance against the Spanish continued in the 18th century, most famously in Túpac Amaru II’s uprising in 1780.

“It’s really difficult to determine via the style or iconographic references if the painter was Indigenous or Spanish,” admits Benavides. “I do use a general rule.

This scholar Carolyn Dean writes about it: unsigned paintings were probably painted by undocumented, Indigenous and Mestizo artists. Only the famous artists would have signed their works, like Diego Quispe Tito signs his works, but he was an Indigenous painter.”

“Basilio Santa Cruz is one of the best known painters of the Cuzco School and was highly lauded by art historians and, not coincidentally, believed to have been a Spanish painter,” Benavides explains.

“His art has references to European prints and also appears to reference actual paintings in Spain, but historian Jorge

Basilio de Santa Cruz Pumacallao (Quechua), Immaculate Virgin Victorious over the Serpent of Heresy, (ca. 1670–ca. 1690), oil on canvas, 69 x 50.39 in. Museo de Arte de Lima.

Here the Virgin Mary embodies the “New Eve.” Her triple crown references the Trinity. The cherub’s whip bears the name, “John Duns Scotus,” a 13th-century Scottish philosopher and saint, who defended the concept of the Immaculate Conception, the idea that Mary was born without Original Sin. The dragon, representing heresy, grasps keys with the names of Pope Alexander VII, Philip IV, and the Franciscan Order, all of whom supported the veneration of Mary. The apples at the bottom, bearing the initials “A” and “E,” referencing the fruit eaten by Adam and Eve in Eden.

Cornejo Bouroncle discovered contracts commissioning paintings from him which reveal that his full name was Basilio de Santa Cruz Pumacallao. ‘Pumacallao’ is a distinctly Quechua last name, which confirms he was at least Mestizo and probably Indian.”

Another celebrated Indigenous painter of the 17th century was Diego Quispe Tito (1611–1681). The Quechua artist descended from Inca nobility and signed his works with “Inga.” He lived in San Sebastián, on the outskirts of Cuzco and is best known for his Signs of the Zodiac, a

9. Maya Stanfield-Mazzi, Object and Apparition: Envisioning the Christian Divine in the Colonial Andes (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013), 172.

10. Ibid.174.

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series of paintings that still hang in the Cuzco Cathedral.

While most Cuzco School artists never signed their paintings and are lost to history, some other prominent Quechua Cuzco School painters include Antonio Sinchi Roca in the 17th century and the 18th-century master Marcos Zapata. In Bolivia, Mestizo artist Leonardo Flores established the La Paz School in the 16th century. Melchor Pérez Holguín (ca. 1660–1724), a Mestizo born in Cochabamba, became the most celebrated artist of the Potosí School.

Spaniards and Criollos initially commissioned the paintings, but Indians began collecting Cuzco School works on the secondary market. For example, records show that Juan Auca, an Andean Native, purchased a nine-foot-tall painting in 1690 from a Spaniard’s estate.9 While women did not paint in the early Cuzco School, they did collect, and Maya Stanfield-Mazzi writes, “Laywomen distinguished themselves within colonial society as pious art collectors.”10 In time Native people did commission paintings which included their portraits as donors.

The Brooklyn Museum owns 18th-century Bolivian paintings featuring their Aymara donors.

Andean Influences

ABOVE: Unknown Peruvian artist, Angel in Blue and Gold Brocade, ca. 1950, oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Peyton Wright Gallery. This “neo-Cuzco” painting features an ángel arcabucero.

Marcos Zapata (Quechua), detail of La Última Cena (The Last Supper), 1753, oil on canvas, Cathedral of Santo Domingo, Cuzco, Peru.

In Zapata’s rendering of the last supper, Jesus and the apostles dine on viscacha and chicha, or corn beer. Avocados are included in the baskets of fruits.

Marcos Zapata, also known as Marcos Sapaca Inca, is considered to be one of the most important 18th-century painters in Peru. He was born around 1710 and died in 1773. Over his career, he painted over 200 works with the assistance of his apprentices who included Ignacio Chacón, Cipriano Gutiérrez, and Antonio Vilca. During his lifetime his paintings traveled as far as Argentina and Santiago, Chile.

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“Andean Christian images…,” writes Carolyn Dean, Art History Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, “became so popular precisely because both Europeans and Andeans could simultaneously invest them with different, sometimes even contradictory meanings.”11 The syncretic blending of European Christian and Andean iconographies is one of the most fascinating aspects of Cuzco School artwork. As Benavides points out, “We’ll find that they used symbolic flowers, like the ñucchu, a red flower used in Virgin paintings, traditionally used for fertility rites in the Andes.”

In high Andes, a region of such dramatic landscapes, the Cuzco artists chose to copy landscapes from imported European prints and paintings. Benavides has an intriguing theory as to why: “My argument is that the landscape—sacred hills, forests, caves—were so religiously important to the Native population, that they weren’t reproduced in paintings, possibly because they didn’t want to defile their sacredness or because Spanish artists didn’t want to reproduce a sacred iconography and continue these Native religious practices. You’ll see these Flemish landscapes reproduced over and over again instead of an Andean mountain or valley.”

“The connection with the Mount Potosí, where the Virgin’s face is implanted in the mountain, and her hands come out of it—there is an obvious attempt to correlate the sacred mountain with the Virgin,” states Benavides. “I think it’s actually more complicated than a correlation between this goddess called 11. Carolyn Dean, “The Renewal of Old World Images and the Creation of Colonial Peruvian Visual Culture,” in Converging Cultures: Art & Identity in Spanish America, ed. Diana Fane (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 178.

Pachamama and the Virgin. Many of the Virgin paintings are trying to connect different fertility rites and gods with the Virgin. I think Pachamama is a simplistic idea we have of prehispanic worship, but in reality they had different deities that were related to corn or the river’s flow during the spring. A lot of the signs in these Virgin paintings reference different gods. For instance, the Virgin standing on a crescent moon which in the European iconography often means that she is the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception or the Virgin that conquers the Islamic religion, but in Peru, you could read it as the Virgin who is connected to the Goddess of the Moon, which is Qilla…. In short, the Virgin paintings are definitely related to prehispanic fertility rites, but we have to look at them in different ways than just Pachamama.”

The Virgin and the Christ Child are often adorned with brilliantly-colored feathers, most likely from the small Andean ostrich Rhea pennata, call a suri. Parasols, originally used by Inca nobility, were made from suri feathers. Native birds, in general, are abundant in Cuzco paintings. Ángeles arcabuceros, the angels with muzzle-loading guns, “are a well-known iconography of the Cuzco School, because of their uniqueness,” explains Benavides. “We don’t find angels being painted like that in Mexico or Spain.

Art historians believe that they are a commemoration of a religious syncretism earlier on in the conquest. When Spanish conquistadors were firing off their rifles, the Indigenous peoples were said to have thought that they were harnessing their lightning god called Illapa. That fusion of the power of rifles and the power of this Indigenous thunder and lightning god may contribute to the popularity of this iconography. It’s an angel but also this historic remembrance of this prehispanic thunder and lightning god.”

The quintessential Cuzco School painting is Marcos Zapata’s 1753 The Last Supper.

Jesus and His disciples are gathered around an Andean feast.

“I was in the Cuzco Cathedral a year

Ignacio Chacón, Madonna and Child with Bird, ca. 1765, oil and gold on canvas, Denver Art Museum, Spanish Colonial Art collection, 1972.390 Ignacio Chacón apprenticed to master artist Marcos Zapata. More of Chacón’s works are at the monastery of the Cathedral of Santo Domingo in Cuzco. Frames of flowers denote the spiritual realm, and brightly colored Andean birds are characteristic of the Cuzco School.

ago,” says Benavides, “and the tour guide told me, ‘This isn’t a guinea pig.’

He called it a viscacha [genus Lagidium], of the rodent family, like the chinchilla.

It’s an attempt to paint the Last Supper in a way that would have been familiar to people of the Andes. The tour guide told me they were drinking chicha instead of wine. Chicha is also purple or red; it’s fermented corn beer. It’s fun to think of the disciples and Jesus drinking this typical Andean alcoholic beverage, instead of wine.”

Changing Attitudes During the colonial era, “The paintings were commemorations of the culture and held monetary value and prestige,” says Benavides; however, after achieving independence, Peruvians began to see Cuzco School artwork, as “bad copies of European paintings.” She goes on to explain: “A lot of colonial paintings were painted over in the new European style that was fashionable at the time of the late 18th and 19th centuries.”

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paperwork to export historical works out of Peru.

“There are wonderful curators and historians that specialize in colonial painting in Peru,” says Benavides, who are turning the tide of public opinion.

Art historians are uncovering new information about Cuzco School art by examining primary documents in Peru and throughout South America.

“It took a while for academics to recognize its complexity,” says Benavides.

Due to the increasing attention from international art historians, she explains, “Peruvians are appreciating the art more.

It’s selling for more at auctions. It’s on the upswing. The more we get children exposed to it with curriculum at schools and museum education, the better. It is fighting some of the same stigmas that folk art has in the United States—that’s it’s produced by unlearned artists—when that’s totally not the case. The art is beautiful and complex.”

“I worked in education. I worked at the Museo Pedro [de Osma] for one year in Lima. My aim was to expose students to the different cultures you can find within one painting. At first glance they appear to be these dark religious paintings, but if you look for local signs and syncretic religious meanings in them, the students become fascinated very quickly. I hope that work can continue and we can continue the upswing.”

Attributed to the School of Diego Quispe Tito (Quechua), La Virgen Inmaculada, ca. 1650, oil and gold on canvas, Cuzco, Peru. Image courtesy of Peyton Wright Gallery.

Nonetheless, Benavides says, “A lot of private colonial collections have survived in families. I know it’s gone through waves were they would put them in the front and then take them to the back.”

Stratton-Pruitt writes, “Out of favor and politically incorrect, the art has suffered the indignities of time, environmental exposure, and limited conservation budgets. Theft and surreptitious sales have become common.”

Since the 1970s when artwork in Peruvian churches was inventoried, fully 40 percent of the paintings have been stolen. Seven paintings recording miracles of the Virgin of Pomata were stolen from the church of Santiago in Pomata in the 1990s.12 In 2010 the FBI Art Crime Team tracked down and returned two 18th-century paintings stolen from Peru.13 The UNESCO Convention for controlling the flow of antiquities now requires buyers and dealers to have proper

“Neo-Cuzco School” Paintings Today Collectors can find contemporary works in the Cuzco School-style in Peru at modest prices. “In Peru, there’s a bunch of painters you can find at the Indian markets … basically tourist markets,” says Benavides. “If you ask to see a lot of what they have in general, and they show you four of the exact same angel with different colored clothing, that’s a good indicator that they are producing copies from a design underneath. But if they are all pretty varied and the gold leafing is distinct on each one, one of those pieces would be a good purchase and a sound

12. Stanfield-Mazzi, Object and Apparition: Envisioning the Christian Divine in the Colonial Andes (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013), 122.

13. “Restoring Cultural Heritage 18th-Century Paintings Returned to Peru,” FBI, April 8 2010, web.

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investment to make.”

“A couple workshops in Cuzco try to emulate the style of a colonial workshop,” says Benavides. “They’ll divide up the work. They’ll have a specialist in frames, a specialist in angel faces, a specialist in clothing, so when you buy one of their works, it emulates the style and process of colonial workshops and painting.”

