First American Art Magazine No. 36, Fall 2022

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

MAGAZINE

OSAGE RIBBONWORK EITELJORG MUSEUM HERRING PROTECTORS FIELD MUSEUM

DYANI WHITE HAWK LILLIAN PITT GOLGA OSCAR ROY BONEY JR.

NO. 36, FALL 2022

DISPLAY UNTIL JAN. 9, 2023

Enjoy an enriching, shared experience exploring centuries of Chickasaw history and traditions. The vibrant, vivid, living expression of Chickasaw culture unfolds through a 1700s tribal village, dance demonstrations, traditional gardens and engaging exhibits.

OPEN TUE–SAT 10 AM to 5 P M

L IVE STOM P DANCE DEMONSTRATIONS 11 AM and 2 P M

S u l p h u r, O k l a h o m a | 5 8 0 - 6 2 2-7 1 3 0 | C h i c k a s a w C u l t u r a l C e n t e r. c o m

NOW OPEN! Join us for the new permanent exhibition, Here, Now and Always. Explore how culture illuminates the past and informs the future of Native art and lifeways.

Join us as we celebrate a century of Santa Fe’s Indian Market with more than 200 works of art, historic and contemporary photographs, and interviews with the artists and collectors.

NOW opeN!

On the Santa Fe Plaza · 113 Lincoln Avenue 505-476-5200 · nmhistorymuseum.org Figurine, Mary Evangeline “Vangie” Suina (Cochiti Pueblo), 1984, Bequest of Sarah Crane, 58157/12. Sponsored by Ann Parker and Angelo Joaquin, Jr.

left: Tyler Dingee, Maria Martinez holding finished pottery, ca. 1950. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, NMHM #073452 right: Kitty Leaken, Jaylina Rain Loretto, 10, Hoop Dancer from Nambe Pueblo, 2019

TERRAN LAST GUN Circular Above Power, 2021, ink and colored pencil on antique ledger paper, 17.5 x 11.25

HECHO GALLERY

129 W Palace Ave, Santa Fe, NM www.hecho.gallery 505.455.6882

309 W. Muskogee Ave. Sulphur, OK | MahotaTextiles.com

ON VIEW THROUGH JANUARY 7, 2023

ON DISPLAY OCTOBER 8, 2022 — MARCH, 12, 2023

Pablita Abeyta, 1953–2017 (Navajo) Untitled (Mudhead), c. 2000s; Clay, paint, leather, turquoise, corn husk; Photography by Addison Doty

Wheelwright Museum

Mary Morez, 1946–2004 (Navajo) Study of a Navajo Woman, 1968–69 (Detail); Charcoal on paper; Heard Museum Collection Gift of Mr. Byron Harvey III, IAC904; Photo courtesy of the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona

704 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe NM 87505

OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

The Indian Arts and Crafts Board offers a Source Directory of American Indian and Alaska Native Owned and Operated Arts and Crafts Businesses that sell authentic Indian art and craftwork, which is available at doi.gov/iacb.

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

For a free brochure on the Act, including how to file a complaint, please contact: U.S. Department of the Interior Indian Arts and Crafts Board Toll Free: 1-888-ART-FAKE or 1-888-278-3253 Email: iacb@ios.doi.gov Web: doi.gov/iacb

Kathy Dickerson, Kiowa, Kiowa Women’s Boots, ©2005

www.dragonflystrail.com your path to fine zuni art 505.280.3197 dragonflys_trail@icloud.com

“The work stands not for me, but for all those who came before us and all whose faces we have yet to see.”

Karen Ann Hoffman is a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Raised Beadworker from the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. Raised beadwork is an artform born of the Eastern Great Lakes. Her contemporary artworks feature modern materials in traditional styles. For Hoffman, her creations stand for all those who came before us and all whose faces we have yet to see.

Visit FieldMuseum.org to learn more

Portrait by Wisconsin Public Radio / J. Potter, artwork captured by © Field Museum

T R I B E S GA L L E RY Art & Appraisals

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

28th Annual Calendar Signing & Holiday Show December 10th & 11th pre-orders are welcome

Native & MIO Gift Boutique Corporate Gift Baskets Appraisals Left: Red Eye by Larry Carter

Boyd Street Ventures provides funding and guidance to startups that are developed in the University of Oklahoma ecosystem or founded by OU alums or other Oklahomans. BSV also supports minority- and female-led, venture-backed companies through its Boyd Street Endowment Fund.

Whether you purchase one of the over 50 works of art in the Boyd Street Ventures Collection or any other artwork from the Tribes Gallery,

10% OF PROCEEDS WILL GO TO THE BOYD STREET ENDOWMENT FUND

Transition by Mary Beth Timothy

Visit the Collection

Sweet Medicine by Harvey Pratt

512 West Main Street | Norman, OK 73069 405.329.4442 tribes131.com

IDYLLWILD ARTS FOUNDATION NATIVE AMERICAN ARTS PROGRAM PRESENTS

NATIVE AMERICAN ARTS WORKSHOPS & FESTIVAL WEEK IDYLLWILD, CA

JUNE 12 – JULY 1, 2023

JOIN US AGAIN IN 2023!

WORKSHOPS June 12 - July 1, 2023 NATIVE AMERICAN ARTS FESTIVAL WEEK June 18 - June 23, 2023

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

All events are free and open to the public.

NATIVE AMERICAN ARTS FESTIVAL WEEK INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION Coming June 2023

Scholarships for Native American adults and teens available for 2023!

FOR MORE INFO & AND TO REGISTER, VISIT:

idyllwildarts.org/nativeamericanarts

issue no. 36, fall 2022

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

Native Truths and Why the Storyteller Matters: An In-Depth Look into the Renovation at the Field Museum

By Monica Whitepigeon (Prairie Band Potawatomi/Black)

24

Honoring Herring in Sheet'ká Kwáan

By Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq)

30 48

Roy Boney Jr.: 48 Cherokee Nation Polymath

By Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Chippewas of Rama First Nation) 54

Lillian Pitt: Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama Sculptor and Jeweler

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

60

Dyani White Hawk: Sičáŋgu Lakota Interdisciplinary Artist By heather ahtone, PhD (Choctaw/Chickasaw Nation)

66

20

Art+Lit Paul Seesequasis: Willow Cree Writer, Journalist, and Curator

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

72

94

REVIEWS

54

Golga Oscar: Yup'ik Multidisciplinary Artist and Teacher

By Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq)

Seven Directions Joe Williams (Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ Dakota)

Calendar

40

ARTIST PROFILES

16

Traditional Ways: 74 James Jerome (Métis)

By Paul Seesequasis (Willow Cree)

A Vision Realized: 34 The Eiteljorg Museum Revitalizes Its Native American Exhibitions

By Susan Burns Osage Ribbonwork: A Continuum

By Nanette Kelley (Osage Nation/Cherokee Nation)

Recent Developments

Exhibition Reviews

76

Movie Review

86

Book Reviews

88

MEMORIALS Richard Aitson 91 (Kiowa/Kiowa Apache, 1953–2022)

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Toneh Chuleewah 92 (Cherokee Nation, 1959–2022)

By Chelsea Whittington (Chickasaw) 60

66

Blake Debassige 93 (M'Chigeeng Ojibwe, 1956–2022)

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

cover Golga, Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), 2021, archival fine art digital photograph on Legacy Platine paper, 60 × 38 in., edition of 9. Prints of this photograph are in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Image courtesy of the artist.

Golga Oscar (Yup'ik) models regalia he created.

NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 13

First Fridays!

issue no. 36, fall 2022 ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Online) Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Literary Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD (Euro-Canadian) Contributing Editor: Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke) Advertising Representative: Barbara Harjo Circulation Manager: James G. Bland Copy Editors: Rosa Cays (Chicana) and Jo Ann Reece Proofreaders: Staci Golar, Jo Ann Reece, Angela C. Villa (Chicana), and Travis D. Day Layout and Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) and Corey Yazzie (Navajo) Social Media: Staci Golar, America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho), and Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke)

Regional Representatives

the First Friday of each month 1-4 pm

FREE

Masks required.

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ©2022 by First American Art Magazine, LLC. Cover and contents are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or part by any method without written permission, except those specific images listed with Creative Commons licenses. Any errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. First American Art Magazine® is registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

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NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 15

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS began cataloguing and transporting the documents to the archives in September.

ART FAIRS SP–Arte featured Rotas Indígenas Brasileiras: Arte em Tempo Presente as part of its annual SÃO PAULO INTERNATIONAL ART FESTIVAL in São Paulo Brazil. Artist Denilson Baniwa (Baniwa) curated this experience, which featured printmaking by Xadalú Tupã Jekupé (Mestizo), the music of Katú Mirim (Bororo) and rap group Oz Guaraní, and discussions led by filmmaker, journalist, and curator Olinda Muniz Wanderley (Tupinambá/Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe). The exhibition includes an immersive space, Aity, or “nest” in the Nhengatu language, to foster conversations about current issues faced by Indigenous peoples of Brazil today.

ART SHOWS above 2022 Santa Fe Indian Market best of show winner: Russell Sanchez (San Ildefonso Pueblo), 100 Years in the Making, ceramic, slip, Lone Mountain turquoise, hematite, 10½ × 8 in. Photo: Tira Howard Photography. Image courtesy of SWAIA.

MUSEUMS The ABBE MUSEUM in Bar Harbor, Maine, hired Betsy Richards (Cherokee Nation) as its new executive director and senior partner with Wabanaki Nations.

Previously based in New York City, Richards was the director of cultural strategies at the Opportunity Agenda.

Prior to that, she served as the program officer for media, arts, and culture at the Ford Foundation; director of public programs at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center; and communications specialist at Newsweek.

She earned her BFA from New York University and her MFA in theater and arts administration from Yale University.

The WHEELWRIGHT MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN in Santa Fe announced that Henrietta Lidchi 16 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

will serve as its new director. Lidchi was the head of research and collections and chief curator at the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen in Leiden, the Netherlands, after serving as the keeper of world cultures at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. She earned her master’s degree from Durham University in Durham, England, and her PhD in anthropology from the Open University in Milton Keynes, England.

T h e S m it h s on i a n In s t itut i on’s NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE A M E R IC A N I N DIA N (NMAI) accepted the archives of Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band Cherokee, 1957–2018).

In 2016, the photographer and weaver offered her personal papers and documents to the museum. NMAI’s processing archivist Rachel Menyuk

The Cherokee Nation hosted the 27th annual CHEROKEE HOMECOMING ART SHOW in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Carolyn Pallett (Cherokee Nation) won the grand prize. All winners, unless listed otherwise, are members of the Cherokee Nation. Category winners were Harry Oosahwee, traditional arts; Crystal Hanna, traditional pottery; Lisa Rutherford, contemporary pottery; Vivian Cottrell, traditional basketry; Hattie Lee, contemporary basketry; Daniel HorseChief (Cherokee Nation/ Pawnee), visual arts; Charlie Nichols, sculpture; Cathy Abercrombie, textiles; Steven Morales (Cherokee Nation/ Lakota), jewelry; and Stephanie Dugger, beadwork. Cathy Abercrombie won the Bill Rabbit Legacy Award, Ron Mitchell won the Betty Scraper-Gardner Elder Award, Jennifer Yates won the Jennie Ross Cobb Photography Award, and Jeanne Webber Al-Ghamdi won the Emerging Artist Award.

MARKETS Beverly Bear King Moran won best of show at the 10th annual NATIVE POP: PEOPLE OF THE PLAINS, a gathering of arts and culture in Rapid City, South Dakota. Division winners were Beverly Bear King Moran (Standing Rock Lakota), adornment; Martin Red Bear (Oglala/Sicangu Lakota), two-dimensional; Jared Lanz (Oglala Lakota), three-dimensional; and Jaida Grey Eagle (Oglala Lakota), emerging artist. Keith BraveHeart (Oglala Lakota) won the publicity award.

The Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) hosted the 100th annual SANTA FE INDIAN MARKET this summer. The best of show award went to Russell Sanchez (San Ildefonso Pueblo), a master ceramic artist and SWAIA board member. Classification winners were Ernest Benally, jewelry; Russell Sanchez (San Ildefonso Pueblo), pottery; Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), painting,

drawings, graphics, and photography; Manuel Chavarria (Hopi), wooden Pueblo figurative carvings and sculpture; Ryan Benally (Navajo), sculpture; Ahkima Honyumptewa (Hopi), textiles; Glenda McKay (Ingalik Athabascan), diverse arts; Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty and Camryn Growing Thunder (both Fort Peck Assiniboine-Sioux), beadwork/quillwork; Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy), basketry; and Tobie Mae Patricio (Acoma Pueblo), youth. A complete list of winners can be found on the First American Art Magazine website.

AWARDS & HONORS The NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS named TahNibaa Naataanii (Navajo) as one of its ten 2022 NEA NATIONAL HERITAGE FELLOWS. Naataanii is a textile weaver based in Shiprock, New Mexico. The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation awarded her a 2020 Mentor Artist Fellowship.

above TahNibaa Naataanii (Navajo), 2022 NEA National Heritage Fellow, at her loom.

Image courtesy of the National Endowment for the Arts.

NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 17

ART OF

ASHION INDIGENOUS FFASHION Through January 8, 2023 ARTART OF OF

FFASHION ASHION INDIGENOUS INDIGENOUS FFASHION ASHION ART OF

INDIGENOUS FASHION

Through January 8, 2023 INDIGENOUS FA8,SHION Through January 2023 Through January 8, 2023

Athena LaTocha: Mesabi Redux Through December 25, 2022 Athena LaTocha:

Athena LaTocha: Mesabi Redux Mesabi Redux Through December 25, 2022 Through December 25, 2022 Athena LaTocha:

Mesabi Redux Through December 25, 2022

Matrilineal: Legacies of Our Mothers Matrilineal: Matrilineal: Through January 15, 2023

Legacies of Our Mothers Legacies of Our Mothers Through January 15, 2023 Through January 15, 2023 Matrilineal: Legacies of Our Mothers Through January 15, 2023

The Stories We Carry TheThe Stories We Carry Stories We29, Carry Through September 2024

Through September 29, 2024 Through September 29, 2024

The Stories We Carry Through September 29, 2024

Dugi (Navajo), The Red Collection-Look No. 2.,byPhoto

by Tira Howard iOrlando (Navajo), The Red(Navajo), Collection-Look 2., Photo Tira2.,Howard Orlando Dugi The Red No. Collection-Look No. Photo by Tira Howard Athena LaTocha (Standing Rock Lakota/ Keweenaw Bay Ojibwe), Mesabi Redux, photo courtesy of MoCNA cha (Standing Rock Lakota/ Keweenaw Bay Ojibwe), Redux,Mesabi photo Redux, courtesy of MoCNA Athena LaTocha (Standing Rock Lakota/ KeweenawMesabi Bay Ojibwe), photo: MoCNA Jimmie C. Fife (Mvskoke), Take Me to Church, 2019 fe (Mvskoke), Take to Church, Jimmie C. FifeMe (Mvskoke), Take2019 Me to Church, 2019 Marcus Amerman (Choctaw), Untitled Fringed and Beaded Cuffs, 1980.

Marcus Amerman (Choctaw), Fringed and Beaded rman (Choctaw), Untitled Fringed Untitled and Beaded Cuffs, 1980. Cuffs, 1980, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Arts Collection: Walter Bigbee.

Orlando Dugi (Navajo), The RedNative Collection-Look No. 2.,CHO-33.

Photo byPhoto Tira by Howard IAIA MoCNArt Collection: CHO-33, photo: Walter Bigbee. mAthena of Contemporary Native Rock Arts Lakota/ Collection: CHO-33.

by Walter LaTocha (Standing Keweenaw BayPhoto Ojibwe), MesabiBigbee.

Redux, photo courtesy of MoCNA www.iaia.edu/mocna 108 Cathedral Place Santa FetoNM 875012019 Jimmie C. Fife (Mvskoke), Take Me Church, 18 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM 108 Cathedral Santa Fe NM 87501 www.iaia.edu/mocna www.iaia.edu/mocna dral Place Santa FePlace NM 87501

Marcus Amerman (Choctaw), Untitled Fringed and Beaded Cuffs, 1980.

The INDEPENDENT CURATORS INTERNATIONAL gave its 2022 LEO AWARD to Candice Hopkins (Carcross/ Tagish), and she is sharing it with the American Indian Community House, a New York City–based nonprofit founded in 1969. Hopkins, the executive director and chief curator of the Forge Project, previously served as senior curator of the 2019 and 2022 editions of the Toronto Biennial.

The AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES inducted Jereldine “Jeri” Redcorn (Caddo/Citizen Potawatomi) as a member. Through experimentation and research beginning in 1991, she launched the revival of Caddo pottery. Redcorn was elected in 2021, and the ceremony took place in September 2022.

The DOROTHEA AND LEO RABKIN FOUNDATION gave its 2022 RABKIN PRIZE to eight art journalists, including First American Art Magazine’s contributing editor, Stacy Pratt (Mvskoke). These annual awards provide art writers with $50,000 stipends. Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Pratt earned her PhD at the University of Southern Mississippi and is also an associate editor and staff writer for Sweet Adelines, a nonprofit supporting women singers.

The FORD FAMILY FOUNDATION presented 2022 HALLIE FORD FELLOWSHIPS IN VISUAL ARTS to three artists in Oregon, including Brenda Mallory (Cherokee Nation), a sculptor, textile, and installation artist based in Portland. The award included a $35,000 stipend.

