First American Art Magazine No. 27, Summer 2020

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

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

NO. 27, SUMMER 2020

NATIVE ART WORLD RESPONSE TO COVID-19

LENA SNOW AMASON

COMANCHE HOMECOMING PHOTO ESSAY

JASON GARCIA

SWAIA’S NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR PORCUPINE QUILL BOXES DISPLAY UNTIL OCT. 5, 2020

MARLOWE KATONEY COURTNEY M. LEONARD

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Yaakni’ (Good Earth) 63Chokma’ x 53” Blanket 63 x 53” Blanket Mahotatextiles.com

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1 5 TH A N N U A L

CHEROKEE

ART MARKET O C TO B E R

10 & 11, 2020

“The Passing of a Generation” by Troy Jackson

Sequoyah Convention Center at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa cherokeeartmarket.com | 877.779.6977

Marlowe Katoney Navajo Textiles

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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

Lisa Hudson, Chickasaw Grace, 2017, Digital duotone print, 7.1 in. x 6.5 in.

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C H I C KASAWA RT I STS .CO M

issue no. 27, summer 2020

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

Native Art World Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic By various authors

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Recent Developments

Point of Contact: The Art of Quillwork Then and Now

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

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Seven Directions 14 Anya Montiel, PhD (Mestiza/ Tohono O'odham)

Returning Home: Comanche Homecoming at Sultan Park Photo essay by Ben Norberto III (Comanche), text by Juanita Pahdopony (Comanche)

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SWAIA Selects Kim Peone to Be Executive Director: A New Chapter Begins for Both

By RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo)

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Collections: Minneapolis Institute of Art

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

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90

REVIEWS Exhibition Reviews

78

Book Review 82

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IN MEMORIAM Rodslen Brown 94 (Cherokee Nation, 1960–2020)

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

ARTIST PROFILES Lena Snow Amason: 54 Alutiiq Carver

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD Jason Garcia:

Santa Clara Pueblo Clay Artist and Printmaker

By Michelle J. Lanteri

Art+Literature 84 Joy Harjo: Mvskoke/Cherokee Poet, Musician, and Author

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD Artwork by Daniel McCoy Jr. (Muscogee/Citizen Potawatomi) Spotlight: 88 Seal Vision: Shared Spirit

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

OPINION The Indian-on-Indian Art Plague: Intertribal Misappropriation

By Nanette Kelley (Osage/Cherokee Nations)

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66

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David Shananaquet 95 (Little Traverse Odawa, 1955–2020)

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

Marlowe Katoney: 66 Navajo Textile Artist and Painter

By Jill Ahlberg Yohe, PhD Courtney M. Leonard: 72 Shinnecock Ceramicist and Multimedia Artist

By Jami Powell, PhD (Osage Nation)

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cover Marlowe Katoney (Navajo), Mitten Buttes Monument Valley Eyedazzler, 2019, wool, vegetal dyes, commercial dyes, 15 × 24 in. Image courtesy of Yun Gee Park Gallery, Tucson, Arizona.

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info@coeartscenter.org • 505.983.6372

1590 B Pacheco Street, Santa Fe, NM 87505 Coe Center

Ralph T. Coe Center for the Arts

issue no. 27, summer 2020 ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Online)

Leggings, c. 1880. NA1028.

Artist Unknown (Ojibwe), Child’s

Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Literary Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD (Euro-Canadian) Marketing Director: Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent) Copy Editors: Rosa Cays (Chicana), Jo Ann Reece Proofreaders: Staci Golar, Travis D. Day, Jo Ann Reece, and Angela C. Villa (Chicana) Layout & Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Social Media: Staci Golar, Michelle J. Lanteri, America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho), and Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa)

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

Editorial Advisory Board heather ahtone, PhD (Choctaw/Chickasaw) Jonathan Batkin James T. Bialac, JD Cliff Fragua (Jemez Pueblo) Teri Greeves (Kiowa) Emily Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Linda Lomahaftewa, Hon. DHum (Hopi/Choctaw) Jami Powell, PhD (Osage Nation) Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole) India Rael Young, PhD

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Artist Unknown (Ojibwe), Child’s Leggings, c. 1880. NA1028.

Ralph T. Coe Center for the Arts

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EDITOR'S GREETING

T

HE SPRING 2020 ISSUE of First American Art Magazine (FAAM) marked the pandemic hitting the Americas with a force. Now we’re in a state of limbo.

The United States leads the world in COVID-19 cases, followed by Brazil.

Peru ranks 8th, Chile 12th, Mexico 14th, and Canada 17th.1 The Navajo Nation became one of the hardest-hit nations in the world.2 Cases are rising but many of our states are opening back up.

Much more is now understood about the nature and treatment of the virus than was known three short months ago. What is known is that large gatherings, especially indoors, are dangerous and greatly increase the risk of the virus spreading, which means in-person art markets and conferences are done for the foreseeable future. Museums and galleries in different countries are cautiously reopening to test if social distancing can provide a safe art experience for the public.

In March, the Native art world, like much of the rest of the world, turned to the internet. Museums and other art organizations hosted virtual lectures, exhibitions, and even art markets. While nothing fully replaces in-person events, these online experiences provide a valuable link to help keep us connected.

In the face of this health crisis and our economic and social collapse, many within the Native art community have asked themselves how they could help people. Whether lending their artistic skills to craft personal protective equipment (PPE), creating artwork to capture the zeitgeist, or trying to create opportunities for artists whose sales venues have evaporated, the Native art world has responded swiftly and in force.

FAAM editorial advisors and writers agreed that we need to document these

above Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation), ᎥᏳᎩ ᏗᎵᏍᏗᏍᎩ (Virus Fighter), 2020, ink, watercolor on paper, 9 × 12 in. Image courtesy of the artist. royboney.com

efforts and share some of the stories of these responses. Of course, there are so many we can’t capture them all, but we can share a sampling. The stories we recorded offer a glimpse into how our community has been looking out for each other and the broader public.

Like so many other art organizations, FAAM also turned to the internet.

Our writers interviewed Native artists from different regions about their experiences in quarantine, which are published on our blog. We launched our first-ever virtual art exhibition, Masked Heroes: Facial Coverings by Native Artists, and received coverage in publications from The New York Times and NMAI Magazine

to the Tofino-Ucluelet Westerly News.

Most recently, we have partnered with the Ralph T. Coe Center for the Arts in Santa Fe to host “Collections Spotlight,” a reoccurring Zoom conversation in which Native artists select different artworks from the Coe’s collections to discuss.

We are thankful that we can continue to provide a service to the public during these times, and I’m so grateful to all the new subscribers FAAM has acquired in recent months. Thank you for your support, and I look forward to sharing better days ahead.

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

1. Center for Systems Science and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, “Confirmed Cases by Country/Region,” Coronavirus Resource Center, June 17, 2020, web.

2. Robert Klemko, “Coronavirus has been devastating to the Navajo Nation, and help for a complex fight has been slow,” Washington Post (May 11, 2020), web.

First American Art Magazine has a new mailing address!

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SUMMER 2020 | 9

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS MUSEUMS The SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM and the NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN have jointly hired Anya Montiel, PhD (Mestiza/Tohono O’odham), as a curator of American and Native American women’s art and craft. She earned her doctoral and master’s degrees in American studies from Yale University, a master’s degree in museum studies from John F. Kennedy University, and a bachelor’s degree in Native American studies and anthropology from the University of California, Davis. Previously, Montiel served as an assistant professor of art history at the University of Arizona and curator of collections at the Tohono O'odham Nation Cultural Center and Museum in Topawa, Arizona. For more about Montiel, see “Seven Directions” on page 14 of this issue.

The GILCREASE MUSEUM of Tulsa, Oklahoma, hired Chelsea Herr (Choctaw Nation) as its new curator of Indigenous art and culture. Herr, who grew up in

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above The Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Belém, Pará, is the oldest scientific institution in the Amazon region. Photo: Rafael Araujo, Fotoarena. Used with permission.

Corona, California, recently earned her doctoral degree from the University of Oklahoma. She earned her master’s degree in art history at the University of California, Riverside, and taught as an adjunct instructor at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Lakewood, Colorado.

The MUSEU PARAENSE EMÍLIO GOELDI in Belém in northeastern Brazil hosted Arte Indígena em comunicação: diálogos entre saberes tradicionais, estética e sustentabilidade (Indigenous art in communication: dialogues between traditional knowledge, aesthetics and sustainability), its first virtual symposium, in May.

GALLERIES GALERIE SAW GALLERY in Ottawa, Ontario, launched a new circumpolar-focused workspace, the Nordic Lab, in partnership with the Canadian Council for the Arts. The gallery hired Taqralik Partridge (Inuk) to serve as director of the new research space and studio, which is part of the gallery’s new 15,000-square-foot expansion. The lab will host artists-in-residence from polar nations, and its Annie Pootoogook Studio will feature digital workstations, a largeformat printer, and space to practice serigraphy.

ABOVE Detail of the winged attendant figures.

Photo: Marc Davis (CC By 2.0) OPPOSITE Unknown Tiwanaku artists, Gate of the Sun, ca. 500–800 CE, hard-carved andesite. Photo: M. H. Water.

SCHOOLS The UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO selected Mikinaak (Crystal) Migwans (Wiikwemkoong Anishinaabekwe) to serve as curator of Indigenous contemporary art in its art museum and as an assistant professor of Indigenous contemporary art in Canada. Migwans, an interdisciplinary artist, expects to earn their doctoral degree at Columbia University in the fall of 2020. Previously, they served as curatorial assistant at the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation in M’Chigeeng, Ontario.

The INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN INDIAN ARTS in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is reducing its 2020–21 tuition by 10 percent due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis following in its wake. Understanding the digital divide in Indian Country, the college is also willing to loan laptops and tablets and increase data plans on smartphones for students facing challenges to accessing the internet.

AWARDS & HONORS Instead of bestowing its CAD 100,000 prize upon four finalists, the SOBEY ART FOUNDATION made the unprecedented decision to present its annual SOBEY ART AWARD evenly divided between all of the artists on its long list. Canada’s most prestigious art award for artists under the age of 40 will be presented with a CAD 25,000 stipend to 25 artists, including Indigenous artists ᐊᓯᓐᓇᐃᔭᖅ ᐅᐃ Asinnajaq (Inuk), Jordan Bennett (Mi'kmaw), Tsēmā Igharas (Tahltan), Amy Malbeuf (Métis), Caroline Monnet (Algonquin), and Joseph Tisiga (Kaska Dena).

SUMMER 2020 | 11

The 2020–21 cohort of TULSA ARTIST FELLOWS include filmmaker Kyle Bell (Thlopthlocco Muscogee), journalist Allison Herrera (Xolon Salinan descent), interdisciplinary artist and composer Kite (Oglala Lakota), and author Traci Sorell (Cherokee Nation).

The yearlong fellowship, funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, includes living and studio space in the downtown Tulsa Arts District with a $20,000 stipend.

Ottawa-based CO-OPERATIVES AND MUTUALS CANADA bestowed its 2020 LARGE CO-OPERATIVE OF THE YEAR AWARD to Ilagiisaq, the fédération des coopératives du Nunavik.

With more than 1,100 employees, Ilagiisaq is the largest private employer in Nunavik, the Inuit region of northern Quebec. Integral to the creation, marketing, and distribution of Inuit art in Nunavik, the cooperative also operates general stores, fuel stations, hotels, and many other essential services.

The AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES elected artist and Cornell University professor emerita Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee Nation) as a member. The academy, organized in 1780, is an independent, nonpartisan, interdisciplinary research center bringing together leaders from diverse disciplines. WalkingStick, a mixed-media landscape painter from New York, earned her MFA degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She earned her BFA degree from Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and the university awarded her an honorary doctoral degree in 2011.

The AS S O C IAT ION OF A RT MUSEUM CURATORS awarded heather ahtone (Chickasaw/Choctaw), senior curator at the First Americans Museum, a 2020 CURATORIAL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE for her essay, “The American Indian and

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Warhol’s Fantasy of an Indigenous Presence,” in the catalogue Warhol and the West published by the University of California Press in 2019.

RACING MAGPIE, a nonprofit arts organization based in Rapid City, South Dakota, announced its first ARTISTS IN VIRTUAL RESIDENCE to South Dakota artists living west of the Missouri River. The residencies included modest stipends and opportunities to share online presentations about their artistic processes while completing at least one new artwork. Among the artists chosen were jeweler Jhon Duane Goes In Center (Oglala Lakota), beadwork artist and maker of hand-game sets Edwin Harris (Diné), beadwork and textile artist Alex Romero-Frederick (Oglala Lakota), doll maker and sculptor Gene Swallow (Oglala Lakota), and mixed-media painter Lorri Ann Two Bulls (Oglala Lakota).

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CRIME & LEGAL ISSUES

IN MEMORIAM

Three incidents of vandalism were reported at PETROGLYPH NATIONAL MONUMENT in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, this spring, including spray paint on rocks in Boca Negra Canyon.

Petroglyph National Monument is one of the largest sites for rock art in the United States. While most of the artwork there dates from 1300 to 1600 CE, some date back to 3,000 years ago.

GILBERT "GIL" D. WALDMAN (1931–2020), art collector and philanthropist, passed on after a long struggle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Hailing from New Jersey and New York, Waldman earned degrees in political science from New York State College of Teachers and served in the US Naval Reserve. After marrying Nancy Bellin, the couple moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Waldman earned his law degree from the University of Tulsa. He managed his family’s Industrial University and Towel Supply then sold the company, retaining only Superior Linen Services. Becoming avid collectors, the couple purchased homes in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the 1980s.

Nancy Waldman passed on in 2011, and Waldman married longtime family friend Christy Vezolles in 2014.

Waldman served on advisory councils of the Gilcrease Museum and Eiteljorg

A post-contact petroglyph featuring an equestrian at GUNLOCK STATE PARK in Washington County in the southwestern corner of Utah was vandalized.

The boulder upon which the rock art had been carved had been rolled into the nearby reservoir. The Utah State Historic Preservation office reports that vandalism of Indigenous rock art has been on the increase, and park officials have shut off the park’s waterfalls due to overcrowding in the park.

Museum of Indians and Western Arts.

He was a founding trustee at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West.

His collection has been showcased in several exhibitions, including By Beauty Obsessed: Gilbert Waldman Collects the West on view at Scottsdale’s Museum of the West through 2021.

ROGER A. WHITESIDE (1952–2020), a staff photographer for the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), walked on after contracting COVID-19. Whiteside’s photography career began when he served in the US Air Force. Working widely as a freelancer in the Washington, DC, area, Whiteside joined NMAI in 1999 and traveled throughout the Americas photographing Indigenous peoples, homelands, and artworks for the museum. Many of his photographs were featured in the museum’s inaugural exhibitions and numerous publications such as Gerald McMaster’s Native Universe: Voices of Indian America.

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SEVEN DIRECTIONS

ANYA MONTIEL, PHD

A Mestiza/Tohono O'odham Curator Shares Her Top Seven List

A

NYA MONTIEL serves as a curator of American and Native American women’s art and craft in a joint position at both the National Museum of the American Indian and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. After working in the museum field for ten years, she returned to school for her doctoral degree in American studies from Yale University.

Anya also has bachelor’s degrees in Native American studies and anthropology from the University of California, Davis. Her research investigates the effects of Native art employed as an economic development enterprise, namely the policies of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board. Anya was raised in San Francisco, California, and is of Mexican and Tohono O’odham descent.

NORTH: LINDA INFANTE LYONS An artist who lives and works in Anchorage, Alaska, Linda Infante Lyons’s heritage includes Russian and Alaska Native. She is an Alutiiq (Sugpiaq) member of the Koniag, Inc., an Alaska Native regional corporation. Linda often creates paintings of meditative landscapes full of color and light and Russian icon–inspired portraits of Alaska Native women. The objective of her current portraits “is to decolonize, recover lost culture, and empower Alaska Native culture and identity by creating new iconic imagery, melding Christian religious imagery with Indigenous symbols of spirituality.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, she continues to drive to her studio and work on paintings despite the postponement and cancellation of art projects and uncertain future sales.

She likened the quarantine to putting the world (and herself) on pause and “hopes to look outward again, breathe without fear,” and complete a new portrait series on Alaska Native youth. lindainfantelyons.com above Anya Montiel visiting the Hood Museum of Art collections. Photo: Jami Powell (Osage). Image courtesy of the author. left Linda Infante Lyons (Sugpiaq), Wiinarpak Prayer, 2020, oil on panel, 20 × 20 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

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SEVEN DIRECTIONS

WEST: ALEXANDER HERNANDEZ A Mestizo/Mixtec artist living in San Francisco, Hernandez is known for his textile and mixed media art that reflect his “multiple identities and narratives like a Frankensteinian creature made from his Oaxacan roots, Colorado upbringing, Queer sensibilities, HIV+ status and [fused] with pop culture artifacts,” as he states on his art website. During his MFA program at the California College of the Arts, Alexander incorporated fabric into his collage and mixed-media works.

“With patchwork,” he explains, “you must work with what you have, and I let the materials and patterns speak to me.”

After the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016, Alexander created “surrogates” or his soft textile sculptures in the shape of human bodies for Orlando’s Art in Odd Places. He noticed that “people wanted to cuddle with them because [they] seemed to fill a void of either a loved one or family member. People see love, death, sex.”

Since the postponement of his show at Acción Latina due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Alexander now has added appendages and layers to his portraits of HIV+ people of color, thereby revealing their “POZ strength and resilience.” With the fabric scraps, he has created face masks for his “day job” as a case manager for the LGBT youth.

Instagram: @hernalex_art SOUTH: INDIGENOUS FUTURISMS: TRANSCENDING PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE For South, I head to Santa Fe! I planned to see the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts exhibition, Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past/Present/Future, in person, but the museum is closed due to the pandemic. Luckily the exhibition lives in a virtual reality environment. Curated

by Drs. Suzanne Fricke and Chelsea Herr (Choctaw Nation), the exhibition connects Indigenous cosmologies, oral histories, and knowledge systems to ideas of the future and post-apocalyptic

narratives. Culled from artists representing 30 Indigenous nations, there are works in numerous media including animation, beadwork, and light-andsound installation.

“It isn’t just about the future,” as co-curator Suzanne Fricke told Albuquerque Journal reporter Kathaleen Roberts. “It’s about respecting ideas of the past and bringing it into the present.”

While I prefer to see art in person, I appreciate this alternative while I wait for the reopening.

above, top Alexander Hernandez (Mestizo/Mixtec), Embraced, 2017, soft sculpture.

Image courtesy of the author. above, bottom Installation view of Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past/Present/ Future featuring moccasins

by Teri Greeves (Kiowa).

Photo: Jason Ordaz. Image courtesy of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

iaia.edu/new-virtual-reality-vr-exhibition SUMMER 2020 | 15

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

EAST: CARRIE HILL I learned about the basketry of Carrie Hill (Akwesasne Mohawk) when a friend reposted her Ember basket inspired by fire. Made of dyed black ash splints with vertical red- and yellowdyed splints and sweetgrass, the result is a basket emanating heat with a lid of ash “flames” rising from the center. Carrie has been a full-time basket maker for eight years and has lived at Akwesasne her entire life. Her aunt Laura Mitchell taught her Mohawk black ash and sweetgrass basketry.

During the quarantine, she has experienced lost income including the indefinite postponement of workshops and demonstrations, but she continues to work from her home studio. Carrie had the idea for a glowing basket and devoted a week to completing Ember—no laundry or housework, only weaving. The reception to the basket has been very heartwarming, and she emphasizes that “weaving is medicine.” chill-baskets.com UP: SHERRY POCKNETT Sherry Pocknett is a Mashpee Wampanoag chef who I met when I was in graduate school “up” in New England. She ran Sly Fox Den Catering for 20 years before opening her own restaurant by the same name in Preston, Connecticut. Her business does more than serve food; it educates people on Indigenous foods and Wampanoag history and resilience. Sherry comes from a family of cooks and learned to hunt, fish, and gather local foods from a young age. Her menu always includes foods in season and local seafood. She has an infectious, energetic spirit and gives her time to educating people of all ages. Look for her delicious quahog fritters, corn cakes, venison skewers, and smoked mussels. slyfoxdenrestaurant.com

left, top Carrie Hill (Akwesasne Mohawk), Ember, 2020, black ash, dye. Image courtesy of the author. left, bottom Chef Sherry Pocknett (Mashpee Wampanoag) at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, Ledyard, Connecticut.

Photo: Tahnee AhtoneharjoGrowingthunder (Kiowa/ S e m i n o l e / M u s ko k i ) . I m a g e courtesy of the photographer.

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SEVEN DIRECTIONS

DOWN: CHRISTIAN THOMPSON, DFA Dr. Christian Thompson is an Australianborn contemporary artist of the Bidjara people. Although trained as a sculptor, he works in multiple media. In 2010 he became the first Indigenous Australian to be admitted to the University of Oxford where he received his doctorate in fine art. Christian created the series We Bury Our Own as a “spiritual repatriation” in response to the numerous unidentified photographs of Indigenous Australians in the university’s archives. He “reclaimed” these objects and then performed a “burial” of them. His recent work, Bayi Gardiya (Singing Desert), is a virtual reality work blending visual, audio, spatial, and experiential elements. Audiences travel to his family’s historical lands, to a creek bed without flowing water due to climate change, while Christian sings in his Bidjara language. The virtual reality platform allows people “to feel language in the landscape.” christianthompson.net CENTER: HEARTS OF OUR PEOPLE: NATIVE WOMEN ARTISTS The touring exhibition, Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists, opened at DC’s Renwick Gallery on February 21 before closing a few weeks later due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was heartbreaking but necessary to postpone future tours, public programs, and artist talks. For me, the exhibition represented the opportunity for Smithsonian visitors and staff members to witness the legacy, innovation, and Indigenous worldviews expressed by Native women artists.

Despite the physical gallery closing, the website contains the exhibition videos, an audio tour, and selected art images.

The catalogue includes more images and essays by artists and other scholars.

Hopefully the exhibition will be viewed in the Renwick again before traveling to the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/ native-women-artists

above, top Christian Thompson, DFA (Bidjara), Scorch the Earth, 2013, digital C-type print, 48 × 48 in., edition of 5. Image courtesy of the artist. above, bottom Marianne Nicolson, PhD (Kwakwaka’wakw), Baxwana'tsi: The Container for Souls, 2006, installation view of etched-glass, wood, light sculpture from the exhibition Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

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NATIVE ART WORLD RESPONSE

NATIVE ART WORLD RESPONSE TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC A Sampling of Efforts by Indigenous Artists and Art Professors to Confront the Crisis

LEE FRANCIS NAVIGATES THE LOCKDOWN

L

EE FRANCIS IV, PHD (Laguna Pueblo), doesn’t ever seem to stop, not even on his birthday, April 17, when he was up for an energetic interview despite being in the middle of restructuring his many projects and, like parents all over the country, helping his child with online schooling.

A few days earlier, illustrator Dale Ray Deforest (Diné) had written on Facebook, “The fact that Lee Francis is having to sit still during the pandemic is a sure sign of how bad the situation is.”

“That cracked me up when he posted that,” said Francis. “It was all too real. It’s funny ’cause it’s true.”

Francis is pretty much a one-man artistic empire. He is the founder of Native Realities, “an Indigenous Imagination Company, dedicated to unleashing the Indigenous imagination through popular culture, including comic books, graphic novels, games, toys, and collectibles,” Indigenous Comic Con (IndigiPop X), and Red Planet Books and Comics in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He also serves as national director of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, which was founded by his father, the late Lee Francis III, in 1993. And he is a poet, writer, storyteller, and scholar himself.

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The pandemic caused him to pause for a moment ... but only long enough to reimagine, reset, and rearrange his projects so he could continue to provide opportunities for Indigenous artists of all kinds as they faced cancellations of events and markets, not to mention the very real threat the virus posed to their lives and the lives of people in their communities.

For his first act, Francis had to make quick decisions about IndigiPop X, which was scheduled for March 25–29 in Albuquerque, right as cities and states around the United States began stay-athome orders of various degrees.

“We had already started talking the week before that it was looking like we were going to have to postpone in one way or another,” he said. “We started talking with the venue. We started talking with our sponsors. We started talking with

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some other folks about what that would look like if we had to postpone.”

With only days to organize, Francis shifted the Indigenous Futurisms portion of the convention to a successful eight-hour livestream event featuring new videos from artists and musicians, and a few recordings of talks from last year’s convention. He offered refunds for tickets and vendors’ table fees, but those who didn’t want a refund can come to next year’s convention without paying extra charges.

“We’re going to take all that ticket money and just turn that back over to the artists,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that we honored all the creators who are just getting hammered right now, because a lot of them are trade-show oriented. They do four shows a month to make rent, and now they don’t have those opportunities.”

Francis said he felt a responsibility for everyone’s safety as well, which is why he canceled rather than postponing for later in the year. “It was a hard decision, but we know all these folks have families and grandmas, and we don’t want them to go back and cause strife in their own space,” Francis said. “As an organization, we should not be putting any of our communities in that position, to have to make a choice between making money or putting Grandma at risk.”

Red Planet Books and Comics generally opens for longer hours as the weather warms up, and the planned grand reopening was set for after IndigiPop X, but Francis has not reopened the physical store, though he continues to offer online sales.

Besides the Indigenous Futurisms livestream, perhaps one of the most visible projects Francis led was Native Realities’ publishing of COVID-19-related public health posters designed by various Indigenous artists. Francis said he wanted them to be as eye-catching as old-time propaganda.

“This is a call to action, right?” he said. “That’s propaganda.

You need people to recognize them. They need an illustration that catches the eye.”

One of the first artists he recruited was Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation), whose illustration of Sequoyah holding a sign in Cherokee about handwashing, caught his eye.

“I hit him up immediately,” said Francis. “I was like, ‘Dude!

Can I license it from you and use it as a poster?’ Roy’s one of my favorite people, and he was so generous in saying ‘Yeah, it’s all yours, man.’”