Benavides recommends the work of the Chávez Galdós Family. “That family is renowned; they have had international exhibitions of their Cuzco Schoolstyle paintings. They paint as a family.

There are eight brothers and sisters, who collaborate. They’re a really cool example of contemporary Cuzco-style work.”

Art scholars such as Anna Benavides are striving to educate the public about the historic artwork of the Cuzco School.

Living Peruvian artists are continuing the meticulous painting tradition. With increased recognition, the Cuzco School will finally get its due respect as a unique cross-cultural phenomenon.

Places to See the Art Brooklyn Museum, NY www.brooklynmuseum.org Cathedral of Santo Domingo, Cuzco, Peru Denver Art Museum, CO www.denverartmuseum.org Inca Museum (Museo Inka) corner Ataúd y Córdova del Tucumán s/n, Cuzco, Peru Lima Art Museum, Lima, Peru www.mali.pe Peyton Wright Gallery 237 E. Palace Ave., Santa Fe, NM www.peytonwright.com

Neo-Cuzco School art: Chávez Galdós Family www.pinturasdelcusco.com Clorinda Chávez Galdós www.clorysart.com

Unknown Cuzco School artist, The Return of the Holy Family to Nazareth, ca. 1700, oil on canvas, 76 x 53.75 in. Image courtesy of Peyton Wright Gallery.

Works Cited • Benavides, Annick. Personal interview.

December 19, 2013.

• Clark, C. Blue. “Native Christianity Since 1800.” In Handbook of North American Indians, V. 14, Southeast, edited by Raymond Fogelson and William C. Sturtevant, 742-752.

Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2004.

• Cummins, Tom. “A Tale of Two Cities: Cuzco, Lima, and the Construction of Colonial Representation.” In Converging Cultures: Art & Identity in Spanish America edited by Diana Fane, 157–170. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.

• Dean, Carolyn. “The Renewal of Old World Images and the Creation of Colonial Peruvian Visual Culture.” In Converging Cultures: Art & Identity in Spanish America,

edited by Diana Fane, 151–182. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.

• Finocchio, Ross. “Mannerism: Bronzino (1503–1572) and his Contemporaries.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. 2013. Web. • “Restoring Cultural Heritage 18th-Century Paintings Returned to Peru.” FBI. April 8 2010. Web. • Stanfield-Mazzi, Maya. Object and Apparition: Envisioning the Christian Divine in the Colonial Andes. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013.

• Stratton-Pruitt, Suzanne. “Painting in South America, Conquest to Independence: An Overview.” In The Virgins, Saints, and Angels: South American Paintings 1600–1825 from the Thomas Collection, edited by Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt, 81–94. Milan, Italy: Skira, 2006.

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Anchorage

Dena’inaq Huch’ulyeshi: The Dena’ina Way of Living Anchorage Museum of History and Art

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ULTURAL HISTORIAN SUZI JONES, Dena’ina historian Aaron Leggett and cultural anthropologist James Fall curated the first major exhibition dedicated to the Dena’ina. Dena’inaq’ Huch’ulyeshi: The Dena’ina Way of Living spans 1,000 years of Dena’ina history and showcases some 160 artifacts gathered from museum and personal collections around the world. Historical artifacts, such as caribou hide clothing, bone drinking tubes, and shamanic dolls; a lifesize display of a contemporary Dena’ina fish camp; and hands-on installations, give visitors an opportunity to experience Dena’ina materials up-close and with their senses. At one interactive listening station, visitors can listen to a Dena’ina love song; at another, visitors learn how to say Dena’ina phrases such as “I saw a beautiful moose.” Visitors are invited to handle materials used by Dena’ina artists such as dentalium shells, fish skin, and caribou bone. They can observe a Dena’ina dinner party through film projections that illustrate typical Alaska Native foods such as smoked salmon and moose meat stew. This exhibition reminds viewers that Alaska Native culture is deeply connected to subsistence life and is constantly evolving.

Preparation for this exhibition took nearly a decade of work, including extensive consultation with Dena’ina communities, an around-the-world museum search for Dena’ina artifacts, oral history research, and a series of Dena’ina language revival institutes. The result is an impressive exhibition and accompanying catalogue that illustrates the complexity of Dena’ina material culture and the continued strength of Dena’ina culture today. According to

curator Aaron Leggett, one of the key goals of this exhibit was to make people aware of the Dena’ina presence in Alaska’s largest city.

“Most people who live in Anchorage have no idea that there is an Indigenous population that has been here and continues to be here.”

Leggett’s words are echoed by Dena’ina elder Clare Swan who relates in the foreword to the exhibition catalogue, “Over time, we had become invisible as a people and sadly isolated from each other.” The exhibit works to counteract that invisibility by highlighting the Dena’ina roots of the city and provides increased access to Dena’ina cultural materials, images, and stories previously only available in foreign museum collections or inaccessible archives.

Throughout the exhibition, emphasis is on self-told history. Every artifact is labeled using Dena’ina terms and accompanied by the name of the maker when known. First-person quotations from Dena’ina elders are painted on the exhibition walls. Contemporary representations of Dena’ina life are presented throughout the exhibit, including photographs of Dena’ina people; beautifully crafted mannequinportraits of Dena’ina individuals made by Dena’ina artist, Joel Isaak, and recently made Dena’ina tools such as a life-size whitefish trap.

Museum programming around this exhibition provides further opportunities to connect to living Dena’ina culture. For example, an artist residency developed by the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center in conjunction with the Anchorage Museum focused on Dene quillwork techniques, a film and lectures series, Dena’ina dance performances, and the involvement of Dena’ina hosts in the gallery space who share their experience and stories with visitors.

Changing Curatorial Practices and Access to Alaska Native Material Culture This exhibition follows a changing approach to museum collections by

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Helen Dick (Lime Village) cleans and splits spruce root lashings. In 2009 the Anchorage Museum commissioned Helen and Alan Dick to construct a Dena’ina whitefish trap. Photo: Chris Arend/Anchorage Museum.

Alaska Native people. In recent years, Alaska Natives have grown more involved with exhibition projects as their community interests to preserve and document cultural practices coincide with the interests of museum curators. This parallels a development on a more global scale where museums are beginning to encourage collaborative approaches to exhibition and seek to include Indigenous perspectives in the curation and care of collections.

In Alaska specifically, since the early 1980s, Alaska Native people have been working to seek out collections of their artifacts spread across the globe.

This work is critical for Alaska Native communities to gain information about some of the earliest collections of their material culture because so many of the earliest surviving examples of Alaskan artifacts were removed from our homeland during the late 19th century and early 20th centuries. Today, early examples of Alaska Native art are often more accessible to visitors to museums in France, Germany, Russia, and Washington, DC, than they are to communities in Alaska. Visiting museum collections in person provides an opportunity for Alaska Native specialists

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to identify and connect with examples of historical artifacts while simultaneously helping museum curators correct and update catalogue record information, which in many cases is inaccurately labeled or only provides limited accompanying contextual information.

Through traveling museum exhibits in the late 1970s, Alaska Natives began gaining access to materials from museum collections housed outside of Alaska. The Far North: 2000 Years of American Eskimo and Indian Art, an exhibit organized by the National Gallery of Art, traveled to the Anchorage Museum in 1978.

This was significant as the first traveling exhibit to bring Alaska Native artifacts back to Alaska. Following this, several Smithsonian exhibitions featuring Alaska Native artifacts traveled to Alaskan communities in the 1980s, including Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska (1988), an exhibit featuring artifacts from around the North Pacific Rim collected from museum collections

in Soviet Russia and the United States; The Living Tradition of Yup’ik Masks: Agayuliyaraput: Our Way of Making Prayer (1996-1998), a touring exhibit about Yup’ik culture and masking traditions presented from a Yup’ik perspective; and Looking Both Ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiiq People (2001), an exhibition of Alutiiq historical and contemporary material culture produced in collaboration with the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak, Alaska. More recently collaborative exhibitions such as Yuungnaqpiallerput: The Way We Genuinely Live, Masterworks of Yup’ik Science and Survival (2008) and Giinaquq: Like a Face, Sugpiaq Masks of the Kodiak Archipelago (2009) brought access to museum collections from as far away as Europe back home to Alaska Native communities. Since 2010, Alaska Natives have had more permanent access to examples of historical artifacts since the opening of the Smithsonian’s Living Our Cultures: Sharing Our Heritage exhibition at the Anchorage Museum of History

Viqizdluyi (Fire bags), 1883, Tyonek and Knik River, Alaska, caribou hide, sinew, dentalia, quills, beads, red ochre, black velvet, cotton, Ethnological Museum of Berlin. Hunters used fire bags to store gunpowder and lead.

and Art. This long-term exhibition includes a collection of 600 artifacts from the Smithsonian collections selected by a 17-member Alaska Native advisory board. The exhibition was designed to be easily accessible so that visiting artists and community members can study the pieces on display in the museum.

Museum Exhibitions as Inspiration in Revival Projects Museum exhibitions like those described above have played a significant role in Alaska Native artistic revival. When material culture returns to Alaska in the form of traveling exhibitions, it provides opportunities for Native craftsmen and women to study and reproduce historical objects that, in some cases, have been absent from our communities for centuries. These collections offer direct visual access to historical objects, share visual information about cultural identity, and help to consolidate a sense of community history and pride. In some cases this has allowed Alaska Native artists to bring forgotten art forms or technologies back into cultural use.

For example, some of the highlights in the Dena’inaq’ Huch’ulyeshi exhibition include highly decorated clothing with intricately woven porcupine quillwork.

This technology has not been practiced in Dena’ina communities for generations.

Thanks to the Dene quillwork artist residency put on by the Arctic Studies Center during the Dena’inaq Huch’ulyeshi exhibition, this technology is now being brought back into practice.

It will be interesting to observe other ways that the Dena’ina exhibition will influence the development of contemporary Dena’ina material culture.

The Native Village of Eklutna already plans to use images of the artifacts as a reference while designing the new regalia.

Although the Dena’inaq’ Huch’ulyeshi exhibition has helped to increase the access to Dena’ina artifacts, much work remains to bring out information on the material culture of other regions of Alaska that is contained in museum collections around the world. This will provide us with a more accurate record SPRING 2 0 1 4

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of Alaska Native material culture and an opportunity to reconnect with our history.

Dena’inaq’ Huch’ulyeshi at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art closed on January 12, 2014; however, the accompanying publication provides a lasting documentation of the major collections of Dena’ina material culture with beautifully photographed images of artifacts, and detailed essays on the history, culture, and language of the region authored by cultural experts.

—Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi

Works Cited Clifford, James. “Looking Several Ways: Anthropology and Native Heritage in Alaska.”

Current Anthropology 45, no. 01 (2004): 5-30.

Cole, Douglas. Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985.

Collins, Henry B. The Far North: 2000 Years of American Eskimo and Indian Art. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977.

Crowell, Aron, Amy F. Steffian, and Gordon L. Pullar. Looking Both Ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiiq People. Fairbanks, Alaska: University of Alaska Press, 2001.

Crowell, Aron. Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2010.

Fienup-Riordan, Ann. The Living Tradition of Yup’ik Masks: Agayuliyararput (Our Way of Making Prayer). Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996.

