First American Art Magazine No. 4, Fall 2014

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

A r t o f In dige n ou s Pe op l e s of t h e Am e r i c a s

No. 4, Fall 2014

Pilar Agoyo Cahuilla Basketry Troy Jackson Jagua Body Art Melissa Melero James Luna’s Archive Kevin Pourier The Challenges of Judging

Shan Goshorn www.shangoshorn.com

SWAIA Booth 511-SF Whitewashed, Arches watercolor paper splints, first printed with archival inks Collection of the Nordamerika Native Museum (NONAM), Zurich, Switzerland

Online Certificate Programs Now Available Business & Entrepreneurship Museum Studies Native American Art History On Campus Academic Programs: • • • • • •

Studio Arts Creative Writing Cinematic Arts and Technology Museum Studies Indigenous Liberal Studies Business and Entrepreneurship

About Us: • • • • •

15:1 Student/Teacher Ratio No out of state tuition fee 70+ Tribes Represented Over 60% Native American Faculty Accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and the National Association of Schools of Art and Design

“Empowering creativity and leadership in Native arts and cultures through higher education, lifelong learning, and outreach.” www.iaia.edu

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800-804-6422

First American Art Magazine, LLC

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Issue No. 4, Fall 2014 ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Online)

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Publisher Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Marketing Director: Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent) Circulation Manager: Robert Garcia (Mestizo) Copy Editor: Meghan Cunningham Proofreaders: Rebecca Hammer, Samonia Byford (Cherokee Nation), William Ferguson, Mary Ellen Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Layout and Design: America Meredith Editorial Consultants: Samonia Byford, Jean Merz-Edwards Editorial Advisory Board: Emily Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Maggie Ohnesorgen (Mestiza) Paula Rivera (Taos Pueblo) Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole) Ken Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho-Seneca) Advertising Representative: Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent), Nancy Fields (Lumbee) Social Media: Jacquie Archambeau (Cherokee Nation), Staci Golar (Cornish-Welsh-American), America Meredith

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Thanks to: Mark Bahti (Sami-American); Bruce Bernstein; Heidi Bigknife (Shawnee); Jeff Binion; Sean Campbell, Buffalo Bill Center 505.989.8728 of the West; Alan Camou; Leticia Chambers (Cherokee descent); keshi.com Kelly Church (Odawa-Ojibwe); Holly Coonsis (Zuni); Jon Davis, IAIA; Keesic Douglas (Mnjikaning Ojibwe); Chase Kawinhut Earles (Caddo Nation); Rosalie Favell (Métis); Susan Feller (Choctaw Nation), Ryan Flahive, IAIA; Reid Gómez (Navajo); Heather Gross; Franci King Hart; Boulder Opal Bear & Coral Fish: Gibbs Othole Benjamin Harjo Jr. (Shawnee-Seminole); William Johnson (Saginaw since 1981 fetishes jewelry pottery Chippewa), Ziibiwing Center; Stephen Lang; Tara Lasiloo (Zuni); Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi-Choctaw); James Luna (Puyukitchum [Luiseño]); Tom May; Jessica Metcalfe (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), Beyond Summer ad Othole Opal Bear v2.indd 1 6/10/14 4:30 PM Buckskin; Linda Muzzy, Heard Museum; Denise Neil-Binion (DelawareCherokee); Jaq Nigg, Eiteljorg Museum; Sasha Noche (Zuni); Victor rctic and ndian arts Pascual (Navajo-Maya); Mike Patten (Cree); Valerie Pourier (Oglala st for the 21 century Lakota); Jenna Faye Powell, Forest City Gallery; Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Sqelix’u-Métis-Shoshone); Tatiana Lomahaftewa Singer (Hopi26 Maine Street Choctaw); Michael Smith, Michael Smith Gallery; Michael Stoklos; Kelly Kennebunkport, Maine 207 967-2122 Waller; Marilyn Van Wrinkle, Autry National Center.

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Subscription services, changes of address, and wholesale inquiries: Email: circulation@firstamericanartmagazine.com Mail: First American Art Magazine, 1000 Cordova Place #843, Santa Fe, NM 87505.

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First American Art Magazine 1000 Cordova Pl. #843 Santa Fe, NM 87505 www.firstamericanartmagazine.com info@firstamericanartmagazine.com ads@firstamericanartmagazine.com circulation@firstamericanartmagazine.com

Floral inlay buffalo horn Kevin Pourier

Sculpture | Prints | Jewelry |Beadwork |Baskets shop online: www.homeandawaygallery.com

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Copyright © 2014 by First American Art Magazine, LLC. 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. All reasonable efforts have been made to identify and contact copyright holders but in some cases these could not be traced. If you hold or administer rights for materials published here, please contact us. Any errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.

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

EXPERIENCE

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2014 Show Schedule for Jackie Sevier A Gathering of People, Wind, and Water Rapid City, SD July 19th

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Cherokee Indian Art Market Tulsa, OK Oct. 11-12

Nathalie’s of Santa Fe Canyon Road, Aug. 22

2014 Show Schedule for Chessney Sevier Santa Fe Indian Market, Booth 236PAL_S Nathalie’s of Santa Fe, Canyon Road, Aug. 22

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BABE & CARLA HEMLOCK Mohawks of the Eastern Woodlands

“Continuing the Legacy,” Best Of Class Diverse Arts SWAIA 2013

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The Ralph T. Coe Foundation Presents: Plain and Fancy:

Native American Splint Baskets and Beyond... originally exhibited at the Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY Curated by Bruce Bernstein and Eva Fognell Opens at the Ralph T. Coe Foundation for the Arts, August 19, 2-6 pm with a panel discussion at 3 pm—Kelly Church, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Ojibwe; Theresa Secord, Penobscot; and Ronnie-Leigh Goeman, Onondaga Nation/Eel Clan

Ralph T. Coe Foundation for the Arts Aspen Plaza 1590 B Pacheco Street Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 Tel. (505) 983-6372 www.ralphtcoefoundation.org

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Santa Fe Indian Market Lincoln Avenue, Booth 785 LIN-W

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Carla Hemlock Mohawk of the Eastern Woodlands

SWAIA Booth #744 LIN-W New Series of Quilts to be showcased at the Santa Fe Indian Market carlahemlock@hotmail.com “Survivors,” Despite Everything We Have Been Through We Are Still Here, 76” x 76”

Sheridan MacKnight

Chippewa/Lakota

paintings & jewelry In Santa Fe: new paintings at the historic Morning Star Gallery at 513 Canyon Road and jewelry at studio by appointment: www.sheridanmacknight.com • 310.488.1796

A HOLIDAY TRADITION Enjoy a Weekend of Fun, Food and Culture During the 62nd Annual Cherokee National Holiday

DILIGWA 1710 CHEROKEE VILLAGE Discover a place where authentic Cherokee fashion never goes out of style at Diligwa – a Cherokee village depicting life during the early 18th Century.

$2 DILIGWA ENTRANCE FEE

62nd CHEROKEE NATIONAL HOLIDAY Food trucks, live entertainment and a wide variety of arts and crafts await all visitors to the Cherokee Heritage Center this year over Labor Day Weekend. Enjoy and celebrate Cherokee National Holiday with the Heritage Center.

CHEROKEE HOMECOMING ART SHOW & SALE Beat the heat during the Cherokee National Holiday inside the Cherokee Heritage Center where you will discover nearly 150 pieces of traditional and contemporary Cherokee artworks, all available for purchase.

2013 Grand Prize Winner “Trading Post Days” by Virginia Stroud

21192 S KEELER DR, PARK HILL , OK 74451 (888) 999-60 07 • CHEROKEEHERITAGE.ORG

ISSUE NO. 4, FALL 2014 FEATURES

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Cahuilla Basketry: An Enduring Legacy Bryn Barabas Potter

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Let It Sink In: The Art of Jagua Vanessa Elmore (Colombian-American)

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Sharing His Legacy: James Luna Donates His Archives to IAIA Kim Baca (Diné-Santa Clara Pueblo)

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Recent Developments

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Seven Directions 22 Tania Willard (Secwepemc Nation)

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OPINION The Challenges of Judging Native Art America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

DEPARTMENTS

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ARTIST PROFILES Pilar Agoyo (Ohkay Owingeh-CochitiKewa Pueblos) RoseMary Diaz (Tewa)

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Troy Jackson (Cherokee Nation) Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation)

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Melissa Melero (Northern Paiute-Modoc) Jean Merz-Edwards

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Exploring Native Graphic Design The Making of a Designer: Mark Rutledge (Little Grand Rapids Ojibwe) Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa)

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Art + Lit

Laura Da’ (Eastern Shawnee) Heidi Bigknife (Shawnee Tribe)

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In Memoriam Alex Seowtewa (Zuni) America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

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Frank Sheridan (Southern Cheyenne) Teri Greeves (Kiowa)

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REVIEWS 38

Art Exhibition Reviews

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Book Reviews

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Video Art Review Kevin

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Kevin Pourier (Oglala Lakota) 44 Mary Bordeaux (Sicangu-Oglala Lakota)

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COVER: Troy Jackson (Cherokee Nation), Halfbreed: Am I Red and White or Am I White and Red, 2011, clay, 22 x 10 x 14 in.

Image courtesy of the artist. Besides the overt racial symbolism in the art, red and white marbles were historically used by Southeastern tribes to divine the future—red typically denoted warfare, while white denoted peace.

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Editor’s Greetings …The true artist: draws out all from his heart works with delight, makes things with calm, with sagacity, works like a true Toltec, composes his objects, works dexterously, invents arranges material, adorns them, makes them adjust.

The carrion artist: works at random, sneers at the people, makes things opaque, brushes across the surface of the face of things works without care, defrauds people, is a thief.

—Nahuatl poem from the Florentine Codex, fol. 115, v. (208)1

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HIS SNIPPET of a 16thcentury Nahuatl poem reminds us that Indigenous peoples have been studying our art and artists for a long time. First American Art Magazine is honored to contribute to this legacy. The Native American art world and its many supporters deserve serious art writing, willing to go below the surface and explore.

I read coverage of Native art on a daily basis and am astounded by how formulaic the articles can be. Writers frequently state the assumption that the audience is utterly unfamiliar with Indigenous art. Many articles begin with the trope, “Most people think Native American art is just beads and feathers [or fill in the stereotypes], but these artists are different...” Personally,

I’m tired of writing that always begins at Square One and never move beyond it. Here at First American Art Magazine, we believe that you, our reader, are knowledgeable about Native art, and if not—if you are new to the subject—we have every confidence that you possess a lively curiosity and are a quick study.

It’s been fascinating following Native art scholars articulating Indigenous art theory. We hope First American Art Magazine provides primary research from which to draw. I believe one of the key components of approaching art from an Indigenous viewpoint is acknowledging art as a living entity. At a recent School of Advanced Research panel, every single artist—even though they worked in different media and came from different tribes—separately described her or his art as alive. I find the sentiment echoed across national boundaries by different Native artists. What does this mean? The art has intrinsic qualities and meanings independent of the audience, and sometimes even of the artist. Simply by its existence, art has agency to shift reality.

In reception theory, the audience activates meaning within the artwork.

However, if the art is alive, it creates its own meaning. Many Native artists describe themselves as conduits rather than creators of art. Seeing the art in this light, the audience might glean meaning from the work beyond what the artist consciously intended. Often the cultural context illuminates meaning between the artists and the audience; however, due to historic forces, the cultural context surrounding a tribe’s art is often not be widely known. The art can be seen as a living seed that grows the cultural context.

America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Walela, 2014, acrylic on hardboard panel, 12 x 12 in.

First American Art Magazine wishes the best for the Native artists and art lovers this season and hopes these living seeds provide fruitful and plentiful nourishment to enhance all of our lives.

—America Meredith

1. Miguel León Portilla, editor, Native Mesoamerican Spirituality: Ancient Myths, Discourses, Stories, Doctrines, Hymns, Poems from the Aztec, Yucatec, Quiche-Maya and Other Sacred Traditions (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980), 208.

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Letters to FAAM Art and Tribal Languages

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ᏏᏲ HELLO. I just want to say an ᎡᏆ ᏩᏙ a BIG THANK YOU for sending my four editions of the First American Art Magazines.

Wow! It is super-sensational. I love it; every issue is spectacular! I love America Meredith’s work. The summer 2014 edition, page 5, Point and Shoot: Julia Tuell and Company is brilliant. What a painting! Thank God that I am on your mailing list because I am so getting your next edition. Also I want to thank America for her artwork that has Cherokee letters; it has been so beneficial to me. All the very best to everyone at First American Art Magazine.

Sandra Beasley Cleveland, OH ᎰᏩ, ᎩᎾᎵᎢ. Thank you for the kind praise. We encourage the use of our tribal languages throughout the magazine. Julia Tuell (1886– 1960) was a European-American schoolteacher who taught on several reservations, notably the northern Cheyenne. She photographed Native Americans, and her work is characterized by its intimacy and casual style. For instance, her portrait of the mighty Oglala Lakota warrior and chief American Horse shows him holding a baby and grinning.

Wixáritari Yarn Painting

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E HAVE ADMIRED THE ARTWORK in Kevin Simpson’s galleries in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, for many years. We have collected many things we treasure, and we have become good friends with Kevin and his family. But even after all the years, I must admit that in his article in First American Art Magazine I learned things about these Huichol arts and the people who practice them that I had never heard before from Kevin. The article was a wonderful and educational work.

Kevin was able to put so much of what he has learned from the people themselves over the years into print. First American Art Magazine gave him that opportunity, and it gave us the opportunity to learn from him. Thank you so much for so many wonderful educational articles like this one. Keep up the good work!

Beth and Peter Shumway Santa Fe, NM We welcome letters to the editor! Please email info@firstamericanartmagazine.com or­mail letters to: First American Art Magazine, Attention: Editor 1000 Cordova Place, #843, Santa Fe, NM 87505

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Contributing Writers ROSEMARY DIAZ KIM BACA (Diné-Santa Clara Pueblo) is a marketing and

(Tewa) is a freelance feature writer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is the author of an original online series, Native Foodways: New Seasons, for Indian Country Today Media Network, and is still engaged in the writing of her study/memoir on historic trauma, entitled The Diaries of Sunshine YellowStar: Entries from Zarzamine. RoseMary studied literature and its respective arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Naropa University, and University of California, Santa Cruz.

GLORIA BELL (Métis) is a writer and researcher based in

VANESSA ELMORE (Colombian-American) is a

communications consultant and a former newspaper and wire service reporter for regional and national news organizations, including the Santa Fe New Mexican and the Associated Press.

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 also 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.

ROY BONEY JR. (Cherokee Nation) is an award-winning

artist and writer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in graphic design and a master’s degree in studio art. Working in a variety of forms including comic books, paintings, drawings, and digital media, Boney focuses heavily on Cherokee culture and language in his art. He is currently the manager of the Cherokee Language Program at Cherokee Nation.

MARY BORDEAUX (Sicangu Lakota/Oglala Lakota) is the

museum curator and cultural coordinator for the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation in Custer, South Dakota. She served as interim director, curator, and collections manager at the Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge. In 2009, she earned her MFA in museum exhibition planning and design from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She earned both her associate’s and bachelor’s degrees in museology/ museum studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

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 basket weaving and birch bark biting. Church earned her bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is an outspoken activist and educator focused saving the black ash tree from the emerald art borer.

LAUREN DA’ (Eastern Shawnee) is a poet and a public

school teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts. Da’ has published poems in Prairie Schooner, Hanging Loose, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.

Her first chapbook, The Tecumseh Motel, will soon be published in Effigies II. In 2013, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and selected as one of Sherman Alexie’s top ten Native American poets. Da’ lives near Seattle with her husband and son.

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professional freelance writer/researcher, art consultant, and fine art appraiser specializing in the arts of the Americas. She holds a master of arts degree in art history from the University of New Mexico and is a current member of the International Society of Appraisers. For the last 16 years, Elmore has handled both antique and contemporary Native American arts at the finest art galleries in Santa Fe, first at Morning Star Gallery and now at Blue Rain Gallery.

SUZANNE NEWMAN FRICKE, PhD (Ashkenazic-

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. As We See It: Photography by Contemporary Native American Artists, curated by Fricke, opens at the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts in August then travels to the Novosibirsk State Museum of Art in October.

TERI GREEVES (Kiowa) is a beadwork artist who grew up

on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Greeves graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a degree in American studies. Her work‚ which is in the National Museum of the American Indian, the British Museum, the Museum of Art and Design, and other major collections, combines Kiowa oral history with her personal and family experiences.

THOLLEM MCDONAS is a peripatetic pianist/

keyboardist/vocalist, serial collaborator, activist, educator, and author. He has released over 35 albums of his own and in collaboration with others on 16 different vanguard labels. As an author he has contributed articles to Anthology of Essays on Deep Listening, Entasis, and Full Moon Magazine.

RHONDA MEIER is an independent curator, writer, and educator based in Montreal. Beginning with her MA work at Concordia University, she has largely devoted her practice to understanding racism and achieving decolonization. She is an active board member at Articule, an artist-run center.

JEAN MERZ-EDWARDS has been studying and teaching art history since 2000 when she attended her first art history classes at Hunter College in New York. Recently, her studies include earning a master’s degree in art history from the University of Oklahoma where Jean was awarded a certificate in women’s and gender studies and the Alice Mary Robertson

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Photo by Eric Swanson

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Award for her scholarship on the life and art of Hopi-Choctaw Linda Lomahaftewa. This fall, Jean looks forward to returning to the classroom where she will be teaching art history and English at Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina, Kansas.

ALEX J. PEÑA (Comanche/San Ildefonso/Pawnee) is a professional artist who has exhibited throughout the United States and in group shows in Europe and Asia. He received his MFA in studio arts and printmaking from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Peña currently resides in Santa Fe and teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

BRYN BARABAS POTTER (Hungarian-Irish-GermanAmerican) is the adjunct curator of anthropology at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum, where she is working with many Native consultants on the exhibition Cahuilla Continuum: Tuku, Ivax, Tuleka. As curator of basketry of the Southwest Museum of the American Indian/Autry National Center, she exhibited the Juana Apapas baskets, and, working with Carrie Garcia on a loan, drove them home for a visit. As BBP Museum Consulting, Potter collaborates with tribes and institutions primarily on basketry projects. She has a BA and MA from California State University, Northridge, and is a resident fellow at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming, from 2013 to 2015.

NEEBINNAUKZHIK SOUTHALL (Chippewas of

Rama First Nation) is a graphic designer and an artist, working in a variety of media such as photography, body painting, and threedimensional art, at Neebin Studios. At Oregon State University, she graduated magna cum laude in 2011, earning an honors BFA through the University Honors College and OSU’s competitive graphic design program, with a minor in fine arts. Southall now works at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, where she photographs, designs, and manages media.

MATTHEW RYAN SMITH, PhD, is a freelance writer,

independent curator, and sessional professor at the OCAD University. Currently based in Toronto, Smith’s writings have appeared in several Canadian and international art publications including Canadian Art Magazine, C Magazine, FUSE Magazine, and Afterimage, in addition to academic journals and exhibition catalogues. His current research focuses on unorthodox autobiographies in visual art practice.

Somewhere between her Alaskan home, her New York college education, and peace riots in La Paz, Bolivia, INDIA YOUNG decided art best expresses activism. She returned to school to learn the practice of sharing her passions. Today she is a doctoral candidate in art history at the University of New Mexico and an independent curator. Young researches print media, contemporary Indigenous arts, and activist art.

Her curatorial pursuits focus on the spaces of interconnection between Indigenous arts and the larger world.

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Recent Developments MUSEUMS The Inuit Art Foundation (IAF) is raising funds to build the Cape Dorset Arts and Cultural Centre in Canada.

The proposed center will include print studios and an exhibition space. The IAF hopes to begin construction in the summer of 2015 and have the center open by 2016.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minnesota hired Jill Ahlberg Yohe, PhD, as assistant curator of Native American art. Yohe earned her doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 2008 and was assistant curator and the Mellon Fellow in Native American Art at Saint Louis Art Museum.

Candace Hopkins (Tagish) is the new interim curator of the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA).

Hopkins is an independent curator and writer, who has curated at the National Gallery of Canada, the Western Front, and the Walter Phillips Gallery, and the Banff Centre. Hopkins earned her MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

ART FAIRS The Grand Award winner of the 2014 Red Earth Festival in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was Chase Kahwinhut Earles (Caddo Nation).

Nelda Schrupp (Pheasant Rump Nakota) won the President’s Award, and Karin Walkingstick (Cherokee Nation) won the Kathleen Everett Upshaw Award. The division winners were Mary Aitson, basketry; Connie Hart Yellowman, beadwork; Tahnee Ahtone Harjo Growing Thunder, textiles; Jim Van Deman, utilitarian cultural items; Anita Caldwell Jackson, diversified cultural items; Linda Kukuk, drawings and graphics; Nelson Garcia, contemporary jewelry; Ray O. Garcia, traditional jewelry; Matt

Bearden, oil/acrylic painting; Gilmore Scott, water-based painting; Lester Harragarra, photography; Jeri Redcorn, traditional pottery; Mel Cornshucker, contemporary pottery; and Troy Anderson, sculpture.

The Best of Show winners of the 2014 Eiteljorg Indian Market & Festival in Indianapolis, Indiana, were Ronni Leigh Goeman (Onondaga) and Stonehorse Goeman (Seneca). The Goemans and Antonio Grant (Eastern Band Cherokee-Navajo) won Harrison Eiteljorg Purchase Awards. Division winners were Jodi M. Webster (HoChunk Nation-Potawatomi) for twodimensional arts; Ryan Gashweseoma (Hopi) for sculpture; Gerry Quotskuyva (Hopi) for carvings/dolls; Brian Szabo (Sicangu Lakota); Delmar Polacca (Hopi-Tewa) for pottery; Ronnie Leigh and Stonehorse Goeman for basketry; Florence Manygoats (Navajo) for textiles; Antonio Grant for cultural items; Sho Sho Esquiro (Kaska Dena) for beadwork; and Ronni Leigh and Stonehorse Goeman for collaboration.

Juniper Anderson (Navajo-Ho-Chunk) won the Margot L. Eccles Youth Award.

ART SHOWS Grand Prize winner at the 43rd annual Trail of Tears Art Show was Troy Jackson (Cherokee Nation). Division winners were Kenny Henson, painting; Jane Osti, sculpture; Vivian GarnerCottrell, basketry; Kristie Vann, Trail of Tears theme; Joseph Erb, jewelry; Hillary Glass, graphics; and Merlin Little Thunder, miniatures. Jane Osti won the Bill Rabbit Legacy Award, and Karin Walkingstick won the emerging artist award. The Trail of Tears Art Show is hosted by the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma.

PROJECTS An interactive site-specific installation, The Tipi Project, was established in Havemeyer Park, Brooklyn, New York.

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A collaboration between Native and non-Native organizers, The Tipi Project features a 30-foot-tall tipi, around which events and youth workshops are organized throughout the summer.

AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS Christi Belcourt (Métis) received the 2014 Ontario Arts Council Aboriginal Arts Award. The council created the $10,000 annual award in 2012 to recognize contributions made by local Aboriginal artists and arts leaders. Belcourt is both an accomplished painter and the lead organizer of Walking with Our Sisters, a commemorative art installation for the missing and murdered Indigenous women that is scheduled to travel throughout Canada and the United States through 2018. The OAC asked Belcourt to select a recipient for its emerging artists award. She chose Jaime Koebel (Cree-Métis), a dancer and visual artist working in a variety of media, including fish scales.

The 2014 Rasmuson Foundation Fellows include David Galanin (Tlingit) from Sitka; Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit-Aleut) from Sitka; and George Demientieff Holly (Deg Hit’an Athabascan) from Soldotna.

The Fellowship includes a $50,000 honorarium. Everett Athorp of Klawock, Jerrod Galanin of Sitka, and Kristina Cranston of Haines received 2014 Project Awards. Based in Anchorage, Alaska, the Rasmuson Foundation is a private foundation established to promote Alaskan artists.

Nadia Myre (Kitigan Zibi Algonquian), an interdisciplinary artist from Montreal, Quebec, is one of five artists chosen for the 2014 Sobey Art Award shortlist.

One of the five will win the $50,000 award, to be announced November 19th, with the four runners-up winning $10,000. The Sobey Award, funded by the Sobey Art Foundation and administered by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, is awarded to exhibiting contemporary Canadian artists.

legal challenges by both tribes, the US Embassy, and Survival International.

The French Conseil des Ventes (Board of Sales) ruled that American Indian tribes do not have legal standing in France.

The Hopi Tribe believes the items to be stolen, while the French courts maintain a French collector legally acquired them.

The Holocaust Art Restitution Project denounced the French government’s decision to allow the auction and said this contradicts France’s signing of the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Only nine of the 29 items sold.

Red Earth 2014 Grand Award winner: Chase Kawinhut Earles (Caddo Nation), Kahwis Bahateno (Red River Bowl), 2013, pit-fired Red River clay with mussel-shell temper, 13 x 24 in.

Image courtesy of the artist.

The Colombian Ministry of Culture is offering a grant of 46,455,000 Colombian pesos (US$25,000) for cultural programs serving Indigenous youth, from babies to three years. The ministry wants to encourage childcare that teaches Indigenous language and ethnic identity.

SCHOOLS Dartmouth College is partnering with IAIA to offer Native American studies courses in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This off-campus program, which will include Native American art classes, will begin in 2015.

The Native American art collection of the late Lois Nelson Miller was donated to Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, by her family. The 88-piece collection spans much of the 20th century and will be housed in Ataloa Lodge, Bacone College’s art museum.

Founded in 1932, Ataloa Lodge is undergoing a major renovation and conservation effort.

Ryan Rice (Mohawk) has been hired as the Chair of the Indigenous Visual Cultural Program at the Ontario College of Art & Design, in Toronto.

REPATRIATION After 16 years of legal battles and protests, Kueka, the sacred stone of the Pemon people, will be returned to them.

The 30-ton rose and grey sandstone boulder is known as “Grandmother” to the Pemon of the Great Savanna region of southeastern Venezuela. In 1998 German artist Wolfgang von Schwarzenfeld removed the monolith from Canaima National Park, with permission, the artist claims, from the former Venezuelan president Rafael Caldera. The Pemon and their representatives maintain that their cultural patrimony cannot be legally removed by outsiders. Kueka was installed in Berlin as part of the Global Stone Project, which features stones from five continents. The German attorney general’s office received petitions with over 13,000 signatures calling for Kueka’s return to Venezuela.

LEGAL ISSUES June 27th marked the fourth sale of American Indian religious items by Parisian auction houses in the last year and a half. Twenty-nine Hopi and Navajo sacred items were put up for auction by Auction House Eve, despite

The Bureau of Land Management reports an increase in vandalism of Native American rock art in the Grand Slope of western Colorado.

On May 10th, San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman and Ryan Bundy, son of controversial rancher Cliven Bundy, led a protest ride of ATVs through Recapture Canyon in southeastern Utah. The National Congress of American Indians and the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office both condemned this unlawful ride. The US Bureau of Land Management outlawed motorized vehicles in the canyon in 2007 when an illegal trail damaged Ancestral Pueblo sites. The canyon contains Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings dating between 750 and 1150 CE and is legally accessible by foot or horseback.

PRECONTACT SITES Poverty Point, an archaic settlement dating back to 1650 BCE in West Carroll Parish, Louisiana, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site on June 22nd. Of the 1,001 sites designated by UNESCO, only 22 are in the United States, and Poverty Point is the first in Louisiana. The settlement consists of six concentric semi-circular earthen ridges surrounding a central plaza, and platform, conical, and effigy mounds. A sixth mound, dating from 1280 BCE, was recently discovered by archaeologist Diana Greenlee.

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Seven Directions: Tania Willard

T

ANIA WILLARD (SECWEPEMC NATION), artist and curator, explores bodies of knowledge and skills at intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Willard has been an artist-in-residence with Gallery Gachet in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side; had a visual art’s residency at the Banff Centre: fiction and Trading Post; and served as curator-in-residence with grunt gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Public collections of Willard’s work

include the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Development; Kamloops Art Gallery; and Thompson Rivers University. Willard’s recent curatorial work includes Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop, and Aboriginal Culture.

