First American Art Magazine No. 22, Spring 2019

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

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

NO. 22, SPRING 2019

NAVAJO ORIGIN STORIES IN PAINTING THE RHIZOMES OF REPATRIATION EARLY SOUTHWEST SILVERSMITHING GUNA PAINTERS OF PANAMA

DISPLAY UNTIL JUNE 30, 2019

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Featuring Featuring premier premier Native Native artists artists from across theNative country.

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BENJAMIN HARJO JR. ABSENTEE SHAWNEE/SEMINOLE B EB NE JN AJ MA IMN I NH AHRAJ RO J OJ R J. R .

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BILL ANOATUBBY GOVERNOR BILL BILLANOATUBBY ANOATUBBY GOVERNOR GOVERNOR BILL ANOATUBBY GOVERNOR

JIMMIE HARRISON NAVAJO J IJ MI M IME I EH AH RARRI RS IO SNO N N AN VA AVJAO J O JIMMIE HARRISON NAVAJO

NORTHERN PLAINS INDIAN ART MARKET

Art Artof of Native NativeAmerica America THE THECHARLES CHARLES AND ANDVALERIE VALERIEDIKER DIKER COLLECTION COLLECTION Highlighting Highlighting masterworks masterworks from from Indigenous Indigenous cultures cultures across across North North America, America, this this landmark landmark exhibition exhibition is is thethe first first toto feature feature Native Native American American artart in in The The Metropolitan Metropolitan Museum Museum of of Art’s Art’s American American Wing.

Wing.

These These superb superb objects objects include include sculpture sculpture from from British British Columbia Columbia and and Alaska, Alaska, California California baskets, baskets, pottery pottery from from southwestern southwestern pueblos, pueblos, Plains Plains drawings drawings and and regalia, regalia, and and rare rare accessories accessories from from thethe eastern eastern Woodlands.

Woodlands.

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Now Now onon view view

#ArtofNativeAmerica #ArtofNativeAmerica

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by The Peter Peter Jay Jay Sharp Sharp Foundation, Foundation, the the Diane Diane W. and W. and James James E. Burke E. Burke Fund, Fund, the the Enterprise Enterprise Holdings Holdings Endowment, Endowment, andand the the Walton Walton Family Family Foundation.

Foundation.

Tsimshian Tsimshian artis,artis, Headdress Headdress frontlet frontlet (detail), (detail), British British Columbia, Columbia, ca. 1820–40. ca. 1820–40.

The Metropolitan The Metropolitan Museum Museum of Art, of The Art, Charles The Charles and Valerie and Valerie DikerDiker Collection Collection of Native of Native American American Art, Art, Promised Promised Gift of Gift Charles of Charles and Valerie and Valerie Diker.

Diker.

VISUAL VOICES C O N T E M P O R A R Y C H I C K A S AW A R T

Kristen Dorsey Panther Woman Hair Comb 2012, fine silver, 14k yellow gold, diamonds, labradorite 6 x 6.25 inches

MISSISSIPPI MUSEUM of ART 380 South Lamar Street, Jackson, MS EXHIBITING MARCH 2 - JUNE 2, 2019

CHICKASAWARTISTS.COM Grant provided by the Chickasaw Nation

Hearts of Our People Native Women Artists

This first major exhibition of artwork by Native women spans 1,000 years of creative ingenuity.

Featuring over 115 masterworks—from pottery, textiles, and painting, to photography and new media, to a gleaming El Camino—that show astonishing innovation and technical mastery.

artsmia.org 612.870.3000

Presented by: Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community

June 2–August 18, 2019

Artwork: Christi Belcourt, (Metis), born 1966, The Wisdom of the Universe (detail), 2014, acrylic on canvas. Art Gallery Ontario, Toronto. © Christi Belcourt

issue no. 22, spring 2019

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

Creation Story: Navajo Origin 20 Narratives in the Paintings of Harrison Begay and Gerald Nailor

By Jennifer McLerran, PhD

Recent Developments

12

Seven Directions

By Melissa Shaginoff (Ahtna Athabascan-Paiute)

16

The Arc of Guna Painting: 28 From Luis Méndez to the Cosmos

By Peter Szok, PhD

Art+Literature Heid E. Erdrich, Turtle Mountain Ojibwe Poet

By Tiffany Midge (Standing Rock Sioux)

92

Collections: Philbrook Museum

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

96

Early Southwest Silversmithing 38

By Denise Neil, PhD (Delaware Tribe-Cherokee Nation)

56

The Art of Identity 46 The Image and the Image Maker

By Matt Jarvis (Osage) The Rhizome of Repatriation

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

Spotlight: Key Marco Cat 106

By Mariah Ashbacher and America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

52

Calendar

ARTIST PROFILES Chase Kahwinhut Earles: Caddo Ceramic Artist

By Jean Merz-Edwards

56

REVIEWS 62

Cannupa Hanska Luger: 62 Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara-Lakota Interdisciplinary Artist

By Alicia Inez Guzmán, PhD (Chicana)

cover The One Who Checks & The One Who Balances, 2018, site-specific land acknowledgment, Navajo Nation. Featuring regalia made by Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara-Lakota) with beadwork by Kathy Elk Woman-Whitman (Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara). Photo: Chip Thomas, www.chipthomasphotography.com.

Exhibition Reviews

80

Book Review

88

Report

90

IN MEMORIAM Shan Goshorn 100 (Eastern Band Cherokee)

By Suzan Shown Harjo, Hon. DFA (Cheyenne-Hodulgee Muscogee)

Leah Mata-Fragua: 68 Northern Chumash Carver, Basket Maker, and Regalia Maker

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Kathleen Wall: 74 Jemez Ceramic Artist and Painter

By RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Tewa)

108

68

74

Snowflake Flower (Cochiti) 101

By Jonathan Loretto (Cochiti-Jemez) Greg Holy Bull (Cheyenne River Sioux)

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

102

Jay McGirt (MuscogeeSeminole descent)

By Tahnee AhtoneharjoGrowingthunder (Kiowa-Muscogee-Seminole)

103

Amanda Swimmer 104 (Eastern Band Cherokee)

By Michole Eldred (Catawba-Eastern Band Cherokee) SPRING 2019 | 7

Issue No. 22, Spring 2019 world premiere of a new composition and prints by artist-in-residence

ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Online) Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Managing Editor: Mariah Ashbacher Literary Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD (Euro-Canadian) Marketing Director: Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent) Copy Editors: Rosa Cays (Chicana), Jo Ann Reece Proofreaders: Mariah Ashbacher, Rosa Cays (Chicana), Staci Golar (Cornish-Welsh-American), Kerrie Monahan, Jo Ann Reece Layout & Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Social Media: Staci Golar (Cornish-Welsh-American), Michelle J. Lanteri, America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Nina Sanders (Apsáalooke), Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho), and Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa)

Regional Representatives

RAVEN CHACON

Great Basin: Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern Paiute-Modoc) Great Plains: Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho) Northeast: Kelly Church (Odawa-Ojibwe-Potawatomi) Northwest: Marianne Nicolson, PhD (Dzawada’enuxw Kwakwaka’wakw) Southeast: Michole Eldred (Catawba-Eastern Band Cherokee) Southwest: Holly Coonsis (Zuni)

Editorial Advisory Board heather ahtone, PhD (Choctaw-Chickasaw) Jonathan Batkin, Wheelwright Museum James T. Bialac, JD Teri Greeves (Kiowa) Emily Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Linda Lomahaftewa, Hon. DFA (Hopi-Choctaw) Jami Powell, PhD (Osage Nation) Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole) Ken Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho-Seneca) India Rael Young, PhD

Advertising Representative Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent), barbara@firstamericanartmagazine.com International distribution 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.

Copyright © 2019 by First American Art Magazine, LLC. Cover and contents are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or part by any method without written permission, except those specific images listed with Creative Commons licenses. Any errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. First American Art Magazine® is registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

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Winter Chamber Music Concert | February 16, at 6:30 pm Vert Auditorium, Pendleton , Oregon Matinee Performance | February 17, at 1:00 pm Crow’s Shadow, Pendleton, Oregon tickets at oregoneastsymphony.org

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CHEROKEE ART MARKET OCTOBER 12 & 13, 2019

Martha Berry - “Sageeyah Gold: Honoring the Pollinators & the Humans Who Protect Them” (textile) Culture Keeper Award

Sequoyah Convention Center at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa cherokeeartmarket.com | 877.779.6977 © 2019 Cherokee Nation Businesses. All Rights Reserved.

EDITOR’S GREETING

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EARS AGO Katherine Abu Hadal launched a campaign to declare that Native art should not be shown in natural history museums but instead be shown in art museums. At the time my mental response was, Who on earth is Katherine Abu Hadal? and then, What is the value of separating human endeavors such as art from the natural world? Regarding the question of where Native art should be exhibited, the answer is simple and obvious: Native art should be shown in natural history museums and art museums (in the Art of Americas wing, American wing, Latin American wing, contemporary art wing, modern art wing, educational rooms, administrative offices, cafés, lawns, etc.), as well as commercial galleries, nonprofit alternative spaces, kunsthalle, public squares, the streets, and any other potential art venue. Regarding the second question, should art be seen as an exclusively human endeavor separated from other species—that's more complex.

When I briefly taught Native art history at the Institute of American Indian Arts, each semester I had the students write an essay about “What Is Art?” In one class, a student asked if paintings by dogs and elephants would be considered art.

The argument that paintings by dogs and elephants do not constitute art hinges on cognition and intentionality. Presumably, dogs and elephants have not studied art history or theory.1 However, one could argue these are the ultimate outsider artists. I have no problem with their inclusion; others would disagree. What do we really know about non-human cognition? Am I anthropomorphizing animals instead of appreciating them for their own ways of knowing?

Still, wouldn’t isolating art from non-human animals, plants, fungi, and other lifeforms play right into Eurocentric humanist values that led us to our current

Anthropocene crisis of mass extinctions of diverse species?

Deep ecology, a movement that does not privilege humans above other living beings but instead sees us as part of a larger whole, was founded in 1973 by the Norwegian philosopher, Arne Naess. This seems like Western thinking belatedly playing catch-up to Indigenous thinking.

above America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Grassroots Organizing (Little Bluestem), 2007, gouache on paper, 14 × 11 in.

The Ecological Indian, blissfully at one with nature, is, of course, a stereotype that Native people have resisted, but beyond the stereotype is a core understanding that humans are an integral part of nature, not separate. Biodiversity hot spots, those places with the highest concentration of diverse lifeforms, coincide with linguistic diversity and are homes to Indigenous peoples worldwide.2 In a natural history museum, one can see Native art in close proximity to the raw materials, such as abalone, the shell of a living mollusk. These non-human beings are, in many ways, our collaborators, and Native artists often speak up for

their welfare and fight the dire situations humans have imposed on them. Perhaps the most famous historical example is the Southern Plains warriors who risked their lives to fight the mercenary buffalo hunters, or the Native artists of today fighting to save the salmon and the black ash trees. In her interview, Leah MataFragua relays her anguish over abalones being threatened with extinction.

Meanwhile, in an art museum, the vast, soaring spaces spawn serious reflection and invite people to slow down, spend time with the artwork, reflect on and challenge their own ideas. Yet, doesn’t much of Indigenous knowledge stem from close, contemplative understanding— deep reading—of our fellow animals, plants, fungi, and other living beings?

Perhaps art is an overt, intentional catalyst whose invitation we should carry with us to contemplate the outside world.

In this issue Andrea Ferber titled her introduction to international repatriation protocols “The Rhizomes of Repatriation.” What an apt metaphor for the spread of artistic ideas! Rhizomes are roots that run laterally across the ground while extending root hairs into the earth to seek life-sustaining water. They sprout new life, both connected to and potentially independent of the mother plant. Also called root runners, these provide artistic materials for Cherokee basket makers here in Oklahoma. Their growth parallels the organic spread, potentially direct and far-reaching, or serpentine, when encountering walls, metaphorical or literal.

B oliv i a and E c u ador, b ot h countries with Indigenous/mestizo majority populations, incorporated the rights of non-human beings into their constitutions. At the end of 2018, the White Earth Ojibwe passed a law guaranteeing the rights of wild rice.

Maybe the art world should follow their lead.

—America Meredith

1. After an acquaintance from Colorado was disgruntled because her application to art school was rejected, she noticed a neighboring dog’s habit of lining up objects—sticks, balls, and the like—next to a swimming pool in his yard. She began photographing the dog’s various installations and submitted these to the same art school. The dog’s application was accepted. Unfortunately for us, the dog did not attend the school, so we don’t know if studying art would have enriched the dog’s artistic oeuvre.

2. L. J. Gorenflo, Suzanne Romaine, Russell A. Mittermeier, Kristen Walker-Painemilla, “Co-occurrence of linguistic and biological diversity in biodiversity hotspots and high biodiversity wilderness areas,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (May 7, 2012), abstract; Russell A. Mittermeier, “Language Diversity Is Highest in Biodiversity Hotspots,” Human Nature (May 10, 2012), web.

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LETTERS TO FAAM APPRECIATION Hello First American Art Magazine, Thank you so much for the beautiful card. I was so touched. Thank you. I love your magazine and am so glad to look through it when it arrives. The magazines have a special place on my bookcase so that I can look at them anytime.

Take care. I hope that the seasons are happy and peaceful for you all.

Susie Sherman Denver, CO We appreciate your kind words, Susie! If you need back issues to complete your set of First American Art Magazine, you can order them through our website at: www.firstamericanartmagazine.com/subscribe or by emailing us at circulation@firstamericanartmagazine.com.

While few copies of FAAM No. 0 or 20 remain, some are still available for individuals or institutions wishing to complete their collections. Thanks again, and we hope you enjoy a wonderful spring!

NEW ARTISTS Hello! First off, thank you for such a great source of information. It’s been so helpful for me. I’m a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Your pages have opened my eyes to so many Indigenous artists I haven’t heard of or seen. They’ve shown me (through you) that we Native artists have a voice, and though it isn’t spoken the same or even seen the same, the source is similar. I just thank you for being you and available to my and everyone’s disposal!

Xavier Jordan Davis Cherokee, NC By letting the artists’ and writers’ voices come through, the underlying themes come to the surface. The overt themes we address are compelling, yet often the real conversation happens in intersections between articles. What common touchstones and concerns are coming to the fore?

Our intention is to cover a wide range of perspectives and reach collectors, scholars, Native and non-Native artists and art lovers— and tribal members who are not necessarily artists—living in a variety of geographical regions. Speaking a language commonly understood by such diverse audiences is a challenge, but hopefully we can resonate with many people to foster an inclusive dialogue.

So glad to hear our magazine resonated with you.

NATIVE ART PODCAST Hello FAAM Family from NYC, Thank you for supporting the Curating Indigeneity podcast. I am here to plan the launch and meet with Spotify.

I look forward to the year to come. Keep listening!

Tahnee Ahtoneharjo-Growingthunder Oklahoma City, OK @curatingindigeneity We’re excited about the upcoming official launch of the Curating Indigeneity podcast later this spring. There is such a strong need for an accessible, intertribal discussion of Native arts and cultures from Indigenous perspectives. A podcast will be a great way to learn more on long road trips to the next art event.

We welcome your letters to the editor! If we print your letter, we will send you a free copy of that issue of the magazine. Please email your letters to: INFO@FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM or mail letters to: FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE Attention: Editor 133 24th Avenue NW #126 Norman, OK 73069 SPRING 2019 | 11

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS The Denver Art Museum (DAM) promoted John Lukavic, formerly the curator of Native Arts, to the endowed position of Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Native Arts. He will oversee the museum’s Indigenous American, Oceanic, and African art collections at the museum. DAM hired Lukavic in 2012 as assistant curator of Native Arts. Lukavic holds a doctoral degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. In 2018 he was selected to participate in the Getty Leadership Institute at Claremont Graduate University’s NextGen program.

COLLECTIONS Thomas Druyan and Alice Ladner donated a thousand Indigenous artworks to the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, to form the Kampelmacher Memorial Collection of Indigenous Art. Druyan and Ladner named their collection to honor Ladner’s grandparents. The couple, formerly based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and now in Edmonton, chose to donate to the MacKenzie because of the museum’s strong history of collecting Indigenous art since the 1970s. This gift is valued in seven figures and follows an anonymous $25 million donation last summer to launch an endowment and a six-figure donation for acquisitions by local philanthropist Lyn Goldman.

above, left to right Peabody Essex Museum 2019 Curatorial Mellon Fellow Frank Redner (Upper Sioux Community) and new assistant curator for exhibitions and researcher Rachel Allen (Nez Perce). © 2019 Peabody Essex Museum. Photo: Kathy Tarantola. Image courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.

MUSEUMS The Osage Nation Museum hired Marla Redcorn-Miller (OsageKiowa-Caddo) as its new director. Redcorn-Miller was serving as deputy director of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe and has worked with Native collections in museums since 1992. She holds a BA in art history from Dartmouth College and a doctoral degree in art history from Columbia University.

She is a Ford Fellow and has served on the boards of the Native American Art Studies Association and the Santa Fe Children’s Museum. Founded in 1938 in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, the Osage Nation Museum is the oldest tribal museum.

Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, selected Rachel Allen (Nez Perce) to serve as its assistant curator for exhibitions and research. Frank Redner (Upper Sioux Community) will be the museum’s 2019 Curatorial Mellon Fellow. Additionally, PEM announced it has been awarded a $1.3M grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support its landmark Native American Fellowship program, which is going into its tenth year.

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Cheri Tate donated 72 Inuit sculptures to the Great Northern Arts Festival Society in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. Tate is the granddaughter of Harold Harshaw, who worked for the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources and amassed the collection in the 1940s and 1950s. The collection has been kept at his home in San Diego, California, for decades.

Most of the small sculptures, carved from steatite, walrus ivory, or bone, originate from the Eastern Arctic.

SCHOOLS The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the Institute for American Indian Arts a three-year planning grant of $434,000 to create a new research center. The planned research center would focus on specifically on 20th- and 21st-century Native art and cultures.

ART MARKETS The Autry Museum held its annual American Indian Arts Marketplace in Los Angeles. Susan Hudson (Navajo) won best of show, and Emil Her Many Horses (Oglala Lakota) won the Jackie Autry Purchase Award. Classifications winners were Don Johnston (Qagan Tayagungin Unangax̂ ), basketry; Susan Hudson, diverse cultural art forms; Bruce Joe (Navajo), jewelry; Corey Stein (Tlingit), beadwork and quillwork; Delores Juanico (Acoma), pottery; Renferd Koruh (Hopi), woodcarving; Catherine Black Horse (Seminole), clothing and personal attire; Terrance Guardipee (Blackfeet), painting and mixed media; Peggy Fontenot (Patawomeck), photography; Robert Dale Tsosie (Navajo-Picuris), sculpture; Phil Singer (Navajo), textiles; and EllaRose Bednorz (Patawomeck), youth.

KESHi thezuniconnection 227 don gaspar santa fe, nm 87501 505.989.8728 keshi.com Since 1981 Jewlery Fetishes Pottery

Orin Eriacho: Sea Turtle, flourite, 8”x 6.75”

AWARDS & HONORS The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) awarded Indigenous Research Capacity and Reconciliation—Connection Grants 2018 ranging up to $50,000.

Recipients working on arts and humanities projects include individuals and teams affiliated with the All Nations Hope Network, Inuit Art Foundation, Concordia University, Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning, Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance, Ittaq Heritage and Research Centre, Nation Waban Aki Grand Council, Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres, Tsi Tyonnheht Onkwawenna, Debwe Society, EnviroNative Training Initiatives Inc., Indigenous Culture Media Innovations, Indigenous Heritage Circle, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, Mannawanis Native Friendship Centre, Métis Nation of Ontario, NunatuKavut Community Council, Three Nations Education Group Inc., Treaty 8 Tribal Association, Wawatay Native Communications Society, and numerous colleges throughout Canada.

United States Artists, based in Chicago, announced its 2019 USA Fellows, which include Allison Akootchook Warden (Iñupiaq), Gabriel Frey (Passamaquoddy), Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota), Cecilia Vicuña (Mestiza). Winners of the annual fellowship receive $50,000 of unrestricted funds.

The Joan Mitchell Foundation awarded its 2018 Painters and Sculptors Grants to 25 artists, including Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke). Grantees each receive a $25,000 stipend and will be eligible to apply for residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans.

The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation selected its 2018 National Artist Fellows: Brian Adams (Iñupiaq), photographer; RYAN! Feddersen (Okanagan-Sinixt), interdisciplinary artist; Courtney Leonard (Shinnecock), ceramic artist; Cary Morin (Assiniboine), singer-songwriter; Kalani Pe’a (Native Hawaiian), singer-songwriter; Jeff Peterson (Native Hawaiian), musician; Allison Akootchook Warden (Iñupiaq), hip-hop artist; Anthony Hudson (Grand Ronde), performance artist; Ciara Leina`ala Lacy (Native Hawaiian), filmmaker; Bently Spang (Northern Cheyenne), interdisciplinary; Frank Wain (Sicangu Lakota), rapper; Melissa Cody (Navajo), textile artist; Pōhaku Kaho`ohanohano (Native Hawaiian), textile artist; Marques Hanalei Marzen (Native Hawaiian), textile artist; Heid E. Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe), poet; Luci Tapahonso (Navajo), poet; Michael Wasson (Nez Perce), poet; Elizabeth Woody (Warm Springs-Navajo-Wasco-Yakama), poet; Jim Denomie (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe), painter; and Linda Infante Lyons (Alutiiq), painter.

The Art Matters Foundation announced its 2018 list of 24 grantees, which includes Natalie Ball (Modoc-Klamath) and Rory Wakemup (Bois Forte Ojibwe). The invitation-only grant program awards $7,500 to individual artists and collective teams working in art and performance.

The Connecticut Historical Society’s Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program awarded two of its 2018–19 Southern New England Apprenticeship Program awards to Elizabeth James-Perry (Aquinnah Wampanoag) to mentor Leah Hopkins SPRING 2019 | 13

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

(Blackfeet), Marty Two Bulls Jr. (Oglala Lakota), and Madison Ann Craig and Jordan Craig (both Northern Cheyenne). The organization also selected as its 2019 Cultural Capital Fellows: Maile Andrade (Native Hawaiian), Keith BraveHeart (Oglala Lakota), Talon Ducheneaux (Cheyenne River Lakota-Crow Creek Dakota), Marcella Ernest (Bad River Ojibwe), Kamaliikupono Hanohano (Native Hawaiian), Gunner Jules (Sicangu Lakota), Deborah Jojola (Isleta-Jemez Pueblos), Kevin Locke (Standing Rock Lakota-Ojibwe), Molina Jo Parker (Oglala Lakota), Kenny Ramos (Barona Kumeyaay), Sheldon Raymore (Cheyenne River Sioux), and Peter Williams (Yup’ik). Each of these fellowships includes a $5,000 grant.

above Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota), She Gives (Quiet Strength IV), 2018, acrylic on canvas, 60 × 48 in. White Hawk was named a 2019 USA Fellow. Photo: Rik Sferra. Image courtesy of the artist.

(Narragansett) in quillwork and to Patricia James-Perry to mentor Jonathan James-Perry (both Aquinnah Wampanoag) in scrimshaw.

The University of Washington (UW) gave Marvin Oliver (Quinault-Isleta), glass artist, printmaker, and professor emeritus, the 2019 Charles E. Odegaard Award. Oliver’s 40-year career encompasses his artwork, teaching, and community collaborations. He holds an MFA degree from UW and began teaching there in 1974. Oliver has served as the adjunct curator of Native American art at the UW’s Burke Museum and founded the university’s annual Raven’s Feast.

The Suzie Cappa Art Center in Rapid City named Ramona Spotted Eagle (Lakota) their 2019 Artist of the Year. The South Dakota-based artist is a painter and draftsperson. In 2018, Spotted Eagle won the Black Hills Works Outstanding Achievement Award.

The First Peoples Fund, a nonprofit based in Rapid City, South Dakota, chose as its 2019 Art in Business Leadership Fellows: Elexa Dawson (Citizen Potawatomi), Danielle and Desiree De La Rosa (both Kiowa-Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara), Terra Houska (Oglala Lakota), Margaret Jacobs (Mohawk), Addison Karl (Chickasaw-Choctaw), James Pakootas (Colville), Kalani Pe’a (Native Hawaiian), Ben Pease (Crow-Northern Cheyenne), Darby Raymond-Overstreet (Navajo), Joseph Running Crane 14 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

The Longhouse Education and Cultural Center, part of the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, awarded its 2018 Native Creative Development grants to these artists working on the following projects: Shawn Brigman (Spokane), dugout canoes; Vickie Era-Pancretz (Alutiiq), masks, regalia; Vickie Harlen and Joe Feddersen (both Okanagan-Sinixt), metalsmithing; Sammy Grant (Upper Skagit), woodcarving; Bunny Haitwas-Peterson (Skokomish), drums, regalia; Mitchell McCabe (Gros Ventre), painting; Morning Star Means (Okanagan Band-Colville), moccasins; Lillian Pitt (Warm Springs-Wasco), glass art; Ashley Russell (Miluk Coos), textiles; Joe Seymour (Squaxin Island-Acoma), textiles; Travis Stewart (ChinookRogue River-Kalapuya), woodcarving; and Jacinthe LeCornu (Haida), basketry. The project-based grants, ranging from $2,500 to $5,000, are available to American Indian, Alaska Native or Native Hawaiian artists residing in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) in Santa Fe named the Cochiti brothers, Diego and Mateo Romero, as its 2019 Living Treasures. This marks the 14th year MIAC has awarded this title, and the 25th anniversary of The Chongo Brothers, the Romero exhibition at the MIAC. The brothers will be honored at Native Treasures, the MIAC’s Memorial Day weekend art market in Santa Fe. The Ucross Foundation named Heidi Brandow (Navajo-Native Hawaiian) as its 2019 Native American Visual Art Fellow.

Brandow will have a month-long residency at the foundation’s campus in Clearmont, Wyoming, and receive a $2,000 stipend.

The Ucross Foundation Art Gallery will later exhibit her artwork.

PUBLICATIONS Inuit Art Quarterly hired its first Inuk editor-at-large, Taqralik Partridge, a writer, curator, and interdisciplinary artist. The Inuit Art Foundation has published the quarterly academic journal since 1986. Since then Inuit guest editors and contributing editors have worked for the periodical, but Partridge will be the first Inuk to permanently fill the position. Originally from Kuujjuaq, Quebec, and now based in Kautokeino, Norway, Partridge has extensive experience in both publishing and arts administration, and previously held senior positions at Avataq Cultural Institute.

She began her artistic career in spoken word and is currently collecting a series of short, circumpolar Indigenous horror films.

Buying or Selling Indian Art? Know the Law! Under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, all American Indian and Alaska Native art and craft products must be marketed truthfully regarding the tribal enrollment and Indian heritage of the artist or craftsperson.

Take Home a Treasure from Indian Country-Buy works produced by members of federally recognized tribes.

For a free brochure on the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, including how to file a complaint, contact: U.S. Department of the Interior Indian Arts and Crafts Board 1849 C Street, NW, MS 2528-MIB Washington DC 20240 Toll Free: 1-888-ART-FAKE or 1-888-2783253 Email: iacb@ios.doi.gov Web: www.doi.gov/iacb Joan Hill, Muscogee Creek Nation, Sacred Ceremony of the Temple Mound, Painting, ©1989

EXTRATERRESTRIAL TRANSPORT Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques blasted off aboard a Russian rocket to the International Space Station on December 3, 2018, carrying a piece of Inuit art. Saint-Jacques selected a sealskin bracelet made by Inuk designer Victoria Okpik, originally from Nunavik, after contacting the artist. Okpik told the CBC that the astronaut “asked me to make him something that would be meaningful for Canadians.” Saint-Jacques had worked as a doctor at the Inuulitsivik Health Centre in the Inuit community of Puvirnituq, Quebec, prior to becoming an astronaut.

REPATRIATION The US Department of Justice returned an Acoma Shield and other cultural items to the Pueblo of Acoma in a ceremony at the Sky City Cultural Center and Haak’u Museum in New Mexico.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs recovered the shield after discovering a Montana art gallery was offering it for sale. The discovery came after the 2015 attempted sale of an Acoma Shield by the Eve Auction house in Paris, France. Acoma Pueblo war shields are sacred pieces of cultural patrimony and used for religious purposes, and closely kept among community leaders of the Pueblo community.

CRIME & LEGAL ISSUES The US federal court indicted five men for fraudulently selling non-Native jewelry as being Native American. The goods were

manufactured and smuggled in from the Philippines and sold without any markings of origin. The accused individuals allegedly copied designs by Native American artists and had the artists’ hallmarks forged onto the merchandise. The men all face prison time if convicted of the charges of conspiracy, smuggling, and misrepresentation of American Indian-produced goods. This is considered the largest Indian Arts and Crafts Act fraud case, with the value of the goods estimated at almost $12 million.

Denver Art Museum suffered ten damaged artworks when an 18-year old visitor, Jake Siebenlist, went on a deliberate rampage in December. The damaged works were part of Stampede: Animals in Art. It is unclear what motivated the teen and he has been charged with felony criminal mischief in connection with the attack. He is due in court on March 15, 2019, to enter a plea. Fortunately, nearly all of the objects can be repaired.

The damaged objects were Pre-Columbian art of the Americas, modern and contemporary art, and one work of Asian art.

Thieves stole two First Nations carvings from an accounting firm in Campbell River, British Columbia. One of the carvings was Bear Dancer by Quadra Island-based artist Michael Price (Kwakwaka’wakw). The other carving was described as a foothigh small eagle mask. The owners declined to speculate on the market value of the art, and the authorities say the investigation is ongoing.

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SEVEN DIRECTIONS

MELISSA SHAGINOFF

A

N AHTNA ATHABASCAN AND PAIUTE from Nay'dini'aa Na' Kayax' (Chickaloon Native Village) and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, Melissa Shaginoff grew up on the southern coast of Alaska where she learned the lifeways of her cousins, the Dena’ina people. She is an artist and the curator of contemporary Indigenous art and culture at the Anchorage Museum where her projects revolve around identity and representation. Shaginoff sees her museum work as an act of making space—space for Indigenous change, for an Indigenous presence, and for Indigenous futures. She participated in the Sheldon Jackson Museum Native Artist Residency in Sitka, Alaska, and the Island Mountain Arts Toni Onley Artists’ Project in Wells, British Columbia. She also curated artwork at Ahtnahwt’aene’ Nay’dini’aa den Gathering Place in Chickaloon, Alaska, and co-curated the group exhibition, INTRODUCING: Alaska Native PLACE, in Anchorage, Alaska. Shaginoff ’s artwork is in the permanent collections of the Institute of American Indian Arts, Palmer Museum of Art, and Pratt Museum.

NORTH: In Finland, contemporary Alaska Native art is being shown on a significant scale. In collaboration between the Anchorage Museum and the Rovaniemi Art Museum, the exhibition Place of Origin: Contemporary Alaska Native Art is currently on view at the Korundi House of Culture.

Representing both Alaska’s great cultural diversity as well as its parallels to Northern communities and Indigenous peoples of Sápmi, Place of Origin embraces a decolonial perspective of the North. The exhibition features many notable artists including George Ahgupuk (Iñupiaq, 1911–2001), Kathleen Carlo-Kendall (Koyukon Athabaskan), Sonya Kelliher-Combs (IñupiaqAthabascan), Nicolas Galanin (Tlingit-Unangax̂ ), Jim Schoppert (Tlingit, 1947–1992), Rebecca Lyon (Dena’ina-Alutiiq), and Erica Lord (Athabascan-Iñupiaq), to name a few. In Place of Origin, the artworks chosen to embody the Indigenous experience of colonization and recognize Alaska Native understanding of their home and place.

SOUTH: This summer PBS KIDS will launch the animated series Molly of Denali, the first nationally distributed children’s animated series featuring an Alaska Native lead character.

The series is important not only because of the Alaska Native portrayal, but also because of the Alaska Native consultation in the making of the show. From Alaska Native voice actors to producers, scriptwriters, advisors, fellows, and interns, Molly of Denali is largely about Alaska Native people representing themselves in media and, perhaps for the first time, representing a dynamic depiction of a 21st-century Alaska Native girl.

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SEVEN DIRECTIONS

above Animation still from Molly from Denali. Courtesy of PBS Kids. above, right Holly Nordlum (Iñupiaq) and S.J Norman prepping participant for her tattoo. Photo: Ricardo Martinez Roa. opposite, top Melissa Shaginoff. Photo: Jason Ordaz. Unless otherwise noted, all images courtesy of the author. opposite, below Rebecca Lyon (Dena’ina-Alutiiq), Counting on Liberty, 2016, mixed media, part of the Place of Origin exhibition. Image courtesy of the Anchorage Museum.

EAST: At the start of 2019, a congregation of Indigenous performance artists from Australia, New Zealand (Aotearoa), Canada, and the United States met in Lenapehoking, in the East Village of New York. In a series of performances, discussions, workshops, and ceremonies titled First Nations Dialogues, the Global First Nations Performance Network (GFNPN) was formed. The GFNPN is a network focused on cross-cultural exchange through various forms of Indigenous performance.