Other artists followed suit, including Arigon Starr (Kickapoo/Muscogee), Dale Ray Deforest, and Vanessa Bowen (Diné), and the posters quickly made their way around the internet via social media shares. With his shop closed, Francis offered the posters free for people to download and print.

“We didn’t make any money on them,” he said. “We just needed them out for the community.”

Francis is currently in the process of consolidating his various projects under the umbrella of Wordcraft Circle, a nonprofit organization, in order to streamline them. The reconstruction was in the works before the pandemic started—and it continues.

As part of Wordcraft Circle’s response to the pandemic, Francis created the Wordcraft Circle Creative Relief Fund, which offered small ($200 to $500 USD) grants to 13 individuals to support “any and all creative endeavors.” Initial grants were

distributed in May 2020, but he hopes to offer more as funding becomes available.

As a Native creative himself as well as a supporter of Indigenous arts, Francis said he has witnessed an incredible interconnectedness.

“We’re creating this sort of creative microeconomy where we’re trading our capital for each other, which we were doing anyway, but especially now, we’re seeing folks helping out who do have a little extra resources,” he said. “They are able to slide some over to me, and then I can slide some over to somebody else, and that other person can slide something back. And then, you know, they can put some stuff back out, and then they come back over to me. It’s this wonderful ecosystem. I don’t like the circumstances, but I see the beauty of what we’re trying to do to ensure that creativity continues and that Native folks, specifically, can continue working at the trades that we love and that we want, that fill our souls.”

—Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke) above Arigon Starr (Kickapoo/Muscogee), Clean Hands Save Lives, 2020, digital poster.

Image courtesy of Red Planet Books and Comics, Albuquerque, New Mexico. opposite Craig George (Navajo), Stay Home, 2020, oil on facial mask, private collection.

Image courtesy of the artist.

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NAVAJO NATION FACE SHIELD PROJECT PHOTOGRAPHER WILL WILSON FABRICATES PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT FOR FRONTLINE WORKERS

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above, middle Acrylic face shield frames (at bottom left) and mylar disposable shields.

he Navajo Nation has been one of the hardest-hit nations by the COVID-19 pandemic in the Americas. Santa Fe–based photographer Will Wilson (Navajo), known for his dystopian futuristic Auto Immune Response and interactive portraiture project The Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange, saw his relatives’ needs for personal protective equipment (PPE).

On social media, “I saw my cousin Helen Manygoats posting about going to work to see some of her clients; she works with senior citizens in and around Tuba City,” Wilson writes.

The artist was familiar with a project initiated by the faculty at Georgia Tech. To address the dangerous shortages of PPE, faculty from different Georgia Tech engineering departments consulted healthcare workers to create plans for reusable and disposable face shields that could be then fabricated by volunteers worldwide.1 They uploaded open source templates in various formats, such as SolidWorks CAD software, with detailed instructions to allow people across the world to fabricate their own PPE. The basic design has two components: a frame and a shield. The face shield frame is a flat, rigid headband that fits on one’s head and holds the shield, a disposable curved clear plastic covering, in place over a person’s eyes, mouth, and nose to prevent respiratory droplets from entering a person’s mouth, nose, and eyes—the most common way COVID-19 is transmitted, according to the CDC.2

above, bottom Will Wilson (Navajo) wears a completed shield.

1. “Face Shields,” Georgia Tech, 2020, web.

2. “How COVID-19 Spreads,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, June 1, 2020, web.

above, top Linda Bighorse (Navajo), Wilson’s sister-inlaw and manager of the Navajo Westerners Ace Hardware in Tuba City, Arizona, wearing a completed face shield. All images courtesy of Will Wilson (Navajo).

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Wilson, a photography instructor at Santa Fe Community College (SFCC), knew the school had a Full Spectrum 48-by-36-inch, 90-watt laser cutter, but “initially, SFCC wasn’t letting anyone on campus so I had to wait until mid-May.” Then he could begin fabricating face shields. “After a week or so, I dialed in the settings, and now I have the materials to get in and ramp up production.” He used eighth-inch acrylic sheets and 7 mil thick Mylar film to fabricate his face shields.

“I have sent about 100 face shields to a family in Tuba City,” Wilson writes.

“Sixty to my big sister Sarah McCabe.”

He also sent 20 to his brother and sister-in-law, who manage the Navajo Westerners Ace Hardware, an essential business that needed to remain open during the pandemic.

“I’m going to be making about 500 in the next couple of weeks and reaching out again to folks. I’ve spent about $1,000 out of pocket. Then a friend of mine Kendall Rock [Venmo: @kendall-rock], who has been producing online music events during the shutdown asked if she could put together a show and have donations go to me to buy more materials.” Wilson can also accept donations at paypal.me/willraywilson.

After a recent discussion with a doctor at Santa Fe Indian Hospital, he might be fabricating masks for their staff, as well.

“I guess I’m going to be busy this summer.”

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

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JOHNNIE DIACON PAINTS COVID-19

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IKE MANY ARTISTS, Johnnie Diacon (Thlopthlocco Mvskoke) faced suddenly canceled shows and festivals as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. At first he wasn’t in the mood to do any art at all, much less work in response to the virus. But then something changed.

“I started thinking about the people older than me,” he said. “Our older people are really susceptible to this, and if we lose them, we’re losing some of our last speakers of our language and our people who know our cultures. And a lot of them, unfortunately, are the caretakers of our younger children also. They’re so valuable to us.”

That realization at the end of March led to the first of four pandemic-themed paintings, Kvlonv Ennokvn (Coronavirus), an acrylic of two elders surrounded by ubiquitous, coronavirus microbes, what have become graphic symbols of the pandemic. It was soon followed by other paintings including “I Don’t Take Responsibility at All” or The Trump Virus: COVID-45. For a while he thought he was finished, but then he painted Going for Groceries During the Time of the Pandemic, an acrylic portrait of a man wearing glasses, a black hat, and a white surgical mask.

The second painting of the series was the one that people responded to most dramatically. Tribute to the Healthcare Warriors in Indian Country During COVID-19 is a Flatstyle depiction of healthcare workers in turquoise-colored scrubs and masks on horseback, battling coronavirus viruses with bows and arrows.

“I started hearing about the frontline workers of Indian Country and looking at all the Native nurses posting on the Social Distance Powwow [Facebook page],” Diacon said. “I worked in the hospital years ago when the AIDS epidemic started, when we got our first AIDS patient, and we had no idea what that was, and so we were gowning up, gloving up, going to these patients’ rooms just to empty a urinal or take their temperature or something, because we didn’t know. I’m still thinking how valuable that PPE is.”

Those images and memories led to the painting, which was shared widely across social media.

“When you’re facing something like this, you don’t know what it is or how brave you are as a healthcare worker,” said Diacon. “You could become infected and die. You could bring it home to your family. Yet you still go in there and do these duties. They are like warriors, and I wanted to do a tribute to them. You do it for your people and make your sacrifices for your people.”

Diacon feels his responsibility as an artist deeply, and he said these paintings are part of it.

“In my art, I always feel like I’m making a record, because it’s going to be around a lot longer than I am,” he said.

“This is something that’s happening to our people today. I’m living this experience now. This isn’t something I’m drawing from old people’s stories and trying to redo it. I want to tell my story of where I’m coming from during this time … so a hundred years from now, someone can look at this art and think, ‘This is what was going on in these people’s minds at this time.’ It’s a historical record, you could say.”

—Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke)

above, top Johnnie Diacon (Thlopthlocco Mvskoke), Tribute to the Healthcare Warriors in Indian Country During COVID-19, 2020 acrylic on Crescent board, 20 × 15 in. above, bottom Johnnie Diacon (Thlopthlocco Mvskoke), Kvlonv Ennokvn (Coronavirus), 2020, acrylic on canvas, 24 × 20 in. Both images courtesy of the artist.

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CUT FROM THE BEST CLOTH KAHNAWAKE SEWING GROUP SUPPORTS LOCAL HOSPITAL TO STAY AHEAD OF PANDEMIC

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N MARCH, when the COVID-19 pandemic spread across North America, textile artist Carla Hemlock (Kahnawake Mohawk)1 “reached out to some of the nurses at our local hospital to ask if they would be needing anything in the coming weeks.” That question was soon answered with a request for scrubs, and Hemlock quickly organized a group of women to meet it.

“I sent out a group email to some of the seamstresses I know, and they all agreed to help,” Hemlock told me. “One of the women had a scrubs pattern that was ten years old and still in its unopened package, so that’s what we used. We worked pretty much around the clock for two weeks with little sleep, encouraging each other through the process. It was all volunteer. Everyone set aside their own work during that time, and all of these women are in high demand.”

Like Hemlock, most of the group’s members are working artists with many commitments, especially around graduation time when special garments are frequently requested. Hemlock stressed the importance of mentioning each by name, and I am in complete agreement.

The Kahnawake Mohawk scrubs team was comprised of Lori Beauchamp,

above, top Lori Beauchamp (center), her daughter Tara, and granddaughter Kaylin (all Kahnawake Mohawk) sewing scrubs. above, bottom Finished sets of scrubs ready to donate.

Both images courtesy of Carla Hemlock (Mohawk).

Tara Beauchamp, Carol Bush, Georgina Bush, Kristjana Curry, Janet Delaronde, Gabrielle Doreen, Owisokon Lahache, Willma Lahache, Karahkwenhawi Laborgne, Lee Scott McComber, Victoria Queenie McComber, Roxie Meloche, Christine Stacey Montour, Karonhiakwas Patton, Niioieren Eileen Patton, Holly Pinsonneault, Donna Rice, Kaylin Stacey, and Taionwesenhtane Lahache-Deering.

Major kudos to all of them.

The 198 sets (yes, sets—396 individual pieces!) of scrubs and 30 caps were gifted to Kateri Memorial Hospital Centre (KMHC) Tehsakotitsén:tha in Kahnawake, Quebec. Founded in 1905, the hospital is a tribally run facility that provides tribal members in- and out-patient services including dental, diabetes, podiatry, optometry, well-baby clinics, nutrition counseling, and rehabilitation, as well as ten beds for short-term care and 48 beds for long-term care and elders—and now, drive-through testing for COVID-19.

Thankfully the hospital staff has not experienced a shortage of personal protection equipment (PPE). The need for so many more scrubs arose from the decision to begin training personnel who normally work in other areas, such as social services and activity workers, as préposé aux bénéficiaires (PABs), the Francophone equivalent of an orderly, should the need for more arise due to the pandemic. While the Kahnawake community had not yet been hit, “the hospital has designated a separate area” for COVID-19 patients, said Robin Guyer, manager of long-term care at KMHC. Guyer added how proud she is “to be part of a community where there’s so much support for one another. You can feel that there’s so much love.”

Two of the women who contributed to this Herculean effort agreed to share some of the experience with FAAM. C h r i s t i n e St a c e y Mont ou r (Kahnawake Mohawk) wrote, “When

1. See: Teri Greeves, “Carla Hemlock: Mohawk Quiltmaker,” First American Art Magazine, no. 2 (Spring 2014): 24–29.

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Carla contacted me to help, I didn’t hesitate to say yes. I run a small business sewing ribbon dresses and shirts, so I had orders to get out for graduations. But I told her I was in—I would figure out how to get my orders out in time. The hospital needed so many scrubs, and I wish I could have done more, but because I was pressed for time, I was only able to take on ten pants and ten shirts. I got them done in less than a week. I was really proud of the entire group. On a personal level, it was an emotional time. I’m so glad I was asked and was able to contribute.”

Lori Beauchamp (Kahnawake Mohawk) managed to recruit relatives: “I’ve worked as a seamstress for over 30 years, serving the community of Kahnawake. When I heard from Carla in the early weeks of the pandemic, she said our local hospital was in dire need of scrubs, and she was coordinating a group of seamstresses who could help. I was happy to volunteer for such a good cause as I know how much the frontline workers are sacrificing and contributing for the health and safety of our community.

“I recruited my granddaughter [Kaylin] to help with cutting out the patterns as arthritis in my fingers makes it difficult to cut. She was happy to oblige and became the cutter, and then the presser as the sewing evolved. I also got my daughter [Tara] to operate the serger, and our trio of three generations went to work, all the while keeping our social distancing of two meters, and we accomplished our goal.”

Beauchamp concludes, “It’s always a good feeling to know you’re helping in some small way and contributing to the good of the whole community. Although we all worked out of our homes, it was nice being a part of the larger group. We appreciate the time and effort the frontline workers and task force are putting in to guide us through these crazy times.”

Hemlock would like to see the sewing group’s gesture enliven similar efforts in others. “What I hope comes out of this is that women right across Turtle Island will become inspired to reach out to their local hospitals, organize, and start sewing for their frontline workers.”

—RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo)

above, top Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation), ᎠᎵᏍᏕᎸᏗ Ꭰ Ꮄ Ꮻ ᏍᏙᏗ ᎥᏳ Ꭹ , 2 0 0 2 , i n k , watercolor on paper.

above, bottom Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation), Zoom Meeting, 2000, pen and ink on paper. Both images courtesy of the artist.

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FRONTLINE WARRIORS JORGE GARZA OF QETZA ART HONORS ESSENTIAL WORKERS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

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HICANO ARTIST JORGE GARZA, who creates under the name Qetza, had no idea his recent Frontline Warriors series was going to be so popular.

“I had been drawing pop culture heroes as warriors and was going to start a new one,” he says, referring to his Mesoamerican/pop culture mash-ups of Selena, Prince, Princess Leia, and others.

“But then the pandemic happened. I saw the folks facing it directly and indirectly

on the news, placing their lives on the line.

Drawing fictional heroes? I just wasn’t feeling it. I wanted to draw some real-life heroes.” Garza did just that and his first Frontline Warrior, in the form of a female registered nurse, was born.

Originally he planned to draw only one female and one male nurse, but then stories about the challenges essential workers were facing, their lack of personal protective equipment, and so on, started to come in. “Between that and all of the

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[social media] comments, notes, and messages I received, I had to continue,” he says. “There are so many doing important work and not getting recognized. Add this to the fact that there is such limited representation for people of color already.”

Garza hopes to get through a list of about 40 more professions in addition to those he’s already drawn, which include everything from mail carriers to farmworkers. “Once I get those completed, we’ll see. The list could be longer by that point, too, so I don’t know.”

A Mexican-American artist who lives in northwest Indiana, Garza decided to take up drawing as a full-time profession when he was in college. Most of his current work is created digitally, but he sometimes sketches on paper. His creations are influenced by comic book culture, the horror genre, popular culture, and Mesoamerican aesthetics. He says his style evolved partly out of necessity, but also by staying true to his heart.

“I started going to comic conventions about five years ago,” Garza recalls.

The work he merchandised, which included highly detailed pen-and-ink illustrations of figures from Mesoamerica, horror movies, and stories, was not going over all that well, however. In order to have a chance to succeed at these events, he says, “I needed to incorporate more pop culture themes into my work. At least that was the idea. I tried a couple of concepts, and while I liked the results aesthetically, I could not see myself looking forward to drawing those regularly.” He came to the conclusion that if this was going to work, he needed to combine pop culture with what he already liked to draw. A few experimental sketches in, he came across a figure he had previously started to draw in the style one sees in the Aztec codices.

“I started working off of it,” Garza remembers, “and something came together.”

The Aztec codices, written by precontact and colonial-era Nahuas using pictorial and alphabetic forms, are

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above, top J o rg e G a rz a (Chicano), Frontline Warrior Medical Laboratory Scientist Female, 2020, digital image, dimensions variable. ©QetzaArt. All images courtesy of the artist. above, bottom Jorge Garza (Chicano), Frontline Warrior Respiratory Therapist Male, 2020, digital image, dimensions variable. ©QetzaArt. above, right Jorge Garza (Chicano), Frontline Warrior Grocery Employee Female, 2020, digital image, dimensions variable. ©QetzaArt. opposite Jorge Garza (Chicano), Frontline Warrior Postal Worker Male, 2020, digital image, dimensions variable. ©QetzaArt.

"Drawing fictional heroes? I just wasn’t feeling it. I wanted to draw some real-life heroes." a treasure trove of information for the Aztec culture they document. Garza’s figures have been drawn to look like they were created on the deerskin or amatl of these ancient publications. They are intentionally “aged,” highly stylized, and always shown in profile with outstretched arms, just like one would see Quetzalcoatl in the Codex Borbonicus (as one example).

Essential workers—largely unheralded in normal times, especially if they are people of color—are now elevated in Garza’s work to the status of their ancestors’ legendary cultural figures. They are 21st-century warriors and social heroes.

In these drawings, Latino people with

Indigenous origins immediately see a “reminder of a loved one having to face this pandemic on the daily, whether it’s a parent, daughter, son, sibling, friend,” says Garza. The work also strikes a chord with so many for the simple reason of representation. Garza continues, “We are out there doing it in all professions on all levels. The feedback I’ve received from this tells me we don’t see that enough and it’s important that we do.”

You can learn more about Garza’s work, including upcoming short comic books and graphic novels, and purchase Frontline Warriors art and merchandise at qetza.com.

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COLORING, CULTURE & QUARANTINE INDIGENOUS ARTISTS CREATE FREE COLORING DESIGNS DURING LOCKDOWN

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YYU QASSATAQ (IÑUPIAQ) first noticed the variety of Indigenous coloring pages showing up on social media in early April. In response, she shared several of the pages linked to the artists’ profiles in a public post. “It was wonderful to see the upswell of our Indigenous artists freely offering their art to bring calm, beauty, and pride during an unsettling time. I simply compiled them in one place for others (especially educators) to have easier access,” Qassataq tells me.

“Unexpected, but wonderful,” she adds, “was the increased exposure all of the artists received as the network of sharers grew exponentially. I hope the increased connection brings them more support as artists. They deserve it!”

Coloring books have a long history that either traces back to the early 17th century as painting instruction books or the mid-19th century when new

printing technology allowed companies to mass-produce watercolor activity books that would be more familiar to us today.1 It all depends on who you ask. However, it wouldn’t be until wax crayons began to be widely sold in 1902 that the modern coloring book would come into its own as a universal part of our childhood experiences.2 Since their humble beginnings as pastimes for children, coloring books have become increasingly popular with adults in recent years as teaching tools and in meditative practices that increase focus and reduce anxiety, claims backed by science.3 It was with these therapeutic qualities in mind that Indigenous artists from across Canada and the United States have shared dozens of free coloring pages of their artwork on social media during the COVID-19 quarantine. I caught up with Michelle Stoney (Gitxsan) and KC Hall (Heiltsuk), two of the artists involved with creating and sharing some of these pages, to ask them about their work and how they are doing during quarantine.

Michelle Stoney, a painter and illustrator from Hazelton, British Columbia, was among the earliest to share coloring pages on Facebook. Her first was a formline unicorn she created to raise money for the Young Adult Cancer Canada (YACC), an organization that helped her family when her twin sister was ill. The unicorn was instantly popular, and Stoney decided to create a new design for every day of quarantine. “I could see by the demand that people were craving something to do together,” she tells me, “so it was then that I decided I would challenge myself and make a new coloring sheet a day. I’ve told myself that I will continue as long as people are still engaged.”

Sharing free coloring pages during isolation has opened up a number of

1. Merrill Fabry, “The Surprising Function of the First Coloring Books,” Time, August 2, 2017, web.

2. Phil Edwards, “A brief history of the great American coloring book,” Vox, August 2, 2016, web.

3. Laura E. Ashlock, Cindy Miller-Perrin, and Elizabeth Krumrei-Mancuso, "The Effectiveness of Structured Coloring Activities for Anxiety Reduction," Art Therapy 35, no.

4 (2018): 195–201.

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unexpected opportunities for Stoney. She has found that she is busier now than before the quarantine began. “I usually have painting workshops where I draw the designs on canvases and people paint them. It was my biggest income,” Stoney tells me. “As a First Nations artist during COVID-19, I had to find new ways to connect with people. Now I conduct online workshops through Zoom and Facebook Live.”

Because of the interest, her work has drawn during isolation, Stoney has decided to publish a coloring book and is launching a new line of clothing based on her designs. “I could have just felt sorry for myself and sat home and [done] nothing,” Stoney says, “but I adapted and changed. I’m a lot busier now, in a good way. I have so many new directions I want to go.”

Heiltsuk graffiti artist KC Hall has released four coloring pages since quarantine began and streams nightly online painting sessions from his home in East Vancouver, British Columbia. When I asked Hall why he chose coloring pages, he said, “I know that for me, drawing and painting are my little escape from everything. Focusing on the task takes my mind off of whatever may be stressful or causing me anxiety. I thought maybe if it helps me, it would help take other people’s minds off of what we are facing.” Hall adds that “at the peak of the lockdown, I wanted to help keep families busy, or just give them something to do while they’re stuck at home. Try to spark that bit of creativity in people.”

When I ask what he’s been working on during quarantine, Hall strikes an upbeat note: “I've been pretty busy painting full-time at home, as well as spending good time with my family. I've been lucky enough to have a number of personal commissions from new and repeat collectors. I’m also working on paintings for an online art show happening at the end of May.” Hall’s solo online exhibition, Sáxva, opened May 29 and runs through July 12, 2020, on the Lattimer Gallery website.

Stoney and Hall are proving how resilient, adaptable, and creative Indigenous artists can be during this global crisis. They’ve also shown how

caring and generous they are by giving away their work to help ease the tensions and anxieties people are feeling in isolation.

While I’ve only highlighted two artists here, dozens more from all over have shared their work online for free.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented crisis that has taken a hard toll on Indigenous artists, so please check out all the artists sharing pages and let them know you are enjoying their work, and if possible, commission some art from them.

—Christopher W. Smith

above KC Hall (Heiltsuk), One Nation, 2020, digital media. All images courtesy of the artists. opposite, top Michelle Stoney (Gitxsan), Stoney Quarantine Colouring Challenge #38 (Bee), 2020, digital media. opposite, bottom Lydia Dirks (Unangax), Masks, 2019, pen and ink on paper.

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NATIVE MUSICIANS RESPOND TO COVID-19 create a new opera called Sweet Land.

Unfortunately the opera’s monthlong outdoor performance was canceled after two weeks due to the pandemic.

It has since been posted on Vimeo for viewers to watch for a small fee. Raven Chacon (Diné) and Du Yun composed the music for the opera, Aja Couchois Duncan (Ojibwe descent) and Douglas Kearney wrote the text, and Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/ Lakota) and Yuval Sharon directed it. The Industry states, “Sweet Land becomes an opera that erases itself.” It begins as a procession through the Los Angeles State Historic Park and chronicles the contact between foreigners and Native peoples through various perspectives and divergent story lines. The full list of credits as well as streaming are available at stream.sweetlandopera.com.

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URING THIS CRISIS affecting all of us throughout the world, musicians across the board have lost income due to canceled events. Many have turned to the internet to rehearse, collaborate, and present their work, while others are working individually from their homes. I spoke to several Native musicians to get an idea of how they are responding artistically in this period, as well as the methods they have adopted to keep projects moving forward.

I found myriad responses.

Some musicians said the crisis has been overwhelming and are not pursuing anything artistically at this moment, feeling that this is a time for reflection or they are busy caring for their community directly. Others are finding, and inventing, ways to participate in their local and global communities, have found inspiration from the crisis, and/or appreciate the extra time they have to devote to their work. All of these are valid responses to the crisis, of course, and the results will be interesting as they are realized.

NATHAN YOUNG (Delaware Tribe/ Cherokee Nation/Pawnee/Kiowa), a Tulsa Artist fellow, created Tulsa Noise, a sustained noise music project that hosts an annual Tulsa NoiseFest that had to be postponed due to the pandemic. To fill the void, Young launched a five-part video series, Tulsa Noise Presents: Local Access, featuring local experimental musicians who perform while social distancing.

The archived live shows by I’m Angry About Cities, Lars Gardner, Gospel, Black Gambit, and DJ Kylie are accessible online via Tulsa Noise’s Vimeo channel (vimeo.com/tulsanoise). This project was made possible through the Tulsa Artist Fellowship and curated and led by Young, an Arts Integration awardee. Young is also working on two ambitious sound projects, one for a museum in Tulsa and the other for a museum on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania.

RAVEN CHACON (Diné), a composer out of Albuquerque, was commissioned by the Industry, an experimental production company in Los Angeles, to

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PAMYUA is a Yupiit and Inuit music, dance, and storytelling troupe that blends Yupiit and Inuit drumming with rhythm and blues. Brothers Phillip and Stephen Blanchett (both Yupiit) formed the group in April 1995. Later that year they invited Phillip “Ossie” Kairaiuak (Yup'ik) to join the group as a permanent member and then Karina Møller (Kalaalleq) the following year. They travel regularly throughout the world collaborating with various musicians from Alaska and Denmark. Presently the members are at their respective homes self-isolating as they continue to collaborate with each other online. They have also been involved in their community in a variety of ways, including a video in partnership with the local public broadcaster KYUK, Tarvarnauramken: Blessings in a Time of Crisis. Tarvarnauramken is a popular Yup'ik dance for blessing and purification, and the video serves to keep the spirit of the annual Cama-i Dance Festival alive in the era of social distancing. The festival was canceled this year because of the pandemic.

Pamyua recently released a music video for “Bubble Gum,” which is part of

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AK Quarantunes, a remote concert series sponsored by the Anchorage Daily News.

Kairaiuak wrote the song about chewing bubble gum in Yup’ik dance class when you’re not supposed to. Musicians from across the globe performed the song online. Kairaiuak, Phillip Blanchett, Ivan Night (playing guitar), and Sara Anderholm (playing piano) joined from Anchorage. Møller and Kristoffer Jul Reenberg (playing clavinet) joined from Copenhagen, while Stephen Blanchett joined from Juneau.

Ethan B erkowitz, mayor of Anchorage, opened his online May 8 press conference with a music video by Pamyua.

The band participated in a virtual concert fundraiser for the Food Bank of Alaska.

The members of Pamyua are also involved in other projects that will be realized this summer.