Fienup-Riordan, Ann. Yuungnaqpiallerput/The Way We Genuinely Live: Masterworks of Yup’ik Science and Survival. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007.

Fitzhugh, William W., and Aron Crowell.

Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988.

Haakanson, Sven D., and Amy F. Steffian, eds.

Giinaquq Like a Face: Sugpiaq Masks of the Kodiak Archipelago. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2009.

Jones, Suzi, James A. Fall, and Aaron Leggett.

Dena’inaq’ Huch’ulyeshi: The Dena’ina Way of Living. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press in association with the Anchorage Museum Press, 2013.

Lonetree, Amy. Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums.

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Copenhagen

Blok P: Final Salute Nordatlantens Brygge

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HE NORTH ATLANTIC House lies in the heart of central Copenhagen’s Christianshavn harbor. This 18th-century pier building was originally a warehouse for the Royal Greenland Trading Company, once an economic monopoly over the small Inuit nation spread across the world’s largest island. Now it houses (among other things) the Icelandic embassy; offices of the Faroese and Greenlandic home rule governments; the restaurant Noma; state archives from over 200 years of Denmark’s colonial rule that have been examined by such figures as the late artist Pia Arke and Sara Olsvig, anthropologist and member of the Danish parliament representing Greenland; and an exhibition hall.

It seems appropriate that an exhibition saluting the end of one of the most notorious symbols of Danish socioeconomic repression and neglect is taking place at this old arm of Danish colonialism in Greenland. Blok P was the largest apartment building in Greenland’s capital Nuuk, at one point housing one percent of the country’s entire population. It was built in 1965 in a style tailored to Denmark’s flat, developed landscape and social infrastructure, a constant reminder of the settlement closures and other destructive “Danicizing” policies introduced when Denmark ended Greenland’s colonial status after World War II. Blok P was demolished in 2012. Nearly everyone in Greenland has a friend or relative who at one point lived there. It could not be let go so easily, without reflection. A team of artists, photographers, and sociologists went to work documenting the building’s history, social constructs, and aftermath. What they produced is an incredibly moving kaleidoscope of memories and material.

The first images are immense photographs

from the 1960s of Greenlandic families in their new, urban living rooms. These are now contained in the Greenlandic National Archives. They are blown up and printed on semi-translucent screens, hanging in the center of the main exhibition hall, injecting the families onto the architectural and documentaryoriented photographs that surround them and juxtaposing them onto the physical remnants of Blok P installed around the space. These anonymous people set the tone for the project—asserting that even behind bottle caps and fragments of stone are people’s lives and stories that refuse to be forgotten.

As social geographer Tone Huse states, the project takes its starting point in examining Blok P’s “materiality, language and symbols”1 as a way to deconstruct its ingrained expressions from the people and the city. One of Greenlandic photographer Jørgen Chemnitz’s works stands out in this respect: an image of an enormous pile of scrap wood and cardboard. Nothing else is visible in the image, only a flat surface of layered, discarded material, creating abstract pattern and texture.

The image is so striking namely because it is blown up to a one-by-one-and-ahalf meter size and installed on the floor, creating an immersive effect, pulling the viewer into the expansive, raw remains.

Parallel to this photograph are a number of glass exhibition cases, which would usually contain the ever-popular, everstereotyped tupilait (carvings referencing destructive magic). Instead they hold rocks, beer cans, posters from royal proclamations, all material gleaned from rubble, expressing the void and social fragmentation both created by and now left in the wake of Blok P. But material remnants are always matched with personal narratives and experiences.

Blok P has long been in Danish headlines as “tragedy porn,” and the alcoholism, abuse, and neglect that flourished in its later years are well documented.

This exhibition’s strongest element is the wealth of human perspectives and individual stories presented,

1. Huse, Tone, and Carsten Aniksdal, “Byen Som Prisme, Linse, Forstørrelsesglas,’’ in Blok P. En Boligblok i Nuuk, ed. Rikke Diemer (Copenhagen: Nordatlantens Brygge, 2013).

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Rikke Diemer, Untitled, 2011, photograph of Blok P, Nuuk, Greenland.

deconstructing the monolithic picture of Nuuk’s urban life.

One video in particular features individuals telling of the positive side of the building, of the warmth and social inclusion it fostered for those who left their communities to come to the city.

They talk about their regular kaffemiks (coffee-drinking parties) and shared balconies. They deny the grim, helpless depiction of Blok P residents by the press.

One woman says how important the exhibition is for her to close out this long chapter of her life—that the exhibition means, “that we finally could let go.” In the last scenes, with Greenlandic rap and heavy metal music playing, the jaws of cranes tear out those balconies that were the sites of parties, their corrugated iron railings waving in the air, until finally the last wall of Blok P collapses backwards onto the crane demolishing it, a scene captured in a photograph by Arqaluartâ Rosing. Interviewed for local news, one witness says, “It was Blok P’s final salute.”

One staggering object stands out at the

end of this exhibition: next to a photo series depicting small, individual graffiti (This is Slum P, I hate my life, This here space is for the “socially-disadvantaged”) is a two-by-four meter cement wall extracted from Blok P itself. The words are faded, crumbling, and difficult to read or cut short. The largest one, “Angerl-,” could have been “angerlarsimaffik,” “home,” but now it is cut in half. The wall also features a stylized, Banksy-esque print far to the left, showing a figure with binoculars looking out toward the layering and fragmenting beside him.

This exhibition reflects upon an emptiness created not just by the mismanagement of and disregard for human lives that characterized Blok P’s final decades, but by the loss of a site of community development, memory, and at times joy—and of the massive potential for growth left in its wake. As Tone Huse describes further: “As much as the story of Blok P magnifies social deprivation in contemporary Greenland, it also draws attention to the colonial inheritance of Denmark… As witnesses to the destruction of Blok P, we are witnesses to

the becoming of a nation and its young capital city.”2 —David Winfield Norman

Copenhagen

Greenland: Head for the Centre of the World Danish Architecture Centre

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T IS NO COINCIDENCE that two blocks from Nordatlantens Brygge is another exhibition looking inspiringly to Greenland’s future. With the goal of introducing Greenland to the world stage, a group of Greenlandic architects, artists, and city planners invited several major Danish architects to collaborate and create design projects aimed at advancing Greenland’s development and celebrating its human resources. Created under the name “Possible Greenland” for the Venice Biennale’s 13th Architectural Exhibition in 2012, the exhibition comes to Copenhagen after visiting Nuuk’s Katuaq Culture Center in February.

At the entrance is an installation by

2. Huse, Tone, and Carsten Aniksdal, “Byen Som Prisme, Linse, Forstørrelsesglas,’’ in Blok P. En Boligblok i Nuuk, ed. Rikke Diemer (Copenhagen: Nordatlantens Brygge, 2013).

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Greenlandic artist Bolatta Silis Høegh.

Ningiu: At Home in Greenland creates a typical (yet remarkable) Greenlandic home: comfortable couches, warm light, new flat-screen television playing Greenlandic news. The walls are covered with Christmas plates, beadwork, and photographs tracing a man’s whole life from childhood to the baptism of his own child. When she was asked to create an installation about “the Greenlandic home,” Bolatta says in her accompanying video interview, “The first thing I thought was, this is a Greenlandic home,” referring to her stylish Copenhagen apartment, itself filled with mixed cultural symbols.

She describes how she wanted to reject the exoticized notions Danes and others have about how Greenlanders live and to emphasize the importance of creating a warm, relaxed inner world to counter the harsh climate.

While I sat on the couch, taking notes, I wound up just watching the news for almost 20 minutes. I felt so content that I started to lose the sense of being in a built environment and forgot where I was—but was brought back when a German couple entered the house and just walked straight through to the rest of the exhibition, hardly soaking in the installation’s warmth and barely glancing at the human history pictured on the walls. Which is a shame, as this installation perfectly

prefaces the exhibition. As Greenlandic architect Helena Lennert says in her video introduction, the aim of Greenlandic architecture must first and foremost be Greenlanders and their living needs, and that architects cannot begin to design anything without understanding and appreciating them. By inviting the viewer to “make themselves at home” in a “real” Greenlandic home, the installation asks the viewer to enter the exhibition keeping in mind the lives of Greenlanders, not just the staggeringly beautiful land.

Beyond this warm, protected environment, the project jumps forward by positioning Greenland as the center of the world— from circumpolar, logistic, and geological perspectives. Minik Rosing, the project’s Greenlandic curator and a renowned geologist, including an ancient slab of rock as evidence, presented with the tagline “Greenland is the world’s memory.” This “banded iron formation” was deposited almost 3.9 billion years ago on the sea floor outside of Nuuk, in an area that London Mining plans to drill for oil. One of the oldest discovered traces of earth’s landscape, it contains geological records of one-third of the history of the universe.

Through the exhibition’s texts, the rock is linked to the Greenlandic people and the aims of these new architectural projects, showing that through self-determination and good design, Greenlandic society will

Bolatta Silis-Høegh (Kalaalleq-Danish), The Greenlandic Home, 2012, installation. The entrance to the exhibition, installation view at the Danish Architecture Centre, Copenhagen.

likewise remain and thrive as Greenlanders rise to meet challenges of coming years.

One of the main features of the exhibition is a film following the exhibition’s planning and production stages up to its opening in Venice. The 28-minute documentary focuses on Danish architect Jens Thomas Arnfred as he plans his contribution and Helena Lennert as she focuses his project to Greenlandic perspectives. Jens Thomas tells how Danish architects and urban planners came and left in the 1960s, failing to adapt their Nordic welfare building models to the people and landscape of Greenland: “You can see a copy of a Danish ghetto back there,” referring undoubtedly to apartments like Blok P. He asserts that new architecture must “go in dialogue with the nature.” But soon an all too common conflict emerges between the Danish architect’s romanticizing and Greenlandic needs: Helena asserts that his first house design (what Jens Thomas calls “a new arctic building practice”), with far too many compartments and impractically small proportions, fails to address her needs and the needs of Greenlandic families. Another participant says, “I see an outsider falling in love with Greenlandic nature… I do not see the same love for the Greenlandic people and lifestyles.” While Jens Thomas offers some resistance and much arrogance, with the collaboration of his Greenlandic partners, the design opens up, combining a fusion with landscape and a flexible, open-building plan. He and his Greenlandic partners are now searching for funding to produce 12 to 14 houses.

What follows are numerous intriguing and forward-thinking project sketches and models. The most impressive and expansive project is a two-tier airport and shipping port, which would build Greenland into a major international transit center with a stopover program to rival Iceland. The project would also address the high cost and unavailability of food and other resources throughout Greenland by bringing air and sea transport together. The design itself is a stunning picture, a steel cross floating among the ice.

The only negative of this inspiring project is its size; it has been fairly reduced

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providing a fixed perspective, her work offers up the possibility of change.

Melting Tallow’s work is part of a larger, collective performance project in Toronto entitled Taking Place: Demonstrating Mindstates to Undo Nationstates. Created based on intuitive movements, Baby Blue explores the impact of trauma and chaos and the fractured spaces that are created within our daily existence in the here and now.

The interstitial zone between reality and other states of consciousness is evoked in the process of walking through the gallery space. The viewer is at once here and not here. In the body, out of the body.

Boundaries of mind and material, reality and dream, spirit and matter, dissolve.