In a collaboration, artist and curator Emily Johnson (Yup’ik) and artist Holly Nordlum (Iñupiaq) brought Inuit tattooing to Koori artist S.J Norman’s performance, Cicatrix 1 (that which is taken/that which remains). Norman developed the performance and invited Holly to into collaboration. During the performance Holly then gave consenting participants a tattoo on their index finger or their non-dominant hand. This subtle mark, influenced

by Norman, was an internal and external act of memory. KooriLebanese writer Mykaela Saunders performed a simultaneous bloodletting ritual. Both the tattoo and bloodletting drew participants into a contemplative space between the reembrace of the

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ABOVE: In the Circumpolar Arctic, the hip-hop genre is being recontextualized from the perspectives of Northern Indigenous peoples. WE UP, a documentary film produced by the Anchorage Museum, profiles the lives and work of hip-hop artists as they explore the parallels and diversity of the Indigenous experience in their communities. The film also highlights an unprecedented Indigenous collaboration performed on the main stage of the 2018 Riddu Riđđu Indigenous folk festival in Olmmáivággi, Norway. In the profiles in WE UP, the artists speak directly about what the hip-hop genre brings to their community. From decolonization to language revitalization to self-representation and to healing, hip-hop has enriched the lives of Indigenous people across the Circumpolar Arctic. tattoo to the scarification of the bloodletting. Speaking about the experience and participants’ reactions days and even weeks after the performance, Holly said, “I got many messages thanking me for being eyes or hands that held them through this experience.”

WEST: Alaska Native PLACE is an artist collective that stands for Providing Living Artists Creative Environments. The collective gets together every month with Alaska Native artists at various stages in their artistic careers and development. The gatherings are Indigenous-led and ask artists what they need to enrich their continual practice. The collective also acknowledges the cultural lives of its members and meets in winter so as not to interfere or compete with important subsistence activities. Alaska Native PLACE is about community, learning, and shared opportunities. The group has continued to grow since its conception in 2017. Through group exhibitions, art markets, and professional development workshops, Alaska Native PLACE continues building community among Alaska Native artists living in Anchorage. They also host a statewide social media group that shares opportunities and news on contemporary Indigenous art with hundreds of Alaska Native artists.

BELOW: Amber Webb is an artist from Curyung (Dillingham, Alaska). This past year Amber has been working on her Qaspeq Project, a series of artworks she created in response to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) in the United States and Canada. Her first piece, White Qaspeq, now part of the Anchorage Museum collection, is a six-by-twelve-foot qaspeq, a customary Yup’ik hooded overshirt, hand-sewn from used, white sheets on which she drew the portraits of missing and murdered Indigenous women of Alaska. Amber believes that most of her creative life has led her to this project: “I was always interested in the things that show humanity.… In this project I’ve realized that this is what I was meant to do.… There’s a reason that I drew portraits over and over again my whole life; this is why.” An important part of Amber’s project is sharing White Qaspeq with various communities. She brings her piece to conferences, gatherings, and protests to honor the memory of these women as well as bring awareness to the Indigenous women still missing or murdered in Alaska. “I was thinking, how do you change people’s minds? You don’t change their minds by giving them information, you change their minds by making them feel how you feel.” This spring Amber will be taking her second qaspeq to Aotearoa to the 23rd International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) World Conference on Health Promotion. There she will present her qaspeq, talk about MMIW in Alaska, and share her experiences throughout the project. “The most important part of the project has been the intimacy showing it—standing by it and talking with people about it. There’s so much pain, and there’s so much love, too.…

People would come up to look at it and say, ‘I see you have my cousin on here.’ ” Families thanked her for including their relatives. “I was really afraid … people would see their family’s portrait and be upset, but I think the most important part was the acknowledgment … that our loss is not invisible.”

CENTER: In working for the Anchorage Museum, I have strove to focus on projects that utilize the power and privilege the museum holds—and I hold as a curator—to enrich the lives of living Indigenous people. I approach my curation from the notion of potlatch. The potlatch from my Athabascan culture is a ceremony in which matrilineal societies distribute their wealth between opposite clans to maintain strength and ensure the survival of all. It involves the initial act of giving your wealth away without expectation of receiving anything in return but the

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belief, the faith, that they will do the same for you in time. My current project with the Anchorage Museum, Object Is, embodies this same notion as the potlatch. In the past, museums have endeavored to preserve, protect, and pass on history through objects in museum collections. Today we want to recognize the knowledge these objects hold by changing how we view the purpose of each object. Instead of living beyond our lives within the museum, we want them to live in our lives as conduits for exchange of information, language, and the opportunities to connect and expand one’s community.

A collaborative team that included the Anchorage Museum and Elders from Gulkana, Tazlina, and Glennallen selected 22 objects to travel to each community. The Anchorage Museum held a temporary exhibition of the objects followed by a gathering. At the exhibition the Elders told stories relating to the objects, then we hosted a meal and held a community workshop on the hnaa atsesi, the customary sewing bag. An important aspect of Object Is was introducing ourselves and intentions to the community by asking what we could provide, in the notion of potlatch, to them. They responded with a meal and workshop.

At the Anchorage Museum, we decided that our collaboration would be one of true co-labor, embracing a decolonial approach to both sharing and gaining knowledge. Our efforts in committing to the traveling of objects, the hosting of a communal meal, and the facilitation of the workshop reflects and honors the needs and goals of both the museum and community.

above Janet Northey showing participant Anna Bell-hand (Ahtna Athabascan) and Elder Virginia Pete (Ahtna Athabascan) an Athabascan dentalium necklace. Photo: Melissa Shaginoff. opposite, left Rapper Bishop Slice (Athabascan-Mestizo), center, at fish camp near his ancestral village of Dot Lake, Alaska, with friend Jacob Dennis (left) and cousin Chris Charles (both Athabascan). Photo: Mike Conti. opposite, right Amber Webb (Yup’ik) sharing White Qaspeq at Portugal. The Man concert. Photo: Melissa Shaginoff.

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CREATION STORY Navajo Origin Narratives in the Paintings of Harrison Begay and Gerald Nailor

By Jennifer McLerran, PhD

S

O MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN about Studio Style painting that it seems there is little left to say. Developed and taught by non-Native Santa Fe Indian School teacher Dorothy Dunn from 1932 to 1937 and then perpetuated by Dunn’s student Gerónima Cruz Montoya (Ohkay Owingeh), who taught at the school until 1961, Studio Style painting was enormously popular and profitable well into the mid-20th century. Since then, it has been castigated as a formulaic “straitjacket” or “cookie cutter” style. While, at the same time, paintings by Dunn’s most successful students continue to be coveted by collectors and fetch healthy market prices.

Some believe Dunn’s proscriptive teaching method was beneficial to the artists she taught, but others have seen her instruction as a well-intended but ultimately colonialist imposition of non-Native cultural values and criteria of excellence. This debate has generated a significant body of scholarship that helps us understand how the mechanisms of colonialism operate in the aesthetic realm, but it has obscured other important aspects of Studio School artists’ work that may allow us to gain a deeper understanding of such processes. Focusing on artists’ conformance to Dunn’s pedagogical approach obfuscates other aspects of Studio School students’ work that may lead to a heightened understanding of 20 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

above Navajo sandpainting decorations in the lobby of the El Navajo Hotel, Gallup, New Mexico, ca. 1920, Photo: Fred Harvey Co., collection of the Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe, New Mexico, negative #052154. Image courtesy of the Palace of the Governors. opposite, top Gerald Nailor Sr. (Navajo, 1917–1952), The Sand Painter, 1952, gouache on paper, 15 × 11 in. unframed, collection of the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, L2007.0542.

Image courtesy of the Philbrook Museum of Art. opposite, below Navajo Indians who took part in dedication of El Navajo Hotel, Gallup, New Mexico, 1923. Photo: Edward Kemp, collection of the Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe, New Mexico, negative #151554. Image courtesy of the Palace of the Governors.

how these artists were able to resist the totalizing effects of colonialism. When examining each artist’s works within the context of their own aesthetic and cultural value systems—which varied significantly from tribe to tribe—Studio School artists’ work yields insights that cannot be gained from focusing only on the effects of Dunn’s teaching method.

Studio School artists hailed mostly from Pueblo communities, but other groups were also represented in Dunn’s classes. Plains, Apache, and Navajo students attended and brought their cultural and aesthetic value systems with them. Perhaps the best known of the Studio Style artists are those from the Hopi mesas and Rio Grande Pueblos.

Standouts among this group are Fred Kabotie (Hopi) and Pablita Velarde (Santa Clara Pueblo). While they enjoyed significant recognition during their lifetimes, Navajo artists trained at the Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS) are possibly less well known today than their Pueblo classmates. There are multiple reasons for the relative obscurity of many Studio School painters, which are beyond the scope of this article, but they include early deaths of a number of the artists, some students’ abandonment of artistic aspirations after graduation, and changing artistic tastes.

This essay focuses on two Navajo artists, Harrison Begay (1917–2012) and Gerald Nailor Sr. (1917–1953). Gerald Nailor died quite young but in his short

life he completed high profile mural projects for the Department of Interior building in Washington, DC, and the Navajo Council Chambers in Window Rock, Arizona. Harrison Begay enjoyed wide popularity in his time, but many now dismiss his art due to the saccharine quality of some of his paintings and saturation of the market with inexpensive silkscreen prints of his work, produced and distributed through Tewa Enterprises.1 Begay and Nailor stand apart from other Navajo graduates of Dunn’s program, such as Andy Tsinajinnie and Quincy Tahoma, through their repeated use of Navajo ceremonial sandpainting imagery. This distinctive characteristic of both Begay’s and Nailor’s work may, at first, seem inconsequential. However, when we consider their paintings within the context of Navajo ceremonial sandpainting practice we may be led to regard their artworks in a different and perhaps more positive light. While Begay’s and Nailor’s work conformed in many ways to Dunn’s proscriptive Studio Style, in other ways it also constituted a significant innovation in Native painting, setting these artists apart from their peers. To fully understand this development in Native painting, we must consider the transcultural context in which it evolved. The designs used by Nailor and Begay were not exact transpositions of sandpainting imagery from the hogan floor to watercolor on paper.2 They were instead creative adaptations of sandpainting imagery to a new medium for a new audience; and, while their works were innovative, they also represent a significant continuity with previous Navajo visual forms. Nailor and Begay were achieving creative transformation and, at the same time, demonstrating cultural continuity through their use of sandpainting imagery.

1. In 1954 Harrison Begay, Charles Barrows, and A. Hamilton Melcher established Tewa Enterprises, a silkscreen business in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Tewa Enterprises also issued prints of Gerald Nailor’s and Allan Houser’s paintings.

2. Sandpainting designs are composed of conventionalized representations of characters and stories from the various Navajo chantways that are performed to heal individuals. They are drawn in crushed stone, pollen, and other organic materials on the hogan floor.

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While many Navajo viewers today would immediately recognize sandpainting imagery in both Nailor’s and Begay’s work, non-Native viewers may just as easily identify such images as merely decorative. But the sandpainting designs in their work were much more than simple decoration. During the time Begay and Nailor painted, non-Native viewers of their work—their intended audience— would have had at least some familiarity with Navajo ceremonial sandpainting.

While that audience would undoubtedly lack a deep understanding of the role of ceremonial sandpainting in Navajo philosophy and life, such viewers would, nonetheless, have been exposed to secular forms of the practice and its iconography and would have recognized, at least vaguely, the source of such imagery.

In most cases, such familiarity would be derived from viewers’ experience of touristic spectacles. Typically, the sites of such entertainment would have been Southwest Native arts fairs and festivals. However, Navajo sandpainting

also served as spectacle in other regions of the United States in the early to mid-20th century. International exhibitions at which sandpaintings were created for public consumption included Chicago’s 1933–34 Century of Progress Exposition, where renowned ceremonial practitioner and weaver Hastiin Klah (Navajo, 1867–1937) demonstrated his weaving of sandpainting designs, and San Diego’s 1935–36 California Pacific International Exposition. Major museum exhibitions that featured sandpainting demonstrations included the pathbreaking Indian Art of the United States, held at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1941.

Sandpainters also performed in traveling shows organized by non-Native showmen and entrepreneurs, demonstrating their practice along with silver workers and weavers for audiences in school auditoriums and at women’s club gatherings throughout the country. Ostensibly intended to raise awareness of the plight of American Indians and the need for reform of federal Indian policy, such

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performances were often thinly veiled spectacles intended to stimulate sales of Native arts and crafts by the non-Native entrepreneurs who organized the events.

Such individuals seized on any opportunity to stimulate tourism to the Southwest, thus increasing their chances for sales of arts and crafts not only to those attending performances in their hometowns across the continent, but to many observers who were prompted to visit Arizona and New Mexico through their exposure to the exotic customs of the Native inhabitants. These performances stressed spectacle over substance, and, rather than contributing to a greater understanding of Navajo culture, they often fostered misunderstanding of the aims and means of ceremonial sandpainting.

One notable example of the willful fostering of such misunderstanding was a 1923 ceremony in Gallup, New Mexico, orchestrated by the Fred Harvey Company and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF). Performing before Fred Harvey Company officials, AT&SF dignitaries, and 2,000 spectators, 30

Navajo medicine men (ceremonial practitioners) gathered to participate in blessing the town’s new Fred Harvey Company establishment. Held to commemorate the opening of the El Navajo Hotel, this event has been singled out as the most important factor in generating public fascination with Navajo sandpainting in the early 20th century.

Designed by Fred Harvey Company architect Mary Jane Colter in the then-popular Pueblo Deco style, the El Navajo’s public spaces featured full reproductions of Navajo ceremonial sandpaintings executed by Harvey Company artist and designer Fred Geary. Colter designed many buildings for the Harvey Company, which had contracted with the AT&SF to construct and run hotels and restaurants along the passenger rail route from Chicago to Los Angeles, but

El Navajo was the only building with an exclusively Navajo interior decorative scheme. Based on drawings on paper by several renowned ceremonial practitioners, the designs were collected in the first decade of the 20th century by trader Sam Day. Reproduced in paint on the walls of the hotel, they represented the first known public display of full-scale ceremonial sandpainting designs in a non-ceremonial space.

As word of the new hotel’s design scheme spread, concern arose among the Navajos. If accurately reproduced and allowed to remain in permanent form, the Navajos explained to Harvey Company officials, the sandpaintings could result in serious misfortune, sickness, and even death. 3 Furthermore, the ceremonial practitioners from whom Day collected

above Harrison Begay (Navajo, 1 9 1 7– 2 0 1 2 ) , Fo u r S a c r e d Mountains: South Mountain, 1959, watercolor on paper, 13½ × 18 in., collection of the Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, C658. Image courtesy of the Museum of Northern Arizona. opposite H a r r i s o n B e g ay (Navajo, 1917–2012), Four Sacred Mountains: East Mountain, 1959, watercolor on paper, 13½ × 18 in., collection of the Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, C656. Image courtesy of the Museum of Northern Arizona.

3. Navajo sandpaintings were created as part of elaborate healing rituals and were destroyed after the ceremony ended in order to destroy the illness as well. Ceremonial practitioners and cultural specialists have objected to the reproduction of full ceremonial sandpaintings in permanent form, but paintings that feature only isolated elements of such designs, as seen in Begay’s and Nailor’s works, have raised little objection (collections consultations by the author with representatives of the Navajo Nation Traditional Culture Program, Kennedy Museum of Art, Ohio University, 2002–04). Nailor never included full reproductions of sandpaintings in his works. Begay occasionally did so, but he primarily incorporated only isolated sandpainting elements.

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the designs had not consented to their public display, and this use was viewed as a violation of confidence. With the hotel nearing completion, the paintings in place, and promotional literature bearing the designs already produced, Colter and her colleagues were faced with a dilemma.

If it became widely known that the Harvey Company had not consulted with the Navajo people on the use of the designs and that the company had disregarded the Navajos’ subsequent trepidation regarding the paintings’ permanent display, the Harvey Company’s reputation as a reliable broker of Indian/white interaction might suffer. Their solution was to spin the situation in the Harvey Company’s favor by claiming that company officials had shown foresight and benevolence in commemorating the designs on the hotel’s walls. Ceremonial practitioners were then enlisted to perform a house blessing and create a ritual sandpainting on the hotel grounds during the opening ceremonies in an effort to allay the Navajos’ fears of negative consequences and signal to the public that the Navajos approved of the hotel’s decorative scheme. The AT&SF sent a movie crew to record the grand spectacle.

The Harvey Company also issued publicity claiming that sandpainting

ceremonial practice was nearing extinction and that, by recording the designs on the hotel’s walls, the Harvey Company had saved them for future generations.

This claim was far from true. While sandpainting may have declined on the reservation, it still had a significant following, as it does today. Following the ceremonies, newspaper readers across the country were informed that, thanks to the foresight of the Fred Harvey Company, Navajo sandpainting had been preserved for the future. While the practice remained controversial among many Navajos, this sanctioning of the sandpaintings in El Navajo was widely perceived as the Navajos’ general approval of permanent public display of sandpainting designs, thus providing a green light to those who promoted their permanent reproduction.

Other fairs and festivals, such as those held at the Museum of Northern Arizona and by cities and counties throughout the Southwest soon followed suit, featuring sandpainting demonstrations at their annual events. Claims by promoters of Native art, who contended that preserving sandpainting designs in permanent form was an act of benevolence since it presumably helped the Navajo preserve their culture, were not uncommon in the early to mid-20th

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century. The Navajos’ trepidation was overlooked in the interests of satisfying non-Native curiosity and in the service of white, Western identity construction, which depended upon a presumably superstitious and “primitive” Other for its own construction of self.

In 1937, Navajo sandpainting ceremonial practice as a public curiosity would be enshrined in Santa Fe’s Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art (now the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian). It was not until the 1970s that such institutions disassociated themselves, in deference to Navajo wishes, from displaying sandpainting designs in permanent form.

With such widespread fascination with the practice, it is not surprising that Navajo artists at the Santa Fe Indian School incorporated ceremonial sandpainting elements into their paintings.

And while it would be easy to conclude that they did so merely to satisfy buyers’ desires, a closer examination of their work reveals that inclusion of such elements was not gratuitous but instead reflected a deep understanding of Navajo philosophy as expressed in ceremonial practice.

While skeptics may contend that Begay and Nailor merely capitalized on the public’s fascination with sandpainting and ignored cultural taboos in the interests of personal gain, close examination of their work reveals a complex and nuanced understanding of Navajo philosophy and the role of sandpainting ceremonial practice in the maintenance of cultural vitality and welfare. This understanding and sensitivity become apparent when one closely examines the structure, form, and content of Begay’s and Nailor’s works.

Both artists worked in a linear style. Their forms are delineated by black outlines and are devoid of shading and modeling, as are the figures and objects in sandpaintings. While Dunn encouraged such Flatstyle painting, both artists had significant exposure to sandpainting in their early years on the reservation, and their style was no doubt influenced by such experiences. Further, the compositional structures of numerous paintings

by Begay bear marked similarities to ceremonial sandpaintings. Begay often uses an internal framing device, presenting his figures within the protective arms of the same rainbow guardian that we see in sandpainting. Also found in both artist’s works are representations of the Holy People, the sun, the moon, the Cloud People, and the four sacred plants that are presented in the conventionalized forms they take in sandpaintings. But, perhaps more importantly, Begay and Nailor employ these iconographic conventions to convey core Navajo cultural truths and values as expressed in the Navajo Creation Story, just as ceremonial practitioners do in sandpaintings.

The Navajo Creation Story details the emergence of the Navajo people into the present world after existence in three previous worlds, the creation of the earth’s beings, and the placement of the four sacred mountains that delineate the Navajo homeland’s boundaries. It defines the Navajos’ role in the world as well as the proper nature of relationships between Navajos and between the Navajo people and the cosmos. Based upon extensive interviews with Navajo cultural consultants, Maureen Trudelle Schwarz concludes that the Creation Story “contains the essence for all that exists or is ever possible.”4 Further, Schwarz contends, the Creation Story forms the aesthetic locus of Navajo culture. Schwarz cites fellow anthropologist Jacques Maquet, who explains that “certain privileged fields where awareness and performance are higher, where expectations and efforts converge” exist in cultures, and “The class or classes of objects that are localized in these areas of heightened aesthetic consciousness constitute the aesthetic locus of a culture.”5 Following Maquet’s lead, Schwarz concludes that

“the Navajo creation story is the aesthetic locus of Navajo culture,” and “the process of creation of aesthetic form evolves from the story.”6 Concern with the Navajo origin story is clearly evident in Begay’s and Nailor’s work. Both artists exemplify the ways in which an art form only recently introduced to the Navajos—watercolor painting on paper in a representational style—developed from the Creation Story.

Begay’s Four Sacred Mountains series of paintings is most clearly informed by it.

This series of four paintings depicts the sacred mountains of the Navajos and is based on the oral history of their placement by First Man and First Woman, as told in the Navajo Creation Story and recounted in ceremonial sandpainting.

While Begay had gained knowledge of sandpainting practice and the Navajo oral history that sandpaintings embody while living on the reservation, he also consulted Washington Matthews’s Navaho Legends to complete this series.7

above Harrison Begay (Navajo, 1 9 1 7– 2 0 1 2 ) , Fo u r S a c r e d Mountains: North Mountain, 1959, watercolor on paper, 13½ × 18 in., collection of the Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, C659. Image courtesy of the Museum of Northern Arizona. opposite Harrison Begay (Navajo, 1917–2012), Four Sacred Mountains: West Mountain, 1959, watercolor on paper, 13½ × 18 in., collection of the Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, C657. Image courtesy of the Museum of Northern Arizona.

4. Maureen Trudelle Schwarz, “The Biil: Traditional Navajo Female Attire as Metaphor of Navajo Aesthetic Organization,” Dress 21 (1994): 76.

5. Jaques Maquet, Introduction to Aesthetic Anthropology (Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1979), 30.

6. Schwarz, “The Biil,” 76.

7. Leland C. Wyman, The Sacred Mountains of the Navajo: In Four Paintings by Harrison Begay (Flagstaff: Northern Arizona Society of Science & Art, 1967); Washington Matthews, Navaho Legends (1897; reprint, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2002). Begay completed two versions of The Four Sacred Mountains series.

One painting of the first set was purchased by the School of American Research (now School for Advanced Research), and the other three were given to a medicine man in return for an Enemyway ceremony performed for Begay. The second set was commissioned by Tucson Indian art dealer Clay Lockett in 1959 and then donated to the Museum of Northern Arizona in 1963.

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above Harrison Begay (Navajo, 1917–2012), Navajo Weaver and Helper, 1967, watercolor on paper, 15 × 17½ in., collection of the Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, C1044.

Image courtesy of the Museum of Northern Arizona. opposite Gerald Nailor Sr. (Navajo, 1917–1952), The Yellow Corn Maiden’s Prayer to the Dawn, 1948, watercolor on paper, 12 × 14 in., collection of the Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, C1860. Image courtesy of the Museum of Northern Arizona.

Begay’s set of four paintings recounts the Navajo Creation Story, as told in one of the most common chantways—the Blessingway. The four sacred mountains mark the limits of the Navajo homeland. First Man and First Woman brought the sacred mountains from the previous world and then secured them to the earth, marking the boundaries of the Navajo homeland. Blanca Peak is the east mountain, Mount Taylor lies to the south, the San Francisco Peaks occupy the western boundary, and Mount Hesperus is to the north. In this series, Begay effected a transformation of the conventionalized, abstracted forms of sandpainting to the pictorial realm of representational

painting. The Four Sacred Mountains and their inner forms figure prominently in Blessingway ceremonies. These inner forms are conceived as beings of humanlike form that existed as animating forces within all phenomena of the natural realm at the time of the Navajo emergence into the present world. Begay’s Four Sacred Mountains feature naturalistic representations of these inner forms and beings of the natural realm. The artist combines realistic representations with abstract, conventionalized sandpainting images, such as Thunder (Thunderbird), the Cloud People, and the Rainbow Guardian.

Bars at the bottom of each painting, representing the earth to which the mountains have been fastened, are similar in appearance and meaning to the black bars that represent the earth in sandpaintings.8 Begay’s Four Sacred Mountains series bears a clear and direct reference to sandpainting pictorial representations of the Blessingway rite, while his other works bear more oblique references to ceremonial practice. This is most commonly seen in the placement of conventionalized representations of the sun and, in some instances, through his use of the Rainbow Guardian that surrounds three sides of ceremonial sandpaintings.

In Navajo Weaver and Helper (1967), a protective rainbow band surrounds the space occupied by a Navajo weaver, her loom, her children, and her pets, reflecting the important role that weaving plays in Navajo life and legend. Given to the Navajos by Spider Woman, weaving is a practice that offers the opportunity for performance of proper womanhood in Navajo culture, thus reinforcing the proper roles of men and women as taught in Navajo oral history. Both the mother and daughter wear the customary Navajo hair bun (tsiiyééł), and the weaving bears a repeated hourglass form that echoes and references the hair bun as a signifier of proper Navajo womanhood.9

8. For more detail, see Wyman, Sacred Mountains, in which Wyman provides a full reading of the iconography of Begay’s Four Sacred Mountains.

9. Jennifer McLerran, ed., Weaving Is Life: Navajo Weavings from the Edwin L. and Ruth E. Kennedy Southwest Native American Collection (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007).

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In Gerald Nailor’s paintings, representations of the four sacred plants—corn, beans, squash, and tobacco—appear in the same conventionalized forms as in sandpaintings. Rainbow Guardians, corn stalks, and the sun and moon often appear in conventionalized form, and scenes from particular ceremonies—most notably the Blessingway—are often points of reference. The Yellow Corn Maiden’s Prayer to the Dawn (1948), which portrays a scene from the summer solstice Blessingway, and Learning to Take Pollen from Corn (1946) include such references.

The Yellow Corn Maiden’s Prayer to the Dawn shows a cornstalk superimposed over the form of Yellow Corn Woman, who appears in the midst of transformation, hovering between vegetable and human form.10 The cornstalk, which appears in the same stylized form as in sandpainting with a three-pronged tassel at the top, bears four ears of corn that reference the four successive Navajo worlds. A rainbow guardian surrounds Yellow Corn Maiden and she is flanked by conventionalized representations of squash plants. In Learning to Take Pollen from Corn a woman instructs a young girl in the practice of gathering the corn pollen that plays a central role in many Navajo rites. The same conventionalized representations of cornstalks common to sandpainting designs that appear in many of Nailor’s works occupy the painting’s left side, and an image of the Hunchback God, a harvest god who carries the seeds of all the world’s vegetation in a pouch on his back and figures prominently in the Nightway ceremony, arches above the woman and child.

These elements in Begay’s and Nailor’s works are not simply aimed to appeal to potential buyers. In fact, Begay is known to have claimed that collectors found works with sandpainting imagery in them less desirable. Inclusion of such elements in both Begay’s and Nailor’s works was a testament to the artists’ assimilation of core beliefs and principles of Navajo philosophy and lifeways. The form and content of their works signify

the artists’ desires to convey their dedication to a life lived in conformance with Navajo principles and beliefs and confirm their wish to share a particular worldview with those who are willing to closely examine their art. Far from formulaic, their work is a creative adaptation of conventionalized forms of representation deriving from sandpainting ceremonial practice that demonstrates a deep understanding of a complex and nuanced Navajo belief system.

In their paintings, Begay and Nailor show how ceremonial sandpainting is a constitutive element of a Navajo world animated by powerful forces and

regulated by codes of conduct necessary to keep that world vital, healthy, and supportive of myriad forms of life and being. Both artists make frequent and repeated visual reference to beings that play central roles in the narratives represented in ceremonial sandpainting.

The Creation Story and the lessons it teaches play central roles in their works, evidencing their deep and protracted engagement with it. Their works are testament to the central role the Creation Story plays in Navajo life and belief, and their art stands as refutation to those who have dismissed Studio Style painting as formulaic and derivative.

10. Museum of Northern Arizona Long-Term Exhibition Plan, Consultation with Navajo Cultural Specialists from Navajo Nation Traditional Culture Program and Navajo Nation Museum, Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, Arizona, March 31 to April 2, 2010.

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THE ARC OF GUNA PAINTING From Luis Méndez to the Cosmos Guna artists in Panama have long captured their heroes, kin, surroundings, interior worlds, and the unexplored universe through paint. Over decades, their painting styles have shifted and expanded to reflect the changing zeitgeist, creating a rich art history.

By Peter Szok, PhD

P

UPILS, EYELIDS, CORNEAS, and optic nerves were the subjects in detailed drawings that Luis Méndez (1934–2008) produced during his long career as a medical illustrator. Méndez belonged to the Guna community, Panama’s second largest and most prominent Indigenous ethnicity with over 80,000 individuals, including a small but visible professional class. The Guna people are famous throughout the Americas for their vibrant visual creations, and for a long history of resisting colonization.

Guna women produce the colorful mola, a multilayered cotton panel that depicts aspects of daily life in an abstract and geometric fashion. Women proudly display the molas on their blouses and hawk them to tourists and other curious outsiders. Like many elements of Native American culture, the mola has become a bitter point of contention between the Gunas and non-Indigenous investors who exploit the molas’ eye-catching patterns for their commercial benefit.

Mola-themed clothing, accessories, and other bric-a-brac are common items in Panama’s shops, often originating from foreign sources with no links to the Guna female artists or the omeggid 28 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

above Alejo Deleon (Guna, b. 1955), Guna Revolution, 2017, acrylic on canvas, private collection. Unless otherwise noted, all images are courtesy of the author. This depiction of the Guna Revolution includes portraits of principal leaders Nele Kantule and Cimral Colman. opposite, top Luis Méndez (Guna, 1934–2008), Untitled, 2004, acrylic on canvas, private collection. opposite, below Luis Méndez (Guna, 1934–2008), Untitled, 2008, acrylic on canvas, collection of Angélica María Guadamuz Núñez.

(gender-fluid individuals) who also make the garment. The Gunas defend their rights to the mola in unending lawsuits, just as they stand guard against any threats to their hard-earned, political independence.

Luis Méndez grew up in Guna Yala, a 232-mile land strip along Panama’s eastern coast, where the San Blas Mountains rise precipitously from a littoral plane and endow the “long land” (yar suid) with a multitude of rivers.

Most of the population resides on small, nearby islands, which the Guna settled in the 19th century, seeking relief from dangerous pests and animals and easier contact with the network of coconut traders. Méndez’s community was Niadub (Tikantiki), located in the central part of the coastal archipelago.

The Panamanian state recognized the Guna peoples’ right to self-government following a bloody 1925 rebellion, provoked by a decade-long attempt to force political and cultural integration through a steady stream of missionaries, educators, police, and arrogant civil authorities. The integration campaign included efforts to encourage miscegenation, in part by promoting Spanish-language music, dancing, and annual carnival celebrations. Today many Gunas enjoy cumbia, rock ’n’ roll, and bachata, and there are gifted performers of música ranchera, who sing Vicente Fernández’s lyrics in soaring Dulegaya, the Guna language. However, most of the Guna people continue to insist that changes come on their own terms. Over the years, they have resisted multiple challenges, becoming a model of Indigenous autonomy, not only in Panama but across Latin America.

Luis Méndez came of age in the mid-20th century, just after the comarca or autonomous region had formalized its position with a 1945 constitution (Carta Orgánica) and via the National Assembly’s passage of Law 16 of 1953.

Law 16 clarified Guna Yala’s relationship with the Panamanian state, while the Carta Orgánica strengthened the comarca’s governmental structures by acknowledging the historic autonomy of

villages but placing them under stronger regional leadership, including a single General Congress. Previously the Guna people had been split between three confederations.

About that time, Luis Méndez moved to Panama City, after completing primary school on Narganá, another island close to his village that had been an entry point for Western educational institutions. Méndez was following a growing pattern of outward migration from Guna Yala, a tendency that accelerated in the 1950s, stimulated by rising commercialization and the pursuit of wage-generating employment. As migration occurred later in other parts of the country, it became clear that the establishment of Indigenous autonomous regions did not ensure their economic viability or their peoples’ ability to remain the community. A coconut blight had begun to affect Guna Yala’s economy, and young people went in search of new opportunities. They found work in the kitchens of the Canal Zone’s military bases and in the fields and shops of the United Fruit Company, whose plantations were located in the far western province of Bocas del Toro. The Guna were grounding themselves in diverse parts of the country. Many headed straight for Colón and Panama City, where they developed a still widespread reputation as dependable cooks, waiters, dishwashers, and janitors.

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above, top José Pascual Obaldía (Guna, b.

1961), The Suffering Woman, 2007, acrylic on canvas, collection of Fundación Nuestra Señora del Camino, San Félix, Chiriquí, Panama. above, below José Pascual Obaldía (Guna, b. 1961), Ngäbe Angel, 2008, acrylic on canvas, collection of Iglesia de San Félix de Nola, San Félix, Chiriquí, Panama. Obaldía has devoted much of his career to the Roman Catholic Church’s inculturation efforts, not in Guna Yala but in the NgäbeBuglé regions of western Panama.

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Presumably Méndez moved through a series of these low-paying and ethnically determined positions, while studying construction at the national trade school (Escuela de Artes y Oficios) and searching for better and more lucrative opportunities. Eventually, he landed a job as an X-ray technician in an ophthalmology clinic. By most accounts, Méndez was a good-natured individual, who is remembered for peddling his paintings amiably in the capital’s law and medical offices. Méndez adjusted readily to the urban environment, competing in the Guna basketball leagues and playing his harmonica in jazz and other musical groups.

His longtime employer, Dr. Benjamin F. Boyd, was a prominent physician and the editor of the international journal Highlights of Ophthalmology. Méndez’s ceaseless doodling caught the doctor’s attention and encouraged Boyd to use him as an illustrator. Seemingly Boyd hoped to improve Méndez’s artistic abilities, and he sent him to study illustration at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine.

Méndez became an accomplished commercial artist, whose intricate representations of ocular maladies became a central part of Boyd’s publications. By the mid-1970s, Méndez was surpassing these endeavors and becoming a more important artistic figure. The timing of his emergence was no accident but coincided with a number of favorable circumstances. At that time, Indigenous political mobilization was sweeping the Americas and deepening the ongoing fascination with non-Western cultures. Domestically, a military government that had taken power in 1968 had begun to implement a series of populist measures, designed to establish its legitimacy.