MIKE BEGAY (Diné), a musician, teacher, and composer based in Tuba City, Arizona, has been very active and prolific in this time. He has developed a solo project called Wolf Harem and taught music composition online to Lakota and Dakota high school students through the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra’s Music Composition Academy. Begay has composed two solo piano compositions (for Diné pianist Renata Yazzie and Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli) and a cathedral choir piece to be performed in Phoenix; arranged an old string quartet for a symphony in Northern Arizona; collaborated with hip-hop artist Mr. DV; and recorded remotely with Lozen, his band who just signed to Sony’s RED Music label. Finally, Begay is developing a new podcast called Original Score: An Indigenous Perspective on Music that focuses primarily on classical music composed by Native composers.

RENATA YAZZIE (Diné) is a classical pianist working on her master’s degree in piano performance and musicology with an ethnomusicology emphasis at the University of New Mexico. As a composer, Yazzie is working on a new collaboration with pianist and singer-songwriter Zachariah Julian (Jicarilla Apache), composed a work for We Are the Seed’s Gathering Seeds Project, and continues to practice her repertoire

of Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Beethoven, Brahms, Busoni, and Bach. Yazzie has also begun an Indigenous ethnomusicology group focused on centering Indigenous perspectives of music and sound.

LAURA ORTMAN (White Mountain Apache) is a violinist, singer-songwriter, composer, and improviser living in Brooklyn. She has been commissioned

by ISSUE Project Room in New York to produce field recordings, the last in a series of nine concerts called Isolated Field Recordings that will be streamed online on July 8, 8:00 pm EDT. The concert series features a home audio recording reflecting the artist’s current conditions during quarantine. —Thollem

above, top Phillip Blanchett (Yup'ik) and Karina Møller (Kalaalleq) of Pamyua, the Inuit/Yupiit R&B sensation.

Photo: Kerry Tasker, Anchorage, Alaska. All images courtesy of the artists. above, bot tom Renata Yazzie. Photo: Linda Duschek Fotografie, Köln, Germany. opposite Mike Begay. Photo: Sage Bond (Navajo).

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MASKED HEROES: FACIAL COVERINGS BY NATIVE ARTISTS INDIGENOUS ARTISTS FROM THE PACIFIC TO THE NORTH SEA REIMAGINE PROTECTIVE MASKS

A

T THE END OF MARCH my friends and I watched as markets and exhibitions at museums, art centers, and galleries shuttered in the wake of COVID-19 quarantine. The public infrastructure of our Native art world was collapsing in front of us, and we knew we had to do something for the artists. Since health organizations advocated facial masks as a means of slowing the spread of COVID-19, which is primarily spread through airborne transmission,1 many Native artists were applying their sewing skills to making cloth masks. For instance, editorial advisor for First American Art Magazine (FAAM) and chief curator of the First Americans Museum heather ahtone (Choctaw/Chickasaw) kindly gave me two masks she had made.

With the admonishments to stay home, many in the Native art world turned to the internet for news and programming.

A virtual art show seemed like something positive FAAM could offer artists, and masks were the perfect subject. Adding a competitive element seemed like a good way to motivate responses, although we at FAAM have had to tighten our budget due to loss of advertising revenue. But a supporter anonymously donated half the prize money, and FAAM contributed the other half. While the monetary rewards were modest, we could also offer publicity.

The exhibition still receives numerous hits—even more recently since the mention in The New York Times.2 I had never curated a virtual or competitive art exhibition before but figured it had to be doable, so I set a schedule with a brisk pace. We announced the call for entries on April 15 with a deadline on Tuesday, April 21. ahtone

graciously gave permission to use her functional masks on the call-for-art graphic. I optimistically thought I could announce the winners by Friday, April 24, but I also expected to receive no more than ten to twenty entries. Instead 73 artists from three countries submitted more than 120 entries.

I spent days glued to my computer, formatting photo after photo to prepare them for publishing online. With so many entries, we needed more prizes, so I added a judge’s choice category with a prize of a subscription to First American Art Magazine. I invited the FAAM editorial advisory board, our regional representatives, editors, proofreaders, and regular contributors to judge. Most but not all of the 26 judges, all made their judge’s choice selections while some preferred to remain anonymous. Author Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke), wrote, “Judging that was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life!”

The entries poured in from artists both familiar and completely new to us. While many were professional, fulltime artists, others were simply sewing masks because they were needed by their communities. Many of the masks were functional, but others were pure artistic expressions. Several artists said they appreciated something briefly to focus on besides the terrifying news of the spreading pandemic. Cathy Cordy (Sicangu Lakota) wrote, “Thank you for hosting this contest. It was a nice diversion from the current situation.”

Their artist statements were beautiful—many brought me to tears. For instance Jennifer Pictou (Aroostook Micmac) wrote, “When I see what is happening with the COVID 19 pandemic, I recall the history of my people. We have

1. Renyi Zhang, Yixin Li, Annie L. Zhang, Yuan Wang, and Mario J. Molina, “Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, June 11, 2020, web.

2. Patricia Leigh Brown, “On Tribal Lands, a Time to Make Art for Solace and Survival,” The New York Times, June 5, 2020, web.

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COVID-19 CRISIS

survived colonialism, smallpox, measles, typhoid, and tuberculosis epidemics.

All the while we had to maintain home and family, so we did that through trade of handmade goods including ash baskets. This mask represents the finest of my tribe, which is perseverance and persistence while maintaining our cultural identity. As we have adapted to all that has happened to us, we must and will adapt again.”

The artists inspired the exhibition’s curatorial statement: “The Native art community has responded to this crisis with compassion, generosity, bravery, and hope. Through Masked Heroes, we want to celebrate the resilience of Indigenous peoples and help share the beauty that Native artists have created in the face of our shared crisis.”

With the unexpected volume of entries, the images needed to be divided down further. The subject matter naturally suggested six themes: Abstraction, FourLeggeds, From the Water, Plant World, Two-Leggeds, and Winged Beings. Each mask image appeared in a slideshow by theme and was linked in a list to the artist’s names. To strike a balance between wanting to promote the artists but protect their privacy, links were posted to the artists’ websites and social media on the main page. Prizewinners were also linked on their own page.

The three ranked winners spanned the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Great right, top “Quill Bill” William M. Mendoza (Oglala Lakota/Sicangu Lakota), Dentalium and Quilled Mask, 2020, dentalium shells, porcupine quills, braintanned hide. All images courtesy of the artists. right, bottom Dolores Gull (Weenusk Cree) and Faith Chookomolin (Weenusk Cree), I See You, 2020, floral beadwork mask on hide. opposite, top Yvonne Jolley (Yurok), Yurok Friendship Design, 2020, cotton batik fabric. opposite, middle Linda Lou Metoxen (Navajo), Saving Lives While Saving the Planet, 2020, recycled plastic containers and components, fabric, sewing notions. opposite, bottom Anita Fields (Osage/Muscogee), All My Heroes Wear Ribbonwork, 2020, taffeta ribbons, thread, yarn, beads, brass bells, metal sequins, plastic pill pouch, photo images printed on silk, embroidery thread.

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NATIVE ART WORLD RESPONSE

collection. It is so thrilling to hear about major institutions collecting masks from this exhibition, and several are planning physical mask exhibitions when they begin reopening. Leith Mahkewa’s beadwork is in such high demand that she has had to post online that she can’t take orders now; she is booked through 2022.

While we have missed physical exhibitions as art institutions have had to close, virtual exhibitions have their own strengths, including exposure to new Native artists. It was wonderful to see so many entries from Alaska Natives.

Geographic barriers evaporated, and artists from far-flung regions in the United States, Canada, and even the United Kingdom were all able to enter the competition and reach a wider audience.

A museum curator says different friends are still sending her links to the exhibition well into June.

Facial masks will be part of our daily lives for the foreseeable future. They help us protect others. Masked Heroes was launched with the hope that more of us will embrace these protections. In appreciation for participating in the exhibition, artists received copies of FAAM No. 25. We are grateful to the artists who shared their creations and to all of the mask makers who are helping the world stay safe. ᎫᏍᏗ ᎢᏓᏓᏛᏂ.

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) BEST OF SHOW Plains. Howard La Fortune (Tsawout Howard La Fortune (Tsawout First First Nation) won Best of Show with Nation), Bear Snout Bear Snout, a carved cedar mask. The SECOND PLACE second-place winner was Leith Mahkewa Leith Mahkewa (Oneida Nation of the (Oneida Nation of the Thames) for I Am Thames), I Am Protecting You from Me Protecting You from Me, a black velvet mask with Haudenosaunee raised-bead- THIRD PLACE: work florals in red. The third-place winner “Quill Bill” William M. Mendoza (Oglala was William “Quill Bill” Mendoza (Oglala Lakota/Sicangu Lakota), Dentalium and Lakota/Sicangu Lakota) of South Dakota Quilled Mask for his Dentalium and Quilled Mask.

After the winners were announced JUDGE’S CHOICE and the virtual exhibition went live, • Pilar Agoyo (Ohkay Owingeh/Cochiti/ Kewa Pueblos), Protection (Kelly museums began contacting the magazine Church) about purchasing the masks. They were put in touch with the artists, and many • Robbie Atabaigi (Absentee Shawnee), COVID-19 Mask—USA (Michole masks were sold. The Burke Museum Eldred, Jo Ann Reece) in Seattle, Washington, acquired La Fortune’s Bear Snout for its permanent • Anita Fields (Osage/Muscogee), All My 32 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

COVID-19 CRISIS

Heroes Wear Ribbonwork (Staci Golar, Jami Powell) • Dolores Gull (Weenusk Cree) and Faith Chookomolin (Weenusk Cree), I See You (America Meredith) • Carrie Hill (Akwesasne Mohawk), #COVIDCreation (Linda Lomahaftewa) • Lily Hope (Tlingit), Chilkat Protector (Jean Merz-Edwards, Christopher W. Smith, Matthew Ryan Smith)

• Katrina Mitten (Miami Tribe of Oklahoma), You May Not Kiss The Bride (heather ahtone)

• Yvonne Jolley (Yurok), Yurok Friendship Design (Michelle J. Lanteri)

• Linda Lou Metoxen (Navajo), Saving Lives While Saving the Planet (Emily Haozous)

• Shayai Lucero (Acoma/Laguna Pueblos), Breath of Life (Samonia Byford)

• Marlana Thompson (Akwesasne Mohawk), Ononkwashon:a/Medicinal Plants (Stacy Pratt)

• Leith Mahkewa (Oneida Nation of the Thames), I Am Protecting You from Me (Stephanie Pratt, Jackie Sevier)

• Serene Weasel Traveller (Piikani Nation), Face Mask Quilt (Candice Byrd)

• “Quill Bill” William M. Mendoza (Oglala/Sicangu Lakota), Dentalium and Quilled Mask (Heather Cox)

• Crystal Worl (Tlingit/Athabascan/ Yup’ik), Beaded Seal Fur (Andrea L. Ferber)

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above, right Howard La Fortune (Tsawout First Nation), Bear Snout, 2020, yellow cedar, leather.

Photo: Sydney Woodward. All images courtesy of the artists. above, left top Robbie Atabaigi (Absentee Shawnee), COVID-19 Mask—USA, 2020, glass beads, cotton, elastic, 5 × 8 in. above, left bottom Pilar Agoyo (Ohkay Owingeh/Cochiti/Kewa Pueblos), Protection, 2020, cotton ripstop, printed cotton, plastic spikes, white grosgrain ribbon. opposite, top Leith Mahkewa (Oneida Nation of the Thames), I Am Protecting You from Me, 2020, glass seed beads, cotton velvet, cotton calico. opposite, bottom Lily Hope (Tlingit), Chilkat Protector, 2020, thigh-spun merino and cedar bark warp, merino weft yarns, tin cones, ermine fur.

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POINT OF CONTACT The Art of Quillwork, Then and Now “My son Arnold said since we enjoy doing quillwork so much, we shouldn’t call it quillwork. We should call it quill art," —Yvonne Walker Keshick (Little Traverse Odawa).1

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

A solving:

S TORY A M ON G T H E ANISHINAABAYG describes how Porcupine got its quills through clever problem

Long ago, when the world was young, porcupines had no quills. One day when Porcupine was in the woods, Bear came along and wanted to eat him. … The next day, when Porcupine was under a hawthorn tree, he noticed how the thorns pricked him. He had an idea. He broke off some of the branches of the hawthorn and put them on his back. Then he went into the woods and waited for Bear. When Bear sprang on Porcupine, the little animal just curled himself up in a ball.

Bear had to go away, for the thorns pricked him very much.

Nanabozho [an Anishinaabay cultural hero and trickster] saw what happened. He called Porcupine to him and asked, “How did you know that trick?”

“I am always in danger when Bear comes along,” replied Porcupine.

“When I saw those thorns, I thought I would use them.”

So Nanabozho took some branches from the hawthorn tree and peeled off the bark until they were white. Then he put some clay on the back of Porcupine, stuck the thorns in it, and made the whole a part of his skin.2

above Beverly Julian, Untitled, 2020, birchbark, porcupine quills, dye. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite, top Yvonne Walker Keshick (Little Traverse Odawa/ Ojibwe), Tribute to the Four Leggeds, 1994, birchbark, porcupine quills. Image courtesy of Collections of the Grand Rapids Public Museum, Michigan. opposite, bottom Yvonne Walker Keshick with two of her quilled boxes. Photo: Kim Berly.

The genesis of Porcupine in Anishinaabay oral history prefaces adaptation as a critical means of survival.

How has this story changed since the European settlement of North America?

To deny that quillwork has suffered over recent centuries would be inaccurate, but so would espousing that it is currently experiencing a “revival.” The practice has continued for millennia, though it has not been exhibited with regularity.

When colonists were not hunting porcupine for food or killing them because they were perceived as a nuisance, they further lowered North American porcupine populations through deforestation. In the United States, frequent war and government legislation that forced relocation served to further separate quillwork from Indigenous communities.

During the mid-19th century, glass beads became increasingly available and were bought from (or bartered by) European and European-descended settlers. It soon became common, particularly among tribes of the Plains, for glass beading to be incorporated into quillwork design, which not only impacted the evolution of quillwork but also formed an entirely new aesthetic practice. Elsewhere, however, glass beads superseded quillwork completely.

Oral histories vary greatly as to how quillwork was first introduced to Indigenous tribes, yet they are connected

1. “Yvonne Walker Keshick,” National Endowment for the Arts, MP3 audio, 28:30, 2014, web.

2. George E. Laidlaw, “Why Porcupine Has Quills” in Indian Legends of Canada, ed. Ella Elizabeth Clark (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Limited, 1960), 80.

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by their spiritual dimensions. One of the most cited narratives in recent literature is that offered by Picking Bones Woman (Northern Cheyenne, ca. 1818–after 1902) to George Bird Grinnell, whose story of Buffalo Woman explains how the Cheyenne came to learn quillwork.

According to her, “the man who followed his buffalo wife was he who brought to the Cheyennes a knowledge of how to ornament robes and skins with quills. His name is not known … ‘I wish you to make a lodge and to ornament it after these patterns that I have. It is hard to do this, but I will try to show you about it,’” said the unknown man to his buffalo wife.3 The Cheyenne, much like the Arapaho, were known for producing extraordinary pipe bags, shirts, and moccasins, yet their southern branches were forced into lands far from the porcupine itself, which proves the value of intertribal trade economies for cultural expression during Cheyenne removal of the 1880s.

Not only was quillwork invented

by Indigenous people, but it also ranks among the oldest cultural practices to exist in North America. Quills, once used as binding material, have been found in caves in Utah and Nevada and date from

530 BCE; likewise, some of the oldest quillwork on moccasins originates from sixth century CE.4 Narratives such as that of Picking Bones Woman, or the Blackfoot story of Thunder’s teachings to the Long Ago People, help to explain how quillwork was understood and disseminated among Plains tribes when there are noticeable gaps in the material record.

Quillwork was widely acknowledged as the most respected artistic practice among Plains and Subarctic tribes. Most quilling societies were the prestigious domain of women and regarded with spiritual reverence, for membership in them brought significant power and esteem within the community; so much so, in fact, that among the Cheyenne, to be a member of a society was comparable to that of battle honors for a warrior.5 Such a privileged distinction can likely be attributed to both the selection of women for quillwork by spiritual figures in addition to the profound depth of knowledge and temperament required in the gathering, preparing, dyeing, and production of materials.

To this end, critical discussions on the subject of patience are severely lacking in quillwork literature. The quillwork

artist Alice New Holy Blue Legs (Oglala Lakota, 1925–2003) cited the introduction of glass beads by European traders as a critical event in the history of quillwork.

Blue Legs emphasizes how trade beads, which came to quickly replace ceramic beads in terms of their popularity, were far easier to handle and manipulate than quills. She maintains the contentious opinion that, at its heart, beadwork took less time and thus required less talent than quillwork. “The new trade beads were so much easier to work with,” she remarks in a 1989 interview, “and since they did

3. George Bird Grinnell, The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life, Vol. 2 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1923), 385. Arapaho women consciously stopped working with porcupine quills because they were no longer able to perform the ceremonies necessary during the reservation era. See Jeffrey D. Anderson, Arapaho Women's Quillwork: Motion, Life, and Creativity (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013).

4. Jessica Dawn Palmer, The Dakota Peoples: A History of the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota through 1863 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., Inc., 2008), 75.

5. Grinnell, The Cheyenne Indians, 159.

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not require the patience and the artistic talent that quillwork requires, everyone soon switched to using the beads.”6 Though the equation of talent to patience (and vice versa) may be unpopular, it is hard to deny that quillwork is undoubtedly a process-based, artistic practice that demands persistence; to this end, it can also be characterized as powerfully meditative, even reflective. To illustrate this point, Christal Ratt (Mitchikinabikok Inik Algonquin) suggests that “patience is important during the entire process, from harvesting the quills to dying them various colors, to working on each design one quill at a time … quilling is a therapeutic process. Time slows down, making it the perfect moment to reflect.”7 Ratt’s impressive quillwork makes use of established subject matter in unexpected ways, like flora and fauna combined with conventional materials such as birchbark and deer hide. Recently she introduced Indigenous iconography to the strata of designer purses, symbols of luxury and high fashion. Similar to the

haute couture of master artisans, whose works are also extremely time-consuming and attention-sensitive, Ratt has conceived new Anishinaabay couture.

Most quillwork techniques were passed down generationally from woman to woman among the Blackfoot, Mi’kmaq, and others. For the Oglala Lakota and many other Plains tribes, quillwork was a gendered construction and strictly the right of the initiated. The spirit Double Woman was known to teach selected women to quill when she visited them in their dreams. “The Spirit wanted only certain ones to learn this art,” wrote scholar Ella Deloria (Yankton Dakota, 1889–1971).8 Women embellished regalia with quills, typically for ceremonial use, and gathered in private assemblies to exchange ideas and present new work to each other. What is particularly remarkable about the special status attributed to Lakota quillwork is how Double Woman communicated individual designs and patterns to each woman, which were not to be reproduced by other members of the

6. Liz Sonneborn, A to Z of American Indian Women (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2014), 19.

7. Christal Ratt, email message to author, April 28, 2020.

8. Lars Krutak, “Treasures of the IACB: Lakota Vest, ca. 1880,” Indian Arts and Crafts Board, August 8, 2019, web.

9. “Yvonne Walker Keshick,” National Endowment for the Arts, web.

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quillwork society. In effect, these are standard protocols that many would recognize today as intellectual property.

For some Anishinaabay people, the creation of special patterns and subject matter was invented by a certain family and could only be shared later through instruction. Once the design was mastered by the student, they could then include it in their inventory of knowledge before passing it along to others. “Somebody might look at my students’ quillwork,” says Little Traverse Odawa/Ojibwe artist Yvonne Walker Keshick, “and say, ‘That almost looks like Suzy’s.’ Well, sure, because Suzy’s student taught them.”9 This process of knowledge gathering and exchange produces a genealogy of aesthetics within the community.

Cheyenne River Lakota artist Rhonda Holy Bear began quilling in 1974 in the customary way and finds personal meaning in the genealogy of historical designs and techniques from those who came before her. However, she observes that current quillwork designs are steadily

evolving toward the use of alternative shapes and increasingly vibrant color arrangements. “Much of it is affected by the newer dyes and materials available to the craftspeople in this modern age,” she writes, “therefore more liberties are taken to make things to please the eye.”10 The result lends a glossier patina that is more attractive to the maker (and to many prospective buyers). Her Miniature Lakota Penny Bag (2020) incorporates several materials and design elements including sewed sinew, tin cones, and dyed feathers.

It is easily distinguishable because it employs micro-quilling, an increasingly rare technique where super-fine quills, often less than one-millimeter wide, are wrapped, plaited, and banded together.

The popularity of online retail shopping, though merely 20 years old, has radically changed the story of quillwork in North America. Cyberspace has eased access to less expensive, synthetically dyed, African-crested porcupine quills.

These are known to be markedly longer, different in color, barbless, stronger, and lighter in weight than their North American counterparts. The use of such material visibly affects the functionality, texture, and appearance of quillwork in the Americas. Conversely, there are those who still value roadkill and maintain the knowledge and take the time to boil quills with plant matter like sumac berries, bloodroot, and sassafras.

Much like Holy Bear, Mi’kmaq artist Beverly Julian shares concern for maintaining the authenticity of quillwork.

Nearly 40 years ago, Julian participated in a gathering of Mi’kmaq women interested in learning quill bark insertion from a visiting Ojibwe mentor. Though the Ojibwe and Mi’kmaq share similar insertion techniques, the construction of their baskets holds elemental differences. For example, Ojibwe quillworkers are inclined to use bark and quills in their basket design while the Mi’kmaq practice, as far back as the 18th century, has employed spruce root to support the basket’s foundation. Julian proposes that the foremost challenge facing Mi’kmaq

quillwork is to forge innovative designs while remaining historically accurate and true to their culture.

Quillwork is no longer the exclusive domain of women in many tribal communities. During the late 19th century, the displacement of these communities and the occupation of their historic lands, together with the establishment of the reservation system, disrupted quillwork practices. Curator Herman J. Viola suggests that when Southern Cheyenne bands and families relocated to Indian Territory, and the Northern Cheyenne occupied a reserve in Montana, their quilling society drew to a close.11 This, of course, is not to imply that quilling itself abruptly vanished, nor that quillworkers were no longer visited by Double Woman, Neyoooxetusei, or other spirits like Spider.

Rather, the decades that followed saw

above Rhonda Holy Bear (Cheyenne River Lakota), Miniature Lakota Penny Bag, 2020, micro-quillwork, hide, glass seed beads, sequins, tin cones, chicken feathers, dye, 31/2 x 21/2 in. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite, left Monica Raphael (G ra n d Trave r s e O d awa / Ojibwe), A Brother's Love, 2020, birchbark bracelet, porcupine quills, dyes, glass seed beads.

Image courtesy of the artist. opp osite, right Christal Ratt (Mitchikinabikok Inik Algonquin), Beshkosh, 2020, birchbark, moose hide, porcupine quills, dye, hawk bells, brass spikes, rabbit fur pom-poms, 81/2 × 10 in. (purse body). Image courtesy of the artist.

10. Rhonda Holy Bear, email message to author, April 29, 2020.

11. Herman J. Viola, “Introduction: Freedom, Bravery, and Generosity: Native Americans and the Horse,” in A Song for the Horse Nation: Horses in Native American Cultures, ed. George Horse Capture and Emil Her Many Horses (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2006), 9.

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above, top Melissa Peter-Paul (Mi’kmaw), Untitled, birchbark, porcupine quills, dye. Photo: Misiksk Jadis (Mi'kmaq). above, bottom Pat Kruse (Red Cliff Ojibwe) and Terri Horn (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe), Celebration of Life, 2019, birchbark, sweet grass, red willow, birch wood, porcupine quills, dye, sinew, collection of the Dunn Museum. Image courtesy of the Dunn Museum, Libertyville, Illinois. opposite Amber Waboose (Ojibwe), Land Back, 2020, birchbark, porcupine quills, d ye s , swe e tg ra s s . I m a g e courtesy of the artist.

several tribal communities experience a steady degendering.

Ojibwe knowledge-keeper Eli Baxter observes that quillwork economies in some communities after 1900 included men and were largely determined by the quality of their work. He adds that both men and women were involved in societies and both held teaching responsibilities: “We were not restricted as a society to only have men only do one

thing and women do only certain things.”

Baxter writes, “Out of the whole village, there would be one or two families that made certain things that were so good that there was a demand.”12 Museum collections, art fairs, markets, and publications have seen an increase in their number of male artists practicing quillwork or incorporating quills into mixed-media work. Though artists such as Melvin Losh (Leech Lake Ojibwe), Pat Kruse (Red Cliff Ojibwe), and Joe Savage (Fond du Lac Ojibwe) are well established, one of the most familiar artists working today is Dana Warrington (Menominee/Prairie Band Potawatomi), whose pipe bags, cradleboards, and moccasins have garnered critical attention. In his latest work, spectra of colored quills and beads merge together, bridging historical geometric designs with the slick texture of the digital age. It is fascinating that as the collective attention span of individuals narrow, in part due to a preoccupation with digital media, we can see the value of process-based art practices surging. Ironically, however, as cultural events such as the Slow Art movement call for individuals to slow down and appreciate art rather than engulf it, quillwork is very rarely, if ever, mentioned. At over 250 hours to complete, Warrington’s cradleboard Wapenoneh (2019) makes Slow Art look fast.13 Following European colonialism, some tribal communities experienced destructive transformations to their quillwork customs. French colonists in Atlantic Canada, Maine, and Massachusetts were so impressed by the elaborate hide and fur quillwork of the Mi’kmaq that they started referring to them as the “porcupine people.” One hundred years after colonists gave them this moniker, newly arrived missionaries describe how the spread of disease and acute poverty desecrated some of the most thriving quillwork in North America. What was once richly ornamental and painstakingly detailed had become “intolerably ragged” in a single generation, according to one observer.14 For Jennifer Pictou (Mi’kmaq),

12. Eli Baxter, email message to author, April 1, 2020.

13. For more on Dana Warrington and Slow Art, see Jodi Rave, “Slow Art: Dana Warrington transforms porcupine quills into works of art, one meticulous step at a time,” American Craft Council, May 27, 2019, web.

