First Ameriacn Art Magazine No. 34, Spring 2022

ANCESTRAL, HISTORICAL & LIVING ARTS by INDIGENOUS PEOPLES of the AMERICAS

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

NO. 34, SPRING 2022

MOTORCYCLES IN LEDGER ART

STERLIN HARJO

SENECA HAND-CARVED COMBS

PETER B. JONES

FINE ART DIGITAL PRINTS NASCA CERAMICS DISPLAY UNTIL JULY 4, 2022

WANESIA MISQUADACE JENNIFER NEPTUNE

IDYLLWILD ARTS FOUNDATION NATIVE AMERICAN ARTS PROGRAM PRESENTS

NATIVE AMERICAN ARTS WORKSHOPS & FESTIVAL WEEK IDYLLWILD, CA

JUNE 13 – JULY 1, 2022

WORKSHOPS June 13 - July 1, 2022 NATIVE AMERICAN ARTS FESTIVAL WEEK June 19 - June 24, 2022

Join us for a week full of in-person programming including performance, exhibition, food tastings, film, and the Michael Kabotie Lecture Series.

All events are free and open to the public.

NATIVE AMERICAN ARTS FESTIVAL WEEK INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION “Looking at Us: Exploring Institutional Critique” Opening June 20, 2022

Scholarships for Native American adults and teens available for 2022!

FOR MORE INFO & AND TO REGISTER, VISIT:

idyllwildarts.org/nativeamericanarts

NORTHERN PLAINS INDIAN ART MARKET Best of Show Art Preview & Reception September 23, 2022 7:00pm to 8:30pm Old Courthouse Museum Sioux Falls, SD

Art Market September 24, 2022 10:00am to 6:00pm September 25, 2022 10:00am to 4:00pm Hilton Garden Inn Downtown Sioux Falls, SD

Artwork by Terrance Guardipee - “Blackfeet Holy Couple”

BIENNALE D’ART CONTEMPORAIN AUTOCHTONE | CONTEMPORARY NATIVE ART BIENNIAL

6th edition Tiohtià:ke | Mooniyang (Montreal) Ktinékétolékouac (Sherbrooke) Kebec (Quebec City) Canada www.baca.ca Starting April 28, 2022

Satellite Exhibitions daphne art centre Galerie Laroche/Joncas She:kon - BACA space for emerging art

Duane Isaac, Land/Body, 2020

Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke Art Mûr La Maison des Jésuites de Sillery Stewart Hall Art Gallery Quai 5160 La Guilde Musée McCord

MAY 28 – 30, 2022

Memorial Day Weekend • Santa Fe, New Mexico Join us for the 18th annual Native Treasures Art Market hosted by New Mexico’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. The in-person art market showcases jewelry, pottery, sculpture, two-dimensional art, fashion, carvings, basketry, beadwork, and textiles by 200 Indigenous artists.

The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) is pleased to announce Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti Pueblo) as the 2022 MIAC Living Treasure. This award is part of the annual Art Market and honors Native artists who have made outstanding artistic contributions to Indigenous arts and culture.

www.museumfoundation.org/native-treasures

The Art of Jean LaMarr Through May 29, 2022

SPONSORS Carole K. Anderson Nevada Arts Council Kristi Overgaard Sandy Raffealli | Bill Pearce Motors The Phil and Jennifer Satre Family Fund at the Community Foundation of Western Nevada SUPPORTING SPONSORS Kathie Bartlett ADDITIONAL SUPPORT In memory of Bernadette Kaye, sharing her culture Nevada Humanities

Buy the book at shop.nevadaart.org

Essay by Ann M. Wolfe, with contributions from Allan L. Edmunds, Mary Lee Fulkerson, Debra Harry, PhD., Archana Hortsing, Lucy R. Lippard, Susan Lobo, Ph.D., Judith Lowry, Malcolm Margolin, Vincent Medina, Anya Montiel, Ph.D., Raymond Patlan and Jan Rindfleisch.

The legacy of Mahota Textiles today is innovation, creating artful, quality products of Southeast tribal designs that are first, and always, beauriful.

MahotaTextiles.com info@mahotatextiles.com

TRIBES GALLERY ART & APPRAISALS

Established in 1990. Distinguished for their expertise in American Indian art.

Buffalo Jumpin’, various glass beads Carol Diaz (Blackfoot) Southern Plains Fancy Dancer, tempera & casein on matboard Frances Blackbear Bosin (Kiowa-Comanche, 1921 – 1980)

Sitting Bull: The Wind of Earth, acrylic on canvas Harvey Pratt (Cheyenne - Arapaho)

Industrial Trade Blanket #9, mixed media Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band Cherokee, 1957 – 2018)

tribes131.com tribes131@gmail.com

512 W. Main Street, Norman, OK 73069 405.329.4442

APRI L 2 – 3 0 A VIRTUAL & IN–PERSON EVENT Experience one of the country’s most prestigious Native art shows. Enjoy and purchase authentic Native art.

Winner, 50th Annual Trail of Tears Art Show Grand Prize “We Are Still Here” Vivian Garner Cottrell Cherokee National Treasure

issue no. 34, spring 2022

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

Legends on Two Wheels: 20 Motorcycles and Bikers in Ledger Art

By James G. Bland

Recent Developments

12

Seven Directions Nonabah Sam (Diné/Tesuque Pueblo)

16

Art+Lit David Heska Wanbli Weiden: Sicangu Lakota Novelist

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

86

Onöndowa'ga:' Combs: An Historic Seneca Art Form Revived

By Joe Stahlman, PhD (Tuscarora descent) and Hayden Haynes (Seneca)

26

46

Digital Fine Art Printmaking: 32 Unlocking New Visual Possibilities

By Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD

Calendar 94

Nasca Ceramics: 38 Life and Death in Polychrome

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

REVIEWS

ARTIST PROFILES Sterlin Harjo:

Seminole/Muscogee Filmmaker, Producer, and Podcaster

By Vicki Monks (Chickasaw)

46

Peter B. Jones:

Onondaga Ceramic Artist

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

52

Wanesia Misquadace: Fond du Lac Ojibwe Birchbark Biter and Jeweler

By Paige Willett (Citizen Potawatomi)

58

Jennifer Sapiel Neptune: Penobscot Basket Weaver and Beadwork Artist

By Kelly Church (Gun Lake Pottawatomi/Ottawa/Ojibwe)

64

Collections: 70 Eskenazi Museum of Art

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

52

Exhibition Reviews

74

Music Review

83

Book Review

84

IN MEMORIAM

58

cover Jim Yellowhawk (Cheyenne River Lakota/ Onondaga), Off to the 49, 2008, pen and ink, color pencil, marker on antique paper, 77/8 × 77/8 in., private collection. Image courtesy of the artist.

64

Mary Lou Davis (Caddo, 1925–2022)

By Mary Ellen Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

89

Jim Denomie (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe, 1955–2022)

By Heid E. Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe)

90

Betty Jean Fragua (Jemez Pueblo, 1962–2022)

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

91

Dave “Strummin’ Dog” Galanin (Tlingit, 1955–2021)

By Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke)

92

Austin Real Rider (Pawnee/Sicangu Lakota, 1941–2022)

By Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho)

93

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 9

First Fridays!

issue no. 34, spring 2022 ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Online) Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Literary Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD (Euro-Canadian) Contributing Editor: Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke) Marketing Director: Barbara Harjo Circulation Manager: James G. Bland Copy Editors: Rosa Cays (Chicana) and Jo Ann Reece Proofreaders: Staci Golar, Jo Ann Reece, and Angela C. Villa (Chicana) Layout and Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) and Corey Yazzie (Navajo) Social Media: Staci Golar, America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho), and Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke)

Regional Representatives

the First Friday of each month 1-4 pm

FREE

Masks required.

• or call to schedule a private tour • check us out at coeartscenter.org

Great Basin: Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern Paiute/Modoc) Great Plains: Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho) Northeast: Kelly Church (Gun Lake Pottawatomi/Ottawa/Ojibwe) Northwest: Miranda Belarde-Lewis, PhD (Zuni/Tlingit) Southeast: Michole Eldred (Catawba/Eastern Cherokee descent) Southwest: Holly Coonsis (Zuni) and RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo)

Editorial Advisory Board

heather ahtone, PhD (Choctaw Nation/Chickasaw) Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation) Cliff Fragua (Jemez Pueblo) Teri Greeves (Kiowa) Emily Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Sugpiaq) Linda Lomahaftewa, Hon. DHum (Hopi/Choctaw) Leah Mata Fragua (Coastal Chumash) Anya Montiel, PhD (Mestiza/Tohono O'odham descent) Denise Neil, PhD (Delaware Tribe/Cherokee Nation) Jami Powell, PhD (Osage) Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole Nation) India Rael Young, PhD

Advertising Representative

Barbara Harjo, barbara@firstamericanartmagazine.com International distribution is by Disticor Magazine Distribution Services.

First American Art Magazine, LLC, is not responsible for the content of any article or for the statements of any advertiser. First American Art Magazine welcomes queries about editorial submissions. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, or artwork.

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EDITOR'S GREETING

M

Y TRIBE SEES ITSELF as an early adopter of technology, but I discovered many other tribes define themselves that way too. The idea of the “primitive” American Indian is just a persistent stereotype. Indigenous peoples have contributed major innovations in medicine, agriculture, and hygiene to world societies. Our songs, dances, stories, and visual arts all work in tandem to convey information, including information about meteorology, agriculture, biology, medicinal botany, geography, philosophy, and more.

Researchers have tried to understand Hopewellian mathematics through the earthworks engineered almost two thousand years. They study precontact Andean tumbaga, a sophisticated alloy of gold, silver, and copper. Soil conservationists are still trying to replicate terra preta de Indio, the human-made, hyper-fertile soil impregnated with charcoal, ceramic shards, and compost in the Amazon. Californians, devastated by wildfires, are increasingly turning to Indigenous fire management techniques to protect their communities.

My dad once observed that Native peoples should be designing fuel cell cars, which made me question why we don't see recent inventions as part of our culture. I created a fumage series inspired by inventions by Cherokee people, including a fuel injection system patented by my maternal grandfather. Science and technology are important facts of our cultures.

Western societies in Europe split art away from sciences; however, the movement to reunite concepts is called STEAM, an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics. A South Dakota study found that “culturally relevant STEM enrichment activities combined with Native arts and crafts increased interest

above America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Mary Golda Ross: Ad Astra Per Astra, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 30 × 40 in., collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 26/8630. Image courtesy of the artist.

in STEM studies and careers for Native American high school girls.”1 Ceramic artist Al Qöyawayma (Hopi) cofounded the American Indian Science and Engineering Society and served as its first chair. Photographer Cara Romero (Chemehuevi) directs the Bioneers Indigeneity Program at an environmentalist nonprofit. In her will, Mary Golda Ross (Cherokee Nation, 1908–2008), the first Native American woman engineer and first woman engineer at Lockheed Corporation, donated a substantial sum to the Institution of American Indian Arts.

In this issue, we explore several intersections between technology and the visual arts. Digital printmaking harnesses ever-changing developments in computer visualizations. With the mid-20th century establishment of the intercontinental highway systems, motorcycles became an ideal mode of transport on the Great Plains and found their way into ledger art. Dremels and other mechanical tools allow Seneca artists to carve increasingly

Intricate combs in antler and bone.

Nasca culture is defined by a technological advance two thousand years ago—switching from painting pottery post-firing to painting with slips before firing.

Some people see working with natural materials, such as elk or black ash as “primitive,” but these animals and plants are still part of the 21st century.

We need to ensure their survival against pests, habitat loss, and climate change.

Indigenous environmental knowledge can benefit all of humanity, and indeed, even though Indigenous peoples are only 5 percent of the global population, they protect an estimated 85 percent of the world’s biodiversity.2 Professor Kim TallBear (SissetonWahpeton/Southern Cheyenne) at the University of Alberta says, “You can’t separate science from society. You can’t separate culture from nature, because those things coproduce each other.

They shape each other.”3 —America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

1. Joanita M. Kant, Suzette R. Burckhard, and Richard T. Meyers, “Engaging High School Girls in Native American Culturally Responsive STEAM Enrichment Activities,” Journal of STEM Education 18, no. 5 (January 2018), 22.

2. Kira M. Hoffman, Emma L. Davis, Sara B. Wickham, Kyle Schang, Alexandra Johnson, Taylor Larking, Patrick N. Lauriault, Nhu Quynh Le, Emily Swerdfager, and Andrew J. Trant, “Conservation of Earth’s biodiversity is embedded in Indigenous fire stewardship,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, no. 32 (August 10, 2021), web.

3. Kim TallBear, “Decolonizing (≠ Reconciliation) Science, Technology, and Indigenous Relations,” University of King’s College, February 19, 2020, YouTube video, 1:30:07, web.

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 11

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS ORGANIZATIONS

The US Senate unanimously confirmed Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo) as the chief of the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES (NEH).

The second woman to chair the organization, Lowe has served as a national council member at the NEH since 2015 and as executive director of the Harvard University Native American program. Previously at Yale University, she served as assistant dean for Native American affairs and directed the Native American Cultural Center. Lowe grew up in Ganado, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation.

MUSEUMS T h e S m it h s on i a n In s t itut i on’s NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE A M E R IC A N I N DIA N (NMAI) named Cynthia Chavez Lamar (San Felipe Pueblo/Hopi/Tewa/Navajo) as its new director. Lamar is the first woman to direct the museum. Beginning in January 2021, she served as NMAI’s acting associate director for collections and operations. From 2000 to 2005, she was the museum’s associate curator.

Chavez Lamar served as the director of the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 2007 to 2014, then returned to NMAI to be the assistant director for collections until 2020. Her extensive museum experience also includes directing the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, and she earned her doctoral degree in American studies from the University of New Mexico.

T h e C E N T R O C U LT U R A L UNIVERSITARIO TLATELOLCO at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City launched Xaltilolli in late 2021. Named for the Nahuatl toponym Tlatelolco, the new multilevel exhibition space showcases exhibitions drawing from 15,200 archaeological artworks from the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo.

The NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA (NGC) in Ottawa created a new department of Indigenous Ways and Decolonization to be led by Michelle LaVallee (Nawash Ojibway), director, and Steven Loft (Six Nations Mohawk), vice president. The department will help the museum realize its commitment to include Indigenous perspectives in its policies, collections programming, and public engagement. LaVallee recently directed the Indigenous Art Centre Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and previously served as the curator at the MacKenzie 12 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

ART MARKETS

above Arthur Holmes Jr. (Hopi), Reaching Out for Strength, Encouragement, 2022, cottonwood root, paint, Photo: FAAM.

Art Gallery. Loft, a curator, scholar, author, and artist, previously served as the NGC’s curator-in-residence for Indigenous art.

The BERKSHIRE MUSEUM in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, repatriated 18th-century artifacts to the Stockbridge Munsee Community, a federally recognized tribe of Mohican and Delaware people headquartered in Bowler, Wisconsin. They returned a pouch and pair of moccasins that belonged to Chief Pophnehonnuhwoh, or John Konkapot (Mohican, ca. 1690–1765), to the tribe.

The Engineering News-Record gave its 2021 Best Government/Public Building award to FIRST AMERICANS MUSEUM in Oklahoma City for the ENR Texas & Louisiana Region.

The journal reviewed more than 800 regional submissions in 20 categories as the Best of the Best in Government/ Public Buildings. The ENR award for the Flintco/Manhattan Construction Group joint venture project team “represents the pinnacle of design and construction achievement.”

The Heard Museum Guild recently hosted its 64th annual HEARD MUSEUM GUILD INDIAN FAIR AND MARKET on the Heard Museum grounds in Phoenix, Arizona. Arthur Holmes Jr. (Hopi) won best of show for his cottonwood-root carving, Reaching Out for Strength, Encouragement.

Classification winners were Lyndon Tsosie (Navajo), jewelry and lapidary; Alvina Yepa (Jemez Pueblo), pottery; Carlin Bear Don’t Walk (Crow/ Northern Cheyenne), paintings, drawings, graphics, and photography; Arthur Holmes Jr., Pueblo carvings; Tim Washburn (Navajo), sculpture; Mary Henderson Begay (Navajo), weavings and textiles; Elias Not Afraid (Apsáalooke), diverse art forms; Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy), baskets; and Rain Scott (Acoma), open standards.

Special award winners were Jamie Okuma (Luiseño/Shoshone-Bannock), who won the Conrad House Innovation Award, and Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), who won the Idyllwild Arts Imagination Award.

ART FAIRS The 59th edition of the International Art Exhibition of LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2022: The Milk of Dreams announced its 213 artists from 58 countries. Indigenous artists of the Americas include Shuvinai Ashoona (Inuk), from Kinngait, Canada; Jaider Esbell (Macuxi, 1979–2021), born in Normandia, Brazil; Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill (Métis), born

in Comox, Canada; and Cecilia Vicuña (Chilean Mestiza), born in Santiago, Chile. The oldest continuing and most prestigious art fair will take place from April 23 to November 27, 2022, in Italy.

JOHN HITCHCOCK

The second edition of the TORONTO BIENNIAL OF ART, What Water Knows, The Land Remembers, launched on March 26 and will be on view through June 5, 2022.

Curated by Tairone Bastien, Candice Hopkins (Carcross/ Tagish), and Katie Lawson, the biennial includes Indigenous artists of the Americas such as Ts̱ ēmā Igharas (Tahltan), Brian Jungen (Dane-Zaa), Janet Kigusiuq (Inuk, 1926–2005), Tanya Lukin Linklater (Alutiiq), Amy Malbeuf (Métis), Victoria Mamnguqsualuk (Inuk, 1930–2016), and Jessie Oonark (Inuk, 1906–1985), all from Canada; Abel Rodriguez (Nonuya) and Aycoobo (Nonuya) from Colombia; and Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe descent), Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee), and Eric-Paul Riege (Navajo) from the United States.

new prints

Indigenous women from Coletivo Inter venção Cultural–Ponto de Cultura hosted the FESTIVAL DE GASTRONOMIA E ARTE INDÍGENA (Dja Wyaa Embiapó Temby'u Ete, in the Guaraní language) in March 2022. Held at the CIS Guanabara cultural space in Campinas, Brazil, this free public festival celebrated Native foods and artwork from 20 Indigenous cultures.

ART SHOWS The Whitney Museum hosts its 80th edition of the WHITNEY BIENNIAL in New York, April 6 to September 5, 2022. This year’s exhibition, Quiet as It’s Kept, curated by David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards with assistance from Mia Matthias, Gabriel Almeida Baroja, and Margaret Kross, includes Native American artists Raven Chacon (Diné) and Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota) and First Nations artists Rebecca Belmore (Lac Seul Ojibwe) and Duane Linklater (Cree). The biennial was launched in 1932 to trace artistic developments in the United States.

AWARDS & HONORS The GERSHON ISKOWITZ FOUNDATION awarded Faye HeavyShield (Kainai) with its 2022 GERSHON ISKOWITZ PRIZE for extraordinary contributions to visual arts in Canada. This award includes a solo exhibition in 2023 at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; however, this year’s award also provides a Can$75,000 stipend. Based in Standoff, Alberta, HeavyShield is an installation artist and sculptor, Blackfoot first-language speaker, and residential school survivor, who earned her BFA at the University of Calgary.

The UNITED STATES ARTISTS selected its 2022 USA FELLOWS, who include several Indigenous artists and

Artist-in-Residence Program | Fine Print Studio & Gallery | Non-Profit

crowsshadow.org 48004 St. Andrew’s Road | Pendleton, OR 97801 | 541-276-3954 Shouting Lightning from Their Eyes (Winter Birds), 2021, eight-color lithograph, 34” x 25”, ed. of 15 NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 13

A L I V I N G , B R E AT H I N G EXPERIENCE

C H O C T A W C U LT U R A L C E N T E R . C O M

NOW OPEN artists of Indigenous descent. They are Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe descent), visual art; Melissa Cody (Navajo), craft; Jorge González Santos (Taíno), visual art; Karen Ann Hoffman (Oneida Nation), traditional arts; Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), music; Qacung (Yup'ik), music; Rosy Simas (Seneca), dance; DeLanna Studi (Cherokee Nation), theater and performance; Marty Two Bulls Jr. (Oglala Lakota), traditional arts; and Peter Williams (Yup'ik), traditional arts. USA Fellows receive $50,000 in unrestricted funds and financial planning.

The FIRST PEOPLES FUND, based in Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti (Native Rapid City, South Dakota, announced Hawaiian), Carrie Moran McCleary its 2022 award recipients. The 2022 (Little Shell Chippewa), Tsanavi SpoonJENNIFER EASTON COMMUNITY hunter (Northern Arapaho/Owens SPIRIT AWARDS went to Shawn Valley Paiute), Tash Terry (Navajo), Brigman (Spokane), Ed Carriere Jodi Webster (Ho-Chunk/Prairie Band (Suquamish), Renee Dillard (Little Potawatomi), Stacy Wells (Choctaw Traverse Odawa), and Charlie Soap Nation), and Laura Young Bird (Grand (Cherokee Nation). This award recogPortage Ojibwe). The fellows receive nized culture bearers with a cash award professional development training and of $25,000. a minimum stipend of $7,500.

The fund named 19 artists, First Fund named C H Oin C TAWC U L T Peoples URALC ENT E R . Ceight OM musicians, and writers as 2022 Artist artists and writers as 2022 CULTURAL BUSINESS LEADERSHIP FELLOWS. CAPITAL FELLOWS. They are Claire They are Aveda Adara (Navajo), Kaylene Charlo (Salish-Kootenai), Kaonelani Big Knife (Chippewa-Cree), Elexa Davis (Native Hawaiian), Emma Dawson (Citizen Potawatomi), Del Hildebrand (Upper Tanana Athabascan), Curfman (Crow), Shauna Elk (Standing Blossom Johnson (Navajo), Ronald Rock Sioux), Madie Goodnight Paquin (Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa), (Chickasaw), Shayna Grandbois-Herrera Wetalu Rodriguez (Nez Perce), Thomas (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), Tara Stillday (Red Lake Ojibwe), and Alan Gumapac (Native Hawaiian), Shanon Wallace (Nisenan/Maidu/Washoe). This Two Shields Hale (Mandan), Josephine project-based grant supports cultural Hoffman (Grand Portage Ojibwe), Ursala work within Indigenous communities Hudson (Tlingit), Samuel LaFountain (Navajo/Turtle Mountain Chippewa), and provides a minimum $5,000 stipend.

NOW OPEN

The AMERICAN CRAFT COUNCIL elected beadwork artist Teri Greeves (Kiowa) and glass sculptor Preston Singletary (Tlingit) to its COLLEGE OF FELLOWS. Existing members of the college nominate artists as fellows based on their leadership in crafts, artistic and educational ability, and at least 25 years of professional achievement.

14 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

EXPERIENCE A L I V I N G , B R E AT H I N G

IN MEMORIAM JAMES THOMAS “JIM” BIALAC, JD (1928–2022), a leading private collector of Native American art, passed away at his home on February 17, 2022. He served as an editorial advisor to First American Art Magazine and proposed our reoccurring Spotlight column. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and served in the US Army. He earned his law degree at the University of Arizona College of Law in Tucson in 1959. While still a student, Bialac acquired a katsina from Tom Bahti’s Indian Arts, which began his collecting journey that spanned more than 50 years. In addition to collecting from established and emerging artists, he judged and juried for numerous art markets and occasionally provided legal assistance to artists. In 2010 he donated more than 4,000 artworks from his private collection to the University of Oklahoma, and the university gave him an honorary doctor of humane letters degree in 2016.

Many of the 2,600 paintings he donated are on public display at the Donald E.

2012). Bialac was an ardent supporter of Native arts and a good friend who will be missed by many.

ERRATA

Jim Bialac with some paintings from his collection, ca. 1967.

Pray Law Library at the OU College of Law. Several publications document his collections, including The James T. Bialac Native American Art Collection: Selected Works (University of Oklahoma Press,

In FAAM No. 33, Winter 2022, page 31 of “A Nation Tells Its Own Story: The Choctaw Cultural Center,” we mistakenly attributed the twined skirt to Sarah de Herrera (Choctaw Nation). The skirt, vlhkuna in Choctaw, made of handspun bison wool and hemp dogbane fibers, was made by members of the Choctaw Textiles Group, including Sandra Moore Riley (Choctaw Nation/Chickasaw), Jennifer Byram (Choctaw Nation), Celia StallMeadows, EdD (Choctaw Nation), Debra Pruett (Choctaw Nation), Gary Byram (Choctaw Nation), Laura Henry, Leslie Widener (Choctaw Nation), Margaret Riley (Choctaw Nation), Michael Henry (Choctaw Nation), Richard Emhoolah (Kiowa), and Wendy Byram. Thanks to Margaret Riley Santhanam (Choctaw Nation/Chickasaw) for calling this to our attention.

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 15

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

NONABAH SAM A Diné/Tesuque Educator and Curator Shares Her Top Seven List with Her Colleagues

N

ONABAH BROOKE SAM ( D i n é / Te s u q u e Pueblo [ Bit ' a h n i i / Te Tsu G eh Owengeh]) is a true champion of preserving Diné culture and lifeways.

As the museum curator at the Ned A. Hatathli Cultural Center Museum at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona, she has a firm belief in passing on the language, culture, and oral history of what we deem sacred as Diné people.

She believes in her work as a preservationist and conservationist but also as an educator. Her work reaches beyond the college and out to the community.

“Our stories should be expressed, from our own truths, as American Indians and First Nations people. Our stories have always been told with a misconception from the non-Native view, but now we can showcase a true history of all our accounts and events from our own eyes. That is important, especially for our children, because we want them to know and understand the importance of culture, language, and history, and who we represent as our identity,” she says.

Nonabah works with tribal museums and education programs around the country. Her highest achievement was garnering the International Museum Excellence Award from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums in 2015. Her renovation project with the Ned A. Hatathli Museum has captured attention from around the world as she continues to provide an excellent space for showcasing American Indian art and history. The museum is her classroom, which allows her to set the tone for not only creativity but also innovation and critical thinking. Her senior fine art students learn Indigenous ideologies and methodologies in creating museum exhibitions with a Diné perspective.

Nonabah is also a distinguished ambassador with Americans for Indian Opportunity and was formal tribal royalty 16 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

in the Navajo Nation. She is currently in her third year of pursuing her doctoral studies in educational leadership through the Native American Leadership in Education (NALE) cohort program at the University of New Mexico, where she also earned her master’s degree. Her undergraduate degrees are from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. “Indigenous-based programs give us the tools we need to enhance our knowledge in academia. For generations, Indigenous Knowledge Systems were never a part of colonial education, and for us, that is what makes us who we are and what sets us aside from a Western educational standpoint,” says Nonabah.

“I chose NALE because when I applied to the program, I was encouraged and supported by Dr. Robin Zape-tah-hol-ah Minthorn (Kiowa/Apache/Nez Perce/ Umatilla/Cayuse/Assiniboine). She believed that I could make a difference and, because my interest was in preserving and conserving traditional culture and language, this cohort would be best. It is the best decision I have made to attend the University of New Mexico (UNM), with the largest percentage (25 percent)

of American Indians in any doctoral program in the country.”

Nonabah continues, “This journey with the five women in my cohort and other individuals from the two previous cohorts, who walk alongside us, has been amazing. Two young ladies recently graduated, one last spring and the other this past fall. To see young ladies go through such rigorous courses and attain their goals gives me hope that many more will follow in our footsteps. Our ancestors prayed that this day would come, and we have become those answered prayers. I hope you find inspiration and encouragement through this lens. May it give you hope and foresight into a brighter future for our Indigenous people.”

EAST. The purpose of the NATIVE A M E R IC A N L E A DE R SH I P I N EDUCATION cohort is to enable UNM College of Education and Human Sciences Department of Teacher Education, Educational Leadership, and Policy to address specific needs within tribal and broader Native American educational leadership in New Mexico.

NALE demonstrates UNM’s commitment

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

bachelor of arts degree in psychology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and master of arts degree in counseling at the University of New Mexico.

“The NALE cohort doctoral program at the University of New Mexico provides me with an Indigenous focus on educational leadership and the incredible opportunity to learn and collaborate with a group of Native American educational professionals. The professors in the NALE doctoral program are phenomenal. As a result, I have gained insight into how to fulfill my desire to positively contribute as a Native educator in the leadership roles I serve. It is an honor to be a part of the NALE cohort doctoral program,” Danielle shares.

Danielle holds a strong commitment to working and bridging tribal communities and students with post-secondary opportunities through college

to American Indian education in tribal, rural, and urban communities.

Intentional curriculum and program development address the unique needs of communities in the P-20 pipeline (partnerships to streamline education from preschool through university) while increasing the number of Native American leaders across the education spectrum in New Mexico, as well as nationally and internationally. NALE truly opens doors for many to achieve in educational programs. Indigenous models, perspectives, readings, and ways of teaching are very inclusive of distinct individual cultures. Conversations about the future of American Indian higher education and the right to exercise tribal sovereignty to the fullest bring the cohort together to blend ideas of bridging Western academics and Native American teaching. coehs.unm.edu

and grew up in Fort Defiance, Arizona, and am from Tsé dah tah, a canyon near Lupton, Arizona. I live with my husband and three children in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and have worked at the University of New Mexico for 15 years.

I was the first graduate of the Native American Leadership in Education program in the inaugural cohort and earned my doctor of education degree (EdD) in educational leadership. I appreciated the Indigenous-centered doctoral program and the chance to learn from amazing faculty. I am so grateful for the cohort model, especially with the opportunity to create lasting friendships with other Native doctoral students. I liked that for our dissertation we were asked to consider what Native community we wanted to work with and how we could indigenize our research. I am so thankful for the UNM NALE program.”

SOUTH. “Yá'át'ééh, I am CATHERINE N. MONTOYA and am Dibé łizhiní (Blacksheep clan) born for Táchii'nii (Red Running into the Water clan).