Melting Tallow is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes video, installation, and performance produced over the past four years. Her work explores states of consciousness and the role of the meditative and the subjunctive relationship among memory, culture, and psychosis.

Chandra Melting Tallow (Siksika), Baby Blue, photo collage.

from the Venice Biennale exhibition, presumably due to space restrictions. In Venice, Bolatta’s installation also opened into a cold room with drying fish, filling it with the aroma of cod, while two videos of Greenlandic nature and everyday life (also present in Copenhagen) played on opposite walls. While clearly this would have been much more of a shock in the Venetian summer than Scandinavian wintertime, it no doubt would complete the immersive experience.

The Copenhagen version has far fewer architectural pieces—several were replaced with a single monitor shifting between them at a slow pace. The Venice exhibition presumably included some of artist Julie Edel Hardenberg’s photographs (she is listed as a contributor, and her works are depicted in the exhibition catalogue).

A number of her works represent the transforming, hodge-podge urban landscape of Nuuk and other Greenlandic towns, and small moments of Arctic ingenuity (for example, carving out a patch of sea ice with a chainsaw to turn snowboarding into surfing).

Overall, while the exhibition presents an inspiring visualization of Greenland’s possibilities, I wish it had given just slightly more space to current Greenlandic lives and lived spaces. This would take the exhibition even further—making it easier to visualize these projects not just as a fanciful dream but as true possibilities.

—David Winfield Norman

Toronto

Baby Blue: Work by Chandra Melting Tallow Whippersnapper Gallery

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ABY BLUE RESTS in interstitial space, in the crisis between consciousness and reality. Within the realm of contemporary media culture, the meaning of liminal takes on fluid, transformative powers, and it is in this space that Chandra Melting Tallow’s artwork provides insight. Rather than

An artist of mixed ancestry, she was raised by her Siksika (Blackfoot) grandmother and mother in Calgary and Vancouver.

Her work is influenced by her Siksika heritage and ancestral traditions.

Her earlier performance and meditative sound work informs her purpose along with reflections from past experience. Her website, chandrameltingtallow.blogspot. ca, implored this viewer to explore the subtle relationships between sound and meditation, and utterance and image.

To create the installation work at Whippersnapper Gallery in Toronto, Melting Tallow drew on childhood memories. Sheets dyed with tea, torn into shreds, are like the archives of traumatic memory, dipped in the residue of ancestral memory. Tiny bells sewn onto the sheets jingle as the viewer walks toward and further into the recess, the tinkling evoking the jingle dress dances of the Siksika and other Indigenous nations on the Plains. The ringing of the bells brings the viewer into a liminal moment—a gentle sound to promote healing and rid the body, mind, and spirit of illness.

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A small altar at the back of the gallery holds an offering of fresh pomegranate seeds and tobacco. Above this, a photograph turned toward the viewer reveals the image of an elderly woman. The photograph is of Victoria McHugh, Melting Tallow’s Siksika great-grandmother. She faces us, engaging in the present. Although she has passed away, her influence is embodied within Melting Tallow’s ancestral meditations. Like the artist’s relationship with her heritage, it is not an explicit acknowledgment, but one that is continually being re-worked.

Melting Tallow’s work reads like a personal visit into her world, inviting us to visit with her familial relations and spend a few moments in other realities.

Crushed blue hydrangeas brought from Vancouver are sprinkled below the altar.

Some of them are dipped in baby blue, a calming color, meditative and lulling, like an experimental song track of Melting Tallow’s previous work on Mourning Coup. Baby blue ink also rests in the bowl, another offering into this space of possibility and rupture.

The intuitive rhythm of the space created provides a disjuncture in traditions of mental states, a dissolution of order, a fluidity. Ambiguity, neither here nor there, lends credence to the mythology of Melting Tallow as a transitional figure and mythical artist, in what Victor Turner articulated as the space “betwixt and between.” Giving this viewer and the audience an implicit rather than an explicit form of communicating and representation, the work brings us into a moment of transition.

Situating herself in the strength of contemporary Indigenous artists creating art in a diversity of multi-media forms to question privileged Western visions, ways of being and existing, it will be interesting to watch Melting Tallow’s artistic meditations as they develop. Through the richly layered installation evoking the liminal places of mentality, Melting Tallow calls us into transformation. —Gloria Bell

Toronto

Lovesick Child A Space Gallery, imagineNATIVE Film+ Media Arts Festival, Aboriginal Curatorial Collective

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EATURING Âhasiw MaskêgonIskwêw, Leslie McCue, Adrian Stimson, and Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Lovesick Child is curator Elwood Jimmy’s response to the creative legacy of Maskêgon-Iskwêw, who passed away in 2006. A Cree-French Métis artist, performer, curator, editor, writer, and educator, MaskêgonIskwêw worked closely with urban communities and cultural organizations to enrich the Indigenous arts in Canada.

His engagement with several digital technology projects in the 1990s inspired Indigenous (and non-Indigenous) artists to examine this new media in greater depth.

New media art, as it is now better known, has offered many of Canada’s leading Indigenous artists a platform to call their own. Today, it has become one of the most innovative mediums of Indigenous expression in Canada, and this is strongly reflected in Lovesick Child.

The works in the exhibition are from, or directly informed by, Maskêgon-Iskwêw’s life and body of work; each piece carries the aesthetic of his politics and the spirit of his activism. For example, MaskêgonIskwêw’s seminal interactive website isi-pîkiskwêwin ayapihkêsîsak (Speaking the Language of Spiders), originally produced in Banff, Alberta, was overhauled by interdisciplinary artist Cheryl L’Hirondelle in 2012 and is here projected onto one of the gallery’s white walls.

The home page of the site is splintered into nine “domains” based on the Saulteaux cosmological cycle, and each is represented by a separate, manipulated digital image, from a nautilus shell to a buffalo. A mouse, provided by the gallery, allows audiences to browse each domain at their own pace. The image of fire leads to a different site called “Dawning of Seventh Fire,” with an image of a young child. Clicking on the child reveals the incisive poem “lies we told each other,”

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written by artist Lynn Acoose about the plight of forlorn love and read aloud by L’Hirondelle. In L’Hirondelle’s remake of Maskêgon-Iskwêw’s isi-pîkiskwêwin ayapihkêsîsak, HTML, GIF animations, and bitmap images are used to generate a penetrating digital narrative of modern Indigenous experience in Canada; however, its historical significance goes much deeper. Although its appearance seems outdated by today’s Internet standards, Maskêgon-Iskwêw’s collaborative project is vastly significant for Indigenous peoples in Canada, because it is one of the first to present Indigenous storytelling in the digital age.

Including the website in the exhibition is a bold, somewhat unorthodox gesture, yet it serves as a powerful reminder of Maskêgon-Iskwêw’s energetic vision and awareness of community.

The audio piece, Lovesick Child, from the exhibition gathers its name from the isi-pîkiskwêwin ayapihkêsîsak website where Maskêgon-Iskwêw’s haunting poem “Love-sick Child” exists in the “Time of Setting Order” Saulteaux domain.

The late Elvina Piapot orates “Lovesick Child,” where the lines describe an Indigenous woman’s horrific death at the hands of an unknown assailant, seemingly caused by a precarious life on urban streets—“It most of all told: death by misfortune or/self-ingested misfortune. Misfortune?” Though Maskêgon-Iskwêw’s poem was written in the mid-1990s, its subject matter remains tragically current and symptomatic of the Canadian government’s appalling conduct toward disappeared Aboriginal women and their families. With this in mind, having an Aboriginal woman, in this case Piapot, recite lines for the audio work further underscores its gendered significance. In voicing the issue, quite literally, the piece works against the Canadian government’s calculated silence: when speaking one cannot forget.

In the work Sweet as Strawberries, by the Mississauga Ojibway artist Leslie McCue, a large rock is enclosed in a Plexiglas case. Positioned above the case is a jug that slowly drips strawberry juice onto the top of the rock. Beside the case is a microphone attached to an amplifier,

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performance can exist as autonomous aesthetic objects? Perhaps, though, the sense of absence triggered by the installation is ultimately related to the loss of Maskêgon-Iskwêw himself.

Taken together, the works at A Space are not intended to be a retrospective, but a reminder of Âhasiw Maskêgon-Iskwêw’s larger impact on Indigenous art and visual culture in Canada. In drawing lines of flight between Maskêgon-Iskwêw and several contemporary artists including Adrian Stimson and Leslie McCue, we see just how his legacy operates and why it’s relevant now. What an important trajectory to follow, one that links history to the present and back again.

—Matthew Ryan Smith

Vancouver

Indian Candy Winsor Gallery

Âhasiw Maskêgon-Iskwêw (Cree-Métis), isi-pîkiskwêwin ayapihkêsîsak (Speaking the Language of Spiders), 1994, website screenshot.

which invites audiences to speak to the rock. In turn, the rock, it is said, holds onto the words like a memory, hence why the work itself is rooted in the Anishinaabe saying, “Make your words as sweet as strawberries.” While the conceptual underpinning of the work is exceptionally strong, especially in the way that McCue has fused Aboriginal tradition with contemporary technology, the execution of the piece is untidy, thus taking away from the idea behind it.

Furthermore, unlike the other works in the exhibition, Sweet as Strawberries is very loosely tied to Maskêgon-Iskwêw and, thus, is at odds with the curatorial premise.

Maskêgon-Iskwêw’s performance, White Shame, at Vancouver’s grunt gallery in 1992 is displayed in full as a video elsewhere in the exhibition. The original performance lasted well over an hour, during which time Maskêgon-Iskwêw pierced his flesh, wrote on the walls, and cleansed his body with clay and ash.

Each of his actions commented upon the relationship between colonial expansion and the Indigenous loss, colonial

oppression and Indigenous misfortune.

Though the video reproduction of White Shame is rather distorted, the original performance remains canonical, so much so that the influential Siksika (Blackfoot) artist Adrian Stimson reproduced it ten years later in 2012 at grunt gallery. Several of the objects from Stimson’s absorbing 2012 performance White Shame Re-visited are installed as part of exhibition, including the large feathers and barbs which Stimson used to puncture his chest. The words “suicide” and “shame” are projected interchangeably atop the feathers in bold white letters—white being a conscious visual device. The feathers installed on the gallery’s walls and projected text remain vehicles for memory itself, both for Maskêgon-Iskwêw’s original grunt gallery performance and Stimson’s interpretation of it in 2012. That being said, the work feels curiously incomplete, unfinished in some way, as if it were too quiet. The likely reason being the performative body is missing from the work, which raises the question of whether or not elements from a

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ANA CLAXTON is a Hunkpapa Lakota interdisciplinary artist working in the fields of installation, video, photography, and performance art. Her work has been significant in the development of experimental Indigenous aesthetics, in the push for the inclusion of Indigenous artists within national and global art institutions, and in the centering of Lakota epistemologies as Indigenous conceptual aesthetic frameworks over her 20-year practice in contemporary art. Previous works explore the significance of family photographs to resurfacing Indigenous ways-of-being and legacies of survivance, a term first used by Gerald Vizenor (Ojibwe) to signify an Indigenous approach to survival and resistance. For example, one might remember I Want To Know Why (1994) and Sitting Bull and the Moose Jaw Sioux (2004). Over the past several decades, Claxton has worked to broaden people’s understanding of Lakota epistemologies and, in particular, the presence of Lakota in Canada. While many people might know of Lakota in the United States, Claxton’s research on communities in Canada helps broaden the SPRING 2 0 1 4

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Dana Claxton, Tatanka (Buffalo), 2013, aluminum-mounted LightJet print, 45 x 60 in.

field of Indigenous art history and Lakota particularity.