Featuring contemporary Aboriginal artists originally shown at Vancouver Art Gallery, Beat Nation has toured across Turtle Island. Willard is currently the Aboriginal curator-in-residence at Kamloops Art Gallery in her home territory of Secwepemculecw. Current

SOUTH: SITE Santa Fe’s SITElines project Unsettled Landscapes, July 20, 2014–January 11, 2015 With a tagline of “contemporary art from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego” and curators the likes of Candice Hopkins, who cocurated Sakahàn, the National Gallery of Canada’s Indigenous art quinquennial, advisors like Gerald McMaster, who curated the 2012 Biennale of Sydney, and Ryan Rice, this exhibition promises to bring conceptually edgy and powerful works to the Southwest. Representing a rethinking of the previous biennale, this iteration has a new focus on “a commitment to community and place, and a dedication to new and under-recognized perspectives.” Look for strong Indigenous representation in this exhibition.

This would be my first stop on the Thunderbird Indigenous Creation Tour. Swooping down with the gift of water, Thunderbird and I would be sure to check out related programming and ways in which this exhibition is rethinking place within an Indigenous framework.

Photo of Tania Willard by Keesic Douglas (Mnjikaning Ojibwe).

projects include the artist collective, New BC Indian Art and Welfare Society Collective and its exploration of landbased art during the summer 2014 at Bush Gallery.

WEST: Montreal has it going on with Art Mûr’s exhibition, Storytelling: The Contemporary Native Art Biennial, 2nd edition.

Curated by Michael Patten, this exhibition features a who’s who of artists I love, and they are: Sonny Assu, Scott Benesiinaabandan, Jordan Bennett, Julie Buffalohead, Keesic Douglas, John Feodorov, David Garneau, Leonard Getinthecar (Nicholas and Jerrod Galanin), Merritt Johnson, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Meryl McMaster, Da-ka-xeen Mehner, Kent Monkman, Jude Norris, Luke Parnell, Wendy Red Star, Frank Shebageget, Anna Tsouhlarakis, and Amelia Winger-Bearskin.

Of particular interest are works by Merritt Johnson. I am also blown away by Michael Anthony Simon, who uses mists of lacquer in collaboration with spiders—living spiders—in the creation of his striking sculptural works.

Since I do have a thunderbird to transport me around—think a rockabilly Indian version of the giant hawks in Harry Potter—I would also make another stop while out West.

Claiming Space: Voices of Urban Aboriginal Youth at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, June 1, 2014–January 4, 2015 Curated by Pam Brown (Heiltsuk) and Curatorial Assistant Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (Blackfoot-Sami), this exhibition is a new generation of young, passionate artists, whose multimedia works explore identity, colonization, custom and tradition, and more. With an ambitious program and a lot of community building in the lead-up, this exhibition and those like it are important in opening up spaces for young Indigenous artists.

Merritt Johnson (Mohawk-Blackfoot), Coyote boy, 2011, installation.

Photo: Michael Patten.

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Thunderbird is very at home here; it will take me a bit to get going, but a little ocean and maybe some oolichan grease will fuel us on to the rest of our journey. All aboard the Thunderbird Express—at this point I imagine being joined by a whole crew of rabble-rousing, intelligent Indigenous artists—I mean I am sure thunderbird can pack at least a few of us at once.

Invigorated by big city visits, radical ideas, and great friends, we brace for take-off again; some of the young rebels and artists stayed on in Brooklyn to plan all kinds of beautiful trouble, and we ready ourselves for a somber flight to our next direction.

BELOW: In memoriam GORDON BENNETT 1955–2014

Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree), Bête Noire, 2014, installation, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of SITE Santa Fe.

NORTH: Artist Ningeokuluk Teevee (Inuk, born 1963), from Cape Dorset, Nunavut Territory.

Gordon Bennett challenged stereotypes and contributed to Australian contemporary art. We are a community of sorts, Indigenous artists the world over, and I think we should mourn together when our elders pass, those that opened spaces, institutions, and minds so that we could have passage here. I pay respect to leaders in the art world. His sudden death came when his work was finding new audiences internationally, most recently through the Berlin Biennale (2014) and dOCUMENTA 13 (2012).

CENTER: Neskonlith Community Mural Project

Shown recently at Marion Scott Gallery in Vancouver with a new body of drawing work, this artist is one I have had my eye on without even knowing it. Although this artist is well known, I would see works as I skimmed through the Cape Dorset catalogue or an image captured somewhere. Not until I saw the past MSG exhibition online did I put two and two together.

I know now this is the artist’s work I have been appreciating.

From Beatles records and images of Sedna smoking amidst the debris of western civilization to quirky drawings of concerts and contemporary life in the Arctic, this artist is one to watch for.

Back in my home territory of Secwepemculecw, community members and visiting artists worked together to complete a new billboard mural adjacent to the Trans-Canada Highway.

Completed with guest artist Raul Gonzalez of Mictlan Murals in Los Angeles, this piece evokes Skwlax, black bear. In the Secwepemc worldview the bear is our brother, a protector, and a warrior. In bold imagery the mural says, “Yecwminte re Sewllkwa (Protect Our Water).” The other side of the billboard is another beautiful project completed in 2013 with artists Guillermo Aranda, Isha Jules, and me.

EAST: Mi’kwite’tmn (Do You Remember), Ursula Johnson at Saint Mary’s University curated by Robin Metcalfe

Many people have seen long lines of advertising billboards on highways near Indian Reservations; this is one way communities are taking back these spaces and voicing a sense of place that goes beyond the local McDonald’s to a sense of the ancestry, territory, and the reconstruction of colonial histories of land. I want to share this project with you here and say, “Liberate the billboards on your rez—Make Art not Ads!”

I have been following Ursula’s work since I first encountered it at the Toronto Harbour Front Centre. Her unique ways of animating Mi’kmaq basketry comment on language, shifting traditions, and bodies of knowledge. Recently short-listed for the prestigious Sobey Art Award, Ursula’s exhibition Mi’kwite’tmn will tour across Turtle Island after it closes at Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery.

Thunderbird and I are sad to leave, but, with bellies full of East Coast dulce and maybe a lobster or two, we set off for a journey to the sky world to visit the eyes in the sky.

ABOVE: Surveillapocalypse, June 7–June 22, The FiveMyles Exhibition Program, Crown Heights, Brooklyn Working across borders, Surveillapocalypse pairs Brooklynbased art collective artCodex with Canada-based Indigenous collective 007 in an exhibition and a program concerned with building trust in the face of widening surveillance security.

007 includes Barry Ace, Howard Adler, Rosalie Favell, Melody McKiver, Ron Noganosh, Ariel Smith, Leo Yerxa, and Barry Pottle from Labrador as the “Northern Special Inuit Agent.” artCodex artists feature for this project include Vandana Jain, Mike Estabrook, Jason Lujan, and Maria Hupfield. Collaborative work, a public poster campaign, and an interactive program spell out the radical impetus of this exhibition.

Neskonlith’s community mural projects were funded in part by the Canada Council for the Arts, community support, and the contributions of artists.

I have landed back home, after a whirlwind and mythic journey in Indigenous creation courtesy of my thunderbird rez ride.

I learned something from my journey: THE FUTURE IS INDIGENOUS!

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Exploring Native Graphic Design

The Making of a Designer: Mark Rutledge

M

ARK RUTLEDGE, A PROUD OJIBWE from the Little Grand Rapids First Nation in Manitoba, Canada, has worked in the design industry for over 15 years.

He has designed for the Canadian government, NGOs/non-profits, Fortune 500 companies, the technology industry, Yukon tourism, and Native clients, including the Chiefs of Ontario, SPIRIT Magazine, and the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards. He is an accredited member of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC) and recently became the president of the GDC’s Arctic Chapter. He works at Outside the Cube in Whitehorse, Yukon, where he lives with his wife Tracy—a fellow designer he met in college—and their three children.

Mark’s successful career results from an adventurous and at times tumultuous journey.

As a child Mark was caught in the “Sixties Scoop,” a tragic period extending from the 1960s to the 1980s in which the Canadian government stole thousands of Native children from their communities. The start of his life was brutal—at an abusive group foster home.

“We’re survivors,” asserts Mark. “We’re still here.”

Like many other Native children, Mark was adopted and raised by a white couple. Fortunately, these new parents were open-minded and never tried to hide his heritage or keep him from finding his Native family.

His adoptive family also nurtured his creativity, which he exhibited early on. When he was six or seven years old—while other children built snowmen—Mark built letterforms

By Neebinnaukzhik Southall in the snow to form a statement. “I didn’t know it was typography,” he says of his early fascination. His first design course came in sixth grade. His mother, a schoolteacher, enrolled him in a night course for high schoolers.

Surrounded by teenagers, Mark learned about commercial art, sign making, and lettering in particular.

After completing high school, Mark dreamed of going to the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto.

However, his guidance counselor told him he wasn’t good enough, and besides, art wasn’t a real career. As a result, Mark enrolled in Seneca College in Toronto, where he studied computer science and spent his first year programming.

It wasn’t a good fit, and he performed poorly. It took him a week to muster up the courage to tell his dad he was failing. Rather than being angry, his dad suggested Mark take graphic design instead. Seneca College was actually one of the first programs in the area to offer a degree in design. Mark enrolled the next year, and his computer experience proved beneficial. “I had an edge on the other kids because I knew how a computer worked,” explains Mark.

While admitting he wasn’t good at something was difficult, he sees failure as a necessary step to improvement.

“Everyone fails. How are you supposed to become successful if you don’t fail?”

When Mark first went to school, graphic design involved paste-ups (an arrangement of physically placed illustrations and text on paper), bluelines (proofs printed in shades of blue), and film for printing. When the industry shifted, Mark went back to school to further immerse himself in digital, online, and interactive media.

“You have to evolve with the field,” stresses Mark, and maintain a thirst for

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knowledge. “If you don’t know the tools, how else are you supposed to be a designer?” A solid foundation in the history of the field and knowledge of its influential designers is also vital.

He is inspired by great graphic designers, such as Massimo Vignelli, a renowned designer who recently passed away. Mark had the fortune to meet him at a conference and loves his clean, modernist style. Also among his favorite designers are Victor Pascual (Navajo-Maya), Ryan Red Corn (Osage), Dwayne Bird (Peguis First Nation), and Louie Gong (Nooksack), for how they utilize Native iconography with flair in their work.

Mark’s first design job out of school was at Aboriginal Voices, an early Native lifestyle magazine published by Cayuga actor Gary Farmer. As their only designer, for a year or two he laid out the magazine late into the night in a “swanky office” in an old building on Queen Street in the fashion district in the core of downtown Toronto.

The location was happening and work atmosphere exciting. “I met all these famous Indians,” enthuses Mark, such as Cree musician Buffy Sainte-Marie, as well as many Native actors.

Rumors spread that the magazine was folding, so Mark started job-hunting and received two offers—a fashion magazine and the student administration at Ryerson University. Despite loving fashion, he chose the latter. At Ryerson, he mingled with other young people, designed diverse communication material, and was in the hub of downtown Toronto.

Over time, Mark didn’t feel challenged enough, so in 1998 he sought work at a design studio to sharpen his skills. The studio, Hangar 13 Art & Design, was

in Ottawa, Ontario, back in “another old warehouse building.” He designed primarily for government agencies. He worked with a team of designers, and his setup was cutting-edge—working a Mac computer with two huge monitors for the first time. “I wanted to work at a boutique design studio, and here I am!” he thought.

First Nations client work poured in as people realized that he was a Native designer. The husband-and-wife team that ran Hangar 13 and Mark formed the Thunderbird Group, a sister company to serve Native clients. Mark developed branding inspired by WWI and WWII Indigenous fighter pilots to fit Hangar 13’s aircraft-influenced branding. The couple was very open to working with Indigenous people, stemming from their experiences growing up in small communities, living on a reserve, and having Native friends. Mark’s time working with them was a mutually beneficial and educational relationship.

“There is a way for us to understand each other in a good way,” asserts Mark, regarding Indigenous and nonIndigenous interactions.

The Thunderbird Group hired Native consultants, including writers, photographers, historians, and elders, and sought to “change the perception of what Native people are. We’re professionals,” says Mark.

The Thunderbird Group was a bridge between people—not only designing but also educating. Mark taught corporations wanting to tap the Native market that they couldn’t just “throw money at the people.” He showed clients how to best approach communities and stressed the importance of respect. In that vein, he hates when “non-Indigenous companies try to latch on for profit only, not community,” when interacting with Native groups. A percentage should go back to the community, and the relationship should be positive.

While Mark is honored that people approach him due to his diverse background and skill set, clients should

Mark Rutledge. Photo: Christian Kuntz, www.christiankuntz.com.

not expect the stereotypical. Clients have requested feathers, dreamcatchers, sweetgrass, and the four directions.

There are other icons and concepts.

“There’s more to communication than the first idea,” says Mark, stressing the need to dig deeper. “I do a lot of research. I don’t know everything about every culture.” He admits he was surprised to learn how many First Nations were in British Columbia alone.

“We want to make you stand out from the rest of your competition,” says Mark, and that is why a nuanced concept is vital.

When Mark first started working as a designer, he focused on winning awards.

Now it’s simply about “doing good design for great clients and having fun while doing it,” and giving back to the community. He provides workshops on communication, focused on giving remote artists the understanding of what it takes to reach an online market.

His lifestyle has shifted as well. Mark relates his experience working at several big agencies; driven by money, the

designers were locked in the studio, working around the clock. At his current job at Outside the Cube in Yukon, there’s a stark difference in outlook.

The owner of the company worked at a large agency herself and sees no need for driving people to an early grave.

Here the employees are surrounded by wilderness, a beautiful landscape of mountains and lakes. Work, play, and family life are balanced, and Mark walks the trails with his family.

His children are heavily into technology and are beginning to appreciate what he does. His oldest son now understands what a designer is. To foster their creativity, he provides his children with watercolors, markers, and crayons and brings home printouts of his work that they can draw over. He encourages them to not compare themselves to other artists and tells them, “You’re being creative, and that’s what counts.”

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Ohkay Owingeh-Cochiti-Kewa Pueblo Fashion Designer

Pilar Agoyo Interview by RoseMary Diaz

I

T SOUNDS CLICHÉ TO SAY, “It seems like only yesterday!” when referring to meeting someone whom you have known for more than two and a half decades.

However, it truly does feel as if time has been standing still over all those years.

Pilar and I first met when she started school at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and became a member of a fashion group that Wendy Ponca, Marcus Amerman, Patricia Michaels, and I had put together a year or two before. (We came up with the name Native Influx while waiting to order drinks at The Rafters, an old Santa Fe bar that was where World Market and Pranzo are now.)

Immediately, I saw that her designs were very different from what the other students, myself included, were doing. Her techniques were advanced… while I and many of the others were struggling with the basics of how to thread a bobbin or use a seam-ripper, she was working on sophisticated garments made from fabrics of notorious temperament—usually without a pattern.

Working with Pilar was always a positive experience; she knew how to make the best of whatever challenge was presenting itself. We worked hard, but we had fun too.

I still laugh out loud when I think of some of our early shows… traveling all over the state in an old station wagon whose Fry Bread Power bumper sticker belied any of our less indulgent food choices or the fact that we truly were living the glamorous life—Native style.

Today, there is no great surprise when I hear Pilar’s name mentioned or printed in connection with some fabulous fashion show or exhibit; her gifts and talents were apparent from the start. I consider her a friend, so her journey to her own success has been exciting to watch. I am honored to have been given this assignment and to have had the opportunity to work with Pilar years ago, when we were both finding our footing at the threshold of our young, creative lives.

I feel compelled to raise my glass extra high when the toasting is in Pilar Agoyo’s name.

And, by the way, Agoyo, most fittingly, means “star” in the Tewa language. Shine on, girl! —rmd

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Pilar reading a script at White Sands National Monument, NM. Photo: Tailinh Agoyo (Chinese-American).

Cut Against the Bias

I

N THE HANDS OF FASHION DESIGNER PILAR AGOYO, ordinary materials are transformed into extraordinary works of wearable art. And, as holds true for all great art, each of the designer’s individual creations has its own story: a visual narrative told through the precise collaborations of fabric and form, color and construct, shape and structure. However, the story behind Agoyo’s rise to notability is no sparse and spiny vignette; rather, hers is a rich and rousing tale of dedicated scholarship and hard work and the courage to follow a dream.

Twenty-seven years ago this fall, when she enrolled at IAIA, Agoyo made a decision that would forever change the course of her artistic path and simultaneously place her in the center of the just-beginning-to-boil concoction of creativity that was the impetus for contemporary Native fashion: she decided not to be a painter.

Shortly after changing her major to three-dimensional arts, Agoyo joined the fashion and performance troupe Native Influx, which was established two years earlier by Native

PILAR AGOYO

draper for stage, film, and television projects, including Bless Me, Ultima; The Lone Ranger; We’re the Millers; and New Mexico’s own much-loved, highrev series, Breaking Bad. Her latest creative venture, Manhattan, premiering this summer and set in the year 1943, has inspired Agoyo to begin working out the concept for a new collection. “It will have subtle touches of the era I am currently absorbed with,” say Pilar. “I’m actually inspired by the recent rains. So cloudy and stormy (with touches of lightning) will be conveyed.”

Agoyo has received numerous awards and recognitions, such as her six Santa Fe Indian Market Native American Clothing Contest places, which include two first place ribbons in 2006 and 2009; fashion shows in Johannesburg, South Africa and at the Idyllwild Arts Program in California and Heard Museum in Arizona; and exhibits at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe and the US Department of the Interior Museum in Washington, DC. She has also been an active supporter of the Pueblo Opera Program (POPS) for many years, which works to expose Pueblo children to the operatic arts.

Agoyo is also the mother of four children, aged 15, 17, 22, and 25.

Visiting with the designer recently, we took notes on what inspires her, how her work has evolved, and what she envisions for the future of Native fashion.

What is your aesthetic/design philosophy?

Full length wool coat with leather appliquéd stars and red trim, designed and created by Pilar Agoyo. Model: Tailinh Agoyo (Chinese-American). Image courtesy of the artist.

designers Wendy Ponca, Marcus Amerman, Patricia Michaels, and the author of this story, where she worked as one of its showcasing designers.

The group’s name was subsequently

changed to Native Uprising, as it is known today.

Agoyo’s resume is impressive, noting dozens of credits for her work as a seamstress, costumer, cutter, and

I have none. I try not to limit myself to any singular approach to designing.

How does your work both incorporate and transcend cultural/ tribal ideals?

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too many tribal patterns into my work.

I do look at old styles and images, but I tend to contemporize their concepts.

My work is usually very fitted, and it’s definitely more about emphasizing the silhouette than about reproducing traditional design forms.

How are Native/Tewa ideas/ concepts/cosmologies expressed in your designs?

Being Pueblo, I know there are boundaries I cannot… and will not… cross with my work… certain [Pueblo] designs that I know I can’t use. I do use Native tribal designs… but not from my own tribe. I have to push that away and use what’s already [acceptable]. I did [produce] a line of swimwear…

I made bikinis out of Pendleton blankets. But I would never put sacred Pueblo symbols on a line of swimwear.

Native concepts are expressed in my work through my ability to be resourceful [with materials] and through my willingness to experiment with new tools and techniques.

What or who inspires you?

Everything inspires me! Magazines, books, movies, music, people… my kids.

In addition to those whom you have previously referenced (Lloyd Kiva New, Wendy Ponca, and Marcus Amerman), who or what would you cite as having the greatest influence on your work as a designer?

My life experiences and my film and TV work all have huge influences on my design work. I meet so many talented people. Just being around them allows me to converse [with other creative people]…and keeps the dialogue fresh. I’m blown away by the talent that surrounds me on a dayto-day basis. Even the extras…they have so much talent, and I really enjoy learning about their stories.

My mom was a storyteller... and my

Custom handbag of patent leather with silver feather appliqué and Star Wars-inspired dress, 2013, Native American Fashion Show, Idyllwild Arts Foundation Theatre. Photo: Alan Camou, Flying Pig Digital Photo & Video.

father was always such an eloquent speaker. Designing fashion is my way of telling stories—my way of speaking eloquently.

When or how did you know fashion was your artistic/creative calling?

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It wasn’t until I attended the Institute of American Indian Arts. My original passion was drawing; I wanted to become a painter. I was [assigned] to Wendy Ponca… She was my academic advisor. Her advice to me was to try a wide variety of classes. She happened

PILAR AGOYO

cardboard. One thing Wendy taught me is that “everything is material!”

In the Indian world, so to speak, we often inherit much of our identity by virtue of our tribal and cultural histories. In the fashion world, where identity can be a bit more elusive, how do you create a lasting identity/signature among so many who are trying to achieve that also?

I have always set out to be myself.

I’m a woman who is a blend of three pueblos; I’m a mother, a daughter, and a sister. But I know that my work has to be unique and different to support a strong identity in the fashion world… that’s why I use a lot of unique fabrics and uncommon techniques. I’ve been lucky enough that my work has caught the eye of many collectors, and that it continues to appeal to the clients who purchase my designs. Fashion is very much about trends and the forecasting of trends. I have tried to get into that mind-set; it’s very difficult. I design fashion because it’s very close to storytelling… I’m sort of leading the onlooker or the wearer through a visual journey.

What would you say is your design/ brand signature?

Contrast.

Black and silver vinyl two-piece outfit with custom star vinyl bag designed and created by Pilar Agoyo. 2013, Native American Fashion Show, Idyllwild Arts Foundation Theatre. Photo: Victor Pascual (Navajo-Maya). Image courtesy of Beyond Buckskin.

Describe your work. How has it evolved over the years?

to be teaching a textile and fiber arts class… weaving, batik, etc. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t until I was introduced to draping in one of her fashion design classes that I realized I had some natural talent.

My work has always been unique… as I said earlier, a blending of textures.

And I have been resourceful with my use of material. I have definitely refined my sewing technique over the years. There is still so much to learn!

It’s playful and sometimes sharp. That’s what I love about being a designer…

I can and do challenge myself with garment construction, and I always try to challenge my creativity… to push it in new directions.

Basically, I was just put in front of a sewing machine, having had no experience at all. It was literally Wendy saying, “Here’s your machine… You can use whatever materials you want… Come get me if you have any questions.” I was quite surprised by how quickly I adapted. I

found my true passion! I changed my major, and well…

You use a wide variety of materials in your designs. Your techniques are quite varied as well. Would you elaborate on some of those materials and techniques?

I’m drawn to experimenting with the juxtaposition of man-made fabrics and textiles. I love the textures… the blending of textures. I love vinyl! I’ve been known to use paper, newspaper, clothes hangers, duct-tape, and

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innovations in Native fashion over the past two to three decades?

I’ve never really given it much thought. So many designers have used “us” as inspiration—Pendleton being the [most notable]. The contrast of innovation and tradition is definitely more prominent in our [Pueblo] villages... I love going home for feast-day and seeing the colors [of the shawls and mantas], the embroidery and colored moccasins… so much work and detail. But I, of course, love the simplicity of the [Pueblo] design aesthetic as well.

Innovation lies in Native designers following their own path… being true to their own vision.

Why do you think so many people, including some of the iconic designers of our day, gravitate toward things Native/American Indian?

I think it’s based in a desire to attach to something solid, something real.

And we pretty much represent the closest thing to that… We still have a connection to our culture and to our history, and everyone wants that.

I don’t think it’s necessarily based in malice or disrespect… but on that desire for connection.

How do you envision the future of Native fashion… say, over the next 50 to 100 years?

I’m so glad there are more Native designers [now than there were] when I began this journey! I hope the art form continues to flourish… and that I can continue to inspire that new future. Wow!... what that will encompass is intriguing to me!

What influences do you think/hope your work will have on the next wave of Native designers?

I hope my work inspires them to be honest and truthful with their own work and to not limit themselves artistically.

Evening ensemble of black velvet, wool, and silk charmeuse with dragonfly motifs and earrings designed and created by Pilar Agoyo. 2013, Native American Fashion Show, Idyllwild Arts Foundation Theatre. Photo: Victor Pascual (Navajo-Maya). Image courtesy of Beyond Buckskin.

What words of advice can you offer to young Native artists considering a career in fashion design?

Learn and do as much as you can.

Trust your own judgment. Trust your creativity. Take risks… challenge yourself.

What careers/interests are your children pursuing?

So many, it’s hard to keep up with them! Music, producing and DJing,

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art, fashion, acting, modeling, photography, painting. They are very creative and determined. I am so lucky to have seen them evolve over the years.

What have they learned by watching you follow your dream?

That it’s not easy! That it’s hard! I haven’t actually asked them that…

They know that it takes many hours to produce work. Sometimes, I think that they’ll try to avoid that. They’re fueled by the Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat

PILAR AGOYO

world…the fast-paced world that I have no clue about.

How has growing up in the art world shaped their identities?

They’re really at ease talking to adults about [pretty much anything]. And even though they had no idea at the time that a lot of the artists their father and I exposed them to as children were very famous artists, they’re unaffected by that… They get bored with the concept of fame. It will be as adults that it’ll dawn on them. I still take them to art events and such… in hopes that it will continue to help them on their journey.

If you could collaborate with any artist from any time in history, who would it be? Why? Ralph Rucci. He’s the most amazing American designer! His [work] encompasses fashion and art; he’s one of the few designers to hold the French haute couture label. His clothing embodies so many levels, intellectually... and the construction is pure genius—so simple and elegant. I aspire to achieve that in my own work.

See more of Pilar’s work: WHAT: Manhattan, new TV drama WHEN: Sundays, 9 pm Eastern/ 8 pm Central time WHERE: WGN America WHAT: Cumulus, dance party and fashion show WHEN: Saturday, Aug. 23rd, 9 pm WHERE: Shadeh Nightclub, Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino, WHAT: End of Days, gallery exhibit opening reception WHEN: Friday, Oct. 31st, 5–7 pm (show runs through Jan. 2015) WHERE: City of Santa Fe Arts Commission Community Gallery, 201 W. Marcy St, Santa Fe, NM

Custom handbag and couture Harley Davidson-inspired leather dress, 2013, Native American Fashion Show, Idyllwild Arts Foundation Theatre, Idyllwild, CA. Photo: Alan Camou, Flying Pig Digital Photo & Video, www.flying-pigs-digital-photo-and-video.com.

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Cherokee Ceramic Sculptor

Troy Jackson

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Interview by ᎧᏂᎦ ᎪᎳᎭ Roy Boney Jr.

HEROKEE NATION ARTIST TROY JACKSON lives in Grand View, Oklahoma, a small community near Tahlequah, the historic capitol of the Cherokee Nation. I had the pleasure of visiting him one evening to speak with him about his work. His studio is located along a country road in an idyllic wooded area. The serene facade of his studio—a converted garage—masks the inspiring art created within its walls. His shelves are lined with his tools and pieces of pottery and sculptures in-progress.

It is not quite chaos, but one can feel the creative energy in the room. It is intriguing to see half formed clay arms grasping upward for completeness from the shelves and seeing other figurines sitting playfully on the edges watching over the artist as he works. One of the most striking elements throughout his body of work is the balance Jackson achieves with elegant figurative curves sitting atop elaborately designed bases. The designs often evoke ancient patterns of the Southeastern Woodlands pottery and shell carving combined with contemporary abstracted gear-like forms. His work is an effective combination of organic-meets-mechanic.

Jackson’s identity plays a very strong role in his work, having grown up Cherokee and white. His decades-long evolution as an artist is the story of identity, technique, and exploration.

In the center of the studio is Jackson’s latest piece, a selfportrait. The clay and steel sculpture of a jester balances atop a sphere and a cube. Leaning in space, as if amused, the figure holds his arms in juggling motion. The jester is painted half red, half white, and with red and white circles painted on the figure and base. Jackson says the piece represents his past as working in an auto body repair shop and working as a fine artist. The red and white color scheme refers to the everpresent subject of identity that prevails throughout his work.

Auto Bodies and Art Jackson hails from the small rural town of Keys, Oklahoma.

From working class family, he is a mixed-blood Cherokee.