My maternal grandfather is Haltsooí (Meadow People), and my paternal grandfather is Tł’ááshchí'í (Red Bottom clan). I am a citizen of the Navajo Nation

WEST. DANIELLE YEPA GUNDERSON is a proud citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and descends from Jemez and Laguna Pueblos in New Mexico. She is the associate director of college counseling and director of Native American studies at Sandia Preparatory School (Sandia Prep) in Albuquerque. She earned her

above, left Native American Leadership in Education cohort at the University of New Mexico. Left to right: Marsha Hubbell-Espinosa (Diné), Ophelia Marie Sanchez (Diné), Danielle Yepa Gunderson (Chickasaw/Jemez/Laguna), Sarah Curley (Diné), and Nonabah Sam (Diné/Tesuque Pueblo). above, right Danielle Yepa Gunderson (Chickasaw/Jemez/ Laguna). All images courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted. opposite Nonabah Sam. Image courtesy of the American Indian Graduate Center.

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 17

TAKE HOME A TREASURE FROM INDIAN COUNTRY

TAKE HOME A TREASURE FROM INDIAN COUNTRY SEVEN DIRECTIONS

BUY WORKS PRODUCED BY MEMBERS OF FEDERALLY RECOGNIZED TRIBES The Indian Arts and Crafts Board (IACB) offers a Source Directory of American Indian and Alaska Native Owned and Operated Arts and Crafts Businesses that sell authentic Native American art and craftwork, which is available at www.doi.gov/iacb.

Under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, it is unlawful to offer or display for sale, or sell, any art or craft product in a manner that falsely suggests it is Indian produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian or Indian tribe or Indian arts and crafts organization.

For a free brochure on the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, including how to file a complaint, please contact the Indian Arts and Crafts Board.

Evans Flammond, Sr., Rosebud Sioux, Dog Soldier Red Moon, Ledger Art, ©2014

counseling and volunteer opportunities. Supporting efforts to serve Native American and Indigenous peoples in secondary and post-secondary institutions is her focus. Danielle speaks from personal experience on identifying and taking ownership of her Native American heritage, a significant component of who she is as an individual and professional.

NORTH. “My name is MARSHA HUBBELL-ESPINOSA, and I am currently an assistant principal at Rio Rancho High School in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. I am a member of the Navajo Nation. I was raised by my grandparents in Steamboat Canyon, Arizona, and am a Ganado High School alumnus. After experiencing a high turnover rate of principals in my 21 years in education, I sought a doctoral degree and applied to the NALE cohort through the University of New Mexico. The NALE doctoral cohort has provided a deep reflection of who I am as an Indigenous leader through collaboration, coursework, and research. The doctoral cohort has also provided an understanding of how the educational system has come to be for our 18 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Native American population and where it needs to go. Indigenizing the educational system is key to making a greater impact in shaping the future of education.”

ABOVE. “My name is SARAH CURLEY. I am from Coyote Canyon, Brimhall Nizhoni, New Mexico. I am a Diné. My maternal clan is the Red House clan, born for the One Who Walks Around clan. My maternal grandfather’s clan is the Towering House clan, and my paternal grandfather’s clan is the Yellow House/Cliff Dwellers People clan. I have four adult children. I have seven grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

The loss of my second-born son in 2008 drives me to do better and find ways to help young people and their families.

Presently I am a participant in the UNM Native American Leaders in Education cohort 3 and started my doctoral studies in fall 2019. The NALE program has afforded me a multitude of opportunities to learn and to keep moving forward. I was given a vision by my maternal grandparents to go to school and learn so I can be self-sufficient and help others with my educational

U.S. Department of the Interior Indian Arts and Crafts Board Toll Free: 1-888-ART-FAKE or 1-888-278-3253 Email: iacb@ios.doi.gov Web: www.doi.gov/iacb

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

experiences, skills, and knowledge. My doctoral studies have brought me full circle by teaching me and reminding me how vital it is for me to know my place of being and my place of knowing who I am, no matter where I travel in life. These reminders are teachings from my ancestors, my Elders, and my grandparents.

I am a seed of their prayers, teachings, conditioning, and values. Without them and my professors at the University of New Mexico Albuquerque campus and their encouragement, I would not have climbed as high as I have on the educational ladder. Or had it not been for the Long Walk taken by my Diné people and for our community ancestor, forefather, maternal great-grandfather, Chief Manuelito [1818–1893], who prayed that his Diné people would earn professional degrees and return home to help the less fortunate. The spirituality of my Elders is exceptionally strong, and it brings higher education to fruition for all those who want it. I honor my grandparents for this wonder and dream that they planted in my heart and mind. Hózhó.”

BELOW. “I am OPHELIA MARIE SANCHEZ. I am Tábąąhá, the Water’s Edge clan from my mother, and I carry the family Hispanic name Marie from my father. I was born on the reservation. I grew up in Nakaibito (Mexican Springs), New Mexico. I currently serve my community as the director of cultural education.” Ophelia leads the Gallup McKinley County Schools’ cultural education department.

“The Native American Leadership in Education cohort supports my work in making a positive impact on schools on my reservation, reinforcing my knowledge to continue to help teachers and students build success for all. I have been in education for 28 years, and it is my job to prepare students for their future.… All students should learn about the world outside or between the reservation borderlines, what the world has to offer them, and how they can succeed.

The NALE cohort has built a strong foundation in my professional growth, ethics,

above, left Corn Pollen model of wellbeing developed by Shawn Secatero, PhD (Diné), University of New Mexico associate professor. right Sarah Curley (Diné) speaking about kinship. opposite Ophelia Marie Sanchez (Diné), head of Gallup McKinley County Schools cultural education department.

and experience so I can use my voice and knowledge to support and develop successful academic accomplishments for the Native American Navajo students.”

CENTER. Knowing the history of AMERICAN INDIAN EDUCATION and the way our ancestors were subjected to a forceful way of learning will always be a bigger part of history that remains untold. Policies today are different, but the system remains in place. We have schools on reservations that have little to no attention, and the poor infrastructure continues to be part of a reality that is unseen by many. The University of New Mexico has allowed itself to shine a light on a path for Native American students like Nonabah, Catherine, Sarah, Marsha, Ophelia, Danielle, and the new cohort who will be starting soon. The pillar of the NALE cohort is the Corn Pollen model that was developed by Dr. Shawn Secatero (Diné). This model was what we used to help us develop our skills and transform into the leaders each of us has become and is becoming.

To many Indigenous people, corn is considered very sacred. To paraphrase the Corn Stalk Ceremony at Big Bead Mesa, New Mexico: “You are created as a seed that is rooted in our sacred Mother Earth to honor your purpose, mind, body, and relations. Expand your roots, grow your leaves of knowledge, stand strong as a cornstalk, and sprout your beautiful tassels to blossom for your people.

Always remember who you are, where you are from, and where you are going in life. Create and continue your legacy by following the corn pollen path through education, well-being, and leadership.”1

1. Shawn Lee Secatero, Beneath Our Sacred Minds, Hands, and Hearts: Stories of Persistence and Success among American Indian Graduate and Professional Students (PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 2009).

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 19

LEGENDS ON TWO WHEELS Motorcycles and Bikers in Ledger Art

By James G. Bland

E

VERY MOTORIST driving down the interstate notices a leather-clad biker. Bikers and their hogs capture the imagination with their speed and strength—just like a warrior on horseback. The impact of both comes through in the work of a cadre of contemporary ledger artists. To see warriors in headdresses straddling road hogs, fancy dancers in their shawls zooming in a Cadillac, or bison skulls morph into tire marks and racing gears may seem anachronistic, but the ongoing success of motorcycle art and the inclusion of Native culture in the broader biker scene says otherwise. The story of ledger artists’ adoption of biker culture and motorcycle motifs is a delightful story of old styles living on in new, vibrant forms.

The best place to begin the story of bikes in Indian Country is, of course, the Indian Motorcycle Company. Founded in 1903, Indian Motorcycle was a direct competitor with Harley Davidson.

The Springfield, Massachusetts–based 20 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

company contended as the domestic leader in cycle manufacturing. With plants across the country, Indian manufactured for both the public consumer and the US military. Like many products in the 20th century, Indian Motorcycle advertised with stereotypical images of stoic and hard-featured Native American men wearing war bonnets.

Indian used model names like “Scout” and “Chief ” to capitalize on the Old West mythology of the era. The company went bankrupt in 1953, relegating its name and models to nostalgia. For the next 70 years, Harley-Davidson dominated the domestic manufacture of motorcycles until Indian Motorcycle was reinvigorated after being bought by conglomerate Polaris Industries in 2011.

The Indian Motorcycle biker community has readily embraced the implications of the brand’s name. Internet message boards are abuzz with users swapping stories, artwork, and paint jobs that link their “steel ponies” to the Native

people who gave their name to the motorcycle. This takes many forms. Riders share a reverence for ancestral tribal land (the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota are the historical home of the Lakota and the site of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally that annually draws more than 500,000 people). Notable is the respect bikers show for the military legacy of Native American warriors, as many bikers are themselves veterans.

A GATHERING OF ANOTHER KIND takes place at the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge. The challenge commemorates the past and positively promotes biker culture of the present. The challenge is a country-spanning journey that promotes values of self-reliance, endurance, reverence for the American natural landscape, and extended family. James Red Cloud Durham (Oglala Lakota, 1955–2017) and Elizabeth Durham first organized the annual event in 2010. Each year the challenge follows a different route to send riders to new parts of America.

The name Hoka Hey comes from a Lakota phrase meaning, “Let’s go!” or “Let’s do it!” Riders encourage each other to camp under the stars and to make a spiritual preparation before the ride. The challengers forge deeper connections to the land and discover new layers of themselves. Each participant is encouraged to raise money for a charitable cause. Many work with tribal governments or chambers of commerce to promote development for Native American communities.

The 2022 Challenge begins and ends in the Black Hills, sacred to Lakota people. The theme, Remember (Kiksuya in Lakota), honors the ride’s late founder Jim Red Cloud. It also commemorates the Battle of Greasy Grass (Little Big Horn) by starting on June 26, when the battle took place in 1876. Elizabeth Durham says, “We want people to remember the cost of Westward expansion.”

PLAINS NARRATIVE ARTWORK has documented warriors’ brave deeds for thousands of years, from petroglyphs and pictographs to hide painting. With the 17th- and 18th-century adoption of the horse, Plains tribes developed new nomadic lifestyles that required graphic symbols to quickly be decoded even when in motion.1 In the mid-19th century, Western materials such as muslin cloth and paper became available to Great Plains artists. Recycled ledger account books provided convenient and portable artistic supports and gave a new art movement its name: ledger art.

The first wave of ledger artists, from the pre-reservation era of the 1850s into the early 1920s, recorded histories and lifeways they witnessed firsthand. Ledger artists like Black Hawk (Sans Arc Lakota, c. 1832–1889) and Silver Horn (Kiowa, 1860–1940) used straightforward representation with a limited color palette.

This first generation focused foremost on storytelling.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, second wave of ledger artists emerged. With access to a much wider range of painting and drawing supplies, they experimented freely and portrayed historical imagery of horse culture interspersed with scenes from contemporary Native life.

above US Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Wolf, A Brief Stop on Holy Soil, photograph, 2014.

Lakota Tribal Nations Veterans Cemetery in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, on the Hoka Hey Challenge Ride (CC BY-SA 4.0). opposite Jim Yellowhawk (Cheyenne River Lakota/Onondaga), Seven Indians and One Harley Hog in 1912, photograph, 2015, pen and ink, color pencil on antique 1912 ledger paper. Photo: Mike Wolforth, Rapid City, South Dakota. Image courtesy of the artist.

Beginning in the 2010s, ledger art exploded in popularity. This third wave of ledger art created intricately lined and brilliantly colored styles that strategically used historical documents as content-laden collage elements that either complement or ironically contrast with the foreground imagery. Abstract, geometric styles of parfleche bags, quillwork, and beadwork, once exclusively women’s art forms, became incorporated into ledger artists’ borders and backgrounds. True to the medium’s roots, most ledger art depicts a single scene, such as people or animals on the move.

Many ledger artists use this format to bridge history to today’s realities.

IN CRAZY HORSE, SOUTH DAKOTA, I first met EVANS FLAMMOND SR. (Sicangu Lakota) at an art fair. His energy, even while seated with one hand glued to the drawing board, attracted patrons across the hall.

What distinguishes Flammond’s art from other ledger artists is his texture work. Many layers, patiently and delicately applied with alternating

pressure, give Flammond’s work a rich density. Using earth paints, markers, or colored pencils, Flammond is a master of gradient. It’s not uncommon for viewers to assume he uses an airbrush. He uses the slow, granular-detail blend to make the bright colors flow together in sleek transitions. When he was demonstrating his technique to me, he used the same flattened-out marker head to highlight the treads of tire tracks and the cascade of a woman’s hair. “It’s about showing motion,” he told me.

Flammond’s internationally recognized work combines the angular, geometric style of historical ledger art with wild color schemes and subjects.

Men in regalia ride motorcycles as buffalo skulls open to reveal gears and engines, and horns turn into switchblades. In other works, horses rear skyward, and man and woman snuggle together in a richly textured courtship blanket.

“I put in everything,” Flammond says. “It’s Native, it’s in. Horse tracks, buffalo tracks, the geometric work, it’s all part of the Black Hills.”

1. Joe Horse Capture and heather ahtone, “The Continuum of Plains Pictorial Tradition,” First American Art Magazine no. 8 (Fall 2015): 34–39 NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 21

Flammond took up art as a child.

“The eagle gave me the gift. It happened when I was seven” during a family car ride to Valentine, Nebraska. “I fell asleep and barely had my head on the window, then the hot sun disappeared, and I felt shade. I opened my eyes and it felt dark.

It took a minute to see this golden eagle.

It was there for a minute and then flew off into the deep blue sky.” The eagle has been an inspiration ever since. “The eyes have to be just right. He’s got to be mean and happy at the same time. That’s the kind of life he leads.” Each of Flammond’s pieces depicts a small eagle.

Flammond has applied his style to the physical models of motorcycles. For the 75th anniversary celebration at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, South Dakota, Flammond painted the full model of a 1904 Indian Scout Motorcycle.

“I got it into my heart, and I decided to make a showstopper.” A private collector bought the motorcycle immediately.

Flammond’s work particularly appeals to bikers who he has encountered at art fairs and rallies. “It’s simple as this: they’re hardcore, bikers, and they love 22 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

[Plains heritage] and want to hear the stories.” Flammond’s jolly nature engages people from all over the world, but his work particularly resonates with bikers.

“Not one that I met didn’t respect the culture or want to learn more about it.”

Flammond comments that one day he’d like to fully deck out a ride of his own. “It’s good to be busy, but I’ve never had the time. I had a chopper and painted my own bikes back in the day, but [now] I never have the time.” He sees Native references and images on bikes more and more these days, riding across the Plains. “Sometimes I’m going to make the whole thing decked out—so that’s a whole deer or buffalo robe, like a story on two wheels.”

BIKING AND LEDGER ART are both very much alive in the career of JIM YELLOWHAWK (Cheyenne River Lakota/Onondaga), a member of the Itázipčho or Sans Arc band. As a ledger, collage, and digital artist; a painter; and a powwow dancer, Yellowhawk’s multifaceted career seamlessly complements his love of bikes, a love that began when he was a young boy on the Cheyenne River

Reservation. “Probably when I was maybe 12 or 13 years old … my father bought me my first motorcycle, and I think it started there. That was my calling to ride.”

L iv i ng i n t he Bl a ck Hi l ls , Yellowhawk has combined his artistic expertise with motorcycles for years.

He frequently exhibits art at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. “I always had requests for doing bikes, and my specialty was doing original works. But during [each annual] rally, I’d always come up with a new image for collectors every year.”

Sturgis is not only a biker rally but also an extended arts and music festival with plenty of connections made. “The big one was when I had permission

by Indian Motorcycle from Gilroy … they asked me to ‘design out’ a bike for them, an Indian Chief. They wanted to recognize Native Americans, so I worked with [them], and the funds from the sale went to Native charities.” As a unique addition to the customized motorcycle, Yellowhawk created a ledger drawing of the same modified bike, complete with the same parfleche-stylized saddlebags of his own design.

He attributes his artwork’s appeal to his blend of historical Great Plains life with images from pop culture. “I’ve done pieces of the buffalo hunt [with riders on horseback], and in the middle I’ll just put a guy with a bike. A lot of times people don’t notice.” In Anansi and Iktomi (2018), Crazy Horse Memorial’s exhibition about the Spider, Yellowhawk created a ledger piece blending the trickster character with Spiderman’s design.

Yellowhawk elevated the mixedmedia possibilities of ledger art.

Sometimes he will collage material together, including three-dimensional objects. “I’m always challenging myself to do something different … I don’t ever want to be stuck. So I started gluing things together or collaging news articles together,” the artist explains.

Yellowhawk has been doing ledger art almost as long as he has been riding.

“I started doing ledgers probably back in the 1980s. There were only a few artists doing it, and then it all started to grow.

Now everybody’s doing it.”

CONNECTING THE PAST WITH TODAY, in ways humorous or profound, has always been one of ledger art’s strengths. In the case of DOLORES PURDY (Caddo/Winnebago), ledger art presented itself as she was finding her roots. While researching the Caddo prisoner of war at Fort Marion, Florida, she studied the Red River War veteran’s ledger art depicting their lives on the Southern Plains. From there, as her artist’s statement reads: “I researched the historic ledgers and read every book I could find, [and made] numerous road trips to see some of the old ones. After extensive research, this resulted in pursuing this art medium.”

Among Plains tribes, narrative and figurative artwork has often, but not always, historically been men’s domain.

“For more than two decades,” Purdy writes, “I have followed the specific art form by using the same medium of antique paper and color pencils, only creating a contemporary version from a female perspective.”

Purdy’s experience layering watercolors compliments her use of colored pencils to layer primary, pastel, and neon levels of energy into her scenes. This use

of colors harkens back to her teenage years in the early ’70s. “The psychedelic and pop art movements, especially Peter Max’s artwork, are huge influences in my work. I am also drawn to the clean, straight lines of the Art Deco movement with the elongated, somewhat disproportionate figures.”

Purdy’s choice of scenes is as distinct as her color palette. “As a woman, I feel it is important to bring the female perspective to this art form and to show Native Plains women are not so different from any other people. We have fun; we honor our ancestors. I do purposely veer far from the usual imagery typically seen in most contemporary ledger art.”

She continues, “My philosophy is to have fun. I like fun images that tell a story. I frequently have a faceless warrior or a woman look out at the view. I do not put a face on my figures (except for the horse) because I want viewers to read into the face or conversation what they would like to see or hear.”

above, top Jim Yellowhawk (Cheyenne River Lakota/Onondaga), Tatanka Run 1912, photograph, 2015, pen and ink, color pencil on antique 1912 ledger paper. Photo: Mike Wolforth, Rapid City, South Dakota. Image courtesy of the artist. above, bottom Jim Yellowhawk riding a custom Indian Motorcycle in the Black Hills of South Dakota, 2009, Prisma by Dukas Presseagentur GmbH/Alamy. Photo: Christian Heeb. Used with permission. opposite Evans Flammond Sr. (Sicangu Lakota), Iron Horse, 2015, ink, gouache on antique ledger paper. Image courtesy of the artist.

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 23

above Dolores Purdy (Caddo/ Winnebago), Rez Racers II, 2020, colored pencil, ink on antique ledger paper, 16 × 13 in. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite, top Mel War Eagle (Oglala Lakota), Native Outlaw, bandana, 22 × 22 in. Image courtesy of the artist and Seven Fires Art, sevenfiresart.com. opposite, bottom Dolores Purdy (Caddo/Winnebago), Rez Racers, 2018, colored pencil, ink on antique ledger paper, 16 × 13 in.

Image courtesy of the artist.

24 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

As a resident of Española, New Mexico, “The Lowrider Capital of the World,” Purdy doesn’t have to go far to get inspired. “We have some great car and truck shows nearby, and it is fun to go see what these young men and women have done to their vehicles. There are such creative and colorful images and paint jobs, as well as the hydraulics that are works of art.”

Regarding her historic papers, Purdy says: “I do try to use paper that may have another level of meaning or interest. For example, I like to use court documents when drawing scenes of hunting bison. Sometimes the guys would be off the ‘reservation’ assigned to them while hunting game. This could lead to big trouble, and the ‘Record of Paroled Persons’ or the ‘District Court of Osage County, Kansas’ are great sheets for the bison hunts.”

Purdy records titles in her crisp handwriting. Caddo-lac Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is a tongue-in-cheek ode to the Cyndi Lauper ’80s song. One can imagine the girls in this piece singing to the song as they travel down the road. Purdy’s Route 66 neon colors, along with her lighthearted style, keep the legacy of ledger art alive in an upbeat way.

FOR THOSE UNFAMILIAR with Native peoples, stereotypes often portray Native history as static. MELVIN WAR EAGLE (Oglala Lakota) of Kyle, South Dakota, says: “Most of my life, non-Natives would continually ask me if my people still lived in tipis. When doing a simple Google search on the topic of Native Americans, I was surprised that most of the images seen were either old portraits of our ancestors in headdresses or powwow dancers. When these are the only images you have to rely on, I can fully understand why non-Natives think

that we have never moved on from the 1800s and that we all live in tipis.”

War Eagle creates in today’s fashion world with strong foundations from his Lakota heritage. The slogan for his work is, “Art made to wear.” Some of the most popular items in his catalogue include bandanas, scarves, and neckwear printed with Lakota designs, which are popular among bikers. Biking and Indigenous Plains lifeways are not as removed as first meets the eye, as War Eagle explains: “Through my artwork, I show how we are combining our traditions with the modern way of living. Tradition to me is preserving the true essence of what our ancestors had taught us.… Traditional rituals are essential and can be easily combined with modern life. I feel that living in both of these aspects allows for a balanced and harmonious society.”

War Eagle’s striking reds and blacks, sleek, speeding linework, and angular geometry work together to support the featured objects of bandana-clad skulls, feathers, screeching eagles, tipis, or stars.

He sells through Seven Council Fires Native Art, a nonprofit art gallery at sevenfiresart.com that represents Lakota and other Native American artists. One of his signature lines is bandanas. Many of his works are made on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and he prints his work onto objects he proudly sees as everyday items.

“When I started my art career, I did not want people to buy my work and put it on a wall,” War Eagle explains. “I thought how sad it would be if this was it.

My whole goal was to give the individual who owned my work the ability to be part of its never-ending journey. I wanted my artwork to live, to breathe, be an extension of the buyer’s life.”

Growing up in Lakota country, War Eagle also worked his way through the biker’s world. “I am a qualified motorcycle mechanic. Motorcycles are one of my passions. There is nothing like having the wind against your body as you are traveling through the countryside on a warm summer day. I suppose this is the modern conversion of the horse when you think about it.”

War Eagle is thankful for how his work makes meaningful connections with the individuals who collect it. “I have found bikers respond very positively

to my bandanas. At first it was due to them being different. As time went on, many bikers began to appreciate the understanding behind the design itself.

This biker culture to me represents the camaraderie and support for each other.

It is knowing that we belong and are accepted for just being who we are.”

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 25

ONÖNDOWA'GA:' COMBS An Historic Seneca Art Form Revived

By Joe Stahlman, PhD (Tuscarora descent), and Hayden Haynes (Seneca)

T

HE ONÖNDOWA'GA:' (PEOPLE OF THE GREAT HILL, OR SENECA) are one of six nations comprising the Hodinöhsö:ni' Confederacy, or Haudenosaunee. Hodinöhsö:ni' (People of the Longhouse) have long been referred to as “Iroquois,” however the term Iroquois is derived from a 16th-century Basque-Algonquian word meaning “Killer People” or “Snake People.” This family of nations includes the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora. Throughout the article we will interchangeably use Onöndowa'ga:' and Seneca.

The Onöhsagwë:de' Cultural Center (OCC) in Salamanca, New York, is owned by the Seneca Nation of Indians, and the entire staff is composed of Hodinöhsö:ni' people. The OCC houses the Nation’s archives, collections, tribal historic preservation office, and the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum. At the OCC, located on Seneca Nation’s Allegany Territory, we spend a part of each day considering cultural items in several different contexts and for varying reasons. Depending on the given tasks, we try to isolate characteristics ranging from everyday use to aesthetics to ceremonial to the sacred. We do realize that the distinctions we strive to tease apart cannot ever be fully separated.

On the flip side, for upcoming exhibitions we try to focus on objects as holistically as possible; however, it is impossible to fully convey our connection to their intangible aspects. We engage in continuous conversations about the placement of objects in ongoing and future exhibitions, and how they are housed in the collections. An area we are sensitive about is how much to share with our guests. In some cases, we question if it is appropriate to display a seemingly mundane object. However, our positions change when we reconsider their deeper importance to us.

One set of objects of great interest is bone and antler combs. These items have a long history throughout all Hodinöhsö:ni' communities, even though we tend to see the comb as something common and taken for granted in the 21st century. Combs were not made or used solely for utilitarian or aesthetic purposes, but rather as a component in a variety 26 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

above Onöhsagwë:de' Cultural Center staff Tristan Jimerson (Seneca), left, and Johnna "Jonie" Crouse (Seneca), right, installing a new exhibition in 2022. All images courtesy of the authors/artists. opposite, top Hayden Haynes (Seneca), Tadodaho, 2017 elk antler, stain, oak base, 18 × 14 in., private collection. Photo: H. Haynes. opposite, bottom Hayden Haynes (Seneca), Reproduction of a circa 1670 Seneca comb, 2018, antler. Photo: H. Haynes.

of practices. For Hodinöhsö:ni' peoples a comb does more than clean and untangle one’s hair. As an object, it reminds all Hodinöhsö:ni' of our commonality. Combing one’s hair is a profoundly philosophical concept that is expressed as a meditative practice that becomes transformative for users.

Combing one’s hair is a Hodinöhsö:ni' metaphor with multiple uses. For brevity, we will only highlight two reoccurring themes from stories. The two themes are universal to human experience but culturally relevant for us. Combing can interpret the visions and/or dreams of another, that is, combing out their spiritual meaning. One old story tells of an old woman who meets a stranger. She is told to comb her hair. As the old woman combs, she becomes younger. Other stories depict the combing of hair as a way to induce fertility. Combing can also untangle the confused and hostile thoughts of someone who is in moral or mental destitution. For example, unkempt hair is also associated with death and mourning; the loss of a loved one requires no explanation. The combing of one’s hair is a practice of getting past the grieving period (transformation). Even now, the use of combs continues to transform. Some of our communities continue to use the combing of one’s hair in ways befitting of our times.

Our first example is in our Creation Story with the conception of Sky Woman. She has many names throughout her existence. For simplicity, we will only refer to her as Sky Woman. She is the first woman on Turtle Island. In one version Sky Woman’s mother entertained a man she did not love. Each day Sky Woman’s mother enticed him by “disentangling” his hair.

Nonetheless, the unfortunate man, the father of Sky Woman, died before she was born and was left as a sky burial in the highest tree in Sky World. Sky Woman grew up quickly in constant mourning for the father she never knew, prompting her grandmother to show her where her father had been buried.

Her father’s absence becomes the source of her quest.

Our second example informs us of how our ancestors formed the Hodinöhsö:ni' Confederacy. The story reminds us how the confederacy was formed from the ashes of constant war and destruction and how peace is preferred. A prophet called the Peacemaker originated from the Huron and traveled across Turtle Island bringing peace. His first convert, Jikonsase, was a mercenary who sold her services to any passing nation. His second believer Hiawatha, a Mohawk chief in mental anguish, finally mourns and releases the pain of his losses.

Peacemaker and Hiawatha take on the last of the warring chiefs, Tadodaho. Jikonsase sang songs with beautiful words to heal his mind. Based on her suggestion, they sing a healing song to Tadodaho. His anger subsided with each singing. Eventually, he is able to hear the Peacemaker’s message, and his twisted mind and body straightened. Then, Hiawatha was able to comb the snakes from Tadodaho’s hair. Tadodaho accepted the Peacemaker’s message of the Great Law of Peace, and the responsibility to become the Firekeeper of the Confederacy’s Grand Council.

The job of the Tadodaho, from that day on, is to promote Peace, Power, and Righteousness. From this great act, Hiawatha earned the name “He Who Combs.”

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MATERIALS & TECHNIQUES LIKE OTHER PEOPLES on Turtle Island, the Hodinöhsö:ni' employed stone, wood, bone, and antler for most of their utilitarian, ceremonial, and ornamental materials before the 16th century.

Transforming materials like antler and bone are not secondary byproducts or “leftovers” of a hunting society only focused on animals for meat and fur.

Once part of a living being, the Hodinöhsö:ni' view these items as having spiritual powers; more so with the energy dictated to its transformation into another useful item. Coupled with their natural origins, combs are considered tools of transformation. Oftentimes, animal parts used as ornamentation provided the wearer with a connection to the spirit and the power of that animal.

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The vast majority of combs are manufactured from the flat section of elk and whitetail deer antlers, although wood and bone were sometimes used.

Moose antler was sometimes used, but less often than elk and whitetail due to the scarcity of moose in Hodinöhsö:ni' regions. To get a desired section out of a piece of antler and bone into a “blank” (trapezoidal or rectangular shape), artists used various techniques, one of which is the score-and-snap technique. The artist scored areas around the desired section to create a groove that weakens the material enough to be snapped off. A chert flake or a rodent incisor could be used for scoring.

Among rodent incisors, the beavers’ were most commonly used, particularly the incisors from the lower jaw; lower jaw incisors are relatively straight. Sometimes the incisor was extracted from the jaw, and sometimes it was left in place and the mandible was used as a handle. Once the artist scored grooves around the desired

sections, the maker would hit the object with a rock or stone axe to break the piece at the grooved sections. Alternatively, the creator could knock the antler against a rock to break the piece.

Water was used to weaken the material. Soaking the piece in a vinegar-like solution to soften the material might have been used historically.