The ONTARIO ARTS COUNCIL gave its 2022 OAC INDIGENOUS ARTS AWARD to Shirley Cheechoo (Cree). The award honors art leaders in Ontario and includes Can$10,000, a certificate, and an Indigenous-designed blanket presented during the Weengushk International Film Festival, which Cheechoo helped found.

The AMERICAN CRAFT COUNCIL selected eight 2022 artists to join its COLLEGE OF FELLOWS. These include Teri Greeves (Kiowa) and Preston Singletary (Tlingit). Based in Santa Fe, Greeves is a beadwork artist who co-curated Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists (2019–20).

Preston Singletary (Tlingit) is a glass artist whose solo exhibition Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight is on view at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, through January 29, 2023.

The FORGE PROJECT selected its six 2022 FORGE FELLOWS, who are Catherine Blackburn (Dene), Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), Rainer Posselt (Stockbridge Munsee), Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos), Tania Willard (Secwepemc), and Peter Williams (Yup'ik). Each fellow receives $25,000 and participates in a three-week residency at the Forge site. Based in Taghkanic, New York, the Forge Project is funded in part by the Goshman Family Foundation.

The first JIM DENOMIE MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP was awarded to Jonathan Thunder (Red Lake Ojibwe).

Created by his widow, Diane Wilson, in memory of painter Jim Denomie (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe, 1955–2022), his family partnered with All My Relations Arts and the Bockley Gallery, both in Minneapolis, to administer the scholarship, which is for $10,000. Thunder is a painter, animator, and experimental filmmaker based in Duluth, Minnesota.

The NATIVE ARTS AND CULTURES FOUNDATION in Portland, Oregon, awarded 20 artists its 2022 LIFT— EARLY CAREER SUPPORT FOR NATIVE ARTISTS. The film/video artists are Loren Waters (Cherokee Nation/Kiowa) and Olivia Camfield (Mvskoke). The multidisciplinary artists are Dylan McLaughlin (Navajo), Mobéy Lola Irizarry (Chickasaw Nation), and T.J. Keanu Tario, or Lady Laritza La Bouche (Native Hawaiian). “Traditional” artists are Brian Walker (Iñupiaq/Athabascan), Carly Feddersen (Okanagan/

Sinixt), Chelsea Kaiah (White Mountain Apache/Ute), Kamali'ikūpono Hanohano (Kanak), Lehuauakea (Native Hawaiian), Hāwane Rios (Kanak), and Sydney Akagi (Tlingit). Visual artists are Akilah or Glittering World Girl (Navajo), Derick Wycherly (Chippewa-Cree), Ethan Lauesen (Koyukon Athabaskan/ Ahtna Athabaskan), Mikayla Patton (Oglala Lakota), and Wicanhpi Iyotan Win Autumn Cavender (Pezihutazizi Dakota). Artists from other disciplines are Amber McCrary (Navajo), Kalyn Fay (Cherokee Nation/Mvskoke), and Natalie Benally (Navajo). Each artist receives $10,000 to complete a specific project.

REPATRIATION The BUXTON MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY in Derbyshire, United Kingdom, voluntarily repatriated several items of cultural patrimony to the HAIDA GWAII MUSEUM in Skidegate, British Columbia. Bret Gaunt, assistant collections officer at the museum,

reached out to the Haida museum to return five historic Northwest Coast items, including a stone carving, canoe bailer, wooden ladle, argillite pipe, and bone totem pole. The Buxton Museum is also repatriating a Nuu-chah-nulth canoe paddle and Kwakwaka'wakw canoe bailer to the U’MISTA CULTURAL CENTRE in Alert Bay, British Columbia, and quilled Huron moccasins to the MUSÉE HURON-WENDAT in Wendake, Quebec.

The Colombian embassy to Germany contacted the STIFTUNG PREUSSISCHER KULTURBESITZ, or Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, about the return of two Kogui ceremonial masks. These masks hold ceremonial significance to the Kogui people of northern Colombia. German ethnographer Konrad Theodor Preuss acquired the masks in 1915, after the death of a Kogui priest; however, the Kogui and Colombia maintain that ownership of these masks is non-transferable and they belong back in the Kogui community.

CHIEFS, CLANS & KIN

CHANGING EXHIBIT GALLERY TEMPORARY EXHIBIT JULY 23 - DEC 31 Point your phone camera at the QR code and tap the pop up to learn more!

NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 19

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

JOE WILLIAMS ˇ A Wahpéthuŋwaŋ Dakota educator, podcaster, artist & curator shares his top seven list

B

ORN AND RAISED on the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota, Joe Williams (Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ Dakota) is director of community education and director of Native American programs at Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota. He has an MFA degree in visual effects from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, and a BA in American Indian studies from the University of South Dakota (USD).

Williams is a storyboard artist and has mentored Native American youth for most of his working career. Currently he directs the Northern Plains Summer Art Institute, a program inspired by his work with USD and run by former Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute (OHSAI) staff. From 1993 through 2007, he was part of the OHSAI, first as a student and then he worked for the organization. Williams also served in the US Army National Guard for 20 years and deployed three times overseas.

Currently Williams is co-curating the exhibition Waŋna niš niyepi: Continuity of Culture at the Plains Art Museum in partnership with Crow’s Shadow Institute for the Arts, on view through February 2023.

Williams also hosts the Native American and Indigenous arts-focused podcast, 5 Plain Questions, which asks five questions of Indigenous creatives, culture bearers, and movers and shakers.

INSTAGRAM @ELEVENJOE NORTH. Curator Hillary Kempenich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) celebrates the quintessential members of Indigenous communities, the “Aunties,” in the exhibition NOOJIMO (SHE HEALS) at All My Relations Arts gallery in Minneapolis. This group exhibition draws from works from established as well as emerging artists and shares their perspectives of these influential cornerstones in our communities. Kempenich understands this kinship in a way that only one from our communities could. Appropriately working with other women in the community, both mentors and fellow artists, Kempenich constructed this tasteful and powerful exhibition. hillarykempenich.com | allmyrelationsarts.com EAST. NATION TO NATION: TREATIES BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND AMERICAN INDIAN NATIONS is an ongoing traveling exhibition from the National Museum of the American Indian curated by Suzan Shown Harjo above Joe Williams (Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ Dakota). Image courtesy of the author. left Nedahness Rose Greene (Leech Lake Ojibwe), detail of Gizigos-Dakise (Your Aunt Is Cool), 2022, digital photograph.

Image courtesy of All My Relations Arts, Minneapolis.

20 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

(Southern Cheyenne/Muscogee). It provides an opportunity for Native American art programs at various museums and organizations to creatively engage with their local communities—and the Smithsonian—on the history of local tribal nations and the United States in a deep and meaningful way. Currently Plains Art Museum in Fargo is engaging with the Smithsonian for a future exhibition. americanindian.si.edu/nationtonation

above Installation view of Nation to Nation:

Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Image courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian. below Oscar Howe (Yanktonai Dakota, 1915–

1983), Umine Dance, 1958, casein, gouache on paper, mounted to board, 18 × 22 in. Image courtesy of Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.

WEST. DAKOTA MODERN: THE ART OF OSCAR HOWE (Portland Art Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian) is the first retrospective of this iconic artist in more than a generation. Native American contemporary art can be traced back to Oscar Howe (Yanktonai Dakota, 1915–1983).

His 1930s education in Dorothy Dunn’s Studio shaped the importance of Native American ceremony in his work, but the individualism that came out in his work in the 1950s was shunned by institutions of the day because he didn’t meet their definition of “Indian art.” Oscar Howe rejected their stance, thus creating a path forward for all contemporary Native American artists to follow. His work is beautifully represented in this exhibition by the curatorial work of NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 21

LEHUAUAKEA New Prints

Kathleen Ash-Milby (Diné), which includes a re-creation of his legendary letter to Philbrook Art Center. portlandartmuseum.org/exhibitions/dakota-modern SOUTH. ATHENA LATOCHA: MESABI REDUX is on view at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. Athena LaTocha (Hunkpapa Lakota/Ojibwe) departs from her large landscape approach of ink, paper, and found materials and presents landscapes of poured iron manipulated with found objects and ink. Created during a residency at MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, LaTocha interprets her unique and intimate observations of the land through materials from the Mesabi Range in northern Minnesota and once again proves her mastery of her craft in a piece that is both delicate and bold. LaTocha’s take on landscape and place

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VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE: crowsshadow.org The Tools That Hina Gave Us, four-color lithograph on Rives BFK cream, 2021, 24” x 18”, edition of 21 Collaborating Master Printer, Judith Baumann, Edition Printer, Maggie Middleton 22 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

is so unique and fascinating; it shouldn’t be missed. iaia.edu/event/athena-latocha-mesabi ABOVE. A rock band from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, ISANTI has a new album due to be released in September. This self-described garage rock band has its roots in ’90s rock but with an infectious ’60s flair. Two tracks, “Lakota Woman Blues” and “On the Brink” are earworms that will have you listening over and over again. It is incredibly important that we extend our support to Native American bands and the art they create. The band features guitarist Cain Rotert (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), bassist Kamp Kirsch, drummer Jacob Vande Vegte, and singer/guitarist Kenton James (Santee Sioux Nation/Cheyenne River Lakota).

Grounded and thoughtful, James also performed with Sons of Sans Arc. Isanti is a comfortable listen that just feels like it’s always been part of a repeatedly loved playlist.

Instagram @isanti_band CENTER. RESERVATION DOGS is the creation of Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/ Muscogee), Taika Waititi (Māori), the 1491s, and company. Nothing is more exciting right now than the creatives at work in Oklahoma producing a television show that speaks directly to Native America. Its writers, actors, cast, and crew come from Indian Country, and this is why it connects to us Indigenous people. The show’s humor and serious topics come from where we come from.

It feels like we are watching family on this television show. Never have we seen a show tap into our community the way this does. Sure, there have been great television series that featured an ensemble Indigenous cast like Northern Exposure, Big Love, Rutherford Falls, and various period pieces, but none created by and for Native American and Indigenous professionals in such a complete way. This isn’t a rebuff or critique of the earlier shows.

I love them all and love seeing Native American representation on the small and big screen, but this series is different.

It does not pander to us; it speaks with us. A truly pivotal point in the creative landscape. fxnetworks.com/ shows/reservation-dogs

BELOW. BLACK OWL SOCIETY is a rock/blues band from Oklahoma.

This powerhouse of a band is one half of Indigenous, the legendary rock/blues band from a generation ago. The siblings, brother and guitarist Buffalo Man and sister Waŋbdí Wašté on drums (both Ihanktonwan Nakota), demonstrate that the magic that was Indigenous still exists in this form. What makes Black Owl Society so interesting is their focus on contemporary issues facing Indigenous people. MMIW and land issues are the themes in their messaging. I encourage everyone to reacquaint themselves with the intense energy in this true artistic form.

Instagram @black_owl_society

above, top Reservation Dogs. Left to right: Lane Factor (Seminole Nation/ Caddo), Paulina Alexis (Alexis Nakota), D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Oji-Cree), and Devery Jacobs (Kanien'kehá:ka Mohawk). Photo: Shane Brown (Cherokee Nation). Image courtesy of FX Networks. above, bottom Black Owl Society.

Left to right: Buffalo Man and Waŋbdí Wašté (both Ihanktonwan Nakota). opposite, top Athena LaTocha (Hunkpapa Lakota/Ojibwe), Untitled (Mesabi #3), 2019 , sand-cast iron, 23½ × 21¼ × 1¾ in., image courtesy of IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe. opposite, bottom Isanti. Left to right: Kenton James (Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska), Kamp Kirsch, Jacob Vande Vegte, and Cain Rotert (Turtle Mountain Chippewa). Image courtesy of Kenton James.

NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 23

NATIVE TRUTHS & WHY THE STORYTELLER MATTERS An In-Depth Look into the Renovation at the Field Museum

By Monica Whitepigeon (Prairie Band Potawatomi/Black)

I

N THE LATE SPRING OF 2022, the Field Museum of Natural History reintroduced the newly renovated Native North America Hall to the public. Whether or not the visitors enter the hall, an undeniable and distinct message presides near the entrance: “YOU ARE ON NATIVE LAND.” Designed by multidisciplinary artist X (Louisiana Coushatta/CHamoru), also known as Santiago X, a projection activates along a blank wall as guests walk by a motion sensor that captures their silhouettes to reveal the names of the 574 24 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

federally recognized tribal nations in the United States. The signage hanging above the entryway reads Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories in bright gold lettering against a bold cobalt background. The hall opens up to a vibrant representation of Native ingenuity, resourcefulness, and adaptability.

With guidance from an advisory council of eleven Indigenous scholars and museum professionals, Native Truths brought together 130 collaborators who represent more than 105 tribal nations.

The $19 million renovation showcases work by innovative Native artists and features more in-depth contextual histories of Native communities. The hall floors were renovated with responsibly sourced wood from Menominee Tribal Enterprises. Strips of blue and red copper accent images from Indian Country and quotes from the advisory committee. Digital displays provide insight and engage visitors to learn more about Native issues. Each display case, interactive station, and

themed rotating gallery tell individual stories all their own.

The five rotating galleries reinforce the concept of Native people as living cultures and will update in the next three to five years. Currently the spaces focus on resiliency stories from the Chicago Native community; a musicmaking experience with hip-hop artist Frank Waln (Sicangu Lakota); generational practices of California basketry; Meskwaki efforts to reinvigorate ancestral and heirloom plants; and the living history of Chaco Canyon.

“No matter what, people are going to walk through that hall knowing something that they didn’t know [before].

There’s no way you can walk throughout that hall without something grabbing your attention,” said Dr. Meranda Roberts (Yerington Paiute/Chicana), a museum consultant. When she was first hired, Roberts was finishing her dissertation on California basket makers. She eventually curated one of the rotating galleries to reflect stories of basket makers and

correlate their knowledge to the baskets from the Field’s collection.

Diverging from its former objectcentric approach, the Field Museum listened to critiques from the Native community and worked with consultants to tell their stories. “When I took over as curator of the North American collection, I knew that we had to renovate the hall,” said Dr. Alaka Wali, curator emeritus of North American Anthropology. “It was the oldest of the culture halls that had not been renovated and represented a very outdated and offensive representation of Native North Americans.”

Comparatively, the old hall presented itself more as a long, low-lit storage closet, accessible from the main Stanley Field Hall and connected to the equally shadowy and problematic Alaska Native hall. The seemingly forgotten hall had not been updated for nearly 60 years, and it was evident that there was a lack of care for the items. Faceless mannequins were draped in questionable regalia and nails directly pierced decorated animal hides that hung precariously behind glass.

above Land acknowledgment projection installation

by X (Louisiana Coushatta/ CHamoru) at left. Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Puha (2020), digital photograph, at upper right. Photo: Jay Young, ©Field Museum. All images courtesy of the Field Museum. opposite Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories Alaska Hall entrance. Mishiké Minsé (Turtle Island) mural by Monica Rickert-Bolter (Prairie Band Potawatomi/Black) at left.

Photo: Jay Young, ©Field Museum.

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Certain cases even had missing letters and mislabeled objects with little context to the items’ cultural significance.

In 2016 Wali co-curated a twoperson exhibition with dollmaker Rhonda Holy Bear (Hunkpapa Lakota) and ledger artist Chris Pappan (Kaw/Osage/Lakota).

At the time, the Native North America Hall was sectioned into two distinct areas: an intimate space to showcase Holy Bear’s beaded figures and the long, linear exhibition space for Pappan’s original paintings and drawings. Pappan seized the opportunity as an intervention to call out the museum’s lack of decorum.

Using decals on display cases, he respectfully covered culturally sensitive objects and regalia that were not meant for the public’s eye.

This was the first time an artist directly interacted with the Field Museum’s gallery framework, and its effectiveness ultimately led to the hall’s change. “It took a few years, but we were finally able to convince the administration that it needed to be done and could be done,” Wali said. “The exhibition is not ‘object driven’ but rather focused on stories that our collaborators wanted to share with visitors and guided by the advisory committee of what were the fundamental concepts or ‘truths’ visitors 26 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

should know about Native American communities today.”

To be in consultation with Native people in the early stages of the renovation project was key to optimizing the vision for the hall. The Chicago Native community previewed the new space before its grand opening in May 2022.

“Upon my recent viewing of the Native Hall renovation at the Chicago Field Museum, I was impressed with the detail, collaboration, and individual stories of the exhibit,” said Les Begay (Diné), founder of Indigenous Peoples Day Coalition of Illinois. “Before the renovation, it was archaic, lifeless, and [featured] stereotype upon stereotype.

Now the exhibit is expressed from a Native point of view through traditional storytelling. Native people today and future generations can go to Native Hall and feel pride in their cultures, traditions, and their tribal nations. Native Hall proudly proclaims we are still here and belong as opposed to the old display, which inferred the 1890s was the end of Native people.”

This remodel didn’t come without its emotional tolls for Native communities and museum staff. After years of planning, development, and construction, many collaborators expressed sleepless

nights, heartache, confrontations, and moments of self-reflection. “There were tensions and stress in the staff because we had not done sufficient reflection on what it means to decolonize, and so the team had to navigate both institutional constraints and personal/emotional feelings that are inevitable with transformation,” Wali said.

Gaining and maintaining trust is a slow and attentive process. Like any good relationship, it relies on communication.

Roberts believes that museums need to have a distinct comprehension of decolonization and trauma support in a human relations capacity when working within Indigenous communities. “When I look at this exhibition as a whole and I see all the challenges that it took for us to get there, what I’m mostly appreciative for is the relationships I built with people in production, exhibition developers, and media,” Roberts stated.