14. Melissa Lizotte, “Reviving a Lost Native Art,” DownEast, February 2, 2020, web.

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Aroostook Band of Micmac tribal historical preservation officer and Abbe Museum educational curator, the desecration of quillwork among the Mi’kmaq correlates to the loss of language. “When we create art,” she says, “it’s more than just making something. We’re sharing our language, stories, life lessons, and tribal knowledge.”15 In this light, quillwork can be defined by its material or physical appearance but also by the cultural knowledge carried within it.

Several peoples, including the Anishinaabayg, once used quill boxes for storage, usually of food. Though these were often elaborately decorated, their pragmatic application shifted considerably once trade with wealthy European patrons began, who were mostly interested in acquiring pretty yet functional boxes for their wives so that they may have a place to store their gloves and handkerchiefs.16 Quill boxes dominated the souvenir economy in the Northeastern Woodlands well into the early 1980s.

Unfortunately, much 20th-century artwork went unsigned. Around this time, a number of artists separated from wholesalers or middlemen and exploitative sales contracts so prospective buyers could commission or purchase work directly from the artist. Does the act of signing one’s work represent an archetypal shift toward the professionalization of quillwork, considering it less a “handicraft” and more a medium of contemporary art? Another perspective is that the rising commodification of quillwork compelled artists to inscribe their signature on their work. In any event, the artwork itself functioned as a signature, an iconographic hallmark, since families preserved and experimented with their own designs, patterns, and subject matter.

As the Anishinaabay story of Porcupine signals the beginning of quillwork, the Lakota story “The End of the World” describes its end. In 1967, cultural historian Jennie Leading Cloud (Sicangu Lakota, 1892–1971) shared a story about the spirit of Old Woman. In her words,

“the Sioux people used to say if the old woman ever finishes her blanket strip, then at the very moment that she threads the last porcupine quill to complete the design, the world will come to an end.”17 Similar to the story of Porcupine, Leading Cloud’s retelling of “The End of the World” story helps to illustrate that quillwork is synonymous with life itself.

Today the burdens of colonialism still pose a related threat to the wellbeing of quillwork. To a large extent, the future of quilling in some communities is subject to the flourishing of sweetgrass, an important material in creating quillwork birchbark boxes. When it is not being bulldozed, the encroachment of land developers on historic sweetgrass fields affects soil erosion and irrigation systems, leading to mass die-offs.18 In the same vein, air, soil, and water pollution gravely impact the development of birch trees and their bark yield.

Ordinarily bark is collected once a year

during the late spring or early summer months, when an abundance of sap eases the peeling of bark and protects the tree from exposure to danger. Harvesting weak or unhealthy birch trees both contradicts Indigenous worldviews and limits the future production of quill boxes, basketry, cradleboards, and so forth.19 The recent explosion of the bronze birch borer and invasive species to the Great Lakes region, such as the Asian longhorned beetle, have only added further harm to birch populations. The future of quillwork, it would seem, depends on an uncompromising escalation of environmental protection.

Nonetheless, contemporary artists are utilizing quillwork to strengthen political opposition to broken treaties and the exploitation of natural resources.

The words LAND BACK scrolled across birchbark in orange quills is how Ojibwe artist Amber Waboose connects her work to those who hold the original stewardship of the land.

15. Lizotte, “Reviving a Lost Native Art.” 16. “Yvonne Walker Keshick,” National Endowment for the Arts, web.

17. Jenny [sic] Leading Cloud, “The End of the World” in American Indian Myths and Legends, ed. Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 486.

18. “Yvonne Walker Keshick.”

19. “Quillwork,” Whetung Ojibwa Centre, web.

SUMMER 2020 | 39

RETURNING HOME Comanche Homecoming at Sultan Park Photo Essay by Ben Norberto III (Comanche) Text by Juanita Pahdopony (Comanche)

T

HE ANNUAL COMANCHE HOMECOMING began in 1952 as a dance memorial for Kelly Poemoceah and other Comanche veterans who served in the US Army 45th Infantry Division during the Korean War.1 The Walters Service Club organized the dance during the Korean War to welcome returning warriors home. Today, the gathering is a time

when families camp, celebrate returning veterans, dance together, feast, and reunite with relatives and friends. Comanche elder Fred Fodder says this event “is the longest continuous celebration of its kind with continued emphasis on honoring Comanche veterans and welcoming Comanche citizens back home from all over the United States.” It is free, open to the public, and a great place to watch

1. Jolene Schonchin, “Comanche Homecoming,” Comanche Nation Newsletter (September/October 2002): 11.

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tribal dancing and competitions, sample vendor foods, and enjoy a variety of other social entertainment.

Jolene Jimenez Schonchin was the 1988 Comanche Nation Princess. Her fondest memory was camping at homecoming, waking up to the smell of bacon and coffee, and listening to the Comanche language spoken inside her family’s canvas tent. Her uncle Ronny Wockmetooah

served in the Korean War, and her kaku (grandmother) was one of the founders of the homecoming who camped every year since its beginnings. “Now I am a mother and my children participate every year and this same tradition will continue on with my family,” says Schonchin.

Ashleigh Mithlo’s two-term reign as Comanche Nation Princess, from 2018 to 2020, was marked by a challenge to research, design, and bead her own buckskin dress. She learned by watching her grandmother and created her own tribal regalia to wear in the dance arena.

Marla Nauni’s memories include an abundance of food and preparations to ensure no visitor to Comanche Homecoming left hungry. The Nauni family camp was set up on the west side of the dance arena with its three to five canvas tents and long dining area with a full-sized kitchen.

Grandparents said, “Go around the arena, and if you see someone sitting alone, invite them to come eat with us.”

Sultan Park, located north of Walters, Cotton County, Oklahoma, is a shady, low-elevation area with a swinging bridge, used by generations of teenagers as a popular meeting place during the annual homecoming.

In recent years, the bridge was replaced with a sturdier, albeit less enjoyable, bridge over the East Cache Creek.

My poem “Dirty Dancing in Sultan Park” celebrates my memories of homecoming with its oppressive triple-digit Oklahoma July heat. Even so, it was always an unforgettable experience that ensured the remembrance of our warriors and dance culture.

Each year, during the third weekend in July, the little town of Walters celebrates two major events, Comanche Homecoming and the Walters Roundup Club Rodeo. Both occasions bring great numbers of tribal and non-tribal visitors to the small rural community, less than 20 miles north of the Red River that divides Oklahoma and Texas.

Visitors are also invited to make their own memories at the annual Comanche Nation Fair in Lawton, Oklahoma, in late September, which showcases tribal dancing and food vendors in a cooler weather venue.

Ben Norberto III (Comanche) shot these images with a Canon EOS Rebel T6 camera in Walters, Oklahoma, on July 21 and 22, 2019.

opposite Members of the Comanche Indian Veterans Association. The Comanche Homecoming was created to honor Comanche veterans. right, top Gourd dancers. right, bottom Young man wearing Southern Traditional dance regalia joining a gourd dance. All photos: ©2020 Ben Norberto III (Comanche).

SUMMER 2020 | 41

above Walters Service Club in Grand Entry. All photos: ©2020 Ben Norberto III (Comanche).

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opposite, top Princesses.

Notice the elk-tooth dress and German silver crowns.

opposite, bottom Master of ceremonies Edmond Nevaquaya.

DIRTY DANCING IN SULTAN PARK Dust . . . dusty roads rising like smoke then settling outside Sultan Park.

The smell of campfires air hanging with the day’s rations sizzling on grills.

Children’s laughter faces caked with dust, snow cones, frybread, popcorn, cotton candy, and kidneys roasted, deep red kidneys.

Bright lights of non-Native vendors offering back our culture for sale: Coyote’s head flattened Horse’s tail stripped Mouse’s eye beaded Plastic shields them from dust— the ever-present dust.

The dance arena fills with visitors, families, babies in strollers, and dancers hungry for a contest victory.

Shawls move in unison to the beating drum while traditional, fancy, cloth, and grass dancers keep the dust in flux at Walters, Oklahoma, Comanche Homecoming.

—Juanita Pahdopony (Comanche) SUMMER 2020 | 43

top, left Giving away an embroidered appliqué shawl during a special, that is, a time at a dance to honor or commemorate a particular person or event. top, right 2018–19 Comanche Nation Princess Ashleigh DeAnn “Ahway” Mithlo. A radiology major at Cameron University, Mithlo is related to the Tosee, Sovo, Sapcut, Aitson, and Goombi families. left Singer caught mid-note at a drum. Southern-style singing is noted for its lower pitch and steady, slower beat than Northern-style. opposite A Men's Southern traditional dancer. All photos: © 2 0 2 0 B e n N o r b e r to I I I (Comanche).

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SUMMER 2020 | 45

SWAIA SELECTS KIM PEONE TO BE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR A New Chapter Begins for Both

By RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo)

A

F T E R A S U S TA I N E D NATIONWIDE SEARCH for a new executive director, the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) board of directors named Kim Peone (Colville Confederated Tribes of Washington State/Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) to the position in April. Social media was abuzz with the news, as the announcement came within days of the board’s decision to postpone this year’s Santa Fe Indian Market due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The postponement, the first interruption of the annual event since World War II, has presented Peone with the first major challenge of her directorship.

“We’ve turned the corner and we’re definitely in a position to be able to offer a virtual Indian Market this year,” Peone said. “We can really be at the forefront of this pandemic.” She is meeting this challenge with the same passion, sense of purpose and professional agility that kept her active in Native governance for 30 years. Peone previously served as the chief executive officer and chief financial officer of a tribal corporation in Washington State and chief financial officer of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, where she managed 120 employees and a $350 million budget.

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above Santa Fe Virtual Indian Market logo. opposite Kim Peone. Both images courtesy of SWAIA.

Peone is the first Native woman to serve as SWAIA’s executive director, though several Native women have served in leadership positions at SWAIA over the years. Notably, Ramona Sakiestewa (Hopi) served as SWAIA president and oversaw many of the association’s daily operations from 1980 to 1982.

Throughout Kim Peone’s career, which has taken her “through Indian Country from coast to coast,” she has been focused on “building accountable, sustainable, and disciplined Native organizations that exceed expectations of key stakeholders.” This philosophy of leadership aligns well with SWAIA’s mission statement: “Bringing Native arts to the world by inspiring artistic excellence, fostering education, and creating meaningful partnerships.”

Peone’s vision for the association’s future is enhanced by technology, beginning with the creation of an online visual platform where a virtual Santa Fe Indian Market will be the central focus.

The nonprofit Clark Hulings Fund for Visual Artists is serving as a consultant on SWAIA’s project to create the virtual Indian Market. Peone notes that the online platform will include “a comprehensive business acumen to assist artists

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in meeting their individual goals, and will make it possible to bring together elders, baby boomers, millennials, and Gen Xers.”

More than 1,000 artists, all those who were accepted into the 2020 Indian Market—or were on the waiting list—are eligible to participate in the virtual market. Dates, fees, and other details were still pending at press time.

Peone’s leadership skills, the creation of a virtual Indian Market to help artists build a stronger web presence and bridge the financial gap created by the COVID-19 crisis, and her willingness to form partnerships to ensure the long-term sustainability of the association have all been met with enthusiasm. “The board is excited by the impressive background Peone brings to SWAIA to lead Indian Market through its centennial year [2022] and into the next century,” wrote Tom Teegarden, SWAIA board chair.

“This pandemic has forced us to look at how we conduct business and meet

new clients, as well as share new designs with established customers,” wrote former SWAIA board member Elizabeth Kirk (Isleta Pueblo/Navajo). “Thankfully, we live in an age where technology can close the void created by the current situation.”

“The cancellation of Indian Market due to COVID-19 has upended the very thing that SWAIA works year-round to produce,” Amanda Crocker, public relations and marketing director, relayed via email. “But to think of us folding up shop and waiting until next year, that would just be so devastating for the artists. I’m proud of us for changing course, finding solid support to assist us with that, and staying in the game.”

Positive sentiments have also been expressed by members of Peone’s staff.

“She’s an incredibly hard worker, and we all just adore her,” says Yvonne Gillespie, SWAIA’s finance administrator. “I’m looking forward to a more artist-friendly directive,” muses long-time Indian Market

artist, Marcus Amerman (Choctaw Nation).

Peone was born in Santa Fe, and her parents met while attending the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is the mother of three grown children.

“My daughters live in Cherokee [North Carolina], and my son is in Spokane.”

Her “full-circle journey” through Indian Country has led her back to Santa Fe, where she has garnered strong support.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about the sustainability of SWAIA,” said Peone as our telephone interview ended. She was working remotely from North Carolina that week. Reflecting on the development of the virtual market, whose website will include content and stories about Santa Fe Indian Market’s past, present, and future, Peone offered these words in closing: “Remember. Relive. Reimagine.

Remember the past 100 years of Indian Market, relive the experiences, and reimagine what it could look like beyond the next 100 years.”

SUMMER 2020 | 47

OPINION

THE INDIAN-ONINDIAN ART PLAGUE Intertribal Cultural Misappropriation

By Nanette Kelley (Osage/Cherokee Nations)

“I

T IS ILLEGAL to offer or display for sale, or sell any art or craft product in a manner that falsely suggests it is Indian-produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian or Indian tribe or Indian arts and crafts organization in the arts, resident within the United States.”1 The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (IACA) is a reasonable resource to examine when determining possible cultural misappropriation, but what if the person you believe to be misrepresenting your culture is another American Indian?

The term cultural appropriation is a fairly new, postcolonial term, and depending upon the academic source of reference, it is partially attributed to noted British artist, critic, and historian Kenneth Coutts-Smith from his written contribution to the 1976 congress of the Association internationale des critiques d’art (International Association of Art Critics) regarding Eurocentric points of view in art criticism, “Some General Observations on the Problem of Cultural Colonialism.”2 Among other condemnations of “high” culture, he notes the “transference and acquisition of cultural property” within institutions are set up to “perpetuate existing class privilege.” He

also shares his criticisms of “hegemony” or dominance of one group over another, imperialism, and the bourgeois.3 By definition, cultural appropriation may or may not be a wrongful act and falls into various definitive categories such as “using things from a culture that is not your own,” the “taking over of creative or artistic forms, themes, or practices by one cultural group,” or it “carries connotations of exploitation and dominance” by “Western” or White individuals and organizations.4 In fact, anyone, American Indian or not, can commit cultural appropriation.

If an Indigenous work is properly credited and it is not a case of the dominant culture appropriating from a minority culture, chances are it is just horse trading. And depending upon tribal protocols, members of one culture adopted or married into another and bestowed the honor of making and utilizing cultural arts are likely not committing an egregious offense.

An extreme example of intercultural adoption and consent to produce work in another culture’s style is that of artist and storyteller Don Morse Smith or “Chief Lelooska” (self-identified Cherokee descent). Smith’s niece and executive

director of the Lelooska Foundation, Mariah Stoll-Smith Reese, explained that a Kwakwaka’wakw family, the House of Sewide, adopted him. Rights and privileges were then extended enabling him to form his own house, the House of Lelooska, which granted him permission to potlatch and make ceremonial masks.

Chief Lelooska’s art was crafted in the Northwest Coast style of his adopting Kwakwaka’wakw family, and although his work is controversial among both Indigenous peoples and academic communities, it is accepted by his family members and some in the art community.

Stoll-Smith Reese informed me, “He was raised to respect his elders” from the House of Sewide.5 But what do status Kwakwaka’wakw artists and Cherokee artists think about this?

In general, cultural misappropriation stems from lack of respect or understanding of one culture by someone of another culture. We cannot always place the blame on overseas counterfeiters or use the colonizers as scapegoats for our lost gallery, e-commerce, performance art, and powwow booth income. Indigenous peoples can commit cultural misappropriation against other Indigenous peoples, and when they

1. Indian Arts and Crafts Board, “The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990,” US Department of the Interior, web.

2. Kenneth Coutts-Smith, “Some general observations on the problem of cultural colonialism,” in Myth of Primitivism: Perspectives on Art, ed. Susan Hiller (London: Routledge, 2005), 14–31.

3. Coutts-Smith, “Some general observations on the problem of cultural colonialism,” 14–31.

4. Sarah J. Bartolome, World Music Pedagogy: Choral Music Education, Volume V (New York: Routledge, 2019), n. p.

5. Mariah Stoll-Smith Reese, in discussion with the author, May 15, 2020.

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OPINION

do, it does far more than create loss of income: it undermines the collective credibility of all Indigenous artists.

While the Indian Arts and Crafts Act covers non-Native people falsely claiming their work is Native-made, the act does not cover actions by enrolled Native peoples or tribally designated artisans within the United States except to prevent them from identifying as being from another tribe than their own.

According to the IACA of 1990, “It is illegal to market art or craftwork using the name of a tribe if a member, or certified Indian artisan, of that tribe did not actually create the art or craftwork.”6 However, because lack of common decency among Indigenous individuals and others sometimes falls outside the framework of IACA’s regulatory jurisdiction, an attempt was made to strengthen the act with an amendment. In the year 2000 the Indian Arts and Crafts Enforcement Act strengthened enforcement of the IACA; however, it still only focused on misrepresentation by non-Native people or those who are not tribally designated artisans.

Indian Arts and Crafts Board program specialist Ken Van Wey explained to me that the board attempted to gain as much input and perspective as possible by consulting with tribes in order to define the term “Indian product” and provide true and false examples of those products.7 All federally recognized tribal leaders were informed of the proceedings and provided with copies of the legislation, yet only a fraction responded or agreed to contribute to the final rule effective in 2003.

If more Indigenous nations, each with their unique cultural attributes and perspectives, provided input into defining “Indian product,” could the rules of enforcement have included a broader definition to address intertribal appropriation?

Indigenous artists can personally gain fame, fortune, and documented misrepresentation of another tribal member, tribe, or ancestors in perpetuity.

It is disheartening to see Indigenous artists (and occasionally an entire community)

above Don Morse Smith, “Lelooska” (self-identified Cherokee descent, 1933–1996), Crane and Xweti, 1965, alder, deer hide, animal hair, deer antler, paint, 123/4 × 61/8 × 41/8 in., collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 25/8768 (CC0).

staking claims to the ancestral cultural resources of another in the name of fine art or tourism.

Ironically, acts of “cultural preservation” or “education” in the name of decolonization are, in fact, examples of the pitiless dominance perpetrated by colonizers. This is especially damaging, because as more tribes develop strategies to interpret their cultures, another American Indian may have already stolen their thunder. Tribes have enough problems battling inaccurate Eurocentric perspectives; they do not need Indigenocentric misinterpretation as well.

Past and present artists are the victims of cultural theft, but when the archives are full of unqualified cultural spokespeople who play into stereotypes, the situation becomes worse. It may be difficult for future youth to gain accurate information or research their own ancestors. They may, in turn, unknowingly appropriate other cultures while losing their own.

According to a National Congress of American Indians report, “twentyseven (27) states make no mention of a single Native American in their K–12 curriculum.”8 Throughout history, the gatekeepers of the mainstream media,

archives, and educational institutions have often enabled cultural misappropriation by misrepresented and limited manuscript curation. Research libraries are filled with a plethora of newspapers, journals, recordings, and, more recently, social media archives destined to be the determining content source for cultural and art history textbooks.

Indian Health Service estimates around 70 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives live in urban areas9 outside of cultural environments with a Native-majority population. In an intertribal environment surrounded by non-Native people, some turn to a pan-Indian approach to culture where etiquette and artistic boundaries may go unchecked.

Due to colonization, many people are “detribalized” or detached from their ancestors’ identities and communities.

Due to displacement and other colonization tactics, many people of Indigenous descent are not affiliated with a tribe and do not know their ancestors' tribal affiliations. In Latin America, the terms mestizo, mestiza, and mestizx (with their own controversies) describe detribalized people of Indigenous descent, but no similar terms exist for non-Latinx populations. “Native American” is not a

6. Indian Arts and Crafts Board, “The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990,” web.

7. “Cultural Appropriation,” in The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature, 3rd edition, ed. Margaret Drabble, Jenny Stringer, and Daniel Hahn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 167; Ken Van Wey, in discussion with the author, May 6, 2020.

8. National Congress of American Indians, “Becoming Visible: A Landscape Analysis of State Efforts to Provide Native American Education for All,” 2019, PDF, 8.

9. Indian Health Service, “Urban Indian Health Program,” October 2018, web.

SUMMER 2020 | 49

OPINION

tribe; so should someone of indeterminate Indigenous descent, whose family lost their known tribal affiliation centuries ago, borrow tribally specific cultural stories or imagery as a means to promote themselves in the arts? Regardless, if when asked, they disclose they are not an enrolled tribal member, they have the legal right to produce and sell any non-copyrighted, tribal-affiliated content because cultural appropriation is not within the framework of IACA regulatory jurisdiction. However, they do not necessarily have these rights under international laws, other countries’ laws, and general policies, such as those defined by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that protect Indigenous, intangible, intellectual property rights.

Van Wey explained that within the framework of the IACA, he has an initial “mental test” he runs when anyone contacts him about a potential violation: If the product is not an Indian arts-andcrafts product, is not for sale, and/or is not sold by Indigenous cultural misrepresentation, then technically there is no violation under IACA.

Because ancient civilizations are not necessarily recognized tribes, the IACA is unable to provide intellectual protection to both the ancestors and current reinterpreters of precontact arts. Even if a tribe has recognized oral history and scholarly evidence that they descend from any of the ancient sites within the United States, it is open season for anyone (including an enrolled member of another tribe) to misrepresent and disrespect another culture’s ancestors. Indigenous cultural appropriation is unsavory enough when an artist of one culture disproportionately profits off the designs of another, but appropriation in regard to our ancestors’ ancient art is deplorable.

When I asked Chase Kahwinhut Earles (Caddo Nation) to give an opinion about precontact art reproductions by members of tribes with no proven affiliation, he said, “At one time, some tribes didn’t know what was theirs or not theirs, but we’ve come so far since then, we don’t need to copy each other’s stuff.”10 Admitting he had “been through the shame” and made some “really ignorant,

10. Chase Earles, in discussion with the author, May 12, 2020.

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stereotypical mistakes growing up,” Earles said he apologized and kept an open conversation with his tribe about it by continuing with the songs, dances, and the Native American Church. “It’s the difference between reading about your culture and doing it.”

Earles, who creates outdoor-fired Caddo pottery, had originally fallen in love with the works of Santa Clara and other Pueblo ceramics but soon decided for himself that making another tribe’s pots is like “blackface” or “redface” and attached to another tribe’s culture. “That tribe’s culture is not my culture, and copying that tribe’s culture, I might as well be a non-Native copying other people’s work,” he said.

Familiar with problems Indigenous artists struggle with today, he explained, “The most painful was seeing other Natives copying Caddo pottery,” and rather than complaining, he attempts to be part of the solution. “I try to educate people as I see the problem.”

It is unclear how Indian-on-Indian cultural misappropriation may have evolved among our peoples. Perhaps it

OPINION

was fueled by the pan-Indian movement of the 1970s, with urban Indians collectively practicing cross-cultural arts.

Maybe it is rooted in the early competition for resources during the time our civilizations were strained due to colonization, war, famine, and disease, when our grandmothers and grandfathers, regardless of affiliation, made the most popular crafts just to feed their families.

Today, many living Indigenous artists are extremely popular. In addition, curators, such as those at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are beginning to integrate Indigenous art into American art timelines alongside artists of European descent, resulting in mainstream exposure. Current Indigenous works are highly sought by international galleries, and grant money for cultural art and performance facilitation is up for grabs.

Ironically, as the subject matter of decolonization gains popularity in Western art institutions, some artists (taking advantage of their sisters and brothers with whom they should stand unified against the Western mainstream) are crossing over into other cultures’ narratives by using the very tools that colonizers have used against us for hundreds of years: Western laws and the mainstream media.

Bottom line, Indigenous regalia makers, storytellers, and mainstream artists should not commit cultural misappropriation while utilizing the mainstream media and non-Native institutions to validate it. The cultural enforcement limitations of the IACA should not be the deciding factor of whether Indigenousmade art is a wrongful act, and perhaps next time the Indian Arts and Crafts Board requires input from the tribes, hopefully more than a handful will respond.

Most importantly, regarding intertribal commerce, we as Indigenous peoples had our own etiquette and protocols in place long before the IACA. Indigenous artists (federally or state-recognized or originating outside US boundaries) should all be asking for guidance from elders

of both their respective cultures and the culture whose designs and symbols they wish to “interpret.” If artists refuse to create work from within an Indigenous, cultural perspective, why should they have the right to claim status as an Indigenous artist? Opposed to the abuses committed within the courts and the media, cultural identity should determine behavior, and we should be having these discussions with our elders.

Nanette Kelley (Osage and Cherokee Nations) is a professional artist, writer, and NAJA member. She holds BA degrees in arts and communications, is pursuing her MA degree in Indigenous Education Curriculum Design and Policy Studies, and resides in both California (on unceded Wiyot land) and in the Osage Nation, Oklahoma.

above Kim Lollis-McCauley (Cherokee Nation), It Pays the Bills, 2020, digital art, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist. galonedi.com.

opposite Robert Havell Jr. (1793–1878) after John James Audubon, Black Vulture, or Carrion Crow from Birds of America, 1827, lithograph, from The Birds of America (1827–38).

SUMMER 2020 | 51

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PROFILE

ALUTIIQ CARVER

LENA SNOW AMASON

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

L

ENA SNOW AMASON was born in the fishing village of Port Lions, Alaska, to a family of visual artists.

Her father is the well-known painter and sculptor Alvin Amason (Alutiiq) and her mother, Kathy Nelson, is an accomplished painter who specialized in drawing with children. Lena Amason credits her mother for encouraging her to paint, draw, and sculpt from an early age. Her mother stressed the importance of making art part of her daily life.