Soaking it in limewater afterward would harden the material again. Smoothing and shaping the piece could be accomplished by rubbing the piece on an abrasive rock such as sandstone, or vice versa. Artists engraved designs and cut out negative spaces, figures, and teeth with the tools previously mentioned. After the arrival of Europeans, metal knives became the tool of choice in carving combs, especially the teeth and ornamental tops. Today, artists working with this material use tools like Dremels and Foredoms with a variety of attachments.

COMBS BEFORE THE 16TH CENTURY BONE COMBS are among the more striking implements made by our people.

Archaeologist Arthur C. Parker (Seneca, 1888–1955) showed how comb styles changed over time. Older expressions have three or four large teeth, perhaps one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter or more. Prior to the 16th century, combs were much larger and were made up of three parts: top, base, and teeth. The tops are usually plain, although there are many examples with perforations around the edges. They generally have three to five teeth and are engraved with various geometric designs based on Hodinöhsö:ni' cosmology. The fivetooth design can symbolize a hand—a reminder of how our hands served as our first combs. In addition to being worn in the hair, combs sometimes had holes that suggest that they were strung as a necklace or hung at the waist.

As available tool technologies changed, so did the expressions of combs. Steel cutting implements allowed combs to assume entirely new forms that resemble our contemporary back combs.

By the 17th century, combs had about 15 to 20 teeth, generally two inches long, and above these rose a decorative top or handle carved with a variety of effigies, everything from animals to human figures to geometric designs. Finally, combs were not the bone-dry white remains we often see today. Combs were very ornate and covered in paints, feathers, and other refinements, which beautified the wearer.

The rise of more intricate Hodinöhsö:ni' objects also has been attributed to increased downtime as a result of refined agricultural practices.

Twentieth-century anthropologists and archaeologists suggested that men crafted the combs; however, we believe women were the creators of combs. Their roles in pottery making, animal processing, etc., make it highly probable that they led the way in comb making.

THE SENECA DECORATIVE COMB ERA SENECA DECORATIVE COMBS have been dated to 1400 CE. The main four materials used for decorative Seneca combs during this period are antler (80 percent), bone (10 percent), followed by wood, and possibly bison or cow horns.

The Seneca produced more decorative combs than any other Hodinöhsö:ni' nation. More than 250 Seneca combs have been found to date, but the number is estimated to be much higher. The Cayuga Nation produced the second most. Due to the close proximity of the Seneca and Cayuga and similarities in crafted items, attributing the correct nation of the comb maker can prove difficult. This proximity, coupled with the influence of other non-Hodinöhsö:ni' Nations due to constant adoption and absorption, suggests that not all combs at Seneca-designated sites were created

by Seneca people.

above Diagram of parts of a Haudenosaunee comb, by Charles F. Wray with adaptations. opposite Hayden Haynes (Seneca, Deer clan) with Randee Spruce (Seneca, Heron clan), Sisterhood, 2021, elk antler, stain, silver hooks, 3½ × 2¼ in., private collection. Representing corn husk dolls. Carved

by Haynes, trees and fabric designs by Spruce. Photo: H. Haynes.

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 29

life and death are very much a part of our dualist worldview. What is often described as supernatural is actually spiritual because of our connection to spirits and forces of the world.

The climax of the production of decorative Seneca combs occurred in the mid-17th century. It was common to see combs with up to 25 teeth. Comb fronts became intricately carved, and carvings appeared on the back sides. Also note that ornaments related to the head, ears, and neck served not only as personal decorative works but as highly regarded items with spiritual powers. Typically, these highly prized objects were worn mostly by women and children; unfortunately, we know this information from 19th-century settler and 20th-century scientific grave robbing. Knowing what we know about combs and their significance, we would expect them to accompany the owners into death.

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY COMBS

above Hayden Haynes (Seneca), detail of A Message from Our Ancestors, 2021, carved antler comb pendant, dyes, carved antler beads, antique glass trade beads, pendant 7 × 4 in. Photo: H. Haynes. opposite, top Hayden Haynes (Seneca), Sunflower Wolves earrings, 2022, carved moose antler, paint, silver hooks, 3 × 2 in. each, private collection.

Photo: H. Haynes.

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Metal tools allowed an increase in the complexity of designs by the 16th century. Various mammal effigies found on decorative Seneca combs include the bear, panther, wolf, dog, horse, beaver, lynx, deer, and otter. Many of the birds identified are snipes and herons. Frogs, snakes, and lizards also occur on combs.

In addition, human effigies (both Native and non-Native) appear on combs during this period. A common theme is mirrored images of figures or images of two figures on the top of decorative combs. Often the physical and negative spaces have equal importance in the symbolism they communicate. The mirrored images often reflect on Hodinöhsö:ni’ concepts of the Hodinöhsö:ni’ Confederacy and the dualities of life. For the Hodinöhsö:ni',

TODAY CONTINUED EFFORTS in decolonizing our communities and revitalizing these ancient art forms are taking place all over Turtle Island.

Contemporary artists continue to learn techniques and incorporate important designs and concepts into newer, innovative works.

Now, more than ever, commentary can be more widely spread due to social media, and artists respond to calls for action and for voices to be heard.

Decolonization and the dismantling of patriarchal systems are continually challenged by long-held customs. In a sense, contemporary combs serve not only as aesthetic expressions, but also as a symbolic gesture of modern-day transformation.

We observe the transformation of combs and of all of the materials under Onöhsagwë:de' Cultural Center’s care. By using combs as an example, we see how people, lifeways, and memory are braided together. We find this empowering.

Colonization fractured the elements and

parts of our community and identities. In many cases, we had to rebuild what was lost. A comb can fortify our identities by the greater context hidden in each item and what they mean to us. Our objects are powerful sites of decolonization, where the transfer of cultural knowledge continues to be passed through the generations. They become refuges where we can come to terms with some of the past and forge the road to peace through healing. These are powerful stories. All we need to do is listen.

Dr. Joe Stahlman (Tuscarora descent) is the director of the Onöhsagwë:de' Cultural Center, which houses the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum and the Tribal Historic Preservation Office for the Seneca Nation on their Allegany Territory.

Hayden Haynes (Seneca, Deer clan) is the museum manager of the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum, an independent curator, and an antler-carving artist based in Seneca-Cattaraugus Territory in New York.

In Memoriam 1955 – 2022

JIM DENOMIE Lac Court Oreilles Band of Ojibwe

FROELICK GALLERY 503 222 1142 Portland, Oregon

Endangered Species, 2019,NO. acrylic paper, 22˝ x 16˝ 34,on SPRING 2022 | 31

DIGITAL FINE ART PRINTMAKING Unlocking New Visual Possibilities

By Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD

D

ESPITE HAVING BEEN A FIXTURE in the art world for several decades, digital art prints are still finding their place in the market and in collections.

Artists have noticed a prejudice against digital printmaking due to concerns over the issues of ownership and copyright, which has led to the reticence collectors and scholars feel towards digital prints.1 A fine art digital print, defined as a high-resolution image developed on a computer or tablet then printed on a high-quality printer, still has what the artist Alex J. Peña (Comanche/Pawnee/San Ildefonso) describes as a stigma, and many do not consider them to be true fine art. Some buyers fear that digital prints will fade after a few decades, while others have difficulty with the concept of originality when prints are in an edition.

Even with these challenges, many artists embrace digital technologies. For these artists, working on a computer offers many new potentialities in the artistic process, which ties into the creative experience more directly. The digital process permits artists to layer and edit an image. Digital processes allow for more details to be integrated, as well as the possibility of new more stylized and dramatic aesthetics. Multiple versions can

be saved, restored, and reedited, offering more options for changing and returning to older forms. Using a computer, a digital composite image can be blended so seamlessly that it seems to be original rather than a collage of disparate elements. Though usually described as photographers, Cara Romero (Chemehuevi) and Will Wilson (Diné) use digital processing to turn their photographs into complex, layered images.

Additionally, digital processes are often less toxic than other forms. For example, film photography uses chemicals to develop the negatives and to print the

image, which can cause health issues when inhaled consistently. Other forms of printmaking, such as lithography, use toxic chemicals that are not only harmful to the individual but the environment as well, and the materials can be difficult to obtain and use. Though computers and printers are not ecologically neutral, the materials are not dangerous to the user.

Digital printmaking is also widely available. Anyone with access to a tablet or a computer and a printer can create an image with minimal costs and mess, unlike painting which necessitates the purchase of paints and canvases, or more historic forms of printmaking like lithography or intaglio that require a press and chemicals for processing. Digital printmaking is also more available to people who are differently abled. Once an image is complete, the results are easy to access and share. Lower prices and the use of tools many students already possess allow them to play and train, building their skills without the clutter and high cost of other art supplies.

The medium of digital printmaking has been moving into the mainstream for several decades. As an artist and academic, John Hitchcock (Comanche) combines historical printmaking techniques with digital processes. For

1. The uncertainty many collectors feel towards purchasing digital art prints has been addressed by different scholars. See John Haworth, “Creativity in Digital Fine Art,” in Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind: Beyond Art Theory and the Cartesian Mind-Body Dichotomy, ed. Alfonso Scarinzi (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2015): 281–96; Yeter Beris, “Effects of Digital Printing Applications on Contemporary Art,” in GRID 2018: 9th International Symposium on Graphic Engineering and Design, ed. Nemanja Kašiković (Novi Sad, Serbia: University of Novi Sad, 2018), 499–507; and Paul Thompson, “Born Digital—New Materialities E-Publication” in Survey of International Printmaking Practitioners #1 (Aberdeen, Scotland: Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, 2011).

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more than two decades, Hitchcock has been the professor of printmaking at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he is also associate dean for the arts in the School of Education. He teaches relief and serigraphy in the art department, which is considered a leader in the field of printmaking. Noted artists such as Joe Feddersen (Okanagan/Sinixt), Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota), and Alex J. Peña trained there. The university teaches digital printmaking as part of its curriculum, including in a foundations course Hitchcock developed to encourage students to combine different images and processes.

Hitchcock views digital printmaking within the history of other print techniques. He notes that digital art’s ability to divide images into separate layers is similar to the technique of printing on multiple matrices. He sees digital technologies as a tool for creating that has touched almost every aspect of image making, including typography, photography, painting, and weaving techniques. For example, when interdisciplinary artist Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee) worked at Tandem Press in Wisconsin, he created the printed design and beadwork patterns of his drums on a computer before they were executed by hand.

While Hitchcock still prefers to draw on paper first and then manipulate the image on the computer, he notices that almost all of his students arrive with some knowledge of computers and mechanical drawing tools. When he asks them to make a sketch for a project, they are far more likely to use a tablet with a stylus in a program like Procreate and Sketchbook than a pad of paper and a pencil. Other drawing programs like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Painter are not as popular for students due to their higher prices.

During his MFA studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Alex J. Peña, an enrolled member of the Comanche Nation in Oklahoma, used digital printmaking to experiment with color, line, and design. Though he is an accomplished draftsperson and painter, he enjoys the printmaking process and the range of images it allows. A computer is another way to make an image, though Peña says that images created on a

computer are “often devalued because viewers do not see the handwork, but really artistic skill is necessary.” Through digital prints, he explores the contrast between the natural and artificial worlds, such as in his Memory Pattern series.

These works combine different types of flowers, exotic species like birds of paradise and more quotidian flowers like carnations, collaged together in Photoshop. He used the flowers to play with types of symmetry, slides, flips, and turns, to consider the geometry of nature seen in Fibonacci number sequences. Named for the 13th-century

above Alex J. Peña (Comanche/ Pawnee/San Ildefonso), Memory Pattern #6, 2018, digital photo collage, 18 × 24 in. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite Jessica Rosemary Harjo (Otoe/Osage/Pawnee/Sac & Fox), Bird Song, 2020, digital print, 42 × 36 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

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above Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez/Korean-American), Ceci N’est Pas Une Indienne, 2014, digital print on ledger paper.

Image courtesy of the artist. opposite Jessica Rosemary Harjo (Otoe/Osage/Pawnee/ Sac & Fox), Skyprints of the Future, 2020, giclée print. Image courtesy of the artist.

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Italian mathematician, Leonardo of Pisa, Fibonacci numbers are a series in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.). These series can be found in structures throughout nature, such as in the spirals of mollusk shells or the branching of trees. In Peña’s prints he often uses 25 to 50 layers from different photographs, arranged to demonstrate and contemplate chaos and order.

As an educator, Peña also observes how comfortable his students are when exploring new technologies. Just like at the University of Wisconsin, Peña’s students are more likely to use a laptop with Procreate rather than pen and paper to sketch. The software taught can replicate aspects of different media, including oil painting, acrylic, watercolor, and intaglio printmaking. For students this approach offers a new and sophisticated option that provides an immediacy to art making. Peña notes that “artists are astute to see what they can use to convey their meaning.”

For Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez/ Korean-American), the advantages of a digital process enabled her to combine contemporary and historic images into a coherent whole. She first started collaging images as a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe in 1992. Yepa-Pappan majored in two- and three-dimensional art and studied with photographer and mixed-media artist Meridel Rubenstein who encouraged her students to collage and layer images to make a single work.

Rubenstein completed her studies at Columbia College Chicago in Illinois, where she first worked with digital art.

Initially reluctant to experiment with the medium because she did not have a computer, Yepa-Pappan discovered that digital processing was an ideal process to accomplish her vision. She could layer, change images, and add text.

For her I Is for Indian series, Yepa-Pappan combined images by late 19th– and early 20th-century photographer Edward Curtis, known for his extensive studies of Native American cultures, with the self-portraits she had taken with an analog camera. Using Photoshop, she superimposed her own face over that of a Plains woman from a Curtis image, then added bright purple braids, reflecting the color of the artist’s hair at that time, and printed a bright floral background.

Yepa-Pappan printed the series on pieces of antique ledger paper, so each artwork in the series is unique, though this added complications to the printing process. She had to work with scraps of paper to test the absorption rate of ledger paper to ensure that it absorbed the ink without smudging.

Her added text, Ceci n’est pas une Indienne (“This is not an Indian”), reflects Belgian Surrealist painter René Magritte’s iconic work La Trahison des Images (1929), or The Treachery of Images, which combines the text Ceci n’est pas une pipe (“This is not a pipe”) with a realistic image of a pipe. Yepa-Pappan replicated the hand-lettering Magritte employed, a distinct form of writing young students use when first learning cursive. Her text repeats the contradiction Magritte introduced between the image and the text.

For Yepa-Pappan, the combination has additional meanings, underscoring the artist’s mixed heritage.

Though she enjoyed the aesthetics of an analog camera, Yepa-Pappan continues to work with a digital camera, because after college she did not have easy access to a dark room and chemicals to develop film and print images. Developing her system took time, but she was drawn further into the process, because she could collage images in Photoshop, layer them, edit them, change backgrounds, and play freely with the different elements. Yepa-Pappan hopes to purchase her own high-quality, archival printer so she won’t have to hire a professional printer. She appreciates digital prints’ lower prices, which make many of them more accessible for diverse buyers, especially for Native American buyers.

Ultimately for Yepa-Pappan, whether she’s working in analog or digital formats, “the process is the same for conceptualizing an idea as it is for a print.” It’s just an artistic process, but the tools are different.

As an artist, graphic designer, and educator, Jessica Harjo, PhD (Otoe/ Osage/Pawnee/Sac & Fox), employs digital designs. She completed her doctoral degree in design from the University of Minnesota, a program introduced in the last decade to teach design and produce research on graphic design and marketing. Her studies contextualized image-making into cultural aesthetics, working with communities, and activism. As part of her thesis work for her graduate program, she laser-cut stencils with digital tools. Children could use these stencils of the Osage syllabary in classrooms to reclaim their ancestral language. Now living in Oklahoma near

Tulsa, she started her own graphic design company, Weomepe Designs, where she also sells her jewelry, apparel, digital prints, and other products. For Harjo, a computer is like any other implement in the art process: “It’s a tool, like choosing a pen or a pencil. It’s an artistic choice.

Digital art allows you to do more. More applications. From jewelry to T-shirt design to fabric design.”

In her graphic designs, Harjo considers the function of her project and chooses the form that best fulfills the need, whether it is a poster, a logo, or a label.

Her design work influences her digital art prints. Harjo believes the different

aspects of her work feed each other. As a graphic designer, she links design and graphics to identity and self-confidence, as seen in the posters she designed for the American Indian Cancer Foundation to convince parents to vaccinate their children for HPV. Harjo uses images such as people playing lacrosse to create a positive emotional response.

Harjo’s approach to her creative endeavors sometimes starts with sketching on paper then scanning or tracing into Adobe Illustrator: “I love the amount of detail Illustrator affords me.” Her work incorporates many small images and patterns, often minute in NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 35

above Adrian Standing Elk Pinnecoose (Diné/Southern Ute), Tranquil Vitality, 2020, digital print on archival paper.

Image courtesy of the artist. opp osite Alex J. Peña (Comanche/Pawnee/San Ildefonso), Memory Pattern #4, 2018, digital photo collage, 20 × 20 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

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scale because the digital process enables easy resizing. Harjo appreciates how she can save multiple versions of an image to create art boards, so she can work on several versions at once. She uses Illustrator to design logos, floral patterns, and ribbonwork.

Harjo creates most of her fine artwork digitally. In Skyprints of the Future (2020), she considered the impact of the COVID pandemic and visualized a place of resiliency for herself and for Native communities. She included images of seeds and plants, Indigenous foods for future generations. Her more recent pieces incorporate different media, including pieces of copper, stainless steel, and brass in designs Harjo creates digitally, then uses an etching process to cut. She collages these elements onto digital prints with acrylic paint, adds the pieces to clothing, and creates jewelry with them. She uses floral designs, water birds, geometric shapes, and ribbonwork patterns from her cultures. Harjo recently showcased her ribbon skirts at a fashion

show at First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City. She is planning a large public artwork for the visitor’s entrance of the Oklahoma State Capital building.

The artwork combines a digital print with digitally cut brass in Art Deco designs reflecting the aesthetics of various Oklahoma tribes.

For Adrian Standing Elk Pinnecoose (Diné/Southern Ute), digital art reflects his architectural training. Pinnecoose received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computational ecologies from the University of New Mexico’s school of architecture and planning. He appreciates how the digital approach creates transparency in the process of his work.

“In architecture, you have to show your process, step by step,” Pinnecoose says.

As seen in the screenshot, working on a computer: “helps me understand the direction I want to go. My two-dimensional art progresses into three dimensions, such as jewelry and fashion.

Architecture helps me to deconstruct my ideas. One of my professors told me you

can take this into any field. I apply everything I learned into all of my designs.”

Digital art allows him to edit his work, though he qualifies that statement with “you have to know when to stop editing and pull back” or one can continue to change the work endlessly.

Pinnecoose grew up in a creative environment. His mother studied at IAIA, where she learned to create in many different media, including jewelry and beadwork. As a child, Pinnecoose accompanied her to her IAIA classes, where he relished the space and creative process.

He enjoyed his time at UNM, especially the collaborative elements, though it was an intense time in terms of work. He continues to work with different artists, including Cody Sanderson (Diné) and Kenneth Johnson (Muscogee/Seminole), to continue his learning process. For his digital art prints like Tranquil Vitality (2020), Pinnecoose combines abstract shapes with flora and fauna, exploring the geometric patterns found in nature.

Though his training has been in architecture, Pinnecoose’s plans do not necessarily involve buildings. He applies an architectural approach using mathematical equations to his digital fine art prints and jewelry. He uses the number four throughout his work to represent the four directions, the four seasons, and the four stages of life. Historic Diné textile designs form the basis for his patterning, as he plays with the geometric elements, capturing the rhythmic energy. Pinnecoose is also influenced by European Gothic and Baroque architectural designs, especially triforium windows, as well as contemporary architects like Zaha Hadid and Santiago Calatrava.

For his jewelry, Pinnecoose creates the patterns on a computer then prints them on a special three-dimensional printer he was able to purchase after being awarded 2017 fellowship money from Native Treasures and SWAIA. He describes creating his jewelry as weaving with a thread of silver rather than yarn.

A complex bracelet can take from 2 to 36 hours to print, then it needs to be cured, and he removes the excess materials and smooths the edges. Pinnecoose continues to learn and engage with his community, working to raise the status of digital art.

In my research for this article, I found that the line between digital and nondigital art has become less and less distinct. Most media involve a digital process, not just photography and video but also painting, textile design, drawing, and other forms. Currently, most photography is created with a digital camera or has a digital component. The process for creating digital art is also less distinct from the approach to other media. As Peña noted: “Fundamentally, the process doesn’t change. Art is art. The basics of composition remain the same. Just another tool for the artist.” The technique can be generative as digital designs can translate easily between different modalities—from graphic design to fashion to jewelry to a fine art print.

Concerns about the archival nature are also notable. While the inks used a few decades ago were less archival and collectors were uncertain how long they

would last, now prints last longer. Other worries around digital images, especially their reproducibility, can be understood within the history of printmaking. Like other forms of printmaking, the concept of the “multiple original” coined by Walter Benjamin in his 1936 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” is challenging, especially when an unscrupulous artist could flood the market with the same image, lowering the value of a fine art print. Seen in the context of other 20th- and 21st-century movements, including Dada, Fluxus, Conceptual, and Postmodern art, digital printing is a logical extension of existing styles. While scholarship, museums, and universities have historically been slow to accept new media, it is almost impossible to imagine that at some point the fine art world will not embrace digital prints for the unique image-making qualities the process offers.

After 30 years of teaching art history and curating, Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD, is now the owner of Gallery Hózhó at Hotel Chaco in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her current projects include a Getty PST–sponsored exhibition at the Autry Museum of the American West focusing on Indigenous Futurisms.

NASCA CERAMICS Life & Death in Polychrome

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

T

H E PACIFIC COAST OF PERU receives some of the least rainfall on earth. Life there is precarious. Yet humans independently invented agriculture, cities, and government along this coast.

This harsh environment birthed many civilizations, each with its own extraordinary art forms. On the southern coast, the Nasca culture emerged around 100 BCE to 1 CE in the Ica and Nasca Valleys and flourished through 650 to 700 CE. “Art was the primary means of symbolic communication in Nasca society, especially to convey sacred or religious ideology,” wrote Donald A. Proulx, professor of anthropology emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.1 They produced goldwork, textiles, and the famous Nasca Lines. “Of all the materials available for artistic and symbolic expression, the Nasca people chose pottery to communicate their ideas to other members of their society,” Proulx continues.2 Nasca people lived off the sea and farmed along river valleys. Instead of a centralized government, shared religion and symbolism bound autonomous, local chiefs together into a loose confederation.

Their society was not heavily stratified.

Elite households may have possessed gold ornaments and spondylus shell jewelry, but every household owned fine polychrome ceramics.

above Unknown Nasca artist, Jar, 100–300 CE, ceramics, mineral pigment slip, 4 × 4½ in., collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Nasli M. Heeramaneck, M.73.48.39 (CC0). opposite, top Unknown Nasca artist, Bowl with Costumed B e i n g , 1 0 0 B C E –70 0 C E , clay, natural pigment slips, 51/16 × 615/16 in., collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art #1949.561. Photo: Gary Kirchenbauer (CC0). opposite, bottom Unknown Nasca artist, Stirrup-Spout Bottle, 450–650 CE, clay, mineral pigment slip, 611/16 × 65/8 in., collection of the Walters Art Museum, 2009.20.28 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Polychrome vessels sculpted 1,500 years ago look almost as fresh and compelling today as the day that they were fired. “Nasca ceramists developed a really amazing, bold, graphic style,” wrote Andrew Hamilton, an Art Institute of Chicago associate curator of arts of the Americas and a lecturer at the University of Chicago.3 “They used a lot of colors, which they tended to alternate or rotate in sequences. This gives them an energy.

They also outlined their images in thicker black lines, which make them legible but also help the images pop visually. And rather than modeling forms with lights and shadows, they painted in broad expanses of solid colors. A lot of the same approaches to making images have been used in comics and graphic novels, for example—possibly even for many of the same reasons: legibility, vibrancy, reproducibility. So it doesn't surprise me that they maintain a modern appeal and contemporary feel.”

Amy Groleau, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, wrote: “Part of what marks the beginning of Nasca as an archaeological culture is the perfection of polychrome slips, the range of pigments potters used, and the gleaming burnished surfaces. These brightly colorful and polished finishes are certainly part of their appeal, as well as what is depicted on the pottery.”4 She added, “I think many of us are drawn in by the paintings of

1. Donald A. Proulx, A Sourcebook of Nasca Ceramic Iconography: Reading a Culture through Its Art (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006), ix.

2. Proulx, 13.

3. All quotes by Andrew J. Hamilton from email message to author, March 22, 2022.

4. All quotes by Amy B. Groleau from email message to author, March 22, 2022.

38 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

charismatic beings—human, animal, and mythic—whose faces often look outward toward the viewer, inviting interaction.”

Nasca culture emerged from the previous Paracas culture. Hamilton explained, “Paracas ceramists added color to their vessels with a paint that they applied after firing, but it was not very durable and tends to flake off.” While Paracas artists painted their incised ceramics with resins after firing, Nasca artists painted pots with slips—pigments suspended in liquid clay solutions—before firing. Firing embedded pigment into the chemical makeup of the ceramic vessel.

Nasca people “invented the broadest and brightest palette of mineral slips used anywhere in all of Andean history before the invasions of Europeans. It was a huge achievement,” wrote Hamilton.

The average Nasca polychrome fine ware had eight to twelve different colors, such as “black, white, purple, red, dark red, light red, orange, light orange, yellow, gray, brown, violet, pink, and light blue hues,”5 as the archaeological technician and museum educator Cristina Anselma Stockton-Juarez wrote.

A harsh environment for humans, Peru’s arid coastal desert was ideal for pottery making. Stockton-Juarez wrote: “The weather is warm and sunny throughout the majority of the year, with very little precipitation; in addition, clay and mineral sources are available in abundance.”6 Mica particles found in local clays sparkled on the pots’ unpainted surfaces. “The fine, smooth paste was typically worked into vessels using a combination of coiling and pinching, along with direct shaping, paddling, and scraping until walls reached an average width of 3–4 millimeters,” wrote Stockton-Juarez.7 Nasca artists did not use molds, like Moche artists did, or pottery wheels. They did use shallow bowls as turntables that allowed them to easily spin the pot while sculpting, scraping, or painting. They crafted paint brushes in different widths with alpaca, llama, or human hair.

Artists painted background colors first, then color fields, and finally black outlines. With smooth stones, they

burnished pottery surfaces to a polished sheen. These delicate, multihued bottles, dishes, bowls, and cups were used as serving dishes, especially for feasts, as opposed to storage or cooking utensils.

Double-spout-and-bridge vessels,

complicated to sculpt, were ideal for the desert climate by limiting evaporation and could make whistling sounds when pouring liquid.

Scholars divide Nasca into different styles through time. “The general pattern

5. Cristina Anselma Stockton-Juarez, “Pots, People, and Pilgrimage: Elemental Analysis of Surface Pigments on Nasca Polychrome Vessels from the Nasca Drainage” (master’s thesis, Cornell University, 2019), PDF, 11.

6. Stockton-Juarez, 5.

7. Stockton-Juarez, 10–11; Proulx, 14.

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 39

above Unknown Nasca artist, Miniature Jar, 100 BCE–200 CE, ceramic, slips, 3¾ × 3¼ in., collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.73.48.28 (CC0). Early Nasca jar featuring mice. opposite, top Unknown Nasca artist, Bird-Shaped Vessel with Single Spout, 100 BCE–200 CE, ceramic, slips, 31/2 × 41/2 in., collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.73.48.21 (CC0). Aplomado falcon effigy jar. opposite, bottom Unknown Nasca artist, Double-Spoutand-Bridge Jar, 100 BCE–600 CE, ceramic, mineral pigment slip, 8 × 6¾ in., collection of the Los Angeles County Museum, gift of Nasli M. Heeramaneck, M.73.48.72 (CC0). Feline figure with chile pepper at left.

of how painting style changes over time is a move from large, singular images with open expanses of monochrome background in Early Nasca toward dense ornamentation, multiple registers, and abstraction in Late Nasca,” wrote Groleau. “There is a boldness to early Nasca painting with its heavy lines and big blocks of color.” The four major styles are Monumental, Transitional, Proliferous, and Disjunctive.

The Monumental phase featured relatively naturalistic images of observed flora and fauna with heavy outlining.

Styles were consistent throughout Nasca territory in this early phase, and a ceremonial center, Cahuachi, was likely a site of major ceramic production.

During the subsequent Transitional phase, the color palette increased, as did abstraction with “rays and tassels” embellishing figures and portrayals of 8. Stockton-Juarez, 15.

9. Stockton-Juarez, 16.

10. Proulx, 61.

40 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

deities with animal features.8 At this time, Nasca people congregated into towns that could be defended from invaders. Cahuachi, while still active as a ceremonial site, played less of a role in ceramic production. Competition among dispersed ceramic artists yielded great diversity in styles.

The Proliferous phas e had “seemingly infinite compounding elements that unfold into dizzying geometric motifs,” as Stockton-Juarez wrote.9 Depictions of immortal beings and warfare increased, and almost every vessel from this period included images of decapitated heads. “Late Nasca is sometimes described in terms of horror vacui because all space is filled with radiating appendages and secondary imagery. Proliferous painting is sometimes so dense, it takes a moment to parse what it is I am seeing,” wrote Groleau. The Disjunctive phase increased in abstraction and influences from highland cultures, such as the Wari.

Within these evolving styles are numerous motifs, natural and supernatural. Studying more than 8,000 samples of Nasca pottery, Proulx “identified approximately 40 major motifs in the ceramic iconography, which can be broken down into around 325 subvarieties.”10 Ancient artists captured the wonder of their extraordinary environment with the animals painted or sculptured onto ceramics. From the Pacific Ocean came whales, sharks, dolphins, orcas, seals, sea lions, otters, turtles, shellfish, squids, jellyfish, eels, burrowing shrimp, crabs, crawfish, lobsters, snails, and numerous fish. Fish ranked among the most frequently painted creatures on Nasca vessels. Some species are identifiable; some not. One vessel even appears to feature silhouettes of sea horses.