In Indian Candy, Claxton edits and reclaims Indigenous ontologies, working from media appropriated from Internet sources and photographs taken at Writing On Stone, an ancient pictograph site.

The glossy, brightly-colored surfaces of many of the works highlight the creative and expressive manipulation of the photography medium, creating tension between the seductive power of color, the recesses and absences of history, and the presence of Indigenous peoples throughout.

Claxton’s exhibition aims to uncover hidden histories of Indigenous peoples, specifically Lakota resistance and the legacy of Sitting Bull, from whom Claxton is a descendant. The candylike surfaces of many of the works are trickster shifts in themselves; the media archive of Indigenous icons has been polished, colored, and transformed into another being altogether. The warrant letter to arrest Sitting Bull, juxtaposed between Buffalo Bill letterhead and the signature of Colonel Cody, entitled Wild Red Envelope, in a punchy red, recalls the numerous Indigenous leaders who

performed in Wild West shows and, at the same time, the violent seizures of territory and people and failed treaty agreements among Indigenous nations within Canada and the United States.

The buffalo is another Indigenous cultural symbol that Claxton celebrates and affirms. With the gradation of the horizon from purple to pink, Tatanka (Buffalo) looks directly at us, a source of spiritual strength and a staple food in Plains culture. The near extinction of the buffalo paralleled the trauma and loss that Indigenous nations faced across the Plains during the latter half of the 19th century. Many other Indigenous artists also reference buffalo; Adrian Stimson (Siksika) creates visceral performances using his alter ego, Buffalo Boy. In the print Geronimo in Pink, Claxton presents the name of Indigenous hero Geronimo, a hero for Indigenous people and a reminder of survivance. A lighthearted work, the large ledger-like drawing Sitting Bull Draws the Dandy portrays the art connoisseur in top hat, glossed over in turquoise.

The work is not all sweetness, however.

There is a sobering narrative with her image Love Me created in light of the

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Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

This is a Canadian government initiative to address the largely destructive legacies of Indian Residential Schools. Love Me works to help people not to just think of Indigenous peoples as souvenir dolls at tourist stands but rather as human beings. Another work, Blue Headdress, plays with perception; the closer one comes to the image, the more pixelated and bead-like the surface becomes, conveying the oscillating power of color and art within Indigenous performance to overturn colonial expectations. The blurred surface also reminds this viewer of the fetishization of Indigenous cultures, through the recurring motifs of headdresses and other stereotypical items of Plains Indian culture. As a reminder of the spiritual nexus throughout Claxton’s practice, the photographs of the ancient petroglyph site in coatings of purple and blue highlight the transcendent power of imagery.

Collectively these archival juxtapositions and bright re-worked icons and symbols

Claxton’s exhibition aims to uncover hidden histories of Indigenous peoples, specifically Lakota resistance might be read as an implicit critique on current efforts of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to provide big solutions for generations of trauma, land loss, and cultural disjuncture that Indigenous peoples face, although Claxton’s high-gloss works avoid outright criticism. The pop colors draw the gaze toward the surface to linger there; the deep blues, turquoises, pinks, and purples seduce the eye. Shaking up the colonial archive, Claxton re-shapes our relations toward history, holding up a mirror to our own blurred and glossy multi-media misunderstandings and representations.

—Gloria Bell

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Book Reviews Art History

Arapaho Women’s Quillwork: Motion, Life, and Creativity

By Jeffrey D. Anderson University of Oklahoma Press

Quillwork was a gift from above to humans, and powers of sacred beings were generated with each new quillwork creation in turn given as a gift from women to their relatives. The spiraling outward motion of Whirlwind Woman, the linear path of the Sun each day, the mediating movement and cross-like radiance of Little Star, and the time-extending power of the Four Old Men were inscribed in quillwork designs and attachments. The wearer of owners of quillwork absorbed those powers into his or her body and life path but also radiated them outward to others.1

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UILLWORK, THE APPLIQUÉ of flattened porcupines quills to hides, is an art form unique to North America. Whirlwind Woman, Neyóoóxetusei, gave quillwork to Arapaho people. Being sacred, the designs cannot be altered or embellished. Due the loss of related ceremonial knowledge,

Arapaho people ceased making quillwork in the early 20th century.

Largely ignored by anthropologists, art historians, and the art market, quillwork defies Western expectations of what art is, while placing Indigenous art values in sharp focus.

Jeffery Anderson, Professor of Anthropology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, studied surviving Arapaho quillwork in museum collections throughout the country. He synthesized field notes “scattered, unpublished, and inaccessible to the public.” These include the work of Alfred Kroeber, George Dorsey, and Sister M. Inez Hilger.

Anderson is particularly determined to bring one voice forward—that of Cleaver Warden, a Southern Arapaho ethnographer who worked for Dorsey from 1900 to 1905. Warden’s fluency in the Arapaho language and understanding of Arapaho cosmology provide unparalleled insight to the quillwork’s symbology, ceremonial significance, and role in Arapaho society.

Warden recorded most of the ethnographic material and collected most of the quillwork in museums today.

“Quillwork is present in the core series of myths that define the oldest meanings and purposes for ritual practices in several of the most sacred lodges,” Anderson explains. “Indeed, quillwork is probably as old as all the Arapaho lodges and the Arapaho tribe itself.”

No clear archaeological evidence exists of Arapahos prior to the 18th century; however, linguists estimate a thousandyear separation between the Arapahos and Great Lakes Algonquian-speakers.

Oral history states that Arapahos lived in Colorado by the early 17th century.

The Front Range forests provided ample porcupines, which are not found on prairies. Botanist John Bradbury penned the first written description of Arapaho quillwork in 1810.

The early 19th century marked the apex of Arapaho quillwork production. These flush times of good hunting were marred by warfare and European-American incursion onto Arapaho lands—ending

in the reservation era, when the tribe was split in northern and southern bands.

Porcupines were rare on Wind River and the Southern Plains of Indian Territory.

Buffalo, the primary source of hides for quillwork, were overhunted by nonnatives. In Wyoming, large robes were the first items to go, while cradles were the last quillwork items made. By the late 1890s, quillwork was rare among the Southern Arapaho. Gradually the women conducted quillwork ceremonies passed on.

Quillwork cannot be among the Arapaho because of the danger of performing the ceremonies incorrectly.

Towards the turn of the century, quillwork and hide grew so scarce, cradles were recycled and ultimately sold to collectors. Ethnographers reached the Arapaho during the most impoverished time in their history. Warden and Dorsey collected quillwork for the Field Museum.

From the 1890s to 1920s, several hundred quilled items were sold to museum collections.

Kroeber and Warden were the only men to be permitted to observe quilling ceremonies because turn-of-the-century Arapaho elders were more concerned about recording knowledge of the quillwork and its symbolism than the anthropologists’ presence. Arapaho elders who shared information and artworks with ethnographers were effectively sending time capsules to their descendants. While anthropologists have largely ignored the quillwork since the 1930s, Arapaho researchers are actively interested.

Today, elders encourage discussion of the old art forms and the reintroduction of tribally specific Arapaho aesthetics into contemporary art. Obtaining finished quillwork from other tribes, such as the Lakota, is acceptable in contemporary Arapaho society, as is using the designs in other media such as beadwork or paint.

Quillwork was exclusively a women’s art form. The Seven Old Women, the most respected elder women in the tribe, were master quillworkers. Each kept a bundle with ceremonial items and tools for quilling. Young women apprenticed with the Old Women. Pledges and rituals were

Jeffrey D. Anderson, Arapaho Women’s Quillwork: Motion, Life, and Creativity, 113–4.

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required to quill a cradle, robe, leanback cover, tipi ornament set, tipi liner, or tipi door. A woman publicly pledged a project to give to a relative or friend on significant occasions or to help them through times of great difficulty, such as illness.

While other Arapaho art forms such as hide painting and beadwork allowed for individual innovation, the sacred nature of art forms such as body painting and quillwork meant that only prescribed patterns and colors could be used.

Group ceremonies with feasts and giveaways preceded the work of quilling, which women performed alone in a tipi.

While quilling, the woman would not engage in any other work, so others had to take over her daily chores. Robes typically took a month to complete; however, the “One Hundredth Robe,” ranked highest of all the quillwork, required 100 days of quillwork.

Anderson takes pains to mention quillworkers by name, such as YellowWoman, Backward, Agnes Yellow Plume, Ann Wolf, Mrs. One-Eye Left Hand, and others, such as Cedar-Woman, one of the last quill bundle-keepers among the Southern Arapaho, and Singing Underwood, one of the last Northern Arapaho bundle-keepers. A prolific Northern Arapaho quillworker, Firewood shared her extensive knowledge with the Cleaver Warden.

Sewing quillwork has often been compared to counting coup. Mrs. OneEye Left Hand had a stick with 30 notches on it, one for each buffalo robe she made.

Women cut dots into their elk antler hidescrapers, marking the numbers of hides they had scraped.

Anderson writes, “Arapaho women did not originally make quillwork for intentions that fit within the pervading modern, postmodern or postcolonial frames for defining artistic creativity or human agency.”

Because pre-reservation Arapaho women were not fighting against sexism or racism or other oppression, this is not the artwork

of resistance; it reinforces the women’s societal values as opposed to challenging them. Quillwork reflected a completely integrated cosmology.

abstract concepts such as a bright future or the “instincts of a child.” Anderson shares meticulous descriptions, diagrams, and images of the quilled designs.

The art strengthened social bonds— between young and older women, between bride and groom’s families, and between quillworkers and the recipients of their artworks.

Xouubee’ means “straight,” and a straight line of quillwork invokes a straight spine, a straight path, and a metaphor for an honest, upright life. Straight rows also represent the Four Old Men walking in single file, which symbolizes the four seasons in a year.

“Meanings and functions are never permanently attached to forms or movements but must continually be reembroidered through women’s motion in quillwork,” writes Anderson. The idea of renewal resonates throughout other forms of Native artwork; that the individual art pieces would ultimately be destroyed, but the expressions need to be recreated by the community to stay alive.

Children were born into a world marked by quillwork at every turn. The quilled designs on their cradle referenced both their growing body—symbols for their straight spine, ribcage, even the whorl in their hair where thoughts emerge—and also the world beyond, tipi designs, and outward to the sun and moon.

Numerical symbolism begins with four, the most sacred number. Rhomboids invoke the Four Old Men, four seasons, four hills of life—infancy, youth, adulthood, and old age—and the “epochal time of the four ages of the cosmos.” Five means all four directions with a return to the center, as well as four fingers and a thumb. Seven represents the sacred directions of east, west, north, south, up, down, and center, as well as the combined sacred beings: “the Four Old Men, Our Father or Man-Above, Mother-Earth, and the pipe in the center.” One hundred is a full life of 100 years.

A circle can symbolize the sun, a brain, or the desire for completion of a cycle.

The rings of a quilled disk also refer to the spinning direction of a whirlwind.

The sacred wheel can reference the sun, water, gentleness, meekness, a snake, and the earth island surrounded by water.