When deconstructing institutional practices, Roberts said, “What is key to actively moving these spaces and trusting each other and building a new coalition, a new world, is building community within community within community.” Trust has to be earned, and dispelling preconceived notions between Indigenous people and museums takes time.

Innumerable Native communities have endured watching their cultural items and ancestral remains studied by Western anthropologists from institutions such as the Field Museum for the sake of science. By presenting themselves as undisputed experts, non-Native anthropologists and their collection practices of the past have negatively impacted Indigenous peoples for generations and continued the dissemination of misinformation about these tribal nations.

In November 2021 the president of the American Anthropological Association, Akhil Gupta, issued an apology to these communities: As ‘experts’ many anthropologists have neither respected Indigenous knowledge systems and community contributions nor addressed the intended and unintended impacts of anthropological research on those

communities. Some anthropologists now acknowledge the harms that have been caused by researchers in the discipline, but it remains the case that anthropology must explicitly address the need to change its ways.…

To initiate a process of truth and reconciliation that restores respect for Indigenous peoples and their sovereignty, on behalf of the American Anthropological Association, I hereby acknowledge, and apologize for, the traumatic effects of anthropology’s enduring legacy on Indigenous communities.1 Artist and singer Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Potawatomi) first visited the Field Museum 20 years ago when he accompanied a group of Elders to begin the process of repatriating their ancestors’ remains. He witnessed firsthand the uneven power dynamic

institutions can hold over smaller communities. It was hard to maintain a healthy relationship and positive outlook while combating the legal hurdles and the museum’s sense of ownership over remains and cultural objects.

“The way we live as Potawatomi people is not contained within silos. With repatriation, telling our stories, creating our art, or interacting with the public, we have the obligation to honor those who came before us and forge a wider path for those coming after us,” Wesaw said.

Wesaw upheld his people’s teachings and moved forward with good intent.

When approached for Native Truths, his experience with the Field Museum was completely different from before. For more than two years, he worked with curators and other collaborators.

“They gave me choices and a voice without boundaries, establishing a level of trust that carried through from the first

Gaining and maintaining trust is a slow and attentive process.

above We Speak for Ourselves permanent exhibition. Great Lakes Mural by Monica Rickert-Bolter (Prairie Band Potawatomi/Black) at top.

Reservation Dogs, season 1, at left. Photo: Jay Young, ©Field Museum. opposite Chris Pappan (Kaw/ Osage/Lakota) and Jaalen Edenshaw (Haida), It’s complicated!, 2021, graphic, colored pencil on antique ledger paper.

Photo: ©Chris Pappan and Jaalen Edenshaw.

1. Akhil Gupta, “AAA Apology to the Indigenous Community,” American Anthropological Association, November 17, 2021, web.

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above Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Potawatomi), Ge’go ibe jibdebeke’n!! (Don't sit there!!), 2021, antique stool from Rush Lake Church, clay, silver. Photo: ©Field Museum. opposite Max Early (Laguna), Dyunni (Olla), 2021, clay, slip, commissioned by the Field Museum. Photo: ©Field Museum.

meetings all the way to the grand opening.

It helped immensely having Native staff on board to help walk through all the different hiccups and changes in developing an exhibition of this magnitude.

Not only did they trust me, but I trusted them,” Wesaw said.

Wesaw’s installation addresses Native peoples’ tenuous history with Western religions in which many were forcefully made to conform and remove themselves from their heritage.

Entitled Ge’go ibe jibdebeke’n!! (Don’t sit there!!), this sculpture combines clay and silver spikes adhered to the seat of an antique stool from Rush Lake

Church, a mid-19th-century Roman Catholic church erected on one of Pokagon’s historic settlements. Serving as a cautionary metaphor, Wesaw hopes others will dismiss foreign places of worship and re-embrace earlier Indigenous cultures.

“From the hardships of those early repatriation visits to the celebration of installing my work in this groundbreaking exhibition, it was a full-circle moment for me,” Wesaw said. “I felt a sense of pride to do work for my ancestors and for the future. It’s a confirmation that our stories matter, that the world needs to hear them, and the time is long overdue for us to tell them in our own voice.”

According to “Exhibiting Inclusion: An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Museum Participation,” museums need to transcend from collecting and preservation to mindful social practices.

The findings revealed that when more museums embrace inclusive approaches to community engagement, this in turn pushes the museums to be proactive and become “facilitators of social change.”2 Museum policies around staffing, pricing, collecting, and programming need to be reassessed to reflect the communities’ needs, be considerate of unexpected barriers, and cater to broader audiences.

As America’s population continues to transform and grow, “museums have no choice but to become institutions that actively engage with diverse populations and practice inclusivity, or risk becoming irrelevant to broad sectors of the community.”3 During the project’s early stages of development, the museum hired Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez Pueblo/Korean), a volunteer at the time, to become the community engagement coordinator.

She made it her mission to ensure Native peoples’ access to public and archival areas and to connect as many Native voices to the new hall as possible. “For Native visitors, I also hope there is an instant connection. I hope they see themselves, see their relatives, their grandparents,

2. Alexandra Olivares and Jaclyn Piatak, “Exhibiting Inclusion: An Examination of Race, Ethnicity, and Museum Participation,” Voluntas 33 (2022), 130.

3. Olivares and Piatak, “Exhibiting Inclusion,” 123.

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and aunties and uncles. For non-Native visitors, we’ve been working to make this an immersive experience that allows them to come into our home—learning from us, not just about us. I’m hoping they get a better understanding of Native people and see the humanity in us to start to challenge stereotypical images they may see around the city and around the country,” Yepa-Pappan said.

E xhibit ion de velop er Ryan Schuessler worked closely with collaborators to ensure their artistic intent was achieved while trying to align with the project’s timeline. “I hope that the work we did in Native Truths sets a new standard for how museums in this country work, not only with Native people but any community whose history is held in a collection like the Field [Museum’s]. In the year 2022, it should not be groundbreaking that an exhibition about a community or culture is created in partnership with people from that community,” Schuessler said.

“In the months since we opened Native Truths, many of us who worked on the project have been asked to talk about our process, or how we did this work,” Schuessler continued. “My answer to those questions is short: Listen to Native people. It’s that simple, and it’s really not that hard.”

In the spirit of mindfulness, the project included voices not only from various tribal nations but those of diverse backgrounds as well. Seattlebased interdisciplinary artist Storme Webber (Sugpiaq/Black) understood it was significant to provide a Two Spirit and lesbian perspective as well as a Black Native experience. To struggle with identity and know that documentation doesn’t necessarily dictate kinship are themes that many Native people can relate to, and Webber acknowledges these through her artistry.

“My work is an attempt to restore lost narratives of poor, Indigenous, Black, queer (though they wouldn’t use that word), women, mothers, survivors of the brutality of this system. I didn’t see

our stories anywhere, though sometimes outsiders came and took a juicy bite. I set out to revalorize my ancestors, to lift them and say here is someone to honor,” Webber stated.

Raised on Duwamish land, Webber incorporates stories from her Sugpiaq [Alutiiq] maternal side and Black paternal side in the exhibition. An interactive display features recordings of Webber reading her poetry and images of her father and grandmother’s aunt.

“It’s challenging, yes, because we love the victories, and we need to be inspired. I’m really interested in how the work lands. I reject poverty porn. I refuse any intention for people to enjoy our suffering, and I am compelled to tell the truth. I try to make it as beautiful as possible. ‘A spoonful of sugar’ is my aim for the beauty of the work, the story of what really happened is the medicine of truth,” Webber said.

She attributes her own story of resilience to the women in her family, and the Indigenous values of generosity and collective care guide her principles.

“I hope that future Indigenous people

will know that they are welcomed in the circle as well, that they have ancestors who walked these same roads and found strength to continue. I am so honored to be within this circle. It’s honestly an immense feeling. I pray my work will be useful and make room for more voices.

It will always honor my ancestors and all that they paid so dearly to make my road,” Webber said.

There are still questionable decisions in sections of the permanent exhibition,4 such as issues around repatriation that seem too sanitized and do not fully encapsulate Native Truths. Transgenerational progress can be hard to measure, but the efforts are felt by those witnessing and participating. Time will reveal the real impact of the Native communities’ and the museum’s efforts.

Roberts said, “As long as our ancestors are in these spaces—because not all of them can come home right away [nor] have a home to go to sometimes— we should be able to tell the stories in the way we want to.”

Disclaimer: Monica Rickert-Bolter (Prairie Band Potawatomi/Black) is a contributing artist to Native Truths with three installations.

4. Alaka Wali, who has now retired, made the controversial choice to feature work by non-Native textile artist Gina Adams in Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories. —Ed.

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HONORING HERRING IN SHEET'KÁ KWÁAN Herring Protectors, a collective of Native and non-Native allies, advocate for this life-sustaining fish

By Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq)

K

AXÁTJAASHAA, HERRING ROCK WOMAN, is remembered as the first woman who called the yaaw (Pacific herring) to Sheet'ká Kwáan, or Sitka, Alaska.

As told by Louise Brady (Tlingit), the founder of the Herring Protectors, this is Kaxátjaashaa’s story: A long time ago, one warm spring day, a young Kiks.ádi woman went to the beach at low tide and sat on that rock.

She sat there for hours singing to those herring. The people thought she was lazy, that she was just sitting on that rock, sunning herself while everyone else was working hard, preparing for

fishing, hunting, berry picking, and gathering the foods that sustain us through the year. Even though people called her lazy, she kept going to that rock and singing to those herring … singing … I am your friend … come to me.

One warm sunny day, the young lady fell asleep on that rock.

She awoke, and her long black hair was floating in the water. The herring were swimming around the rock … coming to the surface … reflecting the light like a shattered mirror when the sun hits it. The herring had laid eggs in her hair … her patience and respect rewarded by the return of the

1. This story is owned by the Kiks.ádi clan and is shared here with permission from Louise Brady (Tlingit).

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herring. She showed we must care for the herring. When we respect them … we assure abundance for all who live here.1 The Kaxátjaashaa story exemplifies the importance of caring for the lands, waters, and animals that we live alongside.

This ecological philosophy centers on the significance of relationships, responsibility, and reciprocity. When we honor and care for the resources around us, they in turn care for and provide for us.

Kaxátjaashaa’s story is starting to become known outside of Sitka, with her image and story drawing attention to the importance of yaaw in Sitka Sound.

Yaaw, also known as Pacific herring or Clupea pallasii, are small silvery fish abundant in Alaska’s waters, from the Dixon Entrance to Norton Sound. Known for their high oil content, the fish are an important part of the coastal food web.

They nourish whales, sea birds, seals, and humans. In Sitka Sound, the herring arrive in large schools each spring to spawn over a period of a few weeks. The waters turn a milky blue as the male herring release milt and the females release eggs on rocks and kelp.

Historically, people from throughout Southeast Alaska gathered in Sheet'ká Kwáan during herring season for the annual harvest. Archaeological records indicate this practice has persisted on the Northwest Coast for at least 10,000 years.2 These tiny fish continue to nourish communities in Southeast Alaska, but they also support cultural connections as people involved in this subsistence practice work together to harvest and share their abundance. The most coveted part of the fish, the roe, is typically harvested on kelp or hemlock branches. The fruits of this labor are shared during feasts, potlatches, and other cultural events.

Today herring subsistence practices take place alongside a commercial purse seine fishery, which is regulated by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.3 These two resource users, however, do not always operate in harmony. Many local people lament that the harvest by the 47 mostly nonlocal commercial herring permit holders is wasteful, with the herring stripped for the roe and the rest of the fish discarded. Locals also worry that the commercial harvest may result in overfishing, which has already reduced herring populations further down the Pacific Coast in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California waters. These two groups value herring in very different ways, with the commercial fishery focused on its monetary value and the subsistence fishery focused on its values connected to harvesting and sharing herring. As Brady shares with

me, “The relationship with herring is a spiritual, cultural connection that no amount of money could replace.”

This is where Herring Protectors come in. An Indigenous-led collective, they advocate for the protection of herring and subsistence fishing practices.

Formed in 2016, they share herring harvests, mobilize public testimony in support of subsistence fishing, organize

2. Iain McKechnie and Madonna L. Moss, “Meta-analysis in zooarchaeology expands perspectives on Indigenous fisheries of the Northwest Coast of North America,” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, vol. 8 (August 2016), 470–85.

3. Commercial herring fishing in Alaska began in 1878. Herring extraction peaked in the 1930s when 250 million pounds of herring were harvested, and fisheries began to decline. Today the majority of the herring caught is destined for Japanese markets where the roe is a coveted delicacy. During the 2022 herring season, commercial fisheries harvested a record 26,350 tons of herring. For more information on this history, see the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (adfg.alaska.gov).

above Detail of Herring Protectors robes revealing Lingít and English language text. Photo: Caitlin Blaisdell. opposite Herring Protectors and their collaborative robes.

Photo: Caitlin Blaisdell.

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above Louise Brady (Tlingit).

Photo: Caitlin Blaisdell. Image courtesy of Caitlin Blaisdell. opposite, top Left to right: herring eggs, herring, close up of herring roe. Photos: Bethany Sonsini Goodrich. opposite, bottom Jennifer Younger (Tlingit), Carol Hughey with Louise Brady (Tlingit), Shame Robe (2022), cloth, brass buttons, buttons, hand-woven wool fringe, laser-cut herring designed by Charlie Skultka Jr. (Haida), commissioned by the Herring Protectors. Photo: Jennifer Younger (Tlingit) and shared with permission.

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educational events, and host an annual yaaw koo.eex' (herring ceremony).4 Brady explains that the yaaw koo.eex' celebrates and honors the herring and builds community and strengthens relationships with the natural world.

Brady organized the first yaaw koo.eex' in 2018 and invited supporters and neighboring communities to come to Sheet'ká Kwáan and celebrate herring.

During the koo.eex', local clans bring out their at.óow,5 such as naaxein (Chilkat) blankets and clan hats. The clans exchange gifts such as miniature drums, cedar baskets, and seal oil. Dances are shared and speeches are given. The preparation for the ceremony takes months to organize, but Brady explains to me, “This

is the way we build community. The koo.eex' is made with love and intention, for each other and the environment.”

In 2020 Brady considered the importance of creating new at.óow to bring out during the koo.eex'.“The way to tell our history,” she says, “is through our art.” She commissioned Jennifer Younger (Tlingit) to create a group of herring robes. Working under the tutelage of Carol Hughey and in community with a group of volunteers—Sarah Ferrency, Lakota Harden (Cheyenne River Lakota/ Ho-Chunk), Randy Hughey, Beth Kindig, Anna Laffrey, Kylie Maxwell, Amy Milsaps, Vicki Swanson, and Cheryl Vastola—the group constructed five robes that illustrate the story of Kaxátjaa Sháa, Herring Woman, using designs created

by Charlie Skultka Jr. (Haida).

When worn together, the five robes create an image of Herring Rock Woman’s face surrounded by a school of herring.

As described by the Herring Protectors, “The herring school design unites the five robes in a double helical pattern of DNA because, as Kiks.ádi Herring Women, our identity and survival is bound to the herring, and we are stronger together.”

Brady recently commissioned Younger to complete another herring robe, this one scarlet colored with red fringe and a golden school of herring. The symbolism of the Shame Robe is eloquently described in the artist’s statement: In the Lingít tradition of a shaming totem pole, this robe brandishes the power of art to condemn ongoing exploitation. The blood red color symbolizes violent destruction and death, pointing to how the insatiable greed of capitalism has resulted in the decimation of our relatives, the herring. Shell casings dangle on the fringe of the robes, representing the violent annihilation of Indigenous peoples’ food sources. Like the buffalo, wiping out the herring leads to the decimation of future generations.

The wool fringe was handwoven by Louise using the traditional Ravenstail technique, showing the enduring strength of culture in the face of

4. Koo.éex' means “to invite” and is a ceremony, sometimes referred to as a potlatch, that honors ancestors, relationships, and the history of Tlingit people.

5. For more information on at.óow, see Nora Dauenhauer, “Tlingit At.oow: Traditions and Concepts,” in The Spirit Within: Northwest Coast Art from the John H. Hauberg Collection, ed. Helen Abbott, Steven C. Brown, Lorna Price, and Paula Thurman (Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1995).

oppression. The quilted pattern across the robe mirrors the shape of a herring seine net, capturing everything in its path. A few herring creep out of the collar of the robe, alluding to the thievery of colonization. There was once a great abundance of mature herring throughout these waters, and now we’re watching them shrink and disappear, as they do across the back of the robe.… This robe fights back, dragging down the dancer with the weight of shame, the heavy draping of a dripping seine net, and the bloody, bullet-ridden history of colonialism. Shame for all the greed and destruction.

Younger hopes that those who see the Herring Protector robes will “think about resource management and how this one little fish is so important. It’s the bottom of the food chain. People need to realize that if we lose these fish, it will have effects up the food chain. Think about that and the story of Herring Woman. Take some action.”

I ask Brady to share what these robes mean to her, and she explains, “When I think about the robes, I remember our ancestors who fought for us to keep our way of life, so that we could be here today.

The robes are a way of telling our story to defend our human rights as Indigenous people. When I look at the robes, I think of my great-great-grandchildren who will be able talk of a time when their people fought for their rights on Lingít Aaní.”

During the next year, four of the herring robes will travel as part of Protection: Adaptation and Resilience, the exhibition organized by the Bunnell Street

Arts Center in Homer, Alaska. They will return to Sitka next April to be danced during the koo.eex' and then continue on in the exhibition schedule. I hope to visit Sitka during the herring season to experience the koo.eex' in person and to see the robes danced. For now, I am happy

to know that these robes are serving as ambassadors for the Herring Protectors and the herring themselves, eloquently drawing attention to the importance of this tiny keystone species in Sitka Sound, to cultural sovereignty, and to the importance of remembering our stories.