Amason also acknowledges the marine life surrounding Kodiak Island, her home, as a driving influence. In particular, the forms, textures, and patterns inherent to the island, its people, and its deep waters are crucial to understanding her work. In recent years she has been recognized for producing a series of remarkable wooden mask carvings inspired by the Alutiiq carving legacy of her ancestors. The intense color palette and rough patina of these carvings speak to how fishing (and the commercial fishing industry) have transformed her everyday experience of living in Port Lions.

An element of her work is also motivated by the prevention of mask carving (and ritual dancing) by missionaries and government agents only a few generations earlier. Her carved masks imagine how the mask and dancing practices might have evolved if unburdened by the history of European colonialism in the Northwest.

Ultimately her work represents an entirely new approach to mask carving that wholly embraces vivid color palettes and dynamic shapes to honor and innovate the history of Kodiak Island carving.

Amason’s work is included in several public and private collections throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, including the Château-musée de Boulogne-sur-Mer in Boulognesur-Mer, France; the Alaska Native

Heritage Center; the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks; and the Anchorage Museum. Her work has also been included in several solo and group exhibitions, notably at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak, and the Pratt Museum in Homer. I connected with Amason after her recent move back to Port Lions through a series of phone conversations and email exchanges during the COVID-19 pandemic in April and May of 2020.

MRS: Thank you for speaking with me, Lena. It seems that Port Lions has been very formative to your life and work.

Shall we begin there? I understand you were born into a family of artists, and you have said your mother has encouraged your creative output since you were a child. Can you tell me how this has shaped your life as an artist?

LSA: My earliest memories are of living with my mom and dad in a house that

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was mostly an art studio. It was this huge studio space and it had a little living area located right down the boardwalk from my great-Gramma Lena’s house. So I watched my dad, for the couple years that we lived there, create these huge paintings of everyday Kodiak life and the wildlife around the island. We came up with titles together, and I learned the visual language of the island early from him. I had my own spot in the studio that my mom and dad set up for me from the time that I could hold a paintbrush. Making art was something that I always did.

MRS: How has your family shown the importance of art in children’s lives?

LSA: My mom would always make sure there were art supplies available.

She encouraged us to draw, spent time teaching drawing lessons, and volunteered to do art classes as we grew up here in Port Lions. And I’m really thankful that I get to spend time with my mom now with my own kids. She spends time teaching them

LENA SNOW AMASON

how to draw and paint and helps to make art a part of their lives, too.

MRS: How would you describe Port Lions for those who haven’t visited there? Perhaps you can extend that to Kodiak Island, as well?

LSA: I was raised and spent my formative years here in Port Lions. As we speak, I’m currently waiting on the airstrip for groceries. The village is small and only accessible by plane. This village was formed after the 1964 earthquake [known as the Great Alaskan Earthquake] and the tidal wave that wiped out the Afognak village. Many of the people moved from there and relocated to Port Lions. I lived here by the time I was in second grade. My mom married a fisherman, and I spent a lot of my childhood in this village. A lot of my memories of fishing and hunting and village life, as well as many of the ideas that surface in my work, come from living in this village of Port Lions.

MRS: Your aesthetic interests aren’t only based on life in the village, I believe. You are a painter with a pointed focus on the wildlife of Kodiak Island, but your carved, wooden masks have garnered a lot of critical attention. I appreciate their color. What was it about carving that stuck with you?

LSA: I didn’t get into carving until high school. My dad would ask me if I wanted to make something. He lived in various places and had studios across the country: Rhode Island to Vashon Island, Washington, to Fairbanks and Anchorage. He took me once to visit the Crossroads of Continents exhibition that came to Alaska in 1991. There was this cool plank mask, and I wanted to make something like that, so I did. I brought the piece back to Port Lions, and Jim Dillard, the carving teacher that got the kids in the village first carving masks here, saw that piece and invited me to come carve with him and showed me how to sharpen tools. I really enjoyed the physicality and the rhythm of carving and being able to create a form that you can paint on.

I didn’t get deeply into the mask form until college, I believe. That’s when my dad handed me this dissertation by

scholar Dominique Desson about the masks of Kodiak. I read through that book and realized what a strong dancing tradition there was on this island and explored the meaning of that for a while.

I also got to experience being part of a dance group for the village of Old Harbor, where I lived for 20 years. We wrote songs and choreographed dances. I even made

above Sisters, 2019, oils, acrylic, buoy plastic on birch plywood, 481/4 × 243/8 × 3 in., private collection. opposite Lena Snow Amason and child. All images courtesy of the artist and Stonington Gallery, Seattle, Washington.

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masks for some of those performances, which was an amazing experience.

Right now I’m mostly doing paintings … until I can get set up to carve here in Port Lions.

MRS: I hope that will be soon. You’ve mentioned your dedication to making art and living creatively. Can you expand on this? Where does this come from?

LSA: I have kept the discipline of making things—drawing, painting, and carving— keeping art a part of my daily life because it’s something consistent, something that’s always there for me and doesn’t let me down. I can always turn to it as a way to express feelings or tell stories. So I am dedicated to it and I consider art my work.

I can show up to the studio every day, just like my dad said I need to. He said, “If this is going to be your job, you need to show up to it every day and treat it like a real job. Even if you just stare at stuff and sweep the floor, you stay connected with

it, you’ll know what to do the next time you come in.”

MRS: That’s good advice. It sounds like he’s saying that making art is not solely about creating objects but also about maintaining a state of mind. Can you dive into how you select the colors for your paintings and carvings?

LSA: In my early 20s, I took a painting class. I studied with an icon painter and learned how to use egg tempera.

MRS: I hear that’s a tricky one.

LSA: It is. The teacher’s approach to painting Orthodox icons was to first paint yellow, gold, or some other bright, warm color underneath as an underpainting and then complete the rest of the painting on top of that. This will kind of help the painting glow from within. So I kind of kept that idea. I tend to start my work with warm colors—yellows and oranges

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and even hot pink—which are colors that I grew up around through fishing and that.

A lot of times I’ll sand back what I painted to build up a bunch of layers and let some of the brighter colors shine through, to kind of sparkle. I work on these paintings for a long time.

MRS: I think it shows.

LSA: Some of my recent paintings play with color and texture. I was thinking about when I’m out on the water and looking into the net full of fish or riding the skiff and watching how the light plays on the water at different times of day. The light play on water and the feelings of the day—every day I would go in and lay colors down and whatever I was feeling that day without really thinking, I would play around, and just be myself.

MRS: I notice, too, that the surfaces of your carvings are purposely scraped or meticulously sanded away. My

LENA SNOW AMASON

mum lives in a small village on Prince Edward Island, on the Eastern Shores of Canada. The scuffed and scraped and worn surfaces of your masks remind me of the old lobster boats there, especially as the fishing season draws to a close.

I’d like to know about your approach to texture. What is the deeper meaning on the surface of these works?

LSA: All of my years spent commercial fishing and being on the water, I paid attention to the way that the wood surfaces of boats and equipment were always scraped or the paint was worn away. I think I try to bring that effect into my paintings. Also, when I look at artifacts and different objects that are painted and worn and used by the Alutiit people hundreds of years ago, the wear marks and scuff marks, that’s where the experiences and stories are.

MRS: Texture as a story is poetic. I like that. With this in mind, I’d like to discuss one of your more popular works, Pray for Blue Sky (2018). It is a work that, I think, best synthesizes your approach to color and texture. Can you talk about how this work came into being?

LSA: Pray for Blue Sky was made in honor of a family member, and I was working on it during a time when we knew that she wouldn’t be around much longer. I was thinking about a happy memory of sitting with her in our yard in Old Harbor when the sunshine was coming through the leaves in the trees and the green grass was all around, just telling stories and laughing with her. It was a happy moment in the summer, and I chose my color palette because of that memory. I chose the face on that piece as kind of a mix between the weasel and the fox, not necessarily any one kind of animal but an animal that had a feisty, kind of a stinker spirit that this person did, but in a playful way. I was finishing up this piece around the time when this person was only going to be around for a little bit longer, and there were family members who needed to make it in to spend their last moments with her.

MRS: The title of the work, Pray for Blue Sky, is inscribed on the lower right-hand

corner of the work. How did you come to choose this title?

LSA: I remember that I called my dad and explained to him what was going on with this person. And we weren’t sure what was happening, and if planes were even going to be able to make it in so that the family

above Nuniak Arlluk, 2018, acrylic, oils, buoy plastic, glass beads, baleen, monofilament, Plexiglas, found wood, yellow cedar, 54 × 30 × 17 in., private collection. opposite Truth, 2019, acrylic, buoy plastic on wood, 163/4 × 22 × 21/4 in., private collection.

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would be able to see her. He said, “You had better pray for blue sky,” so it was he that gave me that title, Pray for Blue Sky.

a b ov e Kasa'inaq—Seal Helmet, 2018, acrylic, oils, Plexiglas, glitter on red cedar, 9 × 167/8 × 101/2 in., private collection. opposite Pray for Blue Sky, 2018, acrylic, oils, on red cedar.

MRS: Your work utilizes various iconography such as Alutiiq cultural symbols, images from commercial fishing, and Kodiak’s wildlife, mostly from the surrounding waters. Can you talk about how they make their way into your work?

LSA: I pull elements of designs from ancient and modern hunting and fishing objects. There are these little carved ivory otter charms that Alutiit people suspended

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on the inside of the bow of their kayaks.

I think of how some boat captains (especially my stepdad, Fuzzy) meticulously do their woodwork and clean their boats to prepare them for fishing.

It’s the beautiful, well-cared-for boats that catch the fish. Some of my wood-sanding habits certainly came from working for my stepdad on the F/V Anna Lissa.

On the underside of the kayak, you’ll see symbols. I drew some that are borrowed from a Kodiak dance mask. It looks like it may be made out of some kind of leather, but it doesn’t cover the whole face. Anyway, it kind of reminds me of fish tails, so I was thinking of the idea

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of being prepared to go out fishing and how it is mental—what kind of state of mind do you need to go out on the boat? You’re going to be dealing with all kinds of weather and all kinds of situations. You need to have a clear mind, and your spirit needs to be right with itself. I recently borrowed symbols from the designs on top of spruce root hats that were from Kodiak. I’m not sure, but there’s a lot of them from Kodiak that have symbols on top. Maybe it was an identifying marker from a family? Like a signature. I’m not sure. The boat names come from the families, from important people in the family, grandmas, daughters, and others.

MRS: Can we follow this further? I’m curious to know why and for whom your work is for.

LSA: I make pieces for many reasons. Many times it’s to honor a memory or something that happened. It could be a piece that was made for someone who I would like to apologize to or someone that I need to forgive. I’ve been looking recently at the work of Joan Mitchell, Willem de Kooning, and different Abstract Expressionist painters. Even paintings by children—give them some paint and they will do amazing things. The total freedom and confidence without worrying about making a certain thing, just expressing your feelings, and what is happening in the moment, and play, and enjoy making.

MRS: As you’ve said, Port Lions is a remote fishing village on Kodiak, so I’m wondering how you’ve managed to connect to other artists and create a sense of community?

LSA: A lot of our communication and sharing of ideas and exchange of images is done using cell phones. They are tools, like any other, especially when I was working on the show I had in Homer and making the piece for the show that Donald Varnell had recently. We shared a lot of screenshots of work and sort of talked in images. We’re pretty far away but we’re still able to communicate on that level. It doesn’t feel like you’re working alone anymore when you’re able to share like that, having ongoing conversations with other people who speak the same language.

MRS: What have you been working on most recently?

LSA: My friend Donald Varnell invited me to make a piece for his state museum show called The Crybabies, and there was a show alongside it that was called The Inspirations, which included the works and objects that inspired his work and people he kept in contact with while he was making his work for the show. He asked me to make something—to do whatever I want, something that I’ve always wanted to do, not connected with any theme or a certain subject matter, which is really nice to have that freedom and be encouraged to just play and experiment and do something that isn’t in a category. Right now I'm making a series of paintings for a show at the Stonington Gallery in Seattle.

Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD, is the Curator at Glenhyrst Art Gallery in Brantford, Ontario, and the Canadian Section Editor of the Art Market Dictionary. Matthew works in London, Ontario.

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SANTA CLARA PUEBLO CLAY ARTIST AND PRINTMAKER

JASON GARCIA

By Michelle J. Lanteri

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ORN IN 1973 AT K’HAPO OWINGEH, the “Rose Path Village,” or Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, Jason Garcia’s Tewa name is Okuu Pín, or “Turtle Mountain,” Tewa for the Sandia Mountains. He lives at Santa Clara Pueblo, and he is a ceramic artist, a printmaker, and a father of three. His parents are John Garcia (Santa Clara Pueblo) and Gloria Garcia (Pojoaque Pueblo). Growing up at the pueblo, he was part of a family of artists, like his mother, whose artistic name is Goldenrod, known for her pottery with sgraffito, or etched designs. She learned from her mother, the late Petra Montoya Gutierrez (Pojoaque Pueblo, 1907–1995), who made painted blackware and polychrome redware. Jason Garcia began working in clay at an early age, and the lifelong exposure to art as a profession continues to inspire his practice.

In 1998 Garcia earned a bachelor of fine arts in photography from the University of New Mexico (UNM), and in 2016 he graduated with a master of fine arts in printmaking from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Combined with his experiences at the pueblo, Garcia’s knowledge in multiple media gained from these programs continued to shape his signature style of illustrative narratives and their photo-like framing.

Garcia’s portraits—often made in clay tiles, pen-and-ink drawings, and serigraph prints—reflect the intersecting, social landscapes between Pueblo life and popular culture. He’s influenced by his family members’ illustrative practices in clay, like his aunt Lois Gutierrez (Pojoaque Pueblo), who paints figurative narratives on polychrome vessels. He also draws inspiration from comic book stories, like Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez’s Love and Rockets series (1982–1996), and the muses he finds in music, movies, and his relationships with friends, family, and loved ones.

Garcia was a 2019 artist in residence at the Chaco Culture National Historic Park, a 2017 Artist in Business Leadership Fellow with the First Peoples Fund, and a 2016 artist in residence at the Institute of American Indian Arts. In 2007, he was a Ronald and Susan Dubin Fellow at the School for Advanced Research.

ML: Can you start off by telling us about your relatives?

JG: On both sides, there are fairly well-known potters. The maternal side includes artists from Santa Clara and Pojoaque Pueblos, while my paternal side is a mixture of Santa Clara and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblos. I primarily grew up and participated in Santa Clara Pueblo and our Tewa cultural activities. My maternal relatives are my grandmother Petra Montoya Gutierrez, 60 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

my aunt Lois Gutierrez, my aunt Thelma Talachy, and my godmother Minnie Vigil. On my paternal side, there is my greatgrandmother, Severa Tafoya (1890–1973), my aunt, Tina Garcia (1957–2005), my aunt, Virginia Garcia, and my aunt and uncle, Lela (1895–1966) and Evangelio “Van” Gutierrez (1870–1956)— Severa’s brother.

ML: How does being Tewa and receiving family guidance inform your practice?

JG: It has to do with the use of materials and techniques, which I’m not necessarily straying too far from. I was also given the freedom to create in my own style. In terms of my clay tiles, I’m influenced by Pablita Velarde’s (Santa Clara Pueblo, 1918–2006) pigment paintings on Masonite, and the overall paradigm of pottery and clay, which is not necessarily a rigid structure. My printmaking has more to do with deciding to go to college. My interest in printmaking grew during my undergraduate years when I was progressing as an artist within my career and through opportunities to participate in fellowships and residencies. In 2009 at Arizona State University (ASU), I worked with their

JASON GARCIA

Map(ing) project, a printmaking collaboration, which led to my decision to go to graduate school. So the translation and transition from clay to printmaking isn’t a far leap since my imagery is based on the illustrative process and inspired by popular culture and Pop Art. ML: How did your undergraduate years at UNM change your outlook on your role as an artist?

JG: The bachelor of fine arts helped me to refine my artistic vision. Through different mentors, I understood more about what it meant to be an artist in the sense of fine arts. This was important during my bachelor’s program in the 1990s. I was in my twenties and a young artist putting in the work.

One of the professors who I learned the most from during this time was the late photographer, Patrick Nagatani (JapaneseAmerican, 1945–2017). From visiting his studio, I saw differences in the career part of it since he was an artist who showed nationally and internationally. The other professor who influenced me a lot was Dr. Joyce Szabo, now a professor emerita of Native American art history. From her I learned about the research and academic side of art history and curation as contexts when you’re writing about the artist.

The artists that I remember studying and trying to understand their voices are Frank LaPeña (Nomtipom Wintu, 1937– 2019), Harry Fonseca (Nisenan Maidu, 1946–2006), and Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (Southern Cheyenne). After I graduated from UNM I held different jobs, with some related to art and some not, and I was on a pathway of finding exhibition opportunities and continuing to make work. In some ways I understand that I have a signature style now in 2020 versus in 1998, when I graduated from UNM and was discovering my medium and my artistic voice.

ML: How did graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison shape your practice?

JG: After my residency at ASU in 2009, one of the professors there told me about the University of Wisconsin’s program, and I had also met Tom Jones

(Ho-Chunk), a photographer, the year before. I started the program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and earned my master of fine arts degree in 2016. I think that being in a graduate program is about fine-tuning your artistic vision while trying unfamiliar media, with more time to devote to them and being able to work with different professors.

I made sculptures in neon lights, a new medium to me, and I did some work to learn the process of how glass moves and how the colors are achieved. I made a pueblo skyline with the satellite television antenna, the ladders, and the roofs.

There were four neon pieces, each about five to six feet in length. They represented different periods: contemporary/current,

above Beats, 2020, handprocessed clay tile, mineral p i g m e n t s , o u td o o r f i r i n g methods, 9 × 63/4 in., private collection. opposite Jason Garcia. Photo: Dakota Mace (Diné). Unless otherwise noted, all images courtesy of the artist.

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the Southwest. Being in a completely different region where many people did not know about Pueblo cultures, I would introduce myself first as Native American, a term I don’t usually use, then from New Mexico, in the Southwest region of the United States, and then as Tewa from Santa Clara Pueblo. I’d explain that six Pueblos speak Tewa in New Mexico, and there’s one in Arizona. I would show a map of the United States with New Mexico highlighted, and then another map showing New Mexico with all the tribes and Pueblos. There were a lot of opportunities for widening and broadening my perspectives in that sense and in seeing and interacting with the other Native communities in the Midwest.

ML: Can you describe your preparations for the clay tiles in terms of the physical work?

above Warrior Maiden Muse from the Tewa Tales of Suspense series, 2018, hand-processed clay tile, mineral pigments, using outdoor firing methods. Image courtesy of the Ralph T. Coe Center for the Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico. opposite Big Kahuna Burger, 2019, hand-processed clay tile, mineral pigments, outdoor firing methods, 9 x 6 3/4 in.

post-contact Spanish/colonial, and then two that represented the precontact period and the emergence. I wouldn’t mind exploring this work again.

I also studied with professor Lynda Barry, known for her comic strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek, and now I’m able to call her my friend, mentor, and committee member. Through her I met artists who came to campus, such as Matt Groening who created The Simpsons. I also attended museum exhibitions in Wisconsin, like an opening of Frank Stella’s printmaking. I visited museum collections and artists’ studios and gave different talks at museums in the Midwest and on the East Coast during those years. So the program really got me out of my comfort zone in

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JG: I go out to the local clay pits near the pueblo, make offerings, dig for the clay, and then I process the clay by hand.

The last step can last a month or longer, depending on methods of processing your clay. The season and the humidity are also boundaries in the work. I go out into different landscapes to gather pigments.

Sometimes when I’m traveling or driving, I see colors on the hillside. Some of the pigments are clumps and fairly hard or soft, or they are clay, or they are found in riverbeds. First you clean it and reduce it to a pure pigment or clay. When it undergoes a chemical process in the firing, that may or may not change the color.

Sometimes what you see is not the color you get. It’s time-intensive and requires patience, but when you get something figured out, then you can start eliminating your variables, as far as your clays, of what is or isn’t working.

ML: Where do you find inspiration for your work?

JG: Comic books and graphic novels influence my work in terms of their visual storytelling and visual learning, and I follow different comic book artists and graphic novelists, like Ed Piskor. Some of my work draws on car culture. People at Santa Clara Pueblo have all kinds of cars— Cadillacs, Hummers, Teslas, Porsches,

JASON GARCIA

muscle cars, and trucks. So my work is informed by my personal observations of Pueblo life, music, and 21st–century popular culture, including social media.

I read about Pueblo history. There are a lot of archaeologists and anthropologists out there, and I try to attend their lectures. Some of them are streamed now. I see a lot of movies, and that hasn’t changed since COVID-19. But now I watch things online versus going to the theater. I watched three Spike Lee movies this weekend: Get on the Bus (1996), She Hate Me (2004), and Rodney King (2017).

A couple weeks ago, I saw his School Daze (1988) and Malcolm X (1992) again. I’ve been watching a program, The Dead Lands (2020), about the Māori story about the undead, and Westworld (2016–present), a sci-fi series. I also watched the series Hollywood (2020), a revisionist history of post-WWII Hollywood. It ended on a good note, which was not necessarily true to history, but it was interesting.

ML: You made drawings and prints for Okuu Pín: Songs for my Muse, hosted by the Hecho a Mano gallery in Santa Fe in April and May 2020. What subjects have you been exploring?

JG: In the early part of the year I focused on a couple museum commissions and my work for the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market in early March.

During that week at the Heard in Phoenix, things were already beginning to shift because of COVID–19. At that point, I was preparing for the Hecho a Mano show and finishing the ideas and sketches I had started. The show date changed from March to April, and we had a virtual opening. I’m still doing the Corn Maiden series and other Pueblo subjects—my personal observations of Pueblo life and how it’s reflected in social media imagery.

I also created some mixed-media prints.

My original thought for Hecho a Mano was to show work that came out of my October 2019 residency at Chaco Canyon.

I created a mixed-media image, The Chaco Astronomers, and started working on a serigraph print, which I expect to finish before the show closes. The title of the show, Songs for my Muse, relates to memories, places, songs, and people. Muses

can be ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, new girlfriends, my parents, my kids, and my friends. Music invokes certain memories and feelings, and for the most part, songs have memories attached to them. Take the song, “Happy Birthday.” Many people have a memory of the most amazing birthday in their childhood and then of a lonely birthday as they got older. Or it might be a love song that has a person attached to it, like if it was a song at your wedding.

ML: How does being based in the Southwest influence the narratives of your work?

JG: I think it’s seeing it firsthand with my own eyes. It’s funny, just considering the

irony and the reality of the way life exists today. Would I necessarily have to observe things, if not through a computer screen or phone screen? Earlier this afternoon I went to Santa Fe, and the clouds were over the Jemez Mountains after it had rained.

Tsícomo Pín, one of the sacred mountains of the Tewa people, the mountain of the west, was glowing from the light, and the clouds were rolling in perfectly. I posted a picture of it to my Instagram. I wouldn’t say it 100 percent captured the moment.

You had to be there. So that’s a big part of it—living within the boundaries of the Tewa world, living and working in my grandparents’ adobe home created from locally sourced materials. All of it SUMMER 2020 | 63

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then you see Pueblo people using them.

At other pueblos, a message memo or flyer goes out with the rules before a dance or ceremony. Some of these have included “No drones,” so drones have become an issue. That’s one of those things where I think, maybe I’ll put a drone in one of my images. Some of the Corn Maiden images come from personal observations, and others are from Instagram and hashtags.

I also look at my family’s pictures.

ML: You painted a hotel room for the Nativo Lodge in Albuquerque, and two Corn Maiden illustrations were wheatpasted outside of the Taco Fundación restaurant in Santa Fe. Can you talk about these experiences?

is essential in informing the narrative of my work, and it also includes participating in cultural activities and being an active community member here in K’haPo Owingeh.

ML: How do the symbols in your works specifically reference Santa Clara Pueblo?

JG: St. Clare of Assisi is the patron saint of the blind, embroiderers, and television.

Being that she’s the patron saint of television, I put the television antenna and satellite dishes in the pueblo landscape background lines. Those are just reference points I use for Santa Clara Pueblo. The dancers are dressed specific to Santa Clara Pueblo. That’s part of my own observations and knowing how individuals dress.

I also use the skyline of the Catholic church that’s in the pueblo or specific cars that are parked within the pueblo.

ML: Thinking of your Corn Maiden series, can you talk about the connection between receiver and transmitter technologies, like cellphones, and Santa Clara Pueblo’s feast day ceremonies?

JG: When you enter the pueblo on a feast day, there’s usually that sign that says, “No cellphones, no audio recording.” That goes for pretty much all of the pueblos in New Mexico, where there’s a sign that says, NO PHOTOGRAPHY, DO NOT ENTER, and “All handheld devices will be confiscated and not returned, including cellphones, PDAs, and pocket computers.”

I also observe the contradictions, where the signs say not to use cellphones but

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JG: The Nativo Lodge commissioned artists to paint the hotel rooms. My work is titled Okuu Pín, referencing both my Tewa name and Turtle Mountain. The room faces out toward the Sandia Mountains, and the images are oriented toward the Tewa cardinal directions and Turtle Mountain. There are images of seasonal dances, the Buffalo Dance and the Corn Dance. There is a Corn Maiden, and she has her hand outstretched, receiving rain or calling raindrops. The bathroom has various bird and water serpent designs, and there’s a rising or setting sun above the headboard. That was the largest piece that I’ve ever worked on, and I really enjoyed it. I wouldn’t mind doing something larger on another future project.

The wheatpastes were installed as part of the Ralph T. Coe Center for the Arts exhibition, IMPRINT (2018–19). I put up two different Corn Maiden images, and there is one still there. These were pen-and-ink drawings that were enlarged, printed, and pasted on the walls. Ideally, I’d like to change the images with the season, where for winter it could be a Buffalo Maiden.

ML: Your work was included in Laughter and Resilience: Humor in Native American Art (2019–20) at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian and in The Force Is With Our People (2019–20) at the Museum of Northern Arizona. Do these exhibitions offer new insights in light of COVID–19?