Land mammals featured in Nasca art included foxes, monkeys, mice, rats, guinea pigs, dogs, pampas cats, nutria, and, in rare instances, white-tailed deer. Camelids included the domesticated llamas and alpacas and the wild

guanacos and vicuñas. Many reptiles and amphibians, such as salamanders, were associated with water and fertility and had spiritual connections, especially the snake. “Because they shed their skin, they are also a symbol of regeneration,” wrote Proulx.11 Lizard imagery abounded. Artists painted frogs and toads in all phases of their life cycles, including tadpoles and polliwogs. Insect designs included scorpions, spiders, bees, dragonflies, centipedes, and butterflies.

Even humble invertebrates—worms from land and sea—appeared on pottery.

Proulx identified more than 20 bird species on Nasca vessels. These included condors, hummingbirds, vencejos (white-collared swifts), cormorants, parrots, pelicans, herons, parakeets, ducks, penguins, owls, and Inca terns with their white wavy “eyebrows.” Many, particularly fuzzy chicks, were difficult to identify. Raptors were associated with warriors. Aplomado falcons could be identified on pots by the black two-prong black markings around their eyes. Nasca artists portrayed warriors wearing face paint with the same eye markings.

As Nasca pottery developed over time, more immortal beings make their appearance. “Throughout the sequence there are complex hybrid creatures, such as the Anthropomorphic Mythical Being, or more simply Masked Being, that have human, plant, and animal attributes,” wrote Groleau. “These beings are both singular and infinite.” This immortal had a human head and wore a bewhiskered gold nose ornament and forehead ornament that were both embellished with human faces. With traits of animals such as felines, killer whales, snakes, or raptors, this being often wore a cloak or animal pelt. Proulx believes the Anthropomorphic Mythical Being symbolizes “powerful spirits thought to reside in nature, similar to the concept of huaca in later Inca religion.”12 It was surrounded by symbols of agricultural fertility and precious fresh water.

Proulx described other commonly depicted immortal beings, such as the Mythical Spotted Cat and the Horrible Bird, “an anthropomorphic raptorial bird, probably a combination of condor and hawk, representing two of the most powerful forces of the sky.”13 Actual orcas, considered “the most powerful and feared creature of the sea” appeared frequently in Nasca art,14 yet the Mythical Killer Whale, with anthropomorphic qualities, was often portrayed with an obsidian knife in one hand and a severed head in the other.

“One of the most frequently encountered motifs in Nasca art is a human head,” wrote Proulx. “These heads are often grasped by the hair in the hand of a masked semihuman figure, who may carry a large clublike object in the other hand.”15 While these are most often called trophy heads, terminology is debated. Groleau explained: “The term trophy pushes the interpretation of war trophy when it is not entirely clear that is the case, or at least not the only way they are meaningful. Some scholars refer

to them as ritual heads to denote their special and standardized treatment, while others opt to call them severed, bodiless, or prepared heads to leave interpretation out of the name entirely.”

Preserved severed heads appear in abundance at Nasca sites. Human sacrifice was common in ancient agrarian societies across the globe, and for Nasca

11. Proulx, 64.

12. Proulx, 63.

13. Proulx, 79.

14. Proulx, 83.

15. Proulx, 56.

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 41

people, severed heads were ceremonially connected to agricultural abundance.

These were painted on pottery or represented by sculpted head pots with lips pinned together with huarango thorns.

Groleau acknowledged, “It’s difficult to suspend our own culturally specific reactions when we encounter these heads or paintings of them.”

Groleau wrote, “We can associate certain plants and animals with seasons, and composite creatures seem to link human blood and the taking of heads as part of regeneration and the agricultural cycle, but the stories, like those of the sprouting bean-beings, are just out of reach.”

Nasca potters painted or sculpted cultivated plants and their fruits, such as chile peppers, beans, maize, peanuts, pepino melons, jicamas, squash, achira, and cassava. “Personally, some of my favorite works are those featuring beans, seeds, and plants,” wrote Groleau. Nasca artists painted wild edible plants such as kelp, lumuca, and cacti. The San Pedro cactus, a visionary medicine for Nasca people, appeared as an entire plant and a star-shaped cross-section. Ceramics showed musicians drinking from cups next to cactus.

Music was important in Nasca ceremonies, and musicians figure prominently in detailed scenes on ceramics, often playing multiple instruments simultaneously. Musical instruments, including flutes, ocarinas, and drums, were also crafted from clay. These in turn were elaborately painted.

Nasca ceramics were found in middens and households but also in grave sites, which is repellent to many Indigenous peoples in North America. This is not necessarily the case in Peru. “The display of both grave goods and human remains is very common in Peruvian museums, and it is generally framed as a way for people of the nation to connect with their past and to encourage preservation of sites,” wrote Groleau.

“Modern-day Peruvians don't tend to problematize interacting with grave goods,” Hamilton observes. “Throughout Andean history, Andean peoples had a very different relationship with their dead than people generally do today.” He 42 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

concluded: “As a scholar and as a person, but also an outsider, it's not my place to tell either modern-day Peruvians or Nascas how they should interact with this cultural heritage. As a curator, I try to model my approaches on those of my Peruvian colleagues.”

Groleau wrote: “As to perspectives on the sensitive nature of funerary materials in Peru, this is something NMAI is working to understand better. We have a practice of involving communities, asking questions, and building relationships that we are continuing to expand outside the US. In Peru, all ancient materials are considered national patrimony and are under the purview of the Ministry of Culture.” She continued, “I don’t know that ethical questions surrounding ancient remains are ever resolved, but rather are something to continually engage with and revise practices.”

Just as humans live and die, so do cultures. Stockton-Juarez wrote: “The eventual conquest of the Nasca people and their integration with the Wari may have contributed to the collapse of their society due to additional environmental stressors put on the region. At the very least, the acculturation of the Nasca people to Wari culture was complete enough that evidence of the Nasca as a separate and distinct culture vanishes.”16 And yet, their artistic legacy lives on. In the Nasca Province today, “there are many workshops producing ceramics in the Nasca style, and the Calle Family is among the most recognized,” wrote Groleau. “In the 1940s Andrés Calle Flores began experimenting with local clays and studying ceramic fragments and tools from the sites of Cahuachi and Chauchilla. His son, Andrés Rolando (Tobi) Calle Benavides trained under him and subsequently took over the workshop. He refers to his and his father’s work as recuperación, because they are trying to understand and reconstruct ancient techniques.”

Both Groleau and Hamilton cite Kukuli Velarde (Peruvian Mestiza) as a contemporary ceramic artist drawing inspiration from Nasca pottery. “Velarde was born in Cusco and now lives in Philadelphia. Her work is very much 16. Stockton-Juarez, 5

inspired by the ceramic traditions of the ancient Andes. And she has a wonderfully thoughtful and provocative artistic voice,” wrote Hamilton. Her series Plunder Me Baby (reviewed in FAAM No. 17, Summer 2017) features “pieces that play with ancient Peruvian ceramic forms and imagery—including Nasca—to speak to colonization, alienation from ancestral roots, and how we consume these works,” wrote Groleau.

Bold and brilliant designs that Nasca artists invented centuries ago continue to delight and challenge audiences. Gradually, we can better understand the people behind the artwork. Groleau wrote, “The images on pottery are our most direct connection to the stories, and to the people who sang and painted them.”

above Unknown Nasca artist, Double-Spout, Bridge-Handle Vessel, 325–440 CE, ceramic, pigments, 91/4 × 7 × 61/4 in., collection of the Brooklyn Museum, Henry L. Batterman Fund, 41.423.

Highly abstracted Horrible Bird with severed head. San Pedro cacti, snakes, lizards, and birds in background. opposite, top Unknown Nasca artist, Orca Effigy Vessel, ca. 100 BCE–700 CE, ceramics, mineral pigments, 11½ × 27/8 × 10 in., collection of the Museo Larco, ML013684. Photo: Velvet (CC BY-SA 4.0). The Mythological Killer Whale carries a knife and has severed heads along its sides. opposite, bottom Unknown Nasca artist, Double-Spout Vessel, 325–440 CE, ceramic, mineral pigment slip, 6 × 7 × 7 in., collection of the Brooklyn Museum, gift of the Ernest Erickson Foundation, 86.224.15. Anthropomorphic Mythical Being holding a club and chile peppers and severed heads.

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 43

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PROFILE

Seminole/Muscogee Filmmaker, Producer & Podcaster

STERLIN HARJO

By Vicki Monks (Chickasaw)

B

ACK IN THE DAYS before the recent phenomenal success of his FX series, Reservation Dogs, Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/ Muscogee) paid some serious dues. He produced a series of shorts, three feature films, and two feature-length documentaries, all with minuscule budgets.

Although his early projects won critical acclaim, he found it nearly impossible to raise production funds through the tribes or other sources. Hollywood wasn’t yet interested in Indigenous stories with no A-list stars, and the tribes understandably had other priorities. “They have to fund the housing department and take care of elders,” Harjo told me, “so it’s not easy to argue [they] should spend a million dollars on my feature film.”

But Harjo kept at it. He was on a mission.

Harjo has been making films and videos for two decades with one goal in mind: to tell honest stories about contemporary Indigenous people tempered with a big dose of humor. The characters are Native people who often struggle in their lives but still joke about it all along the way. “I’ve always wanted to tell the truth about our community and about who we are as Native people,” he says. “Some people feel the need to show us just in a positive light. We also have to talk about our darker sides, our blemishes, our reality, as well as the beautiful, fun, and lovely things about us. We have to talk about everything. And I was happy I got the opportunity to do that.”

Co-created with Oscar winner Taika Waititi (Māori), Reservation Dogs follows four teens as they scheme to escape their Oklahoma Rez after the suicide of a close friend. Lead actors D’Pharaoh WoonA-Tai (Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug Oji-Cree), Devery Jacobs (Kanien'kehá:ka Mohawk), Paulina Alexis (Alexis Nakota), and Lane Factor (Seminole/Caddo), all 46 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

provide moving, nuanced performances.

And the series features brilliant comedic and dramatic turns from Jon Proudstar (Pascua Yaqui), Gary Farmer (Cayuga), Zahn McClarnon (Standing Rock Lakota), Wes Studi (Cherokee descent, eligible to enroll), and many others.

Reservation Dogs is the first major television project to employ an entirely Indigenous writers’ room, as well as primarily Indigenous crew, directors, and cast.

above Sterlin Harjo. Photo: Shane Brown (Cherokee Nation).

Image courtesy of Shane Brown Photography, Tulsa, Oklahoma. opposite Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/ Muscogee), Devery Jacobs (Mohawk), D'Pharaoh WoonA-Tai (Oji-Cree), Lane Factor (Seminole/Caddo), Paulina Alexis (Nakota), and Taika Waititi (Māori) attend the red carpet event for the series premiere of FX's Reservation Dogs at the NeueHouse on August 5, 2021 in Los Angeles. Photo: Frank Micelotta. Image courtesy of FX/ PictureGroup.

STERLIN HARJO

In March Reservation Dogs won two Film Independent Spirit Awards for Best New Scripted Series and Best Ensemble Cast in a new series. Before that, Reservation Dogs was one of ten TV programs to win an American Film Institute award in 2021 and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Comedy Series. And even before that, Harjo and the lead cast of Reservation Dogs were invited to present the Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing in a Limited Series. They took the opportunity to emphasize the importance of diversity in programming. Harjo opened by saying, “We are here on television's biggest night as creators and actors, proud to be Indigenous people working in Hollywood, representing the first people to walk upon this continent, and we are really happy to be here.”1 That was also an unprecedented moment. Never before had an entirely Indigenous-led cast and Indigenous show creator been invited to participate in the Emmys broadcast.

At a time when lots of folks want to banish books and other material that might discomfit some young people, Reservation Dogs leans into uncomfortable. It leans into tragedy, teenage confusion, bad decisions, traumatic history, stereotypes, meth heads, Pretendians, bar fights, and tornadoes in rural Oklahoma. Despite all of that, Reservation Dogs is one of the funniest shows currently streaming, a success with critics, and wildly popular, especially among Native youth.

Speaking on Muscogee Pod, the official podcast of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Harjo stressed the importance of honesty in portraying Native life. “With a kid sitting in Okemah or Wetumka watching that show, they’re not going to relate to it if we don’t tell the truth,” he told listeners. “If they can relate to Rez Dogs, then they feel they’re not alone.

They feel there are people out there who are like them. But we can’t lie. We’ve got to talk about the hard stuff as well.”

In one of the most riveting and emotional episodes, Willie Jack (Alexis) and her father Leon (Proudstar) spend a day hunting in the woods, quietly waiting for the elusive and almost mythical deer, “Chunk,” as they begin to come to terms with the death of Willie Jack’s cousin Daniel and the anguish of Daniel’s troubled life. Harjo says, “The whole time I was doing Reservation Dogs, I wanted the show to be so good we could get to that point where two people could be in the woods for one episode and that’s it.” The comedy had warmed up audiences to the characters. The hunting episode delved into something far deeper and more complex. “Our humor butts up against tragedy, and it exists on the same plane.

That’s what I try to capture,” Harjo says.

Aside from the awards and thoughtful reviews in major outlets like The New York Times, Hollywood Reporter, and Los Angeles Times, Harjo seems most tickled by the waves of memes and videos popping up all over the internet,

1. “Mvskoke Media amendment, Rez Dogs renewed,” Mvskoke Media, September 29, 2021, web.

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 47

PROFILE

produced mostly by young Indians riffing on their favorite Rez Dogs moments. The Spirit character, William Knife-Man, played by 1491s veteran Dallas Goldtooth (Mdewakanton Dakota/Diné), gets the most attention.

Spirit emerges on horseback in episode one, dressed in 19th-century Plains Indian attire, and loudly ululating the oooOOOoooOOOooo from Western films of old. Spirit is the stereotype folks might expect in a show about Indians, but then again, he’s not that at all. He admits right off that he’s not like Sitting Bull or “those other awesome guys” and had nothing to do with Custer’s demise because his horse tripped on a gopher hole, rolled over on him, and killed him before the battle commenced.

Harjo believes that Spirit helps draw non-Native audiences into the story.

Spirit is a comfortable stereotype that helps viewers ease into the Native world, but very quickly he becomes something unexpected. “It makes fun of the stereotype and makes fun of what non-Natives think of us,” Harjo says. “So, I was taking that stereotype, showing them how ridiculous it is, but also inviting them to laugh with us, which that character does. That’s what makes that character good.”

All the while that Harjo was making movies, he also participated in a comedy troupe, the 1491s, named for the halcyon days of precolonial times.

The troupe produces videos available for free on YouTube and has performed nationwide. That’s where Harjo crafted 48 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

his skills in comedic writing. “The 1491s were important, because that’s where I learned how to do Native humor. It was our training ground where we would go in front of a group of white people and we would bomb and no one would laugh, because white people can be very afraid to laugh about Indian stuff because we are so precious, and they held us with such regard, and no one wants to poke fun, and we’re sacred. We learned how to give white people, non-Natives, permission to laugh with us. What we learned in the 1491s is [to] get them to laugh with us. And that’s what Dallas’s character does in the show.”

Migizi Pensoneau (Ponca/Ojibwe) and Bobby Wilson (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota) of the 1491s worked on the scripts for the first season of Reservation Dogs, and this winter Harjo brought the entire comedy troupe into the writers’ room to craft the stories for the second season, with Ryan RedCorn (Osage) joining Pensoneau, Wilson, and Goldtooth, along with writers Tazbah Chavez (Bishop Paiute/Diné/San Carlos Apache), Tommy Pico (Viejas Kumeyaay), Blackhorse Lowe (Diné), Chad Charlie (Ahousaht Nuu-chah-nulth), and Erica Tremblay (Seneca-Cayuga). Canadian actor Devery Jacobs (Kanien'kehá:ka Mohawk), who plays Elora Danan in the series, also took a step behind the camera to share in writing duties. Harjo wanted to expand the creative vision by bringing in talent from many tribes. The new season went into production in March and will play on Hulu later this year.

Shot primarily in Tulsa and Okmulgee, both seasons capture a sense of place unique to Oklahoma, and Harjo says this is essential to the story line. FX originally wanted to shoot the series in New Mexico, the favored go-to location for Native projects. But Harjo persuaded them otherwise. “I wrote them a letter about how when you do a Native film or show, the land on which you shoot it is the most important thing to that show,” Harjo says. “The people we are talking about were brought here on the Trail of Tears and survived genocide to get here.

And this is the land they made their own or adapted to.”

Following the forced marches from tribal homelands during which thousands of people died, Native people in the Indian Territory endured further losses of land, autonomy, and tribal cohesion after Oklahoma statehood. The process of land allotment fractured communities and undermined tribal sovereignty while accelerating forced assimilation into the waves of white settlers who swept into that land. The characters in Harjo’s films are the descendants of that genocide and dispossession. Their generations are still coping with that legacy. And yet, here they are making jokes and, for the most part, having a really good time.

Harjo believes that humor is integral to Native communities and fundamental to communicating the realities of Indigenous people in today’s world. “Even in our most serious moments, we are funny. I wanted a show that represented that,” Harjo says. “The humor comes from our communities.

As Native people, we exist in this space between tragedy and humor, and it’s how we survive. We survive through our humor and through our love of life, whether that’s ceremony or songs. That’s how we survived our hardest times. If you go into any community, we’re not sad; we’re laughing. Even if you’re at a funeral, we’re laughing. So, I just wanted to reflect the reality of that in the show and that the most important thing was to show that humor. It’s one of the most realistic portrayals of our communities.”

This humor, the creativity, and these stories originated around kitchen tables as Harjo was growing up in the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. “I always constantly heard the best stories in the kitchen,

STERLIN HARJO

sitting around having coffee with folks at my auntie’s, my uncle’s, and my grandma’s. I fell in love with the cadence and the rhythm of those stories. They were magical, and at the same time they were reality and real,” he says. “Now a lot of them are gone. I’ve watched them go over the years, and I feel a great responsibility being the person who now takes up that manner of storytelling. If I don’t do it, who else will?”

As I watched Rez Dogs last year, I was delighted once again by how all the characters are fully realized, multidimensional people engaged in today’s society, who also treasure their relationships to their cultures, their histories, ceremonies, and their identities as Indigenous people.

They’re human beings. That’s a through line in all of Harjo’s work.

When I asked Harjo about that ethic, he sighed. “Isn’t that weird that we even have to talk about that? Isn’t that strange that it’s even radical? It’s 2022.

My job as a writer is to create characters who are fully formed human beings. So, if I don’t do that, then I’ve failed. Whether it’s a female character, male character,

whatever, an elderly character, I always try to approach them with empathy and humanity and show them from all angles.”

The first time I met Harjo in 2007, he was directing his crew to outfit actor Richard Ray Whitman (Yuchi/Muscogee) with a life jacket to be hidden under Whitman’s suit coat, while a makeup artist powdered Whitman’s face a deathly pale. It was early in the shoot for Harjo’s first feature film, Four Sheets to the Wind.

Lead actor Cody Lightning (Samson Cree) was to drag Whitman down a rural dirt road and submerge him in a pond. It was imperative that Whitman not drown in the process or pop to the surface too soon and ruin the shot. I was struck by the efficiency and organization of each element. This scene took place at dawn, with a narrow window of good light to get it exactly right. All members of the crew had detailed spreadsheets specifying what must happen when. That organizational skill may be as important as the creativity part, especially for new producers who are working with limited budgets. And Harjo had that down early on.

above The 1491s. Left to right: Ryan RedCorn (Osage), Dallas Goldtooth (Mdewakanton Dakota/Diné), Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/Muscogee), Migizi Pensoneau (Ponca/Ojibwe) and Bobby Wilson (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota). Photo: Shane Brown (Cherokee Nation).

Image courtesy of Shane Brown Photography, Tulsa, Oklahoma. opposite Dallas Goldtooth plays the character of Spirit, the ghost of William Knife-Man, in Reservation Dogs Episode 1: “F—in’ Rez Dogs” Photo: Shane Brown (Cherokee Nation).

Image courtesy of FX Networks.

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 49

PROFILE

above Sterlin Harjo. Photo: Shane Brown (Cherokee Nation). Image courtesy of Shane Brown Photography, Tulsa, Oklahoma. opposite Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi attend the red carpet event for the series premiere of FX's Reservation Dogs at the NeueHouse on August 5, 2021 in Los Angeles. Photo: Frank Micelotta. Image courtesy of FX/PictureGroup.

Goodnight Irene (2005), one of Harjo’s earliest short films, features a trio waiting for care at an Indian Health Service clinic. Casey Camp-Horinek (Ponca) plays Irene, and she’s played characters by the same name in Harjo’s Barking Water (2009) and in Reservation Dogs. Goodnight Irene satirizes the long waits and poor care at many IHS hospitals and clinics. That’s something most Indians can relate to who relied on these services in the days before tribes took control of many facilities and improved the health care. Goodnight Irene resonated with me. My Chickasaw grandma went into a diabetic coma while waiting to be seen at the Indian hospital in Talihina.

Harjo says he grew up hearing similar stories, and his family had one of their own. “I lost a brother. He was premature, and my mom gave birth to him at the Indian hospital, and he didn’t make it. My family at the time blamed that hospital.

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Native health care has gotten better since then. But when you’re five years old and you hear that, it makes an impact on you.”

In Barking Water, Harjo takes on the impending death of Frankie, a man who has a long and conflicted relationship with Irene. It’s a story of love, heartbreak, and reconciliation—not the kind of movie that usually features older actors. But Whitman and Camp-Horinek, who’ve both now achieved elder status, played the leads. “I had this idea that as we get older, we stay the same person we were when we were young,” Harjo says. “I wanted to tell a story that would usually be told about kids in their 20s or 30s, but I wanted to tell it about people who are older, people who have gone through life.

“My grandma was in the hospital when I started writing Barking Water. I was staying with her a lot, and we didn’t think she was going to make it. She had dictated a letter to my mom that basically

said, ‘If I get worse and I can’t breathe, don’t hook me up to your machines and don’t tie me down to the bed. Let me go home and die where I want to die.’ It just gave me this idea of someone wanting to pass away at home. And that’s where the story started.” Barking Water won the 2009 American Indian Film Festival Award for best film, and Camp-Horinek was named as best actress.

Most of Harjo’s stories are pulled from what he’s witnessed in real life. “I try to absorb people’s stories a little bit and bring the characters to life with some of their personal things,” he says. Harjo was aware of the many homeless Indians in Tulsa, and he often sat down by the river near homeless camps to watch and absorb. He says he was also inspired by Richard Ray Whitman’s photographic series, Street Chiefs, that documented homeless Natives in the 1980s.

So, Harjo made Mekko (2015), a thriller about homeless Indians in Tulsa.

“I wanted to tell that story because I just started seeing the homeless community a lot here in Tulsa, the Native community.

And I had missed home. And I would stop and park near them, watch them interact. They would be cracking jokes and laughing. And there was love there.

There was dysfunction, but the love was there. It reminded me of home, and I wanted to portray that world in a way that was honest—and not condemning them but showing how someone ends up on the streets and how easy that can be. I didn’t want it to be a documentary. I didn’t want it to be statistics about homelessness. I wanted it to be a story, and that’s why it’s a thriller that’s set in that world.”

In his documentary, This May Be the Last Time (2014), Harjo presents a mystery about his own grandfather who went missing in 1962 after a car crash on a rural bridge. But it’s far more than a simple mystery. It’s about the Seminole community and the importance of spiritual songs in sorting out truths. The title is derived from an old Muscogee hymn, with links to Scottish songs brought over by immigrants, African-American gospel, and even extends to the more famous Rolling Stones’ cover of the song.

The film is an emotional exploration of the power of songs to keep Native communities whole. And it also flows into another of Harjo’s themes: the value

STERLIN HARJO

of keeping Native languages alive. “The songs are definitely important to the survival of the language. I put language in a lot of the shows and the films that I do. I want young Native kids—Seminole, Muscogee kids—to look at that show or film or whatever and be proud of who they are and integrate the language into their lives more,” he says.

Perhaps because of his early love for Mvskoke songs, Harjo has a keen ear for music that resonates in his films. Choctaw Nation singer-songwriter Samantha Crain’s music provided poignant grace notes to the final scenes of Barking Water, and Harjo has produced music videos for Crain. “I like music to sit somewhere in the middle of emotion,” Harjo says. “I don’t like to have music that pushes an audience to be sad or pushes an audience to be funny … I like for it to support what’s happening. The music that I choose, there’s something spiritual to it.”

For Reservation Dogs, Harjo chose the young rapper Mato Wayuhi (Oglala Lakota) to compose the score.2 “I heard his music and I said, ‘That’s the spirit of the show. I have to use that,’” Harjo says.

“And so I got him, and it’s his first time being a composer.… It goes from hip hop to guitar riffs to everything.”

When Harjo first started out after film school at the University of Oklahoma, he participated in the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab, which led to Goodnight Irene being included in Sundance screenings. “Sundance, Bird Runningwater, and the Native film program gave me my start,” Harjo says. “I wouldn’t be doing this without them opening the door for me. It was the first time that my work was taken seriously.” The program also forged lifelong friendships. “Whenever there was no funding, and there was no way to get your projects made, you got to talk to Indigenous people from across the world who are friends of yours, and they would tell you what they’re doing, and how they’re doing, and what they’re talking about, and it just helped fuel your fire.

It helped fuel you and keep you going.”

Sundance is also where Harjo connected with Taika Waititi. “You can find commonality with people across the world, which Taika and I did,” Harjo says.

“We both grew up wanting to be visual artists, talked about that, talked about how our dads taught us how to do art, our uncles taught us how to do art. Our dads are kind of similar. They’re kind of funny guys that like to work on Harley motorcycles but don’t ever quite get those Harleys fixed, like they’re always working on something.” Having Waititi on the project with his newly minted Oscar for his film, Jojo Rabbit, helped to ensure that studios would give Reservation Dogs a close look.

The support other Native filmmakers gave Harjo is one of the reasons he’s committed to bringing on directors like Blackhorse Lowe and Sydney Freeland (Diné) to direct Rez Dogs episodes. Plus, Harjo says, they are all

his friends. “I wanted it to be Native directors, and I love all of their work. I knew their strengths, and I knew what episodes I could put with each of them so they could elevate those to another level.

But it was a lot about giving my friends an opportunity, just like Taika did for me.”

Harjo has also signed a new production deal with FX for “first-look” projects. That means he’ll be submitting stories and scripts from many of his Native colleagues, creating a space where talented Indigenous filmmakers, scriptwriters, directors, and cinematographers have opportunities, with Harjo acting as executive producer. Harjo recognizes that to keep up the momentum for Native cinema and television, it has to be about more than just him.

STERLINHARJO.COM

2. See: Renata Yazzie, “Mato Wayuhi, Composer-in-Rezidence: The Music of Reservation Dogs,” First American Art Magazine no. 33 (Winter 2022): 92–93.

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PROFILE

Onondaga Ceramic Artist

PETER B. JONES

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD MRS: How would you describe your pottery, Peter?

PBJ: My pottery is sometimes a cross between raku, pit fire, and stoneware.

Since Northeast pottery is not familiar to most, it also involves a lot of teaching and explaining about the art.

MRS: How did studying under Otellie Loloma in the 1960s shape you as a young artist?

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MEMBER OF THE ONONDAGA NATION and Beaver clan, Peter B. Jones lives on the Cattaraugus Reservation of the Seneca Nation of Indians in New York. During the 1960s, he studied pottery and sculpture at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where he studied under the renowned ceramic artist Otellie Loloma (Hopi, 1921–1993). Later he studied art at Bacone College in Oklahoma and at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Montana. His pottery draws upon historical Haudenosaunee aesthetics and styles, which feature hand-built coiling and slab construction.

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After completing his formal education, Jones returned home to western New York to concentrate on his artistic practice. He is well-known in North America and Europe for reintroducing Haudenosaunee pottery into contemporary art discourse. His work is represented in the major art galleries and public collections of numerous museums, including the National Museum of the American Indian, the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. At present, Jones maintains a pottery studio on Cattaraugus territory where he delivers workshops and classes to students and community groups.

PBJ: At the Institute of American Indian Arts, I was fortunate to have Otellie Loloma as one of my ceramic instructors.

She taught basic techniques of handbuilding pottery using coil-and-slab methods. Ralph Pardington taught clay techniques such as wheel throwing, glaze calculation, and kiln firing. Otellie’s style of teaching was direct and hands-on. I was encouraged to make work, and she would give me helpful critiques. Her husband Charles Loloma, the renowned jeweler, would also lend his expertise occasionally regarding design and craftsmanship. Otellie taught me respect for clay as a living thing. I’ve always kept this in mind while working.

MRS: After your studies in New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Montana, you returned home to Cattaraugus territory in New York. How did returning home shape you and your work?

PBJ: In 1968, I studied at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. It was there that I learned a lot in a concentrated atmosphere among some of the most influential potters in America.

David Shaner was the resident director, and artists-in-residence included Val Cushing from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University

PETER B. JONES

in Alfred, New York, and Chuck Hindes, who worked there from 1968 to 1971.

Although I was only 20 years old or so, they treated me as an equal and offered advice and criticism of my progress. This experience probably influenced everything I have done since.

In the 1970s, I spent a few years roaming the country. I worked first in Anadarko, Oklahoma, setting up and teaching pottery at Indian City USA. My son Michael was born at the Lawton Indian Hospital in Oklahoma. From there I moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, to produce art for the Elaine Horwitz Gallery. I then moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and worked at the Santa Fe Door Company studios with artists I had known from my years at the Institute of American Indian Arts, including Doug Hyde (Nez Perce), Tom “T.C.” Cannon (Kiowa/Caddo), Earl Biss (Crow), and Kevin Red Star (Crow).