Acknowledgments: I grew up in a family that was sustained by the herring fishery, albeit through the commercial side. Every spring my father headed to Sitka to fish the sac roe fishery. I have also enjoyed the fruits of herring subsistence as a guest in Sitka lands, when I lived there in 2011 and 2012. I am grateful to Louise Brady and Jennifer Younger for sharing with me the importance of herring to the people of Lingít Aaní. I am hopeful that herring will remain healthy and protected for generations to come.

NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 33

A VISION REALIZED The Eiteljorg Museum Revitalizes Its Native American Exhibitions

By Susan Burns

O

RGANIZED AROUND a bold new approach to presenting Native people’s lives through art, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis unveiled the renovation of its second-floor galleries on June 25, 2022. The first exhibition, Expressions of Life: Native Art in North America, brings together the stunning, striking, and splendid, such as a nine-foot-tall dress and an installation of sparkling discs that evokes both dappled forest light and sparkling river waters.

Altogether, the elements of the exhibition convey stories of Native peoples of the United States and Canada.

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To thoroughly view the exhibition’s objects and digital elements could take an entire day. With the breadth of the collections the Eiteljorg has acquired, along with planned purchases from their annual Eiteljorg Indian Market and Festival and commissions by artists in residence and Eiteljorg Fellows, the objects on display will change at least every few months.

“Some of what we can include is very old and friable—things that are leather, bark, or on paper, such as the ledger art.

They can be harmed by light or other conditions, so we plan to rotate them every three to 12 months,” says Dorene Red Cloud (Oglala Lakota), Eiteljorg’s curator of Native American art. About

20 percent of the exhibition consists of older items of various heritages: family heirlooms, special types of clothing, baskets, furniture, rugs, pottery, carvings, beadwork, and even a cradleboard for a doll. The current exhibition contains more than 100 objects plus digital media works and interactive educational stations.

The Expressions exhibition is built around three themes that weave through Native life: continuation, relation, and innovation. The themes allow visitors to see the diversity of Native Americans through things “both the same and different,” as described by Katrina Mitten (Miami), who is one of the artists included in the exhibition.

Everywhere one looks are bright colors, stylized imagery, and careful design. From miniature Pueblo decorated pottery to the complex, emotional punch of the painting Blue-Eyed Chief by Jim Denomie (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe, 1955–2022), one sees a dynamic new presentation of Native presence and resilience in North America.

Works on display include not only uncredited, centuries-old items but also pieces made in recent years. Asked about her favorites in the exhibition, Red Cloud says that all are worth noting, but the ones that stand out include Portrait of a Residential School Child by 2013 Invited Fellow Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (Cowichan/Syilx), on loan from a private collector; LEGO Long Walk by Ryan Singer (Navajo); Zitkála-Šá (Reunion) 21st-Century Ledger Drawing #205 by Chris Pappan (Kaw/Osage/Lakota); Late Mirovian Period Pueblo Jar by Les Namingha (Hopi-Tewa/Zuni); an untitled ceramic vessel by Jacquie Stevens (Winnebago); and Beloved, a ceramic vessel by Christine McHorse (Navajo, 1948–2021).

Many of the pieces are displayed in the open. For the pieces that are best presented in cases or on the wall, transparent vitrines allow for 360-degree viewing and close inspection and replace the old, bulky wooden cases. Touchscreen hubs throughout the space allow visitors to look up what in other galleries would be a wall label. Technology allows for more in-depth information about the artists, the work, even the context of some information. Digital media includes audio of songs, short presentations, and interviews to further bring the artists and stories to life within the framework of relation, continuation, and innovation.

A good example of how the multimedia approach reinforces the themes and brings the art to life is the land acknowledgment in the exhibition’s first gallery. Red Cloud describes it: “On the immediate right-hand side wall, before one enters the new galleries, we have a written land acknowledgment dedicated to the Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Kickapoo, and Peoria peoples who are the original inhabitants of Indianapolis and Indiana. We also have a projected land acknowledgment that

refers to this land as always Native land, even in the future, that visitors must step across as they enter the orientation space.”

Red Cloud continues, “In the orientation space is an installation by 2019 Eiteljorg Fellow Hannah Claus (Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte) water song: peemitanaahkwahki sakaahkweelo, which we commissioned from her to be the first artwork our visitors see. The work refers to the Miami emergence story, and Claus consulted with Miami Tribe of Oklahoma scholars George Ironstrack [Miami] and Scott Shoemaker, PhD [Miami], to create this work.” Shoemaker was also the Eiteljorg’s former curator of Native American art, history, and culture.

Later on in the exhibition, Red Cloud says, “Finally, before the beginning of [the theme] relation, we have a Miami pipe exhibited as a reminder that we are

above Hannah Claus (Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte), water song: peemitanaahkwahki sakaahkweelo, 2019, DuraChrome™ UV ink printed on JetView acetate film, Gütermann Scala 60 thread, PVA glue, collection of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, museum commission with funds provided by the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, 2019.9.1. Photo: Hadley Fruits Photography, 2019. opposite Image of the Eiteljorg Museum’s new Native American Galleries, featuring the exhibition Expressions of Life: Native Art in North America.

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on Miami land. Last but not least, in the main orientation or introduction space of the new galleries, we have greetings from Miami, Delaware, Shawnee, and Potawatomi who are speaking in their Native languages to demonstrate that Native languages are still alive and in use.”

Since it opened in 1989, the Eiteljorg Museum has showcased an extensive collection on its first floor of Western art by and about people of the Plains, Prairies, and Southwestern United States. The second floor provided a glimpse of people who have called the southern Great Lakes area home since time immemorial, using a geographic region as its organizing principle. After 30 years, however, it was time for a change.

The staff, visitors, and tribes have increasingly wanted a revision that gives a more in-depth presentation inclusive of Eastern Woodland Native peoples. In 2016 the museum launched Project 2021, an extensive capital and endowment campaign to support strategic updating.

The $55 million campaign included the 36 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

reconstruction and reinstallation of the upstairs galleries, as well as improvements to the education center and gathering spaces in and around the facility.

“In departing from the way [mainstream] museums typically have presented Native peoples’ stories, the new Native American Galleries create a space for Native peoples themselves to tell their own stories. Visitors come away from the galleries with a new understanding that Native American cultures are still with us today, and the art they create depicts the past, present, and future,” explains Elisa Phelps, Eiteljorg’s vice-president of curatorial affairs and chief curator.

The ethos of respecting the requests and suggestions of Native perspectives was fundamental, a “nothing about us without us” approach to what has been included and how it is presented. The reinstallation exhibition is the result of the multiyear collaboration of museum staff, the Native American Advisory Council (NAAC), Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellows, artists in residence,

and participants in the annual market and festival.

“We have four goals for the galleries in terms of the story we want to tell” says Red Cloud. “First, that Native people are still living. Second, that Native people are diverse. The third goal is that Native art is on a continuum; both older and newer artistic traditions inform the other.

Fourth, Native people are the authority of their own stories.”

Phelps explains: “COVID, in a way, actually was helpful to how the staff and Native American Advisory Council worked together, since going to online meetings meant we could meet monthly.

That meant we could go more in-depth as things were being designed than twicea-year, in-person meetings would have allowed.”

“They did a lot of interviews during the planning, gathering a lot of input, really hearing the voices of Indigenous people,” says Mitten, a former artist in residence. “By listening and recording our voices, they developed an exhibition that connects the visitor to our stories of today to what is timeless. Combining past and present art and artists leads to a better understanding of our cultures and the artists who have always been, and encourages people to imagine our future contributions to the world of the arts.”

“The reinstallation has been a topic for many years, even before I was hired in October 2016,” Red Cloud says. “Former Native American Advisory Council member Craig Howe, PhD (Oglala Lakota) and contracted consultant with Origin Studios Jeff Thomas (Onondaga), an artist and curator based out of Ottawa, Canada, were more recent content advisors in addition to our current Native American Advisory Council. Scott Shoemaker and I did a lot of the foundational groundwork on the galleries’ big ideas. He left the Eiteljorg in December 2020 to pursue another opportunity, so I was made the lead curator. As for future exhibitions, we will turn to our current Native American Advisory Council members for input.” The current NAAC members are Shoemaker, Brenda Child (Red Lake Ojibwe), Erin Oliver (Miami

Tribe of Indians of Indiana), 1 Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Potawatomi), Emma Hansen (Pawnee), Gloria Lomahaftewa (Hopi/Choctaw), Donald Fixico (Sac & Fox/Shawnee/Muscogee/Seminole), and Margaret Archuleta (Mestiza).

“I believe that our new Native American galleries’ exhibition will have a positive impact in the curatorial industry as more and more museums will reenvision their galleries and exhibition spaces to be more inclusive of Native/ Indigenous groups who are valuable community members and stakeholders,” Red Cloud says. “Non-Native curators are becoming more aware of the fact that Native/Indigenous artists and peoples are the authorities of their own stories.

They are the experts whose voices museum visitors want to hear. In the current climate of the DEAI [diversity, equity, access, and inclusion] movement, inclusion of underrepresented groups is paramount, and we will see more Native/ Indigenous representation in museums.”

Respecting Native voices also meant confronting some of the painful or difficult aspects of North American Native life. In the orientation area, a brief section gently notes that non-Native people often hold misconceptions about Native peoples. Realities such as wars, forced relocations, boarding schools, and reservation life are represented too.

The museum has taken the renovation challenge as an opportunity to excel by using technology, design with preservation as well as flexibility and engagement in mind, and respect for Native voices throughout. To create the new galleries, the Eiteljorg Museum engaged Origin Studios, kubik maltbie, Richard Lewis Media Group, and F.A. Wilhelm Construction of Indianapolis.

The hi-tech cases were built by Click Netherfield Ltd. in Scotland. Support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Lilly Endowment funded the services of professional mount makers, who designed and built physical supports

above Image of the Eiteljorg Museum’s new Native American Galleries, featuring the exhibition Expressions of Life: Native Art in North America. opposite Jim Denomie (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe, 1955– 2022), Blue Eyed Chief, 2008, oil on canvas, collection of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, museum purchase from the Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, 2009.10.1.

Photo: Hadley Fruits Photography.

1. The Miami Tribe of Indians of Indiana is not a federally or state-recognized tribe, but members are related to members of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. —Ed.

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above Cree artist once known, Octopus Bag, 1875–1900, wool cloth, cotton cloth, glass seed beads, metallic beads, silk ribbon trim, collection of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, museum purchase with funds provided by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., 2019.2.256. opposite Anita Fields (Osage/ Muscogee), Considering the Earth and Above (2008), ceramic installation, collection of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. All images courtesy of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art.

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to keep artworks stable and secure.

Lighting and all the audio-visual devices are cutting edge.

Accessibility for the estimated 60,000 annual visitors is part of the design. Wheelchair users will find room to maneuver and screens within reach.

Visitors can rest on the frequently placed benches and couches. Each of the exhibition’s areas includes at least one small “please touch” panel for visitors to feel aspects of the art, such as a square of beadwork, basketry, or a section of ribbonwork panels.

Interactive, educational experiences allow visitors to create stencils

for beading or a story akin to ledger art, or better understand the sovereignty of tribal nations by designing a flag. A small loom for trying one’s hand at rug weaving is also popular. In a complementary project, lesson plans and related educational resources about Native peoples of the Great Lakes region will be available at eiteljorg.org in coming months. The Eiteljorg continues to seek donors to support other essential components, such as educational programming and other features.

The diverse ages of items in the exhibition are included thanks, in part, to acquisitions of historical collections such as Richard Pohrt Jr.’s Great Lakes materials purchased with funds from a Lilly Endowment grant. “Many items in the cases have been donated by private individuals and represent all areas of the United States,” Red Cloud says. Newer works include purchases from the Eiteljorg Festival and some commissions from biannual Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellows.

Terminology has also been carefully considered. Terms such as regalia and historical artifacts have been replaced with text that talks about special clothing and treasured objects. Customary art is another term used to highlight diverse materials and techniques from previous eras. The galleries also include opportunities to help visitors understand that Native people are present throughout the continent and are not “minorities” but sovereign nations with their own cultural practices, languages, and spiritual beliefs.

The new galleries will explore the role of spirituality and religion in Native life. Phelps explains, “The Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative grant will serve as a catalyst for exploring the role religion and spirituality have played in the American West and the lives of Native peoples and other groups. Individual perspectives and community stories will be important elements as the Eiteljorg prepares for the reinstallation of its Native American galleries in 2022, the exhibition and symposium in 2024, and beyond.”

The current exhibitions already include digital media presentations about powwows and the misappropriation of

Native symbols and religious practices.

A replica allows a glimpse of how things would be set up for a Big Lodge religious ceremony.

Future growth for the exhibition that Red Cloud would like to see include more portraits of Native artists. “This portrait of Kaa Folwell by Avis Charley, which was the cover of First American Art Magazine’s summer issue, is a great example of what we hope to show more of in the future—more examples of strong Native people with their art.” The galleries will see consistent changes to what is on display to allow visitors to see fresh things with every visit, but also to protect the items from the subtle, long-term effects of light and climate.

Respect goes beyond story content to presentations that evoke dignity, even awe, as in the 9-foot-tall sprang-work dress by Tyra Shackleford (Chickasaw), titled The Lady (2017). Red Cloud explains, “This piece is after the Lady of Cofitachequi, a Muskogean-speaking female leader who met conquistador Hernando de Soto in 1540. She greeted his army carried on the shoulders of her people and represents the strength and enduring spirit of Native women.”

Another item with a reference to an historical event is a vibrant, rainbowcolored basket titled Ceremony of the Singing Stars (2017) by Geo Neptune (Passamaquoddy), woven in tribute to those slain in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.

An alternate entrance to the galleries presents visitors with a different land acknowledgment: a ceramic installation by 2021 Invited Fellow Anita Fields (Osage/Muscogee) titled Considering the Earth and Above (2008). Made mostly of red clay, two tapered and etched pillars on separate bases stand below random clay shapes suspended from the ceiling, creating shadow play on the wall behind.

At the feet of the pillars lay bowls and other clay remnants, piled as if to support the pillars. Across from this work are two pieces created by 2007 Eiteljorg Fellow Gerald Clarke (Cahuilla), Myaamionki and Seekaahkwiaanki, which refer to the emergence story of the Miami.

Raised beadwork artist Karen Ann Hoffman (Oneida Nation), originally from Wisconsin, offered this observation about the efforts by many people that went into creating the exhibition: Our art speaks—speaks of life, death, the proper ways to move between the two, and beyond. With strong breath, our art speaks the voices of those who came before, through the hands of those who are now, for the ears of those who are yet to come.

This new exhibition Expressions of Life: Native Art in North America is a rare and courageous celebration of those voices. The curators, artists, mount makers, and curriculum developers, all gathered in a communal and groundbreaking way to give full throat to those voices first and foremost. This is what the art deserves. It is what will fascinate the audiences. It is what the Eiteljorg had the courage to do. Come.

Listen. Engage in the conversation. We are all welcome here.

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OSAGE RIBBONWORK A Continuum By 𐓡𐓸𐓵𐓘 𐓰𐓪͘ Nanette Kelley (Osage Nation/Cherokee Nation)

I

N THE FIRST DAYS of summer, the evening breeze cools bison herds that graze the southernmost section of one of the rarest ecosystems on earth, the surviving tallgrass prairie. Through the red oaks and over the lakes, the soft air swirls around wooden paddles stirred in steaming pots over open fires and gathers tiny molecules of stewed peaches, meat pies, and fluffy golden pillows of fry bread. As it continues toward the dance arbor, the fragrant breeze encompasses thousands of bells as they chime in time with the drum and songs. Masterfully cut and folded patterns of colored ribbon and other fabrics are the visual clues that the gentle wind has drifted its way to the Osage Nation’s 𐓣𐓧𐓪͘𐓯𐓤𐓘, or Inlonshka dance.

Located today in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma is the 𐓷𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟, Wahzhazhe, the name Osage people call themselves. The Osage Nation is among the American Indian tribes with documented ancestral connections to the great mound builders of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis. They are a Dhegiha Siouan–speaking people, along with the Quapaw, Omaha, Kaw, and Ponca. It was the Ponca and the Kaw who gifted the Osage the Inlonshka.

On three separate weekends in June, Osage people from all over the country gather in their respective family villages for the Inlonshka, a term that means “playground of the eldest son,”1

above Detail of vintage ribbonwork in the collection of the Osage Nation Museum.

Photo: N. Kelley. opposite Anita Fields (Osage/ Muscogee), Osage Woman’s Hand Blanket, 2002, broadcloth, satin ribbons, collection of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, 2000.27. Image courtesy of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

specifically for the selection of the drumkeeper, the eldest son within an Osage family.

Not an exhibition or powwow, this dance is a spiritual time for the Osage people. Each of the three districts on the Osage Nation Reservation, 𐓷𐓘𐓸𐓘𐓪𐓮𐓣͘ (Pawhuska District), 𐓬𐓘𐓮𐓶𐓪𐓡𐓣͘ (Grayhorse District), and 𐓻𐓘͘ 𐓺𐓪𐓡𐓣͘ (Hominy District), has its own unique village community and dance arbor, headman, drumkeeper, cooks, and committee members who make decisions and host the annual four-day event. The food, dance, and ceremonies are the result of a whole year of preparation, and in that time, additions and repairs to the ribbonwork, from each family’s trunk is vital to the culture. 𐓷𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟 𐓷𐓘𐓬𐓘𐓲𐓟, Osage ribbonwork is a layered appliqué technique in which fine cloth such as silk, taffeta, or rayon is cut and/or folded to create geometric designs in strips. These strips are then sewn onto wool blankets, leggings, breechcloths, or other garments.2 The patterns often repeat, and negative space plays as important a role in the overall design as the positive space. Three of the ribbonwork artists whom the Osage people have entrusted to help preserve Osage cultural history and help design its future in this way are Kathryn Red Corn (Osage, Pawhuska), Janet Emde (Osage, Pawhuska), and Anita Fields (Osage/ Muscogee, Hominy).