He always had an interest in art, so upon graduation in 1974, Jackson enrolled at Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, intending to study commercial art. Jackson chose commercial art out of practicality; he could earn a living while still being engaged in a creative pursuit. Bacone College has a long history as influential center of Native art, famously known 32 | W W W.F IR S TAM E RI C AN ARTMAG A ZI N E.C OM

Troy Jackson with his sculpture, I’m Part White But Can’t Prove It, at the Trail of Tears Art Show, Cherokee Heritage Center, Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Photo: Tony A. Tiger (Sac & Fox-Muscogee Creek-Seminole.

for the so-called “Bacone School” exemplified by the flatstyle art of Acee Blue Eagle and Woody Crumbo. Jackson particularly was struck by the work of David Williams, Chief Terry Saul, and Solomon McCombs. Surrounded by the rich history of the school, Jackson’s plan quickly changed from focusing on commercial art to painting. He obtained an associate’s degree in art from Bacone in 1976.

Jackson continued studying art and soon enrolled in Northeastern State University in Tahlequah a few years later.

Jerry Choate, the ceramic instructor at NSU, proved to be a great influence on Jackson as he developed his interest in pottery. Jackson earned his bachelor’s degree in 1979—and ultimately his master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Arkansas—but the practicality that initially drew him to commercial art put him on a different path. So for the next 20 years, he worked in auto collision repair.

During this time, Jackson mastered the media of metals, plastics, urethanes, and plasters used in auto bodywork. He developed deep knowledge of the industrial aspect of these types of materials and became quite proficient at creating the ultra-slick, cosmetically perfect, symmetrical surfaces that his customers required.

In between working his day job and raising his family, Jackson still continued his work as a potter. His final five

TROY JACKSON

Fayetteville. It wasn’t so much the artist’s extraordinary craftsmanship or the complexity in the simplicity of form, but the work itself seemed to answer a question of their identity. Not only who they were as artists, but as a description of who they were as a culture.

Almost immediately a realization of my Cherokee culture and heritage became much more important, and the search for identity became a catalyst for my work.

Around this time, too, Jackson became actively engaged in the local art community. He served as treasure for the University of Arkansas Ceramics Association, as well as serving as various posts with the Cherokee Artists Association, including two consecutive terms as president, and being president of the Tahlequah Arts Guild. Being a native Oklahoman, Jackson said his attention was drawn to how the history of the state affected its Native population. Being active in local art organizations would help him connect with more local artists and others in the art community.

Jackson began entering many local art shows, and his pottery soon began receiving some attention. He won a first place award in contemporary pottery at the 2008 Cherokee Cultural Crafts Fair in Tahlequah. In the same year he won another first place award in the 5th Annual Muskogee Art Guild Show.

Waiting for the Tractor, 2013, clay with copper ring, 40 x 30 x 19 in.

years working in auto collision repair took their toll. Finally having the choice between creating slick fenders or creating fine art, Jackson chose the latter. It was the perfect time for him, as his children had grown and left the home, and he and his wife were empty nesters. Jackson points to this as a turning point in his career since practicality was no longer an issue. He describes his decision to finally pursue fine art: “Common sense was put on the back burner and a new goal was in view.”

Part of his new goal involved further academic study of art. He applied for graduate school and was accepted into the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He taught an art fundamentals class through an assistantship. Jackson said it was while working on his master’s degree in ceramics that he first seriously explored the theme of cultural heritage and identity through his art.

I recall attending an Asian ceramic exhibit at the university’s gallery in

The following year he won a judges choice award in the 4th Annual Cherokee National Holiday Art Show, and he won yet another first place award in contemporary pottery in the 2010 Cherokee Homecoming show. His awards began to rack up, and in 2011, he won the Best of Show award in the annual Trail of Tears Art Show at the Cherokee Heritage Center.

In 2014, he made history by being the first person to win Best of Show at the Trail of Tears three times. As the years went by he also picked up best of show prizes at the Five Civilized Tribes Competitive Show, Cherokee Homecoming, FALL 2 0 1 4

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Thank God for Who I Am, clay with copper ring, 10 x 9½ x 5 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

the Chickasaw Southeastern Art Show and Market (SEASAM), and numerous first places and other awards.

As Jackson’s work continued to grow in stature, he was given a grand opportunity to have his art expand beyond the regional Native art scene.

He was selected as one of the artists to exhibit in the Changing Hands: Art Without Reservations 3 show, which began in 2012. Changing Hands is a series of exhibitions organized by the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, and the show has traveled to numerous museums across the country. Changing Hands 3 represents Native artists of the

Northeast, the Canadian Subarctic, and the Southeast Woodlands. Jackson also has exhibited in Art From Indian Territory at the All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis; the Bacone Alumni Show in Santa Fe; and he has worn a Best of Classification award for pottery and second place award for sculpture in the 2013 SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market.

Exploring Identity through Sculpture The working class history of his family as well as his own background working in auto body repair influences

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Jackson’s sculpture. He recounts of how his grandparents were of the Great Depression era, and both Cherokees and whites were affected by the economics of the United States. The resilience of his family and others is an inspiration.

“As an artist, I want my work to shed light on the identity of these two cultures,” the artist explains. “Not to separate them, but to join them together.”

His sculpture Putting the Pieces Together represents this effort. The piece portrays a seated figure questioningly looking upward, as if seeking answers from a

TROY JACKSON

spheres represent ethnicity, with one being more evident and the other more subdued or at least less known about. Abstract lines and indentions throughout the surface have very little to do with traditional design but rather have a more contemporary association with the DNA of someone today.

For the artist, the separation of identities can be a troubling, yet amusing, thing. He talks about how an acquaintance of his that speaks Cherokee told him he was an Indian “wannabe.” Jackson takes the term with some hesitance.

I take this with a gesture of humility, but can’t help but believe that he’s right, especially since I can’t argue with him in his own language.

Industrial Water Supply, 2014, mixed media, 22 x 22 x 3 in.

higher power. His body is made of puzzle pieces of white and a deep dark red. He holds puzzle pieces in his hands. An unknown question that has been posed needs to be addressed.

The figure contemplates an untold story with closed eyes—that only he knows or hears. Puzzle pieces share the same anticipation, waiting to be joined together. Jackson quite forcefully uses the concept of the puzzle in this piece both in terms of piecing together and as he puts it, “making it synonymous with such verbs as perplex, distract, and bewilder.”

Jackson does not shy away from identity politics in his work. He explains his thoughts as a mixed-blood Cherokee.

It’s hard to understand what it would have been like to solely grow up as a Native American–even though I’m not exactly sure of what that means.

At most, I would probably be more proficient in the Cherokee language. Or

perhaps the old legends and stories that I found most intriguing when I looked them up on the Internet would have been passed down by a more practical and reliable source such as a wise and knowledgeable grandparent. These opportunities were missed, not because of anything I had done, but because there was no choice.

The title of his piece Am I Red and White or Am I White and Red also serves as question he says he constantly asks himself. A seated figure holds a white orb in one hand and a red one in another. Red and white beads were historically used by Cherokees to divine the future. The blindfolded figure itself is incised with intricate line work. Jackson describes the blindfold as symbolic of frustration of the pull between the two sides of his identity.

We do not have a choice as to where, to whom, or when we are born.

We’re simply placed. Red and white

His piece I’m Part White but I Can’t Prove It is his response to this topic of race. A figure kneels—as if undecided whether or not he will sit in complacency over who others say he is or isn’t. DNA lines are incised into the surface. Again, he is holding a white orb and a red orb in his hands. The blindfolded man is not looking up to the sky. Rather he appears to be looking at the white orb intensely. While blind, he still seems to be examining the white orb while comfortably holding the red orb. Is the viewer meant to see one orb as more important than the other? The entire figure is supported by a base that has the Cherokee syllabary around it and a small white cross hangs off it. Is he kneeling on a foundation of Cherokee language in defiance of the one who the artist could not debate with in his own language? Jackson wants the viewer to ask these questions, and going back to his view of himself as a jester, he says he finds that there is a humorous connotation in the piece as well. The title is a fun play on the famous declaration of “I’m part Indian but I can’t prove it” that some people often bandy about while engaged in genealogical searches for an ever-elusive Cherokee Princess. What may have been taken as an insult by some, Jackson FALL 2 0 1 4

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created a striking work of art out of it.

My mother’s Cherokee parents and my father’s Caucasian parents shared a brief time in history with one common bond, survival of the Great Depression. They were both small farmers and relied on food they grew themselves.

As a young boy, he remembers riding a mare while his grandfather would plow furrows sun up to sun down. Waiting for the Tractor is his representation of the link between the two sides of his family. A shirtless farmer stands with a gloved hand raised in the air. At his feet, the blade of the plow cuts into the ground. The plow’s handles extend upward mimicking the pose of the figure. The front beam extends straight out and away from the center pillar of the figure and the base. It creates a great visual balance, with the front beam, cross struts, and handles all forming areas of negative space, which lend a sense of motion to the entire piece.

The base’s surface is covered in abstract shapes that have teeth on them that resemble gears. The base itself looks like a fitted pipeline that is bolted together.

In the center of the base is a cross. If the viewer takes a step back, the section with the cross almost appears to be a crucifixion scene with all the abstract gear shapes looking almost like arranged figures gathered around the cross. These types of images represent the tension between the traditional Cherokee beliefs and those of Christianity—a common experience among many Cherokee families, including Jackson’s own. Jackson believes that a common bond we all share as people is that of never being completely satisfied.

Depending on our attitude, this can either be bad or good. It seems we are always looking for things that will make our life easier and more profitable; I can’t help but remember how tired my grandparent was from plowing at the end of the day and how relieved he was when the neighbor’s tractor showed up later in the summer to harvest. Although there is no sign of a tractor in the sculpture, the figure eagerly counts down the minutes

5:00 Friday, 2014, clay, 44 x 22 x 7 in.

from a pocket watch he’s holding in his left hand, anticipating when his job will become less strenuous. His right hand eagerly waving down the neighbor in acceptance of better things to come.

5:00 Friday also reflects the artist’s interest in the working class. Inspired

by Jackson’s son who works on a dam, the piece features a figure wearing a hard hat holding a shovel and looking at his watch.

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His platform resembles two fish swimming downward with their tailfins meeting at the top, forming a hollowed-out section in the center.

The whole base is covered in gears and stylized fish. Having just finished his workweek, the man is ready to go home to his family.

The gears and fish represent a sense of irony. The irony is that today, machinery and technology are needed to

TROY JACKSON

help preserve a natural environment that was once self-contained.

We continually create more work for ourselves as we continually seek future technology and machines to repair and replace what we continually tear down.

emerging from a piece of pottery. The base itself is adorned with faces and attached to it is a white cross. The figure looks up towards the sky with outstretched arms in a manner of praise.

The piece portrays the importance of water—harnessing the power of water with dams and the traditional significance Cherokee’s place on water, such as in going to water rituals.

“The outstretched arms surrounded by unlimited space gives an understanding of just how small I am,” Jackson says. “I believe that I have a specific purpose in this life no matter my color or race, and that is to be an artist.”

Thank God for Who I Am is perhaps one of the artist’s most personal pieces. A figure appears to emerge from the base as if

He sees this sculpture as a dedication to humbling oneself before others and before God. When one meets Jackson in person, his demeanor comes across as contemplative and humble. And it’s through his art that he makes grand, thoughtful statements.

Engaged, Active, and Exploring Jackson’s art steadily has evolved over the last 40 years. He engages in practices of pure technique to see how he can combine media such as clay and metal into sculptural art forms. Decades of working with industrial materials give him the technical skills to create unique and creative statements on his life, family, and technique.

His growing stature as an artist has resulted in new projects and commissions. As a member of the Southeastern Indian Artists Association (SEIAA), Jackson has helped organize contemporary Native art shows, including helping plan upcoming exhibits at the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art and the 108 Contemporary Gallery in Tulsa.

He currently serves as treasurer for the SEIAA, a group that evolved from the former Cherokee Artists Association to focus more broadly on the Southeastern tribal artistic tradition. He teaches sculpture, figure drawing, and art fundamentals at Bacone College. His career has come full circle since his days as a student there.

When asked what sort of new ideas he had in mind for his own art, Jackson said he is interested in creating kinetic pieces that include actual working gears, pieces that incorporate auto parts, and creating monumental-sized sculpture. For Jackson, the ultimate pursuit for an artist is to constantly search and to explore, and he shows no signs of slowing down.

Troy Jackson is represented by the Spider Gallery in Tahlequah.

Self-Portrait, 2014, clay, paint, and glaze. Image courtesy of the artist.

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Northern Paiute-Modoc Mixed Media Artist

Melissa Melero Profile by Jean Merz-Edwards I have the constant desire to create these images in my head, and in the process these works mesh into organic, caught-in-time objects of history and personal development. —Melissa Melero1

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ATURAL FOUND OBJECTS, abstract designs, and “green” techniques comprise the mixed media canvases of Melissa Melero, a Northern Paiute and Modoc artist enrolled with the Paiute-Shoshone Tribe of the Fallon Reservation and Colony. Melero became interested in art as a child growing up in Nevada, and her present inspirations include Paiute baby baskets, beaded baskets, and Fallon petroglyphs as well as her 12-year-old son Marlon and her mother Linda Jones. Referring to her imagery as “personal petroglyphs,” Melero considers her creations “abstractions of stories… bits and pieces of memory of things that I love,” and they solidly encapsulate her placebased aesthetic, derived from spatial rather than temporal thought.

Beginnings: Family and Schooling Melissa Melero’s parents met as the result of relocation. Her mother, from Nevada, was in California as part of the Indian Relocation Program, and her father, from New York, was in California as a member of the United States military service, so Melero was born in San Francisco in 1974. Though her life began in California, Melero spent most of her childhood living near Reno, Nevada, where an extended Northern Paiute family, including many artisans, surrounded her.

Reflecting on her current interest in incorporating natural materials into her art Melero recalls, “I was always outdoors with my family growing up; we traveled and camped a lot, fishing and hunting, rock climbing and collecting rocks, plants, and fossils.”

These early memories assert themselves in contemporary works like the 2014 mixed media diptych Cattails, where Melero embeds actual cattails into the art, that create long vertical lines set in a repetition of dots symbolizing water bubbles. Both the subject and the material express Melissa’s “spatial perspective” of seeing “through cycles of space and places of life as opposed to sequences of time.” More specifically, the cattails connect with the artist’s specific band

of Paiute, the Toi-Ticutta (cattail eaters), whose many uses for the plant range from sculpting duck decoys to harvesting it as a food source.

Melero’s art did not begin as large abstract works with natural objects, but rather with figures and landscapes. During high school, Melissa took art as an elective all four years.

She openly discusses challenges she experienced during her time in elementary and high school and later college years.

While earning her bachelor’s degree in science at a state college in the Northwest—where she focused her studies on psychology and fine arts—Melissa experienced what she calls the “new racism,” something she defines as “invisibility.”

Demanding to be seen and refusing to ignore the racism she encountered, Melero took action and began making political paintings in the vein of Spokane artist Charlene Teters. Before graduating in 2001, Melero directly countered the system through a one-woman show that addressed the “historical Indian.”

“It was a big installation. I had three walls to work with,” Melero says.

One wall I called, “Historical Indian,” which included old photographs of Indians from museums, the next wall called ‘Stereotypical Indian’ included panels with stereotypes

1. Unless otherwise noted, biographical information and direct quotes are from the author’s phone conversation with the artist on May 9, 2014: May 23, 2014; and May 27, 2014, and from the artist’s website.

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MELISSA MELERO

company of new, lifelong friends with whom she shared similar experiences from elementary school and high school. Moreover, the exposure to the rich collection of American Indian art changed her view of art in general.

While earning an associate’s degree in fine arts, Melissa took a variety of classes in subjects such as dance, photography, three-dimensional art, jewelry, theater, and painting. Of the classes, Melero says, “I loved it all!” She reminisces that the exposure to such a broad selection of courses afforded her the opportunity to narrow her focus toward the “two-dimensional sculptures” she creates today.

One of the most remarkable opportunities Melero had at the school was frequently exhibiting her student work at the IAIA Museum in Santa Fe. Founded in 1971, the museum moved downtown and was remodeled in the early 1990s.

Naked, 2010, mixed media with pine nuts on canvas, 50 x 50 in. All images courtesy of the artist.

of Indians, and the third wall, “Contemporary NDN,” included abstract works. I felt everyone at the school knew so little about Indians… and I wanted to bring awareness to racism in this county.

co-authored with Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Lakota-Yankton Dakota) Power and Place: Indian Education in America and then co-edited Destroying Dogma: Vine Deloria Jr. and His Influence on American Society.

Melero’s empirical knowledge expressed in the show worked in tandem with the epistemological knowledge she had acquired during her brief time at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas.

Melero transferred to Haskell shortly after the school started an American Indian Studies program and before she graduated with her bachelor’s degree in the Northwest.

In the required reading for Wildcat’s Indigenous philosophy class, Melero read God Is Red by Vine Deloria Jr. According to Melero, the reading and subsequent class discussions of God Is Red affected her deeply and equipped her with a knowledge that continues to inform her painting today.

Because her credits were not interchangeable, she went back to the state school, but not before taking Indigenous philosophy with Dr. Daniel Wildcat, a Yuchi member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Among many accomplishments, Wildcat

Melero credits the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with significantly influencing how she views art through a Native perspective and one of the reasons why she has been successful as an artist.

As a young woman at the IAIA in the early 1990s, Melissa found solace in the

“We were treated like rock stars and exhibited in the main gallery all the time,” Melero recalls thankfully.

Ultimately, these early experiences laid the groundwork for Melero’s many accomplishments including numerous awards and exhibitions throughout her career.

Recent awards include the Lehmberg Fellowship for Native American Women Artists from the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe and first place in mixed media, second in abstract painting, and best in division in painting at SWAIA’s Santa Fe Indian Market.

Recent solo exhibitions include The Basket Series at the Metro Gallery at City Hall in Reno, Nevada, and Willow and Bone at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, as well as group shows Abstract Abstract at the 1Spot Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona, and Salutations: IAIA Public Art Biennial at the IAIA campus.

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Tamano (Spring), 2013, mixed media with willow on canvas, 50 x 50 in.

Turning Points and Other Major Life Events Although studies at IAIA helped her focus, Melero underwent a few major turning points before she fully committed to her art. One of these is her transition to “green” techniques in painting, which began in the late 1990s.

Melero recalls,

I began painting ‘green’ quite unconsciously when I was attending school in Portland, Oregon, in 1998.

I had to make my paints and supplies stretch further and further when I was working larger than ever, so it was more for economic reasons. This required me to make my own experiments with media and dilute everything while still getting my thick textural effects on my canvas.

Portland has such a green presence that

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I started thinking of everything I was using, as far as supplies, conservation, and pollution, and over the years I found alternative ways to recycle canvases, extend one tube of paint for years (not kidding), no paint waste down the drain, etc.

Sixteen years later, Melero still uses sustainable practices in her art, a methodology that supports the general subject of her paintings. Yubano, which

MELISSA MELERO

that made me drop everything and do my art.”

After earning her undergraduate degree from Portland State University in 2001, the pregnant Melero moved back to Nevada to be near her family.

“Before, I was creating just to create,” she recalls. “I did the figure, and I was all over the place. When my son was born, it was right when I finished with school—‘it’ turned on… I had content. I had to make stuff, and I had to show it… It was an explosion. And the beginning of the most amazing awakening.”

During this surge of creativity, Melero had her first show, NDN Perspectivism, at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, and another show in Santa Fe, which sold out.

Cattails, 2013, mixed media with cattails on canvas, 24 x 30 in.

translates from Paiute to English as “Fall,” provides one such example.

Melero began the mixed media work during the fall pine nut harvesting season. The Northern Paiute have been collecting and harvesting pine nuts from the piñon trees of the Great Basin region long before contact with Europeans. In her own family history, Melero has rich childhood memories of pine nut gathering.

In addition to its title, Yubano sees through these cycles of space and places of life via the repetition of groups of four, such as the four vertical sections of color in the central rectangle containing the four rows and four columns of four circles, referring to the

four seasons and subsequent cycle of life. Even further, within the center of each individual circle, Melero affixed an actual pine nut from around the Great Basin region: a natural object that connects with her childhood home, her current home, and the home of her ancestors.

The implementation of “green” techniques into her repertoire marks a significant turning point in Melero’s art, however, the most momentous event of her life and career—thus far—occurred when the artist became a mother.

“The timing was perfect,” she reflects on the birth of her son Marlon and says it is the “single most important thing

With a renewed purpose and a new baby in tow, Melissa left her home in Nevada and moved back to Santa Fe in 2002. IAIA now offered a fouryear degree, and Melissa took classes off and on again as an anomalous undergraduate student represented by the Modo Gallery of Hudson, New York. In 2009 when she graduated from the IAIA with a bachelor of fine arts degree in Studio Arts, Melissa exhibited regularly and was recognized

by SWAIA with awards in 2006 and 2008. In other words, Melissa Melero was thriving in the artist community of Santa Fe. In retrospect, Melero acknowledges she was getting comfortable in Santa Fe because she could be herself. She says, “My paintings got pretty and decorative.” Additionally, her growing son was then fascinated by dinosaurs and fossils, and they both loved to visit the sites around Santa Fe where they could see rock art. Some of these images surfaced in Marlon’s childhood artwork, which subsequently inspired Melero in her paintings. And though she was comfortable and successful with fodder for inspiration in New Mexico, FALL 2 0 1 4

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Melero had a deep longing to raise her son in the place of her childhood and the ancestral home of her family.

Melero Today and Her Thoughts on “Returning Home” Recently, Melero and her son moved home to Hungry Valley, home of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony in Nevada, Marlon’s tribe. Initially, the change seemed precarious considering the level of professional success Melissa had achieved in Santa Fe and all the caring and supportive friends she left behind.

However, seeing her son continue the “cycle of life” by discovering all the things Melissa previously experienced during her childhood, she knows the change was worth it.

Now that I’m back, I get to go to all the places that are in my memories and what I have been longing for. [It’s] just been deeper with every time I go to a powwow out here, or to a house for a cultural gathering; I learn something new. I’m so excited for Marlon, because during my childhood I was not paying attention. I want him to soak it up, from language to culture to stories to experiences. I had no idea how much we needed to be out here.

With this new season in Melero’s life, new images appear in her work.

Basket Series II from earlier this year recalls memories of community days and cultural conferences where basket makers demonstrate their artistry.

Particularly, the geometric patterns in the painting call to mind willow and beaded Paiute baskets.

“I’m doing a little bit with new images that come into my head since I’ve been back—basketry, collecting basketry…,” Melero muses of her recent works. “I’m loving texture, and it came to me on the sly. The images pop up at me and

Yubano (Fall), 2013, mixed media with pine nuts on canvas, 50 x 50 in.

are influenced by baskets that reorganize themselves into these works.”

In earlier works, such as Naked, the color and finish on the painting’s surface mimic attributes of three-dimensional sculpture. Bronze and silvery colors suggest metal, while the carved lines that comprise the crosses and circles create physical depth much like a bronze relief sculpture. Repeating rows of pine nuts embedded down the vertical center of Naked further emphasize three-dimensionality. In Basket Series II, Melero creates the sense of depth through the raised dots and geometric forms, covered in a patinalike wash.

Blending shapes, forms, and textures, from a Paiute pine nut winnowing basket with Marlon’s cradleboard, describe the recent work Pine Nut Basket. This merging of aesthetics

speaks metaphorically about Melero’s return to Nevada and echoes the antinomic quality of life that Melero expresses in her art; it is simultaneously ephemeral and permanent as a season in the much larger cycle of life.

During this period where Marlon comes full circle to the place where it all began for his mother, Melissa has arrived full circle in a space where she uses her exceptional and particular skills for the benefit of her community.

Melero worked as a program associate at the nonprofit Sierra Arts Foundation, “dedicated to providing funds and education to support and develop local artists.” While there, Melissa specifically focused on programs such as Arts in Education and the Galleries at Work program.2 Melero interviewed Pyramid Lake Paiute artist Ben Aleck in the Spring

2. “People on the Move: Melissa Melero Joins Sierra Arts Foundation,” Reno Gazette Journal, January 5, 2012, accessed June 1, 2014.

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Prayer II, 2011, mixed media with willow on canvas, 16 x 20 in.

2014 issue of First American Art Magazine. From the meeting, the two artists decided to found the Great Basin Native Artists (GBNA), “a venue for Native American professional working artists residing in Nevada and the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range,” according to the fledgling organization’s website, maintained by Melero.

These artists “wanted to be available to the public in one resource center, and available to each other for professional support.” GBNA has a growing artist directory, online image gallery, and listings of exhibition opportunities.

The organization will provide a

forum and art business workshops for professional and emerging artists.3 Finally, being back in Nevada allows Melero to support her mother Linda Jones, an Indian boarding school survivor, with a current book and film project about the Stewart Indian Boarding School located southeast of Carson City in Nevada. Jones received a grant from the Nevada Arts Council for the project to create awareness about the history of Stewart.

Not surprisingly, Melero looks to her mother for inspiration, and when asked about her own perseverance and the advice she would give to young people today, Melero shares, “The best thing I ever did was learn about myself and the history of Natives in this country.

Learn about your history—that was the spark of motivation for me—once you learn about who you are and how you fit, you won’t try and be something you are not.”

www.melissamelero.com www.greatbasinnativeartists.com

3. “Home,” Great Basin Native Artists, accessed June 1, 2014.

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PROFILE

Oglala Lakota Buffalo Horn Carver and Jeweler

Kevin Pourier

I

Ičhaǧa

Profile by Mary Bordeaux

SAT WITH KEVIN POURIER in a coffee shop one evening to discuss his work and the art world.

We spoke for a couple hours and had some good laughs and serious thoughts, and I hope we both came away with something that will help us all start a conversation.

What is your favorite piece?

My favorite is the one with the portrait of Sitting Bull, with the butterfly wing in his hat, and he is surrounded by monarch butterflies. That piece is so powerful, just that look on his face from that portrait and being surrounded by those butterflies, which to me represent love and family. It just makes it look like he is in a safe place, at home. I think of the time the photo was taken; it was such a hard time for Natives, and so it was a sad time for him; and then to put him in this different environment, for me to be able to do that as an artist, it was kind of empowering. It was also like a gift to him…

I think that is what all my work is with this political work.

It’s empowering as an artist to be able to put these ideas in a form where people can see it and feel different things about what they are looking at. Showing them through my eyes, maybe seeing the injustice that is happening or has happened. I suppose some of my work is about behavior, I always call it fat-taker behavior, which every race has, this fat-taker behavior.

This other piece I really like is called Oppression. It has all these red fingers pointing at each other, and it’s about the FBI when they came and used the tactic against militant groups like the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement. They spread rumors that someone was an informant, and pretty soon everyone was pointing fingers at each other, and the group would disband. So I have [on the piece] all these red fingers pointing at one another and in the middle is the bird, the middle finger sticking up.

And as Native people we need to look at our own behaviors too. I am not against white people; I am not against Indian people or any kind of race—it’s these behaviors that are not good.

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Rosalie Favell (Cree-Métis), Facing the Camera: Santa Fe Suite— Kevin Pourier, 2012, photograph. Image courtesy of the artist. www.rosaliefavell.com

Do you have any others you like?

Yeah, this other piece called Conquered No More, with Mount Rushmore broken in two. All those presidents had done something to Native people to get rid of us, or take away our land... just to get us out of the way. It was really empowering to break these people’s shrine in two, when it’s just this superficial shrine carved into our sacred mountains.

It’s kind of cool to see people’s reactions, because they get kind of offended, but then after that I will ask them what’s wrong, and so we discuss this, and I can tell people about a Native’s view on Mount Rushmore. I can educate, which leads to healing. And you know, hopefully we can grow from all this racism that goes on.

Do you think about moving to somewhere that is a little more accepting of contemporary Native art? Like in the Southwest…

I’ve always thought about moving to the Southwest, but this is our homeland, and I am inspired by everything around here… just being here. You know, we have done that, gone to the Southwest since we started doing jewelry,

KEVIN POURIER

place is just different. I tried to carve on the inside of the curve before, and it’s just like night and day—the inside of the curve to the outside of the curve. It’s a new experience every time.