MRS: Was it there that you took a design gig?

PBJ: I eventually moved to Fallbrook, California, where my in-laws lived. I took a job working in design for a commercial ceramics company. I designed things such as a life-size roadrunner, a skunk, a unicorn, and other things, while a mold maker created molds for slip-casting the pieces. The company, Village House of Ceramics, also produced candlestick holders, wind chimes, and other items that I had a hand in designing.

I returned home to western New York in 1977, and I realized that I knew more about Southwestern-style pottery than my own tribe’s pottery history. I found out that there really wasn’t a lot written about our pottery. This began my search for anything written or remembered about our craft. Our pottery making had died out in the 1550s with the introduction of European trade goods such as copper kettles and metal cookware.

MRS: Can you describe in detail the process of creating your version of a historical Haudenosaunee pot?

PBJ: I combined what I knew about pottery methods from various sources

and started from there. I mixed local clays and built pots by hand in the old style using archeological studies as a guide.

I adjusted the clays with sand, crushed rock, crushed shell, pulverized old pot shards, and just about anything to get a workable clay body. I found a usable clay formula and started to build a pot without any tools. I wanted to experience the making of a pot with nothing but clay. If I needed a tool, I would look around and see what was available—such as a rock, a piece of bark, or a twig—rather than using modern tools. I was able to get an inkling of what it must have been like to first discover how to make pottery.

MRS: Would you explain the importance of pit-firing in comparison to other firing methods?

I was able to get an inkling of what it must have been like to first discover how to make pottery.

above Skywoman Vessel, 2013, earthenware, copper green glaze, private collection. Photo: Warren Wheeler. opposite Peter B. Jones. All images courtesy of the artist, unless otherwise noted.

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above Four Figures, 2021, stoneware, 20 in. tall. opposite Mystic, 2021, stoneware, glaze, collection of Amy Vollmer. Photo: Mikel Wintermantel.

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PBJ: Firing a finished piece turned out to be the most difficult part of making a functional pot. Early on, there was a lot of conjecture that our pottery was sun-dried, but if you put water in a sun-dried clay pot, the pot would soon return to its malleable form. Another theory I read was that a basket was lined with clay on the inside so that rodents and insects would have a hard time eating the contents. The story goes that somehow the clay-lined basket

accidentally caught fire, and the basket burned away leaving a fired clay shell.

Pit firing, or any kind of firing, is crucial to making a functional pot.

The firing process hardens the clay, and although it is still permeable it can be used for cooking or storage. Pit firing is more unpredictable than kiln firing.

There is no control of the elements like wind and weather. Control of the temperature is also variable. The fire

PETER B. JONES

must be contained to make the heating of the raw pottery gradual. The rapid rise in temperature can cause the pot to crack and explode.

MRS: Clay represents the flesh of the earth. Can I ask you about the spiritual dimensions of clay and ceramics?

PBJ: Clay holds a revered place in most Indigenous societies. Its ability to be molded and fired made it possible to make functional ware and also to craft figures of the deities and animals that make up our stories. When our ancestors looked for a new settlement place, they looked for a water source and a clay source. This would ensure that the new settlement could provide for our survival.

Clay itself was used as a medicine and for treating bites.

It is a very versatile medium.

MRS: You create historically styled Haudenosaunee pots and more figurative, representational pottery as well. Would you talk about the differences between these styles and what draws you to them?

PBJ: The versatility of clay allows me to express my ideas, whether in pottery, sculpture, or any combination of the two. The uses of clay are virtually limitless. Our pottery was designed to be very efficient and functional. The rounded bottom of traditional pots resembled a wok that allowed for quick heating. The texture on the pot doubles the surface area for even heating. Cooking in these pots brings the contents to a rolling boil. Perhaps the constricted necks served as a stop to prevent overboiling. A rolling boil is also important when brewing medicines.

My figures, on the other hand, are made of stoneware clay and are not functional. They are made solely as an artistic statement on our life as Natives and what affects us. Techniques and methods of both forms are interchangeable.

MRS: What lessons or teachings can be learned from your work?

PBJ: If you look at my work, various details represent times in our history and current events. The motifs and symbols that I incorporate into my work come from different sources of Iroquois iconography. Some symbols and motifs are drawn directly from ancient artifacts as displayed in museums. I am blending historic and contemporary pottery methods and subject matter. I feel that what I am making now would have been a natural progression of our clay work had we not stopped making pottery in the 1500s.

MRS: You maintain a studio and often teach pottery classes and workshops. What does teaching students mean to you?

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Native children were taken from their homes and forced to attend boarding schools as a means to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Many Native students were abused physically and sexually. Many of them died and were buried in unmarked graves.

MRS: It is not often that you see boarding school or residential school histories expressed in ceramics. Can you discuss the narrative potential of pottery—of the ways that pottery can tell a story?

PBJ: Research has been instrumental to my study of our pottery. As I mentioned, there was not a lot of information to describe the methods, techniques, clay formulas, or the firing. It is as if the dissolution of our pottery history was so complete that nothing was preserved pertaining to it. I was fortunate to be allowed access to museum collections, which gave me insights into the types of clay used, the weight, texture, and other clues to the pottery’s manufacture.

MRS: Pottery is often used as a form of therapy. Do you often think about the healing properties of clay? How do you see it affecting your community?

PBJ: Pottery has been very therapeutic for me. The solitude of working at the potter’s wheel or hand-building a piece is very soothing and is like meditation. I think that creating a piece of pottery that has ancient connections to our people gives the community a sense of commonality that is unique to the community. It instills pride in oneself.

above New Indian—Portrait Jar, 2010, clay, pigment, sinew, copper, wood, collection of the Longyear Museum of Anthropology, Colgate University, Hamilton, New York.

Photo: Warren Wheeler. opposite Two different views of Broken Promises, 2021, clay, glaze. Photo: Hayden Haynes (Seneca).

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PBJ: Teaching what I have learned has been foremost in my attempts to bring this craft back.

MRS: The pot Broken Promises (2021) features Catholic priests and nuns spilling the blood of children, coupled with numerous skulls and skeletons below. Would you explain what this work means to you?

PBJ: The pot Broken Promises is an example of using clay to express something that has affected all Native peoples.

MRS: You work in both a style that you title “neo-traditional” and in a more representational style. Can you describe why you choose to work in both and what their potential strengths and weaknesses are?

PBJ: I wasn’t trying to replicate our historical pots but rather to answer questions that I had as a potter. This study is still ongoing as there are still many questions I have.

MRS: What are some lessons that you would share with emerging potters?

PETER B. JONES

PBJ: For the up-and-coming potters my advice is to take your time. Learn the basics and don’t limit your creations.

Use the ancient techniques and methods to inform a new type of pottery that is ours. This is what I’ve done with my series of figures and pottery. I sit at the wheel and build a form; from there it takes off.

I add the head, the arms, and let the piece grow. When it is bisqued, I consider how I want to glaze it—applying different colors to produce different textures and other results on the surface. I have created many figurative works based on the cylindrical form. The idea is to capture the essence of the human form through a nuance of body gesture. I show the face and hands to capture emotions and movement. Arms and legs might be added if the work demands it. When they look at a piece, most people focus on the face and hands. Your brain fills in the rest.

This allows the viewer to create their own story regarding their connection to the

work. It might stir a memory or recall a place or feeling or time.

MRS: Where do you see Haudenosaunee pottery heading in the future? Who are the artists and potters that you see potential in?

PBJ: Some of the up-and-coming potters today are, to name a few: Ken Metoxen, Brenda John, Cynthia Thomas, Jennifer Stevens, and Kaluhya Muscavitch VanEvery [all Oneida Nation], all from Oneida, Wisconsin, along with Brenda Hill (Tuscarora/Choctaw), Natasha Smoke Santiago (Mohawk), Katsitsionni Fox (Mohawk), Courtney Leonard (Shinnecock), and my son Michael Jones (Seneca).

MRS: Finally, is there a message you would like to leave readers with?

PBJ: Over the years, teaching what I have learned in Indigenous communities has been foremost in my attempts to bring this craft back. I continue to teach pottery on both the Cattaraugus and Allegany Seneca Reservations.

From April 2022 I will have a piece featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I am also working on a commission for a sculpture for the city of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, and I’m on the steering committee to do an exhibition on Northeast pottery at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. I am also working on a book about my 50 plus years of art, with Carol Ann Lorenz, associate professor at Colgate University, with whom I have collaborated over many years.

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Fond du Lac Ojibwe Birchbark Biter & Jeweler

WANESIA MISQUADACE

By Paige Willett (Citizen Potawatomi)

A

R T I S T WA N E S I A MISQUADACE fills her life with birchbark in any way possible. As a member of the Fond du Lac Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, she feels connected to the medium at every level—from her ancestry to her life’s calling as a professor of a new generation of Indigenous artists at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona. Anywhere she goes— even to the desert Southwest—the birchbark follows.

“Anybody who knows me is like, ‘Oh my God, Wanesia’s got birchbark in her house. She’s got it in her bathroom.

It’s in her shower. It’s in her bed. It’s in the studio. It’s in her hair. And she’s making rings out of it now,’” she says.

Misquadace understands the science of the bark. She lives in the dry Arizona climate, but paper birches come from the much more humid Great Lakes region. Steam from the shower keeps it moist; laying it underneath the mattress helps retain its flexibility, and the patterns she creates from bitings make it the perfect material for Misquadace’s stunning jewelry and sculptures. Her ancestors guide her while she cares for and uses it.

“I feel like I’ve been working with the birchbark for so long,” Misquadace says. “I’ve gotten to understand some of that DNA memory that is around it and the memory that holds the birchbark. It’s on the tree, and the roots are all down there. These root systems are speaking to each other, and they’re helping each other and telling these stories.”

Her birchbark biting paired with excellent metalsmithing techniques have produced a unique and award-winning body of work.

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BIRCHBARK & BITING MISQUADACE BEGAN LEARNING the art of birchbark biting as a child. She finds self-improvement in the process of learning how to fold paper-thin sheets of bark, practicing making what she calls “beauty marks” with her eyeteeth, and finally unfolding the work to turn it into any pattern. For generations, Misquadace’s family has passed down this art form and way to make outlines for beadwork, appliqué pieces, and much

above Field Research: Wanesia Misquadace gathering birchbark on the Fond du Lac Ojibwe Reservation, Minnesota, 2019.

Photo: Mosgaadace Casuse (Navajo/Ojibwe). All images courtesy of the artist. opposite, top Birchbark bitings made during the 2019 Harpo Foundation Native American Fellowship at the Vermont S t u d i o C e n te r, J o h n s o n , Vermont. opposite, bottom Water Protectors Hair Adornment II, 2022, sterling silver, Tahitian pearl and other pearls, peridot, black opal, 14-karat gold.

WANESIA MISQUADACE

more. She sees beauty in the scientific process and geometry of birchbark biting.

“You become the engineer who is designing this process. You’re having to map out all of these folds and the marks that are being made. You look at that from the mathematical form. How does that transfer into larger scales, into larger pieces?” Misquadace muses.

Her grandmother taught her, and Misquadace’s mother practiced birchbark biting too. Misquadace began making art from her bitings at 16. Today she still travels back to her ancestral homeland in northern Minnesota twice a year to collect bark. Misquadace prefers summer bark and shares the experience with her son, Mosgaadace Casuse (Navajo/Ojibwe).

“When I bite on birchbark, I actually feel like my teeth have this nice gloss from the bark,” she says. “And then I’ve just learned how to use the bark, how to restore it back to almost its original shape and mobility, because I’m in a dry climate here versus the humid climate.”

Misquadace is known for her birchbark and silver canisters that often depict Anishinaabe stories. The trees led her to the form, and the bark’s natural bend determines the piece’s shape. She prays and offers tobacco before collecting any bark, asking permission to turn it into art.

“I feel like the tree kind of lets me do it. Like it was talking to me and knew that it was going to be a piece.

It also knew that it was giving to our community and to other people to create solidarity, to create strength by sharing these stories. The birchbark itself is so strong, and so are the Anishinaabe people,” Misquadace says.

For The Water Protector’s Vessel, birchbark forms a canister that she adorned with a dragonfly and flowers made of silver and accented with jewels and pearls. A birchbark biting dome caps the canister. When the top is lifted, the small chains that connect the canister to the curved dome move to shimmer and sound like water. The dragonfly appears to float above a pond.

“I have these nice visions in my head of this great time of storytelling when we didn’t have all this technology.

Birchbark biting was also some of the first Anishinaabe patterns that were formed.

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ceremony to her, and she respects Mother Earth by returning the bark from where it came.

“I never throw any of my bark in the garbage—never, ever,” Misquadace says.

“Every single piece that I have, I save it, and I put it into the fire. So it never goes into the garbage. I don’t even bury it. I literally put it in the fire …”

Her art has gone through transitions throughout the years, and she thinks of ways to bring in other materials to work with the birchbark.

JEWELRY & METALWORK

above Otter Above Water, cuff and ring, sterling silver, coral, pink pearls, amethyst, peridot.

Cuff: 8 × 3½ in. opposite Songs for Grandfather, birchbark, silver, copper, brass, private collection.

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Those oral stories were told first by those bite marks,” Misquadace says.

She considers the stories a sacred part of her art. Misquadace sees passing on the stories as a responsibility, and while her pieces may provide the visuals to Anishinaabe tales, honoring the oral histories remain paramount.

“People say, ‘Can you write them down, Wanesia?’ I’m like, ‘Oh no, you can never write them down. I can only tell you.’ That becomes your responsibility for the piece,” she says.

One of her canisters tells the story of the jingle dress that features two silver dancers. Misquadace attached them to the top of the canister and included exquisite detail, including the cones that make the signature sound of a jingle dress as well as other pieces of regalia.

Throughout the creation process, Misquadace wastes nothing. It feels like a

MISQUADACE HAD STUDIED metalsmithing at the Institute of American Indian Arts and learned Indigenous techniques in the late 1990s.

She also studied metals and four-dimensional art at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and earned her MFA degree in 2015.

Like birchbark, metals can also possess healing and spiritual qualities.

Misquadace often reflects on how her Anishinaabe ancestors obtained natural copper and gold.

“I think about gold on Turtle Island and how we didn’t start digging up the gold from the alluvial mines. We didn’t take all of the gold. We actually used the sites as places of medicine and healing.

So to be in that water where those alluvial gold mines were when the sun touches the water, and the Manidoo (Great Spirit) blue lights come on, those are healing times. It wasn’t to take that wealth,” she says.

The Great Lakes region holds copper of up to 99 percent purity, and some Eastern Woodlands tribes from the area have used the metal for tools, jewelry, and more for thousands of years.

Misquadace feels the copper’s cleansing and healing nature as she works with it.

“Anishinaabe have so many great stories of copper. It’s all over the Great Lakes area. There are so many stories about the Water Panther on the Great Lakes, and he is protecting the copper,” she explains.

WANESIA MISQUADACE

Since the 18th century, corporations have heavily mined the area for copper and nickel. Today, the Fond du Lac Band of the Michigan Chippewa Tribe continues to fight in court against mines that could compromise water and air quality on its land.

Misquadace incorporates silver, brass, and copper—her personal favorite—into her jewelry and sculptures. As a professor, much of her research focuses on using her bitings with metals.

“I basically took the biting, I photocopied that piece, and I laid it on top of the silver, and then I made stamps to represent my eyeteeth. And so then I transferred that little pattern onto the piece of metal.

Then I just took the hammer and stamped those designs. And that was a fascinating awakening for me,” Misquadace says.

Many of her copper or silver pieces look like she bit them along with the bark underneath them. Much of her artistic career is driven by that transference of techniques.

“When I think about the translations or innovations of the material itself, the layers hold so many stories. The people hold so many stories, and the layers of our phases of life hold so many stories. Each of the vessels become vestibules of liberation,” she reflects.

Misquadace also fabricates jewelry only of metal.

The coronavirus pandemic made traveling more difficult the past two years, and she missed several opportunities to collect birchbark in Minnesota. As a result, she increased her metalwork.

One of her most recent pieces, a ring called He/ she who brings life, depicts the Anishinaabe story of the Great Flood. The ring is shaped like the wazashk (muskrat) holding a green jewel resembling a piece of earth. The stories a ring or necklace tells reflect back on the person displaying it and their culture.

“Jewelry is a cultural signifier of who you are, where you come from, and also it elevates the wearer.… There’s like a spiritual process with adornment. And most of my work centers around that spirituality and that memory. So when maybe you’re wearing your jewelry, you feel safe,” she says.

Misquadace believes jewelry also lends itself to four-dimensional and performance art, combining her cultural knowledge and education. “I used [my metalsmithing and birchbark biting] with four-dimensional arts, like performance art, wearing the pieces and making the pieces become alive. When you talk about body and adornment, there’s a different connection to those two materials and processes together.”

Misquadace's ideas and storytelling continue to evolve. Some of her works encourage viewer interaction, while all remind viewers that Indigenous art is diverse.

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Art, Misquadace says, “is awake, and it is alive, and we are here. But the translation, the transition, and the innovation are the next steps.” above Friends, sterling silver, cuttlefish cast and partially oxidized, sugilite, pearls. opposite Water Protectors II, birchbark vessel, sterling silver, amber, pearls.

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THE NEXT GENERATION EACH YEAR ON THEIR TRAVELS back to Minnesota to collect birchbark, Misquadace and her son camp outdoors.

She teaches him how to find the bark ready to be peeled, to pray, and to ask the trees for their sacrifice.

“I like to live in a real tent with no running water and no electricity, and it’s a fun thing that we’ve done for many years.

But I just think it’s a great experience just to understand—just to have that relationship that is so sacred—the relationship that I always wanted to have with my mother,” Misquadace says.

She considers the art she creates from the bark and metals a community art that gives herself and Native people a voice. Telling her tribe’s stories through art is an act of power.

“That has always been important in my life—something that I’ve always

WANESIA MISQUADACE

wanted since I was little,” she shares.

“I’m a survivor of a missing, murdered Indigenous woman, who is my mother, and keeping that love, that faith, and that surviving strength alive is important in my work.” She finds it difficult to create a piece for an art show that focuses on the plight of missing and murdered Indigenous women in North America, usually signified by a red handprint.

“Everything I make is a result of being a survivor. So I couldn’t say like, ‘Oh, this represents this.’ Everything I make is about that survival,” she says.

“You can’t just make a piece that’s about the red hand.”

Misquadace feels the materials she uses also speak to the resilience of Indigenous peoples. The bark’s pliability represents strength—soft enough to bite a pattern onto if peeled into a thin sheet while also strong and buoyant enough to form into a canoe. Her Anishinaabe ancestors knew how to create anything they needed or wanted.

“We were people always of great wealth and worth, and our value was shown through the shells, the copper, and all the beauty around us. I guess that’s why the metal and the birchbark work so well for me,” Misquadace says.

While working toward her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she never anticipated becoming a professor.

However, Misquadace joined Arizona State University as an assistant professor of metals and Indigenous art in 2017.

“It took a long time to [grasp] or understand that I’m one of the first Native American women teaching metals at a [research university] in the whole United States,” she shares. “It was surreal. It’s something that needed to be done.”

S i n c e b e g i n n i n g a t A S U, Misquadace has transitioned her classes to focus on Native fashion and Indigenous metals. After her first semester, she designed two new courses for her program at the Herberger Institute for Design and Arts at ASU. “I really was passionate about them, and Arizona State University, the Herberger, was willing to

let me explore and be innovative in those ways,” she says.

Teaching the next generation of artists gives Misquadace energy. “That’s the great thing about being in an academic setting, because you get to learn with all these great, strong, fierce minds.” Her constant research and the ability to watch other artists use what she teaches them in new ways keep Misquadace’s mind fresh and searching for the next idea.

Misquadace is currently up for tenure at ASU and hopes her son will attend the university in the future.

Wanesia Misquadace’s art is available through Wright’s Indian Art gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the Heard Museum Shop in Phoenix, Arizona. The Society of North American Goldsmiths features her work on their website, and she exhibits at major Native American art markets.

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PROFILE

Penobscot Basket Weaver & Beadwork Artist

JENNIFER SAPIEL NEPTUNE

By Kelly Church (Gun Lake Pottawatomi/Ottawa/Ojibwe)

T

H E SUMMER MONTHS find Jennifer Sapiel Neptune navigating the rivers and braving the rapids she is mastering as a registered Maine guide. She leads overnight excursions where guests cook over campfires and sleep under the stars. She can also be found in her home away from home: the woods and forests, teaching others from her tribe about the cultural and medicinal uses of plants so that they can then share and teach their tribal youth. A gifted teacher and multitalented artist, she worked with the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance (MIBA) for nearly three decades. I recently was able to catch up with Jennifer and learn more about her artistry and how the pandemic affected her art and lifeways.

KC: Tell me about your name and your tribal affiliation.

JSN: I go by Jennifer Sapiel Neptune, as Jennifer Neptune is a common name in other communities and there is more than one. I am a member of the Penobscot Nation located on Indian Island in Maine. We are part of a larger Wabanaki confederacy, which means the “People of the Dawn.”

KC: Where were you born? Where do you reside now?

JSN: I was born in Bangor, Maine, and grew up in Old Town and Orono. I lived on Indian Island for more than 30 years and currently reside in Old Town with my husband, James Francis [Penobscot], who is a talented artist and photographer.

KC: What are your artistic media?

JSN: I work with black ash, sweetgrass, and do silk ribbonwork and beadwork.

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KC: Can you tell me how you got started in beadwork and ribbonwork?

JSN: I started doing beadwork by making beaded jewelry. I was always drawn to photographs of the older-style appliqué bead and ribbon work and wanted to create what I was seeing in the pictures.

I made porcupine quill jewelry and did the powwow circuit for twelve years to pay the bills and was learning black ash basketry and beadwork between cranking out the earrings.

KC: What was the first beaded piece you did? Do you still have it?

JSN: The first piece I beaded was a small bag with appliqué beadwork and a little ribbonwork around the edge when I was 18. I kept it as a reminder to always listen

and trust the guidance that compels the work. I had no idea what I was doing on that first piece. I just trusted the bigger presence that was guiding my hands and showing me the way. The second piece I did was much better and that one was left as an offering to the ancestors and spirits in gratitude for their help in showing me how to do this work.

KC: What is your favorite thing to bead?

JSN: The things that have been lost to museums. I like to make reproductions and return them to our people and community. I also like to be creative and do old designs with all the beautiful types of beads available to us today.

KC: I know you have sewn cuffs and a beaded hood for your chief. Can you tell

JENNIFER SAPIEL NEPTUNE

me more about the designs, colors, and styles and their significance?

JSN: The designs on the chief ’s collars depend on the era it was made. The oldest ones use a lot of double curves, stylized lines, and silk ribbon on wool trade cloth.

In the mid-1800s and early 20th century, there were a lot of floral beaded designs, elaborate and showy. Today both styles are incorporated into the same piece. I think the artistic freedom and flexibility of working with small seed beads in lots of colors lent itself to the creative transition. Working with medicinal plants, I can recognize many stylized flowers as actual medicinal plants. When I bead for long hours, it can become meditative. I often find a piece turns into a prayer for my community.

The collars represent the weight of the responsibility to the community and

to all the beings we share our territory with. They were usually done on wool broadcloth that came from the treaty annuities or trade. Red, black, and navy blue were the most popular colors of cloth, with white as the primary color of glass beads until the 1800s, when colored glass beads became popular.

The first collar I made was for an elder in my community, Charles Shay.

Our tribal historian was able to trace a collar in a photograph of Charles’s mother to the collections of the National Museum of the American Indian. I visited the collections to measure and photograph it. When I finally finished it, I presented it to him in front of our community in the council chambers. We were both crying when I placed it on his shoulders. Objects have power, and their loss is felt in our communities. While we cannot always get back the originals, there is no reason

above Sewing Basket with Lid, 2013, sweetgrass, black ash splints, cherry wood splints, commercial dyes, 4 × 11 in. opposite Jennifer Sapiel Neptune gathering sweetgrass, 2021. All images courtesy of the artist, unless otherwise noted.

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PROFILE

I brought it on a tour of our traditional territory. I paddled with it in canoes on all the branches of the Penobscot River, brought it to sacred places, and took it out on the ocean. I wanted to give it the energy of the places our chief would be protecting and responsible for.

KC: Have you won awards for your beadwork? What collections can we view it in?

JSN: I placed first at Heard Indian Market 2012 for a double-sided tote bag entitled Rabbit Dream and first in Traditional Beadwork at Schemitzun 1998 [an annual Mashantucket Pequot gathering in Connecticut] for a double-sided, olderstyle bag, which is now in the collections at Mashantucket Pequot Museum. My beadwork is also in the collections of the Maine Historical Society, Maine State Museum, and the World War II museum [at the Mémorial de] Caen in France.

KC: What is the latest piece of beadwork you have done?

JSN: My latest bead-and-ribbon work commission was for the Maine Historical Society for their 2021 exhibition, BEGIN AGAIN: reckoning with intolerance in Maine. I made a reproduction of an 18th-century woman’s wool blanket coat with a fingerwoven sash to represent the lives of the Penobscot people who lost their lives to bounty hunters and genocidal policies of the 1700s. Like most of the pieces I do, a poem came through for this piece and it truly became a prayer for healing for the past and present with each stitch and bead added.

above Rabbit Dream, 2012, wool, silk ribbon, leather, cotton liner, glass seed beads, 13 × 9½ in. without strap. opposite Chief's Collar, 2009, wool, silk ribbon, glass seed beads, 23 × 19½ in., collection of Charles Norman Shay (Penobscot).

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we cannot make new ones with their own power and stories to tell.

The next collar was interesting, because the elders wanted a reproduction of a Penobscot chief ’s collar from around 1860 that was primarily floral beadwork. The original lives at the Hudson Museum at the University of Maine in Orono and comes to visit as a guest at each tribal inauguration. It is too fragile to be used as part of the ceremony, so it was important to have one that could be in use. While creating this reproduction,

KC: Please share with our readers what kind of baskets you weave and your materials.

JSN: I weave fancy baskets and miniatures out of black ash and sweetgrass. I use black ash and sweetgrass mostly but will incorporate basswood, cedar, and even birch bark into my baskets. Each material has a unique texture and feel, giving each basket a unique look when finished.

KC: Are you able to gather your materials?

JENNIFER SAPIEL NEPTUNE

JSN: Yes, every summer I go out and harvest sweetgrass in the salt marshes along the coast. We have been harvesting sweetgrass for generations upon generations in the same places.

KC: Can you share characteristics of sweetgrass? What is its length when harvested?

JSN: The sweetgrass can be anywhere from 24 to 36 inches long when harvested. Sweetgrass has the most amazing smell that gets stronger as it dries and can be refreshed with water as it ages. There are baskets more than 100 years old that still retain the scent. It is like vanilla but stronger and sharper. I have had people find my booth at shows because they could smell the sweetgrass in my baskets and followed their nose.

It is a scent that can transport you back in time and place. I have seen it bring people to tears as they remembered the smell from childhood and the memories of places and people it brought back to them. When I pick sweetgrass, I often feel that it has its own memories—collective and far-reaching—and that it remembers us year to year, as well as our ancestors, way back through time.

KC: How is sweetgrass harvested and processed?

JSN: It is pulled up by the root, but some of the root is always left behind in the ground. The picking makes the grass grow back stronger each year. Once you pick, you must process it right away. First you comb or clean through the grass, getting rid of any dried or discolored grass. Then it is tied into small bundles and hung on a line to dry. After drying it can be stored in a dark place to be used later. When it is needed for use again, it is soaked in warm water and then braided or woven into baskets.

KC: What methods of weaving do you use for your sweetgrass baskets?

JSN: I use braiding, twining, and plaiting, depending on which style of sweetgrass basket I am making. It takes a lot of sweetgrass. Sweetgrass is very time-consuming.

From harvesting to cleaning, preparing,

braiding, and finally weaving with it is hours and hours of work. Sweetgrass in baskets is something you do because of your love for the plants and your culture, keeping those connections continuing.

The time is greater than any financial incentive for weaving with it, but it makes you wealthy in even better ways: in your connections to the land, to the plants and beings of the marsh, to your community, to the ancestors who picked and wove before you, and to those not yet born who we are keeping the traditions alive for.

KC: Can you tell me about the significance of sweetgrass to you and your tribe?

JSN: Sweetgrass is important to our Wabanaki tribes here in Maine. In our language, the word for sweetgrass translates to “the good grass.” It is used in ceremonies, burned for prayers and smudging, and hung in homes and cars for its protective ability, both physical and spiritual. The act of going to harvest

and taking care of the grass transmits a lot of cultural beliefs, from how to have the right relationship with the plants and caring for the area you pick in, to sharing what you pick with those who are unable to harvest themselves—remembering, caring, and looking out for each other.

KC: What kinds of sweetgrass baskets do you weave?

JSN: I love making miniature sweetgrass baskets, sweetgrass acorns, sea urchins, and flats. I also weave with the unbraided, straight grass, which is beautiful but time consuming. It is like weaving with thread.

Lately I have been making sweetgrass urchin shapes. Our antique baskets were woven with a mix of ash and sweetgrass, but I have been doing solid sweetgrass for the sides and covers. It has an understated simplicity to it that I really like.

I always weave sweetgrass into every basket I make.

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KC: What was the first sweetgrass basket you ever made?

JSN: My first was so long ago that I cannot remember, but if I had to guess there is a good chance it was a small sweetgrass flat.

KC: Who taught you black ash basket weaving?

JSN: I learned the basics from Theresa Secord [Penobscot] and was her apprentice. I started weaving in my early 20s. I was fortunate to have many connections through my work with basket makers, who were always encouraging me and showing me their tips and tricks. I absorbed a lot just watching them work.

I also study antique baskets and have been able to learn many techniques by looking closely at how they were woven.

KC: What kinds of black ash baskets do you weave?