Triangles when acute often refer to tipis; when obtuse, mountains. These were frequently conjoined to form an hourglass, which can symbolize celestial movements.

Chapter Four, “Quillwork in Mythical Traditions,” relays oral history demonstrating the central role of quillwork in Arapaho life. In “The Painter Porcupine,” a woman married a porcupine so her mother would have quills. “Quillwork was present,” writes Anderson, “in the mythical establishment of proper relations between humans and buffalo, as well as Sun, Moon, Morning Star, and sacred beings in the above.”

A common thread is women’s power, a necessary complement to men’s power.

Greek crosses represent the morning star, nookoox. Quilled disk designs can symbolize bear claws, a centipede, or even a “day in summer.” Five-pointed stars are human hands. Pendants that hang from a round tipi ornament with deer dewclaws, xooxooneihihi’, symbolize raindrops, tassels of cottonwood trees, or bird’s feet.

Purely geometric designs could represent anything from the path of the sun, to a fawn, ground squirrel, buffalo, or mole, to

Arapaho Women’s Quillwork is a challenging but greatly rewarding read. Extraordinary in its thoroughness, the book’s purpose is “bridging the gaps among academic, popular, and Arapaho readership.”

Anderson shares many choice critiques of the current state of anthropology and writes that his “loyalties are with the Arapaho people, not necessarily the anthropology communities.”

—America Meredith

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Journal

Hemispheres: Visual Cultures of the Americas, Volume VI India Young, editor University of New Mexico, 2013

the editors put together an exhibition inspired by Idle No More and organized a symposium held on October 23, 2013, at the Art Gallery at the University of New Mexico. The authors of two of the papers in Hemispheres presented their work, followed by a panel of artists, activists, and scholars discussing the role of protest art in Native communities.

Published for the sixth year running, this edition considers a range of issues spanning from the colonial period to today.

Annick Benavides, a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, describes the 17th-century painting The Surrender of Sevilla from the Cuzco School in Peru.

Though most of the artists in the Cuzco School were Indigenous, the style they learned was decidedly European. The artist captured the complex language of conquest with the Native leader kneeling before the invading Spanish forces and offering the keys to the kingdom. Benavides questions the title applied to the work, suggesting that the image might represent the defeat of Inca forces at the hands of Spanish conquistadors.

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HE COMPLEX relationship between Native American artists and the environment provides the framework for the 2013 edition of Hemispheres, the annual publication of essays by art history graduate students in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of New Mexico. Edited by graduate students, the journal provides a forum for other graduate students across the Americas to share their work. Inspired by recent events, especially the Idle No More movement in Canada, this year’s edition focuses on the arts of South and North America, particularly exploring how Native artists have found a voice to protest the atrocities of colonial impact to Native people and Native lands.

Even today, Native communities are especially vulnerable to “environmental racism,” the tendency noted by Vandana Shiva in Biopiracy for polluting industries to target minority communities. Native artists are skilled in representing the connection to the environment; as Unangan artist Anna Hoover notes, “Art helps me find the waterways that connect my own relationship to the environment” (55).

To celebrate the publication of the journal,

Laura Leaper, a recent PhD from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, suggests how Native artists can subvert intercultural representations in her article about a drawing in Fray Diego de Valadés’ Rhetorica Christiana, published in 1579.

Born in Tlaxcala, Mexico, in 1533 to a conquistador father and a Tlaxcalan mother, Fray Diego included an image of the Aztec calendar in the Rhetorica but failed to include an explanatory text. Despite the author’s assurances that the work was intended to explain Aztec culture, the lack of an explanatory text suggests that he was intentionally leaving the European reader uninformed, thus keeping the power of knowledge for the Native reader.

As part of her master’s degree program in Native American Art History at the University of Washington, Anna Hoover organized an exhibition called fashion STATEMENT to highlight the Anglo American Company’s decision to open a pit mine at Bristol Bay in Alaska. This mine would have polluted a wild sockeye salmon run—one of the last remaining. Hoover invited artists, including John Hoover, James Luna, Joe David, and Larry McNeil, to contribute t-shirt designs, and the sale of these shirts funded the protests. Despite the

Anglo American Company painting their efforts as part of economic growth, protests such as Hoover’s ultimately led the Anglo American Company to withdraw from the Pebble Partnership and to abandon the proposed mine.

As part of the symposium, the artists Nanibah Chacon and Jake Fragua from the Honor the Treaties group came and participated in a discussion. Honor the Treaties began in 2012 and was joined by the street artist Shepard Fairey, best known for the red and blue image of Barack Obama that was adopted for the 2008 campaign, and by Ernesto Yerena, the Latino street artist, Honor the Treaties works to promote Native rights and to strengthen Native advocacy groups by giving images to their causes. The Native artists have volunteered their time and skills to create images that call attention to different causes such as stopping uranium mining on Mount Taylor or helping teenage mothers.

The gallery show explores some of the artwork used in recent protests of the Idle No More movement. Idle No More began in early 2011 when the Canadian federal government proposed Omnibus Bill C-45 that would have undercut Native land and water rights. The exhibit includes not only photographs and posters, but also printed t-shirts and denim jackets handembroidered with the image of a raised fist holding an eagle feather in support of the Idle No More movement. The show underscored the importance of Native artists in the protest movement.

The role of Native artists as a voice to protect their communities may seem an unusual fit, but as Anna Hoover notes, artists have a gift for digesting and relating complex ideas. As Hoover wrote, “Art can be one the most efficient ways to communicate. Artists are often able to digest ideas and produce palatable conversation starters for their audiences to take in. Artists are visionaries for their people, they often describe those things that are not clearly visible to mass audiences” (56). It may be unfair that the burden of caretaking the lands and waterways of the world seems to fall disproportionately to Native Americans, yet the art shown in the journal, symposium, and exhibition highlights the clarity of Native artists to support the health and welfare of their communities.—Suzanne Newman Fricke SPRING 2 0 1 4

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REVIEWS

Monograph

Charles Edenshaw Robin K. Wright, Daina Augaitis, and Jim Hart, Eds. Black Dog Publishing

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AIDA CARVER, PAINTER, AND DESIGNER Charles Edenshaw’s individual artistic style has become synonymous with a resurgence of Haida art practice during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Edenshaw is the topic of a new book, the first of its kind. The monograph was produced in conjunction with a major traveling exhibition of his work beginning at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia, and traveling to the National Gallery of Art in Ottawa and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario, during 2014.

Edenshaw was born in 1839 at a time prior to the profound changes and disruptions in Haida life and culture, which similarly affected all North American Indigenous peoples across the continent. During his lifetime he would see changes that affected his culture and its traditional ways and threatened such long held Northwest Coast practices as the potlatch and other important ceremonies. The fact that this artist trained traditionally, became highly productive during this period, and was able to initiate innovations in long-standing forms of art expression is salutary. It is yet another of the many histories of Indigenous survivance and resilience in the face of widespread colonial disruptions that needs to be told to wider audiences today.

The book Charles Edenshaw, edited by Daina Augaitis and James Hart, is a monographic survey of the artist’s large body of works taking in his carved and painted designs as well as his work in silver and gold. The principal curators, Robin K. Wright and Daina Augaitis , acting with the assistance of two eminent Haida advisors, Robert Davidson and James Hart, artist-descendants of Charles Edenshaw, have brought together a number of experts on Edenshaw’s work who represent a range of perspectives and approaches. Beautifully produced with 280 plates, many full-color and a number of halftone illustrations, the monograph includes all the main pieces on display in the Vancouver exhibition and includes other comparative illustrations to help explain Edenshaw’s works. Taken as a whole, it gives the reader the means to understand both the context for Edenshaw’s stylistic qualities and how they can be interpreted from both an iconographic and historic Haida vantage point. As one of the contributors to this volume states succinctly, Edenshaw’s mastery is demonstrated by the fact that he was able to create new ideas within “a highly stylized art form, but expanded it rather than being restricted by it.” The use of the figure of the Master Carpenter from traditional Haida narratives helps explain the achievements of Charles Edenshaw’s production. Charles Edenshaw, as a collection of both previous and new research, is groundbreaking and will surely stand for years as a key text on its subject.

The book begins with two introductory statements, by the Vancouver Museum’s Director, Kathleen S. Bartels and James Hart, Chief 7Idansuu, whose name 7Idansuu was Anglicized to become Edenshaw in the 19th century and is also where the artist Charles Edenshaw took his name. The title 7Idansuu thus indicates that Charles was both a leader of his people and a master of his art. In Haida culture these two activities, art making and leadership, often were united in the same individual and were part of the reason that chieftainship was merited.

Chapters highlight particular themes or approaches in discussing the work of this major artist. “Haida Traditions” perfectly describes ways Haida artists were fully integrated into their society through their training from a young age to carve, paint,

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weave, or design objects of great beauty and usefulness, usually by watching and doing and not receiving direct instruction.

It also explains how the last part of the 19th century was a time of transformation, not only for the lifeways and culture of the people, but also for the forms that their art could take under the impact of colonial contact and tourism. Edenshaw became the most important and well-known exponent of this new style and form of art, and this book also undertakes to try to discern what makes an Edenshaw piece like no other of his contemporaries’ works.

Larger sections follow, including “The Power of Narrative” and “Distinct Style,” both of which give the reader fuller access to the underlying principles in the Haida, and particularly Edenshaw’s, art style.

The two sections work together looking extensively at the formline and ovoid shapes inherent in this visual tradition but showing how Edenshaw worked creatively and with inspiration within a more strict set of formal notation. The figureforms he created follow his Haida roots carefully, but he innovated within these long repeated motifs and stories to make delightful resolutions, which are indeed both “traditional” and “modern” but are also transcendent. As visual story-forms, they can speak across time and across other boundaries about particular Indigenous values that still hold the power to inform and educate. Wider audiences can fully appreciate the achievements of Edenshaw from reading these sections of the book.

The last two sections of the book take on the ideas of both “New Forms” in Edenshaw’s works and the impact of his achievements detailing his “Influences and Legacies.” These are important elements in the text giving a fuller picture of why Charles Edenshaw’s art has had the lasting power that it has. His intelligent and perceptive understanding of how to synthesize diverse elements and influences in his work stands out as one of his crowning achievements. Both of these sections of the book contain contextual perspectives giving the reader a much greater understanding of why Edenshaw is one of the greatest figures most important for contemporary Haida and Northwest Coast artists today.—Stephanie Pratt

REVIEWS

Art History

In the Spirit of the Ancestors: Contemporary Northwest Coast Art at the Burke Museum Robin K. Wright and Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, editors University of Washington Press

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HE STRENGTH, BEAUTY, and resurgence of Northwest Coast art are the subjects of eight essays by Native artists and non-Native academics.

In-depth writing complements images of 50 works from the Burke Museum’s collection—as robes, baskets, serigraphs, jewelry, and carving. The book’s title comes from the Burke’s 2006 exhibit of works created since 1985, from the museum’s collection of contemporary Northwest Coast art; however, the book includes work created beyond the exhibit.

Bill Holm notes the museum’s shifting focus from historical to contemporary Northwest Coast art. Robin K. Wright, the Burke’s current curator, interweaves the museum’s activities with wider developments, such as the growth of Northwest Coast art after Canada’s 1951 removal of its anti-potlatch law. Providing a nuanced understanding, the authors delve into history and cultural practices. Wright notes, “The history of contemporary Northwest Coast Native art revolves around themes of revival and respect for the works of the ancestors.”