So I am going to ask the question: Why do you do art, especially when there isn’t that large of an art community here?

Oppression, 2012, inlaid buffalo horn spoon, 17 x 3½ in. All images courtesy of the artist.

made a couple rounds, and then heard about the Heard Museum in Phoenix, and so we went to that show and we got good response to our work.

But at the same time I was told once, “Why don’t you do mosaic or pottery or silverwork—something more people will recognize?”

So you were told to do something more “mainstream”?

Basically. Because there was no category for me, I like to joke around and say I have no class. But we still don’t fit comfortably in the boxes that have been set before us, and sometimes when that would happen it would cross my mind [that] maybe I should do something else. Then I think, why should I change, when it’s not my problem that I don’t fit into the box?

How did you decide to start working with buffalo horn?

The guy that was teaching me worked with antler and told me, “You can use antler and my designs, but eventually do something different. This is what I am doing.” So when I had the opportunity to buy a buffalo horn, I did, and I tried it. I had been making little eagle feather earrings at the time from the antler and remember the struggle I had in switching from the white to the black and reversing the designs. It was like changing the positive space to the negative space…

Then the shine of the buffalo horn was so much more than the antler that we just stuck with it—plus, no one else was doing it.

Is it a soft material, easy to work with and manipulate?

It’s softer than the elk antler, but it depends on what part of the horn the piece comes from. The inside of the curve of the horn is a little more coarse; on the tip it’s harder. Every

When I first started to get serious about art, I didn’t have many teachers, and I didn’t know what I was doing.

There were some guys doing the Northern Plains-style inlay up here, so I learned that… but, to make art… I sometimes feel envious of these artists that have grown up in the family of artists and have been doing art since they were two years old. Growing up in that environment must have been so nurturing and supportive… Here, the artists are so scattered and the art community is small, and there is no place to sell your work unless you are selling tourist items. I didn’t really want to be a tourist artist, I guess…

Right, that makes sense, that whole romanticized view of Plains people.

I think sometimes artists in this area get pigeonholed, and if they want to be a selling artist, they have to do the “long hair, feathers, and sunsets.” That’s what people want and people will buy, and it’s really hard for people to see past that…

Right, and so how do we—what do you call that?

Long hair, feathers, and sunsets?

Yeah! How do we end that view of us as Native people? That’s why, with my art, I try not to do the long hair, feathers, and sunsets. I am trying to show the world or whoever’s looking at my work that we are 21st-century people.

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PROFILE

Monarch Horn Cup, 2011, buffalo horn inlaid with orange sandstone from the Badlands of South Dakota and white mother-of-pearl.

to help change the view of Native people and start to become more political and having those conversations?

When I turned 30, I became alcohol and drug free, started attending ceremonies, and started asking questions. Why do we just do survival art; why don’t we have a place at the table? We were hanging around with a group of artists, and we would talk this way, because not everyone has an awareness. So many people need to make just survival art and pretty things… This group we were hanging with—we started asking each other, what are we trying to say—can we do things differently?

That was really exciting for me; it was really empowering. I hadn’t been around people that were challenging the status quo…

Or challenging you and asking you why you do what you do?

Yeah! We would sit in these groups in coffee shops or whatever and laugh and joke. Then ideas would come out

of those gatherings... from the jokes... then it becomes more serious and then a piece of art…

About the progression of your work—you did more geometric and two-dimensional works, then your work became more fluid and three-dimensional and political…

When and where do you think that happened for you?

All these competitions—my work would be put off to the side, and so afterwards we would get to talk to the judges… and they would say, “We loved it, but we didn’t know what it was.” I was just so frustrated because, it was like, “How do I get them to understand what they are looking at?”

It was a hard place to be, because I was entering work that they didn’t know what it was, and how was I ever going to win? Even in one of the big art competitions my work was questioned, and for about three years I wasn’t able to compete…

So in the meantime I was being told to do something that was more

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mainstream and easier for these competitions to understand. I felt really singled out, when my work was contemporary/traditional and then because of one art competition not letting me compete, the other competitions started to do the same.

So I thought, ah, man! I am gonna be outta business. So I switched up my work a little and started this bas-relief work with no inlay. It was texturing and levels.

Then I got a Smithsonian fellowship, and in my research I discovered a piece Crazy Horse did [with buffalo horn and inlay].

Around that same time the rules changed, and the inlay was allowed again. Now, I had a new style using the bas-relief and the inlay…

[The buffalo horn is] a medium I choose to continue to stick with, but it was like I was hitting walls everywhere I was going, and I felt like I was being blocked. That has a way of affecting a person’s psyche, when you’re blocked everywhere you go, and your work isn’t accepted.

KEVIN POURIER

not sure what it is, “Why would I stick with that, when it seems so difficult?”

It’s still a great mystery to me. But I am glad I refused to change, kind of like my ancestors fought…

Do you think one of the reasons you stuck with the buffalo horn, as a Lakota person, is that whole idea of the buffalo being a relative of us (Lakotas)?

Of course, every time I work with it, I feel it. I feel so inspired and have so many ideas… Every time I pick up a horn, I see all these new things I can make… The ideas just keep growing, and they are all contemporary, a lot of it is not “traditional,” but I am a 21stcentury guy.

On your website I saw Crazy Horse’s buffalo horn, my first thought was, “Wow! What an amazing piece. Good job, Kevin!”

Then I read the caption that it was a historical piece… Crazy Horse’s, which in my eyes made it even more amazing… that this historical piece could be seen as a Kevin Pourier contemporary piece.

I think that speaks to a connection to our Lakota culture in what you are doing as a Lakota artist, that you are continuing… It truly is this continuum of Lakota art.

What Happens to the Buffalo, 2012, buffalo horn spoon inlaid with lapis lazuli and mother-ofpearl, 17 x 3 in.

After hearing that, the getting kicked out and your work not being understood, do you think that challenge helped you grow?

Yeah, of course.

As an artist, do you think then, that you kind of thrive on the challenges and someone asking you why you are doing what you are doing? I think it’s important that you kept going and sticking

to your guns… but because you were being questioned by these art competitions, you also grew outta that… despite all the walls, you grew out of it and so did the Native art world; you made them accept you/your medium.

You know, I have questioned myself asking, “Why am I beating my head against the wall?” No one knows what it is, people think it’s plastic and/or just

Right, when we were at the Smithsonian, I was seeing drawers full of tiny horn spoons, and this amazing polish on them—just as shiny as I can do today. They didn’t have any buffing machines or sandpaper, and yet they were doing these beautiful pieces that would win art shows today. I think with all this fancy equipment I have today, and if I can’t make my work half as beautiful or as stunning as what these guys were doing 200 years ago……

Yeah, there is that connection… and continuing…

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Some may feel that then you are not being traditional enough by using these modern tools; how do you feel about that?

I think it’s fine that those people do that; they can take a sharp rock and chip away at this buffalo horn all day if they want to… but like I said I am a 21st-century guy, and I think if Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull had a Bic lighter and needed to warm himself, he would have fired up his Bic lighter and warmed himself. Why should I use their tools? That’s been done, and that was their journey… I am not here to replicate their stories; I am here to tell my own stories.

Why wouldn’t you use what is available to you?

I really like your thought about, “Why wouldn’t you use it?” You know, when you have it there available to you, to make you better at what you were doing…

Yeah, yeah, other artists in the world get to go to like Hobby Lobby and buy their supplies, and Native artists are always put in this box and required to do work as their ancestors did and to do Indians chasing buffalo or the “traditional” designs….but we have moved past that now.

I try and do that now—try and address some of the issues we are faced with today—like the Oppression piece— maybe with that we can change and help others to change too.

If someone had an issue with your work, would you welcome the argument? Do you want them to come to you and question you so you could have a conversation?

I think that’s what art is supposed to do—it should make you feel “some way.” You know, all my work doesn’t make people mad [laughing].

I do some really cool butterflies and flowers… but every once in a while I

Magpie, pendant, Spinel beads, sterling silver, and buffalo horn inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

get this idea I need to do…. and maybe it makes someone mad, but I think, “Let’s talk about it; don’t walk away.”

I have worked with this small group of artists, and we talk about how do we bring this back to the community and work with community with what we are doing... so our work is not so removed from the people, not just an object in a museum.

I think that would be empowering for us and the community to help deal

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with some of our issues… I think this is our next step, to try and figure how to work better within the community with our Native art… At this point it’s not such a huge deal to me to not win an art show. I am all right now, and I realize that maybe that’s just the business of art, and I am trying to move toward my art coming from the community.

I am excited about the possibility of working with young people and the community…

KEVIN POURIER

Conquered No More, 2006, buffalo horn spoon inlaid with mother-of-pearl, malachite, and lapis lazuli, 17 x 3 in.

That is kind of my last question, or the final part I wanted to talk about, is working with young people and/or in the community— how do you think that will happen?

A couple years ago we, some artists, did this really cool thing at this gallery.

We had all this art hanging around, and we all sat on the floor; we talked about the art hanging in front us. We talked about what this work meant to us, not necessarily if the proportions were right or if the color combination was correct or if it was the proper use of the material…

community… but it’s tough to ask or expect people to step away from the business of art… step to helping and supporting each other and the power of art. That’s what’s most important is the power of art…

I like the markets/competitions, all the gallery openings, and fancy parties— who doesn’t like getting dressed up and going to these things? But it’s really important to remember the art and what we are doing…

We just spoke to the meaning of it to us, and the energy was completely different than what goes on in the art competitions. It was completely different.

We should support each other in the competition and listen to each other and talk to each other, so we can grow and learn… Do you think that is what should be happening around these markets and competitions?

It would be cool to be able to do more of that, what we did, in the smaller group. We were trying to connect with people who have an awareness of

Yes, it’s important to understand the power of art, and the possibilities that are there with it, to heal, to grow, to learn, to educate…

Using what was a historical art and using that art to create this contemporary connection, that’s where the idea of the romantic Indian can be squashed. You are creating something that our people always used and created, but in a new way, and I believe that [effort] to have a healing component to our community, both the Lakota and the non-Native.

How do we get the community to take part in all of this? Maybe we just keep doing what we are doing and moving forward... hard as it may be….

Pilamaya to Kevin for taking the time to sit with me and open his heart and mind, it was a great experience! And I hope we can continue these kind of conversations… Kevin, you are amazing.—MB

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Cahuilla Basketry An Enduring Legacy

By Bryn Barabas Potter Yéwi `Íiv’I’ `Á´Alxi’at Míyaxwe’ Long Ago There Was This Story1

J

UANA HELD A BUNDLE of long grass stalks that formed the heart of her basket, the foundation material around which she carefully wrapped her wefts. Slowly, the basket spiraled larger, taking shape as she stitched an intricate pattern with dark orange juncus and white sumac.

Juana was on the Soboba Reservation,2 part of the great Cahuilla Nation, stretching from the mountains through the deserts of inland Southern California. She wove with materials that were skillfully prepared, after being painstakingly gathered from choice areas. Some areas were claimed by certain families; others shared by all. By the time she made this basket, one to be treasured in years to come, she was a master weaver. She pondered as she wove, thoughtfully laying out her design in her head.

What do artists think about when they are creating? With basketry, many weavers give credit to their ancestors. To ancient ancestors, who first learned the art from Ménill, Moon Maiden of the Cahuilla people. To recent ancestors, the grandmothers or aunties who patiently

guided small fingers to coil plants into objects of beauty. To the friends and relatives sitting next to them at a weavers’ gathering today.

In the case of this talented artist, Juana Apapas, what she thought about was written down by a basket collector and author named George Wharton James. James recorded the meaning of her design in his 1902 book Indian Basketry. He was a fanciful writer, his descriptions much in keeping with the style of writing of the time. Today, we recognize the inherent racism within his books, both insulting to readers and damaging to the memories of people.

James wrote on page 220: I once found another basket at Saboba [sic] with stitches and cross stitches upon it, making a criss-cross design that seemed as if it could not be imitative, conventionalized, symbolic or ideographic. Yet as I talked with Juana Apapos [sic], its maker, a bright, witty, elderly woman, I was convinced that it had meaning. For a long time she parried all my questions, with the Indian’s dread of being laughed at or derided, but, at length, convinced that I should not ridicule her. She said that over and over again when she was weary and tired, and angered at the subjection of her people to the rude and domineering whites, as she

lay down at night her eyes wandered to the ‘long path of gray light in the sky’— the milky way—and she felt she would like to pass away to die. Then her spirit would walk on this path of light with ‘Those Above,’ and from thence she could look down upon the white people in the sorrows she hoped would come upon them for their wicked treatment of her people.

Known as “the Milky Way Basket,” the basket Juana made and described was purchased by James and became part of the Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection in the early 1900s.

Through the years, some basket makers have been able to see and appreciate this stunning and influential basket (Fig. 1). 3 In early 2008, Carrie Lynn Garcia (Luiseño-Cahuilla) was pleased to see three of Juana’s baskets in the Southwest Museum’s basketry collections, and that introduction led to a loan.

For the first time in a century, these baskets were brought home for the exhibit Stories of Survival: Walking with Weavers Through Generations of Time at the Western Science Center in Hemet, California. Soboba Tribal Chairwoman Rosemary Morillo, in tears at the exhibit opening, acknowledged the importance of bringing the baskets back for the Cahuilla people and the opportunity to see the baskets made by her relative,

1. Katherine Siva Sauvel and Eric Elliott. ‘Isill Héqwas Wáxish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail. Banning, CA: Malki Museum Press, 2004, pg 1. All section headings are quotes from this book. (Note: there are various spellings of Cahuilla words following different dialects. To standardize this text, Sauvel and Elliott was used. “Sauvel” was often written as “Saubel” in earlier publications.)

2. The Soboba Reservation is not one of the nine Cahuilla reservations. The Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians “recognizes and acknowledges our tribe’s cultural heritage as having both Luiseño and Cahuilla ancestry. We believe that it is necessary to know the cultural traditions and histories of the Soboba people in order keep a balanced life” on their website, accessed April 30, 2014.

3. The Southwest Museum of the American Indian became part of the Autry National Center in 2003.

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“Today, the Cahuilla people span nine reservations across southern California, linked by a shared language yet distinguished by tribal identities forged by geography, culture, and law,”6 proclaims the website of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. These nine reservations belong to the following bands:

Fig. 1. Juana Apapas (Soboba Cahuilla), The Milky Way Basket, late 19th century, coiled basket of juncus, deergrass, and sumac, 4¼ x 13¾ x 13¾ in., Southwest Museum of the American Indian, George Wharton James Collection, No. 421.G.1541. Image courtesy of the Southwest Museum/ Autry National Center. TheAutry.org

Juana Apapas. This homecoming was very significant to Carrie, co-curator of the exhibit and also Juana’s distant relative.

When Lorene Sisquoc (Mountain Cahuilla-Fort Sill Apache) was first asked what she would like to see in an article about Cahuilla basketry, without skipping a beat she answered “the Milky Way Basket.”

Much more than just a lovely old basket, it has taken on a pivotal role among weavers such as Carrie and Lorene as to what they might aspire to, while being appreciated by other Cahuilla people, including the late artist Bill Soza Warsoldier (Soboba Cahuilla-Apache), Juana’s great-grandson.4 Basketry has always been here. It is part of the Cahuilla universe.

Pé’ Pé’`Ámnawet ‘Í’ Héspen Témal Hemyáwwenive’ They Held a Large Territory The Cahuilla homeland encompasses about 2,400 square miles. Based on geographic regions, the people are generally designated as Desert, Mountain, and Pass Cahuilla. Many villages exist within these regions, which include the Coachella Valley and parts of the Colorado Desert hemmed by the San Bernardino Mountains to the north, the Chocolate Mountains of the south, the Santa Rosa and Palomar Mountains along the west, and the San Jacinto Mountain–San Gorgonio Pass area.

Across this expanse, the Cahuilla spoke the same language, with some variation in dialects. The Wildcat (Túktum) and Coyote (Istam) moieties provided social structure to villages, which were well connected by an elaborate trail system.5

• Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians • Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians • Cabazon Band of Mission Indians • Cahuilla Band of Mission Indians • Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeño Indians • Morongo Band of Mission Indians • Ramona Band of Cahuilla • Santa Rosa Band of Mission Indians • Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians.

The Cahuilla share traditions and lifestyles. Their land is rich in resources.

Staple plant foods include qwiñil (acorn), pánu’ul (yucca), tévat (piñon), ményikish (mesquite beans), ámul (agave), and pásal (chia). Pa’atem (bighorn sheep), súkatem (deer), and távut (rabbit) are hunted.7 Dome-shaped homes (kish) are made of willow, woven together like large baskets. The importance of willow was recognized by Evon-ga-net, a culture hero, who named an area Con kish wi qual, or “two desert willows.”8

Pé’e’pé´’Úmu’pé´Pé´¸Pé’ish Pé’pé´`Úmu’pé’iy Pichemkúkulwe’písh Péiy Sáma’ti’ We Used to Make All Kinds of Things Out of That Particular Plant Many plants flourish on the mountainsides and desert floor in the Cahuilla world. Of these, three are the mainstays in southern California basketry: deergrass, juncus, and sumac.

4. Lorene Sisquoc in discussion with the author, Riverside Metropolitan Museum, March 13, 2014, and Malki Museum, Morongo Reservation, May 25, 2014.

5. “The Cahuilla People,” Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians, web, accessed May 12, 2014.

6. “About the Tribe,” Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, web, accessed May 12, 2014.

7. “Historical Information,” Santa Rosa Band of Cahuilla Indians, web, accessed May 12, 2014.

8. In 1943 this area was known as Whitewater River wash. Chief Francisco Patencio as told to Margaret Boynton in Stories and Legends of the Palm Springs Indians (Palm Springs, California: Palm Springs Desert Museum, 1943), 54.

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Fig. 2. Rosemarie Kitchen Salinas (Mountain Cahuilla) splitting juncus, Soboba Reservation. Photo: Bryn Potter.

The stalks of the súul (deergrass or Muhlenbergia rigens) form the foundation of coiled baskets. When they grow, flower stalks rise from the center of this bunchgrass. They are cut at their base when the seeds have set, from autumn to early winter.

After seed heads are removed, bundles of deergrass are stitched with juncus or sumac to form a basket (Fig. 3).

The beautiful variegated colors of séyill ( juncus or basket rush, primarily Juncus textilis), flow from golden yellow and brown to deep brick red. It can be gathered at various times of year, depending on where it is growing. The variety of juncus and the area it grows in help determine the richness of the color on the stem. The darkest color is located at the base of the stem, with the color getting lighter along its length. Rosemarie Kitchen Salinas (Mountain Cahuilla) comments, “For the good red, you really have to tug it. The light comes out easy, the light is easy to pick.”9 When coiling with juncus, the artist can exploit the colors through careful planning and design placement. Sue Hill (Cahuilla-Luiseño) notes that simply using “the different colors are an easy design.”

Whole juncus is used in openwork, twined baskets. These are usually work baskets used for collecting items, sifting, and leaching acorn. The juncus needs more preparation when used as the stitching material in coiled baskets—it is split into thirds, and the central pith is removed. Rosemarie explains that it is best to “split it the day you pick it. I split from the bottom; 9. Rosemarie Kitchen Salinas in discussion with the author, Soboba Reservation, April 26, 2014. Please note: unless otherwise specified, statements by basket weavers quoted in this article occurred as personal communications with the author at the Soboba Basketweavers Gathering on the Soboba Reservation, April 26, 2014.

10. Ibid.

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it’s easier for me. I hold it between my legs, one end in the mouth, and pull it down with my hands” (Fig. 2). The juncus is dried before being used, then soaked before weaving to make it pliable. Juncus is also dyed black by soaking it in húnqwat (elderberry), California walnut, or in rusty cans or nails.10 Sélet (sumac, Rhus trilobata), a tough plant, starts out white and ages to a mellow cream. It can be used as the pattern element, as in the Milky Way basket (Fig. 1) or the smooth backdrop that highlights a busy juncus design (as in Fig. 11). Like juncus, sumac is split into thirds. Its dark red bark (sélet means “red”) is removed when it dries, or “some weavers may take on that task when it is fresh.”11 It is valued for work baskets such as winnowing trays and seedbeaters due to its strength (Fig. 4).

Fig. 3. Deergrass seed stalks in the foreground, and juncus growing in the background at the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens, 2014.

Photo: Bryn Potter.

To a lesser extent, yucca and willow are used in basketry. Long fibers shredded from slender leaves of the pánu’ul (yucca, Yucca whipplei and others) are sometimes knotted and used as the starting point of a coiled basket. The Cahuilla did not tend to make baskets solely of this material, but yucca was woven into sandals and twisted into cordage for nets and other purposes.

Sáxat (willow, Salix sp.) was not used for most baskets, but was reserved for grand scale items that were usually woven by men. Mal-a-not or granary baskets of willow were built near homes, put on stands to keep them off the ground, and were filled with large amounts of acorns or mesquite beans (Fig. 5).

The kish, or Cahuilla house, consists of a desert willow support structure with willow or other brush woven onto the supports and tied into place. A kisish (ramada), an open-sided structure, is also made this way.

Tuháyimani’chi’ Nénehqa’ She Was Always Making Baskets Antonia stood outside, her profile to the camera. Wearing a basketry cap that she probably made, she was demonstrating how it protected her head from the carrying net which supports a pottery olla on her back. The year was 1917, the place was the Cahuilla Reservation in Riverside County, and the woman was basket weaver Antonia “Nina” Cassero (Fig. 6).

Homes are filled with tools that are used everyday. From dishes and pans to dresser drawers, today these items are often taken for granted. Among the Cahuilla, many of the tools of daily life were made of basketry. Baskets were used for gathering, preparing, and storing food, for playing games, and for holding keepsakes. They were well made, well used, and repaired when necessary. Baskets were created with style and beauty, a treat to the eye as well as a necessary tool for living.

Fig. 4. Rose Ann Hamilton (Mountain Cahuilla) wrapping a sumac seedbeater handle with juncus. Both photos: Bryn Potter.

“We had baskets in our house growing up—baskets in our house always,” Sue Hill remembers. “My mother used her winnowing tray for acorn. She was buried with it. She used it at least 60 years. It started cracking, and she had it fixed up with duct tape. She used it all of her life.”

Burying a basket is in keeping with the nukil, a series of Cahuilla funerary rituals. Possessions of those who pass are often destroyed or burned. In the old days, “every member of a Cahuilla village became active in preparing for the forthcoming event. Everyone was required to contribute food and goods....Women would begin to prepare baskets for distribution, trade, or destruction.”12 In addition to growing up with baskets, many weavers grew up with relatives who introduced them to the art of weaving. For sisters Sue Hill and Rosemarie Salinas, their first teacher was their mother, who had been taught by her mother.

Steven Estrada (Santa Rosa Cahuilla) credits his grandmother for first inspiring him. “She’d go around and identify plants— that piqued my interest, especially when she showed me basket materials. She didn’t really show me how to weave; she just explained, so I started figuring it out and made a basket.

She wasn’t a weaver, but her grandmother was, and her dad

11. Rose Ann Hamilton, e-mail message to author, May 19, 2014.

12. Lowell John Bean, Mukat’s People: The Cahuilla Indians of Southern California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 136.

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Fig. 5. Pablo Cantanas standing next to a mesquite bean storage basket made of arrow weed, Pluchea sericea. Covering the basket’s lid with earth protects the beans from weather and animals. The basket sits on a raised wooden platform. Photo: Edward H. Davis at Tova (Agua Dulce), Torres Martinez Reservation, Riverside County, 1917. Courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Cat. No. P02324.

used to prepare materials.” A few years after this, Steven began learning from Donna Largo (Santa Rosa Cahuilla), his grandfather’s first cousin.

representative. Donna was one of the founders of Nex’wetem, the Southern California Indian Basketweavers Organization.14

Páluwe’ Néh’a’ Tuháyimani’chi’

According to Steven, “Donna said someone called her ‘the last Cahuilla basket weaver,’ and she hated that.

She didn’t want to be it, so she started teaching.” Not only Cahuilla people, but many other artists give credit to Donna for teaching them to weave.

For Lorene Sisquoc, weaving in her family “skipped a few generations.”

Her great-grandmother was Tomasa Rice, and Tomasa’s sister was Luisa Rice, a weaver. Lorene learned from Donna Largo and Rosalie Valencia and then became a teacher herself and a cofounder of Nex’wetem.

Antonia Cassero wove utilitarian baskets to use as tools. Even though Antonia’s basketry cap was meant to protect her head, it was emblazoned with a pattern.

Juana Apapas created an elaborate design as she dreamed of the journey taken by spirits to the Milky Way. Juana’s basket made George Wharton James insist that she tell him a story, and it was compelling enough for him to purchase her basket.

As with Steven, Donna learned about basketry plants from her own grandmother, yet was taught to weave

by Elisa Mojada, who probably disliked being called “the last weaver from Soboba Reservation.”13 Donna diligently worked preserving Cahuilla culture, advising museums, and collaborating on books, in addition to raising a family and working as a community health

Lorene says it went a little backwards; “now my daughter Blossom weaves, she is teaching her children, and we taught my mom.” Every year Lorene teaches a new batch of students at Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, California.

She also cares for Cahuilla and other baskets as curator of the Sherman Indian Museum.15

Her Basketry Work Was Always Beautiful

Thousand-year-old baskets found in the American Southwest are often decorated with beautiful designs. It is human nature to desire lovely things. Designs are woven into Cahuilla baskets, whether they be for work, gifts, or sale. Basket forms and designs started changing in

13. Deborah Dozier, The Heart Is Fire: The World of the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1998), 123.

14. “Obituary: Donna Mae Largo,” The Press-Enterprise, March 12, 2009.

15. Lorene Sisquoc in discussion with the author, Riverside, CA, April 10, 2014.

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the late 19th century as traditional uses for baskets declined, and Indian-made items became sought-after souvenirs and highly collectible objects for non-Natives. Around the turn of the 20th century, the American Arts and Crafts Movement popularized the idea of decorating with Native art, and many homes had “Indian rooms” stocked with Navajo rugs, Pueblo pots, Plains beadwork, and California baskets. Basket weavers embraced the market economy, creating items specifically for sale. These baskets were purchased for their beauty, displayed in homes and public places, and are still admired for their craftsmanship and elegance.

What about the designs on the baskets? Author and historian Katherine Siva Sauvel (Los Coyotes Mountain Cahuilla) was not a weaver but the daughter of one.16 Katherine was a culture bearer whose knowledge of Cahuilla life had astounding depth. According to Katherine, “[T]he basketmakers wove birds and rainbows and flowers into their baskets. The storytellers wove these things into stories. Spider is an animal and a woman and a design. Rainbow is a rainbow, and it is a caterpillar of many colors. Coyote is a man and an animal and a star.”17

Sometimes, a weaver knows exactly what she wants to make.

Last year, Carrie Garcia made her first basketry hat. “I always wanted to make a hat,” she remembers. “I sat down and said I was going to make a hat, and I did. I like to try new and different things” (Fig. 10).

Eli Andreas (Agua Caliente Desert Cahuilla)18, and his brother Corey Gilmore (Soboba-Agua Caliente Cahuilla) have been weaving for less than two years. They are students of Sue Hill and Rosemarie Salinas. While Corey is working on his first basket, Eli’s first one was given to his mother for Christmas.

Eli has ambitious plans: “I would like to learn to do a square one, an oval one, one with a lid. Not to sell and make a profit. I want to make them for gifts for my family and friends.”

Fig. 6. Antonia Cassero, an elderly Cahuilla woman, poses in profile wearing a basketry hat and carrying a burden net, containing an olla, on her head. Photo: Edward H. Davis on the Cahuilla Reservation, Riverside County, 1917. Courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Cat. No. P00502.

Steven Estrada talks of his great-great-grandmother Dolores Cassero Lubo. “She did a lot of eagle designs in baskets; they were her signature design. She wove a red and black double rattlesnake basket that is in the Palm Springs Desert Museum. I saw that, and I wove a double red and black rattlesnake basket.”

Rosemarie Salinas recounts an oft-told story about the rattlesnake design. “A lady was making a basket. A rattlesnake kept coming and bothering her. She kept shooing it away, and it kept coming back. Finally she wove it into the basket.”