JSN: I weave fancy baskets and specialize in the old styles and miniatures. I am known for miniature acorns and strawberries and using lots of sweetgrass. I use the twining and plaited methods and add lots of curls, points, and fancy weaves to embellish my baskets.

KC: Have you taught others?

above Barrel Basket with Ring Handles, 2008, sweetgrass, black ash splints, commercial dye, 11 × 9 in. opposite Water Lily Pouch, 2019, wool, cotton liner, silk ribbon, glass seed beads, amethyst, peridot, and garnet beads, 2½ × 2½ in., collection of the Maine Historical Society, Portland, Maine.

of basket used for storage. They can be tucked under an arm or stacked on top of each other. They were a popular basket from the 1850s to 1950s. One of the reasons few people make them anymore is the amount of braided sweetgrass that they take to make. More hours are spent braiding the grass than weaving the basket. If I ever added up the hours spent on each one, I am more than likely losing money on each one I make. I love them, so I never keep track of my time when I weave them.

KC: Who taught you?

JSN: Everyone in a way. I had friends who taught me to pick the plants themselves, basket makers who shared their knowledge with me, ancestral whispers, and old baskets that I followed every strand to figure out how others did things.

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JSN: I have taught many people in community workshops and children at the Indian Island after-school program, before COVID. I have shared with five apprentices, including Sarah Sockbeson [Penobscot]; I have enjoyed watching her success. Teaching and watching your students build confidence and do well is the best because you know the tradition will live on beyond yourself.

KC: What is the most recent basket you made?

JSN: Recently I wove a miniature pack basket with straps and a strawberry. I usually work on a few weavings at a time.

I also wove large sweetgrass flat. There is just something about them, their size, proportions, usefulness, and how good they smell. I will always be making them.

JENNIFER SAPIEL NEPTUNE

KC: Are your baskets in other museum collections?

JSN: Yes, they are in the collections of the Hudson Museum, Heard Museum, Abbe Museum, and Portland Museum of Art. KC: What elders and other basket makers have inspired you?

JSN: So many, not just for their styles and beautiful work but for their way of being kind, generous, and humble.

Many of them have passed on but still influence me. Mary Mitchell Gabriel [Passamaquoddy, 1908–2004] for her amazing sweetgrass baskets, Clara Neptune Keezer [Passamaquoddy, 1930–2016] for her creativity and kindness. Her sister Theresa Neptune Gardner [Passamaquoddy, 1935–2004] for her amazing shapes and generosity.

Lawrence Shay [Penobscot, 1912–2000] for his ability to split ash paper thin and use tiny weavers, and Molly Neptune Parker [Passamaquoddy, 1939–2020] for her encouragement and sense of responsibility to others, to name a few. There are so many!

KC: Please tell us about the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance (MIBA).

JSN: MIBA was formed in 1993 to preserve ash and sweetgrass basketry of the Wabanaki tribes in Maine. It was formed by basket makers from all four tribes in Maine [Aroostook Band of Micmacs, Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, Passamaquoddy Tribe, and Penobscot Nation]. Over the years we have done community workshops, apprenticeship programs, mentoring, a gallery, artist training, formed a task force around the health of black ash preparing for the arrival of the emerald ash borer, and ran shows so the artists have a chance to sell their work. We have been on pause with COVID-19 until it is safe to gather again.

MIBA has worked over the years to connect ash harvesters and basket makers from Maine to the Great Lakes.

All the ash basketmaking tribes share

knowledge, assistance, and moral support as we journey through the decimation of ash trees due to the emerald ash borer.

Together we have influenced and worked alongside state, federal, private, and university scientists and foresters.

KC: How has the pandemic affected your community and you as an artist?

JSN: I work in nature, so I was still able to harvest the plants and materials I usually do. Because shows were canceled, I was able to spend more time guiding, gathering, and teaching one on one. It has been disappointing to not gather in person the way we have been used to.

For me that has been the hardest part.

The health of our communities and of our forests contributes to the health and strength of our culture, so we are staying connected with technology and small outdoor settings for now, but the work and teachings continue as we are able. It has also been a reminder of how precious each day we have is, that our tomorrows are not guaranteed and that we have a responsibility to weave, create, learn, teach, and share our gifts now.

You can find Jennifer and her work at Native art markets across the nation and MIBA shows in Maine. She is currently updating her website, so keep a lookout for that. You can contact Jennifer directly at sweetgrassbasket@gmail.com.

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Collections

ESKENAZI MUSEUM OF ART

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

W

ITH 45,000 OBJECTS the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington oversees the second largest art collection in the state and is rated among the top university collections in the country.1 The Eskenazi recently reopened after a complete renovation of its three-story I.M. Pei–designed building. Spacious galleries broken by numerous diagonally set baffle walls prompt visitors for organic, nonlinear exploration, though the collection is loosely organized geographically: European and American art on the

first floor, Asian art on the second, and art from Africa, Oceania, and the Indigenous Americas on the third.

The Eskenazi’s sister institution, the Indiana University Museum of Archeology and Anthropology,2 is better known for its extensive Indigenous holdings; however, nearly ten percent of the Eskenazi collection is art from Africa, Oceania, and the Indigenous Americas.

Some objects are 3,000 years old, while others were created by contemporary living artists. Three sculptures in this department’s introductory gallery indicate the diverse range of work visitors will encounter as well as the historical

rationale for grouping so many cultures together. They are a wooden female figure made by a Montol artist in Nigeria (ca.

1950), a Maya ceramic vase painted with scenes from the Popol Vuh (ca. 700–800), and a tapestry made from bottle caps (2009) by Ghana-born artist El-Anatsui.

A text panel presents the question, “Why Is Art of Africa, Oceania, and Indigenous Art of the Americas Frequently Grouped Together?” and explains the origins of primitivism, but also aesthetic affinities. Eurocentric ontologies are under increased scrutiny as museums work toward inclusivity and equity, but the argument to retain

1. The Indianapolis Museum of Art manages a collection of 54,000 works.

2. The museum was previously named the Mathers Museum of World Cultures. The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IUMAA) manages a collection of 28,000 archaeological and ethnographic objects and 16,000 photographs. This collection is global in scope with a particular strength in items from Alaska Native cultures and an archive of 8,000 photographs depicting Native American subjects taken by Joseph Kossuth Dixon. The IUMAA is currently under renovation with plans to reopen in 2023.

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COLLECTIONS

a kind of alliance among the fields of African, Oceanic, and American art histories is surprisingly complex. As the text states, “The aesthetic preferences of these cultures did not favor the naturalism and idealism upon which Western art was based, but rather relied more heavily on abstraction, stylization, and expressionism.” A full analysis of this subject is outside the parameters of this brief museum profile; however, the open and porous layout of the Eskenazi’s galleries presents a useful case study to question how visitors make connections and distinctions among world cultures.

The impetus for a university art collection began in 1941 with Herman B Wells, then Indiana University’s president, and Henry Radford Hope, then head of the art department.3 Both men collected and donated many works to the nascent collection. A fine arts building completed in 1962 provided the first dedicated exhibition space. Hope served as director of the collection and gallery until his retirement in 1971. At that time Thomas Solley became director, and acquisitions through purchases and gifts accelerated.

Solley cultivated relationships with important donors, notably Raymond and Laura Wielgus, who amassed a significant collection of work from African, Oceanic, and Indigenous South American cultures.

The Wielguses began collecting in the 1950s and gave generously to the Eskenazi until 1990 when their entire collection came to Bloomington. The third-floor galleries are named in their honor.

Its I.M. Pei–designed building was completed in 1982. A multistory atrium crowned with a beautiful glass roof recalls Pei’s design for the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, DC. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi generously provided funds for its recent renovation.

Closing in 2017, the museum reopened in 2019 with a new name honoring the philanthropists.

The Eskenazi’s Mesoamerican and South American collection consists of about 350 items, including many that were taken from burial sites by amateur archaeologists, decades before excavations were regulated. Objects

from Chavín, Paracas, Vicús, and Nasca cultures, all based in present-day Peru, are grouped in one vitrine. A first-century Vicús crown made from hammered copper features three rows of small squares that dangle from rings, which would chime and shimmer when the wearer moved. Earrings adorn the five faces at the top.

Another remarkable item is a Chavín stirrup-spout jar from 900 to 800 BCE. Its sophisticated maze-like design with horizontal bars and small circles

3. See Indiana University Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art: Guide to the Collection (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016).

above, top Installation view of the Raymond and Laura Wielgus Gallery, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University above, bottom Unknown Guna artist, Cloth Panel, 20th century, reverse appliqué cotton mola, 15 × 191/2 in., Panama, Estate of Doris Steinmetz Kellett collection of the Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, #2013.264. Photo: Kevin Montague, Eskenazi Museum of Art. opposite Exterior view of the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art at the Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

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above Two views of work by unknown Mixtec artist, Polychrome Shell Pendant, 1200–1521 CE, marine shell, pigment, 2½ × 2 × 1¾ in., collection of the Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, #80.65. Photo: Kevin Montague, Eskenazi Museum of Art. opposite, top Unknown Vicús artist, Crown, 1–200 CE, copper, gold plate, 5¼ × 10½ × 5 in., Northern Peru, collection of the Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, #80.74.1. Photo: Kevin Montague, Eskenazi Museum of Art. opposite, bottom Unknown Maya artist, Polychrome Vase, 700–800 CE, clay, pigment, 95/8 × 63/8 in., Mesoamerica, collection of the Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, #73.10.1. Photo: Kevin Montague, Eskenazi Museum of Art.

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is incised into the clay. Select areas are painted red, orange, and white.

Across the gallery are many works from what is now Mexico. One particularly rare object demands close study: a conical shell pendant with painted figures, possibly a woman and the fire god, in Mixteca-Puebla style. A turquoise band encircles the top and the two figures face each other in elaborate red, yellow, and green attire.

The Eskenazi’s Native North American holdings are modest (about 100 items). Its current display includes a Haida and Iñupiaq mask, Nuu-chahnulth rattle, and Skokomish basket, all from the 19th century, and a quillcovered birchbark box by Rose Kimewon Williams (Wiikwemkoong Odawa, 1926–2002).

Allison Martino joined the Eskenazi as curator of African, Oceanic, and Indigenous Art of the Americas in 2020.

Her predecessor Diane Pelrine planned the current layout; upon her retirement Emma Fulce completed the reinstallation. In the future Martino envisions incorporating more contemporary art,

in collaboration with curator of contemporary art Elliot Reichert, to show how living artists draw from and reinterpret established genres.

One approach for the curators would be to borrow or acquire work from contemporary Maya or Peruvian artists. Currently seven contemporary Indigenous artists are represented in the collection, all from north of the Rio Grande: ceramics by Maria Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo, 1887–1980), lithographs by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish/Métis/Shoshone) and Fritz Scholder (Luiseño, 1937–2005), and paintings by Rick Rivet (Sahtu/Métis), Eleanor Kanasawe (Wiikwemkoong Ojibwe), James A. Simon Mishibinijima (Wiikwemkoong Ojibwe), Quick-to-See Smith, and Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo).

Another potential direction would be to focus on those cultures forcibly removed from the university’s site in the 19th century. A text panel near the vitrines of North American art acknowledges the Miami, Delaware, and Potawatomi people. Acquisitions, exhibitions, or programs highlighting these

COLLECTIONS

nations would educate current residents on local history and create opportunities for Native descendants to reconnect with their ancestral homelands.

Martino also plans to experiment with new approaches to installing historical items, especially textiles. Though not currently on display, the Eskenazi has many incredible 20th-century Guna textiles. Most are vibrantly colored molas with bold geometric patterns. Martino and I discussed the possibility of exhibiting some of these alongside textiles from Africa or Oceania, which could allow for new understandings of global fiber art production.

Indiana University is a renowned center for Indigenous studies, through its department of anthropology, the American Indian Studies Research Institute, First Nations Educational and Cultural Center, and its Native American and Indigenous studies program. Many of these maintain long-term working partnerships with various nations to preserve languages, create educational materials, pursue scholarship, and build community. Within this nexus of scholarship, the Eskenazi serves as a source for study and a public-facing exemplar, introducing broader audiences to the museological issues of categorization and interpretation.

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ALBUQUERQUE

Indigenous Women: Border Matters Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico

O above Makaye Lewis (Tohono O’odham), Mom, Those Jujkam Waved at Us and We Waved Back, 2019, monotype and linocut, 24 x 36 in.

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N VIEW from October 19, 2021, through April 23, 2022, Indigenous Women: Border Matters offers audiences a deep sense of humanity regarding notions of the “border,” or the imposed political line, between the United States and Mexico. Featuring artists Makaye Lewis (Tohono O'odham), Gabriela Muñoz (Latinx), Daisy Quezada Ureña (Mexican-American), and M. Jenea Sanchez (Latinx), the exhibition came to the University of New Mexico (UNM) Maxwell Museum of Anthropology on loan from the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe. Curated

by Andrea Hanley (Navajo), chief curator at the Wheelwright, the exhibition draws viewers into a twisting experience of both observing and listening to recollections of the four participating artists.

Indigenous Women: Border Matters incorporates an interactive, call-in component into its interpretation.

Visitors can use their cell phones to dial in and hear the artists’ descriptions of their works. This feature functions like

a metaphor for the entire exhibition— hearing the stories of those who live in relation to the Southern border in constant reference. The act of calling allows viewers to witness the exhibition through both sound and sight—a powerful combination to activate memories. The effect connects audiences to the artists in a direct way by hearing their voices. While moving between the artworks and listening to the artists’ commentaries, one becomes shifted into a mode of traveling indoors.

Upon moving towards the entrance of Indigenous Women: Border Matters, a row of movable walls comes across as a barrier, but once one is behind the walls, the walls slip into a role of protection for the memories being shared. A narrow pathway guides viewers to first encounter a series of Makaye Lewis’s monotype and linocut prints. Designed in a graphic novel style, these storyboard-like compositions expand the limited pathway into personal, illustrative pools of memory. Lewis’s narratives offer detailed moments of the artist and her family driving close to the Arizona-Mexico border.

The artist’s hometown, Ventana, Arizona, is located on Tohono O’odham lands, which cross both sides of the border. She lives just 60 miles from the entrance into Mexico. Her narratives reflect a sense of recurrence and tribulation. One print shows her mother flashing a middle finger at a border patrol station, while another depicts a memory of her father being ridiculed by border patrol officers for his disability. Visitors can learn these details from the call-in interpretation.

Lewis uses color sparingly. Some of her narratives are black-and-white, while others include highlight colors like yellow and orange. At once, these hues reflect the desert palette and overhead lights at the border. Lewis’s works also operate much like a photo album. They convey the complexity of life near a border, while also infusing a sense of humor to lighten the severity. Here, viewers see Indigenous laughter as survival taking artistic form.

Upon passing Lewis’s work, visitors approach a much more open space that extends the remaining length of the gallery. Based in Santa Fe, Daisy Quezada Ureña contributed a group

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of ominous porcelain sculptures that beckon audiences to take a closer look and perhaps “dial in” to gain more understanding. As a long row of ceramic-cast undergarments installed along the walls, this area of the gallery communicates a sense of loneliness and foreboding. The pieces suggest a memory of suffering alone in a wide and vulnerable space along the border.

In immortalizing these garments, the artist honors the experiences of women fighting for their lives in the highly trafficked area of border crossings.

Quezada Ureña seeks to remember these travelers and communicate the harsh yet transformative realities of their journeys through her ceramic process.

Two more of Quezada Ureña’s works stand in the center of the gallery.

One is a stack of bound bags of desert dirt neatly laid on a wooden palette.

The other is a porcelain cast of a larger garment atop a concrete slab with a hanging light illuminating it overhead.

Through their visual weight, both of these works convey the heaviness of traveling along and across a border. In these works, the artist offers multiple questions to audiences: “What is a border, and how does it feel?” “How do we remember those who lost their lives to the border?”

Another underlying message suggests the clay sculptures as stand-ins for those travelers remembered.

The third and final section of the exhibition features the collaborative work of Gabriela Muñoz and M. Jenea Sanchez, who both live in Arizona. Along the back wall of the gallery, a series of serigraph portraits communicates the strength of Latina women. Made with ink using breast milk and paper using desert plants, these images embody the deep connections between the women portrayed and their places of home.

These women smile and express their supportive stances. Placed in a row, they become a force of femininity, much stronger than any border. These are just some of the many women who lead— offering generosity to their families, friends, loved ones, colleagues, and strangers.

These women become the relatives of those who accept their offer of family.

In turn, the prints represent the way

forward through feminine leadership, while offering homage to generations of women past and present. The main message that emerges from this installation is that survival and success grow within feminine community collaborations.

Another of Muñoz and Sanchez’s works is two sections of a 22-foot wall they created. Constructed of handmade bricks formed from Mexican soil, both sides of these sections feature portraits of members of the binational women’s collective, DouglaPrieta Trabaja. The group is devoted to sustainable work in arts and agriculture for the long-term goal of financial independence.

The artwork suggests the building of another kind of wall—a wall of stability and love. The way these two sections are positioned with a large gap between them also suggests both a space of growth and the defiance of a divisive wall. The theme of nurturing comes through in this installation in the support of one brick to the next, all in women’s support of one another.

Overall, the exhibition moves visitors through many facets of feminine experiences along the border. An experience that could seem distanced to viewers shifts to one that is personal and shared willingly. The exhibition humanizes the border through a prism of memories as communicated through prints, bricks, porcelain, and clay.

These artists ground a drive for social justice in their practices. Both Muñoz and Sanchez’s work in creating alliances through community has been supported by the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Leadership Institute. Quezada Ureña has worked with nonprofits including El Otro Lado (The Other Side) to advance youth arts education. Lewis uses her exhibitions to bring awareness to the complexity of Native identity and, having received her bachelor’s degree in 2020, we can look for her next projects as she garners a voice in the field. All in all, Indigenous Women: Border Matters attests to the ongoing strength of Indigenous women and women of Indigenous descent supporting one another to fuse love into collaborative action.

—Michelle J. Lanteri, PhD

PENDLETON, OREGON

You Are Here Tamástslikt Cultural Institute

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I T H P H YS I C A L AND POLITICAL OCCUPATION of Indigenous homelands and attempts by non-Natives to erase Indigenous identity, contemporary Indigenous arts could be considered a collective act of survivance and vital to education. Currently at the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), the exhibition You Are Here represents a universal thread of indigeneity and yet should inspire visitors to embrace each artist’s unique identity and sense of place. You Are Here was curated by Kynde Kiefel, the Sheehan Gallery director at Whitman College.

As the college is located on Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla homelands, the exhibition supports a course on Indigenous aesthetics introduced last fall and encourages conversations within the community about place.1 Whitman College was named in honor of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman who established a Christian mission and school for the Cayuse people at Waíiletpu, just outside of current Walla Walla, Washington.2 The couple enticed settlers to travel to the Plateau region where they conveniently owned a trading post and profited from assisting Oregon Trail travelers. Marcus Whitman advocated for the section of the Oregon Trail that spanned over the Blue Mountains and across the Umatilla River Valley.3 White settlements brought disease and conflicts that killed countless Cayuse people, but Whitman refused to close his mission and trading post. So in 1847, the Cayuse attacked the mission and killed the Whitmans and many others. The subsequent unrest led to more conflicts and lands lost that ultimately became part of the “Umatilla Gold” wheat industry.

1. Lara Hale, “Sheehan Gallery’s “You Are Here” Investigates Place and Identity,” Whitman College, November 28, 2021, web.

2. “History of the College,” Whitman College, web.

3. “Basic Facts about the Oregon Trail,” National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, 2, PDF.

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The Tamástslikt Cultural Institute exhibits coordinator Randall Melton (Seminole/Muscogee) encouraged the Sheehan Gallery to take the show on the road. He shares his thoughts about the impact of the exhibition with me: “It brings to mind a map or looking at an area here and reminding people they are in the homelands of the tribes.

It is important to place yourself and understand where you’re at.”

Artwork comes from Whitman College’s permanent collection, the artists, and private collections. While the exhibition features works by CTUIR and local artists, including an early suite of prints by landscape painter James Lavadour (Walla Walla), primarily it features artists from the broader Western region: Ric Gendron (Arrow Lakes Colville), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke), Marie Watt (Seneca), Marcus Amerman (Choctaw Nation), Roger Amerman (Choctaw Nation), Preston Singletary (Tlingit), Melanie Yazzie (Navajo), Merritt Johnson, Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax), and C. Maxx Stevens (Seminole/Muscogee).

A Kansas-based artist who says she loves going to different places in her dreams, C. Maxx Stevens created nine dreamlike dollhouses exploring themes of identity in relationship to place. A manifestation of memories, Climb That Ladder represents her attendance at Haskell Indian Junior College (now Haskell Indian Nations University), where she would pick up trash at the children’s graveyard and the BIA required them to sing “Go My Son” in class, a song for inspiration to climb the ladder of assimilation and be successful. The lyrics went: “Go my son, go and climb the ladder/ Go my son, go and earn your feather/ Go my son, make your people proud of you.”5 The piece Climb That Ladder offers passage up and away from the school to a dreamscape herd of bison and that sense of home. “You always carry memories with you,” Stevens tells me. “It’s kind of part of your center, where you’re from.

It’s always there. I dream about Oklahoma all the time; it’s part of my dream world, that land.”

Stevens describes her memories of Haskell as part of herself but also part of a greater scenario. She sees the exhibition You Are Here as “how we connect with each other.” She observes historical narratives repeating over time and place, but she hopes for things to get better.

The events associated with the Whitman name, including the missionaries, settlers, land theft, disease, murder, and genocide, are specific to the CTUIR region. However, the story of these lands is far more widespread: a colonial narrative that has touched many places and challenged all Indigenous identities. Representing artists from different regions and cultures, You Are Here also represents a collective of places and honors the resilience of their respective identities.

You Are Here, the first temporary exhibition at the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation’s museum at Tamástslikt Cultural Institute since 2019, opened on February 4 and runs through May 14, 2022.

—Nanette Kelley (Osage Nation/Cherokee Nation)

5. Arlene Nofchissey (Navajo) and Carnes Burson (Ute), “Go My Son,” recorded 1967, track 1 on Go My Son, Blue Eagle Records BE-6840, 1967, 33⅓ rpm.

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ab ove C . M a x x S teve n s (Seminole/Mvskoke), Climb That Ladder, 2021, metal dollhouse furniture, wooden ladders, lights, stuffing, and red-hot glue in metal dollhouse.

Photo: Nanette Kelley (Osage Nation/Cherokee Nation). opposite Angel De Cora ( W i n n e b a g o , 1 8 7 1 –1 9 1 9 ) , frontispiece for The Middle Five: Indian Boys at School, ca.

1900, oil on canvas, collection of J. Andrew Darling. Francis La Flesche (Omaha/Ponca, 1857–1937) wrote the juvenile novel The Middle Five: Indian Boys at School (Small, Maynard, 1900) as a fictionalized account of his own boarding school experiences.

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ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA

Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories The James Museum

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HIS EXHIBITION TELLS A STORY about heartbreak, sadness, love, and strength.

The Heard Museum in Arizona curated Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories, and the James Museum added components from the Tom and Mary James Collection to the traveling exhibition. The touring exhibition can educate people about the dark history of Native American boarding school and shows the great resilience of Native communities.

In 1881 US Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz estimated that it cost a million dollars to kill an Indian through warfare but only $1,200 to support a child through eight years of boarding school.1 “It is cheaper to give them education … than it is to fight them,” said Hiram Price, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1885.2 Written quotes by Native boarding school students, with photographs of students, appear throughout the exhibition. Quotes by non-Indigenous supporters of Indian schools are displayed in contrast. A red velvet-covered barber chair, equipped with a strap to hold the children down, sits in the middle of the exhibition space. Near it are the words of Asa Daklugie (Chiricahua Apache, 1869–1955): “The next day the torture began. The first thing they did was cut our hair.… While we were bathing our breechclouts were taken, and we were ordered to put on trousers. We’d lost our hair and we’d lost our clothes; with the two we’d lost our identity as Indians.” A Fort Marion prisoner, in 1886 Daklugie was one of the first students to attend Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.

The musici an and ac t iv ist Zitkála-Šá, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin

(Yankton Dakota, 1876–1938), described the experience of losing her long hair as symbolic of losing her dignity. Wall text shared her statement circa 1900: “Since the day I was taken from my mother I had suffered extreme indignities. People had stared at me. I had been tossed about in the air like a wooden puppet. And now my long hair was shingles like a coward’s!

In my anguish I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me … as my own mother used to do; for now I was

only one of many little animals driven by a herder.”

Displays of Victorian clothing and boots visually contrast a child’s Seminole patchwork skirt. A photograph of Annie Coodlalook (Iñupiaq, 1882–unknown) with five Alaska Native children wearing matching Victorian clothing hangs next to a photograph of the same children upon arrival at Carlisle. The differences between the images are striking, down to their posture and facial expressions.

1. Rukmini Callimachi, “Lost Lives, Lost Culture: The Forgotten History of Indigenous Boarding Schools,” The New York Times, July 19, 2021), web.

2. Frank A. Salamone, The Native American Identity in Sports: Creating and Preserving a Culture (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 58.

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Photographer John Choate documented life at Carlisle, photographing the children upon their arrival and then rephotographing them dressed in Victorian or military clothing. These images became propaganda tools to promote the success of “civilizing” Native American students.

Midway through the exhibition is an eerie painting of an Indigenous child wearing a dress and wrapped in a shawl. Her feet are buried under the snow, as an owl swoops toward her. The painting is by Judith Lowry (Hammawi/ Maidu//Washoe). In 1916 Lowry’s great-aunt Molly Lowry (Hammawi/ Maidu, 1905–1916) ran away from the Greenville Indian School in California with four other girls. Molly was not far from home when she died of exposure to the cold and snow. The painting echoes the displayed 1915 quote from Santa Fe Indian School student Juanita Cruz Blue Spruce (Ohkay Owingeh, 1909–2003): “I remember it was in October they came to get me. My mother started to cry, ‘Her? She’s just a little girl. You can’t take her.’

My mother put her best shawl on me.”

Two boxes of tissues sit in the corner of the exhibition. This moment marks a turning point. How did the children overcome fear and dread? How did they survive? There is a sepia-toned photograph of students standing outside of their dormitory. Did they laugh and play? Did they argue and fight with each other? While all things familiar were removed, the children made friends who became their new families. Some students even fell in love. This resulted in many intertribal marriages. A photograph ca.

1945 of a Valentine’s Day dance at Carlisle School reflects sweet innocence. The girls look pretty wearing skirts and bobby socks. The boys are dressed up in jackets and pleated pants, and a closer inspection reveals a Seminole patchwork shirt. The teenagers hold hands and dance under hanging hearts.

Parker McKenzie (Kiowa, 1897– 1999) and his wife Nettie Odlety McKenzie (ca. 1896–1978) shot more than 300 photographs of their classmates at the Phoenix Indian School. These images document the personalities, friendships, and true lifestyles of students.

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glowing with delight. Historians now label these images as a form of visual sovereignty. They sharply contradict the formally posed propagandist images.

McKenzie’s images show people with the spirit to not only endure and survive but to thrive. The Indian boarding school system left generational physical, emotional, and cultural scars on those who endured, creating such trauma that many students committed suicide or turned to substance abuse. Despite these wounds, many individual students flourished.

How did the children overcome fear and dread?

How did they survive?

The James Museum extended the exhibition by showcasing artwork from the collection of Tom and Mary James.

Each exhibited piece is created by artists who attended Indian boarding and day schools. These artists demonstrate the ability to relate to their culture by representing tribal life in a variety of images. Alvin Marshall (Diné, 1959) is noted for his lifelike alabaster sculptures. Shonto Begay (Diné, 1954) paints memories of his childhood and life illuminated with a dreamlike quality.

His thoughts about his boarding school experience are: “I survived boarding school partly because of my spiritual strength and retreat into my drawings. I was always drawing. ‘Arts Save Lives’ has been my mantra ever since. Some people did not survive like me. They are walking traumas of my generation.”

Innumerable leading modern Native American artists are boarding school survivors. “I was supposed to discard all my Hopi belief, all my Hopi way of life, and become a white man and become a Christian,” recalled Fred Kabotie (Hopi, 1900–1986), an alumnus of the Santa Fe Indian School. Dorothy Dunn founded the Studio at Santa Fe Indian School, with renowned students including Harrison Begay (Diné, 1917–2012), Pablita Velarde (Santa Clara Pueblo, 1918–2006), Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache, 1914–1994),

and Gerónimo Montoya Cruz (Ohkay Owingeh, 1915–2015), who taught at the Studio from 1937 to 1961. Painter Raymond Naha (Hopi, 1933–1975) studied at Phoenix Indian School.

Adam Fortunate Eagle (Red Lake Ojibwe) had a more positive experience in boarding school at the Pipestone Indian School and Haskell. He saw school as a way to escape the extreme poverty on his reservation. In 1969, he co-organized the Occupation at Alcatraz.

The Red Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s led to tribal control of many of the schools and the passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 created the ability for students to attend local schools. Many of the federal boarding schools closed in the 1980s. The Bureau of Indian Education runs four off-reservation boarding schools, which are now supported by Native communities.

Historically, Native students took what was given them and made something better of it. Today the policy and curriculum of Indian boarding and day schools celebrate Native heritage, with an emphasis on art, culture, language, and history.

Ruthe Blalock Jones (Delaware/ Shawnee/Peoria), director emerita of Bacone College’s art program, observes that boarding schools: “Were started to stamp out the Indian from the Indian, you know, make us all into white people, and you know, it didn’t work. Actually … it was the exact opposite: it made us stronger as Indian People. It made us more aware of and more proud of who we were.”

Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories creates a moment of reflection, utilizing emotions of sadness, love, hope, and pride. An anonymous visitor’s words are tacked on the wall at the exit of the exhibition: “My mom would often reflect on her one year spent in the … American Indian Boarding School in New Mexico. It wasn’t until today I was able to see and feel her past. Every detail here is reflected in her stories.… Sharing experiences eventually helps healing.”