JASON GARCIA

JG: It’s that aspect of using humor to be resilient and as a teaching tool in these times. Some of the internet memes on social media are pretty humorous, and I think people use them as a way of coping.

It’s very serious with all the positive cases and deaths that have occurred. It brings back cultural trauma related to smallpox and diseases from the new world that devastated Native communities. My grandmother, Petra Gutierrez, grew up at Pojoaque Pueblo, and her parents passed away from the “Spanish” influenza (1918–19). She was adopted by her father’s cousin in Santa Clara Pueblo. She was raised here, and she married and had kids. When Pojoaque Pueblo sought to reestablish itself, a portion of the family went back. This is how a pandemic shapes or molds people, and it’s not forgotten or a distant memory. My parents are in their seventies, so their parents lived through that and told them about it.

With The Force is With Our People, I would say there’s the belief that things will get better and to have faith that you’re going to survive and thrive. I was watching Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) the other day and thought about its mantra of the blind spiritual warrior, Chirrut Îmwe, “The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force.” This character was not yet a Jedi, but a believer in the Force. Those things play a part in what we believe and how we see things.

ML: What’s on your mind for the future?

JG: Survivance. Where are we headed? We talk about the return to “normalcy,” but what is that, and did it exist? I’m thinking about the fact that the SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market is canceled this year. From the age of three weeks old, [when] I was in a basket underneath my grandmother’s booth at the Palace of the Governors, I have been a participant in some way. It’s a sacred space in terms of the ritual of returning there every year.

Looking ahead, I’d like to do something with animation. For the Apsáalooke Women and Warriors show (2020–21)

that Nina Sanders (Apsáalooke) curated at the Field Museum, I created around 90 original storyboard drawings for the Apsáalooke Creation Story that appears in the exhibition. That was a lot of fun working with Nina, creating the storyboard illustrations from different variations of the narrative, and the museum staff animated the illustrations to create the final product.

OKUUPIN.COM

above Corn Maiden Postcards #Imprint_Coe, 2020, serigraph print, 6 × 4 in., edition of 20.

Image courtesy of the Ralph T. Coe Center for the Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico. opp osite Tewa Ta l e s o f Suspense No. 48: August 1680, hand-processed clay tile, mineral pigments, outdoor firing methods, 14 × 12¼ in.

Michelle J. Lanteri is a curator, writer, and Mellon predoctoral fellow in Native American art history at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches courses in global arts. Lanteri earned an MA in art history at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

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NAVAJO TEXTILE ARTIST & PAINTER

MARLOWE KATONEY

By Jill Ahlberg Yohe, PhD

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AVAJO ARTIST MARLOWE KATONEY creates textiles that resemble paintings or collage. Figures within the textile—faces, eyes, individual portraits— convey immediacy and intimacy.

Katoney’s use of exuberant, colorful Navajo textile designs complements and energizes the figures. Trained first as a painter at the University of Arizona, Katoney applies Western pictorial concepts with the Navajo weaving practice learned from his grandmother. Blending Navajo design and color theory with classical art-historical conventions allows Katoney to experiment and create new forms of 21st-century Navajo pictorial weaving and art.

JAY: For those who may not know you …

MK: My name is Marlowe Katoney. I’m a Navajo weaver and painter. I guess you could say people are starting to call me an interdisciplinary artist because I sculpt, I paint, and I weave. So that’s what I am.

JAY: There is something special that you are doing in figurative, pictorial work. I love how your work is a woven collage.

It references art and design elements— historical and regional, Navajo weaving design elements, and the figurative, whether it is a still life or individuals.

MK: I always tell people that I’m a storyteller. It’s about narrative. If it is not an episode of something that happened in my life, it’s telling a story about a mood or how I’m feeling at that particular time.

Say, if I’m feeling nostalgic. In December, I completed a piece for a showing I had in Tucson at Yun Gee Park Gallery. I used to live in Tucson. I had a friend there who used to breakdance, so I wanted to incorporate him into that piece called Tucson Momentum or Momento, and my friend is breakdancing and singing. At that time,

there was always a crow around. I used to get up in the morning to be at work at six in the morning. Every morning when I got up, there was that pesky crow. And this crow used to eat out of the trash. I tell crazy stories like that about episodes in my life, things that I remember.

Another piece that tells a story is the weaving of a vase filled with flowers that I created this past January for the Heard Museum Fair. I have two eyes in the piece.

There’s an old eye, there’s a young eye, and then there are the flowers.

Both of my grandmas passed away about a year or two years ago. And when my paternal grandmother died, I got to keep one of her scarves. If you’re familiar with Navajo women, they really like those floral scarves. I guess the Europeans call them babushkas. The scarves have those big roses on them. So I was really telling the story about how when my parents had separated, it was a really devastating time for me—it changed so much in my life.

My grandmas were there to comfort me.

I incorporated a clear vase in the textile and left the stems exposed. So that was

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just me telling a story about my exposed life. The roses blooming represent the comfort that my grandmas gave to me.

And there are two stems: one is a stem of a hidden rosette behind a rosette of clouds.

And then the other stem extends upwards.

They represent my grandmothers. The two eyes—an old eye and the young eye—that is the passage of time.

In a way for me, it was a little bit humorous as well. I wanted to take something from art history, the still life, and incorporate it into a rug just to see what people would think about it, because you don’t see something like that on rugs.

Pictorial weaving within itself is all narrative. People are always telling stories about going to the trading post, about some event going on, a cultural event and the reservation, but you don’t see stuff like a still life in pictorial rugs. So I wanted to do something that nobody had ever seen before on a rug.

JAY: Talk a little bit about your painting and its relationship to your weaving.

MK: I’ve been drawing and painting ever since I could remember. My dad used to paint. He worked for the railroad; that was his main job, but in between, when he was at home, he used to do some drawing and he bought sketchpads. Many times he would start a sketch and then he would have to go to work and he’d say to me, “Finish it.” I had to finish by the time he would come home, so I would do my best to finish the work. Those were my earliest recollections of drawing. It’s always been with me. Everybody always told me that I was going to be an artist, and I didn’t really think too much of it. My dad bought Arizona Highways and Southwest Art magazines, so I was always looking at art. I had an idea about those kinds of artistic disciplines. It wasn’t until I started taking art seriously and decided to go to the University of Arizona and study

MARLOWE KATONEY

art that I started learning about things like chiaroscuro, contour, line, and color theory … I started using those ideas in my painting.

Weaving is a completely different beast than painting because it can be very unforgiving. You have to think through the weaving before you actually

put a yarn onto the warp. So I incorporated techniques of painting into my weaving. You can push things back into space with color, pull things forward, and then use contour and line in weaving.

I start with drawing. I’ve always done that in a sense.

above Garden Ornaments, 2019, wool, lana wool blend, aniline dyes, vegetal dyes, collection of the Tucson Museum of Art, 2019.11, gift of James and Louise Glasser. Image courtesy of the Tucson Museum of Art. opposite Marlowe Katoney, 2020, selfie. Both images courtesy of the artist.

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in the studio, he liked to listen to classical music because it had all of this flow and all the smoothness and accents in it, and he used to incorporate this into his jewelry.

In the same sense, that’s what I do with my work.

JAY: Do you still paint?

MK: I still paint. As a matter of fact, the show that I had at Yun Gee Park Gallery had paintings and weavings. More paintings than weavings, just because paintings take less time. Some of my instructors in school used to get really frustrated with me because I used to do a lot of painting. I was pumping out the work really quickly, and they wanted me to slow down, so they switched me to paint with oils because oils take a little bit longer to dry. So I started painting with oil, and it’s completely different, because with oils you can change it. You can correct something; it’s very fluid. Whereas with weaving, as I said before, it can be very unforgiving.

If you’re working on something and you make a mistake … you have a limited span of time or opportunity to take it out before it’s there to stay.

JAY: You mentioned that accessibility and an online presence are critical for artists today, for people to see your work across the globe. You wanted to share some things that you learned with other artists …

I’ve always doodled. When I was at the university, they always emphasize that you learn how to draw from life. So I started doing that, and it taught me so much. Now I apply those same concepts into my weaving, especially contour in line—it can give so much. You can really activate negative space in your work to make something pop. And those are the disciplines that I use when I work.

JAY: Could you talk a little bit about what color means to you in your practice and in the things that you create?

MK: Color has always been central to just about everything I do, from the way

I dress to how I look at things when I walk down the street. So in a sense, color itself is a narrative for me. It sets a mood, and then you can actually put rhythm into a piece. I use color to set a mood and then I use accents. So a lot of times with my pieces I use both vegetal dyes and aniline dyes. Vegetal dyes are a little bit more subtle, and aniline dyes put a pop and an accent to the piece. Color sets the mood for everything. It creates a sense, a narrative.

One time I was speaking to Verma Nequatewa, and she had talked about how Charles Loloma used to use color in his work. Oftentimes when he used to work

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MK: Well, I think the most important thing is learning how to talk about your work. Learn how to put words to a particular piece when you make it. Because if you have a gallery showing, you’re going to be approached by people about your work, and they are going to want to know about it. I also think it’s important to give information but not give too much information, because many times I see a good painting or a good piece of art as like a novel. Much of it depends on the viewer to create some of that narrative for themselves. When you read a book that’s then made into a movie, you always find that the book is better than the movie. It’s because the person who read the book activated their own imagination into that narrative about that story. Leaving some space open is important.

MARLOWE KATONEY

Also, when you are talking about your work or when you’re talking about yourself as an artist, it’s important to have an artist’s statement about the work. An artist’s statement is different from an artist bio. You should have a bio as well, but an artist’s statement will always change with the work. Also have a working résumé and post that on your web page.

Get professional photography of your work or learn how

to photograph it yourself and post it on social media and your website. Copyright issues are important as well. With phones that take high-res pictures and posts of pictures of your work, you have to be aware that it can be stolen from the internet and it can be produced somewhere else. So you have to be careful with that as well.

Remembering names is important. This is something that is very important to me

above Eye of the Storm, 2013, wool, aniline dyes, vegetal dyes, 20 × 231/2 in., collection of the Heard Museum, 4758-1. Image courtesy of the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona. opposite Axis Radius #2, 2017, wool, aniline dyes, vegetal dyes, 40 × 281/2 in. (not including fringe), private collection.

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because it’s how I got to meet curators and scholars and collectors. Remember names and do your research. When you meet people—this sounds kind of creepy— but google them, find out who they are, who they represent, where they went to school. So when you meet these people, you’re knowledgeable about what they do in their field, and so you know how to conduct yourself when you encounter them again.

Also, I didn’t get here overnight. I had been a struggling artist for more than 20 years. I started off first as a painter. It wasn’t until about eight years ago that I switched over to weaving and now I’m back into painting again. When I first started out and when people started paying attention to my work, they asked me to come and demonstrate here and talk to people there. And a lot of times I used to do all of that stuff for free.

I quit my full-time job and I started doing my rugs because my grandma wanted me to do it. Nobody in my family was weaving. All of my cousins and

everybody—nobody wanted to learn. I do have a few cousins who weave now, but my grandma was really insistent for me to learn how to weave, and I kind of blew it off for a long time and just left it and I didn’t want to learn. Then one day we went out to go visit her and she had the room set up for me and it just took off from there.

I didn’t know how to market my rugs and the only thing I knew was to take them to a trading post or a museum shop and try to sell them there. But my cousin suggested a rug auction because she said that she used to sell hers at auctions—that’s how I got my start with R. B. Burnham and Company, and it just took off from there. Once my rugs started to sell, then I took an average of what my rugs sold for and I set my price. And it just gradually went up from there. I found that as you navigate your way through volunteering, gradually people start to know who you are and that leads to something else in the long run. And that’s how I’ve gotten to the marketplaces.

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JAY: It has been a long journey. Your work is unique, and I would imagine that it takes a while to bring people up to speed on what you’re doing if they don’t necessarily look at weaving as contemporary art or they have their own kind of limited thinking about what weaving is.

MK: Yes, I think weavers shouldn’t sell themselves short. And collectors and curators should not think about it as only Native American art; it is art and it is narrative. Many weavers don’t look at it like that, but if you look at antiquity, the Moirae in Greek mythology were weavers.

The three of them are called the Fates. One was spinning the wool, and the one cuts the string. One cuts the string, and that string was somebody’s lifeline, and it gets put into a rug or it gets put into a textile.

It tells a story about somebody’s lifeline.

JAY: Given the time it takes to weave, it’s incredible to see your productivity. It’s astounding.

MARLOWE KATONEY

MK: It does not feel like that at all. Like right now under the lockdown situation, it’s so hard to sit down and work because of the anxiety. To tell you the truth, I really am inspired by being able to get out and being around people, and I just can’t do that right now. So I just subscribed to some magazines. I’m really inspired by fashion as well. In Vogue, GQ, I get inspired by some of the postures of some of the models, and the clothing—I get inspired, moved by it.

JAY: Do you think that might be something that’s put into your paintings or textiles or even in the future in design?

MK: Possibly. I love a lot of the work by Alexander McQueen and Marc Jacobs.

The texture in the work is wonderful.

I love the structure that Issey Miyake creates. It seems like it evolves around origami—very sculptural.

JAY: Whose artistic work—both historic and contemporary art—are you drawn to? Whose work do you really admire?

MK: Well, before I became a weaver, I really wanted to become a jeweler, and I really liked Charles Loloma’s work. He was a great influence. I knew he started out as a painter and he studied pottery, so I did both of those things, and I looked at his artwork. I’ve always admired Charles Loloma’s work. Allan Houser, and in school I liked Hieronymus Bosch. It’s really hard to narrow it down, because I like all kinds of work. Vik Muniz, Salvatore Scarpitta, Chuck Close—I like all of their work.

JAY: I can see those connections in your weavings and in your paintings.

MK: Several of the professors I used to work with at the University of Arizona were influences for me, because they weren’t just teachers. I looked at their work [and got] inspired by what they can

do. Moira Geoffrion, who is my longtime mentor from the University of Arizona.

She’s retired now. Barbara Rogers, she’s an Arizona painter, and Bailey Doogan, one of my drawing instructors in school.

All of those people have had profound influences on me, and I continue to look at their work for inspiration.

FACEBOOK: MARLOWE KATONEY NAVAJO TEXTILES INSTAGRAM: @MARLOWEKAT

above Gunner and Pepe, 2019, wool, aniline dyes, vegetal dyes, 42 × 29 in. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite Captive, 2020, wool fiber, aniline dyes, vegetal dyes, 15 × 24 in. Image courtesy of the artist and Yun Gee Park Gallery, Tucson, Arizona.

Jill Ahlberg Yohe is the associate curator of Native American art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Along with Teri Greeves (Kiowa), Ahlberg Yohe co-curated Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists.

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SHINNECOCK CERAMICIST & MULTIMEDIA ARTIST

COURTNEY M. LEONARD

By Jami Powell, PhD (Osage Nation)

B

ORN IN 1980, Courtney M. Leonard was raised on her Shinnecock Nation homelands, located on what is now referred to as Long Island, New York. Trained in museum studies, design, and ceramics at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Alfred University, Brown University, and the Rhode Island School of Design, Leonard’s art often weaves together ceramics and multimedia components informed by her ecological, research-based practice. Leonard’s ongoing series, BREACH, engages Indigenous coastal communities across the world and interrogates how culture sustains itself when water, its defining life force, is threatened.

In early March 2020, Leonard and I had the opportunity to spend a week together as she installed BREACH: Logbook 20 | NEBULOUS at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

This site-specific installation, the culmination of nearly two years of collaboration and planning, serves as a centerpiece of the exhibition Form and Relation: Contemporary Native Ceramics.

In the days leading up to Leonard’s arrival, reports of COVID-19 cases in the United States had increased, and concerns about the spread of the virus within our own communities became all too real. By the end of the week, Leonard and I had canceled travel plans and programs, worried about our families, and spent a lot of time covered in blue paint—which helped remind us to wash our hands often.

In the midst of the uncertainty and chaos of that week, we also carved out a few moments to sit down and visit about Leonard’s practice, her commitment to grappling with the complexity that characterizes Indigenous experiences, and her hopes for future generations. Her words evoke the layered and interconnected knowledges, temporalities, and spaces embedded within her artwork, and the more I spend time with them both, the more I appreciate them.

JP: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your work?

CL: I relate strongly to water. The importance of connecting and of moving through life rather than remaining stagnant in a fixed position.

There are moments where life allows you to reconnect with how you entered into this world. I have a daughter. She’s nine years old. When she was growing inside me, the BP oil spill occurred. I remember thinking about bringing a life into this world at that time and wondering what she could hear about society from my womb. I wondered what the relationship of the water would be for us in Long Island, where our traditional 72 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

territory is located, given the fact that once water contamination is in one part of the world, it eventually reaches home. I thought about water and fluidity and of sound and resonance in that moment of bringing life into the world. Reflecting on our connection to water recenters you in terms of how you entered the world and those moments in between.

JP: We’re all connected to bodies of water through our mothers’ wombs. Can you talk about that and how it shapes your work a bit more?

CL: I utilize space to create an environment. During the process of deepening my understanding of the questions I pose within the space, a rhythm occurs where I am taken back to memories of the sound of heartbeats, echoes, whales, and vibrations experienced in my life. The first time I heard our daughter’s heartbeat in my womb confirmed that our relationship to a beat or pattern of sound in connection to place is innately

COURTNEY M. LEONARD

above BREACH #2, 2016, ceramic, wood pallet, 36 × 48 × 36 in. opposite Courtney M. Leonard installing a study of BREACH: Logbook 20 | NEBULOUS at the Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island, Florida. Photo: Mark Poucher, ©2020 Mark Poucher. All images courtesy of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

human. This understanding is also close to our water ties and moon relationships as Shinnecocks: bodies of water in connection.

Today, man-made systems that exist in our territory, such as dams and levee gates developed by the townships that surround us, are not set up for super moons or lunar cycles. When a full or super moon occurs combined with the warming waters and a pattern shift in the migratory path of aquatic species in the northern parts of the Atlantic Ocean, smaller fish are sometimes herded by predatory fish into our bays in masses.

Then once those levee gates close on a super moon and we have high tide, all those fish are trapped. They begin to suffocate from a lack of shared oxygen in the water. Their bodies either rise to the surface or sink to the bottom. We’ve witnessed mass fish die-offs over the past five years, which have impacted our

community. These events affect our food sovereignty and impact the sustainability of our cultural landscape.

My work helps to amplify our experiences of environmental injustice. I think about our future generations. I realize in speaking with you today that these intentions are guided by being a mother, having our daughter, and thinking about if she’s going to be able to experience our traditional lands and water in the same way as our ancestors; able to go and dig her feet in the sand and harvest clams with her toes and eat them when she’s older. And that if she chooses to have children, that she can feed them without having to worry if our quahogs, which have sustained us for generations, will still exist as a species. To sustain yourself from the land and water is truly beautiful. To understand the reciprocity of protecting that gift is to honor the environment that has fashioned it for you.

JP: You touched on a few things, but I’m interested in exploring this tie of your work to activism a bit more deeply. Do you consider yourself an activist artist?

CL: I am trying to bring awareness and utilize the skills that I have been gifted.

Art is a means of communication, and when you are from a small coastal community that often isn’t heard in national conversations about water issues, you realize that you have to try as hard as possible to do the best that you can with the platform that you have. We as Shinnecock people are so blessed to be where we are. We were never relocated or removed. Knowing that connection to place—that relationship between the land and the water—strengthens the appreciation of what you have and the importance to pass that on to future generations.

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members or stitching in sewing circles.

When I was younger I would go visit my great-grandmother at her house. She lived a lifetime as a cook for the wealthy, known for her beef Wellington and Waldorf salads. Everything she made was from scratch. I remember her reading from the local paper that a new strip mall was being built and she warned, “Long Island [is] going to sink.” In that moment she taught me to pause and build from passed-down knowledge.

JP: Can you talk a little bit more about this idea of space and density and how it impacts your work?

in terms of economic situations between the reservation and our surrounding “neighbors.” Growing up I knew that most spaces were reserved for the wealthy and were not necessarily welcoming to Shinnecocks. Through exploring systems of accessibility or inaccessibility, I work within institutions to establish presence and documentation of who we are as Indigenous people. There are museums still within the Long Island and New York City area that fail to acknowledge Shinnecock on their maps. I don’t sign the work of BREACH as it is made by everyone in terms of shared experience. I do, however, advocate that Shinnecock is present in all the labels, text, and online content. This act of built presence is for the empowerment of our younger generations and for the people from my community who will see that acknowledgment and be empowered by it.

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CL: What my great-grandmother expressed resonates with me. I am witnessing the idea of what she was saying happening in our environment. I see the “sinking” as being directly related to the density of the population on Long Island and the many people who often have no understanding of their responsibility and connection to place. Our collective human waste and disregard for the environment is poisoning the land and water we all rely on. Population density, urban sprawl, and continued development strip our waters of the time and space needed for natural systems to adapt. Knowing the impact of density is influential in how I relate to space and my reasoning for using an abundance of objects that reference man-made artificial relationships by placing or mapping them in compositions of installation.

JP: This leads into what you’re doing here. Can you describe BREACH and this particular iteration of the series?

CL: Being an artist at this time is interesting. Everybody wants an answer. They want some sort of immediate connection. Curators want a title, a synopsis for a description. They want a complete, linear lineup of what they're supposed to expect. So when I started realizing these requests, I resisted. I questioned that if we do all of that work, how much is left for an individual to be afforded the opportunity to bear witness from their own accord; to exist and respond without being told

COURTNEY M. LEONARD

how to think, when to think, and what to think?

Language is integral in this conversation. Being from an Indigenous community where we do not have any remaining fluent speakers and where we have been working on our language revitalization program for more than 20 years, the idea of using English is something that I feel I have a responsibility to expand upon in terms of its historical and colonial, forced impositions. The history of imposition that it holds and an understanding of which words I use and what elements of navigation I offer to the community that witnesses BREACH is built with the intention of constructing space where their experiences of art are valid. How they translate the experience and response to the space expands the understanding of the work. Thinking through language and observation allows the work to be a living language rather

than a set construct, and I find that this act is a way to empower Indigenous knowledge and practice in institutional spaces that often overlook our intergenerational truths.

In 2009 I completed a piece called Contact 1,609… as a response to Henry Hudson's “discovery” of the Hudson River. I thought about the irony of the idea of discovery, as we were already standing on the shores when the Half Moon sailed into the river, and our women would have been wearing their shell dresses as they gathered in the cattail reeds.

I ask you, What is contact? What does that truly mean? I looked up the word contact, and I explored the definitions that it held. I responded by making a six-bysix-foot canvas piece onto which I stitched more than 2,009 of my personal clay thumbprints that I individually glazed in blue and white, creating a pixelated map of New York state as a commentary on

above BREACH: Logbook 20 | NEBULOUS, Burden Flow Study still, 2020, ceramic, glaze, paint, wood, and two-channel video projection, installed at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. opposite, top Contact 1,609…, 2009, ceramics, canvas, brass, sinew, 72 × 72 × 2 in., collection of the Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, California. opposite, bottom Detail of Contact 1,609…, 2009, ceramics, canvas, brass, sinew, 72 × 72 × 2 in., collection of the Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, California.

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above BREACH: Logbook 20 | NEBULOUS, Intermodal Flow installation view, 2020, ceramic, glaze, paint, wood, sinew, shell, installed at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth. opposite Installation view details of Subsistence (Yellow Sea), 2018, ceramic, 15½ × 15½ × 4½ in., and Artifice—Line Study C1, 2018, ceramic, 15½ × 15½ × 9½ in.

the relationship of Dutch colonial presence and Algonquin people. Through that piece and truly thinking through the language of imposition, I started to extend an understanding of the power of words and have since defined them through the visual bodies of work within BREACH that log a call and response to a yearly account.

One whale would feed our entire community through winter. Culturally, we understood this as a gift that fed us through those harsh times.

The journey I have taken with BREACH initially began when a finback whale was struck in 2005 by a shipping boat close to our territory. The whale was about 50 feet long and weighed 40 tons, and its carcass washed ashore on the Atlantic side. The reservation faces Shinnecock Bay; our territory that faces the Atlantic Ocean was taken from us.

In terms of our current environmental concerns, not being directly aligned with the ocean helps us during hurricane season as the inlet exists as a barrier of defense. The mansions that occupy these

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oceanfront views are often third or fourth estates that are hit first. Wealth is key to access and resources in conversations of climate issues and impacts. The wealthy have the money and access to drudge sand and to rebuild. We unfortunately do not have that capacity.

When the whale washed ashore in 2005, the Hamptons spent about $10,000 to cut up the carcass and bury it in a location to which we didn’t have access. At that time, our community was state-recognized as a nation. We received federal recognition in 2010 after about a 40- to 50-year battle with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As whales are federally protected, our recognition afforded a deeper conversation in relationship to our cultural patrimony and our connection to the whale. The term breach represents this relationship to colonial imposition as defined in a position of law or as a barrier or gap in a wall. It also represents the whale as it rises through the surface of the ocean. BREACH in and of itself—composed of those myriad definitions—became one exhibition that I installed in 2014.

I realized that one exhibition wasn’t enough to truly understand what BREACH was. Artists deserve more time to understand the path and the journey in its entirety. With this in mind, I started to create and use the language of a logbook as a means to expand upon the elements of BREACH. Logbooks were diaries or accounts used on whaling ships marking when whales would breach and rise above the surface, before they had the opportunity to harpoon them and take in as much oil as possible for another mark and account of barrels for the bank.

JP: So BREACH is the larger body of work, the series. Can you talk a bit about this particular installation, Logbook 20 | NEBULOUS? CL: The first BREACH exhibition response was looking back to the memory of the whale that was beached back home, thinking about the shipping boat hitting it and the impact that it would take.

There are two types of whales: baleen and toothed whales, and the finback whale is a

COURTNEY M. LEONARD

baleen whale. Within our community we would hunt North Atlantic right whales, humpback, finback, and sperm whales.