Among the Cahuilla, the mesaxim (rattlesnake) design is a strong symbol, and rattlesnake baskets are widely admired (Fig. 8).

For Sue Hill, the perspective of contemporary weavers is not the same as for those in the past. She considers the “different women who made different designs. How they looked at things in the past was different than how we weave now. Now you can look at pictures and other baskets, while in the past they just thought of it. The designs really inspire me. My sister and I are doing small things, like hair clips. They’re the same patterns as the big baskets we make, but they’re not as pricey” (Fig. 7).

Hair clips, new designs, different shapes—a lot of innovation is shaping Cahuilla basketry alongside the familiar bowls and trays. Sometimes a basket is spotted in a book, on a shelf in someone’s home, or in a museum display. With artists, there is no telling what will happen when they see something inspiring. Steven Estrada recalls seeing a basket trimmed with quail topknots at anthropologist Lowell Bean’s home, which led Steven to make one. As to his negative-design basket, a rare type among the Cahuilla, he says, “It grew. It started out as a hairpiece; then I wanted to try a different shape” (Fig. 9).

16. Deborah Dozier, The Heart Is Fire: The World of the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1998), 118.

17. Katherine Siva Saubel and Anne Galloway, I’Isniyatam (Designs): A Cahuilla Word Book (Banning, CA: Malki Museum Press, 1977), 1.

18. Eli Andreas, Desert Cahuilla, Agua Caliente Reservation, village Piniktun (Early Morning People), clan Tukut (Wildcat)

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The Cahuilla have long had the practice of giving one’s first basket away. Steve Estrada explains, “I gave my first basket to my grandma, and she gave me her grandmother’s awl.” In making coiled basketry, an awl is used to create a hole through which a piece of weaving material, such as juncus, is stitched.

the language, do the songs. I want to do pottery too. When I have kids, I’ll be able to pass it on. I love history and learning about my culture.”

Interestingly, his grandfather Anthony Andreas Jr. was interviewed in 1991.

When asked if anyone in his family was currently making baskets, or had an interest in learning, Anthony replied,

‘Exenuk Permtéewwe’ `Áchakwe’ Híchaxi’ Téma’li’ Yéwi Táxswetem

…there is always an interest... a lot of this is something you just can’t teach overnight... You have to kind of grow up with it. I am not saying it can’t be done, but you really have to sacrifice to learn a lot of this. It can be done. You just have to have the desire.20

This Was the Way the Indians Took Care of the Earth

It is fortunate that, 15 years after Anthony said this, his grandsons Eli and Corey have shown that desire.

When talking to contemporary Cahuilla weavers, both pride in the past and a humbleness regarding their own talent and accomplishments are evident. They all want to honor the weavers of the past, be it their own grandmother, a master weaver such as Juana Apapas, or the unnamed women who created most of the baskets sitting in museum collections today. They also want to protect the land.

Rose Ann Hamilton voices her concerns.

Cahuilla people have been weaving for generations. Children learn by watching, by helping to gather or split materials, by recognizing the feel of the plants in their hands. Basket weavers can span generations of one family.

Anything can spark an interest in weaving, or squelch it. Rose Ann Hamilton tells the story of her mother, Anne Tortez Hamilton, who was being taught to weave by her mother, Rosanda Apapas Hopkins Tortez Lugo, “until her horse ate her first basket; then she quit!”

Rose Ann had seen her grandmother’s baskets and was always interested in weaving. It seems natural that Rose Ann would become a weaver, as she has master weavers on both sides of the family; Antonia Cassero is her paternal greatgrandmother. Although she had wanted to weave since she was a little girl, it wasn’t until Rose Ann was in her 20s that she took a class from Donna Largo.19 Elders do not just teach their own family members, such as with Donna Largo, who taught many people. Donna did not want to be the last Cahuilla weaver, and many of the talented weavers with us today are testimony to her success. At the annual gathering of the California Indian Basketweavers Association (CIBA), students of all ages learn from weavers of many tribes.

Beginning weaver Eli Andreas celebrates his Cahuilla heritage. “I want to learn

Fig. 7. Sue Hill (Cahuilla-Luiseño) with her whirlwind basket and a smaller whirlwind basketry hair clip, Los Angeles, 2009. Photo: Bryn Potter.

19. Rose Ann Hamilton, e-mail message to author, May 19, 2014.

20. Deborah Dozier, The Heart Is Fire: The World of the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1998), 116.

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members to work on cleaning up a canyon. The crew works to clear the waterways, limb the trees, and reduce the ladder fuels. Carrie states,

We tend to see this program as a holistic wellness program; we’re reclaiming the sovereignty of the land. The program gives back to the community; logs and firewood are going to the elders. We are taking care of the land and in turn the land is taking care of us... I’m really, really proud of it. It keeps the people healthy, and we give back.24 There is a juncus patch in the canyon.

Grandmothers and great-grandmothers used it, but it wasn’t maintained for decades, and the material is very brittle.

As the crew cleaned the area and thinned the juncus, water began flowing again in one of the springs. They are hoping the juncus will be healthy again and be ready for gathering in another year or two.

Fig. 8. Mary Snider (Cahuilla), Rattlesnake Tray, ca. 1900, deergrass, juncus, sumac, and dye.

Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harris A. Thompson, No. NA106.714. Image courtesy of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

“What’s important to me as a weaver are the traditional gathering areas...

It’s very important to the people to respect that. I went about a mile from my house to gather, and I got thrown off. In perpetuity we have that right to gather. I was really, really shocked... The landowner threatened to call the forest service if we didn’t leave.”21 Plants cannot be accessed on private property, but sometimes they can’t be found elsewhere, either. Katherine Siva Sauvel reminisced about the plants that were prolific in her childhood that are no longer found. Not just basketry materials, but food and medicinal plants are destroyed by changing land use and trampled by cattle from area ranches.22 The need to educate other people, to let them know the value of the plants, and to help provide access to gathering areas are goals of CIBA. The association “works with local, state, and federal

agencies and lawmakers to increase access to gathering areas, reintroduce traditional resources to particular sites, limit the use of harmful pesticides, and raise awareness for weavers and Native California cultures.”23 Cahuilla lands are reaping benefits from CIBA’s educational programs. As a beginner weaver, Carrie Garcia was introduced to CIBA, and she wound up on the board of directors. She attended a CIBA workshop called “Tending the Wild,” which stressed land management.

When she returned to Soboba, she and her assistant Beyaja Notah (Navajo) implemented what they learned.

Eventually this evolved into her role as the cultural program manager for the Traditional Land Resource Management Program at Soboba. They collaborate with Tashina Ornelas (LuiseñoMountain Cahuilla) and Jay Dagostino of the Noli Indian School Culture and Science programs and employ tribal

Carrie also started a weaving circle about six years ago. This is where teachers such as Sue Hill and Rosemarie Salinas work with students such as Eli Andreas and Corey Gilmore. Cahuilla basketry on the Soboba Reservation has come full circle.

Pé’ Pé’`Íyaxwe’ This Is How It Was “Basketry is such an integral part of Cahuilla culture; it’s making a comeback,” notes Steven Estrada.

It is impossible to think of Cahuilla life without baskets. From basket-like homes constructed of plants, to baskets for hats, food, gifts, and for holding treasures, basketry is a truly significant art.

The weavers of today are creative, talented, and well versed in their heritage. They frequent museums as visitors, scholars, and consultants.

Cahuilla tribal museums include those at Agua Caliente, Cabazon, and the Malki Museum at Morongo. Museums have

21. Rose Ann Hamilton in discussion with the author, Sherman Indian Museum, Riverside, April 10, 2014.

22. Katherine Siva Sauvel and Eric Elliott. ‘Isill Héqwas Wáxish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail (Banning, CA: Malki Museum Press, 2004), 592-593.

23. California Indian Basketweavers Association, web, accessed May 17, 2014.

24. Carrie Lynn Garcia, e-mail message to the author, May 14, 2014.

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ABOVE: Fig. 9. Steven Estrada (Santa Rosa Cahuilla), baskets, 2014.

LEFT to RIGHT: basket start of sumac and black-dyed juncus— the deergrass foundation material can be seen extending outward; gift basket made primarily of black juncus dyed with black walnut and iron, natural-colored juncus, shell pendants, and a deergrass foundation; small gift or trinket basket of sumac with a juncus design, deergrass foundation, and quail topknot decoration. Whole juncus stems in the back; the green color disappears as the material dries. Deergrass seed stalks behind the juncus; the seeds are removed prior to use.

LEFT: Fig. 10. Carrie Lynn Garcia (Soboba Cahuilla-Luiseño) weaving her first basketry hat, Soboba Reservation, 2013. Both photos: Bryn Potter.

connection, an energy transfer, between the figures, birds, and other animals. The insect could be a water strider, Palmichawit, who played a role in the creation story. The animals on the end—could they be bighorn sheep looking over their shoulders? Could the large figures be Nukatem, one of the first created beings?

been important in preserving Cahuilla basketry. Juana Apapas’ Milky Way basket, Antonia Cassero’s basketry cap—each has survived about a century with its story intact.

Juana’s baskets will be seen again at the Autry National Center.

Their importance to the Cahuilla people demands that. As for Antonia’s basketry hat, it is at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. It will come home in September 2014 in the exhibition Cahuilla Continuum: Tuku, Ivax, Tuleka (Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow), at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum (RMM) through August 2017.

Sean Milanovich (Agua Caliente Cahuilla) recently met with Lorene Sisquoc of the Sherman Indian Museum, RMM Senior Curator Brenda Buller Focht, and the author to review baskets for this exhibition. The energy was high as talk swirled around whirlwind and mountain designs, palm leaves versus mesquite blossoms, and baskets made by Sean’s aunt. Lorene looks with the practiced eye of a weaver. “We put a lot in our baskets.

They are so powerful.”25 Sean studies one of the baskets (Fig. 11). There seems to be a

“They are cleaning or blessing themselves—they start high and go down their bodies—taking the bad stuff that they carry and letting it go. Negativity tries to get on you. You’re pushing it down, getting rid of it, protecting yourself,” Sean explains.

“We sing all night at wakes. The songs tell the story of creation and about the places we visited. The songs also take us on a journey into the sky. When the spirit dies, the spirit remains on earth until the songs are sung to help guide the spirit home, passing through the Milky Way. The Milky Way leads to Telmekish (our final resting place).”26 Basketry has always been here. It is an enduring legacy of the Cahuilla universe.

Places to See Cahuilla Baskets in California • Agua Caliente Museum, Palm Springs • Cabazon Museum, Thermal • Malki Museum, Banning • Museum of Man, San Diego • Palm Springs Museum of Art, Palm Springs • Riverside Metropolitan Museum, Riverside • San Bernardino County Museum, Redlands • Soboba Cultural Center, San Jacinto • Southwest Museum of the American Indian–Autry National Center, Los Angeles.

25. Lorene Sisquoc in discussion with the author, Riverside Metropolitan Museum, March 13, 2014.

26. Sean Milanovich in discussion with the author, Riverside Metropolitan Museum, March 13, 2014.

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Acknowledgments Thank you to all of the weavers mentioned above: their dedication to the art of Cahuilla basketry is keeping it alive.

Special thanks to Carrie Lynn Garcia who generously invited me to her weaving circles and gatherings. Additional thanks to Sean Campbell and Ann Marie Donoghue, Buffalo Bill Center of the West; Deborah Dozier, Palomar College; Brenda Buller Focht, RMM; Rachel Menyuk, NMAI; Randy Potter; Marilyn Van Winkle, Autry National Center.

Bibliography • Barrows, David Prescott. The Ethno-Botany of the Coahuilla Indians of Southern California. Banning, CA: Malki Museum Press, 1967.

• Bean, Lowell John. “Cahuilla,” in Handbook of the North American Indians, Volume 8,

California, 1978, Robert F. Heizer, volume editor, and William Sturtevant, general editor. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1987: 575–587.

• Bean, Lowell John. Mukat’s People: The Cahuilla Indians of Southern California.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.

• “Obituary: Donna Mae Largo.” PressEnterprise, March 12, 2009 • Dozier, Deborah. The Heart is Fire: The World of the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California. Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1998.

• Garcia, Carrie, and Joseph Ontiveros. Stories of Survival: Walking with Weavers Through Generations of Time. Hemet: Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians and Western Center for Archaeology & Paleontology, 2008.

• James, George Wharton. Indian Basketry.

New York: Henry Malkan, 1902.

• Patencio, Chief Francisco, and Margaret Boynton. Stories and Legends of the Palm Springs Indians. Palm Springs, California: Palm Springs Desert Museum, 1943.

• Saubel, Katherine Siva, and Anne Galloway.

I’Isniyatam (Designs): A Cahuilla Word Book.

Banning, CA: Malki Museum Press, 1977.

• Sauvel, Katherine Siva, and Eric Elliott.

‘Isill Héqwas Wáxish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail.

Banning, CA: Malki Museum Press, 2004.

Online Resources • “About the Tribe,” Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. http://www.accmuseum. org/About-the-Tribe.

• California Indian Basketweavers Association, http://www.ciba.org/index.php.

• “Historical Information,” Santa Rosa Band of Cahuilla Indians. http://www.santarosacahuilla-nsn. gov/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=5&Itemid=106.

• Soboba Cultural Center and Research Library, http://culture.soboba-nsn.gov/, website.

• “The Cahuilla People,” Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians. http://www. augustinetribe.org/cahuilla.html.

Fig. 11. Unknown artist (Desert Cahuilla), Coiled Basketry Tray, prior to 1911, sumac, juncus, deergrass, dye, 2.5 H x 14.25 L x 11.75 W in. Cornelius Earle Rumsey Collection, Riverside Metropolitan Museum, Riverside, CA, No. A1-51. Photo: Bryn Potter.

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The Challenges of Judging Native Art

By America Meredith

J

UDGING TAKES MANY FORMS in the Native art world. Winning a fellowship, art prize, residency, or a public art commission can skyrocket an artist’s career. With growing numbers of artists, stakes are high. “Before it was a ribbon on your workshop wall,” says Tucson art dealer Mark Bahti. “Now it’s on your resume.” But how is the art judged? Who are the judges, and how can the process be fairer?

Dissatisfied with the state of judging and caliber of judges at several shows, I did not enter any competitive art events for the last year. Instead, I judged at the two major Native art markets, SWAIA’s Santa Fe Indian Market and the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair to see firsthand how the process unfolds.

To get more perspective, I talked to people with far more experience in judging—Mark Bahti (Sami-American), second-generation owner of Bahti Indian Arts; Bruce Bernstein, PhD, executive director at Continuous Pathways Foundation; Mary Bordeaux (Sicangu Lakota), curator at the Crazy Horse Memorial; Benjamin Harjo Jr. (Absentee Shawnee-Seminole), artist; Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi-Choctaw), artist and educator; Linda Muzzy, Heard Museum Guild member; Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole), director emeritus and regents’ professor of art history at the University of Oklahoma.

“Everything is judged in a way, unless you have your own gallery,” says Bernstein, who directed SWAIA for seven years. “Even then, you’re going to judge what you’re going to put up and not put up on the wall, so you are always working around what you think is successful or not successful.”

While judging art fairs is very high profile, artists are constantly judged— when applying for college, grants, fellowships, residencies, internships,

or jobs or when proposing shows or applying to galleries. Behind the scenes, collectors and curators observe and evaluate artists—do they want to exhibit them? Do they want their work in their collections? If so, which works?

Art is subjective. Friends disagree on that point, but they also admire different artists. “People are people,” says Mary Bordeaux. “They all have their own aesthetics; what they like and what they don’t like.” How do we overcome these personal prejudices? She says, “We need to have open, honest discussions about judging.”

Jurying: Gate-keeping The process of jurying screens potential artists applying to an art event. When serving as a juror, “You’re looking for quality in the artwork,” says Linda Lomahaftewa. “I’m always looking for creativity—something that stands out, something different from the run-ofthe-mill kind of thing.” Because jurors see so much artwork, the process is often streamlined, with formal rating systems.

Friends submitting images to art markets for the first time said they wanted to include work that “looked Indian.” Not only is this unnecessary, it can hurt an artist’s chances. “It doesn’t have to be the feathers, the war bonnet, or the medicine wheel,” says Lomahaftewa. “In these times, people should create what they feel in their hearts.” If the image is too trite, the artist might get juried out.

Jurying can be exhausting. Jurors might look at hundreds or thousands of images. An artist will be rejected for low resolution, blurry image, no matter how good the art may be.

Competitive Art Shows Competitive art shows are superb opportunities for emerging artists.

Common in the mainstream art world,

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annual juried art shows are rare in the Native art world. Red Cloud Indian Art Show, founded in 1968 by the Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, is the oldest, followed by the Trail of Tears Art Show, hosted by the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma. Other art shows are concentrated in northeast Oklahoma: Cherokee National Holiday Show (open to all tribes, despite its name), Five Civilized Tribes Competitive Show, and Cherokee Homecoming.

In competitive shows, artists send images of their work to be juried to the show.

Accepted artworks compete for prizes, are displayed usually for several weeks, and are for sale. The audience can study the art for far longer than they could at a market—a boon to complex works.

“Red Cloud is very rooted in the Northern Plains,” says Mary Bordeaux, who helped organize the show for years. “Red Cloud features emerging artists or community artists who don’t show in other places. We have so many specialized awards at Red Cloud—ones for Indians on horseback, landscapes… Work is often geared toward those awards.”

“I have judged the Trail of Tears, which was huge,” says Mary Jo Watson. “At one point they had 300 entries, and it took me two days just to go through—only one judge. I learned a lot, but it’s helpful to have more than one opinion.” The show has been smaller in recent years, but now has a team of three judges.

Art Fairs and Markets With 1,100 artists SWAIA Indian Market is the largest and oldest Native art market, followed by the Heard, which recently has had between 500–700 artists.

Markets with 200–300 artists include Native Treasures and the Indigenous Fine Art Market, both in Santa Fe, and the Southwest Indian Art Fair in Tucson, Arizona. Those with 100–200 artists

OPINION

include the Autry, Haskell, Eiteljorg, Northern Plains, Red Earth, and Cherokee Art Market. Smaller Native art markets can be found in every region.

SWAIA Indian Market has about 70 judges, and Heard Fair has approximately 24 judges. Smaller art fairs typically have three to five judges. Some markets pay the judges’ transportation and lodging, some offer honoraria, but many offer no compensation, except admittance to events.

Linda Muzzy, Heard Museum Guild volunteer, says she purposely chooses judges representing different disciplines.

When Muzzy assumed the responsibility of choosing judges, she was new to the field, so John Torres Nez, then Chief Operating Officer of SWAIA, shared SWAIA’s database of judges with her.

The Delicate Art of Selecting Judges “I’ve judged several shows, sometimes as a single artist which I think should never be done,” says Benjamin Harjo Jr., “because with the judging process there should be three people, maybe more, judging, so you get a consensus of what all judges like instead of it being a personal choice.” He was a lone judge at an Amarillo art show and the Watonga Arts Festival, both nonNative venues.

“For years [Santa Fe Indian] Market was hindered by the many of the same people judging again and again, oftentimes resulting in the same people winning again and again,” says Bruce Bernstein.

“One of the things we did that was different was forming judging teams where people had different backgrounds and understandings of art—intentionally at times creating a sparky relationship within the judging teams. This created dialogue and vitality helping to focus judges on the art and what they were seeing.

When choosing judges for Red Cloud, Bordeaux made sure to not choose “the same type of people.” She chose: “Academics, visual artists, visual thinkers such as graphic artists, community members with cultural knowledge.”

“You should pick from several of those categories,” agrees Harjo. “Collectors will sometimes give those awards to people whose artwork is in their collection. Museum people and academics will approach it from that standpoint.

They are not always going to give the best art an award. An artist of course... you hit personalities.”

When it comes to finding the best judges, “It’s a quality of the individual now more than anything, and their ability to see things in context, to recognize a personal prejudice, and then set it aside,” says Mark Bahti, whose introduction to judging began by watching his dad judge in the 1960s and 1970s. “There’s a dynamic between the judges. Ideally, they should know each other on some level, so if there is some issue of a personal prejudice on one of the artists they represent, other judges can call them on that. Between the three of them, they can come to some sort of resolution.”

“Judges should have credentials that back them up and have a degree in art,” says Lomahaftewa. “It’s good to have a variety of people, artists as well as collectors because they know what they’re looking at. Curators because they have that trained eye.”

Muzzy says she tries to always include scholars as judges. However, Bahti warns, “You think a dealer is wedded to a certain type of art—a scholar with a dogma is ferocious. If they think that work runs against their academic grain, no one rides a parking brake harder than an academic can.”

Artists bring technical knowledge to judging, especially in the fields of ceramics and jewelry, but they are heavily invested in the outcomes. I believe to be a decent judge artists need to have made some contribution to the Native art world besides their own art practice—do they teach; do they study studied art theory or history; do they look at the bigger picture? Non-Native artists should be familiar with Native art; very few are.

“Artists have it the toughest in terms of judging because they are judging their peers,” says Bernstein. “If they don’t like something, it can appear that they are picking on the person for another

reason.”

“I would advocate for more collectors serving as judges too,” Bernstein continues. “Collectors put as much into collecting as curators put into curating.

They’ve thought about the work they collect. They are looking at it every day.

They can be objective and can be very open to seeing new work.

“When the Arizona State Museum first set [the Southwest Indian Art Fair] up, I was anxious to see them avoid as many pitfalls as possible going in. One of the things I suggested was that two out of three judges should be Native—scholars, artists, dealers, whatever,” says Bahti. “I know they’ve come into some criticism for that, but no one complains if two out of three or three out of three are nonIndian, so I don’t get that objection. It’s not like being Native inherently makes you a good judge any more than being Native inherently makes you a good artist, but you’ve got to bring in that perspective to it.”

Bernstein agrees, “I tried to look for more Native people, in particular, look for Native people that were academics.”

When Letitia Chambers served at the Heard Museum’s Interim Director, she encouraged Muzzy to include more Native judges.

“They have the cultural knowledge. It’s important for the artists to have a Native voice representing them among the judges,” says Bordeaux. “You can’t pick up everything just from reading a book.”

“When you’re judging,” says Dr. Watson, “it depends on the rules and regulations of each particular show.” The rules change from show to show but also over time, and the volunteers and judges need to keep abreast of the changes.

The Process A trend that Bahti has observed is a larger pool of judges who often don’t know each other. Organizations purposely plan group meals allowing judges to get acquainted. “The best thing about judging is lunchtime, because everyone lets their guard down a little bit,” says Bernstein. “Everyone sits down together FALL 2 0 1 4

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OPINION

and shares so much information; it’s wonderful.”

Prior to judging, the Heard hosts a dinner for judges. “We just get used to each other,” says Lomahaftewa. “We get warmed up, and you feel comfortable saying things that you might not if you didn’t know that person.”

At most shows, judges begin with the smallest categories, choosing the best works, which are then eligible for the larger divisions and then classifications.

All judges then have to vote for best of show. At larger markets, where each classification has its own team, a representative from that team will advocate for the piece to the other judges.

Best of show is typically chosen only from the best of classification winners.

SWAIA’s Innovation Award, the Heard’s Conrad House Award, and Red Cloud’s Oscar Howe Award cut across categories and encourage artists to take risks.

When judging teams disagree vehemently, honorable mentions and judge’s choice awards allow judges to award artwork that they believed in but that didn’t receive other prizes. Harjo recommends organizations offer these awards, saying, “It doesn’t cost anything to award a ribbon.”

Dialogue between judging teams is crucial. Back-and-forth discussion can be illuminating and can change decisions. Not only do judges have to know their material, but they also have to communicate to the other judges.

“If I disagree, and I’m trying to go for someone I think should win best of show, I’ll speak up,” says Lomahaftewa.

Markets and shows tend to have eight to ten classifications, primarily based on media. Each has its own challenges.

“Jewelry tends to be the most contentious judging category at Santa Fe Indian Market—sometimes it was a verbal sparring. On a few occasions the disagreement was so dramatic it led to yelling,” says Bernstein. In another situation Bernstein observed two judges ignore warnings about a particular pot by an artist-judge, who was later vindicated.

To ensure a knowledgeable potter could

provide technical information, Bernstein says, “I asked Nathan Youngblood to come be that person on the floor every year. By his stature and ability our judges appreciated Nathan’s authority and impartiality. He served as judge advisor, or head judge. He is a potter; he understands the traditional pottery.

There’s so much to know.”

Artists and judges should both be aware that many art shows and fairs allow judges to recategorize works if they think the works would do better in a different category. Generally, judges want the artwork to have the best advantage to win.

“You’re looking for a certain amount of creativity, and you’re looking for not just technical ability, but what is the painting saying,” says Watson. “I always want to look at innovative people, who come up with something totally untoward that we have not seen before. Sometimes it’s startling, but we have to give artists the right to do what they want to do, and not tell them what to do. At any rate, I don’t take it lightly. This is serious business, and I try to be as careful as I possibly can.”

Kinks in the System The Native art world can be tight-knit, and judges often know artists by their work and reputations. “Being a judge, what do you do?” asks Bernstein. “You can’t possibly wipe your mind clean, but as a judge you want to focus on what’s in front of you and not what you know of the artist previously.”

“If you know what the hell you’re doing, you can identify the work from 20 paces,” says Bahti. “Unfortunately, the guidelines and rules and standards that I’ve seen don’t address [nepotism]. On a certain level you’ve already done that when you pick your judges.” Picking open-minded, impartial judges helps, but conflict of interests can be created by a faulty system. In the past, the one art market has allowed artists to both compete and judge. Judges have awarded fellow judges at that market.

When a conflict of interest arises, judges can recuse themselves, that is, not vote or comment on a particular artist’s work, perhaps because the artist is a relative, a

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close friend, or a student. Bahti suggests judges tell their fellow judges if they might have too close of a relationship— positive or negative—with the artist.

“The other judges can then say, ‘Okay, you can go ahead and judge anyhow’ or ‘You should sit this one out.’ ” If the judges don’t take this step, Bahti cautions, “The other side of recusing yourself is getting accused. It’s a different flavor of the same problem dealers face, ‘He gave that guy a ribbon, because he sells a lot of their work.’ Artists can say, ‘He gave that guy a ribbon because it’s his own tribe, because it’s a friend of his, because they shared a studio once, 32 years ago, when they went to IAIA,’ so you can’t shake that loose.”

Native art organizations usually allow judges to see the entry forms and to read about materials, processes, or tribes.

Artists who pit-fire their own pots or harvest their own basketry materials can share that information on the forms.

Sometimes judges have asked for eloquent artists’ statements to be considered; yet not every artist is a writer. “You can say anything in an artist statement,” says Harjo. “You can blow them over with BS, and they’ll go, ‘Oh, that’s great. I think he or she is on top of it.’ The art is the statement—accept it or reject it.”

Presentation can be challenging, because rules often say a piece cannot have a stand if it isn’t a handmade or integral part of the work; however, 3-D pieces might end up at a disadvantage without a stand.

2-D artists should be aware that mats and frames are judged as well as the artwork.

One art show had a “traditional” category, defined as pre-contact materials and techniques. Nothing in the category remotely qualified, except for a poorly crafted basket. After complaints were made, the criteria was changed to “pre20th century” materials and techniques— except that includes photography, marble sculpture, pastels, and china painting for Native Americans.

Whether judges should give out all possible awards, if a category has few entries or the work is deemed mediocre, is controversial. “My feeling is if nothing is deserving of an award, just because it’s

OPINION

the only one in the category, it doesn’t deserve it,” says Bahti. “It’s an insult to the person who sponsored it, and it’s an insult to the other artists… The Arizona State Museum has done that twice [not given an award] that I know of, and both times they reached out to the sponsor before the awards event. Both times the person was not only understanding, they were happy, because one was a memorial award, and they felt the museum understood and was honoring the spirit behind the award by not giving it. Prizes for mediocrity? Prizes for showing up?”