—Michole Eldred (Catawba/ Eastern Cherokee descent)

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above Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight, on view at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, DC, through January 29, 2023. Photo: Matailong Du for NMAI. Image courtesy of NMAI, Smithsonian Institution.

WASHINGTON, DC

Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight National Museum of the American Indian

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N AN AGE where dominant political and social narratives are continuously fracturing—whether under the weight of climate catastrophe, endemic poverty, or the New Jim Crow, though these are all assuredly interrelated—it is common for individuals to lose faith in their stories. When so many fundamental tenets of US-American colonialist rhetoric about nature’s unlimited bounty, economic growth as an engine for equality, the “meritocracy,” etc. are shown to be obsolete, if not patently false, reasonable people begin to wonder whether the power of stories lies in their ability to obscure the truth, rather than illuminate it. This raises pressing questions for our time: How might we recognize a story’s veracity? Do we track its consistency over time, hoping to find

authenticity earned through longevity?

Can we establish credibility through collectivity if enough of us simply agree?

And how might we share these stories so their truths are not just recognized, but felt? Turning to a well-known trickster, the central figure in Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary’s yearlong exhibition at DC’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), Raven and the Box of Daylight, can help us think through these conundrums at a time when the will to believe is being subverted.

There are, in fact, two tricksters involved in this immersive installation comprising more than 60 individual glass artworks displayed across four rooms on the museum’s third floor.

Inspired by Singletary’s collaborations with beloved storyteller Walter Porter (Tlingit) and realized with independent curator Miranda Shkík Belarde-Lewis (Zuni/Tlingit), the exhibition narrates a composite version of the Tlingit story of Yéil, as Raven was known “before here was here.” Yéil is the ur-trickster, the scheming conjurer capable of transforming himself and bending the world to his will. Singletary’s own work with Raven goes back decades, including

a commission from NMAI curator Emil Her Many Horses (Oglala Lakota) for Raven Steals the Sun (2003), a sandblasted red-and-black formline glass sculpture of Raven’s head that extends more than two-and-a-half feet, his weighty, curved beak holding the fiber optics–illuminated source of light, that has been part of the museum collection since its 2004 opening.

The other trickster is the material with which Singletary works: glass.

Similar to Raven, glass can morph and meander, changing form and its own physical properties to reframe perception, to speed up and slow down our experience of it. In a lyrical essay written for the exhibition catalogue, artist John Drury likens glass’s malleability to water, specifically to the river, representing both the reflection and the flow of history. Singletary’s narration begins in this layered moment where river and glass merge.

A 14-foot cobalt-blue winding glass river sets the stage for the story’s first scene, where any assumptions of what glass can do are unraveled. For those who are unfamiliar with Singletary’s practice specifically or contemporary NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 79

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glasswork generally, the exhibition’s opening moments are spent checking and rechecking gallery labels to confirm that, yes, even that piece is made of glass.

A black, red, and gold, twelve-foot Kéet Yaakw (Killer Whale Canoe) is positioned above the river among three luminescent, standing paddles and five salmon in various pastel shades. Each element hosts different sand-carved formline designs, and the characteristic curvilinear etchings are indicative of Northwest Coast cultural expression, creating a play between image and object. These designs showcase the specificity of glass as a medium. The grainy filigree residue caused by etching glass is reminiscent of the antiqued chandeliers found in Murano, Italy. Glass, again like water and like Raven, can lead to unexpected places.

A second medium is at work in Singletary’s rendering of Raven and the Box of Daylight, one that transgresses the material and situates the story within the realm of the phenomenological, making it possible to not just visualize the story, but to experience it: immersion. Whereas the glass sculptural compositions evoke the flow of history, organizing the exhibition as a series of rooms that surround visitors with various elements of the story creates a space for reflection intensified by manifold appeals to the senses.

Gallery spaces filled with video images of a celestial Northern sky projected onto windblown rope screens are accompanied by ambient sound compositions that in some spots recall animal and human languages. Materials such as textiles and steel accentuate the show’s haptic qualities already heightened by the alternately clear and frosted, smooth and coarse multicolored glass sculptures. Even the clan house objects— from the stoic X'aan Xéidu (Red Comb) to the series of nine Kákwx' (Baskets)— convey the warmth associated with idyllic domesticity. In the exhibition catalogue, Singletary and Belarde-Lewis discuss wanting to include the smell of cedar in the show, or even a fire. The multisensory effect is enveloping, like being on stage during a theatrical performance and consequently becoming part of the story—or stories.

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history. A challenge for Singletary and his collaborators, especially Porter and Belarde-Lewis, lay in composing a version that embraced this heterogeneity without sacrificing clarity. Working with five tellings from storytellers in Alaska and Yukon—including two from Yakutat, Alaska, by way of Porter—the exhibition narrative was written to include both shared experiences and distinctive recollections.

The consequent account produced the following frame: Flying along the river one night, Raven encounters three anglers who tell him of the Nobleman at the Head of the Nass River, or Naas Shaak Aankáawu, whose vast treasures include three boxes containing the sun, moon, and stars. Determined to end Earth’s entrenched total darkness, Raven ultimately transforms himself into a hemlock needle and falls into a ladle of water from which the Nobleman’s daughter drinks, causing her to become pregnant. Once born in human form, the precocious Raven manipulates his doting grandfather’s generosity to gain access to the three boxes, first releasing the stars, followed by the moon and sun.

Having achieved his goal of bringing light to the world, the trickster transforms back into bird form and seeks to escape out of the clan house smoke hole but not before the soot from a burning bentwood box permanently turns his white feathers black.

We progressively grow immersed in this story, which culminates in the space’s final room: World Drenched in Daylight. A soot-befallen-yet-soaring Raven is projected on a rope screen as the inchoate sounds of darkness transform into the articulated chatter of the newly visible peoples of Earth.

Illuminated busts of Yats'eenéit Sháa (Bear Woman), Xíxch'i Káa (Frog Man), and several other intricately carved glass figures present themselves. Formline designs and redolent color combinations reference earlier moments of the procession. Singletary’s singular ability to bring together the earthly and the ethereal without privileging either opens up a space for us to stand and share this resplendent moment of community: A coming together, in the light, into a story made manifest by our willingness to believe.

—Brendan O’Donnell

WEWOKA, OKLAHOMA

Mvskoke Bandoliers: Contemporary Seminole and Muscogee Art in Cloth Seminole Nation Museum

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MID SOUTHEASTERN WOODLANDS REGALIA, bandolier bags reign supreme.

As art historian Dorothy Downs writes, “Rendering these designs, whether old or new, in the embroidered bead technique can be regarded as the single most distinctive and important ar tistic accomplishment of the nineteenth-century women who made them.”1 Richard Ellwanger, the Seminole Nation Museum’s executive director, curated this exhibition that continues the dialogue begun by Rekindled: Contemporary Southeastern Beadwork (2017) at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum in Big Cypress, Florida. He focuses on Muscogee and Seminole bandolier bags from Oklahoma and Florida. So closely linked are the styles of these tribes that Downs writes that distinguishing between historic Muscogee and Seminole bandolier bags without provenance is impossible.2 Featuring 15 bags by five artists— and not just women—Mvskoke Bandoliers showcases underlying aesthetics and forms shared by these shoulder bags while highlighting the individual artistic approaches that make each bag unique.

For Muscogee and Seminole people, these pouches have wide straps worn across the chest, typically used by men.

The pouches carried valuables such as tobaccos, pipes, and medicines, while the outward-facing beaded designs feature protective elements or reference a wearer’s identity. This iconography fascinates me the most. Diamond designs often symbolize diamondback rattlesnakes, and serpentine zigzags on many bags’ tabs are thought to honor and placate the snakes, which are ubiquitous 1. Dorothy Downs, Art of the Florida Seminole and Miccosukee Indians (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1955), 155.

2. Downs, 157.

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in the Southeast and Oklahoma. No animal pelt bags are included in this show, but Pedro Zepeda’s Balance (2020) hints at an animal face on the triangular flap, in keeping with historical designs.

Some symbols are shared by tribes from Canada to Florida, such as the diamond with two double-curves Tammy Rahr (Cayuga) has called a Celestial Eye, while other symbols might be specific to a band, clan, or family. Other designs inspired by dreams or pure imagination might only be known to the beader. The meanings cannot be guessed. As with so much Indigenous iconography of the Americas, they have to be explained by a knowledgeable culture bearer.

Downs identifies four styles of Muscogee and Seminole bandolier bags, illustrated in this exhibition by four lithographic portraits: Mistippee, Yoholo-Micco, William McIntosh, and Menawa, from Thomas McKenney and James Hall’s three-volume collection, History of the Indian Tribes of North America (1836–1844). An enlarged print of the 1852 daguerreotype of Billy Bowlegs (Florida Seminole, ca.

1810–1864) and two commercial prints of paintings by Enoch Kelly Haney (Seminole/Muscogee) illustrate how Seminole men work bandolier bags as part of their regalia. More labeling would be helpful, particularly for the set of men’s clothing and 1950s bag from the Museum of the Red River. Three text panels explain the term bandolier, the bag’s role in Native societies, and twined bags.

While beaded bags on commercial cloth predominate the exhibition, two bags by Sandy Fife Wilson (Muscogee) of Morris, Oklahoma, illustrate a twined style that predates imported European cloth. Her Mvskoke Chief Bag has a triangular flap lined with white seed beads, the first color of glass beads adopted by Southeastern tribes to replace hand-carved shell beads and freshwater pearls. This bag’s bold design with strong diagonals in red, blue, and black contrasts against the soft variations in Wilson’s Gray Fingerwoven Muscogee Diamond Bag. She meticulously worked zigzags of white seed beads into the fingerwoven design of the pouch and punctuated the natural undulations of the long fringe with a few white beads. Wilson is part

of a quiet revival in twining, widespread throughout Indian Country.

The later form of Southeastern bandolier bags incorporates imported European wool broadcloth with cotton interior liner, usually with colorful floral prints. Artists often line the edges of the small rectangular pouch, its triangular flap, and wide straps with silk ribbon.

Among Southeastern tribes, each side of the shoulder strap has different designs.

The bag straps terminate in one to four tabs on each side. Yarn tassels often hang from the bottom of the pouch and tabs.

Unlike their Northeastern Woodlands counterparts, the Southeastern bags are not fully beaded.

Working with beaded wool broadcloth, the remaining four artists

The serpentine zigzags on many bags’ tabs are thought to honor and placate snakes.

above Damian Jay McGirt (Muscogee/Seminole descent, 1953–2018), Rain of the Earth, n.d., wool broadcloth, cottonpolyester cloth, silk ribbon, glass seed beads, glass pony beads.

Photo: FAAM.

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show remarkable diversity in their approaches to bandolier bags.

Robin Fife Jenkins (Muscogee), Wilson’s youngest sister, exhibited a large dark blue pouch, edged with lemon-yellow ribbon, swimming in metallic and cut beads that sparkle. The row of alternating yellow and orange tassels at the base and tabs of the bag compliment the sun imagery on the left half of the massive strap. Apparently Jenkins seldom sells or exhibits her work but instead bestows it as gifts.

Bandolier bags, particularly among the Muscogee, are still used ceremonially and awarded within tribal communities.

The man with extensive cultural knowledge was Jay McGirt (Muscogee/Seminole descent, 1953–2018). He believed deeply in the importance of wearing Muscogee and Seminole regalia. After all, the beaded designs on the bags are embodied prayers of protection for the wearer. He was a virtuoso of this medium, and to see seven of his bags in one location is a rare opportunity. He incorporated the selvage, the striped end of a bolt of cloth, into the terminus of the sashes. This reveals that the unlabeled men’s ensemble—including a turban, beaded sash, bandolier bag, big shirt, and fingerwoven belt with general fringes tassels—was likely sewn by him, accessorized by two historical neckpieces and a silver gorget strung with freshwater pearls by Charley Johnson (Flandreau Dakota/Cherokee/Muscogee/ Seminole/Chickasaw). McGirt sewed a wide range of icons, some delicately embellished such as the elaborate raindrops on the sash of Rain on the Earth. He strung tassels at the base of his bags from faceted pony beads and occasionally cloisonné beads, or enamel 3. Downs, 155–56.

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beads with metal wires worked into their surface. Most of his triangular pouch flaps feature solid contour beading. His white bead edges and two-needle appliqué sash designs are more linear but still perfectly aligned, in stark contrast to his wobbly single lines of white beads where the ribbon meets the wool broadcloth on his straps.

This erratic quality is actually a hallmark of historical Southeastern Woodlands beadwork. Downs quotes art historian Marcilene Wittmer, who wrote that Southeastern bandolier bags have “some of the most intriguingly irregular patterns of any comparable body of American Indian art.”

Downs also writes about “this tendency—toward the lack of symmetry, repetition, and regularity” in the historic Southeastern beadwork.3 With most Native beadwork striving toward precise straight lines or rounded curves, it can be surprising to consider that beadwork can be expressive, loose, or gestural. Likewise in historic Southeastern beadwork, and as evidenced in Mvskoke Bandoliers, artists in this show use the negative space of the dark wool to pop the beadwork designs and even strategically use gaps in the beadwork to energize the design with dramatic leaps in value.

Pedro Zepeda (Florida Seminole) juxtaposes geometric formations, almost like crystals or diatoms, with a sinuous, meandering outline of white beads in his Hanekooch-Hoote (Sugar Ants) bag (2021). Two-needle appliqué, in which one needle and thread hold the line of beads and the other tacks it down to the cloth, is ideal for curvilinear designs, and Zepeda pushes this to the extreme on half of the pouch.

Keeping in step with the wave of Indigenous Futurisms, Zepeda lined Bounty (2022) with Star Wars: The Mandalorian II cotton fabric. While Native artworks abound with Star Wars imagery, this practice speaks to cultural continuity.

Bandolier bags can incorporate even Disney stories into a Seminole context.

A complete surprise is the 1950s-era bandolier bag on loan from the Museum of the Red River. This understated black wool pouch, attributed to an Oklahoma Muscogee artist, has no tassels. Beaded with cerulean blue, palest periwinkle, pink, and white beads, its designs include leaves, buds, and abstract emblems split in half between colors.

Outlined in white, they resemble islands floating on water.

This mid-century bag testifies to Indigenous memory and persistence. Downs mentions a couple of Florida Seminole pouches collected in the mid-20th century, so while the thread of this art form was stretched thin, it was never completely severed.

This exhibition shows that the art of making bandolier bags, while still rare, is very much alive within Seminole and Muscogee communities. The loss of Jay McGirt was devastating; however, the opportunity to study so many of his bandolier bags and those of his fellow artists in one location is a boon to Southeastern beadwork artists. These bags are more commonly seen at ceremonial grounds than museums, so hopefully this rare opportunity to study them will inspire more Southeastern beadwork artists.

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

MUSIC REVIEW

Tanya Tagaq Tongues Six Shooter Records, 2022

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HE LATEST ALBUM by Tanya Tagaq (Inuk), Tongues, confronts the listener immediately. Don’t search for any kind of reassurance. This is a deeply powerful experience as it moves through sonic terrains and various realities into an ecstasy of revolt. The kind of release one only gets from facing it all head-on, regardless of the likely outcome. There is no question, not a moment to flinch. It is absolutely fierce and righteous, from a worldview that seems all-knowing. The first track is a warning: Are you truly ready for this experience? Now you must choose to continue, a conscious decision. This music is a world; are you sure you want in? You may be forever changed. You will be forever changed. That is the point.

Tongues begins with the track “In Me.” The song attacks from start to finish. Low rumbling loops wave through the ground from which a marching fog emerges. A discombobulated comfort that hugs like a constrictor. The face arrives to burst the breath of external derangement of an arrangement that goes against all matters. Morals, thoughts, sinew, pith, eat them. Skin, indignities, strengths, sheath, church, peel them off. We are that which we are in. Your eyes, visions, goals, hunger, eat them. Your blood, breadth, mettle, drink them in the sweetest voice. Heart, brain thoughts, you, me, meat.

Next, the title track, “Tongues,” begins with a calming, high-pitched melody. A reminder of the sweetness that is always present in the maelstrom. A gentle call, a coaxing, a nudge to follow. Followed by a scrub. Feel the noise and scrub yourself.

Clean the grime into a polished stone. Tongues are language, language is blood, and who owns the shame it is their pleasure they deny. The shame can’t be forced if it’s not accepted, but resisting demands action every moment of one’s life. Once we truly understand in the midst of this terror of realities, exhumed as evidence, resuming the daily life. Bury your head and this sound will follow, forever now. Samples of the day that always begin and end and also never end or begin. It feels eternal; it is and it is not. What are you going to do about it?

Bass line, distorted pop, sweating from the inside out of my brain. Exultant, destroyed, uplifted, restored. I love the sound of the drums! I love the sound of this whole track. I want to take a bite out of it and chew it, swallow it, become it! I find myself constantly struck by the relationship between acoustic instruments, samples, and synthesized sounds. These elements reach over and pull the other one in. Acoustic sounds start to sound synthetic and vice versa. This emphasizes the overall qualities of reality expressed on this album. The trance of transience, subjective and/or artificial realities, the romance of what was, the dignity of preservation, and the celebration of what’s newly possible. But the lyrics are straightforward, nonnegotiable.

“Colonizer, you are guilty.”

There’s nothing more natural than the defense of one’s own children. If we are not allowed that, then we aren’t free. “Teeth agape / claws sharpened … Touch my children / and my teeth welcome your windpipe.” This is the statement of an artist who is absolutely and completely dedicated to their expression as a means to a greater end. Voiced virtuosically, every nuance of her phrasing, the moments between speaking, singing, and throat singing, between the sacred, the profane, and the profound. This world is simultaneously so messed up and mixed up through which a clarity is illuminated. As if to say, yes, look at it for what it is, and what you love is worth the fight to defend. The danger lurks everywhere, the resolve is found within, the seed planted by generations for each of us to cultivate.

“Birth” makes me want to be reborn over and over again.

The only criticism I would make about this album is that this track is too short. I would like to indulge in it, but maybe that is the point of its brevity. What do we expect blindly as permanent and what do we respect for the impermanence it is? Yes, indulge for a moment, but then the fight continues.

“I Forgive Myself ” is another vehicle for illustrating the need to face reality for what it is. We can’t just forgive and forget lest we stop preventing and protecting. How can we care for ourselves if we know the same crimes are being perpetrated against others? Who will defend the young before they can defend themselves? This is music that is rooted in the moment we live in, aware of the context from which this moment is realized.

“Nuclear” is another great instrumental segue. A brief intermission, an opportunity to process, but not too much. We don’t have the luxury to process; the next fight is here.

I just love her voice and the ways it is recorded and affected.

Much of this album is designed to come at you, then around you; it is at full throttle most of the time. It is not an album that invites you kindly in. That said, there is so much nuance in Tagaq’s voice throughout. I found myself kind of intoxicated with the way she pronounces her t’s in “Don’t Fear Love.” Somehow everything disappeared beyond her t’s. They are succulent and snap a synapse in a particular part of my brain. Then the c of violence brings me back. “Fear, love, the goodness that is given to you. The courage it takes to not fear love!” A wonderful and very human reminder at this point in the album.

“Earth Monster” is a love song to Tagaq’s daughter. It’s the balance to the rage as well as the reason for her fierceness.

The album ends with an epic remix of “Colonizer” by Tundra.

It makes me want to simply say yes. So … YES! —Thollem NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 83

BOOK REVIEW

Where the Power Is: Indigenous Perspectives on Northwest Coast Art Karen Duffek, Bill McLennan, and Jordan Wilson Figure 1 Publishing, 2022

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HERE THE POWER IS: Indigenous Perspectives on Northwest Coast Art is an important new book that addresses pressing issues about the role museums can play in providing access to objects, maintaining respectful relationships with communities of origin, and decentering institutional control in favor of amplifying Indigenous perspectives.1 It also brings a wealth of Indigenous knowledge and insights. The multivocal title is drawn from a quote by Tahltan-Tlingit master carver Dempsey Bob, who comments that the memories retained by objects from usage and ceremony are “where the power is—you feel it.” The idea of power—as Indigenous knowledge, vested in institutions, and within the objects themselves—is threaded throughout the text, challenging norms in museum practice and centering Indigenous communities. Where the Power Is confronts important issues surrounding Indigenous access to these

objects and the power in reconnecting belongings with their communities of origin (albeit in an institutional setting).

As the book makes clear, engagement with Indigenous communities reactivates relationships inherent within the objects and re-embeds them into complex systems of meaning, which had been stripped away or diminished from years spent circulating in the ethnographic art market.

Veteran Northwest Coast art scholars Karen Duffek, the late Bill McLennan (1948–2020), and emerging scholar Jordan Wilson (Musqueam) bring together 81 First Nation and Alaska Native contributors from up and down the Northwest Coast who connect with these incredible objects and share their knowledge, questions, and observations.

The Indigenous collaborators come from a variety of backgrounds with varying levels of experience and expertise, but all have fascinating and valid insights to share with the reader. The text focuses almost exclusively on the words of the collaborators while the coauthors facilitate and amplify that dialogue, which challenges historic notions of museums (and curators) as gatekeepers and the sole arbiters of knowledge. This book builds on a long-term exhibition titled In a Different Light: Reflecting on Northwest Coast Art, which opened at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 2017. That exhibition was curated by the coauthors and features many of the same objects and contributors as Where the Power Is, but the book format allows for deeper explorations of the objects and significantly more Indigenous input.

Central to both the exhibition and this publication is the Elspeth McConnell Collection, an incredible group of more than 400 Northwest Coast objects bequeathed to the MOA by the late McConnell in 2016. Observations from community collaborators are paired with stunning, high-resolution photos, both detail photos and candid shots of the commentors and the objects together, which give the reader a real sense of the objects and the dynamic conversations at

work between the commentators, objects, and coauthors.

The main body of the book is divided into three broad, geocultural regions of the Northwest Coast: South, Central, and North. The starting point in the South inverts the lens of most Northwest Coast books that overtly focus on northern First Nations and Southeastern Alaska Native groups. As mentioned earlier, Duffek, McLennan, and Wilson cede the majority of the space to the Indigenous contributors, limiting their notes and comments after the introduction to grey caption boxes.

The comments from the contributors are presented as stand-alone vignettes that discuss particular objects, which maintain the conversational feel of the contributors reconnecting with the objects in the moment. By not forcing these comments into essay form or interjecting their commentary into the dialogue, the coauthors have developed a book that feels quite different from other Northwest Coast art publications.

Anchoring the decolonial and collaborative work in the book is the longstanding and close relationship between the MOA and the Musqueam Indian Band, on whose ancestral and unceded territory the museum sits.

Leona Sparrow (Musqueam), designated Musqueam liaison to the MOA and UBC, details the history of the Musqueam and MOA relationship in her introductory essay, “Welcome to Our Museum,” and how, through the development of protocols for belongings and successful partnerships in community-driven projects, the Musqueam have come to regard the MOA as their own museum.

MOA’s partnership and consultation with the Musqueam guides Where the Power Is and is reflected everywhere within the book, from the collaboration of the coauthors themselves (Musqueam and settler) to the centering of Coast Salish peoples and perspectives as a starting point (groups historically ignored or underrepresented in Northwest Coast art studies, even by museums and authors based in their territories). Musqueam and MOA’s partnership, as reflected in

1. Disclaimer: In my capacity as a PhD student in Museum Anthropology at UBC, I contributed research on a few Tlingit objects featured in Where the Power Is and am credited as doing so in the acknowledgments section of the book.

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Anchoring the decolonial and collaborative work in the book is the longstanding and close relationship between the MOA and the Musqueam Indian Band.…

Where the Power Is, moves beyond land acknowledgments and implements decolonial and collaborative practices in meaningful ways.

What’s most striking about this book is the refreshing structure and conscientious decisions made to disrupt norms in Northwest Coast art literature. I cannot overstate how important it is that the coauthors include an Indigenous scholar from the community where the museum is located.

Although this may seem like an obvious choice, many recent books aiming to do decolonial work do not meet this basic criterion. Another innovation growing out of the Musqueam and MOA partnership is the use of hən̓q̓ əmin̓əm̓ (Musqueam language) within the text to describe Coast Salish objects that lack community attribution. This is done not as a statement of ownership but in recognition of the territory in which the objects now reside. Indigenous languages play a large role throughout the book: in the names of the objects, geographic place names, communities, and the Indigenous names of the collaborators themselves. The coauthors have taken pains to use correct regional dialects and orthographies in object descriptions, which serve to further decolonize their presentation by emphasizing Indigenous categories of objects and highlighting the cultural knowledge inherent within their customary names.

While this volume is very effective in implementing the vision of the coauthors and making meaningful strides in decolonial work, this success is bittersweet. The book is dedicated to Bill McLennan, who unfortunately passed away before they completed the writing. McLennan and Duffek had a long-running writing partnership that also produced the groundbreaking volume The Transforming Image: Painted Arts of Northwest Coast First Nations (2000), a seminal work that fundamentally changed how scholars photograph and understand historic Northwest Coast designs. McLennan was essential in the MOA obtaining the Elspeth McConnell Collection and his close relationships with First Nations communities can be seen and felt throughout the text, which serves as a fitting and powerful tribute to his life and legacy.

Where the Power Is has surely set a new bar for decolonial and collaborative work between museums and Indigenous communities. The combination of gorgeous photos, broad cultural knowledge, and Indigenous languages shared here makes it an invaluable resource on historic Northwest Coast objects and an absolutely essential volume for anyone interested in Northwest Coast art, ethical museum practices, and First Nations studies.

—Christopher W. Smith NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 85

ART+LIT

Sicangu Lakota Novelist

DAVID HESKA WANBLI WEIDEN

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

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AVID HESKA WANBLI WEIDEN is Sicangu Lakota and an enrolled citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of the Rosebud Indian Reservation. He earned his MFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts, a law degree from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. His children’s book, Spotted Tail (Reycraft Books, 2019), a biography of the Lakota leader, won a 2020 Spur Award from the Western Writers of America.

Weiden’s debut novel, Winter Counts (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2021), a thriller set on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, tells the story of one man’s struggle to put an end to drug addiction in his community.

Paula L. Woods of the Los Angeles Times called the novel a “once-in-a-generation thriller.”1 In 2021 Éditions Gallmeister released the book in France under the title Justice indienne, and Simon & Schuster UK released the book in the United Kingdom. Winter Counts is also being translated into German, Turkish, Polish, and Japanese.

Weiden is the first Native American author to win an Anthony Award and the Thriller Award and the second to be nominated for the Edgar Award. He is currently an associate professor of Native American studies and political science at Metropolitan State University of Denver and lives in Colorado with his family. The New York Times described him as one of “the most critically acclaimed young novelists working now.”2

MRS: What drives your passion for the written word?

writing in different genres and styles?

How do you navigate these waters?

DHWW: I’ve always been passionate about literature! I grew up in a pretty rough neighborhood in Denver, Colorado, and reading was my escape.

As a kid, I had fantasies of someday becoming a writer, but it seemed like such an impossible dream. It’s been truly amazing to finally be able to realize my artistic vision. I’m hoping that the success of Winter Counts can inspire other Native kids to pick up a pen (or a computer) and tell their stories.

DHWW: My goal has always been to present an Indigenous worldview, and I’ve used different genres to accomplish that. My children’s book, Spotted Tail, originated from my realization that there were no picture books featuring the great leader of the Sicangu Lakota people. There were kids’ books featuring Crazy Horse, Geronimo, and Red Cloud, but none for Chief Spotted Tail, who is a really important figure in Native history.

So I pitched the idea to Reycraft Books and they promptly accepted it. I’m really proud of Spotted Tail—the illustrations by Jim Yellowhawk are fantastic. As for my novel, Winter Counts, I’d been thinking about that project for a long time. I’d

MRS: Can you talk about the transition from writing your children’s book, Spotted Tail, to writing Winter Counts?

Are there benefits or drawbacks to

1. Paula L. Woods, “Murder on the rez: A phenomenal thriller invents Native noir—and then transcends it,” Los Angeles Times, August 21, 2020, web.

2. Brett Anderson, “The Thanksgiving Myth Gets a Deeper Look This Year,” The New York Times, November 17, 2020, web.

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published a short story, also titled “Winter Counts,” in the Native journal Yellow Medicine Review, and I decided to expand that story into a novel. It took me about two years to finish the book and then another six months to edit and revise it.

Writing for adults requires a different skill set. Obviously I can bring in issues and themes that wouldn’t be appropriate for children. But writing for kids is just as tough, as the author must present the information in an age-appropriate style. I truly love writing for both children and adults and I plan to continue writing for both audiences.

also believe that as an Indigenous writer, I have a duty to present an honest but positive portrait of Indigenous culture. I refuse to use the standard stereotypes in my writing—the alcoholic Native being the most common of these. I feel a real duty to the Native community to make a positive impact with my art.

MRS: Winter Counts is not only about drug use, addiction, and the criminal justice system, but it’s also about identity, culture, and mental health. Can you speak to your need to write this book and why it matters now?

DHWW: Winter Counts deals with a number of urgent issues that affect Native people. The broken criminal justice system on reservations; inadequate health care; lack of food sovereignty; substance abuse issues; and economic inequality, to name just a few. I’ve been writing about these topics in scholarly publications for years, but I wanted to dramatize them and really bring them alive for readers by using the medium of fiction. All of these problems are crucial, and I was able to use my legal and political training to bring them to life. I’m happy to share that the book has sparked a dialogue about some of these issues, and I’ve heard from educators and policymakers who are hoping to spark real change. If my novel helped to spur public awareness about these matters, then that’s the greatest reward I could ever hope for.

But the book deals with more than just political and legal issues.

I also deal with Indigenous identity, culture, and parenting in the novel, and I think that’s where the book gets its heart. I’ve heard from many readers that they truly love the characters and can’t wait to read more about them. All in all, I wanted to entertain readers while also sneaking in some material about Native history, politics, and culture.

MRS: What fascinates you about the thriller genre? How did you get into it?