Exploiting the increase in funding for arts and education, Méndez became his country’s first Native American studio painter, whose busy canvases helped to set the trajectory of Guna visual production over the following decades.

NAÏVE ART: THE FIRST PHASE OBSERVERS COMMONLY refer to Luis Méndez as a naïve, or “primitivist,” artist whose paintings betray many elements of his lifelike drawings in Highlights of Ophthalmology.

Méndez portrayed rituals, villages, and daily life in a style suggestive of a selftaught artist—not that of the prolific producer of highly technical, medical drawings. Indeed, his acrylic creations are very different from the images that appear in that journal. Less dependent on multidimensional perspectives, his paintings are more characterized by their lively colors, rich details, balance, and vibrant arrangements. Coconuts, canoes, thatched huts, and molas clutter the bright and patterned foreground and rarely fade into a luminous distance. A pair of scarlet macaws appears in most of his canvases. Méndez depicts the ocean as a steady swirl of octopuses, sharks, coral, sea rays, and turtles. Sometimes a fisherman casts his line into the jumble.

The vigorous, whirling images earned their creator a measure of domestic and foreign recognition, as Méndez participated in national and international exhibitions and won a series of competitions organized by the Xerox, Palmolive, and Colgate corporations. His paintings especially attracted tourists, whose numbers were increasing in the 1970s and whose growing influence in the Caribbean was fueling the rise of naïve-style painting.

US Canal Zone residents became particularly good customers. The Zonians had long benefited from Guna labor, and they had become some of the most dependable buyers of molas.

Stevens Circle, located in front of a Canal Zone post office, had functioned for many years as a mola marketplace.

Anthropologist James Howe notes that US citizens were also some of Guna Yala’s earliest visitors and wrote a plethora of amateur ethnographies.

He suggests that Americans became intrigued with Indigenous culture as a result of racial/ethnic anxieties arising from the process of modernization, and their fascination with Guna endogamy.

Méndez became his country’s first Native American studio painter, whose busy canvases helped to set the trajectory of Guna visual production over the following decades.

above Olonigdi Chiari (Guna, 1949), Nele Kantule, 1993, acrylic on canvas. This painting hangs from the ceiling of the Usdup meeting house.

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above Adán Smith (Guna, b.

1957), Leonidas Kantule Valdés, 1998, graphite on paper, collection of the artist. Smith has drawn portraits of Guna leaders, including this drawing of Leonidas Kantule Valdés, longtime cacique general of the comarca. opposite Ologwagdi (Guna, b. 1953), in 2016, preparing a mural to honor victims of the 1964 confrontation between Panamanian nationalists and US security forces. During the military period, the commemoration of Martyrs’ Day (January 9) became central to Panamanian nationalism.

Neocolonialism, however, is complex phenomenon.

Ironically, as the Zonians and other foreigners admired Méndez’s canvases at places like the Sheraton’s Mary Palma Gallery, these paintings also found their way into less touristy and more nationalistic contexts. Méndez’s work appealed to a broad array of sectors, including elements of the Panamanian military, who were determined to set the nation on a new path and to end the longterm US presence. In a regular series of government and related corporate events, Méndez found multiple outlets for his creativity in what many have described as an important period for the development of Panamanian art.

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As part of an effort to legitimize its position, Panama’s National Guard demanded the return of the US Canal Zone, established in 1903, which the regime would finally succeed in dismantling through negotiation of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties (1977).

Simultaneously, Panama’s military took up a populist political and economic program that was inspired, to some extent, by the Cuban Revolution and carried out in collaboration with Panama’s Communist Party. Part of this fundamentally modest effort included what historian Miriam Villanueva has described as increased state investment in educational and cultural institutions and a redefinition of Panamanian identity. What the government proposed was a reconceptualization of Panamanian nationalism, highlighting the patriotism of working-class people in the long struggle against US imperialism. State intellectuals pitted the “masses” against the “elite,” tying the latter to the foreign US presence. Working-class identity took precedence over any sense of ethnicity, but the reconfigurations opened spaces for Native American intellectuals, as part of an imagined coalition of patriots.

Paradoxically the 1972 Constitution even committed the government to protecting Native American languages and cultures, just as officials embraced a developmentalist agenda and pursued mining and hydroelectric projects on Indigenous lands.

In such a context, Méndez provided acceptable images, presenting the Guna as premodern people who conformed to longstanding notions about “primitive” societies and offered little threat to the goal of national unity. As seemed implicit in the paintings, the Guna were likely to disappear in the future, in what the military and other officials perceived as Panama’s linear path of development. Yet, if Méndez’s art adhered to such colonial conceptions, it remained very Guna in its aesthetics. His lively paintings exhibited characteristics that anthropologist Mari Lyn Salvador and others associated with the mola and have described as portraying common traits of Guna expression. These qualities included a love of detail and filled spaces, bold colors with sharp tonal

differences, and a tendency for subtle asymmetries that spin the viewer about the canvas, much like dancers in a Guna festival. One also senses what linguistic anthropologist Joel Sherzer has described as the richly depicted landscapes of Guna foundational stories. Méndez himself interpreted his creations as an attempt to record Guna culture and to emphasize its deep communal qualities.

A collectivist spirit is apparent in his depictions of daily life, hunting, fishing, and agricultural activities. Responding perhaps to the Cuban Revolution and its strong influence in governmental circles, Méndez suggested that these practices could serve as an example to a society fractured by individual interests. The Guna are rarely alone Méndez’s representations, and neither was he in his endeavors.

THE SECOND GENERATION FROM THE MID- 1970 S through the early 1980s a second generation of Guna painters arose, who began largely by following Luis Méndez’s example and adorning canvases in a naïve-style fashion. Their aesthetic approach was probably pragmatic, having much to

do with its relative accessibility, the proximity of clients in the resident US community, and with the economic circumstances of these young and emerging artists. Most of them were Panama City newcomers, who had arrived in search of secondary and higher educations but had few resources to support themselves in the capital. To get by, they took low-paying jobs at hotels and restaurants and cranked out paintings to hawk on street corners.

These artists sold their works in Stevens Circle and other points around the city, including the plaza next to the national lottery building where large crowds gathered on Sunday afternoons to hear the weekly drawing results. In the early 1980s, the lottery provided a point of Indigenous nucleation—a place to assert Guna identity through mola sales, dances, and exhibitions of bright paintings depicting Guna villages. Even today the naïve style continues to be visible, defining the production of a handful of individuals, the most productive of whom is Alejo Deleon (b. 1955).

A member of this second generation, Deleon traveled to Panama City in the mid-1970s to complete his secondary studies and to enroll at the National School of Arts. Deleon benefited from

the government’s populist program with its increased funding for cultural activities. He studied with leading painters of the period, including Adriano Herrerabarría and Luis Aguilar Ponce, and, like a number of his classmates, he became fascinated by their explorations of nonfigurative representations. But Deleon also became intrigued by Luis Méndez and Uriel Díaz (Guna, b. 1944).

A lesser-known artistic figure and a member of Deleon’s community, Díaz had begun to produce naïve paintings during a long period of employment in the US Canal Zone. The spring 1973 edition of Panama Canal Review features a photo of Díaz participating in a community art show in Stevens Circle.

Deleon embraced Méndez and Díaz’s example after his return to Guna Yala when, in his island-village of Usdup, he fell under the influence of the town’s sailas (chiefs) and their daily urgings to preserve the Guna way of life. Economics were likely another consideration in his turn toward this approach to painting.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, Guna Yala’s economy was becoming increasingly monetized, and Deleon became aware of opportunities to earn money in the region’s growing tourist business.

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businesses. From his thatched-roofed studio in Usdup, he caters especially to foreigners who sail through Guna Yala on their way to and from Colombia.

If Deleon and others followed Méndez’s initiative and continued to paint in a naïve fashion, some artists began to sense the limits of this approach to visual expression. Non-Indigenous colleagues associated naïve art with “crafts” and tended to regard it as an inferior discipline, unworthy of praise or decent remuneration. Aside from Méndez’s occasional triumphs, there was little room for this art form in Panamanian galleries. On the street, painters began to feel uncomfortable and resent the commonplace perceptions of their artwork. Many sensed they were producing something that confirmed longstanding stereotypes about their culture, such as its supposed isolation, backwardness, and impending disappearance. Some artists concluded it was time to shift away from Luis Méndez’s style of painting, and more practical factors also encouraged this change.

In 1972, the Communist Party collaborated with the military government and helped to foment the foundation of the Movimiento de La Juventud Kuna (MJK), or Kuna Youth Movement. The MJK was one of many

populist groups that arose with state and Communist assistance and were designed to support the nationalist program of Omar Torrijos, while recruiting new members to their political organization.

In practice the MJK often pursued its own agenda, which included the demarcation of the comarca, its increased autonomy, and the defense of Guna culture. In its efforts, the MJK cultivated the memory of past leaders and demanded more accurate representations of these people.

MJK activists followed a familiar pattern, perhaps related to Roman Catholicism, of using the images of iconic figures to help galvanize and organize followers, and they needed portraits of these heroes to carry in marches and hang in meeting places.

Simultaneously, the Roman Catholic Church had fallen under the influence of Liberation Theology and initiated a campaign of inculturation.

Adherents of inculturation adopted an anti-colonial perspective, criticizing Eurocentric agendas and seeking to distance themselves from previous missionary activity. Instead they proposed to observe the Christian faith by addressing structural and economic injustices, and by identifying God’s presence in other religions with the goal of creating an Indigenous church.

In the comarca, the Guna priest Aiban

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Wagua headed this effort, which in spite of its contradictions, encouraged a broad range of artistic activities and invited novel forms of visual expression.

It is important to note that these artistic innovations were rarely disentangled from earlier perspectives, and there are few tidy divisions among the Guna painters. As Alejo Deleon produced naïve canvases for Panama’s tourist business, he also decorated Guna Yala’s churches with realistic representations of Native American historical figures. Guna art now took an aesthetic turn, with a new emphasis on the human form. A pair of rebellious figures whose artwork responded, in many cases, to the need for placards and banners to raise in the midst of boisterous gatherings, would lead the way in this transition.

OLOGWAGDI, OLONIGDI, & THE FIGURATIVE MOVEMENT ARMANDO DÍAZ, better known as Ologwagdi (Guna, b. 1953) and Olonigdi Chiari (Guna, b. 1949), were founding members of the Kuna Youth Movement.

They settled in Panama City in the early 1970s and quickly became involved in the cultural activities surrounding the country’s military government. Both men pursued a wide range of endeavors, but they became especially known for their depictions of Panama’s Native American leaders—leaders they tended to frame in contexts inspired by the regime’s populist ideology. As Indigenous figures became part of a pantheon of plebeian heroes celebrated by the nation’s leaders, portraits of their countenances appeared on street corners and buildings and regularly hung from the rafters of Guna meeting houses.

Ologwagdi and Olonigdi also created images of non-Indigenous people connected to the state’s nationalist project. In the later effort, Ologwagdi was particularly productive. Through most of the Torrijos period (1972–81), Ologwagdi participated in the Brigada Felicia Santizo. The brigade was a bohemian and youthful collective that, with the approval of National Guard officials, painted murals across the country in favor of the Sandinista Revolution, the canal negotiations, and other progressive causes with which the regime sought to identify itself. Ologwagdi became adept at producing engrossing portraits, designed to startle and captivate audiences. Interestingly, these impulses toward figurative representations also emerged outside political circles.

While Ologwagdi and Olonigdi collaborated with the Kuna Youth Movement, Adán Smith (Guna, b. 1957) spent his free time doodling pictures of patrons at the Canal Zone’s Elks Club.

Smith was a barman and aspiring artist who had migrated from western Guna Yala. Years later, he studied at Universidad del Arte Ganexa, Panama’s private art academy, and would emerge as one of the preferred painters of the Panamanian oligarchy. Smith has spent years memorializing the children, matriarchs, and patriarchs of Panama’s elite families.

The figurative impulse bloomed in the 2010s under the influence of Lucío López Cansuet (Guna, b. 1974), known to the art world as Kansuet. Kansuet is a

above, top Julián Velásquez (Guna, b. 1955) at work in the Museum of Contemporary Art, 2015. above, below Interior of Museo Orgun Nega, 2015.

Artist Teodoro Torres (Guna, 1953–2017) constructed the gallery with bottles and other discarded materials he collected on Nalunega. opposite Kansuet (Guna, b.

1974), Dreaming Forests, 2013, mixed media on canvas, private collection. Image courtesy of Allegro Galería, Panama City, Panama.

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he regularly organized group exhibitions for his fellow Guna painters. Velásquez is also is an accomplished printmaker, whose decades of service at Panama’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) have earned him national and international recognition. Indeed, many prominent Central American artists have turned to Velásquez to reproduce their works, while naturally, some are less enamored with his abilities and have looked elsewhere for advice and encouragement. Just as the naïve style triggered aesthetic deviations, realistic art has also provoked reactions, contributing to what social anthropologist Paolo Fortis might describe as an ontological approach to painting.

above Achu, or Oswaldo De León Kantule (Guna, b. 1964), Waiting for Our House to Sink, 2009, acrylic on canvas, private collection. opposite Naluginya Vergara (Guna, b. 1957), Fisherman, 2009, acrylic on canvas, private collection. Vergara explores Indigenous esoteric knowledge.

graduate of the National School of Art, where he studied under Silfrido Ibarra and became fascinated with the life of Gustav Klimt. The influence of both artists is apparent is Kansuet’s work, in his Ibarra-like idealizations of the natural world and his focus on the female figure, which follows Gustav Klimt's example by framing the subject in nearly abstract ornamentation. In most instances, Kansuet depicts his young daughter Alison in a hyperrealist manner, enveloping her in romanticized visions of Guna Yala’s natural environment. Guna Yala’s birds, plants, and fish form the background of these swirling paintings.

They encircle Alison’s body in mola-like fashion, suggesting the possibility of harmonious links between humanity and mother earth. Sometimes Alison sleeps along a forested coast or lies peacefully in a hammock of seedpods and vines.

Inspired by the Chilean artist Claudio Bravo, Julián Velásquez (Guna, b. 1955) produces similar almost photographic depictions of Panamanian flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Velásquez is a longtime veteran of Guna visual culture. His creativity has transpired through a variety of phases, and he has mentored generations of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. For years, Velásquez has been employed as an instructor at the National School of Art, and through the 1980s and 1990s,

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ARTIST AS SHAMAN: THE ONTOLOGICAL TURN BEGINNING EARLY among many of these Native artists, was an impulse to reject realistic representations and attempt to portray Guna esoteric knowledge. James Howe indicates that the command of such rare and limited knowledge constitutes the most prestigious aptitude in Guna society. So it is not surprising to witness the emergence of Guna painters whose thoughts are steeped in religious, medical, and philosophical doctrines and who attempt to illustrate these complexities in their art.

Such depictions tend to be less figurative, responding perhaps to what Paolo Fortis has defined as the ontological principles of Guna visual culture. This tendency to reject realistic representations, especially of the human figure, instead conceives aesthetic creativity as a pathway to alterity and the soul.

As a prime example, Fortis points to the nuchukana, wooden carvings that the Guna utilize in healing ceremonies.

The nuchukana are front-facing, human sculptures whose features are minimally elaborated. In interviews, some Guna

painters have agreed with Fortis’s premises, insisting that realism is not part of their artistic heritage. Also important, perhaps, has been the impact of Native American, transnational influences, such as the broad interest in so-called “legend painting.” Indigenous people have always been global citizens, as Joel Sherzer once insisted in a book documenting similar influences in Guna verbal arts.

In the early 1970s, Uriel Díaz initiated the first experiments in this area by mixing village scenes and more realistic portraits with less representational reflections on Guna foundational stories.

Among the art naïve specialists following in Luis Méndez’s path, a special interest developed in these subjects, partly due to the growing tourist market and outsiders’ fascination with such topics.

Some painters even operated small museums, focusing on Guna beliefs and culture. From 2003 until his recent death, Teodoro Torres (Guna, 1953–2017) operated a gallery in Nalunega. Nalunega is a small island community, situated at the far western end of Guna Yala, an area visited by a regular stream of cruise ships, yachts, and foreign tourists. Torres, who had spent years studying Guna esoteric knowledge, attempted to visualize many of its tenets in sometimes abstract and spinning paintings that he fashioned on discarded boat parts, driftwood, and similarly castoff objects. Much of his Museo Orgun Nega was constructed of plastic bottles, which Torres collected on the shoreline. The talented Torres was an interesting man—part shaman, part entrepreneur, and a grassroots environmentalist.

Ontological art reached its most mature manifestation in the career of Oswaldo De León Kantule, or Achu (Guna, b. 1964). Achu has spent his adult years in Canada where he fell under the influence of Norval Morrisseau (Bingwi Neyaashi Ojibwe, 1931/2– 2007). Morrisseau’s explorations of his Anishinaabe heritage served to inform Achu’s thoughts about Guna culture.

Much like Morrisseau, Achu boasts an

illustrious background: he is a direct descendant of Nele Kantule, Guna Yala’s most important 20th-century leader. He has drawn on this parentage to project a wealth of Guna beliefs, histories, and practices, but Achu always insists that he is “not painting for the tourists.”

His representations are varied, often mixing perspectives shaped by his daily endeavors in Canada or his thoughts on such contentious issues as environmental degradation in Guna Yala. Achu’s insights are fluid and complex, and his images stand distant from Méndez’s depictions of picturesque villages.

THE FUTURE OF GUNA ART WHERE IS GUNA PAINTING HEADED TODAY? If the past is indicative of the future, Guna art is likely to continue its evolution, especially as it absorbs new influences in both urban and international contexts. Over half of the Guna people now live in Panama City, or its immediate environs. One possibility is that Native painters will follow the direction other artists have pursued

in this area. In recent years, Panama has experienced rising Indigenous involvement in fashion design, theater, rock ’n’ roll, jazz, filmmaking, and hip hop. Choreographer Iguandili López Smith (Guna) comfortably mixes Guna movements with the aesthetics of ballet and modern dance. Today Smith heads the National School of Dance, overseeing its lively and eclectic programs.

Similarly, Guna photographers Naypiler Hackin and Duiren Wagua explore such subjects as the lives of the capital’s Native American residents.

As Sherzer notes, the Guna have always been global citizens. However, these new turns have made their connectedness more obvious, while also serving to break down longstanding stereotypes and open the door to further developments. Among the next generation, perhaps we shall see a Guna painter who chooses to focus more exclusively on Indigenous life in the city. In some sense, Luis Méndez pointed the way.

Even as he gazed nostalgically toward Guna Yala, Méndez grounded his life in the capital, expanding Panama’s conception of what it means to be Indigenous.

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EARLY SOUTHWEST SILVERSMITHING The first Navajo and Pueblo silversmiths transformed this precious metal into an artistic legacy that has beguiled generations of art lovers.

By Denise Neil, PhD

A

LT HOU G H T H E A RT FORM was introduced by outsiders, silverwork has become a central feature of Southwestern Native artwork, as Navajo and Pueblo silversmiths have taken the medium and made it their own.

Even though many think of it as an ancient American Southwest art form, Navajo and Pueblo silversmithing is relatively new to the region. Its beginnings only trace back to the mid-19th century.

Initially made for community use, early Native silverwork was soon collected by railroad workers, military personnel, and tourists, who quickly saw its aesthetic value. Over time, the refinement of silversmithing techniques, along with artistic innovations, led to a wide array of objects of personal adornment. Today, silverwork produced by Indigenous artists remains in high demand.

Southwest tribes have produced objects of adornment, including necklaces made from shell and stone, for centuries.

As early as 600 to 900 CE, ancestors of present-day Zunis carried bison hides and turquoise to the Pacific Coast to trade for shells. And before they learned to make jewelry from silver, Navajo people wore bracelets and ear hoops of brass and copper. “These metals were easy to work and often came in the form of heavy wire,

above Slender Maker of Silver (Navajo, fl. late 19th century), Squash Blossom Necklace with Naja, late 19th-century, turquoise, silver, collection of the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Photo: Jonathan Batkin. Unless otherwise noted, all images courtesy of the Wheelwright Museum. opposite Slender Maker of Silver (Navajo, fl. late 19th century), Squash Blossom Necklace with Naja, late 19th-century, turquoise, silver, collection of the Wheelwright Museum. Photo: Addison Doty.

which with little effort could be cut to a suitable length and bent into shape.”1 The blacksmithing techniques used to work iron and, later, silver were more complex and required specialized equipment. Once Navajo and Pueblo artists mastered these techniques, their silversmithing became not only a form of artistic expression, but also an important source of income and means of self-expression.

Outsiders’ interest in the history and development of Southwest silversmithing emerged early. United States Army surgeon Washington Matthews, a self-taught anthropologist, documented silversmithing among the Navajo in 1880. While stationed at Fort Wingate, New Mexico, Matthews became interested in Navajo culture, including the tools and techniques implemented by early Navajo silversmiths. Scholarship continued with the work of John Adair, who conducted interviews with Navajo and Pueblo silversmiths in the early 20th century. These firsthand accounts remain essential resources for understanding the development of Southwest silverwork, and the history of its earliest Native craftsmen. Today, interest in the study of silversmithing continues in both academic circles and through museum exhibitions. The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe has

1. Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, “Early Metalwork,” exhibition text panel.

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above Unknown Isleta Pueblo artist (attributed), Squash Blossom Necklace with Naja, silver, turquoise, collection of the Wheelwright Museum.

Photo: Jonathan Batkin. opposite, top Slender Maker of Silver (Navajo, fl. late 19th century) with his artwork and tools, ca. 1885. Photo: Ben Wittick, collection of the National Archives and Records Administration. opposite, below Unknown Zuni artist, Petit Point Bracelet, ca. 1935, silver, turquoise, collection of the Wheelwright Museum. Photo: Denise Neil (Delaware-Cherokee).

dedicated considerable resources toward the development of their Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry, which presents museum visitors with a thorough history of the art of silversmithing.

Indeed, this article could not have been completed without access to their collections and the expertise of their staff.

The earliest known Navajo silversmith was Atsidi Sani (Old Smith, ca.

1830–ca. 1918). In 1938 Adair interviewed Atsidi Sani’s great-nephew Grey Moustache, who recounted that this elder silversmith “realized that a great deal could be gained by learning to make bridles.” Atsidi Sani learned this craft from a Mexican friend who lived in a town near Mount Taylor, and after his introduction to blacksmithing techniques, he returned to his home near Crystal, New Mexico, and set up a smithy where he taught his sons and others how to work iron. While Grey Moustache’s interview indicates blacksmithing was introduced

to the Navajo through Atsidi Sani, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact date when the Navajo began to work silver into their artistic repertoire.

In John Adair’s interviews, his sources maintained that silversmithing did not occur until the Navajos were released from Bosque Redondo, where they were imprisoned in the years between 1863 and 1868. Yet, according to scholars at the Wheelwright Museum, the “evidence suggests that some Native Americans including Atsidi Sani may have learned silversmithing by the 1850s.”2 Prior to their incarceration, Navajo people were fond of wearing silver and adorning their horses with silver bridles. In 1853 US Brigadier General W. W. H. Davis observed Navajos wearing “many valuable belts of silver.”3 In 1856 US Army surgeon Jonathan Letterman wrote that Navajo horses wore bridles “ornamented with plates of pure silver, of the purity of which, by the way, these people are excellent judges.” And in 1864 Navajo headman Hástiin Dághá (or Delgadito) reported that during the Navajo’s forced march to Bosque Redondo, a belt of his valued at $100 was stolen by American soldiers.4 Early silversmithing among the Navajo, like all newly introduced art, underwent several important stages of development. Washington Matthews’s research led him to conclude that the silversmiths had refined their process, and the art form had dramatically improved from 15 years earlier, when Navajo men first began to work silver, to the time Matthews conducted his fieldwork. Contributing factors in the advancement of silversmithing included the introduction of fine files, emery paper, and other tools supplied by American traders.

Slender Maker of Silver is considered to be the premier Navajo silversmith of the late 19th century. Three of his squash blossom necklaces dating from 1895 to 1900 are on display at the Wheelwright Museum, demonstrating the skills of this early master. Slender Maker of Silver used techniques of handwrought and tufa-cast silver to create each of these necklaces,

2. Wheelwright, "Early Metalwork."

3. W. W. H. Davis, El Gringo: New Mexico and Her People (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 412.

4. Lawrence C. Kelly, Navajo Roundup: Selected Correspondence of Kit Carson’s Expedition Against the Navajo, 1863–1865 (Boulder, CO: Pruett Publishing Co., 1970), 149.

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including squash blossom ornaments set between rows of silver beads as well as naja pendants. But the variations between the necklaces are significant, indicating an innovative artist whose flair for design is evident.

In the first example, Slender Maker of Silver created a necklace with eight squash blossoms (four per side) culminating in a naja pendant adorned with three turquoise stones. This is a classic design that remains in use in the 21st century. The “squash blossom” design, originally representing a pomegranate fruit, came from Spain, while the naja, a crescent charm, traces its history to the Moors and possibly the ancient Phoenicians, whose riders hung the crescents from their horse bridles to protect them against the “evil eye.”

Another necklace, attributed as being commissioned by Chee Dodge, shows Slender Maker of Silver’s single row of silver beads giving way to eight double rows of squash blossom embellishments, which project from each side of the rows of beads to create a complex pattern. Like the first example, the pendant includes three turquoise stones.

The third example of the master silversmith’s squash-blossom necklaces exhibits the artist’s return to the simpler squash-blossom design, but the pendant created for this work is much more complex. On this necklace, the pendant includes an abstracted figure, with curvilinear arms outstretched toward the squash blossoms.

In each of these necklaces the emphasis is on their silver components.

Although turquoise is commonly associated with Navajo silverwork, Slender Maker of Silver’s limited use is an interesting step in the development of Navajo jewelry. Adair notes that the Navajo began to use turquoise set into their silverwork around 1880, but it was not incorporated in considerable quantity until after 1890.

Prior to that date, turquoise was procured in limited quantities from the Cerrillos Mining District south of Santa Fe, but turquoise became more readily available when mines in Colorado and Nevada began to export stones to New Mexico and Arizona. Despite the limitations of available turquoise, Slender Maker of Silver made excellent use of the stones SPRING 2019 | 41

Silverwork is a family affair with skills handed down from one generation to the next.

above Fred Peshlakai (Navajo, 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 74 ) , S t a m p w o r k Bowl, silver, collection of the Wheelwright Museum. opposite, top Fred Peshlakai (Navajo, 1896–1974), Choker with Removable Pendant, silver, Nevada turquoise, collection of the Wheelwright Museum.

Photo: Jonathan Batkin. opposite, below Fred Peshlakai (Navajo, 1896–1974), Rattlesnake Bracelets, silver, turquoise, collection of the Wheelwright Museum. Photo: Jonathan Batkin.

that adorn the naja pendants on each of these three pieces.

Like many Native art forms, silverwork is a family affair with skills handed down from one generation to the next. Slender Maker of Silver taught silversmithing to his brothers and his sons, including Fred Peshlakai (Navajo, 1896–1972), who learned the craft from his father when he was around 18 years old. By 1929 Peshlakai had become a Christian evangelist with the Presbyterian mission at Ganado, Arizona, but around 1931 or 1932, he moved to Gallup where he learned commercial metal casting from a local German jeweler. Eventually Peshlakai settled in Los Angeles, and by 1938 he opened a shop there.5 For the next 30 years, Fred Peshlakai produced innovative jewelry, earning a reputation as an expert in the selection and use of turquoise.

Though much of the Native American jewelry trade had been heavily influenced by American traders and the trading post system, Peshlakai broke away from this arrangement. He rarely

worked for others and insisted upon managing his own career for most of his life. He obtained his materials directly, buying silver from the Wildberg Brothers Smelting and Refining Company in Los Angeles and working closely with mine owner “Doc” Wilson to procure the finest turquoise available. Peshlakai’s independent approach to running his artistic career signaled the decline of a power system in which reservation traders, shop owners, and other collectors struggled to maintain control over not only the output of Native jewelers, but also the resources they needed for their craft. Peshlakai had become one of a growing number of Native American silversmiths who, through their own initiative, joined the ranks of modern studio jewelers.6 Peshlakai had a prolific career as a silversmith, and although he learned the art from his father, his work does not copy that of Slender Maker of Silver.

Instead, Peshlakai took the art of silversmithing in new and exciting directions, taking full advantage of the turquoise he had gained access to and often utilizing large cabochons (rounded, cut stones) to embellish necklaces and bracelets. His skills in selecting and setting stones can be clearly seen in two bracelets dating from about 1960, for which he chose large Lone Mountain turquoise stones that nearly obscure the silver settings. In other pieces, he creatively used smaller stones to accentuate details in his jewelry, including two bracelets that implement smaller stones designed into the form of rattlesnakes.

The snakes’ coiled bodies are finely decorated with scaled patterns, and their heads and rattles are embellished with turquoise stones. These unique pieces demonstrate the diversity of Peshlakai’s work.

Of course, silversmithing was not practiced only among the Navajo, and I would be remiss if I failed to mention the development of this art form among Pueblo artists. As he had among the Navajo, Adair also recorded the history and development of silverwork among the Pueblos. At Zuni Pueblo, the silversmith La:niyadhi (Zuni) informed Adair

5. Dana Joseph, “Native Treasures,” Cowboys & Indians (August/September 2015), web.

6. Cheri Falkenstien-Doyle, “Eighteenth-century economy, twentieth-century merchandising: the market for turquoise in the American Southwest, 1900–1940,” in JCH King, Turquoise in Mexico and North America: science, conservation, culture and collections (London: British Museum, 2012), 215–220..

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that around 1870 a Navajo silversmith known as Atsidi Chon (Ugly Smith) set up a forge at Zuni. Although secretive about the process at first, Atsidi Chon eventually taught the craft to La:niyadhi, who then shared what he had learned with Ba:lawahdiwa (Zuni), governor of the pueblo, who then taught other Zuni men. In 1898 La:niyadhi traveled to the Hopi village of Sichomovi where he taught the craft to his friend Sikyatala, who in turn taught Tawahongniwa, a leader from Shungopavi on Second Mesa, how to work silver.7 Jewelry produced at Zuni in the early 20th century is easily distinguishable from the work of Navajo silversmiths, because Zuni artists often used large quantities of turquoise stones in their jewelry. These stones were not the large cabochons that Fred Peshlakai would eventually use in the mid-20th century; instead, Zuni artists cut and polished small, well-selected stones into the shapes of teardrops, spheres, and ovals, as seen in a Zuni bracelet from about 1935. In this bracelet the turquoise takes center stage, while a delicate silver rope pattern offsets the radiating composition of the stones.

So while the Zuni learned from the Navajo and the Hopi had learned from the Zuni, silversmithing at other pueblos, including Acoma, Laguna, Isleta, Kewa, and Santa Clara appears to have developed independently of Navajo silver. Rather than learning the craft from Navajos, these Pueblo silversmiths learned through contact with Spanish-Mexican jewelers in Valencia and Bernalillo Counties.8 Like the early Navajo silversmiths, Pueblo artists created squash-blossom necklaces. Comparing a necklace attributed to a silversmith from Isleta Pueblo you’ll find it notably distinguishable from necklaces produced

by Slender Maker of Silver. In scale, the Isleta example is smaller, but there are also important design differences.

Although the Isleta silversmith included squash-blossom embellishments, he also added turquoise inlaid silver drops with scalloped edges and set the naja’s round 7. Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, “Silversmithing Reaches the Pueblos,” exhibition text panel.

8. Wheelwright, "Silversmithing Reaches the Pueblos."

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turquoise stones in a much more elaborate silver setting. The Mexican influence can be seen in the detailed filigree work used

by Pueblo smiths, including a bracelet dating to around 1930 with delicate silver filigree panels surrounding the square-cut turquoise stones.

Although access to better tools and materials, including turquoise, certainly led to design innovations and refined silverwork among Navajo and Pueblo silversmiths, an increasing marketplace outside Indigenous communities also had a profound effect on the production of silver jewelry. Commercialization of Navajo and Pueblo silver began in left Unknown Isleta Pueblo artist (attributed), Filigree Bracelet, silver, turquoise, collection of the Wheelwright Museum. Both photos: Jonathan Batkin. opposite F re d Pe s h l a ka i (Navajo, 1896–1974), Bracelets, ca. 1955-1960, silver, malachite, turquoise, both collection of the Wheelwright Museum.

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1899 when the Fred Harvey Company started to order silver pieces made for sale to European-American tourists. As Adair notes, “As the tourist trade grew in size during the first two decades of the century, the demand for Indian-made silver increased. … The Harvey Company sold great quantities of silver on the Santa Fé trains and in its hotels at the Grand Canyon and at Albuquerque.”9 The techniques and protocols of silversmithing that were developed when Atsidi Sani first learned the art of blacksmithing continue into the 21st century.

Today, both women and men create jewelry among the Southwest tribes.

Continuing to push the envelope with innovative designs and diverse materials, these silversmiths continue to meet the expectations of both tourists and collectors, who remain enamored with the beautiful objects of personal adornment produced by Navajo and Pueblo artists.

9. John Adair, The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 37.

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THE ART OF IDENTITY The Image and the Image Maker

By Matt Jarvis

“T

O BE, OR NOT TO BE?” is not the question; instead the question is: “What to be, or what not to be?” The question of who will determine who we are is not only a question of genetics but also of image and perception. This question is important to American Indian artists, because we are image-makers and shapers of perceptions—meaning that we have a privilege, responsibility, or power, which, hopefully, we wield for the betterment of our peoples.

Photography came into widespread use during the 1840s, a period of American expansion across the Mississippi River. The Louisiana Purchase had been completed in 1803, securing land for a burgeoning nation that needed room to expand its population from the Atlantic seaboard.