Artists tend to disagree. “I had to fight other judges on that; people would say, ‘No, that work isn’t any good; we don’t need to give them an award.’ I think if the award money is there, it should be distributed to encourage the artists,” says Lomahaftewa. “You just have to go by what’s in front of you, even if you know they did something better in the past.”

organizations have judges sign the back of the ribbons. The Heard lists their judges on awards announcements distributed the evening of the award ceremony; however, with most other fairs and shows, the information is difficult to obtain even after that fact. Personally I would like to know the judges in advance. When shows have had dwindling participation over the years, announcing qualified, respected judges can help woo artists back.

Northern Plains Indian Art Market and the Autry National Center have hosted public forums by judges. Lomahaftewa says, “The first time I did it, it was pretty scary. It was like going into the lion’s

Poor judging long-term will weaken a show. “As a judge, you’re being judged too,” says Lomahaftewa. Judges known for choosing their friends or other unprofessional behavior are not invited back to judge in the future.

“People will call and say, ‘I have a yada yada, and it’s got a second prize ribbon.

Is it worth more?’ ” says Bahti. “My response now is let me see who the judges are. For rugs, for example, there’s certain names that if it’s on the back, and it’s got a ribbon on it, it met the mark.”

In mainstream art shows the prestige of the judge attracts potential artists. The judges are publicly announced well ahead of time. Native art shows tend to be more circumspect. Harjo and Lomahaftewa don’t feel judges need to be announced prior to the show. Harjo cautions, “Sometimes that will influence what the artists will enter, because they’ll know the judge, and they’ll go, ‘Well, I’m going to paint like this judge wants.’ ” “Whenever I win a prize, I do like to know who the judges are,” says Lomahaftewa. “When they write their names on the back of the ribbon, I can find them and thank them.” Not all art

themselves?” says Bernstein.

“All Native people played games and gambled to challenge themselves and stay mentally sharp,” says Bordeaux about competition. “It taught diplomacy among family members and between tribes. Tribes used to not only steal horses from each other but wives as well.” Art competitions are tame compared to much historical competition.

Opportunities “To me, it seems like fewer people have been entering the shows. There used to be more—what happened?” asks Lomahaftewa. To facilitate a thorough judging process, SWAIA moved its competition deadline a day earlier. Artists don’t always have the time or money to arrive a day earlier. Some artists who consistently win consciously step aside to allow younger artists a chance. Other artists are simply disillusioned with the process. Lomahaftewa advises artists to enter if they can: “It won’t hurt. The only thing it might hurt is your ego.”

Besides entering, Harjo recommends judging. “A lot of the working artists, at some point in their career, should judge.

It allows them to experience the process, see how it works, and then when they’re not the judge, they’re the artist entering, if they want to gripe about it, then they go, ‘Oh wait, I judged here, and, yeah, I understand the process.’ ”

Beaded purse being judged at the Eiteljorg Museum Indian Market & Festival, 2011.

Photo: Van Velse Photography.

den, and I felt that, as judges, we were attacked by the artists. The ones that were speaking up and saying, ‘What right do you have to judge?’ didn’t know at that time that they were the winners.”

“There’s always judging, even within communities. It might be called something different, such as doing our best, honoring someone, showing people we care. So, in a matter of speaking, judging has always been there. People look at one another aesthetically and often make social judgments—how do people dress? How do they carry

Judging can be a great opportunity for collectors and others as well. “I enjoy judging, because I like to go to other regions to see what’s out there, who’s doing what—am I going to see something new?” says Lomahaftewa.

If you are interested in judging, make this known to the event organizers, suggests Linda Muzzy. Organizers are always looking for new judges, so you can give them a resume with your qualifications and areas of knowledge. First American Art Magazine is compiling a database of potential judges to be made available to curators and event organizers, so let us know as well at: info@firstamericanartmagazine.com.

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Let It Sink In The Art of Jagua

By Vanessa Elmore

t

HE PROVERBIAL “TREE OF LIFE,” also known as the “Tree of Knowledge,” sparks much speculation among scholars. World theologians ascribe this sacred tree with life-giving power, essentially birthing all humans, animals, and plants on the earth. It should come as no surprise then that many creation stories shared across the Americas often identify their own particular species, the jagua tree (botanical name: Genipa americana), as the source from which all life has sprung forth.

Found throughout the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, the jagua tree and the fruit that it bears have long been harvested and used by Indigenous peoples for well over two millennia. Because people have inhabited these regions for over 15,000 years, the jagua tree’s historic usage could certainly be much longer. Today, the Amazon rainforest remains an immense territory, with many areas still unchartered; therefore, very little information has been published about this plant or how Native peoples might have traditionally used it long ago.

Clear documentation exists that the term jagua— pronounced “hahgwa”—is just one of many nomers for this tree. Other titles include, but are not limited to, Chibara, Genipa, Guayatil, Huito, Tapuripa, Witu, and Xagua. Also documented are current Indigenous cultures still using the tree and fruit for both religious and non-religious purposes, including the Emberá, Kuna, Tikuna, Wounaan, Yucuna, and Yagua in Panama and Colombia; the Kayapó in central Brazil; the Tsáchila in Ecuador; and the Arakmbut and Shipibo in Peru. Unfortunately, the historic advent of missionaries into these regions has caused many of these peoples to seemingly shed their animist belief systems, at least overtly so. Regardless, the over-arching influences of mainstream global society have not completely stamped out the traces of ancient faiths and ritual beliefs. Memories passed down among the generations keep these values alive, and many Indigenous groups continue to equate the jagua tree and its fruit with miraculous events and power.

Widespread beliefs say that in harnessing the juice of the fruit, humans are capable of conferring supernatural powers upon themselves that promise strength and protection from malevolent, uncontrollable forces.

Pataxó man from Bahia, Brazil, with jagua facial art. Photo: Yves Picq (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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More commonly, jagua is an important natural resource.

The tree, related to the Rubiaceae (Gardenia) family, is a medium-sized species which grows at most to a maximum of about 60 feet in height. A 20-year-old mature tree can give upwards of 500 fruit per year between May and September. The wood is commonly used to build houses, furniture, boxes, and boats (the wood floats!), along with

spears, projectiles, and other tools and weapons. The fruit can be harvested directly from the tree without harm or from the jungle floor as it is naturally and seasonally shed. When the fruit is overripe and soft, it can be eaten. With its sweet, lemonade-like flavor, the fruit juice is often consumed as a drink or used as a base for sweet concoctions like sherbets, ice creams, wine, and liqueurs.

Beyond the recreational tastes of the palate and on a more serious note, the fruit, along with the bark and tree resin, have scientifically-proven medicinal properties with antibiotic functions that provide relief and cures to many common illness like jaundice, intestinal worms, common colds, and various inflammatory tissues of the body. The juice of the green unripe fruit, when expressed and processed, can also be applied to the skin and acts as a natural insect repellent.

ABOVE: Young Emberá girl wearing jagua, Comarca Emberá-Wounaan, Darién Province, Panama.

Photo: Yves Picq. (CC BY-SA 3.0) BELOW: Amazonian boys in Belém, Pará, wear jagua on their bodies and red achiote paint on their faces. Many Amazonian people have body art designs that relate to their clans or status.

Photo: Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom/ABr (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Of particular interest here is that the juice is a dye, tinting fibers, wools, and more importantly the skin with a beautiful blue-black color. Depending on the strength, freshness, and efficacy of the application, jagua juice turns the upper layers of the epidermis black, regardless of skin tone.

No needles are used in the application, as the juice can be painted atop the skin and slowly seeps in over a two- to three-hour period. Beyond a person’s having to sit still and exhibit patience, using the juice is a pain-free application, capable of covering large swatches of the body, including the entirety of the arms, legs, torso, and face. Jagua gel can also be applied more delicately in lines, crosshatches, and an infinite vocabulary of geometric and floral designs—the only limitations are our own creative reserves. Because it is all naturally sourced, jagua ink is nontoxic and slowly fades from the skin over the period of about two weeks, as our skin gradually exfoliates naturally.

In the past and still today, the Indigenous cultures that use jagua juice in this fashion credit it with providing a potential and necessary creative force—one that is fully capable of transforming a blanket, a basket, or a human, into a better and more desirable, if not more highlydecorated, version of itself.

and converted their traditional arts into commodities capable of being exported but, now, once again, they have turned to the jagua fruit, this time in its “raw” state, as a natural resource to be sustainably harvested and sold for a source of steady income—jagua juice makes an ideal, albeit temporary, medium for body art.

To survive in a modern economydriven world, many of these Indigenous people have harnessed

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(easily researched using the Internet protocol of “just Google that”) supply the world with jagua gel. Billed as temporary tattoo kits, they range in price depending on the amount ordered. Should you plan to selfexperiment, you need to consider that prices start at about US$15 for a starter kit and can go upwards of US$80 dollars for large quantities (the average seems to be about $60 for a 5-ounce kit). The juice, available as a gel, does have a shelf-life of about two to three months, and companies advise buying in smaller quantities and refrigerating the perishable product. Exposure to air not only dries the gel out but also causes it to lose its efficacy.

Of particular note, and one that brings us back to the Indigenous communities of the Amazon, is that most of these companies work directly with Native peoples as their suppliers. For example, Native communities have quickly mobilized in Panama, Colombia, and Brazil to answer the demand from these small growing companies and to sustainably harvest and process the fruits. One company called Earth Jagua works with the Matsés tribes of Peru and Brazil and proudly proclaims that all purchases of jagua and related products directly contribute to the Matsés’ economic and political stability, growth, and independence.

Idaira Cabezón Mepaquito (Wounaan), a prominent basket weaver from Panama, models jagua art on her chin. She’s holding an Hösig Di, an intricate basket woven from nahuala plant and chunga palm fibers. Photo: Laiyee Lee and Michael Smith. Image courtesy of Michael Smith Gallery, Santa Fe, www.michaelsmithgallery.com.

scores of urban generations, young and old, to decorate their bodies. The predecessor of jagua ink in the global economy is the art of Mehndi, born of North Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, which uses henna to stain the skin, hair, and fingernails a red-brown tint. Henna has long been recognized as the dominant medium to produce temporary body art, but the blueblack color of jagua ink is proving to

be more appealing as it most closely resembles a real, permanent tattoo.

The art of using jagua gel as skin ink is quickly taking hold and becoming popularized on a much grander scale, which only confirms that the temporary tattoo market is perhaps the fastest growing niche within the larger arena of body art and modifications.

Currently, several online companies

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Lastly, one needs to take note about the popularization of temporary and permanent tattoos in contemporary society. Without my tackling the complex and often pitfall-ridden discourses on the social, cultural, and political histories of body art or, even of “modern primitivism,” it should suffice to say here that the position of the body as a site for personal identity and expression remains clear and powerful. All of this reifies that our bodies, decorated or not, continue to be considered on a global scale as a main site for communicating and negotiating issues of the “self ” and

of “others,” and that the body remains a priority in the practice of personal control and investment.

This observation is confirmed by the fact that not only does a body art market currently exist but is also in fact growing and yearning for a new ink source like the jagua fruit.

Little doubt remains that this emerging market provides economic empowerment for many Indigenous Amazonian groups—allowing these communities not only internal job creation opportunities but also giving them improved access to the necessary tools to build better housing and educational systems. More importantly, as the devastating effects of malaria and influenza continue to have a deathly grip on these remote communities, the sustainable economy of harvesting jagua fruit provides a dispensable income to afford travel to health care facilities and for expensive but necessary medicines and treatments. Economic independence also empowers Indigenous groups to have more influence in affecting political and societal change, allimportant linchpins of tribes’ autonomous survival.

Jagua Tips Jagua is perishable; refrigerate it. It should stay good for a couple months.

If the gel is too thick to squeeze through the applicator, let it warm up to room temperature.

You can apply jagua gel with a paintbrush as well as squeezing it on.

Use isopropyl alcohol to clean up mistakes.

Keep Q-tips on hand.

Let the gel dry on the skin. It will be wet to touch (and easy to smear) for the first hour.

After two to three hours, the gel will dry to a film, which you can then peel or gently wash off. Pat your skin dry; don’t scrub it. The surface will appear very faint!

Over the next 12 hours, the jagua will oxidize and darken.

Apply in the morning; you want it to be dry by the time you sleep.

Cover the jagua while you sleep (wear old pajamas or whatever), because it will smear and end up on parts of your body you did not intend (like your face!)

Large solid areas will probably require multiple applications.

The gel stains your skin; however, your skin regularly sloughs off, the jagua will only last ten days to two weeks.

You can exfoliate or use pumice stones to expedite removal of the remaining jagua after it fades.

Botanical illustration of Genipa americana flower, fruit, seeds, and leaf (bottom branch is Thalia geniculata), colored engraving by Johann Elias Ridinger and Johann Jakob Haid (both German), from Phytanthoza iconographia, by Johann Wilhelm Weinmann (1735-45)

—America Meredith

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Models: Tara Lasiloo (Zuni), left, and Sasha Noche (Zuni), right; jagua painting by America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) and Holly Coonsis (Zuni); photography by: Stephen Lang. www.stephenlangphotography.com

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SHARING HIS LEGACY

James Luna Donates His Archives to IAIA

By Kim Baca

A

BOUT TEN YEARS AGO A FIRE RAGED through the La Jolla Reservation in San Diego County, California, that got contemporary installation and performance artist James Luna thinking about his life’s work. The blaze burned for three weeks and destroyed 92 percent of the reservation, taking with it Luna’s home.

Spared was his studio, holding more than three decades of drawings, notes, scripts, photos, and mixed media works used in his exhibitions. Luna began to think about the artwork he had kept since high school, one-of-a kind pieces, and memorabilia that he collected over the years and then wondered, what if they were, too, engulfed in flames?

“Once I started [my files], I used them for reference, but all of a sudden it was 35 years later, and I had files of a lot of shows, or mostly of the shows I did,” he said, describing the trunks and boxes in storage. “By the grace of the Creator, 70 | W W W.F IR S TAM E RI C AN ARTMAG A ZI N E.C OM

the studio was not harmed... That really made me think about what to do with it.”

When he had contacted the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian about his life’s possessions, there didn’t seem to be much of an interest. Still holding onto life-size cutouts from the 1991 Take a Picture with a Real Indian and exhibition cards from his best-known 1986 Artifact Piece, where he laid in an exhibition case for hours, clad only in a loincloth, Luna contacted the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) to bequeath his work.

The US Congress set up IAIA in 1962 not only as an art school but also as a research center “to provide scholarly study of, and instruction in, Indian art and culture” and “coordinate efforts to preserve, support, revitalize, and develop evolving forms of Indian art and culture,” according to the legislation. While IAIA has received some notable pieces in the past, such as sculptures and papers by

James A. Vigil ( Jemez Pueblo) from IAIA founding educator Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee), the Luna collection is the first large-scale compilation given to the tribal college by a living artist.

“Luna is an important 20th- and 21stcentury artist, so getting his papers is monumental,” said IAIA Curator Tatiana Lomahaftewa-Singer (HopiChoctaw), who oversees the college’s 7,500-plus collection. “And the fact that this is a living artist giving us his papers now rather than upon his death is very rare. For him to have the confidence in turning them over to us and allowing us to process and make them available to the public is courageous. What this means is that we have the fortune to be able to work with him while he is living and the ability to capture his story from the original source.”

ABOVE: James Luna (Puyukitchum [Luiseño]), The Artifact Piece, 1987, performance, Museum of Man, San Diego, CA. All images courtesy of the IAIA Archives, MS 25-James Luna Archive, Santa Fe, NM. OPPOSITE: James Luna (Puyukitchum [Luiseño]), Take a Picture with a Real Indian, 1991, performance, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

BELOW: IAIA archivist Ryan Flahive and James organizing files in the artist’s studio.

Luna, a member of the Puyukitchum (Luiseño) tribe and MexicanAmerican, has been called one of the “most dangerous Indians alive.” Beginning his creative career as a painter, Luna then turned to performance art after meeting educator Dutch/Californian conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader in the 1970s. Luna graduated with a BFA from the University of California, Irvine, in 1976 and an MS in Counseling from San Diego State University in 1981.

Often using a dark, humorous lens, much of Luna’s work centers on commentary of stereotypical assumptions of Native Americans.

In his best-known performance, the groundbreaking Artifact Piece, Luna became an “artifact” himself to decry the dehumanization of exhibiting Native culture in museums. Lying with a loincloth in a glass case with card labels among other cases containing his own personal history—college diplomas, divorce papers, a Sex Pistols album, and traditional objects—he stared back at viewers as they viewed a FALL 2 0 1 4

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For any student, researcher, or person curious about what goes on in the mind of a breakthrough artist, access to these types of files is a dream come true. real, live Indigenous person in this contemporary world. In Take a Picture with a Real Indian, he explored the exploitation of Indigenous culture as he dressed in traditional regalia and watched non-Natives take a photograph with him.

However, when he dressed in a business suit, no cameras appeared.

Known for pushing boundaries and infusing satire and irony in issues surrounding alcohol abuse, ethnicity, traumatic history, and race, Luna readily admits that not everyone understands his art, including his own family. Still, it was important to find a permanent place for his life’s work.

“It did dawn on me at some point that this is really important, because you are published, and you are now validated in that world out there. And people want to look

at what you’ve done and they can—anybody can look at a book and see what I’ve done. They don’t have to go to a gallery, or an exhibit space or performance space,” Luna said. “It wasn’t an illusion of greatness or anything, but it was sort of like this might be important someday.”

In addition to photos and scripts in the Luna collection are videos and original audio recordings, such as from the 1994 Relocation Stories exhibition where he recorded those who left reservations to live in the cities under a 1950s US federal government program. His collection also consists of personal journals and notes about his performances and installations detailing how he arrived at the final product and the evolution of his acts—often repurposing items or bodies of work into new experiences. A character that was created as a persona of a sacred shaman Luna called the Shameman, depicted both as a spiritual leader and modernday con man selling Native ceremony, was incorporated into many performances, including a collaboration with other artists in the 1990s. Manuscripts, video, audio, and photos of Emendatio, first presented at the international art festival Venice Biennale in 2005, are also in the 50-box collection.

For any student, researcher, or person curious about what goes on in the mind of a breakthrough artist, access to these types of files is a dream come true. The Luna Collection provides an insight unknown to many and tells us as much about the artist as the art itself, said IAIA Archivist Ryan Flahive. However, most living artists don’t think of a legacy until later in life when it is already too late to save past documentation of their work.

“Luna is a unique case,” said Flahive, who plans to open the collection to the public in August. “He was cognizant of the need to save everything related to his career—from his high school writings and college sketchbooks to mundane emails about the logistics of a symposium. Young artists can use the Luna Papers as a model to begin employing archival principles to proactively preserve their legacy.”

James Luna looks to the future, Palm Springs, CA. Photo: A. Meredith.

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Though Luna received an honorary doctorate from IAIA in 2012 and had several performances and exhibitions at the school’s museum, Luna didn’t initially think about IAIA and thought about contacting larger and non-Native institutions regarding what he had. In the end, he decided IAIA was a good fit because of its educational focus for Native students.

He hopes that his work will give younger artists insight to what it takes to shape their craft.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith Shares Advice on Creating An Artist’s Archive When James Luna began the process of organizing his work, he contacted artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith to get some advice before getting started. Smith (Sqelix’u-Métis-Shoshone) received an unsolicited grant under a pilot project from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, which supports the development of diverse contemporary artists.

Since 2009, Smith and her son, artist Neal Ambrose-Smith, have logged more than 3,800 drawings, paintings, prints, and sculptures into a database that her son developed with a software engineer. Before the grant, her studio, looking like The Little Shop of Horrors, had cartons, folders, and work that hadn’t been opened after being returned from exhibitions.

James poses with his life-sized cut-outs for Take a Picture with a Real Indian. Image courtesy of the IAIA Archives, MS 25-James Luna Archive.

Santa Fe, NM.

“They’ll look at this and think, ‘Man, he worked his ass off. He was persistent in pursing whatever vision he had, and it changed because he worked at it, because he wasn’t content,’ ” said Luna, 63, who has no plans of slowing down. Art “is an ongoing thing, it’s a process, there’s always room for growth, and it does take work. It’s persistence.”

He said he tells people to document their work, not necessarily with the intent of being famous, but for people to see how they’ve progressed.

For anyone who has amassed a collection of personal work and is thinking of starting the task of organizing, categorizing, or just making sense of all of it knows it’s a daunting task. Luna offers this advice: “It’s never too soon to start or to take it on because it is important. The reality is if we’re here today, we could be gone tomorrow. If we think our work is important enough to share, then that means not just the finished product but the process that went into it.”

www.jamesluna.com www.iaia.edu

To begin, she said to start photographing images and gathering information, such as an identification number, dimensions, media, and date, and then enter it into a database before it leaves the studio. A cell phone shot would suffice because a better image can always be added later.

And there is no right or wrong way to archive.

“I have one friend who purchases gold DVDs for his images. I have another who wants a notebook filled with color Xeroxes of every single piece of work,” Smith said, adding that another friend keeps recipe cards. “An artist spends what they can afford. A basic spreadsheet on a computer and a cell phone photo does not cost much, but it gets the basic job done, which is to number and document the existence of the work.”

While Smith is now organized, she says it’s an ongoing process. “As long as I’m alive, there is no finish. There’s always work to photograph and log into the database; plus, correspondence to add, exhibits, or other information that may be attributed to that work, even at a later date.

“In the end, when an artist crosses over, and there is no archive, art historians cannot write about work that has no images nor documentation,” Smith said. “Therefore, there will likely be no lasting legacy for that artist.

They will be dismissed and forgotten. Also, galleries cannot deal with an artist’s estate under these conditions. An artist’s work might then go into a yard sale, and, of course, that is truly “The End.” —Kim Baca

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Albuquerque

We Honor: The Art of Activism Warehouse 508

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E HONOR: THE ART OF ACTIVISM was a three-day exhibit that took place during the Gathering of the Nations powwow. A collection of political artwork by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, it was appropriate that Warehouse 508, a center that serves youth through art and recreation in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, hosted this exhibit. The weekend show, curated by Nani Chacon (DinéXicana) and Kimberly Smith (Diné), was sponsored by both Honor the Earth, whose mission is to “create awareness and support for Native environmental issues and to develop needed financial and political resources for the survival of sustainable Native communities,” as well as Honor the Treaties, “an organization dedicated to amplifying the voices of Indigenous communities through art and advocacy.”

large, intentionally reaching out beyond any and all assumed audiences with the message that inclusivity is a necessary component to our common survival.

The show exuded a fierce tenderness, a playful maturity, enlightening humor, resiliency, fortitude, and urgency. The show generally did not cast direct blame but was a call-to-arms of the mind and the imagination—a powerful wake-up call to people near and wide of universal messages about issues that are affecting us all, all around the world, right now.

An integral aspect of grassroots political movements should be the encouragement of creative expression that represents both the individual and the communal (the inner and the outer) struggles. Art is a process of exploration and discovery that encourages new and deeper ways of thinking, behaving, and relating to the world. It is a powerful force that needs to be recognized more often, and in deeper ways, by activist movements. We seem to be waking up to the necessity of activism

and advocacy to defend ourselves and other life forms from the incessant attack by the greed that is threatening us all daily, some more obviously than others.

The process of activism is also a process of exploration, working to find solutions to problems, paths to justice, teaching respect for each other, and fighting for our humanity in the face of a giant machine called progress. A great challenge exists to find the way, as artists, to make serious art with overtly politicized messages. There is undoubtedly the fear of confusing one’s artistic statement with that of political sloganeering, and it is indeed a very difficult task.

The 20th century has produced many overtly political pieces of art that are generally accepted as masterpieces.

Picasso’s response to the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in 1937 is perhaps the most famous piece of protest art. The Mexican Muralists, the Surrealists, and Dadaists are all considered important artists whose movements

The political commentary in the work included issues surrounding coal, clean water, fracking and pipelines, Fukushima, land rights, and ecosystem destruction, as well as personal and cultural identity.

The opening reception included traditional foods and a lecture by Winona LaDuke (White Earth Ojibwe), a longtime activist, advocate, and inspirer who candidly spoke about her experiences as an Indigenous activist— instilling in everyone the importance of direct political involvement in defending our communities. She spoke with a deep power and an infectious joy in the face of brutal environmental disasters that are continually degrading our quality of life and our immediate future. The warehouse presented the event with an inclusive spirit, confronting meaningful present-day issues that are universally shared by people around the world.

The show itself was a spirited engagement between artists and the community at

Dylan Miner (Métis), Wiigiwaasi-manidoo (Birchbark Spirit) #1, 2014, digital print on paper, birch bark appliqué, and synthetic sinew, 36 x 36 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

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were overtly political by decree. There is not a greater marriage between an artistic movement and the political times than the Mexican Muralists of Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco. André Breton stated that Surrealism was a revolutionary movement. Dada was a direct response to the horrors of World War I. Art communicates beyond cultural and political borders, giving us an insight and an empathy for others and raises our individual spirits through a collective consciousness. This show united significant artistic work and meaningful political subject matter, dancing between fine art and the art of people’s movements throughout the world.

The show inspired many questions.

What makes a piece of art into an activist statement? Does the art follow the statement or vice versa? What role does the artist play in politics? Do artists have a responsibility to express the political environment of their time? Is the work inherently more or less meaningful if it engages in overtly political levels?

Nani Chacon’s Young Mothers is not overtly political but in the context of this show, demands answers to questions such as: what is political about a young woman holding her child? What are the challenges of this young mother and her child? What obstacles and injustices do they have to conquer and endure on a daily basis? She has books in one arm, representing her interest and engagement with becoming more educated, to give her greater tools personally but perhaps also to benefit her community.

How much help does she get from her community? In what state of health is her community? What is the history of her community? Was the community here all along? Did they voluntarily migrate? Were they forcibly removed and relocated? How long will the community continue to exist where it is? How does this woman’s experience affect society at large? What does the future hold for her child? Within this simple subject matter, their body language and facial expressions convey a deep intimacy between each other as well as with the viewer. I felt connected and wanted to be

further engaged with the subjects’ lives, and related my struggles to theirs in very personal terms.

The Beehive Design Collective is “a wildly motivated, all-volunteer, activist arts collective dedicated to ‘crosspollinating the grassroots’ by creating collaborative, anti-copyright images for use as educational and organizing tools.”

Their collaborative work is remarkable because of its cohesion. It has hidden gems as one looks further and deeper into it. It is also designed to fold like a Mad Magazine cover. With the ends folded together, the work portrays an idyllic scene of a healthy ecosystem. Opened up, it reveals the disaster of coal and a dirty energy-based society destroying the beauty in a nightmarish reality.

Gregg Deal’s Reconciled Through Football is a stunning piece visually and elegant in its ability to cut straight through to the heart of the issue of the name of the professional football team of Washington, DC. I cannot imagine how any thinking person could see this work and not realize the profound disrespect inherent in the team’s name.

Other pieces that stood out for me were: Thomas Greyeye’s uplifting Indigenous Resilience, Shepard Fairey’s straighttalking The Black Hills Are Not for Sale, Ryan Singer’s no-holds-barred Manifeast Destiny, Remy Fredenberg’s clear statement Coal Kills, KET’s chilling play on words Blood Spill, Just Seed’s elegant silk screens, Josh MacPhee’s empathetic Fukushima, Jaycee Beyale’s defiant reminder Water Is Life on papyrus, Ernesto Yarena’s stately We Belong to the Land, and Chip Thomas’ gorgeous works of personal/cultural identity John’s Hard Life with Walk in Beauty and What We Do to the Mountain We Do to Ourselves.

Ultimately, the show was enlightening and inspiring, strikingly beautiful, welcoming, and challenging with a resolute and defiant stand—clearly stating that it is imperative that we all wake up to the disasters and imminent dangers at hand and participate in defending our respective cultures, land, and freedom... together! —Thollem McDonas

Montreal

Storytelling: The Contemporary Native Art Biennial, 2nd edition Art Mûr, Stewart Hall Art Gallery, and Cirque du Soleil International Headquarters

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ERHAPS ONE OF THE FEW cultural universals, storytelling is a powerful means of situating ourselves in the universe and transmitting knowledge. For Cree curator Mike Patten, this theme spoke to many of the artworks he was researching, as well as the current debate around Aboriginal education in Canada.