1. Alice Anne Callahan, The Osage Ceremonial Dance I’n-Lon-Schka (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 19.

2. Garrick Bailey, “Early Osage Art and History,” in Art of the Osage, ed. Garrick Bailey and Daniel C. Swan (St. Louis: Saint Louis Art Museum, 2004), 10.

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𐓏𐒰𐓁𐓂͘ (ELDERS) “I’LL BEGIN with my grandmother’s trunks, what she had, and the way she would get them out and assign who was going to wear what during Sunday,” said Anita Fields about her family’s generations of ribbonwork clothing. Her paternal grandmother was He-ah-to-me, Nettie White Luttrell (Osage, 1900– 1984), a fullblood, original allottee.

From a family of artists, Fields received an NEA National Heritage Fellowship, an Eiteljorg Contemporary

Art Fellowship, and the Anonymous Was A Woman Award, all in 2021. From 2019 to 2020, her work was part of the Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists traveling exhibition, and she has been a Tulsa Artist Fellow since 2017.

Perhaps most importantly, she served as a committee cook for two Hominy District drumkeepers.

When I visited Fields at her Tulsa Art Fellowship studio adjacent to the Greenwood District (historic Black Wall Street), she explained that long before she attended the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), she was inspired by

ribbonwork. The meticulously crafted ribbonwork clothing, so powerful in color and patterning, inspired her as a child to learn how to sew the art form for herself.

“I don’t feel like I’m an expert," she acknowledges. "There are women who do ribbonwork much better than I can do, but for me, it’s part of my practice.

Those many things inside me, like my clay work and other work that I do, are heavily influenced by my knowledge and skills I picked up when I was young in order to learn certain aspects of our traditional clothing.”

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OSAGE NATION MUSEUM IN HER EARLY 20S, Field’s first mentors were at the Osage Tribal Museum (now Osage Nation Museum), the oldest tribally owned museum in the country.

Ida Mae Penn (Osage, 1924–1997) and Maudie Cheshewalla (Osage, 1928–1989) worked at the museum and offered ribbonwork classes for beginners and advanced students. Beginners would start with pieces of cloth and work their way up to the ribbons. The most advanced apprentice learned how to make a pattern, select colors, and pair them up.

Fields took classes from Marguerite Waller (Osage, 1917–1990) and was also influenced by Josephine Goode Tillman (Osage, 1918–1998) and Christine Hamilton-NoEar (Osage, 1929–2018). “Those early lessons that I learned are the exact same way that I approach ribbonwork today,” said Fields.

Janet Emde also studied with Maudie Cheshewalla, Marguerite Waller, and Josephine Goode Tillman. Emde told me she does not come from a line of ribbonwork artists but developed a passion for the art form at a young age. While working at the Osage County Museum during her high school years, Emde studied ribbon patterns on clothing in historic photos. In the 1970s she was still at 42 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

the Osage Tribal Museum, where she met women who were willing to share their knowledge, including her main influence, Ireta Jump (Osage, 1934–2007). Emde recounted the women never taught her outright as in a class; instead they would say to her, “Janet, come look at this. When you get in this fix, this is what you do.”

Emde feels blessed to have earned these women’s friendships and respect.

She stressed the significance of the honor of being taught. This honor could only be earned by being quiet, listening, and watching. Today she feels much of that concept has been lost, because many young people study videos that lack the cultural connection to elders.

Fields echoes Emde’s concerns about the possible disconnect from actual mentors and said although one could possibly figure out Osage ribbonwork techniques on their own, it would be far more difficult and they’d miss out on the joy of learning from somebody else. “I always felt like part of that process was the teaching and mentorship—just the fellowship that went along with it,” said Fields. “It’s fun, and those ladies took care of you because they were older, and they were just such great women to begin with—because they wanted these skills to carry on, they were more than happy to share them, and that was really evident.

Their fire for this, their passion for it was quite evident.”

As in the way of Osage extended families, Mary Grayce Gray Bighorse (Osage, Pawhuska, 1950–2017) was Field’s sister. Bighorse, an Osage treasure known for her ribbonwork, taught Fields about the different ribbon patterns. Both Bighorse and Red Corn learned from their mutual elders, some of whom founded the Red Man Store on the Osage Reservation.

Red Corn, who recently retired as Osage Nation Museum director, said, “It seemed like ribbonwork was a dying art at that point” in the mid-20th century, while the Inlonshka “dance was getting more popular.”

While we sat and visited in her kitchen and ate 𐓰𐓪𐓻𐓶 (Osage meat pies) chased with pop, Red Corn shared stories about the Red Man Store on Kihekah Avenue in downtown Pawhuska. This unique resource was the only place one could go to order an entire dance outfit, from the roach down to 𐓡𐓪͘𐓬𐓟, or moccasins. From 1958 through the 1960s, people would come from all three districts on the reservation to get suited up for the dances.

As Red Corn explained, five couples started the store and they took it upon themselves to learn how to make ribbonwork, fingerweaving, moccasins, and anything else needed for the Inlonshka.

These included her parents, Emma Louise Gray Red Corn (Osage, 1914–1972) and Harold Red Corn (Osage, 1913–1989); her mother’s oldest sister, Genevieve Gray Tomey (Osage, 1921–2007) and her husband George Tomey (Citizen Potawatomi, 1904–1974); her mother’s other sister and NEA National Heritage Fellow Georgeann Gray Robinson (Osage, 1917–1985) and her husband Frank Robinson (1916–2003); Myrtle Gardner Crowder Big Elk (Osage, 1917–2001) and her husband Don Big Elk (Osage, 1926–1984); and Frances Oberly Abbot Holding (Osage, 1915–2002) and her husband Homer Holding Jr. (1917–1997).

The Red Man Store maker’s mark is one signature red bead sewn into each piece.

As director of the Osage Nation Museum for 17 years, Red Corn carried on in her family’s footsteps and promoted the culture via a series of lectures and workshops such as ribbonwork classes

by Mary Grayce Bighorse. Red Corn

said, “It was probably the most enjoyable job I ever had because many Osage from all over would come in. I learned a lot from other people, and there was a lot of history.” Today Red Corn continues at the Osage Nation Museum as a docent and occasionally teaches ribbonwork. She said, “It’s a relaxing thing to do too, just cut and sew.”3

MATERIALS & METHODS JAMI POWELL, PHD (OSAGE), curator of Indigenous art at the Hood Museum of Art and professor at Dartmouth College, wrote her dissertation on “Osage Ribbon Work and the Expression of Osage Nationalism: Re-Imagining Approaches to Material Culture and Nationhood.” Powell described how missionaries encouraged Osage women to sew intending to assimilate them, but actually enabled them to be expert ribbon workers. Their designs became a tool of tribal cultural identity. She refers to Osage ribbonwork as “a symbol of Osage nationhood and community.”4 Powell noted that in 1812, the Osage accounted for more than 75 percent of the St. Louis fur trade, which gave Osages first pick of trade goods including choice ribbon, thread, and needles.

“We didn’t always use needles— why not use a sewing machine?” said Fields, who embraces new tools and skills acquired by Osage makers and artists in the 19th and 20th centuries. She considers those materials and methods added through trade did not make the art form any less culturally significant.

However, even though ribbonwork created with the more contemporary tools

has greater longevity, Fields still holds the hand-sewn work, created in the same way for 200 years, in the highest regard.

“When you see that stitching like that, you just know that they were sitting there with that rhythm going, and it’s kind of beautiful to think about,” she said.

“That’s why I like to use the word continuum. Even though our materials have evolved—first through trade, [then] through Swiss ribbon, and now taffeta— it still is a continuum of thinking about things,” said Fields, who explained that this continuum enables Osage people to sustain traditions according to what new material may be available.

Ribbonwork is usually sewn into wool broadcloth to make blankets, skirts, and men’s suits, susceptible to damage by moths. Therefore, Osages highly prize the family trunks lined with cedar to deter

3. Sadly, Kathryn Red Corn’s entire collection of ribbonwork was recently stolen, including an entire men’s suit her mother made.

4. Jami C. Powell, “Osage Ribbon Work and the Expression of Osage Nationalism: Re-Imagining Approaches to Material Culture and Nationhood” (PhD dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2014), iii.

above, top Detail of vintage ribbonwork in the collection of the Osage Nation Museum, Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Photo: N. Kelley. above, left Julia Lookout (Osage, Pawhuska), eldest great-granddaughter of the last Osage hereditary chief, Fred Lookout (Osage, ca. 1861–1949), 1950s, in her child ribbonwork blanket passed down through the family of her grandmother Mary Wilson Lookout (Osage, Grayhorse), made in the early 20th century. above, right Bravery J. Hammer (Osage/Cherokee/Cheyenne/ Arapaho) wearing her greatgrandmother Julia Lookout’s ribbonwork blanket, 2022.

The blanket was passed down from Julia Lookout to Mary Candice Julia Hammer (Osage/ Cheyenne/Arapaho), Bravery’s mother. Photo: Cody Hammer (Cherokee Nation). opposite Anita Fields (Osage/ Muscogee), detail of Woman’s Ribbonwork Blanket, wool broadcloth, satin, collection of Anita Fields. Photo: N. Kelley.

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above Walena Queton (Osage/ Muscogee/Cherokee) wearing a ribbonwork blanket sewn by Anita Fields (Osage/Muscogee).

Photo: Tom Fields (Muscogee/ Cherokee). Image courtesy of Anita Fields. opposite Osage artist once known, Ribbonwork Breech Cloth, n.d., wood broadcloth, cloth, sequins, thread, collection of the Osage Nation Museum, Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Photo: N. Kelley.

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anything that might be trying to eat greatgrandma’s honor blanket. Emde loves opening a trunk and running her finger across old ribbonwork to feel how they made their folds and turns to replicate that antique pattern. She gages the history of a particular piece of ribbonwork by how many trunks and whose trunk it has been in. Ask “‘Whose trunk are you in?’ and that will tell you how far back the pattern goes,” says Emde.

Emde, Fields, and Red Corn agree that many patterns don’t have universally agreed upon nomenclature. Depending

on one’s teacher or family, the different ribbonwork patterns have different names; some are unnamed, or the names might be lost.

Emde advised, “There are generic patterns, family patterns, unique patterns people can create [on] their own, but keep tuned to the tradition, because when you see the patterns and the colors, you’ll know it’s Osage.” She said the colors used distinguish hobbyists’ work or someone who is trying to copy Osage work from authentic Osage ribbonwork, which “will resonate in your heart.”

Once while on assignment in Bangalore, India, when she worked for IBM, Emde could see a wedding procession from her hotel balcony. She described the saris and rich, swirling colors, and she felt like she was at her Grayhorse Inlonshka dances. It made her homesick, and she knew at that moment that she wanted to come home and sew ribbonwork. Although she’s been an active ribbonwork artist for only about ten years, Emde admits to coming from a long line of ribbon hoarders and believes the trait is in Osage DNA. She calls her ribbon collection her “stash.” Some are French or Swedish and go back to the 1930s, and many came from Hymen Hendler and Sons in New York’s garment district, where many Osages have ordered ribbons throughout the decades. “I’m at the point in my life now where I use my best ribbons and have fun with it.”

The availability of ribbons in each new era changes the ribbonwork over time. However, with the time-honored consistencies in pattern and color, whether rayon Swiss ribbon, satin, taffeta yardage, Hymen Hendler’s acetate ribbon, or lack of ribbon whatsoever, the result will always be identifiable as Osage.

Osage patterns can often be found beyond ribbonwork in various art forms.

Jim Lacy Red Corn (Osage, 1938–1994), Kathryn Red Corn’s brother, was one of a select group of young Indigenous artists to participate in the Southwest Indian Art Project at the University of Arizona in 1961 and 1962 as a Rockefeller Fellow.

This project was the precursor to the IAIA where he was later a resident advisor. “He could make a whole suit in silkscreen,”

said Kathryn Red Corn, who recalls her brother’s response to those who said he was “cheating.” He would do yards of extremely narrow pattern work, some with ten colors, and he’d say, “Believe me, it takes a long time to cut all those screens out because each color needs to have its own screen!” Apparently no one has continued Osage ribbonwork in silkscreen.5 Today, as in past eras, cultural arts and materials evolve. “Even though we see it in new forms such as printed-on ribbon—those types of evolutions that it will go through [over] time … you might see patterns getting bigger, and it depends on where you learn it,” Fields said.

Many Osage art forms have historically been gender specific. Fields predominantly saw women create fingerweaving and ribbonwork when she was learning, when every district had masters in the art forms. Today men create fingerweaving, and a few sew ribbonwork.

These gender connections are clear to Osage people, but Fields said it’s difficult to explain to someone outside the culture that not every culture is a one-sided construct. “That is one of the things that I’m really hoping, [that] people will catch the drift. There’s not one way of looking at things. It’s not cut and dry. It’s not all Western Euro. There are many ways of looking at the world, and they should all be appreciated because there are huge contributions that come from our world.”

𐓏𐒰𐓇𐒼𐒰͘ (DO YOUR BEST) “DO YOUR BEST,” an Osage adage, reminds one that striving is what is best for the community. In the case of ribbon workers, Emde believes doing one’s best demands both soul and mind, including thoughts and care for the generations ahead and the generations behind. “Art evokes an emotion, and when you’re willing to go a little deeper, that’s when you get to the good stuff,” she says.

Symbolic of their culture and its identity, finely made Inlonshka clothing often includes the relationship with the

person who made it. A commissioned piece for an Osage Inlonshka dancer or ceremonial clothing is different than some artwork in galleries because it’s an act of the heart. “If I go to somebody who I respect and ask them to make something for me, I know they have the skills to do it,” Fields said. “I know they have the respect to think about it in a way that we need to think about it. I know it’s going to be done in a loving and caring manner. I know it’s going to have good thoughts attached to it—that’s about a relationship.” A photo of her adult son as a boy in his first Osage suit instantly transported Fields back in memory to the conversations she had with the woman who made the suit and to the conversations she had with her dad while trying to prepare her son for the dance.

Fields believes ribbonwork has a strong future. “It holds a huge part of the continuation of our culture.”

Part of being an Inlonshka dancer comes with responsibility for that continuation of culture and

community, and the opportunity to establish a special relationship with the ribbonwork. Emde said those who don’t consider that miss out on a great deal. “When starting on a child’s dance clothes, they may not know you well, but after the process, they greet you with a hug, and you’re always connected.”

It isn’t always necessary for dancers to make their entire regalia themselves.

They don’t need “go in” (enter the dances) by themselves and operate in a silo. If someone is going in, they first meet the drumkeepers and committees to create a bond. “Those people under those arbors— when you’re having a rough time, or you have grief—they circle you and they give you air to breathe.”

Emde emphasized that it’s so much more than just clothes; that the clothes are respect for everything else that the dance is. “The passion to give your best, to collect your best ribbons, to do your best work, and when you send your child under that arbor, you can ask for nothing more. It completes you when you do that.”

Our heartfelt thanks to Braxton Redeagle (Osage), director of the Osage Nation Language Department, for reviewing the Osage terms.

5. Marla Redcorn-Miller, director at Osage Nation Museum, email message to author, July 27, 2022.

NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 45

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PROFILE

Cherokee Nation Polymath

ROY BONEY JR.

By Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Chippewas of Rama First Nation)

C

H E R O K E E NAT I O N ARTIST, designer, educator, and writer ᎧᏂᎦ ᎪᎳᎭ, Roy Boney Jr., creates work riffing on Cherokee and pop culture, including hand-drawn sketches, paintings, digital illustrations, typefaces, and animations.

Rooted in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Boney participates in regional art markets and local, national, and international art shows.1 “Initially, when I got into the Native art scene, I came in through the Cherokee Nation art shows,” Boney notes.

The Cherokee word for art, ᏗᏘᎶᏙᏗ, pronounced ditlilosdodi, encapsulates Boney’s many creations, as discussed at the Symposium on the American Indian in 2017.2 Panelist David Crawler (Cherokee Nation) “broke it down,” says Boney. “He was like, ‘Well, this means you’re repeatedly making very small measurements, or even very small marks, or whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it with thought and a message, and doing it repeatedly.’ So I think that's a pretty cool way of looking at it, and that makes sense. Even the digital side of things—it’s all made of pixels, which are these small little elements, and this goes back to that worldview.”3 Boney has long been making marks on paper. “As a kid, I would sit in front of the TV and try to draw along with cartoons that I was watching,” says Boney, “so trying to imitate what I was seeing before I even had formal training.” However, Boney’s career could have gone differently. “Starting in sixth grade, I had a really good art teacher named James Sinclair, and he was my art teacher through twelfth grade. He saw that I was serious about this. He was a great teacher … he’s the one who got me to go to college, because I wasn’t going to go to college. No one in our family went

to college. No one knew that process and how that even worked.” Boney had begun working in road construction like many of the men in his family. “But my teacher, Mr. Sinclair, said, ‘You need to consider something else.’ So he loaded me up in his car, took me to view some universities in the area, and helped me to apply and get a portfolio together and all that. Without him doing that, I don’t know what I’d be doing now, so I owe him a lot of gratitude for doing that.”