DHWW: I love crime fiction and I truly believe that the most important novels today are being written in the genre. Another writer recently said, “Crime fiction is the new literature of resistance,” and I really endorse that sentiment. Crime writers, which includes thriller authors, are examining issues of social justice, racism, and decolonization. My interest in crime fiction stems from a deep-seated desire to write a social novel that examines issues affecting Native people today.

MRS: Can you offer a synopsis of your writing philosophy?

What are your aims and approaches?

DHWW: An author must keep the reader turning the pages. If a book isn’t compelling, the reader will move on to something else.

So writing an enthralling novel is my most important goal. But I

above Cover of Winter Counts: A Novel (Ecco/ HarperCollins, 2021). opposite David Heska Wanbli Weiden. Photo: Aslan Chalom. Image courtesy of the author.

MRS: What do you find most challenging about writing fiction? Is there something difficult that you chronically encounter?

DHWW: Honestly, the most challenging aspect of writing fiction is finding sufficient time to create these narratives. I have a fulltime job as a professor of Native American studies, and I’m also raising two teenage boys. So I have to get up at 4:00 a.m. most days in order to have a few uninterrupted hours of creative time.

This is a struggle that every artist has to face, and it reflects upon the relatively low level of support that we provide to artists in

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ART+LIT

matters. But I also build in a great deal of Native content—stuff that only Indigenous readers will appreciate. Indigenous slang, customs, musicians, artists: all of these appear in Winter Counts, and I’m really delighted that both sets of readers have enjoyed the novel.

MRS: What are you working on now? Has the COVID-19 pandemic altered your publishing schedule?

DHWW: Yes, I’m delighted to report that I’m writing the sequel to Winter Counts! Tentatively titled Wisdom Corner, all of the main characters from Winter Counts will return along with some cool new people. I’m having a great time writing the book, and I can’t wait for folks to get a chance to read it. As for the pandemic, it hasn’t altered my publishing schedule, but it certainly changed my work habits. I’m raising two kids, and the COVID shutdown required me to drastically change my writing schedule. Of course we all suffered from this terrible virus, and I’m grateful that my family wasn’t too badly affected.

DAVIDWEIDEN.COM Deleted scene from

WINTER COUNTS

this country. Having said that, I’m tremendously grateful that I’ve been given the opportunity to share my words with readers across the world.

MRS: As a professor, what do you see young and emerging writers continually struggling with in relation to their writing?

DHWW: In addition to teaching Native American studies, I also teach emerging writers at an MFA program in creative writing.

I often see young writers concentrate on big-picture issues in their work rather than focusing on learning the nuts and bolts of creative writing. Writing is a craft, and like any artistic discipline, the student must first learn the technical aspects: writing realistic dialogue, learning how to structure a plot, and creating compelling characters. To achieve this, I require my students to engage in close readings and analyses of the classic texts in their genre. At first they don’t like it, but they later tell me that it was incredibly valuable for their artistic development.

MRS: Do you consider the differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous readers for your work?

DHWW: I write for both Native and non-Native readers. I realize that a large number of my readers don’t have extensive knowledge about Indigenous issues, and I provide enough context so they can understand and hopefully learn more about these 88 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

T

HEN I DROVE by the little cemetery where my family was buried. Without thinking about it, I pulled up by the entrance and got out of the car. The wind had been strong, and there was trash and rubbish scattered everywhere.

I imagined what the Chef would think if he saw our sad little burial grounds. I started picking up the waste— candy wrappers, yellowed newspapers, discarded flyers—and put all of it into a garbage bag I had in my trunk. I took an old rag and cleaned off the bird poop on the headstones. I pulled out the weeds growing in between the graves. I didn’t have a rake, so I got down on my knees and began to gather up all of the dead leaves, twigs, and branches with my hands. I stuffed all of those in the trash bag until it overflowed with litter and plant matter. I filled up the back of my car with garbage and debris.

When I was done, I gazed out at the cemetery. It wasn’t impeccably manicured with deep green grasses, it didn’t have elaborate shrubbery and monuments, there weren’t any elaborate gravestones. But it looked better now. Not perfect, sure.

But maybe it was good enough.

—David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Sicangu Lakota)

MEMORIAL

MARY LOU DAVIS June 19, 1925–February 2, 2022

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ARY LOUISE DOWNING DAVIS was a Caddo ceramic artist who spent much of her time, energy, and talent supporting and promoting American Indian cultures. She brought a sense of artistry and ease to the many ways she gave to her community as a professional volunteer, artist, and educator.

Mary Lou grew up in Oklahoma City, where she attended Central High School. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma State University and received her master’s degree in social work from the University of Oklahoma.

She married John Weeks Davis (Muscogee/Seminole, 1925–2004) in 1951. His career with the Indian Health Service moved him from Phoenix, Arizona, to Washington, DC, several times before he became area director, and the couple moved back to Oklahoma City in 1974.

Once back in Oklahoma City, Mary Lou was able to devote herself to powwows, Caddo turkey dances, and her ceramics at the Paseo Pottery Studio. She produced functional slab and wheel-thrown trays and platters, which were contemporary and practical. These she embellished with flowers or other Caddo designs. Although she took part in sales and art walks, she was most comfortable giving her pottery away to friends and admirers.

Her works are in the collection of the Caddo Heritage Museum in Binger, Oklahoma.

A staunch advocate for the arts, Mary Lou led ceramic workshops and taught docents at the Oklahoma City Art Museum. She volunteered at the Center of the American Indian and later Red Earth. She also served as state president of the North American Indian Women’s Association and as a docent at the Cowboy Hall of Fame, now the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. Mary Lou curated art exhibitions, including the Center of the American Indian’s Mothers and Descendants (1987), which featured contemporary Native women artists such as Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band Cherokee, 1957–2018).

Devoted to sustaining Caddo culture, Mary Lou served on the Caddo Heritage Committee and the Caddo Heritage Museum board. With Randlett Edmonds (Caddo, 1914–2011), she launched Caddo language classes in Oklahoma City. She even ventured into tribal politics as a member of the Caddo Tribal Council and served as vice-chairman, treasurer, and Oklahoma City representative.

Famous for their Halloween parties, Mary Lou and John loved to entertain and did so with a flair. She took on projects from menial tasks to chairing major committees and brought expertise and artistry to every one of them.

In her final years, Mary Lou moved to Annapolis to live with her daughter, Jamie. Her niece, Deborah Goodman, PhD (Caddo), remembers her as: “The matriarch of the family. A wonderful dancer: fun and funny.” The central Oklahoma Indian community will miss her.

—Mary Ellen Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

above, top Mary Lou Davis in the Central High School yearbook, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1942. above, bottom Mary Lou Davis (Caddo), Ceramic Bowl, clay, glaze, collection of the Caddo Heritage Museum, Binger, Oklahoma.

NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 89

MEMORIAL

JIM DENOMIE July 6, 1955–March 1, 2022

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above Jim Denomie with his artwork. Photo: Rhett Arens.

Image courtesy of Jim Denomie Estate and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis.

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IM DENOMIE (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe) began his art career rather late in life. He frankly admitted to wasting his 20s partying. In his 30s, he got sober and decided to try college.

Jim was a storyteller, and he would tell his life like it was a wild ride, a narrow escape, a hard-won road from the urban rez to the art world.

We got to know each other at Native arts and cultural events in the Twin Cities.

We chatted regularly, visited each other’s studios and homes. We told each other our dreams and shared ideas. We had a combined book launch and art opening for his first solo exhibition and my first book. I loved him but did not share his true love: golf. Jim and I were friends for 30 years. I wrote poems for him.

We sometimes had similar dreams that amazed us. We were usually in a car in these dreams—always on a wild ride.

I respect Jim for his relationship with his children, for getting his education, and for continuing to learn, all while remaining a skilled drywall finisher in demand and working until a few years

ago. That alone would be a life to be proud of and it was. But in his fourth decade, he was busy exhibiting his paintings in broad venues. One of his earliest series showed an urban “Indian” landscape with buildings presented as plateaus and buttes—humorous comment on tribal casinos and racist metro police. He painted from his dreams and visions as well: erotic landscapes of rivers and hills in female form surrounded by fantastic birds, animals, the sky, and the sun.

Around that time Jim had a son and soon after grandchildren. He married author Diane Wilson (Rosebud Lakota/ Dakota). Jim’s paintings intensified in comedy and tragedy. He painted scores of portraits, the faces of spirits only Jim had met. They retain a quality of coming out of a dream fog of bright colors. He won awards and honors and his work is collected in the United States and internationally. These are the hallmarks of success for most artists, but more than once, I saw Jim satisfied to have a piece in a community gallery. There he could chat with friends about what made him paint.

Jim’s later work grew to large-scale canvases that told stories both personal and historical: Minnesota’s atrocities against Natives, the mass hanging of Dakota, the Standing Rock protest where his son spent months, Trump’s sexual assaults, George Floyd’s murder, and then finally, the pandemic world of the past two years.

There was and will be no one like Jim. He was utterly original. His sculptural works of found objects will become iconic. With his braids and shades, his height, and coolness, Jim always had a bit of the icon to him. I know history will elevate his work and he will be considered a great 21st-century artist. To me he will always be my wild rider, creative trigger, and friend. Good journey, dear Jim. Thanks for the vivid visions you left to us all.

—Heid E. Erdrich, PhD (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe)

MEMORIAL

BETTY JEAN FRAGUA October 10, 1962–January 27, 2022

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ETTY JEAN “BJ” FRAGUA’S FAMILY gave her the Towa name of Say u pah (Bird Flower), “after the bird images of Zia Pueblo pottery,” as her brother Cliff Fragua (Jemez Pueblo) wrote in her eulogy. She was born into the Kee nu tah (Cornstalk People clan) and into a family of talented artists, including her parents Manuel and Juanita Fragua. Her mother Juanita was also a renowned Jemez ceramic artist. Juanita learned to hand process, sculpt, and paint polychrome vessels from her mother, and she passed these skills on to BJ. Through the Indian relocation program, the family had moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where BJ was born.

Cliff remembers her as a “very sweet, beautiful baby” with “dark black hair and dark brown eyes.” After her birth, the family moved back to Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, in 1963 before moving on to San Francisco, where BJ attended elementary school. “The Mission District was all she knew,” wrote Cliff, but “we would make an occasional road trip back to Jemez, with BJ and Sammy riding in the back of our Impala station wagon enjoying the ride back to the reservation.” In 1973 the family returned to Jemez Pueblo. BJ attended Albuquerque Indian School before graduating from Jemez Valley High School.

In 1983 BJ married James F. Chavez in Albuquerque, and the couple had a daughter, Roxanne, and a son, Jonathan James or “JJ,” who preceded her in death.

As a young adult, BJ studied pottery-making from her mother, Juanita.

“Of course, her work, in the beginning, was in the same style and design as Mom’s,” Cliff observed, but over time, she developed her own distinct style and created the series, Wave Pottery, painted with natural earth pigments. “You can distinguish her pots from others just by looking at her designs and motifs,” he wrote. She began exhibiting at Native art markets, such as Santa Fe Indian Market in 1984, as well as the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial and Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Arts and Crafts Show. Her polychrome ceramics, hand-burnished

above Betty Jean Fragua holding one of her wedding vases. Image courtesy of her daughter Roxanne Velasquez (Jemez Pueblo).

to a glossy sheen, exemplified Jemez aesthetics and iconography. Her pots garnered major awards and the attention of collectors. “She wouldn’t rush on the making of her pots and took her time finishing on them,” wrote Cliff.

“The world has lost a beautiful person, a noted and extremely talented Walatowa (Jemez) Pueblo potter, and I am mourning the loss of my friend,” shares Janet Smith-Peterson, the owner of Sundance Gallery in Geneva, Illinois.

“Her smile lit up a room, and her infectious laugh was unmistakable.”

“Her legacy includes her children, her pottery, and her accomplishments.

We respect and honor her and her life in this world,” wrote her brother.

“We believe that when a person leaves us to enter the place of our ancestors, our ancestors will be there to receive and welcome her,” Cliff continued. “They will gather to watch her enter the village in her regalia, dancing for them and for us. They will feast together. Our father Manuel, her son JJ, our grandmothers and grandfathers, our relatives, will embrace her and accept her into the spirit world.

We know that she will be in peace, joy, and happiness. We will find comfort knowing that she is in a good place.”

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 91

MEMORIAL

DAVE “STRUMMIN’ DOG” GALANIN January 18, 1955–December 18, 2021

above Dave Galanin playing guitar. Image courtesy of his family.

D

EEPLY CONNECTED to his homeland and culture, Tlingit carver, jeweler, painter, and musician Dave “Strummin’ Dog” Galanin forged connections through time and across space. His stunning and innovative work in metal, stone, ivory, and bone as well as his soulful music bear witness to a life dedicated to artistic expression and exploration. His generosity as a collaborator and mentor ensures his influence will be felt for generations.

Galanin was of the Eagle Nest House of the Kaagwaantaan clan and was named Kindaa', which means “to be taken up with the eagles.” At a koo.éex' (memorial party) in 1996, he was given the name Dei Kee Tla Tin, which means “to be on a high point and look far out to sea.”1 Galanin comes from a family of master carvers in southeast Alaska, where he began learning Northwest Coast formline design at a young age.

He apprenticed with the late master silver carver Louis Minard (Tlingit, 1917–2004)

at the Southeast Alaska Indian Cultural Center in Sitka. Galanin went on to develop a signature style of formline design on copper, silver, and gold and founded Galanin Silverworks. Intricate jewelry, epic sculptures, daggers, spoons, boxes, and so many creative experiments emerged from his studio, which became a center for the collaborations, apprenticeships, and mentorships that marked his career.

In 2000, he was invited to exhibit more than 30 pieces in the International Te Tairāwhiti Arts Festival at the Tairāwhiti Museum in Gisborne, New Zealand, a gathering of more than 80 Indigenous Pacific Rim artists. He stayed in New Zealand for almost a decade, becoming well-respected among the arts community. In 2005, he was part of an artistic exchange with bone-and-silver carver Stacy Gordine (Ngāti Porou).

The artists instructed each other in their respective styles during a three-month workshop in Sitka, resulting in the exhibition Enduring Forms (2005–06), which

opened in Alaska and traveled to New Zealand.

Galanin’s formal music career began in New Zealand as well, when he was invited by Poverty Bay Blues Club founder and vice president Darryn Clyne to be the very first musician to perform on the club’s stage on its opening night in 2004. An acoustic Delta blues–style guitarist and singer, Galanin went on to record three blues albums under his stage name, Strummin’ Dog. Upon his passing, Poverty Bay Blues Club called their first event of January 2022 Strummin’ Dog Night in his honor.

Galanin created several commissioned pieces of public art, especially in his hometown of Sitka. He also left a legacy in the many students and apprentices he worked with. He taught workshops at the University of Alaska Southeast as part of their Northwest Coast arts program and also trained silver carvers through formal apprenticeships.

Two of his sons, Nicholas and Jerrod, accomplished carvers and artists working in several media, collaborate under the name “Leonard Getinthecar.”

Nicholas performs and records music as Ya Tseen. Both cite their father as a major influence. In a FAAM interview, Nicholas says his father had “nothing but support for me as a young artist.”2 His father’s influence had a wide reach that continues. “My father was a major influence on not just myself but on many in the community and on the many who had the chance to meet or work with him,” Nicholas wrote me via email. “He was endlessly supportive and encouraging, mentoring many, and he was a bearer of cultural visual language and knowledge. His work within the Tlingit continuum was original in style, powerful and prolific. He was a worldclass blues musician who was always looking to share his profound love for music. He lives on in all of us.”

—Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke)

1. “Dave Galanin, 66, Dies; Was Tlingit Silver Carver,” Daily Sitka Sentinel, January 11, 2022, web.

2. Matthew Ryan Smith, “Nicholas Galanin: Tlingit-Unangax Artist,” First American Art Magazine no. 7 (Summer 2015), 60.

92 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

MEMORIAL

AUSTIN REAL RIDER March 11, 1941–January 30, 2022

“A

USTIN WAS A GIFTED ARTIST who enjoyed shows and his fellow artists’ talents,” says Benjamin Harjo Jr. (Absentee Shawnee/ Seminole). “He always had a tilt to his cowboy hat and a laugh that warmed the spirit.”

Many of his colleagues will remember sculptor Austin Real Rider (Pawnee/Sicangu Lakota) just this way.

As artists shared the sad news of Austin’s passing, memories and stories of the road trips and shows flowed freely with laughter and comfort. Known to be a prankster, those who knew him will forever remember his gentle ways, his generosity, and the laughter he shared.

“He has left us with a lot of good memories and his work that I will treasure,” recalls ceramicist Jane Osti (Cherokee Nation).

Born in Pawnee, Oklahoma, to Austin Real Rider (Pawnee, 1917–1988) and Marie (Lane) Real Rider (Pawnee/ Sicangu Lakota, 1917–2007), the future artist graduated from Pawnee High School in 1960, then attended Oklahoma State Technical College in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, where he earned a degree in printing. He married Cheryl Iron (Pawnee/Crow, 1944–2017) in 1962, and through the American Indian Urban Relocation program, the couple moved to San Francisco and worked for a printing company. They also lived in Utah before returning to Oklahoma, where they settled in Tulsa with their growing family and where Austin worked at Ross-Martin Company as a printer for 15 years.

Always a creative entrepreneur, Austin and his family began screen printing and hand painting T-shirts in the mid-70s and traveled to sell their goods at powwows. About a decade late, when he was in his early 40s, Austin moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to enroll at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where he obtained a fine arts degree and

above Austin Real Rider at his booth at the Red Earth Festival, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

explored ceramics. He harvested and processed clay from Pawnee by hand.

Soon Austin earned recognition and awards at top Native art markets throughout the nation. Skilled in many media, Austin set the bar high for his unique raku masks, Little People clay sculptures, and his two wall-piece series, Sioux Ponies and Buffalo. Galleries across the country showed his work, and colleagues noted his distinct style and professional working relationships.

In recognition of his many accomplishments, the Red Earth Festival in Oklahoma City named Austin as its Honored One in 2008.

With his second wife, Prescilla Campos (1945–1998), he opened the Prairie Rose Western Store and the Buckskin Pony Art Gallery in downtown Pawnee.

He team roped when he could and became a local legend for shooting pool.

Austin was a longtime chief and represented the Chaui band on the Nasharo Council, the Pawnees’ customary leadership. He drummed with the Brave Scout Singers and Red Land Singers. A Southern Straight dancer at powwows, he took time to share and teach his three children, their children, nieces, and nephews—or any Pawnee child—about their Pawnee heritage. In Tulsa he volunteered as a driver to take Native youth to local cultural functions.

Austin’s three children, Cherise Moore, Angie EchoHawk, and Warren Real Rider, echoed the legacy of Austin’s love for his family. Despite all his awards and accomplishments, his greatest pride was being a father and grandfather. He left his love and teachings with his sisters, his three children, and each of his grandchildren, nieces, nephews, relatives, and many, many friends.

—Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho) NO. 34, SPRING 2022 | 93

AMERICAN WOMEN ARTISTS MEMBER EXHIBITIONS 2022

CALENDAR April 1–May 21: Winnipeg, MB A Path to the Tipi between Stars and Time at Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art Gallery, 203–290 McDermont Avenue | +1 (204) 942-2674 | urbanshaman.org April 1–May 29: Albuquerque, NM Indigenous Brilliance: Culture without Compromise at the North Fourth Art Center, 4904 4th Street NW | (505) 345-2872 indigenousbrilliance.wordpress.com April 1–August 20: Lincoln, NE Contemporary Indigeneity at the Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q Street, biennial juried exhibition | (402) 472-6220 | unl.edu/plains April 2–30: Tahlequah, OK 51st annual Trail of Tears Art Show at Cherokee Springs Plaza, 3377 Cherokee Springs Road | visitcherokeenation.com

MAR C H 5 – MAY 2 9 Breaking Through: The Rise of Women Artists at Customs House Museum, TN MAY 6 Spring Online Juried Show Launch Works available for sale in both shows Forest Fountain by PHYLLIS MANTIK DEQUEVEDO Bronze, 10"x 8"x 9"

W W W. A M E R I C A N W O M E N A R T I S T S . O R G

April 2–TBA: Eureka, CA The Bartow Project at Da Gou Rou Louwi' Cultural Center, 417 2nd Street. Curated by Brittany Britton (Hupa) in partnership with Froelick Gallery | thebartowproject.com April 2–August 14: Whistler, BC Wolves: The Art of Dempsey Bob at Audain Art Museum, 4350 Blackcomb Way. First retrospective for this Tahltan-Tlingit woodcarver | (604) 962-0413 | audainartmuseum.com April 6–TBA: Nuuk, Greenland Ileqquvut: Assassorneq imm. II at Katuaq Cultural Centre, Imaneq 21. Group exhibition of Greenlandic needlework +299 36 37 70 | katuaq.gl April 6–May 25: Warm Springs, OR Savages and Princesses: The Persistence of Native American Stereotypes at the Museum at Warm Springs, 2189 US Highway 26.

(541) 553-3331 | museumatwarmsprings.org

June 5 - August 14, 2022

April 7–30: Toronto, ON Qavavau Manumie at Feheley Fine Arts, 65 George Street +1 (416) 323-1373 | feheleyfinearts.com

Topaz Jones (Shoshone, Kalapuya, Molalla, Lummi), Rise Above Little Warrior, acrylic on wood

April 7–30: Seattle, WA Post-Apocalyptic: A Solo Exhibition by Kari Morgan at Stonington Gallery, 125 S. Jackson St. | (206) 405-4040 | stoningtongallery.com April 8–August 21: Santa Fe, NM SITElab 16: Spectrum at SITE Santa Fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta.

Solo exhibition for Nani Chacon (Diné/Chicana) (505) 989-1199 | sitesantafe.org April 8–September 18: Brooklyn, NY Guadalupe Maravilla: Tierra Blanca Joven at the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway. Solo exhibition for this El Salvador–born interdisciplinary artist of Mestizo/Maya descent (718) 638-5000 | brooklynmuseum.com April 9, 2022–February 2023: Indianapolis, IN Contemporary Native Art 101 at Eiteljorg Museum, 500 W. Washington Street | (317) 636-9378 | eiteljorg.org April 15–TBA: Toronto, ON Kananginak Pootoogook at Art Gallery of Toronto, 317 Dundas Street | +1 (877) 225-4246 | ago.ca

Call for Entries - Deadline May 13, 2022 Entry form & More Info at www.redcloudart.show The Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School Pine Ridge, SD 605.867.8257

94 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

April 22 & 23: Tulsa, OK Inaugural Mvskoke Art Market at River Spirit Casino, 8320 Riverside Parkway. Award reception: Friday, April 22, 6:30 pm (918) 549-2434 | muscogeenation.com/mvskokeartmarket

April 22–May 15: Online Living Earth Festival: Saving Sacred Spaces film screenings and panel discussion, hosted by the National Museum of the American Indian | americanindian.si.edu/calendar

Australian Variscite Snake

by Christopher Sandoval Zuni / San Felipe

April 23–July 23: Winnipeg, MB Kakinit: Inuit Embodied Practices at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 300 Memorial Boulevard | +1 (204) 786-6641 | wag.ca April 25: Online Beyond Art: Respecting and Protecting the Sacred, online discussion about cultural sensitivity and how to approach Living Beings not for public viewing, hosted by First American Art Magazine. Speakers: Suzan Shown Harjo (Southern Cheyenne/ Muscogee), Rick W. Hill Sr. (Tuscarora), Tina Kuckkhan (Lac du Flambeau Chippewa), James Riding In (Pawnee), and Brian Vallo (Acoma) | firstamericanartmagazine.com/beyond-art April 29–May 1: Collinsville, IL Cahokia Mounds Indian Market Days at the Gateway Center, 1 Gateway Drive. More than 40 Native American artists. Friday, 11:00 am–5:00 pm. Saturday and Sunday, 9:00 am–5:00 pm (618) 346-5160 | cahokiamounds.org May 6–September 11: Santa Fe Jeffrey Gibson: The Body Electric at SITE Santa Fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta. Solo exhibition for this Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee artist, curated by Brandee Caoba | (505) 989-1199 | sitesantafe.org

Since 1981 Fetishes Jewelry Pottery 227 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe 505.989.8728 keshi.com

May 6, 2022–April 23, 2023: Phoenix, AZ Between the Lines: Art from the No Horse Ledger Book at the Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Avenue | (602) 252-8840 heard.org/exhibits May 7, 2022–January 1, 2023: Montclair, NJ From My Home to Yours: Caroline Monnet and Laura Ortman at the Montclair Art Museum, 3 S. Mountain Avenue | (973) 746-5555 montclairartmuseum.org May 7: Gallup, NM Spring Friends of Hubbell Auction at the Gallup Community Service Center, 410 Bataan Veterans Street | friendsofhubbell.org May 7–June 18: Montreal, Sherbrooke & Quebec City, QC Land Back: Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone (BACA)/ Contemporary Native Art Biennial, 6th edition, at Art Mûr, 5826 Rue St-Hubert. Also Musée des beaux-arts de Sherbrooke, La Maison des Jésuites de Sherbrooke, Stewart Hall Art Gallery, Quai 5160, La Guilde, and Musée McCord plus satellite exhibitions.

Curated by Michael Patten (Cree) | +1 (514) 933-0711 | baca.ca

Native American jewelry Native American jewelry and arts marketplace and arts marketplace 2 Christensen Lane 2 ChristensenMaine Lane Kennebunk, Kennebunk, Maine 207 423-8473 207 423-8473

shop online: www.homeandaway.gallery shop online: www.homeandaway.gallery

Offering Maine Indian Baskets Offering Maine Indian Baskets

May 12–June 4: Toronto, ON Ooloosie Saila at Feheley Fine Arts, 65 George Street +1 (416) 323-1373 | feheleyfinearts.com May 14 & 15: Bernalillo, NM 5th annual Bernalillo Indian Arts Festival at Loretto Park, 237 S. Camino Del Pueblo | (505) 867-9667 | bernalilloindianfestival.com May 24–26: Flagstaff, AZ Zuni Festival at the Museum of Northern Arizona, 3101 N. Fort Valley Road. Members preview: May 25, 5:00 pm–8:00 pm (928) 774-5213 | musnaz.org May 28–30: Santa Fe 18th annual Native Treasures, a MIAC Art Market, at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy Street. Tickets: $5–$100 | nmculture.org/nativetreasures

Ganessa Frey Ganessa Frey

Aron Griffith Aron Griffith

Jewelry | Baskets | Prints |Beadwork |Sculpture Jewelry | Baskets | Prints |Beadwork |Sculpture NO. 34, SPRINGjewelry 2022 | 95 Native American and arts marketplace

NATIVE AMERICAN ART APPRAISALS, INC. SINCE 1936

May 29–October 2: Los Angeles, CA Portable Universe/El Universo en Tus Manos: Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard | (323) 857-6000 | lacma.org May 31–July 9: Portland, OR V. Maldonado: Un Rinconcito en el Cielo at Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis Street. Solo exhibition for this artist of Mestizo/ Purépecha descent | (503) 222-1142 | froelickgallery.com June 5–August 14: Pine Ridge, SD 54th annual Red Cloud Indian Art Show at the Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School, 100 Mission Drive | (605) 867-5491 redcloudart.show June 10–September 25: Windsor, ON Itee Pootookgook: Hymns to the Silence at the Art Gallery of Windsor, 401 Riverside Drive West | +1 (519) 977-0013 | agw.ca June 11 & 12: Los Angeles, CA 31st annual Autry American Indian Arts Marketplace, hosted by the Autry National Center, at the Autry in Griffith Park, 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, with 200 artists | theautry.org June 19–June 24: Idyllwild, CA Native American Arts Festival Week at Idyllwild Arts Academy, 52500 Temecula Road #38 | (951) 468-7223 idyllwildarts.org/nativeamericanarts

(855) NAAA-INC EMAIL INFO@NAAAINC.COM VISIT WWW.NAAAINC.COM CALL

June 15–ongoing: Online Ancestors Know Who We Are, an online exhibition of BlackIndigenous women artists, hosted by the National Museum of the American Indian, curated by Anya Montiel, PhD (Mestiza/Tohono O’odham descent) | americanindian.si.edu June 15–December 11: Seattle, WA Indigenous Matrix: Northwest Women Printmakers at the Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Avenue. Curated by Kari Karsten (Seneca (206) 654-3100 | seattleartmuseum.org June 16–September 11: Tacoma, WA In the Spirit: Contemporary Native Arts 2022, 17th annual exhibition, at the Washington State Historical Society, 1911 Pacific Avenue | (888) 238-4373 | washingtonhistory.org June 17–19: Crazy Horse, SD Gift from Mother Earth Art Show, art market, at the Crazy Horse Memorial, 12151 Avenue of the Chiefs. Market starts each day at 8:00 am | (605) 673-4681 | crazyhorsememorial.org June 23–26: Okmulgee, OK Muscogee Nation Festival Art Market at the Creek Council House Museum, 100 W. 6th Street | creekfestival.com June 25 & 26: Indianapolis, IN 30th annual Eiteljorg Indian Market & Festival, hosted by the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, 500 W. Washington Street | (317) 636-9378 | eiteljorg.org June 29–July 5: Whitehorse, YT Adäka Cultural Festival at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre, 1171 1st Avenue. Cohosted by the Yukon First Nations Culture and Tourism Association | +1 (867) 667-7698 | adakafestival.ca June 30–July 2: Oklahoma City, OK Red Earth Festival at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, 1700 NE 63rd Street | (405) 427-5228 | redearth.org For more events, visit our online calendar at

FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM/ CALENDAR 96 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

NARCISO • PABLITA • ELIZABETH • TONY

Elizabeth Abeyta, 1955–2006 (Navajo) Untitled (Koshari), c. 1998; Clay, paint, leather, wool, feathers, coral, heishi, horsehair Photography by Addison Doty

704 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe NM 87505 wheelwright.org • (505) 982-4636

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