The second of an ongoing Native biennial series initiated by Montreal’s respected commercial gallery Art Mûr, Storytelling presents work in diverse media by 25 artists. While the first edition, curated by Nadia Myre (Kitigan Zibi Algonquin), read like a “Who’s Who” of preeminent—mostly Canadian— Aboriginal artists, Patten has selected a distinctive roster of reputed artists from somewhat further afield. That is not to say that they are no less accomplished.

Patten’s list includes three Eiteljorg fellows (Nicholas Galanin, Meryl McMaster, and Nadia Myre), three Sobey Award Nominees (Sonny Assu, Myre, Frank Shebageget), and many others who have garnered acclaim for their work.

The stories that many of these works tell are neither didactic, nor are they diatribes; instead, they point to history, culture, and ruminations in ways that are multi-layered and often meditative. And rather than being a biennial presenting new works for the sake of the novel, Patten has selected works that engage in conversation with each other and broader cultural, sociopolitical, and environmental struggles.

Exemplifying this are the two works on stretched hide by brothers Nicholas and Jerrod Galanin (Tlingit-Aleut) collaborating under the pseudonym FALL 2 0 1 4

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Leonard Getinthecar. With its limited palette and repetitive shapes, Space Invaders conflates traditional hide paintings with the 1970s cult video game, while referencing colonial incursions upon Native land, past, and present. Colorful rows of alien spacecraft hover over crimson tipis and a trio of indistinct blue fort or longhouse structures, from which the inhabitants are targeting the invaders with arrows. The identification of these outbuildings is crucial to the interpretation: are the brothers playing with a possible future of where aliens become one more group in a long list of North American invaders? Or are they positing a future where Indigenous and non-Indigenous forces work together and unite against a greater threat?

Not surprisingly, the Getinthecar brothers represent stereotypical indigeneity with one of its most predominant icons—the tipi. CreeMétis artist Jude Norris’ Six Green Braids (sextet) protrude from the center of small monochromatic canvases, evoking a meeting between Donald Judd and Eva Hesse. Symbolizing harmony among body, mind, and spirit, the braids pour out as if an excess of organic, Aboriginal, or human identity can or will not be constrained by the rigid linearity of the square canvases. Norris’ work emphasizes connection, so perhaps these works allude to the coexistence of technology with the human and the natural.

Frank Shebageget’s (Ojibway) miniature basswood Curtain of Beavers is both an homage to an airplane integral to the survival of northern communities and a reminder of its role in their earlier colonization. Their repetition (there are over 300 of them) evokes the accretion of flights over time and the subsequent accumulation of personal and communal memories. The beaver floatplane continues to provide transportation to and from remote Aboriginal communities, while serving as a reminder of the changes it brought to Indigenous social structure and economies.

The shift to a capitalist, commoditybased economy is also alluded to in Jordan Bennett’s (Mi’kmaq) Artifact Bags.

Adrian Stimson (Siksika), Beyond Redemption, 2010, taxidermied bison, bison robes, and black crosses. Dimensions variable.

Softened deer, moose, and elk hide bags bearing the logos of Walmart, Target, and Giant Tiger play with stereotypes of consumer practices in clash with a culture of laboriously handmade personal items.

Bennett plays often with the idea of the artifact, to challenge and to “open eyes to what it is to be an Aboriginal person in the 21st century.”

The work of Nadia Myre resolutely works to this effect; it is to Patten’s credit that in addition to her renowned Scarscape series, she is represented with one of her lesser-known participatory artworks.

Her ongoing, long-term Forgiveness Project (2010–present) encourages those seeking pardon to express it in writing.

Once shared with Myre, she prints their requests in elegant, old-fashioned script on creamy-white paper. At times this font contrasts starkly with the very contemporary language of the request; at others they are rendered timeless and honored by the formality.

Many works go beyond the exploration of stereotypes to speak about storytelling in allusive and intriguing ways—Scott Benesiinaabandan’s (Anishinaabe) series, Psychometry: Conversations with a Psychic History; Michael Anthony Smith’s spider web sculpture Faux/Real; Hannah Claus’ (Mohawk) exquisite, abstract Cloudscape; Meryl McMaster’s (Plains CreeBlackfoot) chromogenic prints of North American wildlife projected onto the face of her father, Gerald McMaster, which are part of her Ancestral series.

Indeed animal imagery provides

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a cohesive thread throughout this beautifully installed exhibition. Merritt Johnson’s (Mohawk-Blackfoot) somewhat sinister stuffed hare, Shhh, hovers on homemade stilts underneath Julie Buffalohead’s (Ponca) collaged drawings of fantastical animal figures. They inhabit a space with Cannupa Hanska Luger’s (Mandan-Arikara-Hidatsa-Lakota) cheeky ceramic figures garbed in felt. Once Upon a Time There Were Humans enacts a sly role reversal—these portly beings are animals (from a moose and antelope to a lion and unicorn) wearing human masks and clothing, smoking cigarettes, listening to boom boxes, and telling tales about those strange Homo sapiens.

Emblematic of the exhibition is Adrian Stimson’s (Blackfoot) installation piece Beyond Redemption. Installed at Stewart Hall, a taxidermied bison stands as if addressing a group of bowed disciples, which on closer inspection are revealed to be the empty shells of bison skins draped over black wooden crosses. With eloquent economy, Stimson (known also for his performance persona “Buffalo Boy”) references several colonial narratives while leaving interpretation open.

Art Mûr’s ongoing commitment to Indigenous artists, and visionary partnerships, such as those for Storytelling, are productive steps to ensuring a more sustained presence of Aboriginal art in Montreal. To that extent Storytellers is not just fulfilling that mandate—it is writing a significant chapter in the chronicle of Aboriginal art in Quebec.

—Rhonda Meier

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New York

Before and After the Horizon: Anishinaabe of the Great Lakes National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center

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EFORE AND AFTER THE HORIZON: Anishinaabe Artists of the Great Lakes opened in August of 2013 and includes a full range of historical and contemporary objects made by a diverse group of artists from the past and present. Many objects are significant pieces from the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian and the Detroit Institute of Arts, interspersed among new works created by living artists of today.

Algonquin), Indian Act, which consists of 56 pages of the Indian Act, stitched with beads—some fully beaded, some partially.

Utilitarian items showcased include clubs, pipes, drums, bowls, and basketry from artists and makers of times past, juxtaposed among items made with the same traditional materials or same idea of completion, but with ideas and materials from global society.

The largest showcase features traditional, utilitarian-made birch bark baskets, floral quillwork transforming mundane containers, and a fully quilled, exquisite birch bark box by Yvonne WalkerKeshik (Little Traverse Odawa-Ojibwe), depicting a pictorial in quills of

Anishinaabe life that could be the past or present: a woman cooking, a baby in a cradleboard, a woman gathering plants.

Traditionally woven black ash baskets made by the late Harriet Shewadin (Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa) of Michigan are shown alongside a black ash basket woven in the shape of a pregnant woman’s torso

by Cherish Parrish, using traditionally prepared materials, and a basket woven of paper in a black ash basket fashion next to a basket woven of paper in a black ash basket fashion by Maria Hupfield (Wasauksing First Nation).

Reverence and respect are shown with the depiction of the Thunderbird and Underwater Panther, which are represented throughout the exhibit on

The 20 living artists included in the extensive exhibition spanning seven decades, ranging from 24 years of age, Cherish Parrish (Match-e-be-nashshe-wish Potawatomi), to 95 years of wisdom with the talented Daphne Odjig (Wikwemikong Odawa-Potawatomi) of Canada. Sixteen of the 20 living artists are from Canada, and four are from the United States.

The range of decades represented marks the complexity and continuity of the thought-provoking and unique works of art which all tell their Anishinaabe-related story and show the influences of being Anishinaabeg in today’s world.

Although the political experiences of the Anishinaabeg from Canada and the United States are different, similar themes unite all Anishinaabeg: displacement, water, plants, and the belief systems and stories that are passed down from generation to generation. These themes abound in works by established artists such as Christi Belcourt (Métis) and her amazing painted beaded pictorial So Much Depends On Who Holds the Shovel representing the flowers, trees, plants and medicines of the Anishinaabe homelands, next to floral beaded leggings, and the work of Nadia Myre (Kitigan Zibi

Nadia Myre (Kitigan Zibi Algonquin), Indian Act detail, 2000–03, glass beads, stroud cloth, acidfree paper, and masking tape,18 x 15 x 2 in. National Museum of the American Indian Museum, No. 26/7723 (© Nadia Myre/Licensed by CARCC, Ontario, and VAGA, New York). Image courtesy of NMAI.

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beautifully-made items such as drums, bags woven from bark, and quilled into deerskin hides and birch bark.

Among the many important and significant paintings are those by masters such as Norval Morrisseau (Sand Point Ojibway)—a personal favorite—founder of the Woodland School, and others influenced by his work such as Blake Debassige (Ojibwe) and Carl Ray (Cree).

Works by the late George Morrison (Grand Portage Chippewa), Robert Houle (Saulteaux), and Wally Dion (Saulteaux) reflect a visceral approach, while works

by Arthur Shilling (Ojibwe), David Bradley (White Earth Ojibwe), and Frank Big Bear Jr. (White Earth Ojibwe) are subtle and require a closer look.

I would have liked to see more balanced representation between American and Canadian artists, but the exhibit is significant for sharing of excellent and diverse Anishinaabe arts of the past and present. The exhibit includes important themes and works by past and present Anishinaabe artists, who will all contribute to the stories and reflections of Anishinaabe people of the future generations.

Before and After the Horizon will travel to the National Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. —Kelly Church

New York

Robert Davidson: Abstract Impulse National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center

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OBERT DAVIDSON is an interdisciplinary artist creating in the fields of sculpture, painting, printmaking, and jewelry. Over his 40-year career in contemporary art, he has been significant in the development of Indigenous abstraction, in the resurgence (what the curator of the show Barbara Brotherton, from the Seattle Art Museum, calls the “renaissance”)

Robert Davidson (Haida), Green Tri Neg, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 in., private collection.

Image courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center.

of Northwest Coast Aboriginal art.

Davidson—a member of the Eagle Clan, whose ancestral home is in Masset, British Columbia—is prodigious in his creation of works. This is reflected in the diversity of works selected for the exhibition including sculpture, cedarbark totems, painted drums, jewelry, and prints. Abstract Impulse explores a Haida approach to abstraction and helps the viewer contemplate the significance of the formline and U-shape to Northwest Coast art development. Over the past few decades, Davidson has drawn inspiration from his ancestral community along with research at museums, such as the Haida Village outside the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British

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Columbia, to create works that reference his Haida ancestry while forging new directions. Although Davidson no longer lives in Masset, Davidson’s artworks strongly reference his ancestral home on Haida Gwaii and draw from well known artists such as his great-grandfather Charles Edenshaw (1839–1920) and fellow carver Bill Reid (1920–1998).

Throughout Abstract Impulse, one hears Davidson’s voice echoing through the space, and his thoughts are scripted on the wall, creating a strong feeling of the carver’s presence. The moment one enters the gallery, the viewer witnesses a video of Davidson articulating his inspiration and his hopes for Indigenous people.

Davidson’s ideals of resurgence through

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contemporary art for Indigenous peoples is strengthened through the diversity of works in the exhibition, asking the viewer to explore the formline with him. The use of U-form and ovoid with materials, such as cedar in many of the works, unites Davidson’s explorations in abstraction with the aesthetic that is distinctly Northwest Coast.

Davidson’s exhibition showcases Indigenous Northwest Coast approaches to art that are deeply ingrained with an intimate relation between the artist and his place of origin. Referencing the land through abstraction brings attention to the tensions between understanding Indigenous art on the Northwest Coast and Western abstraction, both conceptual devices that are in themselves abstractions.

Davidson notes that there is no word for “art” in his Indigenous culture; this gap then brings to mind how Indigenous Northwest Coast art has been abstracted into a conception and how artists must negotiate the Western art world and its conceptions of art if they are to survive and thrive. One might think of theorist Walter Benjamin’s distinction between conception and idea to add a layer of understanding to Davidson’s Abstract Impulse. If we think of Indigenous artists as working with Western concepts, these can become stale and strict, especially in consideration of the term “traditional” which often pigeonholes artists.

However, if we turn to Benjamin’s notion of the “idea” with its shifting alliances and moving intentionality and magical possibilities, this might help us think more fluidly about the possibilities of Indigenous abstraction. Davidson himself seems to encourage this shift toward the idea, urging viewers to interpret the pulsating energy of the forms in his works. He aligns himself with a higher power, that of the creator, central to Indigenous ontologies across North America. Although the exhibition does not venture into this territory of ideas, concepts, and the redemptive power of art, it is worth thinking about in relation to Davidson’s broader goals to push the field of Indigenous art and move beyond impulse to sustained visions.

“The formline is my language,” Davidson states in the video, “and the challenge is mine to expand on my understanding of the millennia of development behind it.”

This line of inquiry is the force behind many of the works, mostly created from 2005 and onwards. The bright color palette of most of the works is balanced by the minimal interpretations of the U-form. In U and Eye, acrylic on canvas, there is a crisp balance of U-shape and ovoid in red, black, and green. The olive green slits between the black teeth are negative space; the oval in the top right is a being, a creation of the artist’s intuition and deep knowledge of Haida culture.

Within his work there is an ambiguity of Indigenous space. Some works are clearly formline, and others are less defined.

Davidson enjoys working within this ideological space; there is freedom in the unknown and in the exploration of the formline, in the balance of positive and negative space. In his words written on the gallery wall, “I want to be able to draw one line and it be Haida art.”

One of the most intriguing works for this viewer is Southeast Wind. This miniature totem pole carved in red cedar and acrylic paint harkens Davidson’s proactive legacy of cultural resurgence. At the age of 22, Davidson was the first carver in over 90 years in his village of Masset to erect a totem pole, and he continues this pathclearing initiative throughout his career with works like Southeast Wind.

Overall, Davidson’s message is one of cultural resilience and the redemptive power of art. This message is clear in works such as There is Light in Darkness, an energetic painting of finely split U-shapes in red, blue, yellow, and black. Through the exhibition, the first major US show of his oeuvre, Davidson encourages the viewer to engage with abstraction. It is refreshing to see the artist hopeful and alert for new possibilities in abstraction and Indigenous art, leaning towards ideas and not just concepts. Davidson’s energy reverberates throughout the exhibition, with the pulsating lines of the works that will continue to inspire artists and viewers in the Northwest and beyond.

—Gloria Bell

Santa Fe

ARTiculations in Print Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

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ONTEMPORARY PRINTMAKERS JOKE that printmaking is the second-class citizen in the discipline of art.

Defying their sentiments are the current shows that feature Native printmaking and printmakers at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. The sixmonth-long exhibition ARTiculations in Print, conceived of and designed by former Chief Curator Ryan Rice (Mohawk of Kahnawake), dedicates the majority of the museum to emphasize the importance of printmaking as a contemporary form of expression for Native American artists.

The cohering theme of ARTiculations in Print includes four separate shows: Prints from the Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Kenojuak Ashevak (1927–2013), John Hitchcock’s Traces from the Plains, and David Sloan’s T’ah Aniiłtso Yéé’bii’ Neiikai (Endangered Species).

Prints from the Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts fills the main gallery. Located in Pendleton, Oregon, Crow’s Shadow is a fine art press that pairs nationally and internationally acclaimed artists with collaborating Master Printer Frank Janzen. Artists include Rick Bartow (Yurok-Wiyot), Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee Nation), Truman Lowe (Ho-Chunk), James Luna (Puyukitchum [Luiseño]), amongst many other wellregarded Native artists. Interestingly, most of the artists are not printmakers but sculptors, painters, and performing artists. However, this show exemplifies the facility and adaptability of the print media to match the creative tenacity of the artists represented.

Among the more arresting prints in this show are those of Marie Watt (Seneca), Jim Denomie (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe), and Joe Feddersen (Colville).

Marie Watt’s series of woodcuts are simple and elegant. Exhibited in a stacked FALL 2 0 1 4

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group of four prints are: Tether, Vest, Camp, and Plow. All are evocative of place and landscape. Watt uses layers of muted colors such as yellow ochre, maroon, greyish-blues, and umbers to create space and subtle contrasts. Adjacent to Watt’s woodcuts are the monoprints of Jim Denomie. These monoprints also include the element of place but are paired with Denomie’s overt sense of satire and humor. The print Untruthful unleashes his critical candor posing the Tonto and Lone Ranger figures in a conversation with the forlorn Tonto saying, “You lied to me!” and the Lone Ranger bluntly replying, “Get used to it.”

Printmakers joke that printmaking is the second-class citizen in the discipline of art Joe Feddersen’s lithograph, Wyit View, is a larger, colorful piece that is also indicative of place. It includes Feddersen’s signature pattern work in dominant black lines; they also function as a reference to infrastructure and an engineering visual vernacular that dominates underlying layers of aerial mapping of land. The contrasts create a dynamic composition of line, color, texture, and shape, which also makes this print a beautiful study in formal elements of abstraction.

The show titled Kenojuak Ashevak (1927–2013) bears the name of the Inuit artist who created the graphic and colorful prints curated from the Edward J. Guarino Collection. Ashevak, who passed away in 2013, was a prolific artist throughout her lifetime and is credited for being one of the first Inuit women to enthusiastically explore and embrace contemporary art media. The prints exhibited are a stunning reflection of her visual interpretation of cultural knowledge and aesthetics. Kenojuak’s seemingly effortless use of line, color, and space to create narratives are impressive.

In the Fritz Scholder Gallery is the show Traces from the Plains by John Hitchcock (Comanche). Hitchcock is a professor at

John Hitchcock (Comanche), Epicentro, installation view, serigraphy on paper and felt, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.

the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he teaches printmaking and installation art. Most of Hitchcock’s work is based on his experience growing up around the Wichita Mountains of southwest Oklahoma and the large Army base, Fort Sill, which dominates the surrounding landscape. For Traces from the Plains, Hitchcock uses screen print, lithography, installation, and video that depict familiar landscapes and fauna that identify this area. He couples images of buffalo, deer, and horses with tanks and helicopters. The centerpiece of the exhibit is the installation titled, Epicentro.

Stacked in large piles and strewn across the floor are depictions of buffalo and other animals that have been screen printed onto felt. Flags and banners bearing the same images of the animals on the floor are hoisted on top of the large piles, referencing a memorial to their metaphorically fallen counterparts.

Included in this installation are an “X” (presumably marking the spot) and tanks and helicopters (also printed on felt) reining in the sprawl of animals.

Hitchcock innovatively uses the print media to create an engaging story that is also allegorical. He is continuing a centuries-old tradition of using printmaking as a democratic form of art that incorporates political overtones.

Hitchcock’s exhibition utilizes the multiples of printmaking conceptually.

The diversity that his show brings to ARTiculations in Print educates viewers of the possible extent and variety to which printmaking can be used.

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The fourth show is David Sloan’s T’ah Aniiłtso Yéé’bii’ Neiikai (Endangered Species). Sloan is Navajo and uses the Diné language to make statements on cultural appropriation, marketing, and consumer exploitation. Sloan’s wall of monoprints have screen prints of animals and their Diné names superimposed on images of vintage issues of the Navajo Times.

Every aspect of the show, including Sloan’s use of bright, neon colors, gridlike placement, and repetitive images, reference commercial values that often lack sensitivity to cultural items.

ARTiculations in Print is a rare exhibit that exclusively and extensively focuses on the print media. Ryan Rice states that a reason in planning this exhibition was “to show the diverse practices of the art of printmaking… and those who work as printmakers.” Rice also accurately states, “Printmaking is still a misunderstood medium and has been further complicated by the digital age [with] commercial reproduction to… giclée.”

This group of shows successfully satisfies his curatorial purpose. The variety of processes exhibited demonstrates the breadth of aesthetic and conceptual potentials possible with this unique medium. It is a fulfilling show highlighting the artistry, technical acuity, and creative diversity of contemporary Native artists. Audiences who know about the nuance of printmaking or not are able, according to Rice, to “experience the vitality of the medium.”

—Alex J. Peña

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Santa Fe

Will Wilson Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian

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HE WHEELWRIGHT, co-founded by Diné medicine person Hastiin Klah, provides an ideal venue for Will Wilson, a survey of Diné-Welsh-Irish artist William R. Wilson’s studio work of the last decade. Digital and analog photographs form the backbone of his yearlong solo exhibit, but Wilson experiments with other media.

the interactive possibilities of this piece will be better exploited throughout the course of the show.

Critical Indigenous Photography Exchange (CPIX) is Wilson’s interactive, exploratory response to the ubiquitous work of Edward S. Curtis (1868–1952).

Wilson collaborates with sitters. He encourages his subjects to hold an object of personal significance to them and shoots their portraits with a large format camera using a 140-year-old lens in wet plate collodion process, the same used

by Curtis. These produced a reversed

“tintype”-style portrait, formerly called ambrotypes—now aluminum plates are used—which Wilson gave to the sitters in exchange for the rights to create highresolution scans. Most of these portraits were shot over 2012 and 2013 Indian Market weekends, showcasing players in the Native art world. Where Curtis shot stoic warriors, chiefs, and Indian maidens, Wilson photographed prominent curators and museum directors, but also several striking portraits of members of the hoop dancing troupe, Dancing Earth.

The ambrotypes themselves are as

The main gallery, structured like an oversized hogan, echoes his subject matter. Against the blackness of the gallery, the photographic works glow in a manner reminiscent of Canadian artist Jeff Wall’s backlit Cibachromes, though with a subject matter that is all Wilson— vignettes in post-apocalyptic landscapes and uncanny portraiture using 19thcentury techniques.

Auto Immune Response (AIR) is an earlier series of digital photo collages, in which the artist photographs himself as a protagonist in the dystopic landscape and shoreline and in an abandoned hogan and warehouse that became his laboratories.

The images grow progressively fractured, some coarsely Photoshopped, and the implied narrative suggests a Diné survivor seeking solutions to a devastated environment.

The series inspired by the real world havoc wrecked by uranium and coal mining on the Navajo Nation is less a warning of impending doom than the exploration of environmental collapse that already marks our present. Wilson’s artist’s statement includes the phrase, the “land became toxic to him,” suggesting that the autoimmune response is the Earth repelling human life, but that humans are still an intrinsic part of nature.

Sculpture, installation, and photographic prop, AIR LAB, a portable hogan/ geodesic dome/garden, stands forlorn outside the entrance, with store-bought plants withering in the heat. Hopefully,

Will Wilson (Diné-Welsh-Irish), Nimkii Osawamick, Citizen of the Ojibwe First Nation, Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island Unceded Reserve. Dancer, Dancing Earth, Indigenous Contemporary Dance Creations, 2012, archival pigment print. Image courtesy of the artist.

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enticing as Curtis’s photogravure prints.

Immense faces with piercing gazes—these uncanny images are like seeing humans for the first time. The camera focuses on all the wrong features and ramps up the value of freckles and pores until the skin seems to swim. The organic chemical blooms, framing the edges of the print glory in the process but also echoing the toxic plumes of AIR’s dystopia. By using the obsolete photographic techniques of the 19th century, Wilson conceptually catapults his sitters back into the past or the Land of the Dead, where they can enter into dialogue with their ancestors.

Nowhere is this more explicit that in the ambrotype of Joe Horse Capture (A’aninin) holding a blurred iPad with the 1908 portrait of his great-greatgrandfather, Waátyánath, taken by Curtis.

track video by McLaughlin, who also created the soundtrack—of conversations in the Navajo language, close-ups of the original rug, the beadwork piece in progress, and the artists, looking awkward or laughing.

I look forward to the day when Native American photography cuts anchor from the weighty influence of Edward Curtis.

Every new artist who challenges Curtis serves to further strengthen his place in art history.

Soaking up years’ worth of work in this space is well worth the time. During the length of the exhibit, it will be intriguing to see how Will Wilson will make use of the interior studio and the AIR LAB and incorporate the act of photographing as a performative aspect of his oeuvre.

—America Meredith

Within the main gallery, a horseshoeshaped enclosure creates a photographic studio and interior gallery, an ornate, antique camera stand and worn sitting chair. The shelves are lined with actual aluminum “tintypes” of the artist and his family available for inspection and several framed works.

At the beginning and end of the exhibit is a unique project blending weaving, beadwork, video, music, and visual data encoding, eyeDazzler: Trans-customary Portal to Another Dimension. Inspired by an eye-dazzler (a wool rug that uses diagonal zigzags and complementary colors to achieve the optical illusions of pulsation ) woven by Wilson’s grandmother Martha Etsitty, this loomed beadwork tapestry is woven from 76,050 4mm glass beads

by Wilson, Pamela Brown, and Joy Farley (all Diné). The collaborative team also includes Jamie Smith, project manager, and Dylan McLaughlin (Diné).

Transparent gold, silver, and red glasses contrast opaque black and white beads— suggestive of the original keyboards— that forms a central QR code. When scanned the code links to a short dual-

In the interior studio, Etsitty’s original woolen rug, woven in the 1970s, rests on the armchair below a digital photograph of the woven glass bead eyeDazzler. Seeing all three works together simultaneously might be conceptually stronger, but placed as they are, they bookend the entire exhibit.

While materials and technology shift, the imagery remains constant; however, the digital photograph of the beaded rug design speaks to the increasingly mediated images of our spectacle society.

Victoria

Adasla: The Movement of the Hands Legacy Gallery, University of Victoria

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N 2005 TAHLTAN ARTIST PETER MORIN fried up the world’s largest bannock at the annual Stone Soup Festival in Vancouver, British Columbia. He’s been interested in how the “world’s largest” might feed community ever since. Recently, at the University of Victoria’s Legacy Gallery, Morin worked with a class of students, a team of accomplished regional button blanket artists, and Williams Legacy Chair and Carolyn Butler Palmer, to create the world’s largest button blanket.

Not only is it the world’s largest, there are two things going on here. First, it’s me subverting this very specific trope, this Western trope. It’s a sign of progress, it’s

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a sign of quirkiness, it’s an attempt at creating an identity. [Second] I wanted people to know the names of John Powell, Maxine Matilpi, Lucy Baron, Debra Bell, Yolanda Skelton, and Lou-ann Neel. It was also like that was the real exhibition. Because we were collaborating on organizing the space, using Indigenous methodologies, and everything sort of collapses when you do that…

The idea was that this is an underappreciated art form, which has a history throughout BC, all the way up to Alaska, of over 150 years. This is an important practice, which is so overlooked. The idea, for me, was sort of like an intervention: that if I make the world’s largest then people would come. Everybody wants to see the world’s largest something. It would be presented like, this is what we did, this is a button blanket, but here are the real artists. Like John Powell, for example, who’s made over 300 button blankets by hand. John is so humble and a great blanket maker.

The full exhibition featured this largest button blanket, which hung from the second story of the gallery and was so large it swept the floor. The overall design of the blanket was a collaboration between Morin and Salish artist Barry Sam. For Morin, recognizing the people and the land upon which the blanket was conceived is essential. Over the central form designed by Sam, Morin projected images of his own family and ancestors, blanketing community, and history with practice.

The exhibition included two other sites about the history of community and coastal blanket-making art practices. In one area of the gallery Morin blanketed four Emily Carr landscapes, work of the legendary British Columbian artist of the early 20th century, with his own button blankets.

I said to [the gallery curator’s] Emily Carr’s project and this version of art history, this Canadian landscape art history blanketed everything, blanketed the history of the people here, and pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes, so that my thought was to put the Tahltan blanket— that vision—to blanket that colonial vision of Canadian landscape with an Indigenous

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The Big Button Blanket being danced at the University of Victoria. Image courtesy of India Young and Peter Morin (Tahltan).

vision of landscape. And the challenge was to say to somebody, “Can you see them both? Can they both sit there together? Or do you see a random blanket hanging on a wall?”

It was a challenge for viewers to engage Morin’s own blankets and to render visible the oppressive tactics of EuroCanadian art historical practices.