LANGUAGE PRESERVATION BEFORE ATTENDING COLLEGE, Boney never used a computer, but he studied graphic design at Oklahoma State University and taught design and digital graphics classes at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah. “The typography really intrigued me because

I grew up seeing the Cherokee language everywhere,” he says. “Some people had bibles. Some had all these writings in Cherokee. There were family notebooks in Cherokee. My father could read and write Cherokee. So I had seen it all the time growing up, but I couldn’t read it as a kid. As I got older, I’m like, I’ve got to learn how to read and write this stuff.

That started that journey, and I started learning about typography and its own art form,” he explains.

“That led me down the path of wanting to learn more about how the Cherokee syllabary was created, which led to me researching more about Sequoyah and getting into how did he design this?

I started learning more about the type process. How did they make metal type back in the 19th century? Why did they change the letters from cursive to this?”

Boney serves as a program manager of the Cherokee Nation Language Department, overseeing language

1, One of his first art shows was Frybread and Roses: The Art of Native American Labor (2006) curated by FAAM publishing editor America Meredith (Cherokee Nation).

2. Stacy Pratt, “Artist group debates Cherokee word for ‘art’,” Tahlequah Daily Press, April 13, 2017, web.

3. Quotes have been edited for brevity and clarity. —Ed.

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technology and typography. Projects have included translations, overseeing accurate use of the Cherokee syllabary, and working with Apple and Google to put Cherokee on smartphones, tablets, and computers. Boney grew up in a Cherokeespeaking home and community in Locust Grove and has witnessed language loss over his lifetime.

“And my age group, we’re the first generation of people who lost the language, that hardly anyone 40 and under speaks Cherokee as their first language,” says Boney. The loss of Cherokee-speaking elders, including Boney’s father, is a pressing issue. “We lost him almost two years ago and that was a major loss for a lot of reasons, but one of them was that he was a Cherokee speaker. I was complacent in the sense that I always thought, Well, I can go ask

him a question, he’ll know, but now I don’t have that direct contact,” says Boney.

The Cherokee Nation’s Cherokee Language Master Apprentice program offers hope. “It gets these young adults, usually in their 20s or 30s, and they’re paired with these elder Cherokee speakers for 40 hours a week for two years and they come out of it pretty fluent. Some of these students coming out of it now are interested in art. There are a couple of graphic designers going through it, some painters, and some filmmakers. I’m excited to see where they’re going to go.”

Recently, the Cherokee Nation partnered with FireThief Productions and an animation studio to create ᎢᎾᎨᎢ, Inage’i, a 3D cartoon series in Cherokee, Boney’s largest animation project. They have written scripts for ten episodes and have produced four episodes. Boney was “the lead Cherokee designer on it and

above, top A Storm Is Coming, 2018, acrylic on panel, 24 × 28 in. All images, unless otherwise noted, courtesy of the artist. above, bottom ᏚᎴᎯᏌᏅ (Resurrection), 2017, pixel art, 16 × 16 in. opposite Roy Boney Jr. and his artwork. Photo: FAAM.

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with them in the language,” explains Boney. “So that’s when I really started getting into animation.”

Boney saw the need for Unicodecompatible Cherokee fonts, which led to him later designing typefaces. “One of the things we wanted to do is have subtitles in Cherokee, and at the time, the Cherokee font was not Unicode compatible, so it wasn’t displaying properly in the software.” His boss persuaded Boney to go to graduate school. For his thesis project, he created a stop-motion animation in Cherokee and a computer animation in Muscogee. “They both were tied to the Trail of Tears removal, and it was these little personalized stories about these families experiencing removal going through the state of Arkansas, because I was going to school in Arkansas. We got a grant to tell that portion of the story,” Boney says. “Ever since, I’ve been doing small animations here and there for the tribe. I do a lot of stuff in the Cherokee language for the Cherokee language immersion school, so there are all these short little animated segments that we’ve done for the school over the past 15 years or so.”

CHARACTER CREATION

above The Buck, 2019, acrylic on panel, private collection. opposite ᎤᏕᎵᎩ ᎠᏣᎳᎩ ᏕᏓᏝᏃᎮ, Udeligi Atsalagi Dedatlanohe (We Speak in Secret), page 11, 2014, digital illustration, from Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers, volume one (Native Realities, 2014).

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helped write some of the scripts.” The completed episodes have been shown at film festivals, community events, and the tribe’s immersion school. “Our kids love to watch it,” says Boney.

Boney experimented with animation as an undergrad. After graduating, he created stop-motion animations with Cherokee and Muscogee students in northeastern Oklahoma during a grant project with the American Indian Resource Center in Tahlequah. “A lot of these students had lost touch with some of the culture—some hadn’t, but some of them had—so we would have them do research where they’d go home, talk to their parents or grandparents, and find some stories. They’d write scripts, and then we’d do stop-motion animations

BONEY’S “SKETCH A DAY” serves as a mental health practice and has helped him through the pandemic and his father’s death. “Even on the day he passed, I did a sketch, and people are like, ‘How could you do that?’ I’m like, ‘I had to do it.’”

Of his drawing habit, Boney says, “It’s been helpful in many ways. It’s given me emotional support to get through tough times in life. It’s provided me with general real-world practice and getting better at the craft, and then it’s opened up a community too. I’ve met a lot of people I wouldn’t have otherwise met without doing social media and just connecting with people.” Eager Facebook followers comment, “Dibs!” within minutes of a sketch post. While Boney’s larger works are bought up by serious collectors like Bill Wiggins from Arkansas, the smaller sketches allow Boney to offer competitively priced originals to a wider audience. Created in under an hour, they

ROY BONEY JR.

are often full-color works made with watercolor, ink, and perhaps a highlight of acrylic paint.

“You know, I started doing the ‘Sketch a Day’ because it was a New Year’s resolution kind of thing. I’m like, I’m going to do a drawing a day for like a month, and that was ten years ago. When I started, it was just more artistic practice. I’m always drawing anyway, but being consistent was always an issue. I wanted to do more, so that was my personal challenge, and I did that for a few years. I would post them online, on Facebook.… But over the years, I started getting a following, and people wanted to see the daily sketch.

Then one of those days, maybe four or five years ago, someone asked, ‘Hey, can I buy this one?’ I’m like, ‘I guess!’ I didn’t even think about selling,” Boney laughs.

“And so from there it kind of took off with people wanting to buy them. Now it’s become kind of a game of chance for people to try to get one.”

Boney’s digital and analog 2D works are full of fantasy, visual puns, cultural figures, remixed historical individuals, such as Sequoyah (Cherokee, as an animal), antlered half-humans, indigenized pop-culture characters, and Cherokee punk rockers. The works indicate a depth of references, from cultural stories and Cherokee words to heavy metal.

Boney’s day job offers inspiration. “I’m around these very traditional people. They’re telling stories or they’re teaching me things all the time, so I’m very fortunate,” Boney shares. His colleagues, elders, and relatives share stories that influence his work. “A lot of these images come from my grandmother on my mom’s side, because she told me a lot of stories growing up. These images are coming from stories I heard and just from being around all these traditional people and learning things in the language.

But on the other side of this, I grew up heavily into comics, heavily into hard rock, heavy metal, and industrial music.

I might be listening to some music and just get inspired by that, because when I was much younger, I was into a lot of those scenes—those music scenes. I’d go to all these shows, and I was in a couple of bands. I’m always listening to music,

usually when I’m making art, and so that’s usually informing some of it.”

The characters strike dynamic poses with expressive hands and faces—often with a particular specificity—honed by years of observation, drawing, formal training, and ongoing study. During his university experiences, Boney took life drawing and anatomy classes, and he refers to anatomy books. “I’m always looking at stuff. Observing everything, whether it’s people, or animals, or whatever it is. It’s out there. I’m always looking at stuff,” shares Boney. “And so I’ve always

looked at people, looked at their faces in particular. I’ve always wanted to portray people in the community, and some of these might be real people. Sometimes they’re people I’ve noticed on the street or sidewalk. Sometimes they’re imaginary figures, but I’m still drawing upon this experience of seeing people in the community. I try my best to represent Cherokee people as I see them, because a lot of times as I was growing up—there’s a lot of stereotypical representations of Natives—but I never saw art that really represented me. I tried to represent NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 51

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above Deer Clan Artist, 2022, watercolor, ink, acrylic on paper, 12 × 9 in., part of the Sketch a Day series, private collection. opposite ᎢᎾᎨᎢ, Inage'i promotional image, 2022, digital artwork, dimensions variable, Cherokee Nation.

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people I know, or the kinds of people I might know or people I grew up with.”

Strong female characters are fully present. “We are a matrilineal society, traditionally. Some of that has been lost through history and assimilation, but I was raised by very strong women. These women in my family—some are gone, some are still here—had a huge impact on my life. I mentioned my grandmother.

We had a pretty close bond, and my mom is a very strong woman. I have aunts. I don’t have any sisters, but there’re all these women around me. They’ve had a huge influence on me—coworkers and friends. And so I was raised with a very healthy respect for women, and so when I portray them in drawings and paintings or whatever, I try to show them as strong, powerful people, because that’s

who they are. Other artists, especially in mainstream media, will sexualize women heavily, and that’s not how I was raised.

I was raised to respect them, and I try my best to show that when I make these images of the women in my heart.”

Boney depicts many rabbits. “I’m fascinated by this idea of a trickster.

We have a lot of stories about the rabbit getting into some kind of trouble or hijinks. A lot of them are morality tales where he learns the lesson, but he’s always getting into something. These stories we tell kids. ‘Well, you better mind your elders, or this will happen’,” Boney explains. “Plus, visually, rabbits’ forms are just very intriguing. They’re very surprisingly athletic. When you look at them, they look just like a little furry ball, but then suddenly they’re jumping way up in the air, and they just speed away.”

The historical war chief Dragging Canoe (Cherokee, ca. 1736–1792) appears frequently. “He was one of the Chickamauga Cherokee who was against white invaders, and he was known to be a very great warrior, very ruthless against Europeans.” Boney continued, “His nickname was Cherokee Dragon, but his actual name was Dragging Canoe. He’s captured a lot of people’s imaginations throughout the centuries. I like to incorporate him into a contemporary context.

I’ve done him as a punk rocker—the leather jacket, spikes, boots, stuff like that.

I imagine him as if he were here now; he might be that kind of guy.”

Tobacco pipes and cigarettes in hand allude to spiritual connotations and a personal fascination. “Some people are like, ‘Why are they always smoking?’ And yeah, it’s kind of a funny story. Smoke is a big part of a lot of Native cultures and the Cherokee culture too. Smoke can be used for your medicine—as a spiritual messenger. It can be used for healing, so I use the motif in my work quite a lot.

On another side of it, I’ve been fascinated by smoke as long as I can remember, but because I grew up asthmatic, I can’t smoke,” Boney laughs. “I’m honoring the tradition, but still fascinated by this thing that I can’t really partake in.” Similarly, while a plethora of tattoos, piercings, and stretched earlobes decorate many of his characters, he has none of the above.

ROY BONEY JR.

“I think I’m scared of pain,” Boney laughs.

“So I live vicariously through the art.”

COMIC BOOKS A WORLD LIVES IN BONEY’S MIND. “I haven’t really nailed it down entirely, but in my head, most of these characters do exist in one shared world,” Boney comments. “I have this idea in my head for a graphic novel, which incorporates talking animals and humans and the spirits and hybrids of humans and animals, and all this stuff in this one huge world that’s tied to Cherokee cosmology and belief systems. I haven’t worked out detailed specifics, but some of these characters in the daily sketches—if you go back and look through them, you’ll see some of them recurring. That is purposeful, because I am trying to work out, What is this? Is there a narrative to this?” Sketching allows Boney to explore different versions of a character. “I’m actually working on character development because I do plan to use some of them in a graphic novel format in the future.”

Boney seriously began creating comics with Plug-in Boy, a morbidly humorous web comic in which a robotic boy unplugs himself. After reading it, Canadian writer Matt Shepard asked

Boney to collaborate on a comic book about zombies who, instead of being typically brain dead, “retain their thoughts and memories of when they were alive,” as Boney says. He illustrated eight sample pages. Slave Labor Graphics picked up the project and renamed it Dead Eyes Open (2007). Boney also illustrated “Horned Toad Lady and Coyote” in Trickster: Native American Tales, A Graphic Collection (2010)—an Eisner award nominee—and a story in Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers, volume one (2017), which had a personal element.

“A lot of my family, for better or worse, were drafted into the military.

There’s that whole back and forth of Natives being in the military. Some people will be like, ‘Well, you know we shouldn’t fight for this country because of what they did to us,’ but some of them are very proud of that tradition of being veterans. My family is on that side where a lot of the men were in war,” Boney explains. “A lot of them had suffered from it too, coming back with lots of post-traumatic stress disorder, but they were still very proud of that [service] and then tying that to the language, and how there were Cherokee code talkers, along with other tribes too.” Cherokee code talkers were active in World War I. “If it weren’t for tribal languages, things

might be radically different now in world geography and politics.”

Boney illustrated “Xenisi,” the story of a time traveler meeting Sequoyah in the anthology Moonshot, Volume 3 (2020).

Boney has created several variant covers for Marvel, including a digital illustration for Venom #8 (2020), a digital/acrylic painting for Marvel’s Voices: Heritage #1 (2022), and a digital painting for Amazing Fantasy #1000 (2022). “This most recent thing I did was for Spiderman, which for me was a big personal kind of geek-out,” says Boney. “I’ve been a big Spiderman fan as long as I can remember, so having to do a cover for the 60th anniversary celebration of Spiderman is pretty fun for me.”

This November, Native Realities Press will release a hardback book featuring Boney’s daily sketches and a story he wrote and illustrated. And the artist will continue sketching, bringing his internal world to life, and sending the Cherokee language to new platforms.

As Sequoyah Fellow at Northeastern State University, Boney is organizing Skasdicon, a Native comic con, on November 5, 2022.

Further information can be found online at skasdicon.com.

ROYBONEY.COM NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 53

PROFILE

Yup'ik Multidisciplinary Artist & Teacher

GOLGA OSCAR

By Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq)

T

HROUGH SKIN SEWING, grass weaving, photography, beading, and textile design, Quki “Golga” Oscar breathes fresh energy into Yup'ik customary arts and readily shares his knowledge with others. A 25-year-old from Kasigluk in Southwest Alaska, Oscar works with an array of materials including gut, sea lyme-grass, seal skins, porcupine quills, and the pelts of wolves, wolverines, and beavers. His work conveys a deep connection to place and reflects Yup'ik values such as the importance of gratitude, family, and respect for all living things.

Oscar produces his work for sale through his business, Third Generation Art, and participates in art markets, but he also shares his creations within his community and family. His work includes nasqerrun (headdresses), atkupiat (fancy parkas), and mukluks, which he encourages Alaska Native people to wear as a way to decolonize themselves.

He also makes storyknives,1 ulus, dance fans, earrings, smartphone cases, backpacks, silk scarves, and embellished graduation caps.

Many of Oscar’s designs follow patterns found on historic works of art that he studied in books and visited in museum collections. His work incorporates design elements, color systems (red, black, blue, and white, especially), and number patterns (3, 4, 5, and 7) rooted in Yup'ik aesthetic practices that trace back thousands of years. His work often pays homage to subsistence practices through the use of materials and imagery, especially representations of seals.

A 2020 graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), Oscar is

1. Historically, young Alaska Native girls used storyknives to draw stories in the sand, mud, or snow.

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GOLGA OSCAR

currently a Yup'ik cultural studies teacher for junior high and high school students in the Lower Kuskokwim School District in Bethel, Alaska. He teaches Yup'ik language, dance, and visual arts. He has also taught workshops through the Bethel Arts Council. Passing on knowledge to others is important to Oscar. He told me, “Let’s teach our next generation at a young age. Then they will start picking up the traditional ways of sewing, making

drums, carving ivory, etc.… As they grow older, they will get to pass down what they have learned from us to the future generation.”

NS: Can you tell me a bit about who or what have been some of your creative influences?

above Self-Portrait, 2020, digital photography. Golga Oscar and his creations. opposite Golga Oscar passing down techniques to the next generation. He is coiling a sea lyme-grass basket. All images courtesy of the artist.

GO: One of my biggest influences has been reading the books that Calista (an NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 55

PROFILE

above Fancy Seal Mukluks, ca. 2017, spotted seal skin, raw bearded seal, calfskin, wolverine pelt, beaver pelt, hand-harvested red ochre, glass seed beads, yarn. opposite Smartphone Holder, 2022, hide, metal cones, seal skin, 6° glass pony beads, 11° glass seed beads.

Alaska Native regional corporation) has produced.2 They have created books that share stories about our region—both old stories and stories of today. I am also inspired by family. I come from two different regions. Tununak, my father’s community, stood out to me because the community was more into cultural arts knowledge, traditions, and ceremony.

Headdresses really stood out to me.

I also gain knowledge from Elders

in my community and their stories.

Whenever I can, I ask questions.

Elders tell me how they produce the type of clothing. I have also learned by researching online, using Facebook and Google, and then working from trial and error. From my mistakes, I would learn that way.

I attended college down in Santa Fe, and I started to understand what it means to be Indigenous in the 21st century and

2. To learn more about Calista, visit calistacorp.com/news/preserving-our-culture-ceci.

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GOLGA OSCAR

how important the art and cultural values are. IAIA furthered my inspiration, especially in the community. It was not just the school, but the people who attended came from different cultural backgrounds and inspired me. One of the lessons that I learned was to keep my art simple but also to challenge myself. Those are the words that I tend to remind myself of when I self-reflect.