America’s problem was that the country those people wanted to move onto was already occupied and “underdeveloped.”

In 1831, between the Louisiana Purchase and the spread of photography, another invention appeared in America—the railroad. The Great Lakes, Ohio River Basin, and the “Deep South” Gulf Coast became inhabitable, as a modern system of infrastructure moved west to catch up with agricultural frontiersmen. The constant westward movement of European American

populations was forcing (through sheer numbers) more and more “Natives” to also move further west.

This was the time of tales in which Indians committed savage barbarities against innocent, defenseless settlers, while some brave white man went and brought civilized militia or the army to the rescue. Writings and drawings of these stories created a “righteous” belief in the God-given right of the United States to remove or eradicate the Natives, so “civilized” people could inhabit these lands to the west. Others

1. Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1977), 57.

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painted and drew reproductions of the unspoiled, bountiful resources and beautiful landscapes that were just waiting for the “right” people to come and take possession of them.

Until the widespread development of photography, only a trickle of rugged European-American individuals from the East trekked beyond the Mississippi River frontier. This is not to say photography caused the expansion of America; the doctrine of Manifest Destiny had already taken hold. But the spread of photography also led to a spread of Western sciences (geography, geology, and social sciences), through the distribution of reproducible images that came west with settlers during the second wave of American expansion.

While European-Americans often had their portraits taken to share with others, they were also hungry to collect photographs of the exotic.

Pseudoscientific studies of Africans, “Native” American Indians, and nude females and other erotica could become profitable endeavors for an industrious photographer.1 Some say photography was a mixed bag for American Indians, because they were finally presented as human beings instead of savage beasts (the same people say photography increased awareness of the plight of Africans-Americans). Photography also helped create the concept that American

Indians were people who could be captured and removed farther west.

When gold was discovered in California in 1848, European-Americans began to feel the West could no longer belong to American Indians. The expansion of railways past the Mississippi River in the 1850s brought a flood of western migration that could not be held back. Not only were EuropeanAmericans spreading into Indian lands, but European diseases were permeating tribes in the West who had not been hit by the initial wave of diseases spread

by European explorers from foreign shores. As waves of epidemics spread, conflicts for territory took place between the Western tribes, the tribes forcibly removed from the East, and white settlers. As news traveled back east, this led to the perception of the “Vanishing Race.” Easterners now wanted images of these vanishing noble savages, because they thought American Indians would become extinct.

As Susan Sontag writes, “The predatory side of photography is at the heart of the alliance” between photography and tourism. Sontag links the completion of the transcontinental railroads in 1869 to the colonization of the West, with photography as a vital weapon. To her, “The case of the American Indian is the most brutal,” with “tourists invad[ing] the Indians’ privacy, photographing holy objects and the sacred dances and places, if necessary paying Indians to pose and getting them to revise their ceremonies to provide more photogenic material.”2 Easterners were aware of the documentary power of photography through the efforts of Mathew Brady and other studio photographers’ work during the Civil War. Some of these photographers separated from Brady, and other influences, and went west to document the land and the people. Timothy Sullivan primarily focused on the land, but others sought to capture images of “real” Indians before they all, presumably, disappeared.

By the 1890s, ethnologists attempted to rationalize racist beliefs through outmoded interpretations of

cultural evolution which maintained that, due to their evolutionary state, American Indians just could not advance their culture as fast as the advancement of Western culture.

American Indians had changed since contact with whites, because of something—apparently white superiority, as 19th-century EuropeanAmericans widely concluded—that made the Indians acculturate or accept aspects of white culture. To the extent

above Matt Jarvis (Osage), Klandra B l e n d , 2018, digital photocollage. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite Matt Jarvis (Osage), Pop Art Osage Southern Traditional Dancer, 2003, digital art, 12 × 8 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

2. Sontag, On Photography, 64.

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they acculturated, Indians lost the vague quality of “Indianness,” in effect, they seemed to become less authentic. Thus, when American Indians changed, they were no longer seen as “Indians,” and the fallacy that Indian culture did not change could remain sacrosanct.3 According to Celia Lury, author of Prosthetic Culture: Photography, Memory and Identity, “In the early days of ethnology, this generally meant that researchers attempted to study Indian cultures in terms of what they were—or rather what they were imagined to have been—prior to contact with white peoples.”4 Edward Curtis, who became the most famous pictorialist photographer of Native subjects, opens one volume of his series The North American Indian with his photograph, Vanishing Race— Navaho. He captioned the photogravure: “The thought which this picture is meant to convey is that the Indians as a race, already shorn of their tribal strength and stripped of their primitive dress, are

passing into the darkness of an unknown future.”5 Curtis felt this image captured his thesis so well that he selected it as the first in his entire 20-volume series.6 Curtis’s photograph also illustrates Susan Sontag’s point that, more often than not, Americans use photography for partisan purposes because they are “experts on the ‘reality’ and inevitability of change.” Photography in America not only showed what should be admired, but also what should be improved by the influence of American culture.

Sontag linked American photography to a geographic and social reality that was more hopeful for whites, and more predatory for others.7 Imagery of American Indians—first from literature, drawings, and paintings— was that of the savage. With the advent of photography, came images of the “vanishing race.” In the 20th century, these two concepts were propagated by the motion picture industry through Westerns. The disappearance of Native

peoples was portrayed as a moral victory during that period of the past, and the elimination of “uncivilized” Indians was represented as better for all, including those in the present still watching those Westerns.

With the apparent victory of European-American culture over Native cultures, there were now two kinds of American Indians portrayed: those acculturated on reservations far away from the majority of Americans, or the “Injuns” who had not fully taken on American culture and could be seen displaced amongst Western civilization.

The Injun became a stereotype, the butt of humor and a commercialized image for brand names and mascots. Since reservation Indians were no longer authentically Indian they could simply be ignored as the government’s responsibility, and they became invisible.

The American Indians’ plight went unnoticed, since they no longer existed in the “white man’s world.” Thus, in the late 1960s, it came as a shock to most mainstream Americans that Indians did exist, and they had complaints about how they were being treated. American Indians used visual arts in the 1970s, especially portraiture, to reclaim some of the identity that had been taken from them by non-Native photographers, moviemakers, and corporations.8 To mainstream Americans, the most surprising aspect of Indian identity was the broad range of Native peoples and cultures, well beyond the two stereotypical images types of Indians. Lucy Lippard recognizes that American Indian image-makers have many viewpoints, because Indigenous people are not all alike. American Indian “contemporary photographers are making art with a humor and vitality that is sometimes angry, but amazingly free of bitterness,” according to Lippard. “Creation of such

3. Celia Lury, Prosthetic Culture: Photography, Memory and Identity (London: Routledge, 1998), 49.

4. Lury, Prosthetic Culture, 49.

5. Shannon Egan, “‘Yet in a Primitive Condition’: Edward S. Curtis’s North American Indian,” American Art 20, No. 3 (Fall 2006): 59.

6. Lury, 49.

7. Sontag, 63.

8. Lucy R. Lippard, “Independent Identities,” in Native American Art in the Twentieth Century: Makers, Meanings, Histories, ed. W. Jackson Rushing III (London: Routledge, 1999), 134.

9. Lippard, “Independent Identities,” 141.

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a multicentered space from threads of culture lost to many and almost invisible to a general public is not an easy task.

The misunderstandings and misinterpretations that greet their efforts result as often from ignorance as from bias (though ignorance is a product of bias).”9 At that time, Native photographers tended to create blurred, indistinct, or fragmented facial features. This trend was explained by Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee Nation, 1916–2002), a cofounder of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, who noted that young Native artists knew they were neither enfranchised members of American society, nor living in the reality of their ancestors.

Marginalized by mainstream cultural stereotypes and knowing they were not

living an authentic Indian lifestyle, these artists could no longer recognize their very own identity.10 Lippard also recognized the trend of American Indian photographers to present themselves in a clearer, more straightforward manner in the 1980s and 1990s, confronting their audience directly.11 Shelley Niro (Mohawk), one of these artists, draws upon her knowledge of the general public’s belief of how Indians are identified. Niro looks at images of what she is and what people expect her to be, questioning why people would think they are the same person.

She explores this concept in Are You My Sister? (1994), an installation that juxtaposes current and historical photographic portraits of Mohawk people.

above Shelley Niro (Mohawk), detail of Are You My Sister?, 1 9 9 4 , p h o to i n s t a l l a t i o n , entire installation 40⅛ × 252 in., collection of the Agnes Etherington Gallery at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario.

Image courtesy of the artist. opposite Edward S. Curtis (1868–1952), The Vanishing Race—Navaho, 1904, photogravure on paper, 143⁄16 × 17¾ in., public domain.

10. Lippard, 143.

11. Lippard, 143.

12. Linda Haverty Rugg, Picturing Ourselves: Photography and Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 9.

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above, top Matt Jarvis (Osage), Buffalo Are Dangerous, 2002. digital art, 36 × 54 in. Both images courtesy of the artist. above, bel ow M at t Jarvis (Osage), My Life as an Indian Dog, 2002, digital art, 36 × 54 in.

Linda Haverty Rugg writes in Picturing Ourselves that autobiographical photography produces images of self-determination. She thinks this is a key to determining how images and text relate— to see if the body constructed matches the desired body of the constructor.12 For my exhibition Red, White, and Blue I used the “Indian dog,” commonly-seen mutts of the reservations, as a symbol of identity for a contemporary hybrid Indian. An allusion to bison for the buffalo Indian stereotype and generations of my family are juxtaposed with 13. Lury, 84

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images from my generation in Buffalo Are Dangerous. Another method I used to claim my own identity was to collage the many items that supposedly make up my identification.

In Prosthetic Culture, Lur y describes how British sociologist Don Slater believes the family photo album, neatly arranged as a past narrative of the family, is being replaced by a “pinboard” or bulletin board. She writes, “Snapshots, bits of photo booth strips left over from passports or identity cards take their place alongside postcards sent by friends, newspaper paragraphs, a child’s drawing, birthday cards, pictures of celebrities, notices and advertisements.”13 These collages, images and text of the present, replace a familial narrative with items that now belong to the individual, who has the ability to change them.

It is the ability to claim and change our perceived identity to fit our real situation that will truly grant American Indians intellectual sovereignty. Digital imaging introduces American Indian artists to new tools to represent themselves. We can now show a stereotype of 19th-century Indians blended with contemporary American Indians, or portray modern American Indians following longstanding cultural protocols, inspiring audiences to question what they believe is the “true” image.

American Indian artists need to lead the way in establishing more publicly seen modern-day Native images, something better than Johnny Depp putting a crow on his head and calling himself Tonto. Otherwise, the most popular images will become what the public believes is the truth. Depp, who is not of Native ancestry [although the Comanche Nation has adopted him], can put on a stilted accent, dab some black around his eyes, and supposedly wander the American Southwest desert, and the American public will see him, at least in advertisements, as a spiritual Indian. This is wrong, and it needs to change for so many reasons. But it is up to American Indians to make these new images ourselves.

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21192 S. KEELER DRIVE, PARK HILL, OK 74451 888.999.6007 • CHEROKEEHERITAGE.ORG SPRING 2019 | 51 © 2019 Cherokee Heritage Center. All Rights Reserved.

THE RHIZOMES OF REPATRIATION Every collected object is tangled in a complex web of familial, historical, social, political, and legal roots.

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

R

ECENT PROTESTS at several high-profile museums have brought on a renewed fervor to “decolonize” collections acquired illegally—often stolen during periods of traumatic violence. In the spring and fall of 2018, members of the group Decolonize This Place protested in the galleries of the Brooklyn Museum with banners that read, “How was this acquired? By whom? For whom? At whose cost? #decolonizethisplace” and “Reparations/Repatriation Now! Your collection contains thousands of objects acquired through imperial plunder.”1 The Decolonize collective has seven demands, one of which is, “A decolonial inventory of colonial-era objects of African and Indigenous people with a view to settle the long-pursued claims of reparations and repatriation.”2 The Brooklyn Museum’s Arts of the Americas collection consists of over 35,000 objects.

Some objects definitely have questionable provenance, but the protests leave many wondering, Which items, specifically? Who are the protesters speaking for? Given that museum professionals have already been engaged in provenance research and repatriation cases for decades, it seems the protests are intended to raise awareness among the general public rather than within the museum itself. It is unknown

above Educational placard about NAGPRA in precontact ceramic display at the Sam Noble Museum, Norman, Oklahoma. Photo: A. Meredith. opposite Delaware Tribe of Indians youth and culture resource director Curtis Zunigha (at right) visit Lenape carving of Mesingwe in the Philbrook Museum of Art collections, Tu l s a , O k l a h o m a . I m a g e courtesy of Curtis Zunigha (Delaware).

if the protesters did much research, given that their demands are so vague.3 The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) became US federal law in 1990. It requires any organization receiving federal funding to inventory their collections and submit a report to the National Parks Service detailing any human remains, sacred objects, and funerary items in their possession, with the intent to return items to the rightful owners. This process is laborious and ongoing. The latest reports show that since 1990, organizations have posted notices of intent to repatriate over 1.9 million funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony, as well as 63,885 sets of human remains.4 This includes a recent notice of intent posted by the Brooklyn Museum to repatriate a Wiyot woman’s dance skirt.5 Since 2010 the Brooklyn Museum has offered to return a collection of 4,500 objects to the Museum of Costa Rica. This case is not NAGPRA related, nor was there any demand for repatriation. Notably, “there were no legal issues surrounding the Brooklyn Museum’s ownership of the objects, since they left the country before a 1938 Costa Rican law restricting export of archaeological artifacts.”6 The decision

1. Jasmine Weber, “Decolonize This Place Demands Repatriation of ‘Imperial Plunder’ at the Brooklyn Museum,” Hyperallergic (November 30, 2018), web.

2. Hrag Vartanian, “Growing Coalition Calls Brooklyn Museum ‘Out of Touch’ and Demands Decolonization Commission,” Hyperallergic (April 12, 2018), web.

3. Attempts to reach representatives of Decolonize This Place for comment were unsuccessful.

4. “Fiscal Year 2017 Report,” National NAGPRA Program, 5, web.

5. “Notice of Intent to Repatriate Cultural Items: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY,” National Park Service (August 28, 2017), web.

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was made in an effort to downsize the museum’s sprawling collections and free up storage space. It has not yet been realized because the Museum of Costa Rica has to raise considerable funds to provide for shipping.

If this information is freely available online, much more can certainly be gained through rigorous research and interviewing the curators directly involved in individual cases themselves.

In fact, there are many more partnerships between museums and tribal communities than recent protests would lead one to believe.

To date, the United States is the only nation in the world to have federal legislation mandating repatriation. Though statistics reflect progress, the law is not without its drawbacks. Federally unrecognized tribes cannot make claims for remains or items that may be theirs; First Nations in Canada cannot make claims (the border divided many tribes); and the US law does not apply to international collections. Federal legislation provides funding for provenance research, transfer, and proper storage of fragile items. Last year, the Canadian House of Commons debated the Indigenous Human Remains and Cultural Property Repatriation Act (Bill C-391), introduced by MP Bill Casey.

However, repatriation does happen even in the absence of federal legislation.

Many museums have been building relationships with tribal communities for decades and, as research institutions, are self-driven to conduct provenance research. Some museum professionals believe entering into voluntary partnerships sets a more positive tone than a mandate from the government. Blackfoot communities in Canada began repatriating sacred bundles in the 1970s.7 Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, has worked extensively with local Indigenous tribes not only to repatriate sacred objects but also to create a permanent exhibition and public programming on Blackfoot culture, and to act as an appropriate

repository for sacred objects that cannot be held elsewhere.

In 2016 British Columbia and its Royal Museum began offering repatriation grants to First Nations, and the Huu-ay-aht received 17 items as part of an agreement that will eventually return 51 objects to the tribe. This is a small part of the Royal BC Museum’s response to Canada’s 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report, specifically its 94 “Calls to Action.”8 The TRC calls on Canadian institutions to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) adopted in 2007. Article 12, section 2 of this document proclaims, “States shall

seek to enable the access and/or repatriation of ceremonial objects and human remains in their possession through fair, transparent and effective mechanisms developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples concerned.”9 Though progress is slow, every initiative and collaboration contributes to a positive outlook for the years ahead. Since 2017 the Royal BC Museum has hired two repatriation specialists focused solely on the return of stolen items.

In 2000 the Alberta legislature passed the First Nations Sacred Ceremonial Objects Repatriation Act (FNSCORA), becoming the only Canadian province to give First Nations

6. Kate Taylor, “Museum Wants to Return Objects, but There’s a Hitch,” The New York Times (December 31, 2010), web.

7. Gerald T. Conaty, We Are Coming Home: Repatriation and the Restoration of Blackfoot Cultural Confidence (Alberta: Athabasca University Press, 2015), 177.

8. Raymond Frogner, archivist, “Royal BC Museum and Archives Official Response Regarding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action,” Royal BC Museum (last updated August 24, 2016), 2, web.

9. “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, G.A. Res. 61/295, U.N. Doc. A/RES/47/1 (2007),” University of Minnesota: Human Rights Library (September 7, 2007), art. XII, § 2, web.

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the legal right to retrieve sacred material from public collections. As in the United States, many tribal communities opt to work with museums to manage their collections rather than demanding an outright physical transfer. Nadja Roby, manager of repatriation and Indigenous relations at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec, touched on the complexities of repatriation in an interview with the Toronto Star: “Repatriation, Roby explains, is not one-size-fits-all. Some communities don’t have the capacity to store or care for objects, preferring to leave them with the museum for safekeeping. Others, like the Nisga’a in northwest British Columbia, prefer a shared custody arrangement, where objects rotate between the community and the museum, which takes them back for conservation.”10 In 2015 Robert Janes, editor-inchief of Museum Management and Curatorship wrote, “Both the idea and practice of repatriation enjoy a far more progressive climate in North America than they do in Europe.”11 Though long delayed, recent developments suggest change is foreseeable in the future.

Museums in the Americas often have an opportunity to partner with local tribal communities (for example, Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, works with the Delaware Tribe of Indians; Glenbow Museum with the Blackfoot Confederacy). European museums do not have this option and will have to develop different methods of collaborating, often relying on language translation. Digitizing collections just to share inventory across continents should be the first priority.

In May 2018 the Deutscher Museumsbund (DMB), or German Museums Association, published “Guidelines on Dealing with Collections from Colonial Contexts.” This fundamental document broadly outlines the effects of colonialism; Germany’s particular role in taking cultural heritage from its former colonies; and how German

museums can recognize those objects associated with colonial rule. Finally, it outlines ethical recommendations regarding prioritization of research, exhibition, and the return of objects that fall into this category. The guidelines stress transparency, timeliness, and mutual respect: With regard to the colonial era, representatives of the communities from where these objects originate want to discuss their issues on an equal footing with the museums. It is by no means always simply a matter of returning these objects, but mostly about participation, involvement, negotiation processes, the prerogative to interpret the past, and knowledge transfer. This provides a tremendous opportunity to learn more about the objects and their contexts, and to shape the future of the German museum landscape together.12

Repatriation is not one-size-fits-all.

The aims of the DMB are promising, and it will be especially interesting when the new Humboldt Forum in Berlin opens this year. This three-year project relocates the Ethnological Museum from the outskirts in Dahlem to Museum Island in the city center, giving curators the opportunity to organize and present its extensive collections with a “decolonial” approach. In the same month the guidelines were published, the Ethnological Museum repatriated nine funerary objects to the Alaskan Chugach people.13 Though these are initial guidelines and not federal mandates, this could prove a turning point in how German museums approach provenance research of Indigenous objects.

Similar messages are coming from France, in this case from the president himself. Emmanuel Macron has

been vocal in his demands that French museums repatriate objects stolen during the colonial era. However, the conversation has thus far centered on art and artifacts from Africa. It remains to be seen if action will be taken on Indigenous cultural heritage from the Americas.

In her excellent book, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums, Amy Lonetree (Ho-Chunk) writes that one of the most important goals in the process of decolonization is to “address the legacies of historical unresolved grief by speaking the hard truths of colonialism and thereby creating spaces for healing and understanding.”14 Further, decolonization involves “incorporating Indigenous languages, such as place-names, names of people, and proper nouns; and, finally, privileging Indigenous sources and perspectives over non-Indigenous ones.”15 To “decolonize” is not simply to return cultural heritage. It must involve a change in public education, along with more accurate historical narratives, which will prompt critical thinking over the acceptance of unquestioned myths and popular representations.

Though stolen cultural heritage and questionable ownership of human remains is a global problem, outside assessment of these cases can lead to deceptively simple conclusions. Even a cursory look into a few examples reveals how complex and multilayered a single resolution can be, requiring debates over jurisdiction, legal history, and terminology. Returning stolen property to rightful owners or heirs is complicated by the duration many items have been held and the interests of multiple parties. While increased public awareness surrounding these issues is good, the protests and/or the media coverage of protest events generally sets up a false us/them dichotomy: protesters/ museums; good people/bad institutions.

Yet the reality and the way forward are, in fact, much more nuanced and collaborative.

10. Murray Whyte, “Art so sacred, we’re not allowed to show it to you,” Toronto Star (November 18, 2017), web.

11. Conaty, We Are Coming Home, 15.

12. Wiebke Ahrndt, et al., “Guidelines on Dealing with Collections from Colonial Contexts,” German Museums Association Berlin (July 2018), 6, web.

13. Christopher F. Schuetze, “Berlin Museum Returns Artifacts to Indigenous People of Alaska,” The New York Times (May 16, 2018), web.

14. Amy Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 5.

15. Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums, 8.

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Nelda Schrupp Pheasant Rump Nakota Jeweler & Sculptor Lakota, ND

neldaschrupp@gmail.com Heard Museum Guild Fair & Market Phoenix, AZ, March 2 & 3, Booth A-45

Jay Contway & Friends Show March 21–23, Great Falls, MT

neldaschrupp.com Ring in sterling, amethyst, sodalite, and horsehair, 2018

benjamin harjo jr. american indian artist heard fair & market artesian festival santa fe indian market the gathering of song, 2018, gouache on arches paper, 12½ × 7 inches

www.benjamin harjojr.com

PROFILE

CADDO CERAMIC ARTIST

CHASE KAHWINHUT EARLES

By Jean Merz-Edwards

F

OR THE PAST DECADE, while working at his 20-year career in web design and development, Chase Kahwinhut Earles has been creating pottery, teaching classes, and attending markets on any available weekend: not an easy task for this father, husband, son, and brother. Naturally, when the demand for commissions, teaching, and providing art for shows began to outweigh his ability to engage in every role on the level he wanted, Earles started to reevaluate his priorities and recognized that he needed to transition into being a full-time artist.

His passion for Caddo history, culture, and art has driven Earles to this place. In his spare time, the artist has sought out his elders—like Jeri Redcorn (Caddo-Potawatomi)—as well as scholars and their scholarship, past and present. As a result, Earles now embodies an incredible breadth and depth of Caddo cultural and technical knowledge.

Along with a natural ability to create and teach, this knowledge explains why his work is in such high demand.

Currently, Earles’s art can be seen in numerous museums, such as the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) and Great Plains Art Museum (Lincoln, Nebraska), and in exhibitions—including Caddo Contemporary: Present and Relevant (Nacogdoches, Texas) and Stories from the Land (Lindsborg, Kansas).

In March 2019, Earles will speak at First American Art Magazine’s inaugural symposium. In spring, Earles will serve as the first resident in the Native American Art and Residency Program at Caddo Mounds State Historic Site in Davis, Texas, and he will hold a ceramic residency at Stephen F. Austin State University to teach in the ceramics program.

I wonder how many Native Americans grow up not understanding the unique cultural identity of their tribe. At that point I realized, Man, I need to know this, so I dove in to our tribe’s culture. I just wanted to know everything—to figure this out. I knew that it would help others.

JME: How were you first introduced to pottery?

CKE: Growing up, my family would take me and my brother to the Southwest.

We were into art and would go into the galleries. I loved it. It was inspiring. I saw Pueblo pottery year after year—the different styles and the variation. It struck home because we are Native American, and I felt, like, a connection.

After I met my wife and we were married and out on our own, I thought I would try to do some arts and pottery. I looked at different Pueblo techniques. You know, everybody in the world has seen that Maria Martinez video [laughing]. It’s inspiring.

So I started with clay that I bought at the store by playing around with it, making coils. I never did anything else with it. I just didn’t feel like I had a connection, and I still didn’t have anything to say.

I don’t know what it was—it just struck me one day, as I was talking to my father and he said, “We are Caddo.” And I said, “What does it mean to be Caddo? What is our tribe?”

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I found out there are tens of thousands of Caddo pots in museums across this entire country. On top of all of that, it’s so different from all the other tribes.

And then the fact we didn’t know about them. … I found out they took one of our elders—he’s in a wheelchair—they took him to a museum and showed him this pottery, and he just cried. He said, “I’m an elder of this tribe. I had no idea.” There is a long disconnect.

At that point, I realized it is my calling to do this. I am an artist. I am Caddo.

I want to contribute. Man, this is it! It’s calling me.

JME: Would you speak a little bit more about the specifics of your process in creating pottery?

CKE: The biggest part was trial and error [in the beginning]. Jeri Redcorn was able to tell me, “Go dig through clay. Our homeland is rich with it. It’s fired on the ground.” When you go and try to do that, you learn there’s a lot to it. If you’re passionate you will find the way.

I go to our homeland rivers down in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, and I dig from sources that I have been pointed to by archaeologists or pottery makers like my friend Dr. Ian Thompson (Choctaw). I go there, dig the clay—literally dig with a shovel—as many buckets as my car can handle [laughing]. I have broken an axle trying to drive back from a clay dig.

CHASE KAHWINHUT EARLES

above Loren’s Bipod, 2018, incised, shell-tempered, Red River clay, 8½ × 10 in., private collection. opposite Chase Earles with an incised jar. All images courtesy of the artist.

There are a couple of different processes to making clay, but I use a dry method.

I dry it out, crush it, mix in the temper, reconstitute it, and let it age. Once it’s ready, I hand-build pottery with the coil method—getting it as thin as I can. When it’s dry, I burnish it sometimes three times over to get it really shiny. Then my pieces are pit-fired in an open bonfire. Once it gets to temperature, I put the work directly into the coals, and then place wood up around, letting it go up in flames.

We didn’t have modern conveniences, so that’s the way I do it for my [cultural] work. I’m also working to evolve our processes and make more things, but when I’m making very [historic] pottery, I don’t use things like metal buckets or barrels, cages, cans, metal plates, or any

of that. It’s just straight into the coals of the fire. Until it gets to the temperature—when it starts glowing, I pull it out and clean it off. Then I engrave designs into the pot that are based on our ancient designs.

JME: Who and what are your greatest inspirations when you create?

CKE: I guess what is unique to our Caddo identity became important to me because of the way I grew up, seeing how many people appropriate cultural identity. It became extremely important to me to amplify, or even just get out there into the public what is specifically unique to the Caddo culture identity, so that it is not muddied up. I feel like it’s not just my purpose to create pottery but to educate as many people as I can.

As a Native American in this time—in 2019—what is it that we are experiencing?

I did a piece recently called Reuniting Bonds, which is about me drawing my family back to our tribe and reconnecting.

We are a river tribe—not every tribe can say they lived directly off the river. Our houses were very unique beehive grass houses, and so just showing these things … I look at it and think, Man, what if a little Caddo boy saw that artwork and it made a difference to him … made him understand what it meant to be Caddo?

JME: The forms of your pottery range from vessels that resemble conventional jars to alligator gars to neon-glazed bottles. What is your process for choosing the shapes and styles your creations take?

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PROFILE

above Reuniting Bonds, 2018, low-fired clay, kiln smudged, 20 × 15 in. opposite Restricted Emergence, 2017, hand-dug, shell-tempered, Red River clay, pit-fired, 12 × 24 in., private collection.

CKE: I feel the need to create a [customary] Caddo piece—we talked about the importance of that—so that I can get those works in front of archaeologists, museums, galleries, and in festivals. I put all my heart into it. Once I’ve done that, it is important [for it] to evolve into something—into new ways to get across ideas. More statement pieces to start thinking about something specific

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that’s going on in the news or events, or archaeologically. For example, the garfish.

There’s a lot of talk about water. Water is life. I was thinking, What is alive in the water? For us as a tribe, we would have seen a gar, so I was kind of focused on that for a while. Then, contributing to the story of our people, I made Reuniting Bonds, where it has the chains that bring us all back together. I’m trying to make

CHASE KAHWINHUT EARLES

more statements in the overall shape of the pot that look like something brand new, even though it is an ancient form. I add my statements through those touches.

Those neon glaze pieces had mixed reviews when I was showing them.

They are important. Those shapes are all ancient kinds of shapes, and people look at them like, “What are these crazy things?!” It’s just giving shapes a new light. There’s this Caddo Pop Art—everything is bright colors and big statements.

Caddo Pop forms made of these ancient shapes with [new] shiny, neon glazes.

I just put them out there and see what people think about it.

I keep developing new designs and using new materials. We did make the same pottery for about 2,000 years, but I saw in our ancient history that we went from fiber to sand temper, and then we started using shell, and that was the latest thing. I know our shapes evolved to post-contact, when you start seeing shapes in Caddo pottery that mimic the glassware and the chalices and the metal appliances that were brought from overseas. Caddo

chalices—it’s crazy! They were mimicking what they saw.

I’ll be keeping tradition alive and will move forward. I am going to buy clay, I’m going to shape it the way I shaped the ancient pots, then I’m going to glaze things if I use the kiln, and I am going to make new ceramic fine art. It’s moving forward, rather than replication.

JME: Last May you said, “Our tribal pottery, Caddo, is very distinct. It’s unique to our tribe, and it’s also very prolific.” What features distinguish it, and in what specific ways is Caddo pottery prolific?

CKE: I started going to the Caddo Conference and the Southeastern Archaeological Conference and talking with professional archaeologists from universities and businesses that deal with Southeastern and Caddo pottery. Seeing the pictures and the collections, I started piecing together what makes a Caddo pot.

I can say it’s brown. It’s something that you see repetitiously—the gourd bottle shape was very specific to the Caddos. Yes, other

tribes did do it, but not in the numbers that we’re talking about. With Caddo you’ll see 200, 300. We had a distinct chocolate brown color. We did have light-colored orange ones, white ones, black ones. But most of our pottery was chocolate brown with a subtle finishing.

If you go too far [in firing] it goes black, or if you char too much it turns black, or if you give it too much oxygen it stays tan.

It’s a subtle thing that we obviously strove to do. The majority of our pottery was burnished, but not like the super shine that you see today. We had a very velvet finish, like it was shined up and burnished and then rubbed soft again.

One of the other things very specific to our tribe is our effigy pots. These are pots in the shapes of animals. We’re just talking about the animals that were in a homeland area, so it was mostly bears, ducks, fish, and turtles. You see turtles and fish in other Mississippian pottery, too, but there are some unique styles to the effigies that you see coming from the Caddo homeland.

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PROFILE

back down into the clay body to make a contrasting color. That’s distinctly Caddo.

Nowadays, I think in the Southwest, it’s called sgraffito, but in the Southeast we’ve been doing that since AD 800. above DeeTumBah Kahwis (Horse Tripod), 2014, shelltempered, Red River clay, pitfired, 22 × 19 in., collection of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. opposite Batah Kukuh Alligator Gar Effigy, 2018, hand-dug, shell-tempered, Red River clay, pit-fired, 46 in. long.

The scroll design is universal across the Southeast, but when you see a specific shape to that scroll on a pot, you can immediately say that’s Caddo. It’s just the way that design is engraved. There’s a lot of ticking and hashing of lines and crosshatching [in the negative space]. No other tribe did that.

We have two different kinds of pottery: ceremonial and utilitarian. Distinctive to Caddo, the ceremonial pieces have almost eggshell-thin pottery walls, which are worked and worked in the production.

The utilitarian pieces are very elaborate and can be used daily for cooking and serving. The firing method is different,

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too. Our pottery is fired on flat land. You gather wood that is around and make a bonfire, and then fire your pottery in that bonfire just above the ground. It takes a specific clay, and experience, to fire things that way. Our clay sometimes had mussel shell. You can’t overfire mussel shell or it changes chemically, and the pot starts breaking down and falling apart.

Prolific: I thought, There’s a [Caddo] pot here or there in the gallery or museum.

What I came to find out is that these museums, like the Sam Noble, the Gilcrease, the Smithsonian in DC, a museum in Kansas, a museum in New Mexico, countless museums down in Texas, across the Southeast—all of them—have Caddo pottery. I also found out through Jeri [Redcorn] that there are museums in Spain, Germany, and France that have Caddo pottery, because they

CHASE KAHWINHUT EARLES

traded with us, and they sought Caddo pottery to take back home.

So I started reaching out to archaeologists and seeing the collections in the back rooms. I found out one of the [practices] of Caddos is that we bury an individual with the pottery that they used in life, and so the vast majority of all full, unbroken pottery pieces were burial pots. That’s very important to understand. We don’t look at these ancient pots just willy-nilly. We don’t just do it without thinking. We burn sage and we have a new prayer every time we look at all these ancient pots, because they’re burial items. There are not many ancient pots that can be viewed by the public, but someone said maybe upwards of 70,000 Caddo pots are in museums across the country.

JME: What have been the greatest challenges in being part of this renaissance of Caddo pottery, and how do you respond to those challenges?

CKE: That is a good question, because I have found it is a huge challenge—being Caddo and producing art. Going to Native American art festivals, market shows, exhibitions, and galleries, people ask, “What’s Kay-toe? Cah-toe?” Because no one has heard of the Caddo tribe.

This is sad because the Caddos were a

gigantic, influential tribe in the Southeast, but we were whittled down to nothing.