We have to say it now. It is a gender thing. It’s a gendered, Western, patriarchal view of our art history. That is why it gets overlooked. [Blanket making] is a significant art form. Like, the Okanagan people, they have a word for knowledge. I don’t speak that language, but Jeanette Armstrong explained the word to me. The words for ‘knowledge,’ and the word for ‘basket making,’ are basically the same word. The practitioners of these art forms, the women of our communities, are making knowledge, they’re reinforcing knowledge, they’re reproducing knowledge, and they’re also contributing to making new knowledge—

that’s what artists do. That’s what art does. That’s what Doreen Jensen said at the opening of her speech at the Museum of Civilization, in Ottawa, she said, ‘Art is everywhere.’ That’s why art is everywhere, because as a people, we are constantly reinforcing knowledge.

Morin feels strongly that the creators of button blankets offer an alternative and underrepresented art history. In 1986 curator and artist Doreen Jensen held the first major exhibition of new blankets at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Robes of Power: Totem Poles on Cloth. In her forward, she challenged the art historical and anthropological communities to devote meaningful attention to the art form. It is only now, with Morin’s exhibition, that the challenge has been met. And he too considers this an entry point into something that ought to become a larger dialogue.

There was one beautiful blanket I saw in the RBCM, while doing my own

research. I looked at it, and it was a little bit misshapen. At first I thought, “Oh, that’s age.” But then I looked closer and the artist had taken a suit, a Western suit, and taken it apart, disassembled it, and recreated it into the blanket form.

And this, to me, is such an amazing, innovative thing. I think the blanket makers in particular are consistently innovating, and the art form is born out of innovation. We have this language, “Oh you know, we traded for blankets...

We traded for buttons. It’s a show of wealth…” That language takes the artist out of the equation. And I think that’s wrong. Artists saw these materials in order to create, to redevelop, to re-imagine, already existing artworks, or language, within Indigenous frameworks.

In an effort to kick start dialogue around the practice of blanket making, Morin brought it into the classroom as an Indigenous pedagogical tool. University students came to learn through practice about the history of the art form, and about and from contemporary blanket artists.

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Day one I said to [the students], “I’m not teaching you how to make a button blanket. At the end of this class you are not button blanket makers, but you might have enough language to talk to an elder, or a practitioner, to become their student.” I’m sort of trading in, and trading on educating people about ideas about how knowledge is constructed, and how Indigenous knowledge continues to happen.

The works of visiting teachers were also showcased in the exhibition. Each piece had a uniqueness immediately recognizable as the hand of the artist and also perhaps the signature aesthetic of their heritage. John Powell (Mamalilikulla Kwakwaka’wakw) had a magnificent robe with characteristically flamboyant beading of many colors. Lucy Baron (Kwikwasut’inuxw-’Namgis) used pearl white buttons in the shape of a tree on black gabardine bordered by red velvet—a true classic form and design.

To get a sense of the life lessons imparted by these artists to the university students, you can visit a blog for the project: thebigbuttonblanket.wordpress.com.

This Indigenous art history communicated more than just how to see or how to make a blanket: Because a blanket is made, it’s made for a body, made to dance, and a song. That was a very interesting component for the monumental blanket, because I didn’t want to take it to a place where it wasn’t considered able to dance. There is supposed to be a feast, and then I’m going to go back and cut it up. I’m going to cut it apart and give it away to people, so now the blanket becomes a metaphor for knowledge, and how we construct knowledge. So we’ve seen the world’s largest button blanket, now it needs to go to button blanket makers and community members so that they can recycle the materials.

The exhibition has ended, and the blanket will be returned to artist to be reimagined as new and varied knowledge, for several coastal communities. Peter Morin, however, has an exciting summer of other art interventions ahead. He is currently at an artist’s residency in

Toronto, and later this summer will collaborate on a performance with Leah Decter and Ayumi Goto, in Montreal, at the Encuentro Conference.

“Even the practice of making blankets is an important art form for all Indigenous people, and has been probably for the same amount of time that carvers have been carving,” says Morin. “You’ve got buffalo robes here; the Tahltan people have woven rabbit fur blankets.” What conveyors of knowledge are there in your community? How can you share their stories? —India Young

Book Reviews Art History/Catalogue

Floral Journey: Native North American Beadwork Lois S. Dubin Autry National Center and University of Washington Press, 2014

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HIS ISN’T A BOOK—it’s a tome. Accompanying the Autry National Center’s art exhibit of the same title, Floral Journey is far more than simple show catalogue.

The mammoth volume is crammed with hundreds of photographs of floral beadwork, with minuscule detail enlarged—no doubt for the benefit of the beading audience. The wealth of images include numerous works in private collections—unavailable to the average researcher.

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Art historian Lois S. Dubin spent four years researching this text. Floral designs, exemplifying frivolous, superficial, pretty decor, hardly seem like a likely subject of scholarly inquiry; however, Dubin argues that it is precisely the non-threatened guise of flowers that make them the perfect vehicle for hidden religious and medicinal symbolism of Indigenous resistance. On page 11, she writes, “floral beadwork became not only a major art form but also a means of cultural and economic resilience.”

Europeans introduced glass beads, and their missionaries and nuns introduced new beading techniques and floral patterns. Floral beadwork was seen as “civilized” and non-threatening, so it flew under the radar of European consciousness. After the collapse of the fur trade, Native women sold beadwork to support their families. Botanical beadwork particularly flourished during the late 19th century. Ironically, some of the most beautiful, uplifting beadwork was created during the Reservation Era, one of the darkest periods in Native history.

The book follows the geographical dispersion of floral beadwork over the 19th century into the present—beginning in the Eastern Woodlands moving to the Subarctic, the Prairie, Plains, Plateau, and Great Basin. Where Dubin excels— continuing her approach in her epic North American Indian Jewelry and Adornment—is honing on specific items, such as the bandolier bag or the octopus bag, or people such as the extraordinary Gould family (Shoshone) of master beaders who hand down partially finished works to be completed by members of younger generations.

Fascinating information is revealed through early ethnographies. For instance, Louise Bluestone Smith (Mdewakanton Dakota) said, on page 177, her grandmother Ellen Barnes Bluestone Rees (1867–1962) “used to bead medicine flowers onto their handmade items such as moccasins and bags because white people, especially the missionaries, disapproved of Mdewakanton women using medicines.” Many of the medicine

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plants found in beadwork were used in midwifery.

The Plateau chapter, “Power in the Flower,” is the best in the book because Dubin traveled to the region and interviewed culturally informed people, such as Roberta Conner from the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute. She shares the exquisite work of master beader Maynard White Owl Lavadour (CayuseNez Perce) and provides art historian Steven L. Grafe space to explain why Plateau beadwork differs so dramatically from that of neighboring regions.

The incongruous “Indians and Cowboys” chapter appears to be an afterthought, perhaps to appeal to the audience of the Autry National Center. The beadwork images in this chapter could easily have been included in the regional chapters.

The “Cultural Continuum” chapter features the most recent artwork; I would have preferred to see the living artists’ work integrated in the main text, as Dubin did throughout North American Indian Jewelry and Adornment, rather than being tacked on at the end.

The work itself, however, is exquisite, demonstrating that floral beadwork and quillwork are thriving today.

Alongside beadwork, Floral Journey discusses moose hair tufting, quillwork, and birch bark biting and cutouts. Dubin focuses on under-discussed regions, such as the Subarctic and the Prairie—a liminal space between the Woodlands and the Plains, where cultural exchanges among relocated tribes create new styles in beadwork and adornment.

I wonder if the book was intended to be read cover-to-cover or used as a reference. Key points are reiterated— Ursuline nuns introducing floral designs to Huron, who in turn taught the nuns moose hair embroidery is mentioned no fewer than eight times. The book has the minor factual glitches—page 140 states Delaware people today live on two reservations in Oklahoma; tell that to the Dawes Commission!—that beleaguer so many Native art history

surveys. However, the book is ambitious and bold. Floral Journey helps recuperate the multi-layered content of Indigenous artworks often dismissed by outsiders as being simply “decorative.” Dubin shows us that under the pretty flowers lies a world waiting to be fully explored and understood. —America Meredith

Catalogue

Gashka’oode (Tangled) Dolleen Manning (Tisawii’ashii), editor Forest City Gallery, 2014

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ASHKA’OODE (TANGLED), the 2013 art show, its related events, and catalogue, demonstrated the wider potentialities for an art exhibition: the ability to move beyond the gallery’s walls and reach members of the public who would not usually attend an art event. Held at the Forest City Gallery in London, Ontario, Canada, from May 31, 2013, to June 29, 2013, the exhibition displayed the work of Jason Baerg (Cree Métis), Wally Dion (Saulteaux), Beverly Doxtator (Mohawk), and Amy Malbeuf (Métis). The term gashka’oode, translating as “entanglement,” describes the meshing of various objects, but opposites, such as urban/reservation, traditional/mainstream, historical/ modern, become blurred. The show opened with an in-depth talk with Elder Isaac Day and drumming by Ojibwe men and women, artists’ talks, a panel discussion, and a symposium at Western

University. By combining elements of an art show, a ceremony, a symposium, a poetry reading, and a performance, Gashka’oode created something wholly new. To continue the discussion, the gallery published a catalogue with images of the art and articles by the gallery’s director, Jena Faye Powell, the curator Doreen Manning (Ojibwe), and Gerald McMaster (Plains Cree), an artist and curator of Canadian art at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Jena Faye Powell writes on page 5 that this show fulfills the gallery’s premise to reach a diverse public in London, Ontario, by exhibiting the work of artists “who reflect the complexities and realities of this community.” The show opened the gallery space to new visitors and new artists, continuing on page 5 that “the remarkable outcome of Gashka’oode was its resilience, enduring and inextinguishable effect that lingered long after the events. Forest City Gallery began to see new faces at openings, new artists submitting, and a conversation continuing to build as a direct result of these events and their outreach.”

Manning’s article, “Entangled: Thrown Down and In-Relation,” explores the cascading issues important to Native cultures across the Americas, issues of identity, colonial violence, and prevailing Indian clichés. The curator wanted “to interweave contradicting narratives that obliquely reveal a complex web of relations that more aptly attend to the vast inconsistencies that make up our lived realities.”1 Manning addresses the concept of “traditional” not as an idea of things that are historical but as a continually renewing building or culture.

On page 10, she describes the “traditional mode of being, paradoxically, involves perpetual nuancing—circling back to reassess, expand, reinvigorate, and shift ever so slightly, while simultaneously entrenching these ways of being through everyday, ceremonial, and oral cultural practices.” Manning considers how an art exhibition can be curated from a Native perspective. The term Anishinaabeg (original peoples) does

1. Dolleen Manning, ed., Gashka’oode (Tangled) (Toronto, ON: Forest City Gallery, 2014), 10.6 FALL 2 0 1 4

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Ojibwe Anishinaabemwin refers to the idea of everything being alive and responsive, not in a stasis but constantly growing and renewing. not define a specific group but rather a way of being between a community’s members with each other and all life around them, including people, plants, animals, and even inanimate objects.

Ojibwe Anishinaabemwin refers to the idea of everything being alive and responsive, not in a stasis but constantly growing and renewing. Working from a unique curatorial viewpoint allowed Manning to consider “how Indigenous peoples might construct ‘authentic identity’ in relation not only to derogatory stereotypes and romantic ideals but also to externally imposed distinctions.”2 The four artists chosen for the show conducted “investigations via ‘traditional’ Aboriginal iconography, not as romantic reiterations from the past but as an unavoidable and perpetual collision within their conflicting composite realities,” Manning writes on page 18.

Their art in the exhibition demonstrated the gashka’oode between different media, different cultures, and different subjects, yet all return to their Native themes.

In her black-and-white photographs of tall trees, Thunder Connector I and Thunder Connector II, Beverly Doxtator reversed the color scheme and intentionally exposed the images twice to blur the outlines. Within a single image, Doxtator looked in multiple directions, inside and out, old and new, Native and not. The trees suggest multiple referents, both the Iroquois reverence for trees and the story of Sky Woman, the figure who fell from the sky to the earth through the hole linked by a tree. The trees link the sky with the earth and “stand as everpresent electrically charged lightning rods that transmit the thunderous heartbeat

of Minwaasgay into past and future exaltations.”3

heated ideas of authenticity merge and bend around cold-colored concepts.”

In the work of Wally Dion, “fragments from obsolete and defective chronicles are reclaimed, rewritten and redeployed like so many Indian cars and reservation gadgetry, inventions retooled from salvaged remnants and forgotten histories that deftly speak of new forms of digital interfacing and ever-increasingly entangled intersubjectivities.”4 Dion created a curved wall of six shields hung from the ceiling and made out of computer circuit boards harvested from old computers. The motherboards and other components were cut into diamond shapes and stitched with brass wires looped and twisted together to form the morning star-blanket common among the Cree and Saulteaux. The blanket/shield forms are complete with wire tassels that reach down to the floor, recalling the grasses on the Plains that are gathered in preparation for ceremony. The circuit boards, representations of globalization, are intentionally old; using pieces from defunct antiquated computers to reform a new image suggests the potential for renewal. Dion’s work bridges the old with the new.

Dressed in a brightly colored unitard that covered her head and hands, Amy Malbeuf interrupted the events by creating an eight-foot circle of salt by walking around with a fertilizer-spreader, using “silence, repetition, anonymity, and an exaggerated foreignness to explore the contradictions posed by that very identity.”5 Malbeuf ’s performances were about the audience as much as the performer, trying to jar the viewer into a new awareness of the world. On page 24, McMaster compares Malbeuf to a spiritual healer, unable to speak or see but aware of the terrain. Malbeuf combined the sacred with the destructive: the circle suggests the eternal, but the salt never goes away and causes irreparable damage to the planet. By using a circle and salt, the artist “[ juxtaposed] an outright defilement of this iconic symbol of cyclic renewal with an unexpected reversal in the metaphorical deployment of salt, fertilizer, and by implication, static demarcations as both poison and cure.”6

Jason Baerg’s brightly painted lasercut aluminum abstract lightning forms referenced both the hard-edge abstraction from the 1960s and ‘70s as well as Cree cosmology. Manning writes on pages 13 and 14, the artwork offers “the sense of hereness and a concomitant everywhereness, devoid of any definite and singular place or identity” suggesting turbulent skies and lightning bolts and creating “a controversial land where

2. Dolleen Manning, ed., Gashka’oode (Tangled) (Toronto, ON: Forest City Gallery, 2014), 10.

3. Ibid., 12 4. Ibid., 16

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5. Ibid., 17 6. Ibid.

7. Ibid., 15

The exhibit explored the “fluid notions of identity” and the “complicated interrelations between people of Aboriginal ancestry and other Canadians” which are “still haunted by the shadow of colonialism.” The work of the four artists tied together the idea of ceremony, stories, and songs of with the challenges of contemporary life. As suggested in Dion’s work, these artists combined the “[t]echnological excess tinged with sentimental yearnings for by-gone thrift and an uncomplicated age.”7 —Suzanne Newman Fricke

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Video

Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit-Aleut)

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FIRST ENCOUNTERED Nicholas Galanin’s Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in December of 2012, where it featured in one of Canada’s most successful traveling exhibitions in recent years, Beat Nation, organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery.

At the time of the encounter, the space was mired with a fleet of enthusiastic German tourists, whose cinema and popular culture have, historically speaking, been hopelessly infatuated with everything Aboriginal.

Soon after, I was given the opportunity to write a review of the show by the website ARTINFO Canada,1 and, though I only briefly mention of Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan, I always felt like there was more to be said, more that I could say, and it nagged at me like a splinter. So, with this is mind, I’ve returned to the work nearly two years later.

Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan, translated as “We Will Again Open This Container of Wisdom That Has Been Left in Our Care,” is a transmedial video cut into two distinct, but not wholly separate, parts. The first displays hip-hop dancer David Elsewhere popping-and-locking inside an empty studio to the tenacious beat of a traditional tribal drum and song. In the second, Dan Littlefield, dressed in traditional garb, rises from his knees to perform a ritual dance before a massive Tlingit painted screen; however, the music accompanying Littlefield is a tinny dub-step rhythm that is more Super Mario Bros. than familiar

Aboriginal sonicism. Here Galanin renders aesthetic and historical tensions explicit, if not painfully transparent, existing, as they do, between white kicks and ritual dress, urban studio and Tlingit backdrop, electronica and ancestral song.

These tensions therein serve to make the traditional urgent, and, dare I say, very cool. Not disrespectful, perhaps not even radical, but something different. Almost immediately I reached a telling conclusion: I didn’t know you could do that. For one of those rare but important moments, my ignorance precipitated fear, more precisely, the fear of not knowing.

That being said, Galanin has been frequently criticized within Aboriginal communities and by elders for doing precisely what I, at that time, didn’t think was possible: conflating deeplyentrenched Aboriginal forms of expression with contemporaneous Western media and popular culture. To some, Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan inflames a profound ethical conundrum, whether the video is fundamentally “wrong” or “disrespectful,” one that brings to question the very idea of Aboriginal cultural appropriation in the digital age. To others, including Ryan Rice, “The sentimentality and visions of ethnographic purity imposed from the outside and from within are the principal mis-users or abusers of the word ‘tradition’ and have created the distorted lens through which many people, unfortunately, view Native art.”2 The rupture in the field of acceptable subject matter for contemporary Aboriginal art, of its cultural appropriateness, is intended to deconstruct feelings and beliefs that reinforce the status quo. Essentially, Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan performs a valuable

task: it arouses reflection of established meanings by embodying change itself.

However, it’s more than that.

As I later discovered, another crucial element to Galanin’s Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan is its color. Not only does Elsewhere, Littlefield, and their surrounding environments become veiled in rich chiaroscuro, but also shooting in black-and-white is symptomatic of the fluidity of time itself; in the video, time— the gradations between the past and the present—are rendered as a synonymous whole. Some speak of this temporal phenomenon as “dreamtime,” others as “time eternal;” either way, it points to the existence of time within a nonlinear, proverbially Western framework, respectfully placating the fluidity between the traditional and the contemporary.

Ultimately, the video’s black-and-white color may be a metaphorical embodiment of fluidity and transformation itself— the more I watch, the more I come to recognize that Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan looks in the past as it surges in the present.

Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan is a deceptively simple mash-up of dress, music, spirituality, and movement—characteristics of almost any given culture in the world.

To paraphrase French curator Nicholas Bourriaud, in the West’s “postproduction” society, expressions of originality and creativity are blurred in order to produce new and exciting forms of artistic production.3 Hence, the collision of Aboriginal and hip-hop cultural signifiers in the video are not an example of Galanin’s insensitivity but represent a deep concern for regeneration.

—Matthew Ryan Smith

1. See: Matthew Ryan Smith, “Aboriginal Artists Engage with Urban Youth Culture in the Urgent and Timely ‘Beat Nation,’ ” ARTINFO Canada (December 20, 2012).

2. Ryan Rice, as quoted in Karen Kramer Russell et al. Shapeshifting: Transformation in Native American Art, exhibition catalogue (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 32.

3. For more on Bourriaud’s theory of postproduction, please see: Nicholas Bourriaud, Postproduction (New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2002).

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The Points of Beginning Geodaesia: The art of surveying and measuring— footpath stamped and deer path trampled.

Wily agents of creation foliated under great pressure; white-banded rock embedded in absolute time’s alluvial fan.

The first creeping act of range is the infant’s change of heart from open to closed upon the initial intake of breath.

Thence with the meanders of the river.

—Laura Da’

Metes and Bounds Chilled thigh under winter weight homespun, tallied baste stitches, the weaver’s aching back and yellowed finger pads bow to the sovereignty of metes and bounds. The length of cotton stretched between brass tacks weaves its own leger-worthy autonomy.

Proceed from the blazed line twenty chains to the southwest.

Dulled needle through burlap.

Chilled holler of the axe’s subtle swipe through a scrimshaw of frost.

Under moss, oak trunk blazed breast high and skin smooth to mark the end place.

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ABOVE: Heidi Bigknife (Shawnee Tribe), Dive, torn paper collage on acidfree watercolor paper, 19 x 24 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

OPPOSITE: Heidi Bigknife (Shawnee Tribe), untitled, torn paper collage on acid free watercolor paper, 22¼ x 27¾ in. Image courtesy of the artist.

Heidi Bigknife is a Shawnee jeweler and mixed media artist living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is an alumna of IAIA and Beloit College. In addition to artistic endeavors, Heidi is active in tribal ceremonies and health and fitness pursuits. Her artwork is available through the Case Trading Post in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Home & Away Gallery in Kennebunkport, Maine; and Four Winds Gallery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The artist can be reached at bigknifedesigns@earthlink.net.

Chains and Links I do desire—Chillicothe, Piqua, Lima that you remain—Shawnee, Lawrence, Olathe Wyandotte, Tecumseh—on the other side Junction City, Fort Leavenworth, Lenexa— of the river. Species shame goes to earth at the piedmont. 1844’s flooding of the Kaw: long rains chased by dry and hot weather, coupled with the smallpox, cholera, and typhus trailed by settlers. Buckskins, bucks becoming frontier currency

Historical Citations The Points of Beginning Geodaesia: The Art of Surveying and Measuring of Land Made Easie by John Love is a canonical treatise on surveying first issued in 1688 and widely used in the early colonial surveying of America.

Thence with the meanders of the river is a common term in early surveying.

Chains and Links

at the fall line where ships unload and lighten; fever, chills, bloody flux. Let the record state

I do desire that you remain on the other side of the river—is a quote attributed to multiple Native leaders in Indian Territory including a Delaware chief and a Shawnee ferry operator.

in that year, that there was not a single well person in that nation.

—Laura Da’

There was not a single well person in that nation comes from a newspaper report on the status of the Delaware.

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IN MEMORIAM

Alexander Seowtewa April 29, 1932–March 13, 2014

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UNI ARTIST ALEX SEOWTEWA, born in 1932—or 1933 according to some references—is best known for his murals. He painted largerthan-life-sized portraits of katsinam and Christian imagery on the interior walls of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in his home of Zuni, New Mexico.

His parents were Annie, of the Sandhill Crane Clan, and Charlie Chuyate (1899–1977), of the Parrot Clan. Annie died when Seowtewa was only three years old, so his maternal grandfather, Na-Seowdewa, a Zuni bow priest, raised the young boy and taught him about Zuni religion and worldview.

Seowtewa’s father Charlie was a cultural historian, painter, and religious leader, who gave his son insight into the art world and the need to share knowledge of Zuni culture and theology. Seowtewa discussed his upbringing with Smithsonian curator, Gwyneira Isaac: When I was still growing up, I always assisted my father during lambing time… At times he took me to the nearest drawings [ancient pictographs] where his customary lands were in the northeastern corner of the reservation—which is in the Nutria area. He took me in those hills and explained certain symbols. I shared, passed on, what my father taught me, how to remember these symbols, to recognize them.1 The University of St. Joseph in Albuquerque offered Seowtewa an art scholarship after he graduated from St. Anthony Zuni Indian School. He only attended college for one year, 1952, before leaving to serve in the Korean War. After the war, he returned to Zuni and his wife, Odelle Panteah. Together the couple had ten children.

While working at St. Anthony’s Mission, the artist discovered that his own father had painted murals on the ceiling of the rectory and walls of the church back in the 1930s. Nearby, Our Lady of Guadalupe Church was undergoing a major renovation project. Built in 1629 in the Zuni village of Hawikuh, just south of Zuni, and abandoned by 1820, Our Lady had lain in a state of ruin for almost a century and a half.

Seowtewa proposed his mural project to Father Niles Kraft, the pastor of St. Anthony’s, who immediately approved of the ambitious plan. In February of 1970, Seowtewa began painting winter solstice scenes on the northern interior wall of the church. He continued working for over four decades.

1. Gwyneira Isaac, Mediating Knowledges: Origins of a Zuni Tribal Museum (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 2007), 39.

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His vibrant murals, featuring the entire year’s ceremonial cycle, successfully merge Zuni and Roman Catholic theology to educate locals and visitors about the nuances of spiritual beliefs in Zuni. In the ensuing decades, Seowtewa’s sons, Kenneth, Edwin, and Gerald (1956–1986)— accomplished artists in their own right—assisted him in the monumental painted frieze. The National Endowment for the Arts and the New Mexico State Legislature helped support the project.

His murals also faced opposition. Some felt he was revealing too much about Zuni religion; others questioned his religious syncretism. However, on a research trip to the Smithsonian, Seowtewa discovered that previous murals, visible in 19th-century photographs of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, also featured Zuni religious imagery.

Alex Seowtewa’s painting style was exquisite—a magical Alex Seowtewa painting from a scaffold at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, 2010. Photo: Michael Stoklos (© Stoklos Photography).

IN MEMORIAM

realism defined by a vivid palette, heightened details, and crisp outlines.

Frank Pipe Woman Sheridan

Besides painting in oils, the versatile artist also painted in acrylics and watercolors and drew in ink, graphite, and pastels. Seowtewa even created silver and turquoise jewelry in the Zuni needlepoint tradition. His wife Odelle was also a jeweler, and together the couple participated in Santa Fe’s Indian Market in the 1970s.

August 27, 1950–May 9, 2014

The many accolades Seowtewa garnered throughout his life include the New Mexico Preservation Heritage Award from the New Mexico Cultural Affairs Office. He served as a cultural ambassador for Zuni, traveling as far as Russia, as a part of a Soviet art and cultural exchange program. In 1991, he received both the New Mexico Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts and the Soviet Union’s Fine Artists Union Award. Arizona declared him a living treasure in 2006. In 2011 he was on a team of Zuni artists and cultural historians who painted cultural maps for the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center in Zuni.

“He would always come in to speak at the high school,” remembers Holly Coonsis (Zuni). “He was part of our Zuni history class, and he shared different stories about how it was different growing up in the old days. He shared a lot of himself with everybody. He always told all of us at the school that he considered all of us his children. I just really miss him.”

Seowtewa was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and received care from Lovelace Medical Center, Presbyterian Hospital and Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital. He was interred at Quincy Panteah Cemetery.

A non-profit organization Friends of Alex Seowtewa (online at: www.friendsofalexseowtewa.org) is compiling a biography about the artist. —America Meredith

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EVERAL YEARS AGO Frank’s firstborn grandchild, a grandson named Christian, was on his mind. Frank started working on a quiver with a bow and set of arrows.

It took almost a year to complete the beading, sewing the quiver, finding the right wood for the bow, making each arrow with as much care and attention to detail as the ones he had witnessed his uncles and grandfathers carry. He brought it to an art show and displayed it, as his daughter Helen tells, “out of respect for the past” and in tribute to legacy handed down to him by the men in his family. Since it was an art show, he put a price on it, big enough that he thought people would lose interest once they saw the price he was asking.

Someone was interested, and, though his family could have surely used the money, he couldn’t bring himself to sell it. It belonged to his grandson. After the show, though Christian was only eight years old, his grandpa gave him the quiver, bow, and arrows. For Frank, the beautiful things he made were never solely about the money. His priority was to leave something for this boy, for this future of his family, and his tribe.

As a prominent Southern Cheyenne artist, Frank won many awards at major Native art shows for his beadwork, parfleches, and ledger drawings, but when his talent was publicly recognized he was always humble. His motivation, as evidenced by how much he gave away to others, wasn’t for himself; it was the recognition his work created for the past, for the things he had seen and heard about from his elders, for his desire to keep those deep and meaningful traditions alive into the present. If a person came to him wanting to know how to make something—how to bead, what design would be proper

to use, how to work with rawhide, how to construct clothing—he obliged. He understood that the knowledge of how to make these items came from a long line of people and was not his to keep.

Besides receiving the First People’s Fund Community Spirit Award, grand prize at Red Earth, and many ribbons at SWAIA’s Indian Market, Cherokee Art Market, and numerous other Indian art shows, Frank was a believer and participant in the Cheyenne Sun Dance, a member of the Cheyenne Elk Society, and a championship traditional powwow dancer. He was a community intervention specialist with the Indian Health Service for over 30 years. Using his knowledge of Cheyenne wellness philosophies given to him by his uncles, he helped treat veterans from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan for combatrelated post-traumatic stress disorder.

He treated people who worked with sexually abused children and Native American HIV/AIDS patients, and he worked with Native American elders.

His family, the Southern Cheyenne people, the Native art world, and all of those people who reached out to him in need have lost a most generous man, a true Tse-se-hetane. —Teri Greeves FALL 2 0 1 4

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