The sperm whale is a toothed whale.

Their teeth are ivory, and the politics surrounding ivory globally impacts many Indigenous communities.

All ivory is protected, whether it comes from a whale, a walrus, or an elephant. Sometimes the desire to help overshadows the importance of understanding the layers of cultural ties Indigenous communities have to these species. The creation of a singular law to protect everything everywhere fails to account for the symbiotic relationship between certain species and Indigenous communities and their reliance on one another.

The first BREACH piece I created was a response to these layers of impact.

It included 48 to 60 teeth that I fashioned out of clay because I couldn’t touch ivory.

I could, however, touch clay and coil clay into sperm whale teeth and place them onto the shipping pallet, which then became symbolic of the cultural material that I don’t have access to. It is a conversation of not being able to touch sacred material or to be able to legally gift sacred material to anyone. I can, however, mimic the teeth with clay and place it on the object that ultimately killed it … as at least 60 percent of whales killed per year are struck by our shipping industry. What relationship and responsibility does society as a whole have to the death of a whale?

The first BREACH piece was made in 2014, and we’re in 2020 now. Each year I think about a different Logbook or visual account that examines our relationship to the whale, the impact, and the overall path we share.

BREACH: Logbook 20 | NEBULOUS is a call and response to witnessing the Connecticut River's connection and flow into the Atlantic Ocean, flowing from Canada through New England to Long Island Sound. The relationship to the waters tied to the Connecticut River, including the expanse of the bays and ocean, is vastly influenced and impacted by fishing, lobster, crab traps, and fish ladders installed in response to impediments to fish migration in the region.

With NEBULOUS, I’m specifically looking at ghost nets and ghost traps and the artificial pieces and objects that are left behind by man that continue to endanger local species. In this regard, I’m also extending a response to an understanding that I have also witnessed through BREACH of one where people will listen to the death of a species, the death of a whale, more so than they may relate in understanding the impact Indigenous communities face or our death rate in relationship to the same waste and imposition. Sometimes I try to create an environment where I can get people to pay attention to the comfort that they have with caring for something else in hopes that they understand that the same level of care needs to be extended to Indigenous peoples.

JP: How do you think your work might teach people about how we can grapple with this kind of complexity and maybe understand that we can’t know everything?

CL: BREACH has taught me personal and collective responsibility. One of the things that I am very mindful of is that I know I am not an environmental artist. Observation is key. Presence is key. Awareness is key. Accountability is key. We are all contributing to the system in some fashion. Ask questions. Share stories. Document memories. Work collectively. This is a complicated path. It has really been an amazing journey. And I am not done.

COURTNEYMLEONARD.COM Jami Powell, PhD (Osage Nation), is the associate curator of Native American art at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. Powell received her doctoral degree in anthropology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and previously served as a faculty lecturer in the American studies program at Tufts University.

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REVIEWS

ARCATA, CALIFORNIA

Tiffany Adams: Ink and Skin and Bone Goudi'ni Native American Arts Gallery, Humboldt State University

“M

Y GRANDMOTHER was shot at by gold miners,” said Tiffany Adams (Chemehuevi/ Konkow/Nisenan) during her lecture at the Goudi'ni Native American Arts Gallery at the Humboldt State University campus. Her story about her grandmother, who survived the California Gold Rush and met her grandfather at boarding school, set the tone of survival, resilience, and the redefinition of postcolonial relations of possession for Indigenous women and their facial tattoos at her Ink and Skin and Bone painting exhibition.

Originally located at the Humboldt Area Foundation (HAF), the Ink and Skin and Bone conversation continued a few miles away with a lecture and workshops at the Goudi'ni Gallery. Adams’s exhibition was sponsored by HAF’s Native Cultures Fund, a program created by tribal elders in Northern California to provide resources for cultural works from the West Coast, north to Tolowa Dee-ni', south to Chumash, and east to the Paiute service region. “We recognize and honor aboriginal territories, so state boundaries mean nothing to us,” as Tayshu Bommelyn (Tolowa Dee-ni'/Karuk), coordinator for the philanthropic organization, says.

Bommelyn is thrilled that her niece and nephew are growing up immersed in this aspect of their culture. Because facial tattooing was formerly an illegal practice, it skipped generations. “It got to the point where it wasn’t safe to have one; it got down to colonization,” said Bommelyn, but currently, Indigenous peoples of California are experiencing a resurgence in the art of facial tattoos. She said this exhibition is “not just an art show. It’s tied into so many other things,” including providing Indigenous Californian cultures a seat at the discussion table.

Regardless of tribal affiliation, Adams provides seats at the table

for Indigenous women. Although place-based, her work could be described as aesthetic activism that crosses territorial borders beyond California and around the Pacific Rim to New Zealand.

Adams says she sees a connection among the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Rim beyond tattoo arts. The Māori culture and their stories regarding ritual and place especially resonate with her.

A high school dropout, Adams went back to school at age 45 and recently graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts with a BFA and a minor in Indigenous liberal studies.

Her artistic roots are in regalia-making.

New to painting and free from the past generations’ cultural restrictions, Tiffany Adams consciously utilizes the media of the dominant society.

Her acrylic portraits on canvas in the European portraiture style are, in part, an attempt to address the agency of materials—that which is embedded within the object by the intentions of its creator. Adams says her connection to land is portrayed in the paintings through the California color palette relevant to her people’s territory, regional landscapes, and a combination of the Western medium and her personal medicine materials, such as angelica and red dirt, which she integrates into each piece. Beyond her Indigenous ecological knowledge base, it is unclear to Adams if Western media loses agency due to processing or if it receives more, including “a thousand more experiences and voices it’s passed through before me.”

Adams refers to her work as “identity formation” and indicates that she’s not trying to reproduce the sitter frozen in antiquity. These women are up front, center, and each with an identity and recognizable personality.

Her subjects belong to Koyoomk'awi, Nisenan, Wintu, Yokut, Karuk, Yurok, Nuwuvi (Chemehuevi), Ohlone, Pomo, and Esselen cultures.

It would be easy to label Adams’s work as Feminist Art, but feminism is a Western concept describing a fight for equal rights among the sexes. True, the oppression of women was built into Western society long before Plato grew a beard, but Adams’s peoples are from the Sierra foothills, not Greece.

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Her individual representations of tattoo culture are a confrontational and proactive reclamation of space, time, and culture in the face of state-sanctioned cultural iconoclasm. The art within the portraiture, the facial tattoos, referred to by many Indigenous women who don them as 111 or “one-eleven” tattoos due to the three vertical lines on the chin, should not be considered mainstream “tribal” tattoo art. The 111s are instead the embodiment of both Indigenous women’s hereditary rights—and rites—and a renewal of their ancestors’ ways.

Because of the previous laws banning Indigenous chin tattooing, few historical documentations of designs survive. Adams says that each of her tribes practices facial tattoos. While searching for her own 111 design, her chin tattoo came to her in a dream. Later she found a reference to a similar design described in anthropologist Carobeth Laird’s memoir.

A recurring theme in Indigenous history, those recorded by early anthropologists “were not the only ones, just the only ones [that] were documented,” said Adams.

The misog ynistic laws that prevented California tribes from practicing their tattoo culture ended with the Indian Freedom of Religion Act of 1978. “We cannot begin a conversation about the history of Indigenous tattoos without talking about colonization,” says Adams. With the lack of past documentation, “the portraitures confront issues of erasure and absence of California Indigenous peoples within the academic and art worlds,” said Adams.

Regarding colonization, the Northern California redwood coast was a good fit for this two-part Ink and Skin and Bone exhibition. Wigi (the Wiyot place name for Humboldt Bay) and Goudi'ni (the Wiyot place name for present-day Arcata) are locations where gold miners and other settlers built communities upon unceded Wiyot land and water.

The Goudi'ni Native American Arts Gallery is the only public art gallery in the California State University system exclusively dedicated to American Indian art. Goudi'ni curator Brittany Britton (Hupa) was pleased with the message Adams’s work brought to multiple communities. “Due to the location of Goudi'ni on HSU’s campus nearest to the

REVIEWS

left Tiffany Adams (Chemehuevi/Konkow/Nisenan), Vanessa Esquivido, PhD (Nor Rel Muk Wintu/ Hupa/Xicana), 2018, acrylic on canvas. right Tiffany Adams (Chemehuevi/Konkow/Nisenan), Kenwani'cahee Ryan-Kravitz (Pit River/Wintu), 2018, acrylic on canvas. Both images courtesy of the artist.

[Native American studies] department, we had the opportunity to hold drop-in art workshops with Tiffany for students and community members. We welcomed the energy built in the space of collaboration, skill sharing, and activism that Tiffany brought to our campus,” Britton said.

Most of Adams’s printmaking workshop participants were of Indigenous descent. However, one non-Indigenous student’s work stood out: a block print of her personal experiences as a member of the HSU rowing crew. Her design illustrated Humboldt Bay around Indian Island, the Wiyot Tuluwat village site where a genocidal massacre took place on February 26, 1860, and where the Wiyot hold their World Renewal Ceremony.

With compassion, the student expressed acknowledgment to the tribes and appreciation for the opportunity to learn alongside local peoples about the place she now calls home.

Although not of Wiyot descent, Adams enabled all those who participated to connect with the local Indigenous cultures. The Ink and Skin and Bone exhibition and workshop proved to be an excellent example of community-based education, an extension of local cultural history and values to the greater community. Adams promoted the narrative that Indigenous people need to focus on sustaining cultural practices rather than exert energy into that which has been lost. As many artists today centralize their theme on decolonization, Adams personifies a rejuvenating perspective. “I can’t change it, but I can build something more like reclamation … where energy is being focused on what we need instead of keeping you upset, scared, and agitated—focus on community.”

The artist’s influences are diverse: Judith Lowr y (Hammawi/Maidu/ Washoe), Frank LaPeña (Nomtipom

Wintu, 1937–2019), Rick Bartow (Mad River Wiyot/Yurok, 1946–2016), Rebecca Belmore (Lac Seul Ojibwe), and portrait artist Kehinde Wiley (Nigerian-American).

Adams also cited Sage LaPena (Nomtipom Wintu), Frank LaPeña’s daughter, as her cultural advisor and friend for many years who “graciously and humbly shared all information with me about tattoo and has been a role model for hundreds of women in California around 111.”

With Ink and Skin and Bone, Tiffany Adams has achieved more than an aesthetic and thought-provoking exhibition. At first the presentation appears to be one of pleasing aesthetics, but beauty is only skin deep. Her portraiture is instead a culturally representational lens that has placed actual faces on a movement of strong, individual women who inspire while asserting their indigeneity.

—Nanette Kelley (Osage/Cherokee Nations) SUMMER 2020 | 79

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PHOENIX

Maria Hupfield: Nine Years Towards the Sun Heard Museum

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N DECEMBER 6, 2019, Wasauksing Ojibwe artist Maria Hupfield’s first solo exhibition in the United States opened at the Heard Museum, and its closing date has been extended to November 15, 2020. The show’s title references the artist’s years living in Brooklyn, New York, from 2011 to 2019. Hupfield now resides in Toronto, Ontario, and she is the research chair of Transdisciplinary Indigenous Arts at the University of Toronto, her alma mater.

This move has allowed Hupfield to be within a three-hour drive of the Wasauksing First Nation, her tribal community located near Parry Sound in the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. Thus the exhibition emerges from Hupfield’s pathways between places.

From this crossroads, nearly a decade of memories overlaps in the two-story gallery that showcases more than 40 of Hupfield’s artworks. On both floors, industrial grey felt functions as a mainstay that bridges the different installations.

This medium instills an equalizing force in the gallery, and it visually communicates an ethics of relations within the artist’s work. The felt also gives renewal to Hupfield’s practice, as a tactile support that strengthens the bond between every sculpture, assuring their belonging. In Nine Years Towards the Sun, Hupfield presents an array of personal memories, cultural worldviews, performative art practices, and binary-rejecting paradoxes.

A complex web of memories swirls through the gallery, weaving new threads with every visitor who enters. It’s clear that Hupfield’s desire to see the sun in New York—another reference of the exhibition title—has been fulfilled by Phoenix’s intense sunshine. As visitors approach the gallery’s doors, this metaphor is conveyed in the interior architecture that bears the exhibition’s title. Its cutout letters are filled with views of the Phoenix landscape made visible by a nearby window. Across from the sign, a wooden kiosk houses Hupfield’s video installation, Ahn Ahn Ahn Kaa Kaa Kaa (2013–17), which features the artist in a felt mask with tin jingles. Four years ago, the artist began using this type of kiosk in It is Never Just About Sustenance or Pleasure (2016), a video installation commissioned by SITE Santa Fe for the biennial much wider than a line. Now a constant in Hupfield’s work, the wooden slats propel a notion of being “on exhibit.” Made of two-by-fours with front-facing beams painted electric yellow, the kiosk signals the structure of display as a built environment. The video’s Anishinaabemowin title translates to “Yes Yes Yes No No No,” reflecting the artist’s head movements in this performance. Hupfield’s mask sits adjacent to the monitor in a vitrine, as if witnessing viewers’ interactions with the film.

Alluding to the sun, the display’s yellow paint foreshadows the recurrence of this color in the exhibition.

Upon entering the gallery, the two-story division of the space immediately registers. Already the sense of looking ahead, above, in front, and across resonates. In their overall theme of 80 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

above Maria Hupfield (Wasauksing Ojibwe), Jiimaan, 2015, industrial felt, satin ribbon, approximately 108 in.

presence, the artworks on this floor signify concepts of being in time, where each holds the memories of where it has been and where it is in the present in the same moments its life advances.

A collection of Hupfield’s performative garments marks a centerline, dividing the first floor in half. With seven out of eight of these ensembles arranged on wheeled supports made of two-by-fours, the installation offers an imaginative take on an Indigenized concept of a museum display of personal effects. A paradoxical comment on access comes through in the “do not cross” sign posted on one end of the platform placed underneath the garment racks.

One ensemble, From Alpha Alternative (2017), offers a burst of geometric color in its angular textile sections stitched together and adorned with ribbons. A two-piece textile, Double Triangles (2018), possesses a dappled shine from its solid sheets of sewn, silver sequins that mark the exterior sides of the panels,

and the fabric’s interior sides reveal satin ribbon adornments in blue and black. Several of Hupfield’s ensembles in this installation contribute to a dialogue with Anishinaabe regalia through their incorporation of ribbons.

In the alcoves spanning the perimeter of the first level, some of Hupfield’s recorded performances are installed as wall projections, with objects made from industrial grey felt interspersed throughout. Silhouette (2016), a wall-mounted sculpture in felt, depicts the artist seated in right-turned profile and holding a crown at her knees. It faces toward Hupfield’s Survival and Other Acts of Defiance (2011), a looped performance of the artist jumping endlessly while wearing felt boots adorned with tin jingles. The meanings of the wall-supported sculpture and the screened performance change through their direct association with each other.

Here, the felt establishes a continuum between these artworks produced five years apart. It also operates as both a thread and an active conveyor of time between all of the installations.

As a self-portrait, Silhouette reflects a nurturing relationship between the artist and the felt, suggested by the artist’s seated pose in this cutout. Survival and Other Acts of Defiance, as a self-portrait in video, records the power of movement in Hupfield’s jumping and her acts of creating space as marked by the sounds of the tin jingles. Linked by felt, both works operate within a framework of reciprocity in creating a presence of place and personhood.

By the exhibition’s design, the second floor of the gallery enacts an archive and evokes a theme of absence. Its installations focus on the preservation of memories through fragments. Trophy Case (2015–ongoing) features a group of Hupfield’s hand-sewn objects used in past performances and placed in a perforated vitrine so they may breathe. Arranged on shelves, these sculptures bring together a sense of the everyday with a sense of the lavish, as several are made of grey felt and two are created in gold lamé. By calling attention to the differences in these fabrics, Hupfield reveals how an object’s material alters perceptions of value. As such, the artist’s felt objects appear to have maintained their structural integrity.

These include a Perrier bottle, headphones, and an umbrella. In contrast, the pieces in gold lamé seem to slouch. One represents a trophy while the other is a sculpture reminiscent of a musical instrument. Here, Hupfield demonstrates how materials, as living beings, perform specific gestures within particular contexts and associations.

Maria Hupfield: Nine Years Towards the Sun enacts a visual commentary on the ways that humans, materials, and places remember. It reminds audiences of the importance of all beings through the constant presence of grey felt, a medium that supports movement in both its artistic and industrial functions. This exhibition celebrates motion with each installation being a step between an infinite constellation of locations. In her sculptures and performances, Hupfield embarks on a lifelong relationship between the act of enlivening and the results of enlivenment. From these nodes, the world and its beings move in time measured by returns around the sun.

—Michelle J. Lanteri

JIM DENOMIE

Four Days and Four Nites, 2020, oil on canvas, 24 x 30˝

FROELICK GALLERY

7 14 NW Davis Portland, OR 503.222.1142

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BOOK REVIEW Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art Katherine Nova McCleary, Leah Tamar Shrestinian, and Joseph Zordan Yale University Art Gallery, 2019

“I

NDIGENOUS NORTH AMERICAN art is an enduring yet under-recognized presence at Yale University. Thousands of artworks and cultural and sacred items—which hold stories of their artists, communities, and lands—live in disparate collections across campus. On display in glass cases or tucked away in storage, in wooden drawers and steel cabinets, with catalogue numbers scrawled across their birchbark, river cane, and hide, these objects speak to the entangled, often violent, yet ever-changing relationship between their current steward, Yale, and the Indigenous nations to which they belong. As captives, ambassadors, and ancestors, these objects are never silent,” wrote Katherine Nova McCleary (Little Shell Chippewa/Cree) and Leah Tamar Shrestinian in their introductory essay, “Entangled Pasts, Collaborative Futures: Reimagining Indigenous North American Art at Yale.”

Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art is the first exhibition to bring together North American Indigenous works from Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and the Yale University Art Gallery. The exhibition was curated by Yale students Katherine Nova McCleary, Leah Tamar Shrestinian, and Joseph Zordan (Bad River Ojibwe), who worked with staff members from the Yale institutions and then-postdoctoral fellow Kaitlin McCormick, now the curator of Western ethnology at the Canadian Museum of History in Quebec.

Large campus protests led by Indigenous students and students of color in fall 2015 and spring 2016 were followed by the gallery and Peabody’s announcement of the Native American Arts Initiative internship, which provided funds for two Yale students to research the museums’ collections for eight weeks.

McCleary and Shrestinian were the first recipients of that internship, which ultimately resulted in this exhibition. In the essay, the curators describe the process of studying the collections and taking on the history of their creation, from the problem of early collectors through the era of “salvage anthropology” and to recent history, including 2017, when Yale began the process of repatriating hundreds of objects from its collection to the Mohegan Nation.

The catalogue, like the exhibition itself, is an earnest response to Yale University’s complicated history with Indigenous people, whose homeland the university is built upon and whose material objects have been collected and

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displayed by the university over the years.

The essays and gallery texts within the catalogue present an unstinting analysis of Yale’s problematic past and present in regard to Indigenous art. In addition to McCleary and Shrestinian’s essay, the catalogue includes a foreword from the director of the Yale University Art Gallery, a preface by Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel (Mohegan) on the Mohegans' relationship with Yale, and a brief history and description of the art collection in Yale’s Native American Cultural Center

by Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) and Summer Sutton (Lumbee).

In their essay, the curators explain the reason they chose to group objects by themes—Place, Nations, Generations, Beings—rather than by chronological, geographic, or other categorizations, in order to better reflect their context within their original communities and to subvert mainstream (“settler”) categorization of Indigenous art. A striking example of their explanation of the categories is this one from the introduction of the Beings section: “Some works in this section express an artist’s or family’s relationship to a being through their colors, designs, and materials, while others are themselves beings that must be cared for and that have the ability to engage with and affect those around them.” Their acknowledgments begin with “gratitude, first and foremost, to the ninety-two objects in this exhibition and publication, and to the countless others we met in storage cabinets and cases along the way.”

The curators’ relationship with the art and artists is reflected in the language of the entire catalogue. In “Note to the Reader,” the curators, along with other Indigenous Yale student contributors, explain their choice of language for the exhibition’s text, particularly the use of “Artist Once Known” rather than the often-used “Unknown Artist” for historical works “to acknowledge that they were once known—and perhaps are still known—to their communities.”

The curators’ language choices, as well as their clear explanation of how “the decentralized nature of Yale’s collections makes it difficult to research Indigenous art on campus and creates false hierarchies among objects, seemingly classifying them, just by the nature of which institution holds them, as ‘art’ or ‘natural history’—that is, as ‘art’ or ‘artifact’—makes reading the gallery statements that follow particularly illuminating.”

The works are grouped within chapters headed by an explanation of each category, and most works also include a paragraph on the work and/or artist.

The statements are so concise and interesting that their absence from some of the works was disappointing, but overall the full-color photographs of the objects are described with exactly the right amount of context to bring their creation—and their creators—alive to the imagination. That is why I found myself looking at the art first, then reading the statement, then trying to guess which collection housed it. The fact that I began to become incensed when I found that certain objects came from the Peabody, as if they were “artifacts” rather than “art,” indicates that the curators were successful in their attempt to recontextualize the objects and to highlight Yale’s changing relationship with Indigenous art and people and this exhibition’s part in it.

—Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke)

ADVENTURE AND INTRIGUE FROM COVER TO COVER. What You’ll Learn May Surprise You. • “Cherokee Newspapers, 1828-1906: Tribal Voice of a People in Transition” • “Records of the Moravians Among the Cherokees” Volumes 1-7 • “The Development of Law and Legal Institutions Among the Cherokees” • “The Life and Times of Reverend Stephen Foreman” Enjoy these and many other hard-to-find books on Cherokee history and culture.

21192 S. KEELER DRIVE, PARK HILL, OK 74451 888.999.6007 • CHEROKEEHERITAGE.ORG SUMMER 2020 | 83

ART+LIT

Mvskoke/Cherokee Poet, Musician, and Author

JOY HARJO

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

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OR N I N T U L S A , i n t he Muscogee (Creek) Nation within Oklahoma, Joy Harjo moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, when she turned 16. She enrolled in the Institute of American Indian Arts, then a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding high school, where she studied painting. She later enrolled at the University of New Mexico in premedical studies but changed her major to visual art before settling on creative writing. Harjo later received a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa in 1978. From the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, she taught at a number of post-secondary institutions including Arizona State University, the University of Colorado, and the University of New Mexico.

As a singer and player of alto saxophone and flute, Harjo has made music with the bands Poetic Justice and Arrow Dynamics. In 2009 she was awarded best female artist at the Native American Music Awards. She is the author of several books including An American Sunrise (2019), Crazy Brave (2012), For a Girl Becoming (2009), and How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975–2002 (2004).

For her literature, activism, and performances, Harjo has received numerous prestigious awards such as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014, the Wallace Stevens Award in Poetry in 2015, and was named the United States Poet Laureate in 2019 and again in 2020.

MRS: It is a pleasure for me to speak with you, Joy. What drew you to study painting at age 16, and how did it help you transition to creative writing?

JH: In my early years I was inspired by paintings and drawings made by my grandmother Naomi Harjo. They decorated the walls of our home. My earliest

impulse was to draw and paint. It was there I felt a sense of accomplishment, of bringing into vision what I was seeing and feeling, often what could not be seen or expressed. I always had a sense during the act of creation that I was surrounded by ancestors who loved me, who would stand by me no matter what lessons I encountered. Even if I failed, they stood by me with understanding, and with art: their arts of speaking, creating, and being.

Being a real human being is an art in itself.

As I prepare to draw and paint again, I remember that I preferred oils because of the smell of the paint. With painting I entered into a very sensual, perceptive experience with form and idea.

Becoming a writer or poet was never in my plan until my second or third year at the university. I was going to become an artist. I loved music but felt shut off from the creation of it, until I reopened the door in the very early 1990s. I’ve always said I write like a painter because I am drawn to image, resonant moment, and

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what can be depicted powerfully with a gesture.

MRS: Be it a paintbrush, a pen, or a keyboard, can you speak about the act of creation itself and how it relates to your philosophical approach to writing?

JH: I have always just delved into creation, though I have worked through my share of blocks, which includes a perfectionist streak that can be useful but can get in the way. If I had been required to learn everything there was to know about writing poetry before writing poetry, I would never have written. I followed a voice.

It was my own, and different, and very Mvskoke at its roots. The poetry world for the longest time did not get it. With poetry, just as with painting, I follow color or line and a vision of what I have never seen or heard before. That doesn’t mean I don’t study or read. I am always studying, reading, listening, and practicing. Though it’s best not to call it practice—rather, you perform as if you are not practicing.

ART+LIT

MRS: The connection between language and care has fascinated me lately. Does care through language (writing, oral communication, etc.) exist, and, if it does, how does it affect past generations, the current generation, and future generations?

JH: If caring figures into the shape and trajectory of intent, there is more of a chance of landing close to the heart, to the root of meaning. I don’t believe the connection is just with language. I identify “care” as attention and the will to take care to the best of your ability—to give attention, to be aware that whatever you say or do, or however you act will affect everyone around you to some extent, and will follow in the direction of children, grandchildren, and so on down and through the net of relationships. What stories do we tell ourselves, about our families, peoples, and history? Every one of us has a part. Each of us matters.

MRS: What do you struggle with when writing?

JH: What I’ve always struggled with is time, with finding time given all the responsibilities I have shouldered from when I began writing as a single mother, full-time student with a job. Women artists with children have the most difficult time finding time for their craft, for imagining, and working out their visions.

I remember a discussion with the Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Silko years ago when I was a graduate student at Iowa and enthralled with the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe. I expressed frustration at finding the time to write as I took care of children, studied with a full load of classes, and worked. She reminded me that O’Keeffe had no children or responsibilities to a larger familial community. Native women who are active in their tribal communities also have other layers of responsibilities. I don’t have children at home now but am a grandmother and great-grandmother of many, and I am an active community member. When I was coming up as a young artist/writer/musician, I noticed that all the male artists who were so prolific had a girlfriend or wife (or two) caring for them. I have so many projects in line that it can be hard to focus. I find

that it’s best if I have a project in mind and/or a deadline. What’s also important is time away from the screen, the phone, and disappearing into the natural world, the world of inspiration and ideas.