Artist Shaun Peterson (Puyallup-Tulalip) explains Coast Salish art, providing a much-needed vocabulary for the unique elements of the Coast Salish design system,

which stands apart from the better-known northern Northwest Coast formline system found among the Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian. Salish style instead features “cutout negative areas” on otherwise solid positive areas, notably in the shapes of crescents, trigons (t-shaped wedges), circles and ovals, and “extended crescents” housing a positive trigon shape inside.

aunt Dolores Churchill and cousin Holly Churchill, who respectively taught her to make traditional Haida basketry and cedar clothing. Lisa reflects on objects and techniques, noting the integrated beauty of objects following the form-followsfunction rule, and the unique woven works that depart from functionality, including her own woven cedar high heels.

Margaret B. Blackman conveys a deep personal appreciation for Northwest Coast prints. Beginning in the 1970s, when the making of such prints was still relatively new—”an exciting time to launch a study of Northwest Coast Indian graphics”—she and her husband Ed Hall built a massive collection of 1,166 screen prints over 25 years by Northwest Coast artists. Purchased by the Burke Museum, this collection forms the Blackman-Hall collection.

Joe David (Nuu-chah-nulth) shares his dreams, memories, and insights relating to his “life’s passion” of carving masks.

Joe credits the deep impression masks and ceremony made on him as a child, watching his father carve, and the influence of Bill Holm and Duane Pasco on his work. Joe writes about masks—work he has created and wants to create, how some masks can reflect the features of specific people, the market and the appeal of masks, and his community’s Tla-o-qui-aht style.

Weaver, Evelyn Vanderhoop (Haida) explores the meanings, construction, usage, and origins of the hand-woven naaxiin regalia, chief ’s robes, also known as Chilkat robes. Woven with complex crest designs based on painted pattern boards and originally made with mountain goat wool and yellow cedar bark yarn, dyed with copper and lichen, the naaxiin indicate one’s clan and prestige. Amidst dramatic cultural changes, “the continuity of weaving the naaxiin has never been broken.” Even the earlier style of Ravenstail robe is being made again, as old and new methods, designs, and materials are used.

Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, assistant director of the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Coast Art, compares clothing and adornments worn in a ceremonial context to those worn in secular, everyday situations, observing parallels between them that signify identity, particularly clan affiliation. One striking example is the connection between the hand tattoos and silver and gold bracelets on the bodies of high-ranking women, which could be displayed simultaneously. Missionaries disparaged tattoos, bracelets began standing in for the tattooed clan symbols; however, tattooing is being revived.

Master weaver Lisa Telford (Haida) explains the value of studying items from the past for the insights they offer for creating new works. Family connections are vital to her education, from a hat woven by her grandmother to apprenticeships under her

Robin K. Wright details the history of bentwood box drums, from 18th-century Spanish records of the drums, the drums’ usage, the 19th-century introduction of bass drums by a Christian mission in Metlakatla, the Potlatch Ban, and the resurgence of the ceremonial use of bentwood box drums. The comeback of the instrument is strikingly evidenced by Metlakatla’s Fourth Generation Ten Year Potlatch in August 1997, where 18 drums were played simultaneously.

Emily Moore discusses two Teikweidí brown bear posts, stolen from a clan house in Gaash village during the Harriman Alaska Expedition in 1899, their display at the Burke Museum for almost 70 years, and their voyage home in 2001 following a repatriation claim by the Cape Fox Heritage Corporation. Emily discusses “swapping out the spoils of a colonial past for objects that Native artists design specifically for museum display”—the Burke commissioned new house posts by Tlingit father-and-son artists Nathan and Stephen Jackson.

As someone who already delighted in the visuals of Northwest Coast art, I came away from In the Spirit of the Ancestors with a greater appreciation and understanding of the Northwest Coast peoples and their art forms. Whether you want to just look at pictures or learn more about Northwest Coast cultures, the book provides an enjoyable, informative experience.

—Neebinnaukzhik Southall SPRING 2 0 1 4

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ADVICE

Art and Object Conservation

Caring for Featherwork

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ATIVE AMERICAN AND FIRST NATIONS art is diverse—we are a holistic-thinking people after all—and the materials used vary widely. Let’s be honest—not many of us can afford to bring in a professional art or object conservator to care for our collections or even to give us some much-needed pointers on how to protect what we have.

I would like to present some basic rules and techniques on caring for artwork or cultural objects that incorporate feathers as a material. Hopefully, this will aid you in protecting your piece well before dust, dirt, grime, or (horrors of all horrors) little pesties decide to make a quick meal of the featherwork.

By Jessie Ryker-Crawford cardboard boxes over time, you will know what I mean.

Now, some people swear by storing things in boxes made of cedar. And you would think that this makes sense, since cedar is a natural insect repellent. However, it is also an extremely acidic wood and can damage work that is in direct contact with it. If you have an old cedar chest with heirlooms stored inside, check the contents to see if any acid damage has occurred. You can pad your chest well by using synthetic blankets or fabric around your objects (but not cotton or wool—remember, organic materials attract pests) and hope for the best. I know that if I had an old cedar chest or storage container, I would not easily give that up. And I have seen extremely old delicate lace stored in a cedar chest that showed very, very little signs of yellowing. But you are taking a chance.

Parfleche containers, as long as the lid fits tightly over the cylindrical case, or as long as the parfleche bag is not “squishing” your object, work wonderfully. As our ancestors well knew!

However, parfleche has its own care issues as well.

Extreme feather damage by Clothing Moth larvae.

First off, be alert as to why feather material is so prone to damage; feathers are considered an organic material, and most organic materials are highly susceptible to insect and rodent attack.

Basically, they make a good meal for all sorts of pests.

If your featherwork has been dyed or painted—with traditional pigments or commercial paints or dyes—be aware that light can quickly fade and discolor the hues. For these reasons, good storage is the most important first step in protecting your piece.

Your best storage bet? An archival box. These are boxes made out of acid-free materials which, as they do break down over time (and everything does), will not damage the objects inside. These boxes tend to be a little bit pricey; an archival storage box made out of a high-grade barrier board with metal edges runs about $30 for a 16-inch wide x 20-inch long x 3-inch high box. However, you can be absolutely sure that your featherwork is not being damaged by the container that is supposed to be protecting it! Archival boxes can be purchased through a number of archival stores online. I would look at Gaylord Brothers, Inc., (gaylord.com) or University Products (universityproducts.com) for the best current price on the box size that I need.

Plastic containers work well, too. They are cheap, and usually come with a tight-fitting lid. However, they are mass-produced

Storing Feather Objects A box with a well-fitting lid is a very acceptable storage container.

However, do not—and I will repeat this—do not use your regular, grab-it-from-the-back-of-the-grocery-store cardboard box! The boxes made from brown corrugated board are highly acidic in nature. As this material slowly breaks down, the acids in the material will, in turn, begin to damage and break down your feathers—not just feathers either, but silks, cottons, paper, canvas, etc. You will open up your storage container one day and may find yellowing, staining, brittleness, and/or disintegration of your cherished object! If you have ever stored papers or books in 74 | W W W.F I R S TAM E RI C AN ARTMAG A ZI N E.C OM

Archival storage box. All photos in this article by Jessie Ryker-Crawford.

ADVICE

with very little (probably no) thought as to whether they are archivally appropriate or not. An easy test to see whether they are archivally appropriate is the “smell test.” Anything that is breaking down and emitting chemicals into the atmosphere is very dangerous to an object. Smell the inside of the container. If it is giving off a chemical smell, it would probably be best to stay away from it. I will thoroughly wash a plastic container with a soft soap (Woolite, dish soap, etc.), rinse it at least two times, and meticulously dry it before giving it the “smell test” and making my decision as to whether I will use it or not.

I don’t usually have the money to buy an archival box, but when I do have extra pocket money, or if an object is very dear to me, then I will pay the extra cash and order an archival box.

I will periodically check to see if any feather-eating critters have gotten into my storage containers despite a tight-fitting lid. Insects can get into spaces you would never dream that they could. And they will tear through featherwork in a matter of weeks. If I do not think that I will be checking on a piece in a timely manner (if it is sitting waayy back in my closet), then I will add the protection of a zip-lock plastic bag–either placing my object or the storage box in it. Preferably, place the box in the bag. You do not want your feathers all “mushed” by the bag.

In the classroom, we make a mount system for objects with feathers. This is a bit time-consuming and requires ordering more material from an archival store, but we are then assured that the object will not be damaged while stored away. This mount system is made by cutting a piece of archival corrugated board larger than the fan (half-inch wider and longer than the fan), then padding it with Volara (a very soft spongy material), and finally covering it with non-bleached, non-dyed muslin.

Muslin is made out of 100 percent cotton, which does not give off any chemical fumes as it breaks down. We used strips of triangular archival foam rod covered with muslin to act as the support strips, and used non-bleached, non-dyed twill tape to tie the fan down. We also used archival hot glue sticks to glue the muslin and foam rod down to the supporting archival board.

be. If you have any questions, check with a professional.

Archival storage box made in-house, specifically for the object.

Overall, this costs about $120, but that is because some of the material, such as the archival board, has to be bought in bulk.

It left us enough material to make a box especially for the fan—with lots of all the materials left over for other objects as well.

Feather Objects on Display If you have an ethnographic object or art piece on display that incorporates feathers, there is little you can do to stop insects from attacking your object. If it is up on a wall, this will deter all mice and rodents except for those who are knowledgeable about using ropes and grappling hooks.

However, insects tend to lay their eggs in dark places, and it is the larvae that will feed on the feathers. Check behind the piece occasionally, as well as in any creases or folds where some rude and thoughtless moth may have laid its eggs.

You are looking for small little cocoons (they will be the same color as the material since the moth-mother will utilize these materials to build the cocoon), or sticky little trails where the larvae traveled as they fed off the feather/materials, or actual holes. If you do find evidence of moths, then carefully place your object in a zip-lock plastic bag and freeze the heck out of it for about a month. Once the larvae are deceased, you can then take tweezers and clean your piece up of the insects, larvae, and debris. Please note, though, that although featherwork is not damaged by freezing, other materials can

One last thing…never, ever, ever use mothballs or spray pesticides to deter insects. Mothballs are made out of naphthalene, which is a toxic material.

Needless to say, so are almost all pesticides.

Yes, they either kill or deter insects, but they are also damaging to the health of other living things—children, pets, yourself. The techniques that I have shared with you are considered “preventive maintenance.” That is, we prefer to deal with the problem before it starts rather than after we have a full-fledged attack on our object, which may then call for more drastic measures.

One last thing… some cultural objects cannot be fully encased in either a plastic bag or even a lidded box. They need to breathe, because they are living entities.

We make our own boxes for these spiritual entities, with a cut-out area on the top of the box which we then glue a piece of muslin on the inside—as a window, if you will. That way, they are breathing and happy and are protected until it is time for them to come out during Ceremony.

I hope that this helps; your artwork and objects that incorporate feathers are probably some of the hardest to care for, but with a bit of preventive maintenance, your pieces should be safe.

Storage box for an object that needs to breathe; window covered with muslin fabric.