You know how history gets lost in a country where they don’t teach it, especially in this region, so the whole story of the Caddos is lost on so many people.

Even the name of the tribe.

The more I can teach, the better it helps my work, not only mine but generations to come. So when the next career Caddo artist comes up, they won’t be facing everybody that doesn’t know anything about our tribe.

A lot of people don’t know that Texas, the name of the state, is a Caddo word. The word is Taysha. That’s what the Spanish and French would hear when they entered that whole area—it was our subtribe confederacy calling to each other. Taysha means “friend” or “ally,” so that place was called the Kingdom of the Tejas [by the Spanish and French]. Eventually, the British Americans called it Texas. I bring a map with me to every show, and people love that because it zooms them in immediately to where our tribe was from, that region of the country [known today as East Texas, West Louisiana, Eastern Arkansas, and Oklahoma].

CKE: Hopefully a lot more work. Having only been able to produce things every other weekend [while working a fulltime job], I just don’t feel I’ve been able to create the amount of work I want to show—all the ideas that I have, sketchbooks full of pottery ideas. Hopefully, now that I’m starting to do pottery and Native arts full time, I’ll be able to produce a lot more things for people.

When people think of Native American pottery, I guarantee you they think of Southwestern Pueblo pottery. And, when they see my different, brown, super-engraved details with spirals on pottery, they don’t know what to think.

The first thing they say is, “Oh! It looks Mesoamerican … or Inca … or Aztec.”

[Laughing.] I get that a lot.

JME: What exciting things can readers look forward to from Chase Kahwinhut Earles in the near and the distant future?

I am going to start concentrating on evolving our [tribe’s ceramic legacy]— pushing it from creating our ancient pottery into more statement and sculptural pieces, and just trying to say more and educate more about our tribe. I think it’s important to share this knowledge, so I will do a lot more teaching through institutions and classes.

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PROFILE

MANDAN-HIDATSA-ARIKARA-LAKOTA INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST

CANNUPA HANSKA LUGER

By Alicia Inez Guzmán, PhD

I

N NOVEMBER 2018, Cannupa Hanska Luger won the inaugural Burke Prize, named for Marian and Russell Burke, collectors of craft and supporters of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. The award aims to fund an artist under the age of 45 who best represents the future of craft in the media of glass, fiber, clay, metal, or wood—materials often overlooked or undervalued in contemporary art. As we edge into a century of synthetic things and mediated experiences, craft may feel nostalgic, of the past.

Luger, who grew up between the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota and Arizona, is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian descent. In the last decade he has become known as a ceramicist, forging creatures big and small in clay.

Some are animals—owls and other birds, deer, coyotes, buffalo—and others human. And then there are the things that don’t fall into either category: cigarettes, bottles, beer cans, arrows, and daggers. But even describing the animal, human, and human-made doesn’t quite get at how much one of Luger’s forms can merge into another. Their quality of shapeshifting, their curves and edges, their glossy and opaque slips and glazes, their ability to yield many meanings, from the condition of humanity that we all share to histories of colonialism and the stereotypes of indigeneity birthed out of the belly of manifest destiny and today’s pop culture. Still, all give the sense that they are made by hand—his hand—many carrying the artist’s signature, small painted characters that spell out Hanska.

And that seems to be at the core of what craft is, objects bearing the imprint

of their maker, especially important when much of the world’s things are anonymously manufactured. Yet the Burke Prize is pivotal to the extent that it directs our gazes forward, to the future of what making things by hand looks like. For Luger that future is, of course, Indigenous. It is also undefined by a single medium—neither ceramics, nor performance, nor even social practice.

They’re all part of the same story. He’s at

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a tipping point, between object and practice, one long in the making.

LUGER RECEIVED HIS BFA degree at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe where he “was able to create a relationship of learning to clay.” Before that there were stints in Phoenix, where he went to high school, and Seattle, where he flirted with slam poetry. At IAIA, though, his professors gave him free reign to produce. He says,

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above Installation view of Lazy Stitch, a five-artist exhibition curated by Cannupa Hanska Luger, 2018, at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Gallery of Contemporary Art at the Ent Center for the Arts, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Image courtesy of the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Galleries of Contemporary Art. above, left Every One, 2018, social engagement and sculptural installation comprising 4,000 ceramic beads (each 2 in. diameter), clay, ink, nylon, rope. opposite Cannupa Hanska Luger with a mixed-media sculpture. Photo: Marco Paven. Unless otherwise noted, all images courtesy of the artist.

I got to create my own bad habits, instead of inheriting someone else’s.

Clay taught me to engage other media and I was one of those mediums. I liked how plastic it was. It created a sense of patience in me that sugar cereal, acrylic paint, and the ’90s didn’t give me. It influenced how I work with human beings. And for every one sculpture I’ve made, I have six ashtrays [rejects]. You can put hours and hours into a piece and then pull out shards from the kiln or a bad glaze job. Pieces shrink in that process. There is always room for chaos and it’s really humbling.

It’s patience and observation. But things break, and that’s beautiful.

The finiteness of things doesn’t bring sorrow into my life. A forever apple would be garbage. But a finite apple, that’s what makes it special—its entropy.

This is Luger’s way of speaking, moving from a seemingly funny and irrelevant example to making a point about the nature of clay, entropy, and even failure. He connects the dots between art and the rest of the world.

That’s perhaps because making art within the constraints of one medium can feel so compartmentalized, especially when artists, including Luger, strive to exist within complexity.

At the end of the BFA degree, there are only two outcomes: grad school or

the market. Luger chose the latter, which forced him to create at a fast pace and to turn out objects for vending. But the object was to him only “the echo of the work,” in his words, “the theory.” And the real work—that was the practice. “I can’t sell you the 20 hours I spent in the studio, but I can sell you the object.”

Luger says he recently pulled out of making work for galleries—and the market—to begin building relationships that graduate school might have otherwise afforded him with institutions: schools, museums, and nonprofits.

His goal is to forge a new role “for art production in the 21st century, to think of art as a verb and not a noun. To art.”

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ab ove Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan-HidatsaArikara-Lakota) and Kathy Elk Woman-Whitman (MandanHidatsa-Arikara), The One Who Checks & The One Who Balances, 2018, mixed-media regalia, installation view at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Gallery of Contemporary Art at the Ent Center for the Arts, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

Image courtesy of the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Galleries of Contemporary Art. opposite In the Wake of The Beast, 2017, site-specific performance with regalia made from surplus industrial felt and ceramic, mixed media, Bennington, Vermont. Photo: Dylan McLaughlin (Navajo).

model in mind, Luger has moved at a breakneck clip as he experiments in arting, melding his background as a fine artist making objects with curating, performance, and social practice. To that end, Luger has been traveling widely, both nationally and internationally, installing art, giving lectures, and conceptualizing large-scale public projects. He likens this first year’s explosion of activity to the trial and error that comes with producing the first sculpture in a series. It’s a prototype year wherein the learning curve is sharp, but where you “know how to make it better in the future. That’s what this first year has been like, so we know what the edge is.”

I HADN’T REALLY MET LUGER until he came to my classroom at Santa Fe University of Art and Design last spring, though I taught his work in previous semesters’ classes, and had seen it at local galleries in Santa Fe. We crossed paths a few times, so I emailed him to see if he would create beads with the ten of us for his installation, Every One. I’d heard of

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his project from a short film produced

by Razelle Benally that was making the rounds on social media.

I wanted the students in my class, Contemporary Art of the Americas, to gain firsthand knowledge of what a continental art practice looked like by working with a practicing artist. He arrived wearing knee pads in the shape of eyes made out of felt, accoutrements worn before at Standing Rock. And then the object lesson began: rolling square hunks of clay into fist-sized round forms and piercing them at the center, like a bead. Repetition and materiality. The clay was charcoal in color, but it would eventually fire white and later be stained in a spectrum of greys.

In total, Luger wanted to create 4,000 beads, each representing a data point and a human life. In 2013 the Canadian government began collecting data on missing and murdered First Nations women. According to the Native Women’s Association of Canada, the number of missing and murdered women from 1980 to 2012 reached 4,000.

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The United States has yet to embark on a similar initiative into the rates of missing and murdered Indigenous women, trans, femme, or queer people.

However, a report in 2008 published by the US Department of Justice confirmed that rates of murder against Indigenous women are more than ten times the national average.1 To Luger, “each number in that 4,000 references a life,” which, in terms of hard data, “can be hard to conceptualize and put into context.” The day he came to my classroom, we made about 200 beads—a fraction of the total—while eating tamales, laughing, and holding space for the project. He describes humans like beads, vessels with holes

from our mouths to our anus.

This was the newest iteration of Luger’s art making, “engagements” as he calls them, and gatherings toward a single cause: bringing awareness to the epidemic many had never even heard of, my students included. For my class, the gathering was another way of being together and of learning through the body. The end result would be a tapestry, one that reminds me of Rebecca Belmore’s Trace, beads made with Red River gumbo clay installed like an asymmetrical curtain at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.

Each bead in Every One is akin to a pixel in a grid, and multiple strands are hung like a curtain. Together, the beads

form the contours of a face, eyes, hair, and lips—a woman. The tintype portrait

by Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena) that Luger reproduced in clay depicts the sister of a missing Indigenous woman.

Our class was one of several places across the United States and Canada where folks made beads for Every One. And, as promised, our names were listed as collaborators when the artwork was first exhibited at an exhibition Luger organized at the Ent Center for Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, in spring 2018. Every One glowed pink in the light of the gallery, and when I looked closely, I could see the differences in the clay forms. All are roughly two inches in

1. Ronet Bachman, Heather Zaykowski, Rachel Kallmyer, Margarita Poteyeva, and Christina Lanier, “Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and the Criminal Justice Response: What is Known,” US Department of Justice (August 2008), PDF, 5.

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diameter, though they are imperfect and some still have visible handprints. Other beads aren’t exactly round, even closer in form to the original hunks of square clay.

But when all 4,000 are read as a whole, the face is undeniable: Every One. above Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan-Hidatsa-ArikaraLakota) in collaboration with Ian Kuali’i (Native HawaiianMescalero Apache descent), Tethered, 2018, site-specific land acknowledgment, Wilderness Acts Biennial.

Santa Fe, New Mexico. Regalia: ceramic, industrial felt, mixed fiber. Photo: Dylan McLaughlin (Navajo). opposite Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan-Hidatsa-ArikaraLakota) in collaboration with Ian Kuali’i (Native HawaiianMescalero Apache descent), Tethered, 2018, aerial view.

Photo: Dylan McLaughlin (Navajo).

EVERY ONE WAS A FULCRUM for the rest of the exhibition, and lazy stitch, the method of beadwork and title of the exhibition, a metaphor for intersubjectivity, connectivity between people and place. Beads are only interlinked with other beads and thus functional because of the holes in their center, the space in which a thread can pass. In this way, single beads come together in lanes and eventually entire designs and narratives.

Lazy Stitch became a platform for different artists’ voices to resonate individually and as a whole around indigeneity, difference, and bearing witness to injustice. This was yet another iteration of Luger’s practice, curating a collaborative exhibition and, as he says, a “futurespace that moves away from the rugged individualism of the American mythos to celebrate being communal.”

Luger invited Chip Thomas, a Black doctor on the Navajo Nation who

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is also a photographer and wheat paste artist with the name Jetsonorama; Jesse Hazelip, an activist, performance artist, and tattoo artist whose work is dedicated to protesting the prison industrial complex; Kathy Whitman-Elk Woman (Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara), a stone and metal sculptor, painter, jeweler, beadwork artist, and Luger’s mother; Kali Spitzer, of Kaska Dena and Jewish heritage, who works in film and wet-collodion processes; and 1000 Tiny Mirrors, a collaborative performance project that uses aerial acrobatics to enact states of rage, vulnerability, perseverance, and transformation.

At the entrance of Lazy Stitch unfurls Jetsonorama’s large-scale wheat paste mural, Return of the Warrior Twins, featuring two figures bent over, their arms swinging backwards as if getting the momentum to jump, photographed in the Navajo Nation. The original twins are known to have used the methods of their father, the sun, to eliminate monsters such as uranium. Their mother, earth, held those monsters within her belly, depriving them of air and sunlight and keeping them from harming humanity.

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“We go to these spaces and apologize and remember how to let the land lead.”

The Hero Twins pictured are inspired by the oral history of many tribes. Their faces are completely covered. Of the figures, Luger says: I’ve had these forms, We Have Agency, and those informed the notion that we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. They were sparked from Native hero tropes, monster and monster slayer types. I made regalia for The One Who Checks and the One Who Balances from armor I took to Standing Rock and riot police gear. Those two armors were the dualities and ends of a spectrum that became the core of the regalia forms. Their role was to destroy the monster. I wanted to limit my human experiences—you can’t see or hear when wearing them, just feel your way through the environment. I take these regalia to landscapes that have been abused by uranium and coal and create movements, dances as simple as walking in a way that the landscape decides your movements.

We go to these spaces and apologize and remember how to let the land lead.

Under the twins lay the railroad tracks operated by the Black Mesa and Lake Powell Railroad to transport coal from the Peabody Energy Kayenta Mine to the Navajo Generating Station power plant, an integral part of the infrastructure built around industries of extraction, such as coal.

Inside the gallery, those figures, covered head to toe in felt, crocheted blankets, and beadwork, are installed side by side in The One Who Checks and the One Who Balances. One’s hand is in the mouth of a black snake as if to push it back into the bowels of the earth. The serpent, This Is Not a Snake, is compiled from oil drums, ammunition cans, trash, found objects, steel, and ceramic. Its fangs are made with two gas pumps.

MOVING FORWARD, Luger’s practice is becoming ever more collaborative

and less about making things to sell.

His craft is oriented toward the land, the possibility of ceremony in art, of generating empathy in sharing creativity and activism over the internet, and the future—cultivating the conditions under which generations that come after us can thrive.

For now, Luger says that working within institutions, including museums, means holding them accountable for their role in generating narratives of the so-called “vanishing Indian.” He says, “All of the institutional scholarship on Native peoples is dependent on us being terminal. But we’re still here, and we’ve contributed so much to everyone else’s existence.” Part of that labor involves shepherding said institutions into an Indigenous worldview, one of “reverence over resource,” he describes, for “we have an endless capacity to give through all the horrible things we’ve lived through.

That’s how you make a good knife—heat and pressure.”

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NORTHERN CHUMASH CARVER, BASKET MAKER, & REGALIA MAKER

LEAH MATA-FRAGUA

By America Meredith

I

N 1542, when Europeans first arrived in what is now the state of California, the Indigenous Californians had more linguistic diversity than the entire European continent. Today California has the largest Native American population of any US state, and the second highest number of tribes, behind Alaska. Yet, the Native population is dwarfed by the state’s vast non-Native population, often causing Indigenous Californians to feel invisible in their own land. Many tribes don’t have federal recognition. As Native Californians strive to keep their cultures, ceremonies, and languages alive and thriving through the 21st century, Leah Mata-Fragua is on the forefront of this effort.

I first saw Mata-Fragua’s artwork at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market years ago, when she displayed an unmistakably Californian dress at the awards preview in the museum’s vast Steele Auditorium. Mata-Fragua and her nephew patiently endured my gushing with excitement at seeing Indigenous Californian artwork at the Heard fair.

That was one of Mata-Fragua’s earliest forays into the Native art market circuit—a platform she can use to educate the public about Chumash arts, culture, and issues. The Native art market world is also where she met her husband, acclaimed stone sculptor and musician, Cliff Fragua (Jemez Pueblo). They married at Santa Fe Indian Market in 2016, and they’ve been exhibiting together and encouraging each other ever since.

Mata-Fragua maintains ties with her home community to increase the visibility of her yak tityu tityu yak tiłhini, or Northern Chumash people, and to follow in the footsteps of her artist-ancestors. Her great-great-grandmother was Rosario Cooper (1845–1917), the last fluent speaker of the tiłhini language, whose recorded translations and notes are

struggle to figure out where your place is on that spectrum. How do you label yourself in the art world?

Going to the Smithsonian was great, because, while I knew my grandmother’s stuff and our family’s stuff were there, I didn’t know how much of it was there.

AM: Were you part of the Artists Leadership Program that goes to Suitland, Maryland, to research their collections?

helping a new generation learn to speak the language. Leah Mata-Fragua sees art, culture, and language as all inextricably connected.

AM: You didn’t start out in the art market. Would you like to talk about your own journey: how you began making art? And I use art in the broadest possible term.

LMF: I’m from a community of artists. I’m not trained by school. I never even used the word artist, until someone said to me, “Oh, you’re an artist.” And I was like, “No, I just make things.” They replied, “No, you’re an artist.” But I said, “I’m uncomfortable with that word.”

Mine is a living culture, and what I do is often utilitarian. But when I went to the fellowship at the Smithsonian, art was a word they used there. They had an artist marketing class for us. I didn’t even have an artist statement or bio, because that’s just not something a community artist does. I had to learn art marketing language and learn the way the art world talks. It was a big learning curve. It’s a

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LMF: Yes. My great-great-grandmother [Rosario Cooper] has work there, and almost all the jewelry they have for the northernmost Chumash was from my village. That was validating. I never fully understood why sustaining culture was such an important role for women in my family. When I saw all that jewelry from our community, I thought, Wow, I guess that’s just what we do. It’s just natural.

Actually I resisted showing at markets, but I would be at local events, mostly basket gatherings and dances, and Diana [Terrazas, the Autry Museum’s community outreach manager] would say, “I really, really need a California person at the Autry.” We felt the Autry was for Southwest or Plains work, so it didn’t match what we thought of for our work or ourselves. Finally, I said, “All right, all right. I’ll do it.” She helped me fill out an application; I had no idea what to do.

Then she asked, “Do you have an entry piece?” I’m like, “What do you mean?”

And she said, “We have a competition you should enter.” This was only a couple of weeks before the show, so I was up until four in the morning finishing it. I raced over and got it entered, and then she calls me a little bit later and says, “You won. Can you come back?” So I go there.

I’m in sweats. She says, “Okay, you ready

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for pictures? And I’m like, “I don’t know what’s going on here.”

That was my first experience, so I thought, This is easy. I’m going do more of these.

That started the trajectory of doing shows and stepping out of California. Then the second show I did was at the Heard, where I won a first place. It was just beginner’s luck or maybe people were seeing new techniques, new skills, or new media.

What kept me going was that people were interested in work from California.

People do like it. They were curious, so that made me feel good. Then I applied for the Smithsonian fellowship, and when I was able to see just the amount of jewelry that came from my village it was really validating. And I was also able to incorporate older styles into my work.

The question for artists who make regalia for their community is how do you take those pieces outside your community, without offending the community? When I teach Traditional Arts and Ecology at IAIA, a lot of students will come to me after class and say, “Here’s where I’m struggling.” And I’m like, “I wish I could help you, but I have the same struggle.”

What I’ve done is try to develop lines extending from that community framework and move them forward. To move our arts forward, as our culture probably would have moved had it not been interrupted.

While I am still making pieces for my community, I also make pieces that are not ceremonial but still reflect California Indigenous cultures—the work still has those materials. I’m just using them differently so that someone’s not out wearing our regalia. It’s a hard balancing act.

Where’s the line between what’s shareable and what’s not shareable?

AM: Now that you are in this artistic sphere where most people are not familiar with Indigenous Californian opposite Leah Mata-Fragua. All images courtesy of the artist. right Dress with Beaded Belt, 2018, bark skirt, deer hide, pigment, abalone, seed beads, olivella shells, clamshells. Photo: Christopher Short (Citizen Potawatomi).

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You’re not just buying a piece of jewelry, you’re collecting thousands of years of someone’s relationship with a place: Indigenous knowledge.

above Baby Basket, 2018, tule reed, willow, hemp dogbane cordage, milkweed cordage, abalone, cotton. Photo: Christopher Short (Citizen Potawatomi). opposite Mallard Belt, 2013, male mallard duck feathers, abalone, clamshells, cordage.

Photo: Christopher Short (Citizen Potawatomi).

art, what do you want the public to know about Chumash people?

LMF: That we’re diverse; we’re not one nation. When people say Chumash, Pomo, or Diegueño, they’re talking about many, tiny communities with their own languages. I can’t talk to someone from Ventura Chumash; our language is just so different. Those broad anthropological terms diminish the uniqueness, diversity, and nuances in Indigenous California.

We all have different ecosystems. Our regalia can look different on the coast versus inland. A typical dress might include a bark skirt, and you’d find those up and down California. But up north they may use maple bark, and more central it can be willow bark and tule, then south it could be cottonwood.

communities had clans, but many didn’t.

Mostly, we are kinship-based. When you go to any area, someone will ask you, “What’s your last name?” Then they can pinpoint where you’re from.

AM: A friend of mine calls that “the Indian résumé.”

LMF: Right, it’s like that in California, too.

Any tribe on the coast has to be resilient.

Specifically, where my community was, became an oil refinery. California has some of the most expensive property values in the world. For Kashia Pomo, Graton Rancheria, Ohlone, Salinan Chumash, Tongva, and all those coastal communities to still be occupying and protecting our homelands is incredibly resilient.

AM: How do you prefer people describe your community?

AM: You have a master’s degree in cultural sustainability. What does that mean?

LMF: To me, we’re just families that are still doing our thing. We didn’t have complex clan systems. Other California

LMF: My undergrad degree is in anthropology. I had felt that was the best way to protect my community or be a better

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LEAH MATA-FRAGUA

advocate. But later I thought, I cannot stand the field. It’s so archaic. I cannot pursue higher education in this field. I just can’t.

I looked around for a program and found one that resonated with me, because it’s about finding tools that help communities sustain themselves. It doesn’t have to be working just with Indigenous communities; it could be trying to preserve the Mission District from gentrification.

When I go there, I don’t recognize any stores, the foods, the communities, or anything anymore.

I went to Goucher College in Baltimore, which used to be an all-women’s school. It was one of the first schools to offer lesbian studies. They’re very progressive. It was a good degree that gave me skills I use in my consultant work.

AM: What type of consulting have you done?

LMF: I recently worked on a project with Cal Poly [California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo], incorporating art, language, and culture. The campus is located on our home territory.

The university is building new dormitories and decided to take land recognition a step further by building their dorms with a Chumash influence. I was project leader and was able to pick a couple of people from my community to be on my team.

We will have seven dorms named after some village locations. One of the things I learned in school was how to create a sense of place, and I thought our project could resonate with the matrilineal, matrilocal culture of the Chumash. I thought, I could intersect all that. So each of the new dorms takes on the face of one of those villages, through a narrative, graphics, and colors that belong to the area. Each of the seven buildings take on a sense of a Chumash location and what it offers to us culturally.

AM: Now I want to go see it!

LMF: It’s still in progress. It’s a three-yearlong project, and we’re still trying to figure out: how do we incorporate Chumash education and culture throughout campus?

I don’t know if it’s adult ADHD or not, but I can’t just do one thing. I can’t do just art.

I can’t only teach. I don’t want a tenure track; I like being an adjunct professor.

I like doing consultant work, and the variety of skill sets I get to use keep me inspired and motivated. I don’t want a desk job, I want to still feel passionate when I’m working on something. And I still want to feel excited or have love for that material.

AM: Is that why outside projects help you have more artistic freedom?

LMF: When I do work with language, it helps me better understand my environment and the materials I’m working with.

Because we didn’t need complex names with thousands of categories and subcategories. A plant does this, so that’s what it’s called. Or this location is called White Shell because, guess what, that’s where the white shells are found. So language helps me create art.

AM: What are some specific materials that you use in your artistic practice?

LMF: Primarily I use abalone—which is a whole crisis in itself—deer hides,

antlers, deer bones, birds, every kind of feather, bark, sedge root, and the list goes on. That’s why I hate filling out those art material forms for shows. Here goes the list: all these shells—abalone shell, mussel shell, clamshell—dogbane, cottonwood, deer hide, deer bone, mallard feathers.…

The materials are so diverse.

When an artwork comes to market, you’re not just buying a piece of jewelry, you’re collecting thousands of years of someone’s relationship with a place: Indigenous knowledge. To understand these materials, you must have generations of cultural interactions and know where to find them. And that knowledge is constantly changing with environmental degradation, development, and now climate change.

Last year, use of abalone was banned, and I knew it was coming. We could all tell that it was becoming scarce, and more recently they announced that it’s going to be banned until 2021. My son, who did an internship with the UC Davis Marine Biology Program this summer, said, “Mom, it’s so bad out there, I believe we’ll be lucky if it ever recovers.”

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what’s in the landfills? Those CDs. They sparkle. Cut them like abalone.” I thought about it for a quick minute, and I’m like, You know I may have to.

AM: That’s like Barry Ace. He’s Odawa from Canada. Instead of floral bead work, he uses computer parts.

LMF: It’s a weird place to be in because in my lifetime, I never thought I would see something on the verge of being extinct.

Coastal communities, from Alaska all the way down the West Coast, are seeing the effects of climate change quicker than other states that are more insulated.

I have this urgency in my work to make as much as I can before it’s all gone. Now when I make things I have to decide if I should sell it or save it for my family and community.

above Hair Pin, 2011, abalone, carnelian, glass beads, wood, private collection. opposite Whale, 2018, steatite, clamshell, private collection.

AM: Yes, and it’s not just overharvesting, it’s acidification of the ocean and the changing temperature.

LMF: It’s a combination. We don’t see what’s going on in the ocean, but it’s a such a balanced ecosystem. Once one thing is thrown off, it creates a chain effect. These red tides that we’re seeing more often and in larger blooms are killing off the starfish, which are natural predators of the sea urchins. Now, sea urchins don’t have a natural predator and they reproduce and grow faster than an abalone. They eat the same food sources as abalone, and they’re devouring the abalone’s food. Red tides occur naturally, but because of warmer waters they now occur more often or in larger blooms. Then poachers come, making the situation even more complex.

It’s not just that I’m losing access to a material; other basket makers are having trouble accessing bird feathers. That’s caused by a combination of endangered species and migratory bird policies,

as well as environmental degradation.

So when I have discussions with other California artists, I ask, “Okay, what is our solution? What are we doing? Are we just going to lose this art form? Or the skill set? Or are we going to incorporate something different?”

I find that when people try to find alternatives, lateral oppression comes in and people say, “Well, that’s not traditional.

That person didn’t do it right. They didn’t go out and hunt their own birds.”

I say, “Yes, I know they use alternative bird feathers. They cut them and dyed them, but they spent so much time mixing dyes and trimming them to make them look like a woodpecker. That’s a skill set. It’s just a new skill set, and 200 years from now, we’ll call it traditional.”

Kevin [Pourier] asked, “Well, what are you going do when you run out of abalone?”

I said, “I don’t know.” He calls me up a couple weeks later: “I got it. You know

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I created a dress with the trash and material I collected from the beach. My intent was to go gather some white olive shells, but when I got there, I couldn’t find any shells. Nothing but trash—plastic bags. I told my daughter, “Well, let’s just gather all this, because this is the only resource that’s here right now.

I wove supermarket trash bags to make cordage, as if it was a bark skirt. And then instead of the red ochre we put at the bottom, I put oil because that’s all I could see: oil deposits, pop-top bottles, and straws. I titled it Our New Cultural Resources, because that is what our dresses are going to look like now, since I can’t make them with what I really need.

Does that make something less meaningful, or change the value of it? Those are complex issues that communities struggle with. Juried art markets are going to have to start looking at their standards. What if there is no more coral? What do we do?

What if the only turquoise in 50 years is in chip inlay? How will the lack of resources shape new standards for markets?

AM: It does seem like people across the globe have to find answers to these questions. In the Amazon, some communities are beginning to make headdresses out of straws instead of

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feathers. And that’s for their own use, not to sell to outsiders.

rural or remote areas, can speak back to the mainstream.

LMF: Globally, Indigenous people are having this conversation. These are complex issues that I feel uncomfortable trying to answer myself. I need to have a discussion with my community about these things and ask what direction we’re going to go in. And every community, because we’re all sovereign and different, will have different responses. If somebody wants to use straws and have that incorporated in their dances, it’s that community’s sovereign right to do so. A lot of times I see people criticizing communities as being less authentic when, actually, people no longer have access to some of their materials.

LMF: There are two things I want my art to do: talk about climate change and lack of access and bring greater awareness to Indigenous California.

AM: And who gets to dictate? It is exciting that communities can speak up on their own behalf to a global audience, and Native people, even from extremely

AM: If readers are unfamiliar with Indigenous California, what are some resources you would recommend if they want to learn more?

LMF: The best thing is to look at tribal websites. Those come from the community; the tribes have created their own websites.

AM: What projects are you working on now or planning?

LMF: Recently I got a grant to revitalize our feather dance belts, so I’m working on that, and then I’m working on Chumash

steatite sculptures. This is just a natural trajectory because of my studio space, but historically, Chumash people carved whales and sea animals. I saw a lot of the carvings at the Smithsonian—hundreds of them. I was looking at a scrap pile [in Cliff ’s studio], and I thought, Well, everything is here. I might as well carve because the tools are here. It’s a way to help me transition as there’s less shell. Basketry material is becoming harder to get, but it’s still available much more than shell is. But Cliff has what seems like an endless supply of stone scraps. I could carve forever.

Leah Mata-Fragua’s artwork can be found at Rainmaker Gallery in Bristol, England; the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Art Museum Store in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Raven Makes Gallery in Sisters, Oregon.

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JEMEZ CERAMIC SCULPTOR AND PAINTER

KATHLEEN WALL

By RoseMary Diaz

K

ATHLEEN WALL was born into a family of renowned Jemez Pueblo artists. Her first lessons in ceramic sculpting came from her mother, Fannie Loretto (Jemez-Laguna).

She was inspired by the legacy of her grandmother Carrie Loretto and aunts Alma Concha, Edna Coriz, Mary Toya, and Dorothy Trujillo, who taught her how to hand-coil the locally gathered and processed clay to form bowls, vases, pots, and figurines.

Wall’s brothers, Adrian Wall and Marcus Wall, are sculptors, known respectively for work in stone and clay.

Their father, Stephen Wall (White Earth Ojibwe-Seneca), is also a well-known sculptor and educator.

For the first five years of her career, between the ages of 15 and 19, Wall focused on making the familiar storyteller dolls, which were popularized by Cochiti and Jemez Pueblo artists in the mid-20th century.

Ever since those early creative endeavors, Wall has dedicated her artistic life to the clay. “I’ve been a full-time artist for 30 years! It’s all I’ve ever done,” she says. “I’ve never gotten a regular paycheck.

I had to figure it out—how to survive as an artist.” Over three decades, Wall has not only figured out the formula for surviving as an artist but has honed it to perfection. She has taken top awards at Native America’s most important art markets, including Eiteljorg Museum Indian Market and Festival, SWAIA’s Santa Fe Indian Market, Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market, and Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture’s Native Treasures.

Among Wall’s many career highlights are a School for Advanced Research’s Eric and Barbara Dobkin Native Artist Fellowship for Women in 2016, a best-ofshow win at Eiteljorg in 2016, and first place in clay sculpture at Indian Market in

2017. Celebrating Native Legacies: Works in Clay by Kathleen Wall of Jemez Pueblo (2007–10), at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, was a major milestone for the artist: “It was my first solo exhibition!” This was followed by a 2014 solo exhibition at the Pablita Velarde Museum of Indian Women in the Arts in Santa Fe, Harvesting Traditions, in which Wall explored Indigenous foodways of numerous tribes through ceramic sculptures and paintings on canvas.

In the last few years, Wall has moved in new directions. She returned to college and earned her BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA).

Her professor there, Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi-Choctaw), says, “I admire what Kathleen is doing. The way she combines it all, the 3D ceramics and the 2D paintings, really works. Anyone can talk about it but she did it. I still support her, and I’m anxious to see how her work evolves from here.”

Wall’s expressive clay figures (including her well-known amusing and lovable koshares, or sacred clowns), once backdropped by paintings of landscapes,

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are now part of the paintings. The figures seem to walk right out of the canvas, suspended in both space and time. When speaking about her artistic innovations, the artist reflects that experimenting with new media “is what I need to keep me excited about creating. Whenever I work in a new [medium], I feel like a brand-new artist.”

Widely collected internationally, Wall’s art is the subject of many magazine articles and books and has been a main feature at Gallery Chaco in Old Town Albuquerque since its opening almost two years ago. There, longtime collectors continue to support her creative vision and offer some down-to-earth gestures of friendship. “The owner used to buy work from me when I was super young.

Now his kids run the [hotel] business, and they carry my work in the gallery. And, they hired my son to work in the gift shop.

I told him, ‘You’re just lucky you’re not slinging burgers.’”

Wall has three children: two sons, ages 16 and 10, and a daughter, 14. “Are any of your kids following in your footsteps or showing interest in pursuing careers as artists?” I inquire.

“My oldest is a musician, and my daughter is talented in sculpting,” says Wall. “My little one is only ten, so not yet.

But we’ll see. There’s still plenty of time.”

During her own childhood, Wall said she was “all over the place. We moved a lot—from New Mexico to Arizona to Colorado, then back to New Mexico.”

Eventually she settled in Jemez Pueblo, where she has built a large, light-filled studio on a piece of property given to her by her grandfather. “For the past three years, we’ve been working on finishing the studio, so things are a little crazy.

One of my sons is sleeping in what will be the packing and shipping area, but we’re making it work and hopefully it’ll be finished soon!”

KATHLEEN WALL

On a busy Friday as she prepared for SWAIA Winter Market, the artist took some time to be interviewed for FAAM. “Things are hectic,” exclaims Wall. “As we speak, I’m looking for a five-foot table for my booth. I’m trying to make it happen!”

Over the course of a few weeks, we had several telephone conversations (and lots of laughs; Wall has a great sense of humor and is quick to share it) and

corresponded through email and text messaging.