MRS: Why is writing a means of connecting to family, to community, and to others?

JH: I believe that any art is or can be. Writing began for me as an act of social justice. I was an undergrad at the University of New Mexico when I began writing poetry. My gift and practice emerged from a need to bring justice to Native peoples and to speak the story that was unfolding around Indian Country in

above Daniel McCoy J r. ( M u s c o g e e / C i t i z e n Potawatomi), Village with Stream, 2020, watercolor and India ink on illustration board, 10 × 8 in. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite Joy Harjo. Photo: Shawn Miller, US Library of Congress (CC0).

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the early ’70s. I was a member of the Kiva Club, the Native student club at UNM. We became a political force in the state for Native rights. Those meetings and actions politicized me. I also began to notice that women’s voices were not usually in the public. Rather, we were more domestic in our expression. My poetry became part of that expression. It related directly to the community, and I meant for my poetry to speak the truth, and then as I developed, to assist us in moving toward sovereignty.

I wasn’t the only one. There were and are many artists and writers of my generation continuing into the present. I always remember the artist Jaune Quick-To-See Smith. She was out there making art that spoke social justice even as it broke new ground in the field of art. And she helped so many Native artists. Leslie Silko and Simon Ortiz, of course, were writing. I see the Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier continuing in that [vein]. I’ve always felt that my work is first and essentially for my tribal community, even as it has accumulated a world audience.

MRS: There is a deep relationship between absorbing experiences and writing about experiences. What are your thoughts on this relationship?

JH: Of course. We are in an active story field.

MRS: What, if any, is the book you haven’t written yet but always wanted to?

JH: I am working on the sequel to my memoir, Crazy Brave. I’ve always wanted to write a book on Indigenous canoes and canoe culture. I was a canoe paddler the eleven years I lived in Hawai’i. I would love to see a dramatic film of the story of the life of a grandfather I am close to, though he had passed this world before I was born: Monahwee. He was a Red Stick warrior and fought directly with Andrew Jackson against illegal removal. That whole period contains many stories from our families that need to be told. And a music album or set of albums with the songs catalogued within my cousin Joe Sulphur’s memory. He’s an encyclopedia of Mvskoke songs.

MRS: Is there a character or moment or line in something that you’ve written that has stayed with you throughout the years?

And if so, how come?

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ART+LIT

JH: So much has stayed with me through the years through other writers: a line by the Oneida poet Roberta Hill about a movement into “praise of nations.”

[Laguna novelist] Leslie Silko’s “Yellow Woman,” [Kiowa writer] N. Scott Momaday’s moment of seeing a cricket silhouetted in the full moon. I even included that moment in my last book of poetry, An American Sunrise.

MRS: I’m curious to know what drives your prolific output? What influences your creative ambition?

JH: It feels as if the fierce intention and practice of creating as a poet, writer, and musician is an accumulation from family, from places from which we emerge. It was planted in me. I have agreed to take it on. It is beyond me. I don’t always understand it.

MRS: Thank you very much for speaking with me, Joy. JH: Mvto, I love your magazine and am honored to contribute.

JOYHARJO.COM

DANIEL McCOY JR.

L

I K E J OY H A RJ O, D a n i e l McCoy Jr. (Muscogee/Citizen Potawatomi) was born in Tulsa.

He grew up on his mother’s allotment in Bristow in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

His father, an Irish-American outlaw biker with a penchant for illustration and pinstriping, was McCoy’s first artistic inspiration although he was immersed in art. His maternal grandparents collected Bacone School Native art from Eastern Oklahoma and Studio Flatstyle painting from New Mexico.

Mary Adair (Cherokee Nation) taught him painting at Sequoyah High School, an American Indian residential school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. In 1993, McCoy made the leap from Oklahoma to Santa Fe when he became the youngest student at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). Returning to IAIA twice more, McCoy earned his AFA in 2003 and BFA in 2017.

McCoy complemented his formal art education by working as a commercial sign painter and became deft with India ink and 1 Shot lettering enamel.

His inspirations range from 1960s underground comics, graphic novels, Americana, and classic tattoos, to Woody Crumbo (Citizen Potawatomi, 1912–1989) and Joan Hill (Muscogee/ Cherokee).

His family is filled with artists from his partner Topaz Jones (Shoshone/ Lummi/Kalapuya/Molalla), to his oldest son Roman Friday (Arapaho/ Muscogee), and three younger children, with whom he often collaborates.

above Daniel McCoy Jr. (Muscogee/Citizen Potawatomi), Cricket in Moonlight, 2020, distemper on illustration board, 8 × 8 in. All images courtesy of the artist. opposite, top Joy Harjo with saxophone. Photo: Shawn Miller, US Library of Congress (CC0). opp osite, bot tom Daniel McCoy Jr. (Muscogee/Citizen Potawatomi) Kingdom, 2020, India ink and distemper on illustration board, 10 × 8 in.

McCoy shares many experiences with Joy Harjo (Muscogee/Cherokee). He says, “I have been painting nonstop” since the quarantine and, inspired by this interview, he created these new works.

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

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SPOTLIGHT

SEAL VISION: SHARED SPIRIT

I

N APRIL 2019, three Alaska Native artists met at Alaska Native Masterworks, an exhibition at Raven Makes Gallery in Sisters, Oregon.

Terresa White (Yup’ik), a bronze sculptor, and Don Johnston (Qagan Tayagungin Unangax), a baleen basket maker, both live in Oregon, while Mark Tetpon (Iñupiaq), a carver working in walrus ivory, baleen, wood, and bone, lives in Anchorage, Alaska. Gallery owners Chris Morin and LaRita Chapman planted the seed of a collaborative project, and the three artists decided to pool their wide-ranging skills in this artistic tour de force.

The trio began brainstorming during the show reception and continued through online video chats. “Our process was organic,” says White. “We didn't schedule meetings or check-ins. We dialed up each other at random as ideas occurred or as we needed feedback from the group.

The piece came together for the first time in its entirety just days before the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market in March 2020.”

An unprecedented sculptural series with a limited edition of three, Seal Vision: Shared Spirit won a first place in the bronze division of the sculpture classification at the Heard Fair and a judge's choice award from Dr. Bill W. Wiggins. A private collector has already purchased one of the edition and intends to donate it to an art museum in the Pacific Northwest.

Seal Vision celebrates the profound importance of seals to the coastal peoples of Alaska through the novel reenvisioning of materials. Based loosely on the form of Yup’ik dance masks, the central figure is a seal body enclosing a transformative human face and seal profile, all rendered in bronze. While the three artists are from different cultures in different regions of Alaska, the seal is important to all of them.

“We share a belief in our interdependence and interrelationship between human and non-human persons such as seals,” says White. “We share Far North stories of the masked dancer transforming into a seal, of the first seal springing to life from the severed fingers of Sea Woman, of the young boy who is sent to live in the underwater home of seals to learn their

above Detail of Seal Vision: Shared Spirit. Photo: Kevin McConnell. opposite Don Johnston (Qagan Tayagungin Unangax), Mark Tetpon (Iñupiaq), Terresa White (Yup’ik), Seal Vision: Shared Spirit, 2020, bronze, walrus ivory, fossilized walrus ivory, baleen, artificial sinew, birchwood, iron, plasteline, clay, pigment, 24 × 24 in., 1/3 ed. Photo: Kevin McConnell. Both images courtesy of the artists and Quintana Galleries, Portland, Oregon.

ways and so become a great hunter.” The artist continues, “Our people have long histories and strong relationships to seal people. We are told that seals know the ways of humans, are sensitive to our thoughts and actions, and can hear our words. Caution, care, and respect in the treatment of seals and of other human and non-human people are central to our understanding of living a good life.”

White made the stand from iron and sculpted the central figure in bronze. The overall form is of a seal’s body with stylized flippers at top and bottom. In the center, a human woman faces the viewer, encircled by a silver-grey profile of a seal’s face. She explains, “The woman and seal in the mask represent the interrelationship between the seal, the hunter, the women who prepare the harvested seals, and the community that benefits from the harvest.”

White sculpted plasteline clay spokes that flare out like sunrays, tied to two gracefully undulating pieces of wood.

“The curved black parts are half hoops that are usually used in Yup’ik masks and I made them from birchwood,” says Tetpon.

The terminus of each of the ten spokes (five per side) holds a sculpture in mirrored pairs. From the bottom upward are polar bears, seals, dancers—holding

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a drumstick aloft hand drums, frozen in mid-beat—fish, and ulus. Tetpon sculpted all these figures from walrus ivory and baleen. Alaskan women use ulus to process seal meat, and fish provide food for the seals. “As far as the polar bears, they are part of the ways of life that go with the overall design,” says Tetpon.

Feeding polar bears and humans, seals are central to sustaining many forms of life in the Arctic.

Johnston sculpted baleen basketry into an inlaid series of concentric circles for the base and a miniature baidarka, an Aleutian kayak, at the top, resting on the bronze seal’s fins. The top of the baidarka is a solid sheet of highly polished baleen inlaid with walrus ivory and fossilized walrus ivory, while the bottom of the baidarka is finely woven baleen basketry.

Johnston also crafted a hunter wearing a customary Unangan bentwood hat that he rendered in cut ivory, carefully layered to showcase different colors from cream to brilliant orange.

Despite working remotely, the three artists’ contributions to this intricate sculpture form a unified whole. As White says, “Our work came together beautifully, celebrating our shared Far North aesthetic.”

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

SPOTLIGHT

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COLLECTIONS

COLLECTIONS

MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ART

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

F

OND DU LAC BAND of Lake Superior Chippewa artist Maggie Thompson’s Family Portrait (2012) comprises three woven tapestries.

Black lines divide each into eight rectangular sections. The repeated shapes bring to mind Minimalist sculpture from the sixties, in particular Donald Judd’s fabricated sculptures. However the superficial connection stops there, as the group of artists known as Minimalists aimed to purge their work of all personal association, while Thompson (and indeed many Indigenous artists) draws from deeply personal experiences. In this case the focus is blood quantum—the controversial measure of “Nativeness” or “authenticity,” which the artist presents correctly as entirely abstract. The center panel is a self-portrait: Thompson is “3/8ths Native,” a percentage between her mostly Fond du Lac Band father and European-descended mother. The artist’s choice of materials further embeds her work into Indigenous

cultures, a fact underscored by the nearby display of 19th-century Navajo blankets at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia).

Minneapolis emerged around Bdote, the confluence of the Wakpa Tanka (Mississippi River) and Mnisota Wakpa (Minnesota River). It is the center of the earth for the Dakota—a sacred place, but also a site of historical traumas (and current, including the May 25 police murder of George Floyd that sparked worldwide protests against police violence and violence against the Black community). An 1805 treaty ceded 100,000 acres to the United States. Fort Snelling, built in 1819, became a concentration camp in 1862 for 1,700 Dakota women and children. Later that year Abraham Lincoln approved the hanging of 38 Dakota men.

Yet the Native communities remain resilient.

The American Indian Movement (AIM) emerged there in 1968. Today, about 35,000 Native people call

1. Mia was officially established in 1883 with the organization of an artist’s society.

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Minneapolis home. Mia supports Indigenous communities locally and nationally through preservation of cultural heritage, exhibitions, repatriation, education, purchase of work by living artists, fellowships for emerging museum professionals, and numerous partnerships with galleries and universities.

Mia opened its Neoclassical building in 1915.1 Its Americas collection began in 1928 with a gift of 25 objects from the Northwest Coast. The department of Decorative Arts managed these works until 1974, when the director established a Primitive Arts department. Louise Lincoln managed this collection from 1980 to 1998. Objects from Africa, the Americas, and Oceania were housed in a single gallery until the end of her tenure, when each continent was given its own gallery.

Evan Mauer published a survey of Native North American art a decade before serving as Mia’s director from 1988 to 2004. Jill Ahlberg Yohe credits him as a

COLLECTIONS

leader who put so-called “non-Western” art on equal terms with Western canonical art. “He collected contemporary art before many other encyclopedic museums,” she shared. 2 Mauer was friends with Minnesota-born painter George Morrison (Grand Portage Ojibwe, 1919–2000), and Mia was one of the first to collect his work.

With George Horse Capture (A’aninin, 1937–2013) and Joe Horse Capture (A’aninin), Mauer co-curated the traveling exhibition Visions of the People: A Pictorial History of Plains Indian Life in 1992. Joe was Mia’s curator of Native American art from 1997 to 2013. During his tenure he helped to raise a one-million-dollar endowment for acquisitions of Native art.

Today Mia’s collection consists of about 90,000 objects, managed by 15 curators across eight departments.3 Jill Ahlberg Yohe has been curating Native 2. All quotes from interview with the author on April 17, 2020, and email communication. Ahlberg Yohe recognizes the Denver Art Museum acquired contemporary Native art much earlier.

3. Mia’s largest holdings are in Asian Art and make up nearly 18 percent of the collection.

opposite Minneapolis Institute of Art, Third Avenue South entrance, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo: ©Minneapolis Institute of Art. All images courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. above, top Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Chippewa), Family Portrait, 2012, rayon, wool, dye, 72 × 36 in., collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Jane and James Emison Endowment for Native American Art, 2015.61a-c. ©2012 Maggie Thompson. Photo: Minneapolis Institute of Art. above, bottom Minneapolis Institute of Art, East 24th Street entrance, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo: ©Minneapolis Institute of Art.

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COLLECTIONS

American art at Mia since 2014. While some works by Indigenous artists are included in other departments, Ahlberg Yohe oversees 3,514 works from North America and 523 from Latin America.

More than 50 nations from all geographic regions are represented, with strengths in Upper Plains and Anishinaabe nations.

Though not all objects are yet online,

visitors can explore the museum by gallery on its website.

When Ahlberg Yohe came to Mia she hit the ground running with Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists (2019– 20), which took five years to realize. While most exhibitions are conceived by one curator, Ahlberg Yohe, along with co-curator Teri Greeves, created an advisory

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board with primarily Indigenous women to orchestrate a collaborative project.

This massive exhibition, currently at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, features works loaned from dozens of collections and boasts a hefty catalogue with contributions from 41 authors. Most labels were translated into the artists’ Native language. Another distinguishing feature is a reflection room for Indigenous visitors, with sage, sassafras, sweetgrass, and tobacco available. Hearts of Our People has received significant global attention. The scope and quality of the objects included are changing mainstream conceptions of American art, and the curatorial approach sets new precedents for future exhibitions.

Hearts of Our People drew heavily from Mia’s permanent collection. Its collection is also rich with work by artists from Minnesota. George Morrison’s Collage IX: Landscape (1974) suggests an aerial view of divided fields or a bustling cityscape with no space between buildings. Morrison’s Untitled (1960) is an Abstract Expressionist piece featuring vivid oranges and yellows in heavy impasto. This painting was conserved in 2017, and since then Ahlberg Yohe has worked closely with fellow curator Robert Cozzolino to display the expressive image in a variety of contexts: with contemporaneous American paintings, among other American abstract paintings, and in the Native American galleries. In this way viewers understand the work from different perspectives. Cozzolino explains, “Morrison holds up to all those contexts.”

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Cozzolino has reorganized the galleries dedicated to Western art so that nearly half of the artists are Native.

Ahlberg Yohe and Cozzolino invited Kathleen Ash-Milby (Navajo) and Tom Jones (Ho-Chunk) to discuss the greater implications of these museum changes in a panel open to the public. Like the Denver Art Museum, Mia juxtaposes historical and contemporary work to encourage visitors to consider aesthetic and conceptual relationships.

Author Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) is represented in the collection with Story of a Woman (2015), a vertically oriented canvas painted with thin, parallel blood-red lines. The wavy, rhythmic lines flow like rivers and suggest a repetitive and nuanced practice. Next to the painting is a smaller piece of brown paper with the words no baby typed over and over, punctuated by the occasional yes baby. The artist explained, as recorded in the museum’s acquisition proposal, “At one point, I realized that I’d never be able to write all of the books I wanted to write, so I began painting them. Each of the lines is a drawn out period of consciousness, and each is influenced by the line that came before, just like writing.”

Acquiring work by living Native artists is one way Mia creates “reciprocal and sustaining” relationships with Native communities. One program links art with language learning. The collection is a resource for the University of Minnesota, which offers Dakota and Ojibwe language programs. Objects from these cultures will soon have bilingual labels.

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community established a curatorial fellowship to create a pipeline for emerging Native professionals to segue into museum careers. Dakota Hoska (Oglala Lakota) was one of the most recent recipients. In 2018 the museum hosted the traveling exhibition Horse Nation of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, organized by the Heritage Center of Red Cloud Indian School, with local galleries All My Relations and Two Rivers. Ahlberg Yohe curated a solo exhibition for painter Julie Buffalohead (Ponca) and worked with Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe) to produce Let: an act of reverse

“Native art belongs everywhere.”

—Jill Ahlberg Yohe incorporation (2016), an institutional critique that brought attention to the complexities of displaying objects from colonized cultures.

In organizing major traveling exhibitions, integrating Native art into multiple areas of its museum, hosting listening sessions for Native communities to voice opinions on museological issues, providing professional opportunities for Native curators, and collaborating with Native individuals and institutions, Mia models initiatives which other museums can implement. When one considers the glacial progress to indigenize mainstream museums in the United States, it is significant that many institutions leading the way are in the West and Midwest rather than the coasts. Ahlberg Yohe summarizes the efforts well: “Native art belongs everywhere.”

above Unknown Osage artist, Friendship Blanket, ca. 1900, wool, glass beads, silk ribbon, 625/8 × 68 in., collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the George Family Acquisition Fund for Native American Art 2011.52. opposite, top George Morrison (Grand Portage Ojibwe, 1919– 2000), Collage IX: Landscape, 1974, wood, 601/8 × 1681/2 × 3 in. collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Francis E. Andrews Fund, 75.24. ©Estate o f G e o rg e M o r r i s o n / B r i a n d Morrison. Photo: Minneapolis Institute of Art. opposite, bottom Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe), Story of a Woman, 2015, acrylic on canvas, typed paper, 48 × 30 in. (canvas), 91/4 × 53/4 in. (paper), collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Patricia and Peter Frechette Endowment for Art Acquisition, 2019.1.4a,b. ©Louise Erdrich.

Photo: Minneapolis Institute of Art.

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MEMORIAL

RODSLEN BROWN July 22, 1960–June 9, 2020

“M

above, top Rodslen Brown. above, bottom Rodslen Brown (Cherokee Nation), Lace Moxie’s Purse, 2014, root runners, flat reed, dye, hide. Photo: A. Meredith.

Y ZEAL IS TO HELP ALL PEOPLE and has lit a fire among the Cherokee Nation as well,” wrote Rodslen Brown (Cherokee Nation). An award-winning basket maker, Brown founded the nonprofit Project A Association in 2000. Project A served the community of Muskogee County in numerous ways, such as teaching arts to at-risk youth, computer skills to adults, and gardening to children and seniors, while advocating for small farmers and ranchers and even providing emergency food donations during the COVID-19 quarantine.

Born Rodslen Leearn King, she had eleven siblings. Rodslen Brown attended Muskogee public schools and lived in Muskogee and neighboring Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. She married Willoman C. Brown, and they had two daughters and two sons. She was a devout Baptist who dedicated her life to service. For more than three decades she served as a habilitation training specialist for Oklahomans with disabilities through the Oklahoma Health Care Authority.

“I’m a Cherokee Freedmen ... and I have worked hard to prove myself [and] that we all need each other. We have a lot of knowledge and skills that we need to share with each other and to make us beneficial to each other,” she told Allison Herrera of KOSU radio.1 She was an outspoken advocate for Cherokee Freedmen and other Black Cherokees and gained her Cherokee Nation citizenship in 2006. The tribe recognized her community service with the Cherokee National Community Leadership Award in 2013.

Sandra Pallie (Cherokee Nation) taught Brown to weave and invited her to join the Cherokee Basket Weavers Association.

She began weaving with honeysuckle runners and commercial round and flat reed. She won first place in basketry at the annual Cherokee National Holiday art exhibition and judge's choice at the Cherokee Art Market. She exhibited throughout Cherokee country and Oklahoma.

“Rodslen was kind, loving, supportive, and believed we ought to work together to make our lives, our communities, and our shared future better,” wrote Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskins Jr. on social media. “Rodslen did more than believe in these things. She put those beliefs into action. Whether it was advocating for equality for all Cherokee citizens, creating opportunities for young Cherokees or celebrating and creating Cherokee art, Rodslen indeed let the work she did speak for her.”

Cherokee Heritage Center curator Callie Chunestudy and I were honored to include one of Brown’s baskets in our 2019 exhibition, Earth Shakers: The Influence of Cherokee Women, at the center in Park Hill, Oklahoma. Chunestudy wrote, “She was a pillar of strength and inspiration for justice and equality in my mind. A powerful woman I was lucky to have met through art. She fought for the underdogs, the underprivileged, and the mistreated.

She made beautiful Cherokee baskets and was always a joy to be around. Rodslen Brown, you are missed by many.”

—AM 1. Allison Herrera, “Some Cherokee Freedmen are Citizens, While Others are Left Out,” KOSU, August 10, 2016, web.

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MEMORIAL

DAVID SHANANAQUET May 9, 1955–April 4, 2020

“M

Y ART AND MY VISION are of the most personal and valuable tools that I rely on,” David Shananaquet (Little Traverse Odawa) once wrote in an artist statement. “I will always dedicate my work to the young people and the Seven Generations yet to follow.”1 While he is remembered as a talented painter, powwow arena director, birchbark basket maker, and practitioner of Anishinaabe spiritual teachings, the greatest legacy Shananaquet leaves may be his mentorship and encouragement of generations of Native artists, dancers, and singers in the Great Lakes region.

Born in Petoskey, Michigan, David Lee Shananaquet was the first son of Marie Shomin Shananaquet and Lawrence Shananaquet. His Odawa name, Saagima, translates to One Who Can Travel the Water and Sky Realms, and he belonged to the Sturgeon clan. His family belongs to the Midewiwin Lodge.

Shananaquet started creating at a young age. “Poverty was my inspiration,” Shananaquet told Annette VanDeCar, the Little Traverse Bay Bands communications coordinator. “My mom always told me I was drawing and painting on walls and anything else I could get my hands on in the house.”2 In another conversation, Shananaquet said, “I spent all my free time drawing when I was a young person. I got encouragement from my mom. I was raised by a single mother and then my grandmother.”3 His maternal grandmother, Angeline Shagagonabe Shomin (Odawa, 1874–1978) was the matriarch of his family, who inspired her children and their children to hold their Odawa culture and language fast.

Shananaquet lived in Hopkins, Michigan, with his wife Lorraine “Punkin” Martin Shananaquet (Potawatomi/Ojibwe), and they have two children, Paul and Carly, who are both painters and active powwow dancers now. Punkin is a beadwork artist, powwow dancer, birchbark artist, and teacher. The entire family was popular on the powwow trail.

Before becoming a well-known powwow arena director, Shananaquet began singing with drums in the 1970s and formally joined a drum group around 1980. He sang with the Skin Tones Drum.4 As a visual artist, Shananaquet was mostly self-taught. He sold his first artwork at age 13. After becoming a full-time artist, he averaged 50 to 60 paintings a year.

Shananaquet painted naturalistic portraits, landscapes, and flora and fauna culturally significant to the Anishinaabeg. He also painted stylized, abstract images of Anishinaabe cultural motifs, such as the thunderbird and Great Lakes floral designs. “All of my artwork is usually really balanced,” he said of his symmetrical

above Rachel Mae Dennis-Butzin (Haudenosaunee), Tribute to David and Punkin Shananaquet, 2020, digital art.

compositions, to reflect the balance in the natural world, particularly the Sky Realm and Underworld.5 His tribe, the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, purchased a series of eight paintings depicting Odawa clans, and these paintings now hang in their courtroom. The clan series won the People’s Choice award at the 2015 Circle of Indigenous Arts Market and Competition at the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways.

Several museums hold Shananaquet’s work in their collections, as do schools, casinos, and healthcare facilities. The Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi commissioned him to paint a 16-foot-long mural. Shananaquet was also an accomplished graphic designer and created logos for Native organizations and events. He designed and printed custom streetwear with Anishinaabe iconography.

Together, Punkin and David Shananaquet harvested birchbark from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They etched the bark and sculpted birchbark baskets, boxes, and even functioning hats and goggles. They then taught birchbark harvesting, etching, and basketry workshops.

While reverent at the appropriate times, Shananaquet could be highly irreverent in informal situations and was known for his single-finger salute, yet he always showed compassion and generosity for Native youth.

“Being a young Native artist I can’t tell you how much I looked up to Dave Shananaquet,” wrote Rachel Mae DennisButzin, a Haudenosaunee art instructor at St. Joseph’s Indian School. “Seeing Punkin Shananaquet and Dave at powwows always filled my heart.”

—AM

1. Annette VanDeCar, “Painter and Illustrator David Shananquet’s Talent Is Unlimited,” Odawa Trails (February 2007), 1.

2. VanDeCar, “Painter and Illustrator David Shananquet’s Talent Is Unlimited.”

3. Kristy Phillips, “David Shananaquet Interview,” October 22, 2013, video, 3:51, YouTube, web.

4. Tara Browner, Heartbeat of the People: Music and Dance of the Northern Pow-wow (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 120, 131.

5. Phillips, “David Shananaquet Interview.”

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Azhwakwa

Bear Snout, 2020, yellow cedar, hide. Photo: Sydney Woodward.

Dennis Esquivel (Grand Traverse Odawa/Ojibwe)

CONTEMPORARY ANISHINAABE ART

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AUGUST 1 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 Tentative dates based on public health conditions

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Pottery of the Southwest Exhibition • August 13th • 4-7pm • 223 Canyon Road • Santa Fe SWAIA Virtual Indian Market • 2020