NS: How did you learn about IAIA? GO: I barely knew about IAIA until a teacher booked my flight to Santa Fe. It was my first trip out of state. After going there, exploring the campus, and getting to know the faculty and its people, I saw how different it is. Coming from a small village, it was difficult for me to visualize the art world. After visiting the campus, I thought to myself, If I were to attend, I could learn and feel comfortable in traveling and connecting with people.

NS: I know you work with a lot of different media like grasses and skin sewing. What is your favorite form of artistic expression?

GO: One of my favorite art forms is skin sewing. The more I work with it, the more I feel connected to it. I remember my ancestors when I sew. I put myself in my ancestors’ shoes and think about what they went through. Through the stories that I heard or that were told to me—I heard about starvation, needing clothing for loved ones, and overcoming challenges—I try to make myself understand what it was like for them and challenge myself. I try to honor my ancestors through their hardworking techniques and those ancestral stories that they passed down through generations.

NS: Many of the materials that you use come from the land.

I would love to hear where you get your materials.

GO: Furs I get from community, from my brother-in-law’s family, and my mom. They are the biggest supporters in my art career. Wolf, wolverine, and seal skin I harvest, skin, and process myself and then send them out to get commercially tanned. Last year in my mother’s hometown, I received a beaver skin from an aunt and a seal skin from a cousin. This made me feel uplifted because it means that people support what I am doing. It feels like a blessing to come from two communities with access to different sets of materials. My father lives by the ocean in Tununak on Nelson Island, where we harvest seals and seal skins. Inland, we harvest beavers, otters, and foxes.

When it comes to intestines, like from a beluga or bearded seal, I use what I can get from subsistence harvests. In the community of Chefornak [on the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta], one of my relatives, Clara Eric, is culturally rich, and she is teaching me about bearded seal. She knows a lot of stories that have to do with this animal. The intestines can be used to make a drum or window covering or waterproof parka. I am planning

on making a waterproof gut parka. No one in my family has done this before, but I come from a long line of people who lived off of these materials. Using these materials is my way of pursuing cultural identity.

NS: I saw on your Instagram account that you made a pair of boots that include red ochre harvested from Nelson Island. I have heard that there are some very interesting pigments from this area. What is the process like to harvest ochre?

GO: One of the sayings that we have is that things can hear through the land including animals, plants, and everything.

Before proceeding to get something from nature, you should never mention it until after you got it. Otherwise, it is not going to show itself to you and you won’t be successful. Knowing that

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winter, I would try to wear my traditional clothing as often as I could and inspire others to do the same. One of the projects that I hope to pursue is a collection of images that will contrast people wearing Western clothing and Indigenous clothing. This will show what it feels like to have both identities. I plan to print the photographs life-size.

NS: Can you share a little bit more about decolonizing and what you mean by it? Is art-making a form of decolonization? How, or perhaps when, is art decolonizing?

GO: The way that I have conducted research, I have learned that people once created so many objects because art was a way of life, a way to survive. My ancestors used everything around them. When we relearn these arts, art can help us live and go further with life. Art is a way of gratitude and giving gratitude toward nature.

That’s decolonizing, learning traditions that came before Western influences.

Before proceeding to get something from nature, you should never mention it until after you got it.

Otherwise, it is not going to show itself to you and you won’t be successful. above Kaligtuq, 2021, digital photograph, dimensions variable. This portrait photograph is of a student with her completed nasqerrun (dance headdress). opposite Golga Oscar modeling his atkupiaq (fancy parka), made with the pelts of muskrat, wolf, wolverine, sea otter, calfskin, 6° glass beads, and yarn.

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saying is what helped me find red ochre.

Before I used to say, “I’m going to get red ochre.” This year, I didn’t say anything, and I found some.

NS: How about your work with grasses?

GO: I work with grass once in a great while. I’m looking upon my ancestors’ and Elders’ creations of grass baskets. It’s like they’re challenging me to produce what they once made. I am the only grass weaver in my immediate family. I have only made a few little grass baskets in my lifetime.

NS: You are also a photographer. Can you share what you hope to accomplish through your photographic work?

GO: I create portraits as a way of decolonizing. I like capturing people wearing their parkas and other cultural attire, because I want to encourage people to use traditional clothing. During this past

NS: You recently had the opportunity to visit Yup'ik materials at the Burke Museum. What was that like and what did you learn?

GO: My experience in the Burke Museum was very extraordinary. The pieces there were different from what I expected to see. The images that museums share online are often outdated, and seeing them in person is very important. It is intriguing to check out collections and see our ancestors’ work and the intricate designs that they made. Through observing the details of the work, I learn sewing techniques and material choices and can take precise measurements.

I am sometimes emotional when visiting collections, but I thank the object in front of me and the maker who put their energy into making it, because in our culture, gratification is one of the number one ways of living.

Visiting the collection at the Burke was an amazing opportunity for me, but also to be able to come home and share what I learned with the community. Whatever

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opportunity I have, I try to share with the community as well.

NS: You also were an artist in residence at the Anchorage Museum this summer and had some of your work on display in the gallery there. How was that experience?

GO: That was a great experience too.

Being in the Anchorage Museum made me realize how important it is to share our lifestyle. I was able to display a parka that I made as part of a year-long grant from the Rasmuson Foundation and a group of headdresses. Western influences make Indigenous people question who they are and where they come from. That’s what I went through growing up strongly embedded Western influences.

NS: What are your next projects or plans for the future?

GO: I am working on producing a collection of clothing, trying to expand my business, and hoping to get into the fashion industry. I was recently awarded a fellowship which will allow me to produce two fancy parkas including one using Arctic ground squirrel, and I’m looking forward to that. I plan to use Merna Wharton’s methods, which she shares on her blog. 3 Merna is from Akiachak but lives in Anchorage now, and we recently connected during my Anchorage Museum residency.

Since graduating from college, I have been thinking about how to indigenize Western spaces, not only for myself but for my high school. I want to help the students be inspired to share their artistry and to put themselves out there.

The message I want to share is, instead of being isolated, voice your concerns, share your artistry. Don’t question who you are.

We are Indigenous people. We are given materials and skills to use over time. Art saves lives.

NS: Recently you have been fortunate to receive some funding to support your work. Can you share why arts organizations should continue to support customary arts?

GO: It is really important. It is a blessing to receive funding and have resources available for artists. Having craftsmanship and pursuing it is an opportunity not just for the artist, but also for their community. It can inspire other community members to follow the artist’s steps in their journey. The more inspired they

become, they’ll have an opportunity to change their lives. Being an influential artist is an important part of Indigenous leadership that should be supported.

My art is keeping me going. My culture is keeping me alive. My identity is slowly being regained despite Western influences.

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3. Merna Wharton’s blog is at nasektaq.com.

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Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama Sculptor & Jeweler

LILLIAN PITT

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

above Lillian Pitt (Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama) and her artwork. Photo: Dennis Maxwell. All images courtesy of the artist. opposite She Who Watches, 2004, limited edition bronze, 47/8 × 55/8 × ¾ in. Photo: Dennis Maxwell.

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L

ILLIAN PITT WAS BORN on the Warm Springs Reservation in central Oregon in 1943. She moved to Portland, Oregon, in the early 1960s and soon began working as a hairdresser. A back injury forced Pitt to retire from hairdressing, so she earned an associate degree in mental health and human services in 1981. She enrolled in a ceramics class at Mount Hood Community College and, as she

says, “it was love at first touch.” She is now recognized for producing artwork influenced by petroglyphs and pictographs from the Columbia River Gorge.

Pitt met Navajo artist R. C. Gorman at an exhibition and showed him her raku-fired masks. Gorman purchased two and recommended that the gallery owner represent her work. As an emerging artist, Pitt did not incorporate Indigenous elements into her iconography; however, this changed after an Elder took her to view historical rock carvings and paintings created by her ancestors. Since that journey, her masks, jewelry, mixed media, and public artwork have been inspired by the iconography and history of the Columbia River Gorge and its people.

Major exhibitions have featured her work, now found in collections throughout the United States and Canada, including the National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, DC), the Portland Art Museum (Oregon), and the Burke Museum (University of Washington). In 1990, the Oregon Arts Commission gave Pitt the Governor’s Arts Award, and the High Desert Museum gave her the Earle A. Chiles Award in 2007. Pitt is also a partner of the Confluence Project, an artistic collaboration between Plateau tribes connecting people through outdoor installations and sculpture, stretching nearly 450 miles from the mouth of the Columbia River to the junction between the Clearwater and Snake rivers in Idaho.

Pitt’s other public artworks are located throughout the United States and have been completed with artists such as Rick Bartow (Wiyot), Gail Tremblay (Mi'kmaq/Onondaga), and her niece, Elizabeth Woody (Warm Springs/Navajo/ Wasco/Yakama). I connected with Lillian Pitt through a series of email conversations in August 2022.

LILLIAN PITT

MRS: I’ve been aware of your work for several years now. Can you tell me what life was like during your early years living on the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon?

LP: I was raised by my mom, Elizabeth Thompson, and my father, Lewis E. Pitt, with an older sister and one younger brother. We lived in a two-room home in “Hollywood,” on the Warm Springs Reservation. We were all one community there and had a lot of other children to play with. But most of the time I would go off to the hills and wander around looking at all the flowers, watching the path that the ants took to see what big burdens they carried. I could hear my mother yelling for me, so then I’d run home as quickly as possible so I would not be in trouble.

Dad worked nights at the sawmill not far from us but would come home for his late dinner, and we would sit up with him and share his dinner. We never realized we were poor. We were a happy family.

MRS: From your early years on Warm Springs, you eventually moved to Portland and practiced hairdressing, your first career. I’ve seen some writers and curators gloss over this fact, but I think it applies to your art practice.

Have you thought of the connections between your early profession as a hairdresser and hairdressing’s connection to sculpture, to space, to scale, to dexterity? Knowing your work, I don’t think the connection between the two can be ignored.

LP: I agree. I loved hand waving or finger waving the mannequins for a challenge to see if the waves all fit equally. Hairstyling and precise haircutting were important to me as well. I never realized I was so eager to do a professional job even though I was still in beauty school.

MRS: During this time you enrolled in a ceramics class. You’ve said that your first time using clay was “love at first touch.” Can you describe that initial experience with clay?

LP: It all opened my eyes to something completely new to my world. It gave me

a focus to learn all I could about clay working. I had a smart teacher who sent me to the library to get all the important clay instruction books, stories by potters, and history of clay books. I did not drive at that time but carried all these books home on the bus. The same with the half-bag of clay, which was 25 pounds full, to practice hand building in the freezing cold garage. I loved every minute of it.

the tension between suppressing your identity and yearning to express it?

MRS: What then drew you to produce raku-fired masks early in your career?

How has your approach to mask making changed from then to today?

MRS: I understand that an Elder first took you to visit petroglyphs and pictographs where you encountered Tsagaglalal (She Who Watches). As you’ve mentioned in the past, this was life altering. What do you recall about this experience and why was it so profound?

LP: Raku was the only way I could get a lot of color to my works. High-fired clay colors did not seem to fit my scheme of things, which also took me a short amount of time to figure out.

MRS: You’ve written about how your early works didn’t involve your Indigenous ancestry, namely because your father thought you “could have a better life.” Could you talk about

LP: My father was always looking after us to have a better life than he and mom had growing up in the Chemawa boarding school. They did not discuss their Native culture or speak their Native language.

They had their hair cut. It was painful to them. It all gave me strength to carry on.

LP: Having an Elder take me to such an important, sacred place was an honor.

When I first came upon the watchful gaze of Tsagaglalal, I was stunned to stillness and a feeling of profound knowing who my ancestors are and where they lived for thousands of years. It gave me NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 61

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a sense of power that no one can take away from me.

MRS: You’ve also spent considerable time researching your Warm Springs, Wasco, and Yakama ancestry and applying this cultural history and iconography to your art practice. Can you explain the significance of research to your work?

LP: Speaking to my Elders has been the most enriching [experience] of my being.

Especially when they said they relied on my storytelling to let all know we, Native people, are still here, thriving and working. I've learned to keep my work honest, with my intention of honoring my ancestors, our history, and our land base.

MRS: You work in a variety of media, from clay, glass, and gold to painting, beading, leather, and much more. This isn’t something that most artists do.

What do you think are the advantages of working with these materials, and what have they taught you over the years?

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LP: Mostly flexibility. I know I have the three P’s: patience, persistence, and perseverance. Using the flexibility of clay to mold into what I wanted gave me freedom to wonder and then try out another medium or style. I have a jeweler friend who talked me into making something out of silver, then later 14- to 18-karat gold, and a bronze worker who said my clay could be a great way to make multiples. Most of the suggestions were tried. Even drawing, in which Rick Bartow gave me a lesson—which I flunked, but that’s okay. Joe Feddersen gave me a printmaking workshop where I made 60 prints, and 85 percent of them were what Joe called successful.

When I was a kid, I would cross the street in Hollywood to where an Elder was a bead worker, and I would just sit on the floor and quietly watch her sort out her colors and draw her images and start beading. But it never happened all at once. I would ask her if I could come back the next day just to watch. She would always just nod her head with a yes.

MRS: What is the most difficult aspect of your art practice? Is there something that regularly challenges you?

LP: Getting things done on time. Time management is hard for me. As I age, time is flying, my body is changing. I’m moving slower, I forget what day it is.

Memory problems.

MRS: I’ve heard this response from artists quite a few times; you’re certainly not alone in this. Lillian, I’d like to turn to public art. You’ve created several pieces throughout the United States, often in collaboration with other artists, including your niece. You shifted from creating small-scale work—mask pins, necklaces, and rings—to large-scale outdoor installations. What was the impetus behind this?

LP: There were no Native American female artists getting public art commissions here in the Pacific Northwest. So in 2001 I applied with Gail Tremblay (who wrote the application) to TriMet,

LILLIAN PITT

Portland’s light-rail commuter train for a public art commission. We later added Rick Bartow, Ken MacKintosh, and Elizabeth Woody to collaborate with TriMet, Portland Boulevard, to honor my ancestors in the Columbia River Gorge with the petroglyphs, pictographs, basket designs, and salmon. I was the team leader and had to go to meetings with the community to explain the importance of having me do this job to educate all that we are still here making our people proud.

That job gave me purpose and a focus on what I am to do with my talents and great collaborators.

MRS: Can you explain the origins of the Confluence Project and how you got involved with the initiative?

LP: The Confluence Project first started out working with architect Maya Lin during the anniversary of Lewis and Clark coming to the Pacific Northwest. It evolved into an educational organization

above Lillian Pitt (Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama) and Dan Friday (Lummi), Violet Sky, 2018, blown and fused glass, 141/8 × 14 × 5½ in. Photo: Russell Johnson. opposite Installation view of Building on the Frames of My Ancestors (2005–06), a solo exhibition at the Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Oregon.

Photo: Dennis Maxwell.

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LP: All our skills are different. In that difference, we inspire each other always with our goal of doing what we are paid to do. We help each other with focus.

We never compete with each other. No disadvantages so far.

MRS: Do you think about the audience when making work? If so, what would you like audiences to take with them after they see your work?

LP: When we write our proposals for a job, we always try to think of what we want people to think about. Then it goes into the focus of what we are doing for the paying company and the community we are working with. My goal is always to honor my ancestors and our culture.

My team is behind me to support the message.

MRS: Can we talk influence? What is a continual source of inspiration?

LP: My relationship with Rick Bartow— his works have always been an inspiration to me. His feelings about authenticity with his works made me think about what I am doing with mine. My friends keep in touch, and I remain active in my community.

above Spirit Guide from Shadow Spirit series, cast New Zealand lead crystal sculpture, wood and steel base. Photo: Dennis Maxwell. opposite Lillian Pitt (Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama) with Mikkel Hilde, Saralyn Hilde, and Juno Lachman, River Guardian, 2015, steel and lead crystal glass sculpture, 108 in. tall, commissioned by Portland State University Native American community, and the Portland City Parks. Installed at the South Waterfront in Portland, Oregon, on the banks of the Willamette River. Photo: Dennis Maxwell.

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where Native American teachers, who are bead workers, basket makers, fishermen, and storytellers, taught non-Native American teachers as a way to share our culture with students from kindergarten through twelfth grades.

I was a teacher who taught clay mask making. We started out with twelve schools and now it has grown to about 30 or so, up and down the gorge.

MRS: Collaboration is elemental to your art practice. Can you discuss why you choose to work closely with other artists, and what are its dis/advantages?

MRS: You’ve maintained a critically and commercially successful art practice for more than 40 years. What has this taught you? Have you kept your passion for art making? What has stayed the same over this time?

LP: To continue making artwork, whether it’s mask pins or public works to show preparations, has kept me in tow. My passion has not ebbed. My passion and mistakes keep me going. And a community of clay makers, painters, quilt makers, family, teachers, museum people, are friends who keep me on track, at one time or another.

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LILLIAN PITT

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Sičáŋgu ˇ Lakota Interdisciplinary Artist

DYANI WHITE HAWK By heather ahtone, PhD (Choctaw/Chickasaw Nation)

O

NE EVENING Dyani White Hawk (b. 1976) and I shared a long conversation via Zoom and discussed her current work, our mutual appreciation for what’s happening in the field, and thought out loud about the ancestral gifts we inherited and the critical social movement in which we are living. Dyani was in the studio at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts during her residency in Oregon, wearing a printer’s apron and drawing while we visited. I was in a studio at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. We’ve known one another for more than a decade, but this was our first conversation since the onset of the pandemic. Tears of appreciation flowed.