RD: Hi, Kathleen. Thank you for taking time to speak with me on behalf of FAAM. We haven’t talked in a while, since you showed at IM: Edge a couple of years ago.

KW: That was a while ago. I only did Edge that once. At Indian Market, I’ve mainly

above Gye wha la’ pah (The Place Where I Began), part of the Place series, 2016, ceramic figure: hand-processed Jemez Pueblo clay, acrylic, earth pigments, slip, underglazes.

Painting: acrylic, earth pigments, clay slip, sand on canvas, 36 × 30 × 8 in. opposite Kathleen Wall. All images courtesy of the artist.

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above Detail of Shi wiyain in White Sky from Place series, 2016, Jemez clay, slip, underglazes, acrylic, sand, clay wood platform, 60 × 48 × 15 in., features Wall’s son, Isaiah, whose name Shi wiyain translates to “Trees in a Row.” opposite Installation view of Celebrating Native Legacies: Works in Clay by Kathleen Wall at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2010.

focused on my pottery. That’s what I know and have been doing for many years. I want to do other work, but for the markets and shows I focus on what’s in demand.

RD: That year you showed Place, a series of large figures paired with paintings of landscapes. Your newest work has taken the idea a step further, with figures emerging directly out of the landscape.

Can you talk about what inspired these?

KW: I think [adding the paintings] came from being a fan of all the painters …

Sheldon [Harvey], Tony [Abeyta], Emmi [Whitehorse], Jaune [Quick-to-See Smith], and being enamored with their ability to render a subject on canvas. I’ve

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always had such admiration for what they do. Growing up seeing paintings all around me, I wanted to be part of their world, part of that community, part of that family. So when I went back to finish up my bachelor’s degree, I decided to focus on studying painting.

RD: Where and when did you do that?

KW: I received my BFA in two-dimensional arts from IAIA in 2014. I studied three-dimensional arts when I was there in 1995.

RD: Under whom did you study?

KW: Linda Lomahaftewa was my most memorable teacher. She was my very first

KATHLEEN WALL

teacher in my very first class on my very first day of college! She happened to be my advisor back then [in 1995], when I was just a youngster starting out, and when I returned to the institute decades later she was my advisor again.

RD: You’re one of many I’ve heard express such sentiments. Linda was definitely an integral component of the school for a long time. We were surrounded by such vast creativity during our respective scholarships at IAIA, as we have been throughout our lives, both of us coming from big families of Pueblo potters and artists. Do you believe creativity is inherent? Is it in our genes? In our Native DNA? KW: I don’t know if I can say it’s in our DNA or in our genes, but it’s in our culture and in our surroundings, so in that way, it’s inherited. If we participate in being Native—and I can only relate to being Pueblo because that’s how I was raised—we’re surrounded by artwork. We live with artwork and use it in our daily lives. We have beautiful [clay pottery] jars that we use for water and baskets to carry our food. We wear our beautiful jewelry, and all of our dancing and ceremonial regalia is very artistic. So in that sense, we don’t ever live without art. It’s a constant influence: from the time we’re very young children to our old age, we’re looking at an art form of one sort or another. From getting dressed to serving food, art is all around us all the time. That’s what makes us so expressive within our own voices: part of the way we look at the world is through art.

RD: Do you observe any particular process in preparing to be creative?

KW: I have so many deadlines, so there are a lot of demands on my creativity. I don’t have the luxury of time to prepare myself to be creative or prepare to create.

Basically, I’m constantly working on the next project or understanding that I need to make certain pieces in order to pay bills, and I have pieces that are due for different projects and events. So my creative process isn’t really about getting

ready to create, it’s just about creating.

I don’t worry about mastering [a technique], I just create.

RD: Talk a bit about that process of creating.

KW: I’m not married to any one technique or any one medium, so I’m mixing up mediums all the time. Of course I do pottery for a living. But when I’m working on a multimedia project, I don’t worry about anything. It all goes.

I usually mix [local] clays and pigments with acrylics for my paintings. I never use an armature for my sculptures; I build everything like I do with pottery, with the coiling technique. Even the largest pieces are hand-built by coiling.

RD: As an artist, how do you learn from those times when things don’t quite come to fruition?

KW: Most of the loss for potters and ceramic artists is from the uncontrolled, outdoor firing, which I appreciate and am a fan of but don’t partake in myself.

For the most part, I have my own type of insurance policy. If [a particular piece] is really, super important as far as time constraints or being really fragile, I usually make two pieces. That way I don’t have an issue with getting the order to a client or an organization by the set date. And it helps me build my inventory, which is always good. If something breaks, it’s melted back down into clay. That broken piece represents a lot of work, a lot of hours, and I don’t want to waste the clay.

If it’s already fired, sometimes I’m able to salvage something here or there, but, for the most part, it just gets recycled. There’s a big pile of rocks in my yard that I like to [smash] the [broken] pots or sculptures on, but I don’t have many failures, and breakage rarely happens.

[In 2017, when I interviewed Wall for an Indian Market profile, I posed the question above a little differently, asking her what she has learned from failure. Her answer changed my point of reference on the subject, and I’ve held the lesson since: “Failure is inevitable in all aspects of life.

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above The Basket Maker from The Makers series, 2018, handprocessed Jemez Pueblo clay, slip, underglazes, acrylic, wood panel, 22 × 26 × 4 in. opposite Pottery Maker from The Makers series, 2018, handprocessed Jemez Pueblo clay, slip, underglazes, acrylic, wood panel, 48 × 36 × 6 in.

helps me persevere to the next project or into the next chapter of whatever is going on in my life.” These are words worth repeating: they’ll grow on you and change your mind about not always hitting the mark, if you let them.]

RD: Have you thought about collaborating with other artists?

KW: I always planned to collaborate but haven’t done it yet. Mostly it’s because of the lack of time and not being able to make that commitment. When you’re so involved with your own work and trying to get all your stuff done, it’s really hard to experiment with another artist. I have been wanting to for so long, but, because I’ve always been such a non-collaborator, I just don’t know how to do it yet. I’m not sure where to begin or who I would ask.

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RD: What about the element of humor in your work? Can you offer a few words on that?

KW: The element of humor isn’t always intentional; it’s just something that comes out naturally. I believe it’s like that with other artists, too, in that the artwork resembles the maker. The smile or the sense of humor that comes out is a natural reflection of myself.

RD: What role do you think spirituality plays in Native art?

KW: Of course our art plays a role in our spiritual lives. But I don’t take that to my work. I keep my religion and my spiritual beliefs to myself.

RD: How does your work feed into the larger narrative of contemporary Indian art?

KATHLEEN WALL

KW: As a contemporary artist, all I can really do is work hard and hope my work is accepted into the future contemporary art narrative. I don’t know when my work will be talked about on a larger scale, in classrooms or textbooks. All I can do is be patient and hope to be accepted in the long run.

RD: Any special projects in the works?

KW: I guess I like to think all my projects are special. I’m always excited to tackle a new body of work. Right now I’m working on some paintings and sculptures, mixedmedia pieces that talk about Native American names. This is a reclaiming of Native identity. By addressing ourselves and each other in our own language, we acknowledge that we are the people we come from. I’ve done some pieces where the Native name will be an actual place.

To Native people, the importance of place is reflected in our names, in what we call each other every day, and in the names of places. I also started a body of work called The Makers. It highlights the makers of traditional art by putting traditional Pueblo materials in a painting and adding a portrait or a sculpture of an ancestor making art, which is something I have been inspired by all my life.

RD: In our lifetimes, we have seen immense change and evolution within the Pueblo ceramic genre. How do you envision the future of the art form in the hands of the next generation, say over the next 50 years or so?

KW: There is endless possibility in the genre. It’s interesting—in the Native art community you see a beautiful evolution from [historical] art to modern sculptural pieces. I don’t see as many young artists pursuing it like I did in the past, but the artists I do see carrying it forward are innovative, creative, and fearless. I’m excited to see what comes to Native art in general over the next 50 years. But as far as pottery and ceramics are concerned, I see continuous growth and innovation.

As the art forms’ techniques continue to be taught and innovated upon and a better understanding of clay embraced, the genre will continue to evolve.

RD: What are you trying to convey to the viewer through your work?

KW: I hope the viewer takes inspiration from my art, a sense of excitement for something new. With this new medium I’m working with, I definitely want people to hear a different voice from me. Through my new work, I’m hoping to communicate a more serious point of view. Most of my work is very lighthearted and whimsical, and, although I really love to make that type of work, I would like my new work to convey some serious subject matter such as the importance of place—where we as Native Americans come from and where

we live. I would like my art to acknowledge how Native people lived in the past, and that we are still here. And, yes, we’ve evolved and changed while still keeping a strong culture with respect to our relatives today, as well as our ancestors.

Through my art, I would like to honor the strength and resilience of Native people.

RD: Any thoughts on what your creative legacy will reflect for future Native artists?

KW: I really don’t think about that too much. I just hope it’s something positive!

RD: I’d say you’ve succeeded. And on that note, I thank you again for your time and energy and for letting our readers peek into your world, if only for a few moments.

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REVIEWS ANCHORAGE

Aiviq and Nanuq: Sea Horse and Sea Bear of the Arctic Anchorage Museum

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WO I C O N I C A R C T I C ANIMALS are celebrated in Aiviq and Nanuq: Sea Horse and Sea Bear of the Arctic now on view at the Anchorage Museum in Anchorage, Alaska. The exhibition features film, photography, sculpture, paintings, and installations that pay homage to the walrus and the polar bear.

Insightful text panels share information about how these animals are adapting and adjusting to climate change and a growing human presence in the Arctic.

Walruses and polar bears have a large distribution across five circumpolar countries: Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia, and the United States. Some Arctic stories relate that the sea animals— seals, walruses, and whales—were created from the fingers of the powerful goddess, Sedna, as she clung to the side of her father’s boat. In many Arctic communities, polar bears and sea animals are important resources for subsistence foods and raw materials, and they are often represented in material culture.

For artists like Teevee Ningiukulu (Canadian Inuk), Bernard Katexac (Iñupiaq, 1922–1997), Melvin Olanna (Iñupiaq, 1941–1991), and Ronald Senungetuk (Iñupiaq), the walrus and polar bear are familiar subjects that these artists were raised alongside. Bernard Katexac’s Seasons of the Arctic III (1977) illustrates a King Inland spring hunt with men pursuing walruses from umiat (skin boats) and kayaks. Alvin Amason’s (Alutiiq [Sugpiaq]) large-scale painting Oh My Heart (2015) is a close-up portrait of a walrus in shades of purple, red, and blue with protruding sculpted wooden tusks. Olanna’s bronze polar bear sculpture depicts the animal pensively standing on its hind legs.

These intimate images of polar bears and walruses produced by Indigenous inhabitants of the North contrast somewhat with representations that have been produced by visitors, who tend to present these animals as exotic and fearsome creatures. For example, John Webber’s Sea Horses (1778–80) and Charles Sidney Raleigh’s Chilly Observation (1889) depict the animals in harsh icy landscapes and emphasize their massive size and strength. More recent images of polar bears and walruses circulating in popular culture often focus on the animals’ plight, as climate change threatens their habitat.

Polar bears and walruses spend the majority of their time in or near the ocean where food is readily available. These animals depend on the Arctic ice pack for breeding, hunting, and resting. Changes

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to the environment, with warming oceans and thinning sea ice, create unpredictable habitat and challenges for these animals, who are simultaneously navigating how to adapt to a growing human presence in the Arctic through tourism, shipping, and industrial development. Some material in the exhibition reflects on the impact of these changes: an installation of Gísli Hilmarsson’s (Icelandic) polar bear soap figures makes a statement about global warming. Natural Resource by Nicholas and Jerrod Galanin (both TlingitUnangan) points to the impact of the oil industry on marine animals’ habitats.

In Maureen Gruben’s (Inuvialuk) Message (2017), one of the most visually arresting pieces in the exhibition, brilliant white polar bear guard hairs are sewn together with a striking contrast of red cotton thread and arranged in the configuration of SOS in Morse code. However, marine mammal products are only permitted across the Canadian/American border with an export permit, and the Anchorage Museum did not receive a permit in time for the exhibition opening.

As a result, the Message presented in the exhibition is a high-definition photograph of the original piece. The absence of the work itself draws attention to international laws that govern the transportation of marine mammal materials across international borders.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Anchorage Museum has organized a series of public programs to provide opportunities for people to learn more about these Arctic animals from the

REVIEWS

above Maureen Gruben (Inuvialuk), Message, 2017, repurposed polar bear guard hairs, cotton thread, black interface, 180 × 24 in.

perspectives of hunters, artists, and scientists. The programs have included presentations by artists like Alvin Amason, Sylvester Ayek (Iñupiaq), Lydia and Jerome Apatiki (both Sivuqaghhmii), Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Iñupiaq-Athabascan), and Maureen Gruben. While Lydai Apatiki was at the museum, she led a polar bear–hide sewing workshop that was open to Alaska Native participants. According to the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, Alaska Native people are permitted to harvest marine mammals for subsistence use and the byproducts can be used in the production of art.

Short films are presented in nearly every gallery of this exhibition. Most are silent documentaries, but a short film

by Anna Hoover (Unangax̂ ) explores the history of the walrus tusk motif used on Yup’ik parkas, and a humorous fictional film by Luke Randall shares a surrealistic vision of a walrus-headed man and his longing for the sea.

Few people who live outside the Arctic will have an opportunity to see a polar bear or walrus in the wild, but if you visit this exhibition at the Anchorage Museum you may be inspired to make a trip to the Arctic Circle yourself to see these fascinating animals in their natural habitat. Aiviq and Nanuq: Sea Horse and Sea Bear of the Arctic will remain on display through May 12, 2019.

—Nadia Jackinsky, PhD

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

Nathan Young: Night Music of the Southern Plains American Indian KCAI Crossroads Gallery

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FANTASTIC SHOW that is deceptively simple, Night Music of the Southern Plains American Indian unravels in layers upon conceptual layers, interweaving and fusing disparate cultures, perspectives, materials, and media.

The connecting force between it all is the personal and familial story of the artist. Nathan Young (Delaware-KiowaPawnee) conveys universal truths but only to those who actively invest themselves in the work.

The show is a reminder that the observer has an equally important role to play in the success or effectiveness of the work. Realizations occur in the moment as well as long after leaving the gallery.

The longer I reflect on Young’s work, the deeper its significance is to me. Our imaginations are massaged through this art and music, our biases and preconceptions gently coaxed to the forefront of our minds.

A reoccurring quality through Nathan Young’s sound and visual art is the intention of challenging conventional thought by instigating dialogue

that may not occur otherwise. He was a founding member of the Indigenous arts collective Postcommodity, which has had a significant impact on the art world, helping to open platforms for other conceptual and sociopolitically expressive Indigenous artists. He is also an elected member of the Delaware Indian Tribe’s council. His work illustrates his academic education and noise culture, as well as his personal and familial story.

This exhibition, on view from November 6 to December 8, 2018, included an opening performance by the Southern Thunder Singers and a closing performance by Nathan Young with Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) professor Dwight Frizzell and his students on a truck rigged with a series of microphones and a public address system. The installation was complex and combined diverse materials, sources, cultures, and disciplines including drywall, projection, Southern Plains drumming culture, Native American Church (a peyote religion), and live electro-acoustic improvisations on an amplified pickup truck. The installation created interesting, intellectual feedback loops that recontextualize living cultures into the gallery world and imaginary connections in an intimate setting.

The first sensation upon entering the space was the recording of the Southern Thunder Singers performance from the opening night. The gallery opened into an uncluttered, spacious room that allowed the sound to reverberate freely.

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deep green pickup truck furnished with a Cherokee Nation license plate, a pack of cigarettes, and woven sweetgrass. A vehicle parked inside the gallery was disorienting. The lighting was low, as if it were overcast sky. The truck faced a wall that divided the room and projected video of the opening performance: the singers drumming on the hood of the truck in the parking lot at the First Fridays art walk in the Crossroads Arts District and singing 49 songs.1 To imagine the room absolutely vacant on that first night of the exhibition brought further depth to the installation I was experiencing. The arrangement of objects in the room gave the impression of a drive-in theater—but for only one vehicle to watch a movie about that same vehicle. Noticing this, I started to recognize a pattern of feedback loops and profound connections.

As one approached the projection from the entrance into the gallery, a second room began to take focus. This more standard art gallery experience

revealed a series of solidly painted square pieces of drywall framing half-moon reliefs. The contrast of the lighting between the two rooms was yet another eloquent treatment of the space; the first dim, the second brightly lit. These two rooms seemed at odds, yet the viewer’s mind sought connection.

What did connect the two rooms was the sound from the video. It was a superimposition, in a sense, on the well-lit room as the sound bled in, begging one’s mind to formulate connections that weren’t otherwise clear. What did join these two rooms were the artist’s personal story as well as the strange context for the content overall.

The artist explained in his statement that his parents were participants in the peyote religion during the revitalization of the Native American Church in the 1970s and ’80s. Young eventually became a participant as well. The half-moon reliefs, each handmade and unique, signified the peyote religion popularized by Quanah

Parker (Comanche, ca. 1852–1911) in Oklahoma in the late 19th century. The reliefs were mounted onto drywall squares in homage to the everyday, working-class people who practice the religion. Each square was painted a different solid color based on Native American beading in serape blankets. The first ones were blue, yellow, and red, the colors of the Native American robes church leaders wear.

The final concert incorporated the same truck the Southern Thunder Singers had drummed on in the parking lot of the opening reception. This time they drew the connection to Young’s practice of improvised, experimental, noise, and electro-acoustic music. Along with Frizzell and his students, they attached compression drivers, exciter speakers2 and contact microphones to the truck. They activated the speakers using a stochastic composition—random elements informed by mathematical processes and probability theory—developed with the students. The students played the truck percussively

above Nathan Young (Delaware-Kiowa-Pawnee) in Night Music of the Southern Plains American Indian, installation and video projection, KCAI Crossroads Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri. Photo: Thollem.

1. A 49 is an informal, after-hours social dance originating in Oklahoma, where 49 singers can use drums or improvise items to be used as drums. Lyrics are often humorous and can be about romantic subjects.

2. Exciter speakers use vibrating, rigid surfaces to transmit sound and can be mounted on unusual surfaces.

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with found objects, employing a variety of extended techniques, like playing the tail pipe with a violin bow.

The projection of what was the final concert could have been mixed in with the original, projecting itself onto itself once again, ad infinitum. In this way, the exhibition would extend eternally as its nature seemed ever-changing, with each new event unfolding onto itself, reimagining the space, rearranging the original materials and/or obliterating them entirely. At the same time, the multimedia exhibition was an eloquent work, finite in its infiniteness. I am reminded that everything has its time, and all things continue in some form through the processes of entropy and evolution.

—Thollem

NEW YORK

Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection The Met Fifth Avenue

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OR THE FIRST TIME in its 92-year-history, the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has devoted an entire exhibition space to the display of Native American art with the exhibition Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection. The show, which opened on October 4, 2018, consists of 116 works from the private collection of Charles and Valerie Diker, the majority of which are donated and promised gifts to the Met. The Dikers have been collecting Native American art since the 1970s, with many of the works dating from the 2nd through the early 20th centuries.

Art of Native America, a collaborative curatorial project, was overseen by Sylvia Yount, Lawrence A. Fleischman Curator in Charge of the American Wing

at the Met. Guest curators are Gaylord Torrence, Fred and Virginia Merrill Senior Curator of American Indian Art, and Marjorie Alexander, Curatorial Consultant of American Indian Art, both at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Numerous Native experts of material and visual culture, including Kathleen Ash-Milby (Diné), Nadia Jackinsky (Alutiiq), and Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora), contributed to the exhibition’s scholarship.

Many Native and non-Native contributors were also left unnamed.

Art of Native America is undoubtedly a monumental turning point in the institution’s classification of American art, and it dramatically strengthens the museum’s existing Native American collection.

New director Max Hollein assumed office in August 2018 and, during this period of leadership transition, the Met is asserting a commitment to honoring Native peoples within the city of New York and throughout the country. At the exhibition’s entrance, an acknowledgment reads, “The Metropolitan Museum of Art is situated in Lenapehoking, the homeland of Lenape peoples, and respectfully acknowledges their ongoing cultural and spiritual connections to the area.” While this effort is significant, the museum must also recognize its own relationship to Lenapehoking, which extends well beyond this exhibition.

As Mi r an d a B e l ard e - L e w i s (Zuni-Tlingit) observes, this collection includes a number of objects that are culturally sensitive, some intended for ceremonial and funerary purposes. 1 Despite the consultation from scholars regarding objects from their respective homelands, many of the object labels stray from using the proper Native languages, opting for English translations such as “mask” in place of the Alutiiq word giinaquq or giinaruaq. Within a month of the Art of Native America’s opening, Shannon Keller O’Loughlin (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), director of the

Association of American Indian Affairs, publicly objected to the classification of these works as art and stated that the advisory committee for the exhibition failed to properly consult with tribal governments. 2 This objection calls attention to the difference between collaboration versus consultation. In this case, curators Gaylord Torrence and Marjorie Alexander, both non-Native, were responsible for interpreting advice from Native consultants and advisors into a show that would—in their opinion— best suit an audience of approximately seven million yearly visitors. When asked about the layout of the show, which is organized simply by region (Woodlands, Plains, Plateau, Arctic, California & Great Basin, Southwest, Northwest Coast, and Arctic), Torrence said that the selected structure was decidedly the easiest means for international visitors to begin to understand the breadth of cultural variation within Native America.3 The success of this kind of survey depends entirely, of course, on the personal collection of the Dikers.

The collection holds significant works including three striking beaded hoods that sit in the center of the largest gallery, two are James Bay Cree and the other Ojibwe. The designs included in such mid-19th century hoods (e mitsuits utstuden in Cree) were often highly personal, their motifs decided on by the beadwork artist according to the life of wearer.4 The rapid decline in their use amid prolonged settler contact makes such masterpieces rarely found outside of select museum collections. With their unmistakable floral patterns of the Subarctic and Northeast Woodlands, these hoods serve as a reminder of the powerful language of beadwork, which has served as a method for political resistance and spiritual expression for centuries.

Intricately beaded California basketry, in the final gallery of the exhibition, also demonstrates the widespread and diverse adoption of this material.

1. Miranda Belarde-Lewis, “Seven Directions,” First American Art Magazine 21 (Winter 2018/19): 16–17.

2. Gabriella Angeleti, “Native American group denounces Met’s exhibition of indigenous objects,” The Art Newspaper (November 6, 2018), web.

3. Gaylord Torrence in discussion with the author, October 2, 2018.

4. Paula Menarick, “James Bay Cree Hood,” Otsego Alumni Review (Summer 2015), web.

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above Unknown Naskapi artist, Man’s Coat, ca. 1840, caribou hide, pigment, 69¼ × 41½ in., collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of Native American Art (2017.718.9). opposite RYAN! Feddersen (Okanagan-Sinixt), detail of Coyote Now Epic, 2018, ink on paper, Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

A section titled Emissaries from the Past speaks to the ways objects bear witness to time, life, and events, alluding to the categorically (pre)historic works that can also be found throughout the galleries. A pair of Thule snow goggles, dating between 800 to 1200 CE, made from walrus ivory, are delicately adorned with linear engravings around the border.

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The thin carved slits filter out blinding sunlight and prevent windblown ice from coming into contact with the eyes, allowing the wearer an optimal field of vision in the Arctic. This very design has influenced modern protective eyewear, highlighting the ancestral innovation that continues to inform us today.

The dormancy in these galleries is overwhelming at times, an emotion that is perhaps entirely unavoidable when displaying works created for use. What is missing is the pronounced recognition of their purposes to heal, to hold, to feed, or be fed. Wall text from Brian Vallo (Acoma) reads: “These works are still serving their purpose; their lives are not complete. They are fulfilling the thoughts and prayers of their makers—and offer blessings to all the people from around the world who visit these galleries.” While the artists’ lives certainly persist in this space, the idea that the intent of their makers is fulfilled here is difficult for me to reconcile.

Although the Diker collection is predominantly ethnographically driven, seeking to build strong, historically informed representations of each region, it is clear that the couple is also inspired by pure aesthetic value. Included in this exhibition are masterful examples of quillwork, ceramics, and textiles. It should be noted that the Dikers have frequently loaned selections from their holdings to the Met and other museums, increasing their value with each showing.

I believe that the canon of American art and visual culture must be expanded to include Indigeneity, an undertaking that inherently includes the role of American museums. With the Met representing a major influence as an encyclopedic institution, I left the show with a sense of ambiguity about the experience and a renewed sense of urgency for the need to prioritize more complete collaborations with Native curators, scholars, artists, and communities. Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection is on view at the Met through October 6, 2019, and a number of online educational resources accompany the exhibition.

—Morgan E. Freeman

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SANTA CRUZ

Coyote Now: RYAN! Feddersen Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History

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N A GORGEOUS, SUNNY C A L I F OR N IA DAY , I climbed the stairs of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH). My objective? Visit Coyote Now, an exhibition by RYAN! Feddersen (Okanagan-Sinixt). My expectations of museums and exhibitions were firmly planted when I first stepped into MAH. What I encountered at the front desk, the museum, and the exhibition uprooted my established assumptions and provided a new frame for engaging with the world through art and history.

MAH differentiates itself from other art venues in a way best understood through their mission statement: “to ignite shared experiences and unexpected connections.” Consistent with this vision, executive director Nina Simon wrote The Participatory Museum. Reinforcing mission and vision, staff members genuinely welcome visitors to the museum upon their arrival.

After passing beyond the staff desk at the entrance into the museum, visitors recognize immediately they have entered a new space … that they have left behind the “medieval cathedral” that feminist art historian Carol Duncan describes in her essay, “The Art Museum as Ritual.” Practically speaking, the MAH’s approach locates one as a participant, rather than a viewer, and invites every person to engage first hand with various aspects of art and history.

Walking up the stairs to the Coyote Now Epic installation, a temptation to stray into other interactive exhibitions and the question, “Is this really for adults?” pops into visitors’ heads, because the old barriers between object and viewer have been dissolved. Fortunately, there are signs to help to stay focused, and other adults walking around sans children. For affirmation: Yes, we are all invited to participate!

Just outside the entrance to Feddersen’s installation, text in English and Spanish covers the walls with instructive information, including the Feddersen quote, “In most indigenous cultures, art was something that you touched, it was something that you used, it was something that was part of a ritual or an action, it was something for the community and it wasn’t for one person to collect.” It also provides important contextual details, such as biographical information about RYAN! Feddersen and about Coyote. It concludes with a question about Coyote, “But what is he up to lately?”

from a graphic novel coloring book, herald the epic adventure participants will soon engage. Stepping through the gallery doors, one wonders if they are in a gallery at all. From floor to ceiling around much of the perimeter of the space, a colorful, interactive mural covers the walls. The Coyote Now coloring placard explains, “Part graphic novel, part coloring book this immersive installation invites us to bring the adventures of Coyote to life!”

On a brightly painted red wall, framed text instructs participants: “No stranger to mischief, Coyote’s antics often cost him his life. Because of this, the leader of the Spirit People gifted Coyote

Two grey couches face each other in the center of this foyer. On the coffee table, constructed of six white plastic milk crates and a slab of wood, six books lay face up. With titles such as American Indian Trickster Tales and Coyote Tails, each book cover prominently features a sticker that reads: “RECOMMENDED B Y T H E A M E R IC A N I N DIA N RESOURCE CENTER AT UCSC” or “RECOMMENDED BY ARTIST RYAN! FEDDERSEN.” The entrance to Coyote Now cautiously peaks interest. Four canvaslike, unframed renderings of Coyote’s previous adventures, resembling imagery

with immortality. With even a scrap of bone or a piece of hair Fox can bring Coyote back to life.”

The text explains that Feddersen uses crayons cast from coyote bones as storytelling devices. She imagines that “through this collaborative act of creativity, we bring Coyote back to life.” This explains to participants why there are two display areas filled with a rainbow of accessible crayons and what to do with them.

On this day, the once blackand-white mural of Coyote’s so-called misadventures vibrates and dances like a Jackson Pollock drip painting. Where SPRING 2019 | 85

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does a viewer focus their attention on this collaboration between museum, artist, and community? Logically, one might follow the narrative from beginning to end.

This iteration of Coyote’s story (Epic) is part of Feddersen’s ongoing Coyote Now series. According to the MAH, which commissioned the work, “The story begins with coyote’s resurrection and ends with his death. He confronts his relationship with technology. He navigates through nuclear sites and proposed oil fields. He makes selfish decisions that have long ranging impacts on the earth.” In other words, Coyote teaches us how the follies of our actions can impact our world.

Walking around the mural, the power of art in the hands of the people manifests itself in blue and purple crayon manifestos, such as “FAMILIES BELONG FREE,” “LOVE HEALS,” and “I AM THE LIZARD KING.” Like a de Kooning painting, participants make visible what artists once tried to hide: indexical traces that reveal the presence of the person who created the art.

Individuals respond in various ways as they participate with the installation.

There are lighthearted, fun gestures like the abstracted, cartoonish profiles created out of landscape features in the background of Coyote’s continuing story.

Some visitors color inside the lines, while others color outside the lines. Precise, descriptive color appears in some places, while in other places one might see a red coyote sporting a purple head and tail.

Perhaps most striking is a section where Coyote sits behind a desk facing outward toward participants. His eyes are covered with Blues Brothers–style black sunglasses, while his yellow-colored face supports red-tipped ears. A computer monitor blocks his upper torso, while one imagines his lower torso behind the desk where Coyote sits like a human.

Facing Coyote, with his back to us, stands a man who wears a blazer, crisp pants, and dress shoes. Unlike Baroque paintings, where postures such as these act as a substitute for the viewer, participants cast this man in a different light.

On the top of his now orange crayon-colored hair topped with black crayon-created horns, the words “You’re Fired” pass between the man and Coyote.

On the back of the man’s jacket, in black crayon the words, “I REALLY DON’T CARE DO YOU?!” allude to the jacket First Lady Melania Trump wore in June 2018 when she traveled to Texas to visit children taken from their parents at the US–Mexico border. The man’s pant legs echo the overall theme of the scene: on the left pant leg are the words “IMMIGRANTS ARE” and up the right “HERE TO STAY.” The beauty of this installation— including the silly, playful musings and the pointed political messages—is that it replaces stagnated power plays within the art world where institutions select art that they believe the public should view and not touch. In contrast, Coyote Now opens a new space that activates the imagination of each person who steps in the museum gallery and empowers them to collaborate and create … all the while documenting an archive for future generations who want to learn about history from the perspective of the people.

—Jean Merz-Edwards

SANTA FE

LIT: The Work of Rose B. Simpson Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian

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AVE YOU EVER MET ROSE?,” I overhear one visitor ask another as I enter the Wheelwright Museum’s Klah Gallery, where Rose B. Simpson’s mid-career retrospective of ceramic work, LIT, exhibits through October 2019. “She’s nothing like you’d expect,” he summarizes, his gaze fixed on one of seven clay masks that comprise Simpson’s Ancestors series, punctuating the exhibition with fixed gazes of their own.

For a moment, I ponder a few of the endless possibilities of interpretation: Did the visitor think Simpson would be wearing a customary Pueblo manta and moccasins when they met? Was she too tall, too edgy, too something he couldn’t quite decipher? Could it be the body

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piercings and tattoos that threw him?

And, I found it odd that he assumed the second viewer had any to-be-shattered expectations of Simpson, as if there exists some invisible but deeply carved template for how a 21st-century Pueblo woman should look, sound, dress, or act, or what she should create. All these thoughts rush to me momentarily, before I remember that this is the way much of the world still sees us and our art: through superficially informed and misaligned measurings-up of tribalness, wrapped in and then unwrapped from some nostalgic expectation of Indianness. And, following that course of thought, the belief that our art should, or could, be contained within such a limited and confining graph.

Simpson’s work pushes against these awkward, threadbare notions, and that’s what makes it so important and so effective on a sociopolitical, dissertation-supporting level. Consisting of several dozen sculptures (“It’s the first time I’ve seen so much of my work in one place.

So cool!,” enthused Rose), the collection confronts some of the standardized conventional ideas that linger on the edges of the rewritten, contemporary Native art narrative—dismantling old stereotypes one newly informed viewer at a time. But this exhibition speaks more to the soul and spirit than to politics or protocol—livening a sense, an ancient memory perhaps, of those who have come before, while acknowledging a consciously accessible, if physically intangible, space for those yet to arrive.

Most of the work in LIT is self-portraiture, brought to form through the “slap-slab” technique Simpson learned while earning an MFA at Rhode Island School of Design. Several pieces, including Prayer, employ the historical Pueblo coil-and-scrape method, bringing verve to vision. The black-and-white, manta-and-moccasin-clad figure speaks to Simpson’s strong connection to her Tewa culture, and to the power of prayer that exists within us all. The tattoos and non-Pueblo embroidery on her dress express Simpson’s often dichotomous influences and extra-Pueblo experiences.

The Prayer sculpture stands with Genesis, another dynamic depiction of

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Simpson “holding her infant daughter and looking to the future,” states the stainless-steel text panel accompanying the contrasting figures. Every sculpture, or group of sculptures, is described on one of many such panels throughout the exhibition, and much of the content expounds on the artist’s philosophies: about the creative process, cultural identity, the importance of place and community, and her desire to “shatter” the edges of the boxes around “the objectified, stereotyped role” of the Native artist.

The arrangement and lighting of the sculptures is superb. Each work is given ample room to breathe and be appreciated. Thoughtfully placed maternal forms stand tall and proud. Casting shadows, warrior figures seem to double in size, creating the illusion of a more densely filled space. Illuminated from above, masks radiate peace, wisdom, and the promise of protection, as one might feel in the presence of elders. But there is also the feeling that all these pieces belong together—they form a family of sorts— and when the show closes, they will part and return to their respective homes with a longing for reunion.