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Anthropocene Years [Plate 1] By dg nanouk okpik Here Cape Lisburn Kaktovic

Here New Siberian islands Here I’m lost else-where Cape Chelynskin

White Island My compass twirling out of bearing Here Novaya Zemlya Here Bereen Isle, Norway She/I choking on acidic air Here Green land, Jan Mayen Disko Here Canada Baffin

Grinnel Lake

Minto inlet

She/I’s fogged lenses of my telescopic eyes Here brilliant colors of pollution so high

She/I wonder in the melt sun

Here start ending double rate heat Here wake-up we’re lost.

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to sweat

Breaking one Caribou at a Time By dg nanouk okpik when the arctic ends, She/I will be fishing in the mountains of the Brooks range She/I churn hallowed creams wailing and claps of beavers stir Teshepuk lake caged sand flats a little bit away a carcass of pussy willow in a droughtdried lake becoming so common and no bush willows but, who really cares? In a bloated side walk say in Houston, Texas the water tastes so fresh and cut with chlorine wake up Houston on the Prius ipod he & her listen to rush hour horns in an acrid crude daze with weight we’ll all break through the ice it will freeze and thaw and another 112 caribou risking something new cross the lake break through swim and get to the other side of the shore looking for moss 20 feet more legs cramping they lay down to rest and die of hunger.

Photo Series Chilkat River Study

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By John Hagen

HE ESTUARY at the mouth of the Chilkat River in Haines, Alaska is a spot of extremes.

In the morning you can see bears walking along the sand bars searching for salmon, in the afternoon you can see Steller sea lions swimming over the same sand looking for the same salmon. The beach can be bathed in mid-summer sun or pounded by winter storms. I photograph these transitions with an Olympus Digital Camera. I find the best images as storms blow in or out, as the sun rises or sets, and as the tide ebbs and flows.

People, place, and their interactions are my inspiration.

I explore the notions of what it means to be Alaska Native.

For myself, coming from three traditionally opposed cultures, Aleut and Iñupiaq, I build into my work a fundamental awareness of these historic conflicts.

In the 1990s, I began working with photography. My early work was with traditional silver-based processes. In the early 2000s, I picked up a digital camera, which has been my tool ever since. I started my photography career working at newspapers in Alaska.

The lands we live on form a significant part of our identities.

Classic landscape photography forms an important part of Indigenous art dialogue.

hagenphotophotoshelter.com SPRING 2 0 1 4

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IN MEMORIAM

received innumerable awards Sherman Chaddlesone Sherman at various Native American festivals and

June 2, 1947–August 17, 2013

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HERMAN TERRANCE CHADDLESONE, respected Kiowa artist, was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, and passed away at his home in Anadarko, Oklahoma, at the age of 66.

His impact on the art world through his many paintings, ranging from individual ledger-style drawings to the renowned 10-panel murals chronicling the history of the Kiowa people from their origin stories and oral tradition, was profound.

Sherman was born to John Wesley and Alice Toppah (Yellowhair) Chaddlesone and was a descendant of the respected Kiowa war chief Set-tainte (White Bear).

He is survived by his wife, Adeline or “Allie,” and four daughters Angela, Shawndae, Alison, and April.

Sherman’s father, John Chaddlesone, helped form his early interest in art and provided him instruction in figure drawing, pencil sketching, and screenprinting. In 1964, after graduating from high school in Lawton, Sherman traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and began attending the prestigious Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA).

Following his art instruction at IAIA, Chaddlesone joined the U.S. Army and from 1968 to 1969 served as an intelligence and operations specialist in both Vietnam and Thailand. When he returned to the United States following his tour of duty, he began working as the Indian Arts Workshop director of the San Francisco Arts Commission Neighborhood Arts Program. While in California, Chaddlesone and his wife, Allie, worked with the Indians of All Tribes organization that participated in the pivotal Alcatraz Island occupation.

Sherman eventually returned to Oklahoma to further his studies at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, Oklahoma, at the urging of

friend and artist T.C. Cannon (KiowaCaddo). He then moved to Washington state near the Kalispel Reservation, where his wife’s tribe is located. While there he worked as a teacher, workshop director, and administrative manager for the Kalispel Indian Reservation.

Chaddlesone returned to Oklahoma in October of 1982, and he and wife pursued full-time careers as artists.

Sherman drew with pastels; painted with acrylic, watercolor, and mixed media; printed with silk-screens; and sculpted in bronze and stone, especially alabaster.

Sherman has been an artist-in-residence at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana, and has exhibited at the Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko, Oklahoma. Sherman exhibited in Bremen, Germany; at the Amon Carter Museum of Art in Fort Worth, Texas; the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Owensboro Museum of Fine Arts in Kentucky; the Museum of New Mexico; the Oklahoma Art Center Gallery; the Oscar B. Jacobson House in Norman, Oklahoma; the Red Cloud Indian Art Show in Pine Ridge, South Dakota; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the Scottsdale Native American Indian Foundation Cultural Arts and Crafts Competition in Scottsdale, Arizona; and the Tulsa Indian Art Festival. Sherman also served on the Board of Trustees of the Oscar B. Jacobson Foundation in Norman, Oklahoma, and was an avid supporter of its establishment as a Native American Art Center. He also participated in several touring exhibitions, including the Jacobson Foundation’s Moving Murals of Oklahoma: Contemporary Native American Painting as well as the former Institute of American Indian Art Museum’s New Directions.

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events, including the American Indian Exposition, the Cherokee National Heritage Center, the Oklahomans for Indian Opportunity exhibit, the Red Earth Festival, and the Scottsdale National Indian Art Exhibition.

The National Hall of Fame for Famous American Indians in Anadarko commissioned Sherman to sculpt busts of his friend and celebrated artist T.C. Cannon and his ancestor Chief Set-tainte (White Bear). Relying on the advice of elders and using tribal oral history, Chaddlesone collaborated with two other Kiowa artists, Parker Boyiddle and Mirac Creepingbear, to create ten 6-foot by 8-foot murals depicting the origin and history of the Kiowa people. These spectacular murals are currently exhibited at the Kiowa Tribal Headquarters in Carnegie, Oklahoma. Chaddlesone also served as an elected member of the Kiowa Business Committee, the executive governing body of the Tribe.

As a Vietnam veteran, he became a member of and an active participant in the Kiowa Black Leggings Warrior Society (Ton-Kon-Gyah). In 2008, Chaddlesone collaborated with Jeff Yellowhair (Kiowa) to paint the cover of a new full-sized Battle Tipi for the Black Legging’s 50th anniversary, which is a central feature of the annual ceremonial dance held in October each year.

Sherman’s artwork is featured in numerous private and public art collections throughout the world including the National Collection of Contemporary Indian Arts, New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts, MabeeGerrer Museum of Art, the Southern Plains Indian Museum, and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

He is interred near many of his relatives at the Saddle Mountain Kiowa-ComancheApache “KCA” Intertribal Cemetery in Mountain View, Oklahoma.

—Arvo Mikkanen

IN MEMORIAM

as solid and clear as ice before LaVerna (Laverne) Goldtooth truth daybreak.

September 13, 1959–July 20, 2013

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T WAS MY PLEASURE and honor to work with Laverne Goldtooth at the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

She was an extraordinary individual— that rare person who was truly beautiful externally and internally.

I first remember her working on her jewelry during lunch, shortly before Indian Market. She was cutting strips of silver to weave together for the earrings she was making. She took her box of materials outside to a picnic table and sat engrossed in the process until she had to return to work at the Case Trading Post.

Laverne’s smile and laugh were infectious, and she could always manage to cheer you up if you were in a grumpy mood. Her intensely positive attitude served her well during those times when she was faced with life’s challenges. We would all be lucky to have ten percent of her belief that things would work out for the best.

Laverne was proud of her three children and always desired the best for them. If the boys wanted to accomplish something, she was right there to support them and to encourage them to work hard to achieve what they wanted.

During Laverne’s battle with cancer, she remained committed to do everything she possibly could to live as long a life as possible. Her courage and determination were evident to everyone who surrounded her with love.

—Leatrice A. Armstrong, Assistant to the Director, Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, NM

W

HEN I FIRST set pen to paper in the writing of this memoriam, a small, brightblue butterfly settled herself on the windowsill outside the room where I was sitting. She remained there for several minutes; her wings reflecting the early evening light and fluttering in the cool, gentle breezes that pushed themselves down from the foothills to the east. Suddenly alighting into the soft currents of air, she was carried far beyond my view. That evening, in the late-summer darkness, I saw three falling stars, one right after the other, and the next morning the brightblue butterfly was perched on the windowsill again and was not startled when I tapped on the glass to offer a greeting. She sat there for most of the morning, occasionally flying off for a while then returning to the sill again to rest: in silence, iridescent, beautiful, perfect.

I met LaVerna (Laverne) in the mid1980s, when we were working with a Native fashion and performance group called Native Influx (later known as Native Uprising). Beginning with our very first acquaintance, a photo shoot it was, I remember being impressed by her graciousness and warm, friendly reception, and, of course, by her beauty, of both earthly and more spiritually-assigned presence.

Driving home after that meeting, I remember thinking, “Wow, she’s so beautiful…and so nice!” as in real, funny, generous, kind… unaffected by her runway-model form or by her success as a talented jeweler, a most-fitting gift considering her own gem-like qualities. And the more I got to know her over the years, the more that impression traveled far beyond mere sensation and into the territory of knowing something for certain—a

That solidity and clarity were also most evident in LaVerna’s devotion to her sons, each of whom she shaped into upstanding and dynamic young gentlemen: Bryceson Bearclaw Pinnecoose, Freeman Bluestar Pinnecoose, and Adrian Standing-Elk Pinnecoose. She would say without hesitation that they were her greatest accomplishments.

Several weeks later, sitting down to write again, there is a bright-blue movement from near the window: the butterfly is on the sill again. This time she stays only for a moment before she flashes away and flies north, toward where katsinam live and early frosts settle over tall, dry grasses; toward cold, churning, trout-filled rivers and smooth, sandstone canyons; toward vast prairies where foxes hunt and cactus blooms in many colors; toward where gourds grow on thin, green vines; toward where red mesas flatten out into the horizon; toward where dew drops settle on the backs of tiny brown frogs and sparkle in the day’s first light; toward where whirlpools spin and dragonflies cast long delicate shadows all around; toward where cattails seed and lightning strikes in the same place for thousands of years; toward where clouds gather over shining white mountain peaks; toward where stars move across the surface of oceans; toward where corn grows in each of the sacred colors; toward tall trees where eagles nest and rain falls in thick, grey sheets; toward where wild turkey tracks skirt the banks of icy streams; toward where elk songs echo through damp, mossy forests; toward where snow melts into the edges of deep, clear lakes; toward where stars fall, sometimes three in a row, one right after the other.

I wonder about where she is resting now: in silence, iridescent, beautiful, perfect.—RoseMary Diaz SPRING 2 0 1 4

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Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian | www.wheelwright.org

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exterior back cover

benjamin harjo jr. american indian artist

The Artist, 2013, Prismacolor pencil and graphite on paper, 15 x 19 inches

www.benjaminharjojr.com

Will Wilson

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian May 11, 2014 - April 19, 2015

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian 704 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe, NM 87505 Open daily from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm www.wheelwright.org

This project is made possible in part by the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission and the 1% Lodgers’ Tax; New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts; and several private donors.