L i ke S i mp s on h e r s e l f , t h e complexity of the work is revealed quietly and through thoughtful and careful attention, not rushed, formulaic analysis.

Yet I’m tempted to correlate some of the sculptures with different facets of the artist’s personality: some pieces (Secret of Flight and Reclamation) look you right in the eye, seemingly eager to entertain any queries on form or function, while others (Self-Portrait and Cairn) appear to avoid inquisition altogether. From the smallest piece in the exhibition (The Answer that Ended Creation) to the largest (Great Lengths), the common denominator in Simpson’s work is contrast: dark with light, rough with smooth, ancient with futuristic, industrial with of-the-earth.

Found, recycled, and repurposed objects (exhaust manifolds, radiator fans, engine-mount bolts, and used tires) are all familiar components in her work, set against and/or into the clay, as if they belonged there all along.

If any one piece in the collection qualifies as a departure from Simpson’s more signature work, Special comes closest to the mark. Sculpted by Simpson from white clay and painted by Isleta Pueblo graffiti artist Watermelon 7, the marionette-like figure registers a more rigid posture and emotionally tense expression than its companions, exuding a wound-up, restrained energy—ready to break free from her invisible confines and become sentient at any moment.

At the center of the exhibition, which winds through the gallery’s

above Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Tewa descent), Genesis, 2017, ceramic, steel, hide. Photo: Addison Doty. Image courtesy of the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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hogan-like contours, rests Baby, a cherubic infant—minus the wings— whose mirrored reflection in the glass case holding her appears to go on forever, affirming the coming of future generations and the continuum of Indigenous arts. The baby rests under the watchful eyes of post-apocalyptic warriors depicted in Simpson’s Directed series, who “defend against stereotypes about Indigenous identity.” Four of the five pieces constituting the series are reunited here for the first time since their creation. Summoned from afar, like good uncles, they protect Baby and defend her against anything that might threaten or attempt to dismiss the wholeness of her Native identity.

The end of the exhibition funnels into Friends Gallery, where Simpson’s Cabinet of Curiosities showcases some of her inspirational treasures. Among the objects are two small clay faces, a toy buffalo, a rather large undischarged bullet given to her by Chiricahua Apache artist Bob Haozous on her 21st birthday, and a Predator figurine, which, Simpson notes, has inspired much of her wardrobe. The cabinet (three, wall-mounted cases arranged in a U-shape) is anchored by a sculpture made by the artist’s parents [noted artists Roxanne Swentzell (Santa Clara Pueblo) and Patrick Simpson], portraying Simpson in the womb near the end of her mother’s gestation.

Adjacent to the cabinet, a small alcove holds a continuously looping video, in which Simpson expresses great respect for the natural materials she uses in creating her sculptures. “This was someone’s skin!,” she exclaims in the video, as she is filmed weaving a thin strip of smooth, white buckskin through a circular, twig frame. Her message resounds loud and clear.

Making my way back through the gallery, I reach the starting point again. A final glance at Prayer lets me know I have completed the circle.

Drawing a full breath, taking in the essence of what I have just experienced, I leave the shadow-filled space with a renewed sense of connection to my own Tewa-ness, and I walk out into the good and unexpected, ever-changing light. —RoseMary Diaz

BOOK REVIEW Dana Claxton: Fringing the Cube Grant Arnold, editor Vancouver Art Gallery, 2018

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UBLISHED FOR ITS NAMESAKE retrospective, this catalogue provides readers with a much-needed contextualization and analysis of Hunkpapa Lakota artist Dana Claxton’s multimedia practice. Grant Arnold, the curator of this exhibition, edited the volume. Reflecting the complexity of Claxton’s works, the essays in this insightful book examine many instances of the Vancouver-based artist’s performative actions and imagery through the lenses of indigeneity, contemporary art, and social politics. These contributions both enact the authors’ distinctive voices and create a community of thoughtful responses to Claxton’s practice. The concluding “Chronology” section, an annotated curriculum vitae, recognizes the artist’s significance within a global perspective. This ambitious text signals the importance of the Dana Claxton: Fringing the Cube exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery—the first

survey and book to honor the artist’s 30-year career.1 Taken together, the essays in this catalogue set the stage for a subsequent, extended volume about Claxton’s art yet to be produced.

Dana Claxton: Fringing the Cube facilitates a prismatic dialogue surrounding Claxton’s practice that radiates at center. Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota) orients the artist’s ever-evolving methodology as originating from generosity and gift giving and later narrates a candid history of the events leading to the 1862 execution of the Dakota 38. Through an extended discussion of several of Claxton’s works, editor Grant Arnold situates Claxton’s indigenized art practice—“fringing the cube”—as a telling example of White Earth Ojibwe theorist Gerald Vizenor’s “postindian” notions of activism and warriorhood via artistic expression.

Considering Claxton’s performative practice, Monika Kin Gagnon and Olivia Michiko Gagnon emphasize the centrality of fringe as a relational materiality that guides the artist’s fusion of fine art and ceremony. David Garneau (Métis) offers a generous visual analysis of Claxton’s The Patient Storm video (2006), acknowledging the layers of depth in the details that make up this performance grounded in Lakota worldviews. Jaleh Mansoor contextualizes Claxton’s NDN Ironworkers series (2018)—photographs formatted in “fireboxes” (LED light boxes)—through the lens of Vancouver’s unsettled social politics and the settler-colonial orientation of its contemporary labor system that relies on Indigenous employees. Siobhan McCracken Nixon delineates the artist’s career in a thorough timeline complemented by archival images.

The contributors’ biographies reveal that the authors have a strategic presence.

Long Soldier, an Indigenous creative writer, exemplifies Vizenor’s call for the “postindian” inscription of the real. Her work has been supported by the Lannan

1. The Vancouver Art Gallery’s website describes this catalogue as, “the first monograph to examine the full breadth and scope of Claxton’s practice,” accessed January 21, 2019, web.

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Foundation and the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and her pieces have been featured in The New York Times and The American Poet. Arnold has organized numerous solo exhibitions, serving in curatorial roles at his current post, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and at the Art Gallery of Windsor in Ontario. His experience with exhibition catalogues places him in a strong position to collaborate with Claxton in representing her courageous art practice. A communications studies professor at Concordia University, Monika Kin Gagnon’s research focuses on the intersections of cultural memory, the archive, and lens-based art. In Claxton’s acknowledgments, she expresses gratitude to Gagnon for their 25 years of “journeys.” A doctoral candidate at New York University and the managing editor of Women & Performance, Olivia Michiko Gagnon’s dissertation is titled “Archival Entanglements: Re/ Encountering History in Contemporary Feminist, Queer, and Decolonial Art & Performance.” An informed analysis of Claxton’s work in this context will greatly benefit contemporary art discourse. Garneau, a visual arts professor at the University of Regina, provides a multidisciplinary approach, stemming from his work as an artist, curator, and writer, akin to Claxton’s variety of creative roles. Lastly, as art history associate professor at the University of British Columbia (where Claxton is chair of the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory), Jaleh Mansoor is working on a three-year project, supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant, with the artist.

While researching Claxton’s practice last year, the information I was able to locate was scattered between sources, thus I found this catalogue to be immensely valuable. A necessary resource for further discussion of Dana Claxton’s work in art historical discourses at large, it fills a need by providing specifics about the artist’s processes and practice. The text provides a vast amount of detail, and the volume’s pacing and delivery nurture a reader’s desire to get to know Claxton’s art in both visual analysis and broader contexts. In addition to its vivid essays, the catalogue features many photographic reproductions of Claxton’s works.

It was challenging for me to find such examples, as there simply are not many images of Claxton’s work readily available online.

Here, readers have the opportunity to delve in and examine Dana Claxton’s ensembles in a high-quality format that offers visual integrity to the original artworks.

The array of contexts in the catalogue create a constellation around Claxton’s works and recall the mixture of lived experiences that fuse in the artist’s performative and imagistic expressions. In this volume, Claxton’s art is associated with her sun dance and jingle dance practices, Jeff Wall’s photographic light boxes, Vancouver’s fraught social history, Conceptual Art, and even the MTV channel’s music videos. Additionally the “Chronology” section outlines Claxton’s familial heritage. Her maternal great-grandparents were among the band of Sitting Bull’s (Hunkpapa Lakota, 1831–1890) followers who walked to Wood Mountain, North-Western Territory (now Saskatchewan), where her great-grandparents remained. As such, Claxton’s family is from the Wood Mountain Reserve and from Moose

Jaw, the subject of her 2004 commissioned artwork for the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery.

This exhibition catalogue seems designed to serve as a primary resource for art scholars and museum professionals, and some of the language may seem too niche-focused for a collector or enthusiast. Specifically, Arnold’s references to Vizenor’s “postindian” theories and Mansoor’s labor-economy concepts may prove to be the more challenging points. Without prior experience with these contexts, some readers could become frustrated with the academic tone of these essays. However, I also realize that including these ideas serves as the good kind of risk-taking that helps expand the conversation surrounding Claxton’s art. Moreover, this type of interdisciplinary discussion is needed within fine art departments in the academy to help break the boundaries surrounding extant Native American and First Nations art historical texts. Thus, these essays appear to call for more dialogical responses—either written or curated.

Overall, Dana Claxton: Fringing the Cube is a book you will need to stay current with Claxton’s work. Clearly, this is the best reference of her career in print. While the authorial voice changes from one chapter to the next, this is precisely what keeps the catalogue interesting. And this rhythmic variation reflects the fragmentary fusion that runs throughout Claxton’s multimedia art practice. The exhibition catalogue can be purchased through the Vancouver Art Gallery’s online store, and it is well suited for both professional scholarship and university classrooms.

—Michelle J. Lanteri

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REPORT PERU, ECUADOR, AND THE UNITED STATES

Bienal Intercontinental de Arte Indígena, Ancestral, o Milenario

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HE SEVENTH BIENAL INTERCONTINENTAL DE ARTE INDÍGENA, ANCESTRAL, O MILENARIO (BIAI) marks it as the oldest and longest-continuing Indigenous art fair in the world.

Since 2006, the fair has showcased works by a growing, international group of artists, writers, and scholars in Quito, Ecuador.

Beginning September 27 and 28, BIAI VII opened in Quito and Pijal, Ecuador, and this year the fair took a major step by also opening in October in Lima, Peru. The main events in Peru took place at the Metropolitan Museum of Lima, with collateral and traveling exhibitions at Centro Cultural Mansión Eiffel in Lima, Cultural Center of the San Marcos University of Lima in Santa Anita, Olaya de Chorrillos Cultural Center in Callao on the

Pacific Coast, and in Ica Province. Auxiliary events, showcasing a smaller selection of BIAI works, took place in the United States in Chicago, Illinois, and St. Ignace, Michigan. With this expansion of the art fair, the BIAI truly has become intercontinental.

Artists and scholars first created the BIAI fair to provide an Indigenous-led platform for Native artists from Ecuador and elsewhere. Jorge Iván Cevallos, director of the Escuela Indígena de las Artes (Indigenous School of the Arts) in Quito, Ecuador, is the BIAI’s general producer, and he has been with the fair since its inception. In a public letter, Cevallos wrote, “We recognize the mission to cultivate and share the beauty of the art of our nations and peoples with artists and the public, through exhibitions, laboratories, workshops, and coexistence integrated in the spirit of a community of inter-learning, of multiple, intergenerational, and pluricultural nature.”1 One goal of the gathering is to address the gap between formal and informational education, and to “promote learning practices aimed at the revaluation and enhancement of cultural heritage and human talent.”

The BIAI competition publicly recognizes the artists, and the winning trophy is itself a work of art. Indigenous artists of South America don’t always have such a broad platform in which to showcase their work, alongside that of fellow Indigenous artists from around the world. The two lifetime presidents of the art fair’s jury are both Peruvian: Herbert Dante Calumani (Aymara)2 and Enrique Galdós Rivas.

1. Jorge Iván Cevallos, Memorandum, Bienal Intercontinental de Arte Indígena, Ancestral, o Milenario (November 20, 2018), PDF.

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An abstract painter who has completed more than 2,000 paintings in his career, Galdós Rivas says the biennial strives to make Indigenous art visible. As Rivas told Nodal Cultura, “In the Sabogal era there was an Indigenous school, but it was lost,” referring to the Indigenist movement championed by Spanish-Peruvian painter José Sabogal (1888–1956). “To be an Indigenous painter is not about painting a little hill or the llama.

You have to be original and share what we have in our world.”

The primary BIAI exhibition in Lima ran from October 12 to 24, 2018, and featured 300 works by Indigenous artists from 22 countries in South America, North America, Europe, and Africa. Besides visual art—sculpture, painting, drawing, weaving, and photography—BIAI held juried competitions in performing arts (including music, dance, and theater), video, cuisine, literature, and social and scientific research.

In the 2018 BIAI painting by a professional artist classification, first place was tied between Felix Pinchi Aguirre (Quechua) of Peru and Darryll Brown (Mackinac Ojibwe-Odawa) of the United States. The winner of the collective painting category was Runa Amaru’s Salón del Arte Visionario (Hall of Visionary Art), a psychedelic installation in a gallery lit by black light. The painting and craft classification was won by Olinda Silvano Inuma (Shipibo-Conibo) of Peru, who combined painting with embroidery. And the winner in the youth collective painting category was the Institución Centro Polivalente de Arte de Ushuaia (Polyvalent Art Center of Ushuaia), from Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.

Quintín Borda Ticona of Peru won the professional sculpture classification, while Carlos Lozano Guaman won in the youth sculpture category. Rolando Fulgencio Parrales of Peru won the woodcarving classification.

Percy Ramiro Gavilán Chávez of Peru was the winner in the professional drawing classification, and Ronald Janampa Mallma of Peru won in the youth drawing category. Karina Padilla Choquez of Peru won a special classification for drawing with guarango ink, a precontact artistic media derived from the seeds of the Prosopis pallida, a mesquite tree. And Alejandro Sánchez Salazar of Peru won in the youth printmaking classification.

Tito Guevara, an Ecuadorian-born percussionist living in Norway, won in the music classification. Los Danzantes Quillasingas of Colombia were the winners of the professional dance category. The Quillasinga people, who have farming communities in the Nariño Department, are known for their goldsmithing, ceramics, and dance festivals. Zenón Gallegos Ramírez from Nazca, Peru, won the social and scientific research classification for Nanasqa: Mensajes Milenarios (Nanasqa, Millennial Messages), his analysis of the Nazca geoglyphs. Héctor Surco Ccapatinta of Peru won in the weaving classification.

The film, El Corazón del Sastre (The Tailor’s Heart), directed

by Sofía Carrillo of Mexico, represented by aluCine Latin Film + Media Arts Festival of Canada, won in the short film classification.

Rey de las Nubes (King of the Clouds), directed by María Laura Molina of Argentina, won the documentary category. Leading the youth films was Nuestras Raices (Our Roots), created by the IE JEC Los Algarrobos-Piura, an elementary school in Peru.

above Percy Gavilán Chávez Ramiro, El dia y la noche en el tiempo (The Day and the Night in Time), guarango ink on paper.

Guarango ink is derived from the seeds of Prosopis pallida, a mesquite tree from Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The spiky desert tree, which can live for a thousand years, is culturally significant, particularly in the hyperarid Ica Valley of southern, coastal Peru. opposite, top Winner of the textile classification: Héctor Surco Ccapatinta, Armonía de Colores, weaving, Cuzco, Peru. opposite, below One of the tied winners in the painting category was Felix Pinchi Aguirre (Quechua, Peru). Born in 1983 in Huanuco, Peru, Pinchi Aguirre studied painting at the UskoAyar Amazonian School in Pucallpa. Inspired by anthropologist Luis Eduardo Luna, spiritual healer and artist Pablo Amaringo (1938–2003) founded the school, where young children learn painting, English, and other skills. Though Amaringo has passed on, the school continues to serve 700 students, ages 8 to 24.

The overall youth award went to the Family Art Project by the Asociación Cultural Antonio Maro of Peru. Ehekatl Tozkayamanki, the Association of Traditional Games of Jalisco, from Mexico won the special Revelation Award.

Award winners of this year’s biennial will receive stipends to help them participate in the 2020 biennial—the location of which has not yet been disclosed. Details will be made available on the fair’s website, biai.art. However, the Michilimackinac Historical Society is planning another auxiliary exhibition in St. Ignace, Michigan, for 2019, creating even more cultural bridges between Indigenous artists of South America and their northern neighbors.

—America Meredith

2. The artists’ cultural heritages are seldom listed, so I have included them when known.

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ART+LIT

Turtle Mountain Ojibwe Poet

HEID E. ERDRICH

By Tiffany Midge

I

’M EXCITED TO SHARE an interview I conducted with poet and editor Heid E. Erdrich. Erdrich has published five poetry collections, and her most recent is Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media (Michigan State University Press, 2017), which won the 2018 Minnesota Book Award for poetry. Erdrich has received numerous awards, including a Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship, a Loft-McKnight Award, and two Minnesota Book Awards. In 2018, Erdrich edited a Native poetry issue for Poetry Magazine and served as editor of the anthology New Poets of Native Nations (Graywolf Press, 2018).

Our interview took place through correspondence by email over the course of four weeks beginning November 1, 2018, the first day of National Native American Heritage Month.

TM: One thing I’ve always admired about you is that you have headed projects in innovative ways that involve many moving parts inclusive with regard to community—for instance in your cookbook, Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories, and Recipes from the Upper Midwest. You included food narratives from various Native people of the Upper Midwest throughout the different chapters, which I thought was delightful—like fresh surprises on every other page.

What was your impetus for writing and compiling recipes for this book?

How has this contributed to the ways in which you approach curating and editing?

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moving parts and many people involved, and there were art direction aspects to the work: Aza Abe’s illustrations, photos, document images. I guess it was more like an exhibition than I realized. But my main reason for creating Original Local came from my sense that the local foods movement left out the Indigenous contribution and often ignored the presence of Native nations in local regions.

We need all kinds of books on Indigenous foods. We need to support activists fighting for our foods, because they are our lifeways as much as powwow or ceremonies. My food book started when the publisher approached me for ideas for cookbooks written by Native authors.

They have a successful cookbook series and were keenly aware that they should have started with an Indigenous foods book. I did not know Native foods writers in our region at the time, but gave them a few names and a title, Original Local.

After a few months, they asked me to write the book. I laughed! If I were to do the book the way I wanted to, with voices and recipes from 28 Native communities in the Upper Midwest, I would need help from my family and an assistant, and it would be a huge project. It was.

above Heid E. Erdrich. Photo: Chris Felver. Image courtesy of the author. opposite Cover of Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media (Michigan State University Press, 2017).

Cover design by Andrea Carlson (Anishinaabe).

Writing my dissertation and my graduate research training gave me the skill set to complete the book, and I drew on my experience as a curator as well. Those are the same set of skills I’ve always used as an editor. Collage is my aesthetic.

TM: Yes, a collage would describe an anthology! Aside from writing cookbooks, poetry, and curating art installations, you’ve edited a number of collections. I’m thinking of the anthology of Native women’s poetry,

ART+LIT

Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community, coedited with Laura Tohe, and, more recently, the June 2018 issue of Poetry Magazine and the anthology New Poets of Native Nations. Can you discuss what personally drives you to assemble Native poetry for anthologies and portfolios?

HE: Thanks for noticing what I did in that book. I’m not sure anyone read Curator of Ephemera. There are only two or three reviews. No one, not even my friends, has really talked to me about it, which is very different from how my other books were received. I guess it is for the future.

HE: It’s the same impetus that drives all of my work: a need to be in conversation, to respond to questions, statements, needs, wonder. Even my poetry often launches off another voice or answers some reader I imagine asking a question. Collage and editing and teaching and curation are all collaborative arts, at least when I take them up. It’s a way I can meet other’s energies and share my own.

I work with choreographers and public artists and make films for the same reasons. It’s an urge to be beyond myself in my work. Maybe I bore myself. Maybe I am terrified of boredom. Maybe I just grew up with a lot of kids in my house.

TM: I remember the first time I saw your quote on the back cover of the Poetry Magazine issue that you edited: “There’s no such thing as Native American poetry.” What did you mean by that?

HE: My introduction to that issue of Poetry goes into detail to explain that quote. It’s online, if anyone wants the long answer. Short answer: I mean that there are hundreds of Native nations, so Native American poetry is an umbrella term like Native American art.

TM: I love that your latest collection of poetry, Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media, contends with notions of curation and uses art terms, specifically with language and ekphrasis. This collection of poetry is so delightfully representative of the work you do as an art curator and activist. What themes within this collection do you feel the most engaged with and why?

shows are called Skew Lines, to suggest our work is parallel but our joining is an illusion. Still, Rosy and I will give a collaborative presentation together at some point during our shows.

TM: I love the poem, “Curatorial Statement for Apocalyptic Poetics.”

Can you tell me where this poem came from?

HE: Oh, that’s one of my poems responding to contemporary, mainstream poetry and art that treats our present conditions and dim prospects for the future as a trend. There’s a gory glory in a fearful, grim stance. But I want to be clear I’m not going to revel in our doom even if my poetry would find a better audience that way. Indigenous people are already post-apocalyptic; we don’t have to imagine apocalypse, we are surviving it.

TM: If you could put any five books into a time capsule for survivors of the future, which books would they be?

In that book there’s a through line about misunderstandings of art, of lyrics, of life, of the message and metaphors of our times. There’s also the idea that someone in the future would curate our ephemeral experiences—like instant messages or listening to songs, those slippery things.

That’s the heart of the book. The invisible art of gathering voices and visions, curation and editing, directing films—my experiences with these are behind those poems. I thought the book would be context to my collaborations and mark the end to my work as a curator and installation artist. But no, they keep dragging me back to the art world. In fact, my visual work has expanded to the point that I have the gall to consider I might be a visual artist. My first solo show will be in May at Soo Visual Arts Center in Minneapolis. It will be concurrent with an installation by Rosy Simas. Our two

HE: My relationship with books is so personal, so ongoing, it might as well be the first five books next to me right now: This Accident of Being Lost: Songs and Stories by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, which is actually relevant (“we are the singing remnants/left over after/ the bomb went off in slow motion”); Truth to Power: Writers Respond to the Rhetoric of Hate and Fear, an anthology of resistance poetry from Cutthroat journal; The Relentless Business of Treaties: How Indigenous Land Became U.S. Property by Martin Case; A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing

by David Mura; The Great Vanishing Act: Blood Quantum and the Future of Native Nations, edited by Kathleen Ratteree and Norbert Hill. I guess in the future they’ll all be NDN. TM: Same question for paintings?

HE: Much harder to answer without being predictable. I imagine those survivors would want images of an earlier earth—and I’m not too keen on SPRING 2019 | 93

ART+LIT

above Andrea Carlson (Anishinaabe), Long Weekend, 2012, ink, oil, watercolor, graphite, and gouache on paper, 40 × 55 in. Image courtesy of Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota. opposite, top Heid E. Erdrich and Louise Erdrich (both Turtle Mountain Ojibwe), detail of Agency Apophany, 2015, installation. Photo: Heid E. Erdrich. opposite, below Aza Erdrich, Pallas Erdrich, and Heid E. Erdrich (all Turtle Mountain Ojibwe), detail shots of Agency Apophany, 2015, installation and text, Bockley Gallery. Image courtesy of Heid E. Erdrich.

landscape except George Morrison. I’m the worst person to be the one to pick. It’s such a personal choice. What will people need? Maybe a Christi Belcourt for the beadwork patterns of plant knowledge.

We could not get cave paintings or earthworks in a capsule. Hmm, if they were reading those books above, I’d love a Jim Denomie in there and an Andrea Carlson, but they are my friends and inspirations, so I can’t tell if they would be full of unanswerable mysteries in the time to come. I’d refuse the task. I like ephemeral exhibitions rather than museum collections. The future best just paint itself.

TM: Which artists are you most excited by, and can you discuss why?

HE: It’s pretty clear from my poetry and film that Andrea Carlson is a kind of muse to me. There are universes in her work, and I can go there to figure out all sorts of things. My sister Louise has been

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painting lately, and I love her abstractions of the writing process into lines.

Her found-object works have fascinated me almost my entire life. We are about to revive Agency Apophany, our installation.

We will do a Feast of the Apophany as part of the revival.

Another artist I most go to for inspiration is Jonathan Thunder, who is just killing it with new work in large-scale animation and 3D printing. Jim Denomie tells present events as Native American history through figures who are someone humorous, heartbreaking, alive. My art interests are as much about conversation with the artists and community as they are about my love of their technique or their subjects. I have a similar relationship with Christopher Lutter-Gardella, a sculptor. Choreographer Rosy Simas’s installations and paper sculptures particularly resonate for me right now. It’s all about relationship.

ART+LIT

TM: What projects are you working on currently? And do you have any new books or collections in the future?

HE: This is terrifying because I just got done with a huge push to take New Poets of Native Nations out into the world, and I’m in “heidbearnation” until 2019, so I don’t want to think ahead too much while I am lazy. Let’s peek: I mentioned my first solo visual art installation at Soo VAC; that’s all text and image work presented as installation, projections, works on paper and in vinyl, along with a community-made work. Also, in 2019 I’ll work with Rosy Simas on creating a project titled No Known Word. I’m pretty excited for the 2019 opening of Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists, a traveling exhibition of women’s art of Native America. They let me select the literary arts. The women involved in curation are an amazing group. It will be spectacular.

My writing? Sigh. I have a creative nonfiction manuscript I keep tearing up, adding to, reorganizing. My two

poetry manuscripts have titles but not a publisher. Verb Animate is poems and essays written for choreographers.

Another poetry project is Little Big Bully, very personal and risky for me. I’ll send those out in 2019. It takes forever to get

a poetry manuscript to print. If I have another book published in the next ten years, it will be the most surprising thing about the apocalypse.

HEIDERDRICH.COM

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COLLECTIONS

COLLECTIONS: PHILBROOK MUSEUM OF ART

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

T

H O U G H O N LY F O U R INCHES in diameter, Tohono O’odham artist Leona Antone’s Miniature Plaque (1995) draws one in with a complex design woven from horse hair. Brown, red, blonde, white, and black strands create a ring of figures holding hands (21 women, 21 men), encircling a labyrinth. One figure begins and ends the maze. The work is in the Philbrook Museum of Art, which manages a collection of more than 14,500 objects on the grounds of a 25-acre estate in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The 72-room mansion, built in 1927 in the style of a 16th-century Italian Renaissance villa, became Tulsa’s first art museum when Waite and Genevieve Phillips gifted the estate to the city in 1938.1 Antone’s remarkable work is one of about 4,115 in the collection made by Indigenous artists from the Americas.2

Christina Burke joined Philbrook as curator of Native American and non-Western art in July 2006. We spoke recently about the history and character of the museum’s holdings of Indigenous

art, which came from three main sources.3 In 1942 Tulsa businessman Clark Field gifted around 1,800 objects representing over 170 tribes, created between the 1870s and 1950s: 1,100 baskets, 550 pieces of Pueblo pottery, and about 150 paintings and cultural items. Field’s collection is particularly important because he kept detailed records, including the names of women basket makers and ceramic artists who are not identified in other collections. Burke notes, “Baskets by Louisa Keyser (Washoe, also known as Datsolalee) and Sarah Hunter (Panamint Shoshone) are considered exemplary masterpieces.” Burke’s predecessor, Lydia L. Wyckoff (curator, 1991–2000), with assistance from Shelby Tisdale (curator, 1999–2002), edited a book on this collection titled Woven Worlds: Basketry from the Clark Field Collection (Philbrook Museum of Art, 2001).

1. Waite Phillips’s older brothers created the Phillips Petroleum Company. Thomas Gilcrease (Muscogee Creek, 1890–1962) allowed the public to view his collection in 1949; the Gilcrease Museum was later bequeathed to the city of Tulsa.

2. Its holdings also include African (400 objects), Asian (1,000 objects), Oceanic (19 objects), (non-Native) American (1,400 objects), European (515 objects), Antiquities (200 objects), Modern and Contemporary (1,500 objects), Decorative Arts (1,500 objects), and Photography (4,735 prints). Forty-six objects from the Native American collection are viewable online.

3. Christina Burke in discussion with the author, December 2018.

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COLLECTIONS

Philbrook received a second major gift in 1947. Roberta Campbell Lawson (Delaware, 1878–1940), granddaughter of Chief Charles Journeycake (DelawareWyandotte, 1817–1894), amassed a collection of 200 items of clothing, ceremonial items, and cultural arts.

Also during this decade, the University of Tulsa transferred its holdings of Native American cultural arts to Philbrook. These items of clothing and wearable arts had been collected by settlers.4 The university intended to build a campus museum for their care and display but never raised the funds to do so, and in 1995 ownership was formally transferred to Philbrook.

The Native American collection has been enriched by additional acquisitions.

Philbrook hosted its well-known Indian Annual exhibition from 1946 to 1979. This prestigious event provided a critical space for Indigenous artists and the public to see what other living Native artists, particularly painters, were creating around the country. It was also a place to network and share information. Over the exhibition’s 33-year run, Philbrook purchased 297 works from this competition.5 The Indian Annual is often credited with changing perceptions of Indigenous art from strictly baskets and weavings to include more modern and nonrepresentational works 4. These include Daniel E. Soper, Ellis Clark Soper, Bright Roddy, and Alice Mary Robertson.

5. Purchases were made unevenly; the museum bought 39 works the first year, but nothing in 1961 or 1965. right, top Sarah Hunter (Panamint Shoshone, 1883–1967), Pictorial Bowl, ca. 1910, white willow, redbud, juncus, bulrush, flicker quills, 8½ × 23 in., collection of the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, gift of Clark Field, 1949.4.5. right, below Woodrow Crumbo (Citizen Potawatomi-Muscogee, 1912–1989), Burning of the Cedar, 1947, egg tempera on muslin, 83 × 68¾ in., collection of the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, museum purchase, 1947.1.1. opposite, top Identity and Inspiration: 20th Century Native American Art, June 14, 2013, to present. Installation view, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Photo: Jeremy Charles. opposite, below Charles Loloma (Hopi, 1921– 1991), Ring, silver, amethyst, 1½ × 1 3/8 in., collection of the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, The Eugene B. Adkins Collection at Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, L2007.5499.

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COLLECTIONS

above Patrick DesJarlait (Red Lake Ojibwe), 1921–1972), Making Wild Rice, 1946, watercolor, 23 /8 × 29 in., collection of the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, museum purchase, 1947.22. below Dick West (Southern Cheyenne, 1912–1996), Water Serpent, ca. 1951, oil on canvas, 22 × 28 in., collection of the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, museum purchase, 1951.11.

on canvas. Patrick DesJarlait’s (Red Lake Ojibwe, 1921–1972) paintings were two of 39 artworks acquired the first year. Chief Runs Them All (1947) by Bonita Wa Wa Calachaw Nuñez (Luiseño, 1888–1972) is a striking portrait comparable to the rich palettes and impasto approach of some German Expressionists, such as Emil Nolde.

In 1995, Phillips Petroleum Company (now Chevron Phillips

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Chemical Company) gave 105 paintings, most of the corporate collection, to the museum. This prompted the exhibition, Visions and Voices: Native American Painting from the Philbrook Museum of Art, and a comprehensive catalogue by then-curator Lydia L. Wyckoff. Many paintings are executed in Flatstyle, a movement associated with the Studio in Santa Fe and Bacone College in Muskogee.

This style typically depicts daily tribal life, hunting and battle scenes, and dance ceremonies with great attention to details in regalia.

Most recently, the Eugene B. Adkins Collection of jewelry, pottery, and paintings came to the Philbrook in 2007. More than 2,260 objects, including 1,200 pieces of silverwork by artists such as Charles Loloma (Hopi, 1921–1991), Preston Monongye (Mexican-Mission Indian, 1927–1987), and Kenneth Begay (Diné, 1913–1977), are shared with the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. While many museums only recently began looking into ways of integrating or strengthening Native voices in exhibitions and programming, Philbrook’s location in what was formerly Indian Territory and its founding during the establishment of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board resulted in a museum where Native communities have been involved from the start. Neighboring Bacone College established an art department in 1932, a central locus of education for Native artists led by Native artists including Acee Blue Eagle (MuscogeePawnee-Wichita, 1907–1959), Woody Crumbo (Potawatomi, 1912–1989), and Dick West (Southern Cheyenne, 1912–1996), among others. These artists mentored generations of successful Native artists and were deeply involved with the Philbrook Indian Annual.

Like most museums, Philbrook continuously reviews and researches its collections in consultation with a network of experts. In 2004 the museum deaccessioned a fetish bundle and wooden bowl from Taos Pueblo because they were determined to be objects of cultural patrimony. However, Burke explains, “Philbrook maintains possession of these items, as per the stated intentions from

authorities in Taos.” Access is highly restricted. They are never exhibited, photographed, or loaned. This kind of collaborative agreement is more common than one may conclude from divisive headlines that posit repatriation as a simple two-sided issue.

Similarly, Philbrook has an active partnership with the Delaware Tribe of Indians based in Bartlesville, almost an hour north of Tulsa. In the late 1980s, Curtis Zunigha (Delaware), currently director of cultural resources for the Delaware Tribe, learned Philbrook had items from the Big House Church.6 Centuries of forced relocation, forced conversion, and systematic assimilation have nearly erased this Indigenous religion. The last Big House ceremony was held in 1924. In the 1940s, prayer sticks, rattles, sculpted doorposts, and other objects came to the Philbrook “under cover of darkness,” as Zunigha describes the regular practices of amateur archaeologists before the establishment of ethical guidelines (which are still being written). Zunigha worked with Wyckoff to curate an exhibition with these artifacts and sacred objects to teach the Delaware and the larger public about Lenape culture. He stresses that the majority of his tribal community are Christian and believe the Big House religion should remain in the past. As a critical component of their unique heritage, he and others work for the new generation to learn as much as possible. In June 2018 he organized a culture camp for youth. A highlight of the week was visiting the Philbrook vault, where the teens were able to see these sacred objects up close, offered tobacco, and prayed to their ancestors. Though Zunigha felt motivated to educate a wider public when he curated the exhibition in 1993, he has come to believe that some of the objects should be visited only by tribal members. He has never advocated for the physical repatriation of this collection because, at the present time, the tribe does not have the proper facility.

When funds become available to realize a temperature- and humidity-controlled vault for archival storage, the Delaware Tribe will repatriate. Until then he hopes to continue the youth camp annually to nourish cultural hunger.

In 2013 Philbrook expanded with an additional 30,000-square-foot satellite facility downtown. In these sleek, contemporary galleries, Burke curated the permanent collection thematically rather than chronologically or by region.

The concepts of Preservation, Adaptation, Innovation, and Integration allow visitors to consider relationships among works, which may not have been juxtaposed under conventional schematics. Oklahoma is home to the third most tribes of any US state (behind Alaska and California) and is second only to California in Native population, though racism and cultural stereotyping directed toward Indigenous people remains extremely problematic. In this context, Philbrook’s work remains critical to educate the broader public about Indigenous cultures as well as serve as a trusted repository for sacred items temporarily entrusted to its care.

6. All information from Curtis Zunigha in discussion with the author, December 2018.

Coe Center Experience our unique collections

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MEMORIAL

SHAN GOSHORN July 3, 1957–December 1, 2018

“T

HERE ARE SOME women who show up to speechify for the sisterhood but seldom show up for the sisters. There are artists who just show up to make a sale. And some activists only show up for the show or to profile against the sunset. Shan is not any of these. Shan shows up. Full stop.

She should be taught as a life lesson on the kind of human being we all might strive to become.”

I wrote these words for Resisting the Mission, Shan’s exhibition of mixed-media baskets depicting hostage-students at the first federal Indian boarding school, which was displayed at Trout Gallery, Dickinson College. I was deeply honored that she asked me to write the catalogue essay on the arc of her artwork and activism.

As a longtime friend and “Shan fan,” I’ve curated her work into exhibitions for three decades including her first basket, Pieced Treaties: Spider’s Web Treaty Basket, displayed in an exhibition on sovereignty and treaties, Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations at the National Museum of the American Indian (2014–21).

Shan and I first met in Tulsa in 1992 during the ramp up to the Columbus Quincentenary, aka the 500th anniversary of The Invasion. She and I hit it off, recognizing common concerns with human rights, the environment, and the continuing genocidal tendencies hemisphere-wide.

Shan Goshorn was a brilliant, wise, and beloved woman—brave, caring, passionate, and compassionate.

A truth seeker, she was a strong-hearted, good-humored activist for the rights of Native peoples, women, artists, the environment, and more. A mixed-media, concept-based artist of great renown, Shan worked in photography, painting, basket making, silversmithing, and collage and montage artistry. Her many series make fulsome, cohesive statements, and she mastered each subject in a manner

above Shan Goshorn in her studio with a basket in process.

Photo: Lorae Davis.

worthy of acknowledgment as a scholarly dissertation.

Shan was a captivating storyteller and a most effective advocate. In making art or otherwise imparting knowledge, she was clear and unflinching about treaty violations, grave robbing, violence against women, torture of children, harm to Mother Earth, mascoting, stereotyping, and damage to Native languages and sacred places. Her statements continue to give heart to those searching for ways to present issues and reach for solutions to our myriad emergency situations. The impact of her work on generations to come is incalculable.

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Shan’s constructions and montages provide visual commentary on the social injustice of invidious discrimination and the distortions of cultural identity in popular culture. Her Honest Injun collection, launched in 1992, shows the wide range of misrepresentations of Native ceremonies, clothing, appearance, histories, and values resulting from 500 years of commodification. She handpainted black-and-white photographs of commercial brands that use so-called Native names and imagery, such as the Land O’Lakes butter maiden and the Cleveland baseball team’s former symbol, “Chief Wahoo.”

MEMORIAL

Through her art, Shan made history and information accessible to people who know little about laws, or about our unique need for and relationship to complex substantive legal policies.

The “wounds inflicted by institutionalized racism,” cannot heal, Shan once said, “until we are perceived as human beings” rather than “archaeological artifacts.” The images and voices, of Shan and other artists, have contributed significantly to efforts at instituting and enforcing US policies that address repatriation and other cultural imperatives.

Defending the Sacred is Shan’s homage to the Standing Rock resistance to the pipeline that threatens L akota lands and water. Her multimedia construction is a briefcase-shaped basket in the Cherokee “water” design, interwoven with images and texts of treaties, Lakota prayers, a prayer fan, and the Oceti Sakowin camp, topped by an antler handle for the “strength of our resolve.” Comparisons between the pipeline and a snake of pure greed captured the imagination of many, including Shan. She wove a snake over pipeline propaganda on the outside of her briefcase—a structure she chose because the battleground is the judicial system, where the arduous case has far outlasted the ten-month standoff.

Not only did Shan stand up to give her creativity and voice, she also donated all proceeds to the Standing Rock Sioux legal fund—another example of why Shan is respected, admired, and beloved.

I miss our inspiring, funny, and always good talks about art, shows, show-offs, justice, spirits, signs, living beings, connectedness, excellence, health, death, dying, renewal, living, and love. I join all with love of Shan Goshorn. Through her good works, good vision, and good words, we will continue to find answers, respect the unanswerable, and fill the silence left by our sacrificing ancestors.

—Suzan Shown Harjo

SNOWFLAKE FLOWER December 26, 1931–November 23, 2018

I

WRITE ON BEHALF of Sn ow f l a ke F l owe r (Stephanie C. Rhoades), and for our family, friends, and acquaintances. On November 23, 2018, we lost a beloved mom, sister, great-greatgrandmother, auntie, friend, and an all-around wonderful person. Born on December 26, 1931, she was from the village of Ko-tyit-i (Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico). Most people knew her as Snowflake Flower.

I always knew her as Mom and I will focus on how I knew her, as her son, and the life she lived and enjoyed.

The first and only college graduate of her siblings, Snowflake Flower attained her bachelor of arts degree at the University of Albuquerque when she was 41 to 42 years old. Soon after, she decided to come back home to Ko-tyit-i to start a new life as an artist. By this time, her sisters Ada Suina and Martha Arquero were well into the art of creating storyteller figurines, which depict children climbing on male or female storytellers and are well-known here in the Southwest. She decided to do the same and help keep the genre alive. At first, it was hard learning the methods of mixing clay and firing the pieces outdoors.

I remember her frustration at pieces exploding in the firings, or paint getting burnt off from too much heat. But she was persistent in wanting to learn. It took her several years to finally get comfortable enough with the process to be satisfied with her work. Until her passing, she had made a good name for herself as an artist—winning numerous awards, getting her name published in books, and having pieces exhibited in museum collections.

Snowflake Flower’s favorite moments were when her collectors would come to visit. She got excited telling people the stories behind her pieces. During one of these stories, she was asked why she painted a feather on her work. She would tell people it was a prayer feather for a daughter, Patricia Ann Loretto (“Happy”),

above Snowflake Flower and her artwork. Image courtesy of her family.

who had gone through a very bad cesarean section and ended up in a coma for three weeks. She did recover but was never the same. Patricia was basically bedridden for 21 years until she passed. The feather was in remembrance of her, and the love and prayers my mom had for her daughter every time she made a clay piece.

Mom always enjoyed her work. It was that connection to the past, as well as a preservation of the future. Some of her favorite pieces were the coyotes, but she just really loved making her art pieces. I guess that’s what makes a great artist—not hating the pieces you create, but loving what you do. That’s the way I saw her, loving her work and singing her old Native songs. She would sit there and sing to her pieces with complete passion.

Today (December 26, 2018), Snowflake Flower would be celebrating her 87th birthday. Instead, we are here remembering her, as a big storm of snowflakes comes falling to the ground. She will always be remembered through the art she created, the love she so willingly and freely gave, and, of course, the snowflakes that surround us, just like they do today. We will miss you, Mom. We will always remember you and cherish the love you gave us.

—Jonathan Loretto SPRING 2019 | 101

MEMORIAL

GREG HOLY BULL March 28, 1965–December 29, 2018

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REGORY GILES HOLY BULL, whose Lakota name, Tate O Kinyan, translates as Flying Wind, was a visual artist, singer, Lakota teacher, storyteller, public speaker, master horseman, pipe carrier, and sun dancer, who lifted up his Lakota and Dakota people in many ways throughout his complex life.

His parents were Martin Holy Bull (1920–1980) and Agatha Reel Howard Holy Bull (1918–2007) from Wakpala, South Dakota. They both spoke Lakota, so Holy Bull’s first language was Lakota, which he later taught at the University of North Dakota. Enrolled in the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Holy Bull grew up on the Eagle Butte in South Dakota, on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, and, later, on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. He graduated from Helena High School in Montana.

Holy Bull first earned an associate degree from the United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, North Dakota. Later he earned a BFA degree from University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, and at the time of his passing, he was studying in their MFA program. Two of his metal

above Greg Holy Bull. left & right Grey Holy Bull (Cheyenne River Sioux), details of stained glass. All images courtesy of his family.

sculptures are in the university’s permanent collection and on display at its American Indian Center. Images of the sculptures are included in Storytelling Time: Native North American Art from the Collections of the University of North Dakota (Hudson Hills, 2010).

Active in the powwow community, not just as a dancer but also as an arena director, judge, organizer, and drummer, Holy Bull sang with numerous drum groups. He also composed his own original songs, and one, “Tammy Sparvier’s Song,” was recorded by the Assiniboine Jr. Singers on their album Pow-Wow Songs, Volume 5, released by Canyon Records. Holy Bull and his son Gerimiah went on tour with the Lakota Sioux Dance Theatre to New York City.

The dance troupe was founded in 1978

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on the Rosebud Reservation to share Lakota dances, songs, and oral history with diverse audiences.

A superb horseman, who had also been a bull rider on the rodeo circuit, Holy Bull served as a consultant for Sunka Wankan Ah Ku (Bring Back the Horses), a program sponsored by the Spirit Lake Tribe for young people to learn horsemanship, life skills, and Dakota cultural values. He was also a storyteller and regularly gave talks and presentations about Lakota/Dakota culture.

Besides sculpting metal, Holy Bull pursued several other artistic forms, including beadwork and stained glass. Cynthia Lindquist, president of Cankdeska Cikana Community College, commissioned him to create a stainedglass panel for a new administrative building on the college’s campus in Fort Totten, North Dakota.

Holy Bull officiated at many Lakota and Dakota people’s funerals. He is survived by a large extended family that includes his four sons—Gerimiah “Jesse” Holy Bull, Tyson Holy Bull, Brendon Cardova, Randy Holy Bull—and one daughter, Tara Holy Bull. Holy Bull’s legacy lies with his family, the many tribal members he helped, his Lakota language students, and his stories, songs, and enduring public artworks that celebrate the Lakota worldview.

—America Meredith

MEMORIAL

JAY McGIRT March 23, 1953–December 18, 2018

W

E HONOR THE LIFE of Eco-Mahe Damian Jay McGirt, the respected historian of Maskoke and other Southeastern Indigenous cultures, who has gone to his campfire in the sky. It is with great sadness and heavy hearts that we announce the sudden passing of Uncle Jay in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Born in Okemah in 1953, Jay grew up in Okfuskee, a Maskoke community in rural Okfuskee County. He was from the Wind Clan and Tokvpvcce Etvlwv and a son of the Deer Clan.

As a teenager, inspired by Plains Indigenous peoples’ continuity in the making of their own regalia, Jay was determined to seek a resurgence of creating Southeastern Indigenous clothing.

A master beadwork artist, and with more than 40 years of experience as a textile artist, Jay successfully revived the production of beaded Maskoke bandolier bags, and he promoted the sewing and daily wearing of Southeastern tribal clothing.

One of Jay’s greatest honors was his acceptance into and completion of a competitive internship program at the Smithsonian Institution, under the supervision of William C. Sturtevant, for the study of historic Southeastern textiles and beadwork.

Jay’s beadwork creations were all finely detailed with size 13° cut charlotte beads, fine silk threads, and top-quality Morton and Stroud wools from his personal collections and honoring gifts. Jay’s bandolier bags can be seen in the collections of the Philbrook Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma History Center, Seminole Nation Museum, Museum of the Red River, Kerretv Cuko Museum (Poarch Creek tribal museum), Baltimore Clayworks, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Ah-TahThi-Ki Museum, where one of his most prized pieces, which was contributed to the museum’s collection, is on permanent display.

An avid believer in Indigenous resistance and maintaining independence from tribal governments, Jay was involved in the White Roots of Peace movement and other activism for the rights of Indigenous peoples. He was a fluent Maskoke speaker and taught at the Pemayetv Emahakv Charter School’s Creek Language Immersion Program on the Brighton Seminole Reservation in Florida. Jay shared his knowledge with the world as a teacher, artisan, and historian to the US National Park Service’s Ocmulgee National Monument, Fort Toulouse, and the Moundville Archaeological Park and its Jones Archaeological Museum, where he supervised the production of time period regalia in the living history scenes. He also served as a consultant on the play, Tecumseh at Tokvpvcce, which dramatizes the Shawnee leaders sparking the Red Stick movement among the Maskoke people.

above Jay McGirt (Muscogee-Seminole descent), Bandolier Bag, wool, silk, seed beads, pony beads, yarn. Image courtesy of the author.

Jay’s skills and knowledge in the Maskoke culture will always be unquestioned. He taught us our language, humility in song and dance, and many methods of finger weaving, appliqué, beadwork, and baldric iconography.

Jay would often say, “Ekerrvhaneckatvlkes. Este-cate em ponvkv eteroptten, estimvt oweckat kerreckvres. Este-hvtket oweckekot onkv este-hvtke em accvke vccetvt okotos. Nettv-vtekat este-catet em accvke vccetvt os.” (“You have to know yourself. It is through the Maskoke language that you will know who you are. You’re not a white person, so you’re not supposed to wear white people’s clothes. You’re supposed to wear Indian clothes, every day.”)

Uncle Jay sometimes mentioned that he hoped his life would leave a legacy of cultural revival, and so we say to you, dear uncle: “Mvtat mececkvtet os” (You did just that).

We thank you for all you have gifted us in this world.

—Tahnee Ahtoneharjo-Growingthunder SPRING 2019 | 103

MEMORIAL

AMANDA SWIMMER October 27, 1921–November 24, 2018

above Amanda Swimmer, Beloved Woman, at the Cherokee Voices Festival at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, ca. 2015. Image courtesy of Museum of the Cherokee Indian, Cherokee, North Carolina.

A

M A N DA S W I M M E R , Hon. DHL, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians citizen, was truly beloved for so many different reasons. She was admired for her skills at making pottery.

Respected for her wisdom, she was endeared for her wit. But, above all, she was loved for her heart, which was full of kindness.

The office of Beloved Woman or Man is bestowed upon an EBCI tribal member who has contributed in ways that have made a significant impact on the Cherokee people. The term has been used historically for more than two centuries.

Swimmer was bestowed the title of Beloved Woman with the passage of

Resolution Number 104 by Tribal Council on February 1, 2018. The resolution, submitted by Big Cove Representative Richard French, read in part, “Amanda Sequoyah Swimmer, a member of the Big Cove Community, has dedicated her life to the preservation of the Cherokee culture and language by demonstrating and teaching countless children and adults the art of pottery making, serving as a foster grandparent, sharing stories and knowledge of traditional Cherokee dances and practices to anyone willing to learn.” The passing of Swimmer at the age of 97 on Saturday, November 24, 2018, leaves the tribe with two living Cherokee Beloved Women.

Amanda Swimmer spent her life studying, creating, and teaching

historically accurate Cherokee pottery.

She was one of the first people to determine the uses and name the pottery styles.

The creation of Cherokee pottery was all but decimated after the removal of many Cherokees to the West, but Swimmer spent more than 35 years demonstrating pottery making techniques in the Oconaluftee Indian Village. All of her pieces were created by hand, never using a wheel. For her work in pottery Swimmer received many awards, including the North Carolina Heritage Award in 1994 and the Mountain Heritage Award from Western Carolina University in 2009.

Swimmer is also featured in documentaries and several books.

“Amanda Swimmer embodied all the characteristics of what it means to be a Cherokee elder,” said Eastern Band Principal Chief Richard G. Sneed.

“Amanda was a pillar for her family, the Big Cove Community and the EBCI. She will be sorely missed for her humor, kindness, and wisdom. My thoughts and prayers are with her family during this difficult time.”

Mrs. Swimmer instilled in countless tribal and non-tribal members a great love of God and sense of duty to her fellow human beings. I am honored to have met Amanda Swimmer on several occasions. She was always kind hearted.

An empty space is left on this earth with Mrs. Swimmer’s physical passing. But she has left behind her faith and wisdom, giving it to her large family of children and many grandchildren. When asked about her passing, Micah Swimmer, Mrs. Swimmer’s grandson, noted, “Right now, the only thing that rings in my head is something my brother Jake said when he learned of her passing. He said, ‘She finally opened her eyes and was happy with what she saw.’”1 —Michole Eldred

1. Scott McKie Brings Plenty, “Beautiful Soul: Beloved Woman Amanda Swimmer Passes Away,” Cherokee One Feather (November 26, 2018), web.

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Norman Akers (Osage), Little House Effect, 2018, lithograph on paper, 21½ × 16 in., courtesy of the artist.

STORIES FROM THE LAND Indigenous Voices Connecting Within the Great Plains SYMPOSIUM | March 7–9, 2019 | Salina and Lindsborg, Kansas Hosted by Bethany College and First American Art Magazine EXHIBITION | Continuing through March 15, 2019 Mingenback Art Center Gallery, 335 E. Swensson Street, Lindsborg Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery, 401 N. First Street, Lindsborg Featuring the work of Norman Akers, Matthew Bearden, Kelly Church, Chase Kahwinhut Earles, Michael Elizondo Jr., Anita Fields, Sharron Ahtone Harjo, April Holder, Matt Jarvis, Linda Eben Jones, Linda Lomahaftewa, Chris Pappan, Melissa Melero-Moose, Tony Tiger, Jodi Webster, and Micah Wesley

firstamericanartmagazine.com/stories We are grateful for the support of Humanities Kansas and the Lindsborg Arts Council to make this symposium and exhibition possible.

SPOTLIGHT

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SPOTLIGHT

SPOTLIGHT: KEY MARCO CAT Unknown Calusa artist, ca. 700–1450 CE, incised hardwood, likely buttonwood, approximately 6 in., collection of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, A240915.

By Mariah L. Ashbacher and America Meredith

S

UBTROPICAL KEY MARCO, south of Naples, Florida, was one of the Ten Thousand Islands, a group of small barrier islands and mangrove islets situated just off the Gulf Coast of South Florida. What was once the Key Marco site is now Marco Island, Sadly, its mounds have been leveled and built upon.

In 1895 Colonel Charles Day Durnford, a retired British officer, discovered several artifacts belonging to the Indigenous people of the Key Marco area centuries earlier.1 Shortly after Col. Durnford unearthed the Marco artifacts, he met the Smithsonian anthropologist Frank H. Cushing (1857–1900), known for his studies with the Zuni, who traveled to Marco to examine the site himself.

In 1896, Cushing led the Pepper-Hearst Expedition to Marco Island and disinterred “one of the most spectacular assemblages of artifacts in the history of North American archaeology,” as Austin J. Bell, curator of collections for the Marco Island Historical Society, notes.2 An estimated 90 percent of material culture in precontact Native settlements was perishable. Textiles, feathers, baskets, hide, and wood—these materials almost always returned to the earth, especially in wet climates such as coastal southwest opposite The Key Marco Cat is one of the finest pieces of preColumbian Native American art ever discovered in North America. Image courtesy of Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution (A240915), and the Marco Island Historical Society, Marco Island, Florida.

Florida. In those early days of archaeology, the technology to preserve organic objects that had spent centuries submerged did not exist. Cushing reported that less than half of the objects members of the expedition pulled from the muddy swamps survived deterioration for more than a few days.3 Only rare fragments allow us to speculate what the once vast corpus of precontact woodcarvings may have looked like. Yet, miraculously, a cache of elegant woodcarvings—at once stylized and representational—were preserved through the centuries in the muck of a Florida swamp. The oxygen-deprived depths of the swamp saved the graceful figurines, ambassadors from ancient cultures to spark the imagination of present and future generations. These are the Key Marco artifacts, and none is more alluring than the mysterious Key Marco Cat. The six-inch feline-human effigy, believed to date from approximately 700 to 1450 CE, kneels with its legs curled under, resting back on its haunches. The figure’s arms are taut, pushing its shoulders rounded up and forward, with hands modestly resting on its thighs. Carvings on each side of the figure, from the shoulders to the back of the body, form a spiral, possibly indicating the kind of sinewy musculature observed in a Florida panther. On its back, a long sleek feline tail has been carved in relief against the spinal column, extending upward to the back of its head. The cat’s vast round eyes stare out in a hypnotic, watchful gaze, and its rounded ears stand alert with the rest of the graceful feline features, delicately and expertly incised, terminating in a pert nose and pursed mouth.

Scholars believe that the cat’s carver was from the Calusa people, possibly Muspa, a Calusa subtribe known to inhabit the area at least since the 16th-century arrival of the Spanish.

“In addition to the Key Marco Cat,” writes Ben Brotemarkle, director of the Florida Historical Society, “Cushing’s team excavated vibrantly colored ceremonial masks and other carved objects, identifying the Calusa as one of the most artistic tribes to inhabit Florida prior to European contact.”4 Archaeologists consider the Key Marco Cat to be stylistically distinct from woodcarvings from other regions of North America. The elegant feline-human figure was carved from an unidentified tropical hardwood, likely using shell scrapers and shark teeth, and then seasoned with protective layers of animal fat.

Since Cushing’s excavations were a joint effort between the Smithsonian and the University of Pennsylvania, artifacts were split between the two institutions.

Some were eventually transferred to the National Museum of Natural History and the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Durnford’s initial finds were donated to the British Museum in July 1895, and today they are located in the Department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the British Museum.5 The Key Marco Cat will be on display at the Marco Island Historical Society until April 2021. Related artifacts can be seen in the museum’s permanent exhibition, Paradise Found: 6,000 Years of People on Marco Island, but the reunion with this very special cat represents the first time these objects have been together in the more than 120 years since their discovery.

1. Colonel Durnford was in the Key Marco area when he made his initial discoveries. He detailed his account in an article “The Discovery of Aboriginal Netting Rope and Wood Implements in a Mud Deposit in Western Florida,” in the American Naturalist (November 1895). See also Annette L. Snapp, “The Durnford Collection,” The Florida Anthropologist 49, no. 4 (December 1996): 267–73.

2. Austin J. Bell and the Marco Island Historical Society, Marco Island (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2017), 10.

3. J. Alden Mason, “Primitive Wooden Masks from Key Marco, Florida,” Archaeology 4, no. 1 (March 1951): 4–5, web.

4. Ben Brotemarkle, “Florida Frontiers: Key Marco Cat provides clue to Calusa tribe,” Florida Today (January 12, 2015), web.

5. Snapp, “The Durnford Collection,” 263.

SPRING 2019 | 107

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For information visit www.phxindcenter.org or contact Jolyana Begay-Kroupa at (602) 264-6768.

NATIVE AMERICAN ART APPRAISALS, INC. SINCE 1936

CALENDAR March 1–3: Phoenix, AZ 61st annual Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market at the Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Avenue. Reception: Friday, March 1, 5:30–8:00 pm. Market: Saturday, March 2, and Sunday, March 3 | (602) 252-8840 | heardguild.org March 2–April 27: Montreal, QC Renato Garza Cervera: Ideals at Art Mûr, 5826 Rue St-Hubert | +1 (514) 933-0711 | artmur.com March 2–June 2: Jackson, MS Visual Voices: Contemporary Chickasaw Art at the Mississippi Museum of Art, 380 S. Lamar Street (601) 960-1515 | chickasawartists.com March 2–June 28: Novato, CA Native Expressions with Becky Olvera Schultz (MestizaKickapoo descent) at Museum of the American Indian, 220 Novato Boulevard | (415) 897-4064 | marinindian.com March 7–9: Lindsborg, KS Stories from the Land: Indigenous Voices Connecting within the Great Plains, symposium sponsored by Bethany College and First American Art Magazine at 335 E. Swensson Street, in conjunction with Stories from the Land: Indigenous Voices Connecting within the Great Plains, a group exhibition at Mingenback Art Center Gallery, 335 E. Swensson Street, and the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery, 401 N. First Street, continuing through March 15 (405) 561-7655 | firstamericanartmagazine.com/stories March 8: New York, NY Resisting, Reclaiming, Reframing: Indigenous Communities and Art Museum Collections at the Italian Academy, 1161 Amsterdam Avenue, 9:30 am–5:30 pm (212) 854-2306 | italianacademy.columbia.edu March 9–11: El Prado, NM 7th annual Taos Pueblo Art Winter Show at the Millicent Rogers Museum, 1504 Millicent Rogers Road, an art market (575) 758-2462 | millicentrogers.org March 9–August 4: Indianapolis, IN A Sense of Beauty: Showcasing the Power and Beauty in Native Art at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, 500 W. Washington Street (317) 636-9378 | eiteljorg.org

(855) NAAA-INC EMAIL INFO@NAAAINC.COM VISIT WWW.NAAAINC.COM CALL

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March 14–April 27: Vancouver, BC An Exploration of Resilience, solo exhibition for Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena) at the grunt gallery, 350 E. 2nd Avenue #116 | +1 604-875-9516 | grunt.ca

Kelly Church

NEA 2018 NATIONAL HERITAGE FELLOW OTTAWA AND POTTAWATOMIE GUN LAKE BAND ARTCOVE@HOTMAIL.COM MARCH 1 & 2 HEARD FAIR BOOTH I-14 PHOENIX, AZ THROUGH MARCH 15 STORIES FROM THE LAND, MINGENBACK ART CENTER GALLERY BETHANY COLLEGE, LINDSBORG, KS THROUGH APRIL 28 NATIVE FIBER, WISCONSIN MUSEUM OF QUILTS & FIBER ARTS CEDARBURG, WI MAY 24–26 MIAC NATIVE TREASURES SANTA FE, NM

UNIQUE, INNOVATIVE BLACK ASH BASKETRY AND FIBER ARTS W W W.WO O D L A N D SA RT S .CO M

March 16–September 16: New York, NY T.C. Cannon: At the Edge of America at the National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center, 1 Bowling Green | (212) 514-3700 | nmai.si.edu/visit/newyork March 21–December TBA: Bar Harbor, ME wolankeyutomon: Take Care of Everything at the Abbe Museum, 26 Mount Desert Street, in partnership with Maritime Indigenous Artists, Inc. | (207) 288-3519 | abbemuseum.org March 30–August 28: Indianapolis, IN Bringing Friends Together: Contemporary Hopi Carvings from the Eagle, Perelman, and Rader Collections at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, 500 W. Washington Street | (317) 636-9378 | eiteljorg.org March 31, 2019–March 1, 2020: Santa Fe, NM Diego and Mateo Romero: A Larger Vision at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, 710 Camino Lejo (505) 476-1269 | indianartsandculture.org April 2–June 14: Davis, CA Indigenous Futurisms at the C. N. Gorman Museum, University of California, Davis, campus, 1316 Hart Hall, (530) 752-6567 | gormanmuseum.ucdavis.edu

April 6: Scottsdale, AZ Silver & Turquoise Ball, fundraiser for the Phoenix Indian Center, at the Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch, 7700 E. McCormick Parkway, featuring silent and live auctions (608) 264-6768 | phxindcenter.com April 20: Norman, OK Caddo Festival at the Sam Noble Museum, 2401 Chautauqua Avenue. Visual arts, dancing, drumming, and symposium (405) 325-4712 | samnoblemuseum.ou.edu April 20: Missoula, MT Warshirt Workshop with Bently Spang at the Missoula Museum of Art, 335 N. Pattee Street, 11:00 am–12:30 pm, all ages (children under seven should be accompanied by an adult), free (406) 728-0447 | missoulaartmuseum.org April 20: Missoula, MT Watershed and Ethnobotany Workshop with Bently Spang and Linwood Tallbull at the Missoula Museum of Art, 335 N. Pattee Street, 1:00–2:00 pm | (406) 728-0447 | missoulaartmuseum.org April 26: Collinsville, IL Spring Indian Market Days at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, 30 Ramey Street | (618) 346-5160 | cahokiamounds.org SPRING 2019 | 109

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May 4–25: Minneapolis, MN Skew Lines with Heid E. Erdrich and Rosy Simas at Soo Visual Arts Center, 2909 Bryant Avenue South (612) 871-2263 | soovac.org May 9–June 23: Nuuk, Greenland Annual KIMIK Exhibition at the Nuuk Art Museum, Kissarneqqortuunnguaq 5, group show of Greenlandic arts collective | +299 32 77 33 | nuukkunstmuseum.com kimikart.com May 13: Seattle, WA Native Art Market at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington, 17th Avenue NE and NE 45th Street, 10:00 am–4:00 pm | (206) 543-5590 | burkemuseum.org

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May 17–19: Bar Harbor, ME Abbe Museum Indian Market in downtown Bar Harbor, hosted by the Abbe Museum | (207) 288-3519 | abbemuseum.org May 24 & 25: Sulphur, OK 6th annual Artesian Arts Festival, sponsored by the Chickasaw Nation, in Artesian Plaza, West Muskogee Avenue. Reception: Friday evening. Market: Saturday from 10:00 am–8:00 pm (580) 272-5520 | chickasaw.net May 24–26: Santa Fe, NM Native Treasures Indian Arts Festival, hosted by the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, at the Santa Fe Convention Center, 201

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W. Marcy Street. More than 200 artists, benefits the MIAC (505) 216-0683 | nativetreasures.org May 25 & 26: Flagstaff, AZ 28th annual Zuni Festival of Arts & Culture at the Museum of Northern Arizona, 3101 N. Fort Valley Road (928) 774-5213 | musnaz.org May 25–June 8: Santa Fe, NM Anita Fields: It’s Not Always Black & White, Sometimes It’s Gold at King Galleries, 130 Lincoln Avenue #D. Artist talk and demo: Monday, May 27 | (480) 440-3912 | kinggalleries.com

MAY 17–19, 2019 DOWNTOWN BAR HARBOR, MAINE

May 25–July 26: Brantford, ON 45th annual Indigenous Art (formerly called the First Nations Art Exhibition), juried art show, at the Woodland Cultural Centre, 184 Mohawk Street +1 (519) 759-2650 | woodland-centre.on.ca June 1: Miami, OK Native Art Market at the Shawnee Tribe Cultural Center, 19 N. Eight Tribes Trail, 10:00 am–4:30 pm (918) 544-6722 | shawneeculture.org June 1 & 2: Oneida, WI Woodland Indian Art Show & Market at the Oneida Radisson Hotel & Conference Center, 2040 Airport Drive, free (920) 490-3985 | woodlandindianart.com

ABBEMUSEUM.ORG/INDIANMARKET

June 2–August 18: Minneapolis, MN Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2400 Third Avenue South (612) 870-3000 | new.artsmia.org June 3–August 12: Pine Ridge, SD 51st annual Red Cloud Art Show at the Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School, 100 Mission Drive (605) 867-5491 | redcloudschool.org/museum June 7–9: Oklahoma City, OK 33rd annual Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival at the Cox Convention Center, 1 Myriad Gardens (405) 427-5228 | redearth.org June 14–16: Crazy Horse, SD Gift from Mother Earth Art Show, art market, at the Crazy Horse Memorial, 12151 Avenue of the Gods (605) 673-4681 | crazyhorsememorial.org June 20–August 25: Toronto, ON Brian Jungen at the Art Gallery of Toronto, 317 Dundas Street +1 (877) 225-4246 | ago.ca June 21–23: Indianapolis, IN 27th annual Eiteljorg Indian Market & Festival at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, 500 W. Washington Street | (317) 636-9378 | eiteljorg.org June 22 & 23: Okmulgee, OK Council House Art Market at the Muscogee Creek Nation Council House, 106 W. 6th Street. Open to all tribes (918) 549-2434 | creekfestival.com SPRING 2019 | 111

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July 6: Bar Harbor, ME Native American Festival and Basketmakers Market at the College of the Atlantic Campus, 105 Eden Street (207) 288-3519 | maineindianbaskets.org July 6 & 7: Flagstaff, AZ 86th annual Hopi Festival of Arts & Culture at the Museum of Northern Arizona, 3101 N. Fort Valley Road (928) 774-5213 | musnaz.org July 12–14: Collinsville, IL Cahokia Mounds Contemporary Indian Art Show at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, 30 Ramey Street. Juried art market featuring 30 artists. Reception: Friday, 6:30–9:00 pm (618) 346-5160 | cahokiamounds.org July 13 & 14: Prescott, AZ Prescott Indian Art Market at the Sharlot Hall Museum, 415 W. Gurley Street | (928) 445-3122 sharlot.org/festival/prescott-indian-art-market

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July 14 & 15: Rapid City, SD 7th annual Native POP: People of the Plains at Main Street Square.

Reception: Friday; award reception, tickets available. Market Saturday (605) 394-4101 | nativepop.org For more events, visit our online calendar at

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

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June 2 - August 11, 2019

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ENTRIES DUE May 10, 2019 The Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School Pine Ridge, SD 57770 More information at www.redcloudart.show 605.867.8257

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