With the opening of the Whitney Biennial fresh on my mind after a trip to New York, we began to discuss Wopila | Lineage (2021), Dyani’s piece in the exhibition. This year’s biennial featured works by Dyani, Rebecca 1. Wopila is an expression of deep gratitude.

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Belmore (Lac Seul Ojibwe), Duane Linklater (Omaskêko Cree), and Raven Chacon (Navajo), collectively a strong representation of Indigenous American art. The Whitney curators used the binary of darkness and light to organize the exhibition on two floors, with an installation in the connecting stairway. Dyani’s work was located on the “light” floor, among those works set in a space that resisted the imposition of solidity. The light floor engendered thoughts of ephemerality and connectivity and drew attention to the concept of temporality. Visitors encountered Dyani’s piece, suspended on a framework, upon entrance to the floor. Intentional gaps in the framework allowed visibility beyond the painting into the gallery. The compositional format and the shimmer reminded me of Indigenous philosophical references to time. That what we have is a gift from our ancestors; that what we make is our gift to those yet to come.

Dyani’s piece was stunning. Having seen published photos of it in advance, I was excited to find it. What I had not seen in the photos caught my breath, as I realized it was not a painting at all, but beadwork. The beads were so tightly woven that they read as a solid surface.

I thought of countless generations of Lakota women holding high standards for process and technique. Looking closely and in awe, I was deeply moved by its monumentality and filled with appreciation for Dyani and her creative vision. Her artistic commitment to honor her culture and community has garnered international attention for Indigenous beadwork on one of the most important contemporary art stages in the world.

The inclusion of Wopila | Lineage in the 2022 Whitney Biennial claimed space that represents so much more than just the product of glass beads and sinew; it represents gratitude.1 Dyani participates as a link within a continuum of Lakota feminine creativity that has laid a path for her to follow.

Steadfast on that path, she is kicking down doors and bringing her culture and her people with her into spaces not imagined a decade ago, much less a century ago. While her work in the biennial is referred to as a painting, it is in fact made of glass beads. She and her team used approximately 537,000 9-millimeter bugle beads to manually create loom-woven strips, then mounted the strips onto eight gold-painted panels to create the overall composition. The aluminum panel system provides a structural hanging support for the incredibly heavy work. The beadwork and assembly were accomplished by 18 members of her family and community for ten months during the pandemic, but the time to construct it can honestly be claimed as a millennium because of the

above Wopila | Lineage (2021), installed at the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum. Photo: Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota). All images courtesy of the artist unless otherwise noted. opposite Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota). Photo: Nedahness Rose Greene (Leech Lake Ojibwe).

relationship her work carries to Lakota aesthetics.

Dyani’s compositions primarily draw upon Lakota philosophy, the same that guided makers to apply quillwork and beadwork on any surface that could carry this visual language. Using this formal aesthetic system, the community retains cultural philosophies and knowledge across generations despite the onslaught of cultural oppression.

Dyani expressed a deep regard for those who carried and passed it into her hands. She said, “So much of the work is about placing the legacy of Indigenous art, which has historically been upheld in large part by Native women, front and center. In the greater stories of American art history and contemporary American art history, our work has been so ignored, undermined, undervalued. And the reality is that it’s the foundation of art on this continent.”2 Drawing upon Lakota aesthetics, Dyani has formulated an interpretation

of the customary Lakota designs that is familiar yet uniquely her own. In reference to the geometric system that codes Lakota knowledge, her compositions avoid mimicry of specific cultural presentations, thus protecting the sanctity of the cultural knowledge, which allows her to experiment and cultivate her artistic voice. Lakota aesthetics serve as a language from which Dyani composes poetry that explores materials and scale.

Doing so, she challenges the presumption of how Indigenous aesthetics can be interpreted. She draws from cultural customs to examine what it is to be a Lakota woman, mother, daughter, wife, and community member while living in the 21st century. She uses every tool available to her and expands definitions of an Indigenous American artist.

Dyani’s knowledge about materials and tools is a product of both informal cultural instruction and art school. She is a formally trained artist and earned her master’s degree in fine art at the

University of Wisconsin, Madison, where Truman Lowe (Ho-Chunk, 1944–2019) served as a mentor. During her keynote speech at the 2019 Native American Art Studies Association conference held in Minneapolis, she spoke of the lessons she learned from Lowe: to believe in herself and stay true to her artistic vision. She addressed a specific incident where she had been subjected to a professor’s critique that had, unfortunately, been overly personal and dismissive of her identity.

The incident significantly shook her. She explained, “Truman, on the other hand, just calmly shook his head, and in his Buddha-like way, he told me, ‘Dyani, don’t give these people any of your energy.’ I don’t remember his exact words, but I remember his message. He argued that I needn’t spend any of my energy because, ultimately, their opinions on my story, my life, and my work would be inconsequential.”

Dyani said, “As a result of this experience, I formed some of my strongest

2. All quotes in this essay are from a conversation held via Zoom on June 16, 2022, unless otherwise noted.

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arguments as to why my artistic voice is important, valid, and needed in the thread of Indigenous, US, and global artistic histories.” She continued, “Once I was grounded again—in great part through Truman’s compassion and mentorship—the adversity I faced through this experience prompted me to dig in and begin to question and critique the rationales that had devalued and othered Native art and people.”3 Her artistic practice remained steadfast and led to an invitation to meet with the curators of the Whitney exhibition. I wondered how the invitation transpired. She said that Todd Bockley arranged for her to meet with the Whitney curators during the Bockley Gallery installation at the Armory Show 2020.4 Adrienne Edwards, Whitney’s director of curatorial affairs, and David Breslin, DeMartini Family curator and director of curatorial initiatives, visited with Dyani to discuss her work. Two of her paintings, Untitled (All the Colors) and She Gives (Quiet Strength VII), met

at a corner of the space. The untitled work came from a series that incorporated beadwork on the surface of the painting, though it still relied heavily on a painted surface. She Gives was her largest work to date, a 7-by-10-foot painting that utilized a heavy geometric, visual framework.

Dyani recounted: “Adrienne was looking at the painting and looking at the beaded piece and asked, ‘So do you think you could make this’—pointing at Untitled (All the Colors) with the bugle beads—‘like this?’ as she pointed at She Gives (Quiet Strength VII), referring to the scale.’” Dyani recalled, laughing, that she answered, ‘Yes, I’m sure I could, but it will be a tremendous undertaking.’ So the work came from Adrienne asking.

It totally makes sense. It’s a completely natural progression for the two bodies of work to merge between the large-scale paintings and the mid-size beaded paintings, but it came from that ask.”

She explained how that conversation took place just days before the world shut down. The follow-up meetings were

3. Dyani White Hawk Polk, “The Long Game ,” Arts 9, no. 2 (June 2020): 67, web.

4. The Armory Show 2020 was held from March 5 to 8, 2020.

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held over Zoom. When they had arrived at an agreement, Dyani set down to draft a plan. She explained: “It was the first composition that came to mind. I had some fear in taking on such a huge undertaking. I sat down and, in one day at my kitchen table, I figured it out.” She explained that the sequence of forms and the colors were significant to what she wanted to do, and the composition and materials guided the scale to be an 8-by-14-foot construction.

With the concept in hand, Dyani set out to identify a source to provide the necessary materials. She initially wanted to use 30-millimeter bugle beads, the same size she used on other mid-size beaded paintings. But with the impact of COVID-19 felt all over the supply chain, it became clear that in order to produce the concept true to the intended colors and scale, she would only be able to get enough beads in the 9-millimeter size. This radically shifted the scope of the work. She initially planned to sew loomed strips of the larger beads directly onto canvas, as she had in previous mixed-media works. After evaluating potential conservation issues considering the weight of the beads, plus time and logistics of stitching beaded strips to canvas at that scale, she decided to work with a fabrication company to design a rigid panel system. This laid a construction plan for their work.

As she waited for beads to arrive from Japan, Russia, and locations across the United States, she recognized that the pandemic was not going to be short term.

In late April of 2021, to minimize the possibility of a potential COVID-19 exposure, Dyani took her mother-in-law and younger daughter away from their home in Shakopee, Minnesota, and retreated north to a cabin in the Mille Lacs Lake area where she worked for two weeks.

In this home away from home, during the final weeks of the State of Minnesota v. Derek Michael Chauvin trial and sentencing, Dyani found herself reckoning with the Black Lives Matter protests, the murder of George Floyd in her hometown, the continuing protests for Indigenous human rights, and the further

DYANI WHITE HAWK

exposure of the great political divide. The weight and importance that this time of social unrest represents, an ongoing battle against white supremacy and toward a truly free society for all, contributed to a fear that gripped her, even as she was working on Wopila | Lineage.

Dyani realized, “It is entirely possible that I can put all this effort, all this love, all this passion into this piece.

And because the greater American public does not know Native history, does not know Native Art history, does not know Indigenous people or communities, because they don’t know the significance of making this piece for this show, it is entirely possible that people can see it, think it’s pretty, and walk away and not understand. That scared the sh— out of me. Because people won’t know the significance of making this piece.”

The gravity of her words resonated in our conversation. To be a creative Native is a minefield. Dyani elaborated that the struggle with the fear gripped

her and became an impediment to the progress that was needed. “Then I sat on the porch trying to figure out, What am I responding to? I had to dig down and figure out what is causing this emotional response.”

It took seriously looking at all the realities of the Whitney commission and what it meant for her and beyond her. “I know that the expectation is for Native folks, and BIPOC folks at large, to make pieces that educate people. It has been our job to slap people in the face, to expose the racism, all the isms. When that work takes place, and it is really important work, then people can say, ‘Yes! and I’m on board and I can feel good about that!’”

While describing this, Dyani’s hands paused from drawing. “I realized that I was responding to that expectation.

I was afraid, because I wasn’t going to be doing that in my first opportunity to be on that big stage.

“I’m responding to the fact that our people, Native people, and BIPOC people

above S h e G i ve s (Q u i e t Strength VII), 2020, acrylic on canvas, collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 2020.17. Photo: Rik Sferra.

Image courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery. opposite Untitled (All the Colors), 2020, acrylic, bugle beads, thread, synthetic sinew on canvas, collection of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. Photo: Rik Sferra.

Image courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery.

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above S h e G i ve s (Q u i e t Strength IV), 2018, acrylic on canvas, 60 × 48 in. Photo: Rik Sferra. Image courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery. opposite Dyani White Hawk in her studio with some of the community members who assisted with the making of Wopila | Lineage (2021). Left to right: Jennie Kappenman (Red Lake Ojibwe/Leech Lake Ojibwe), Angela Kappenman (Leech Lake Ojibwe), Delaney Keshena (Menominee), nouf selah (Muwalladi/Yemeni/ Ethiopian), Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota), Jennifer Adams (Ho-Chunk/Mvskoke), HoonMana Yazzie-Polk (Navajo/ Quechan/San Carlos Apache), Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Ojibwe), and Noah Polk (Quechan/Navajo/San Carlos Apache). Photo: Danielle DeLong (Ho-Chunk).

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have not been afforded the luxury of making what they want, when they want, for the reasons they want. We have not been afforded the luxury to make for the sake of creation, to create for whatever force is driving them. We have not been given that kind of freedom.”

D yani got animated as she explained further: “I’m not going to play the game. I’m not going to give them the instant ‘woke juice.’ Unless they try. If they try, it’s there. It’s front and center. If they work for it, it’s there in a really big way, physically for sure, but also conceptually. But you have to work for it. You have to think about it. The longer you think about it, the more there is to offer.

But it’s not spoon-fed.

“And that was a risk. I had some major fear about it.”

Dyani continued: “But then I also realized that my fear meant that even

though I knew those truths to be the truth, I had bought into what had been taught. The fear meant that to some extent I drank the punch, and I also had to unlearn it. I had to learn that it was okay for me to do what I wanted to do and why I was inspired to do it. And that the inspiration and the motivation to do that work was just as valid as anything else.

It was important to recognize that I had the right to do it, and it was important to follow it, even though what I feared may or may not happen in response.”

Looking away reflectively, Dyani continued: “The work was a gift for me in that way, because it really allowed me to think about those things and to walk through the fear.”

We both took a breath. Walking through fear is something with which we are both familiar. The last couple of years has been filled with innumerable sources of fear. We both had lost family and friends during the pandemic, watched our children growing up in a country that does not honor their humanity as Indigenous people, and recognize how little value is assigned to our beloved cultures. Yet we persist in our work to steadfastly honor our cultures, our philosophies, our values.

Our conversation turned to the way cultures assign value, especially in consideration of Euro-American cultural values. Dyani explained that this was why the support panels are painted gold. She described that this was an interrogation of value systems.

“The underpainting is gold,” Dyani said. “That’s been carried forward from the Quiet Strength painting series that I did. It was a conceptual burying. In that series I push back on a lot of different hierarchies. But one of those hierarchies is the way that the art world has prioritized certain media, designated certain media as valuable, and designated other media as less valuable and less desirable.”

Dyani addressed how art history has been built on Western cultural values, so that marble, bronze, and oil paints, most associated with European and Euro-American artists and mostly men, have benefited from these value assignments. This knowledge motivated her to push back against this hierarchical value system because it oppresses Indigenous

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art and artists. She described how the Quiet Strength series used different underpaintings to address the illogical values assigned to the metals.

“Some underpaintings are gold, some are copper, some are silver,” Dyani says. “This was done to create opportunities for us to discuss that all of these have values assigned and each one is different.

But these are all gifts from the land. Gold, silver, copper, porcupine quills, natural fibers, glass that makes beads—these are all gifts from the land. Human beings have placed monetary value on these materials and decided that one has more monetary value than the other.”

We considered the valuation of resources from the land as a concept that draws upon the convergence of Western epistemology and capitalism. Dyani said assigning value through this system was problematic.

“I believe that when we do that, instead of looking at the way that value is added as all these materials work in unison; when we create these hierarchical systems that value one gift of the land

more than the other—take water and oil for example—that imbalance and chaos can happen.” Dyani continued, “And the same thing happens when we apply those human-made value systems to people.

“So a lot of those pieces” in her Quiet Strength series “are created to make opportunities to have critical dialogue about how we assign value and then how we choose to perpetuate those systems.

How we play along or hopefully make moves to think more critically about those value systems in the future.”

By placing gold beneath the beadwork, Dyani is juxtaposing Lakota and Euro-American value systems against one another with the beadwork carrying the greater presence. Further, by incorporating Lakota symbolism, she privileges viewers who recognize the language of Indigenous aesthetics and kapemni (the hourglass form).

Privileging Lakota culture and community is an extension of Dyani’s

gratitude. It doesn’t take long listening to her to recognize that she knows that Wopila | Lineage is the product of family support, her culture, and her community, including the contributing beadwork artists. This gratitude is part of why she is so confident that Lakota culture has a place within contemporary American art. To use designs that speak to the genius of her ancestors, to make choices for color and placement, and to apply the red horizontal line are all assertions of Lakota values she shares with audiences in the most privileged of cultural spaces: museums. This lineage of Lakota aesthetics speaks to the values of love, family, culture, and the resources from the land as gifts from the Creator.

Dyani’s work becomes not simply an act of creativity but also a masterclass on living as a Lakota person and expressing that as an artist. I think back to how much truth Truman’s words carried, and I am filled with gratitude, again.

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Willow Cree Writer, Journalist & Curator

PAUL SEESEQUASIS

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

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ᓃ ᐱ ᓰ ᐦ ᑯ ᐹ ᐃ ᐧ ᔨ ᓂ ᐤ NÎPISÎH KOPÂW I Y I N I W an d member of the Beardy’s and Okemasis’ Cree Nation, Paul Seesequasis, lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He was a founding editor of Aboriginal Voices magazine and the editor of Theytus Books, the oldest Indigenous publishing house in Canada.

He curates the Indigenous Archival Photo Project, which explores the history and identity of Indigenous archival photographs through an online database and physical exhibition. Knopf Canada published his photo book, Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun: Portraits of Everyday Life in Eight Indigenous Communities in 2019, which won Saskatchewan’s Book of the Year award. Knopf will also publish his photo book Gaze, Kahentinetha Horn & the 1960s in 2023. Seesequasis was selected to be among Canada’s official literary delegation for the 2021 Frankfurt International Book Fair. His essays appear in publications including The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and Maclean’s.

MRS: How did you transition from journalism and editing to authoring photo books and curating?

PS: Like many things in life, it wasn’t planned but seemed to happen naturally.

I’ve worked as a journalist and a program officer at the Canada Council for the Arts and other places, so I’ve always had a deep interest and commitment to the arts and photography—in particular, the history and practice of photography and Indigenous peoples. A culmination of factors made this transition a reality.

MRS: What drew you to publishing volumes of archival photographs of Indigenous individuals and communities? And why does that pull linger with you today?

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MRS: I’m fascinated by photo books, having written part of my dissertation on their function and meaning. What is the power of the photo book?

PS: I was firstly inspired by my late mother who was a residential school survivor, attending St. Michael’s Residential School in Duck Lake, Saskatchewan. Several years ago, she was one of the honorary witnesses to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings and at that same time commented to me that, while a lot of awful things had happened and were being talked about, few were mentioning all the positive things that previous generations were able to accomplish despite all the obstacles: keeping languages, kinship, and culture alive. I began to look for photographs in archives, museums, and historical societies that would reframe and portray the strength and dignity of those generations. As I found them, chose them, and posted them online, the Indigenous Archival Photo Project was born. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and people posted comments, often naming people in the photos and providing historical context. This led to correcting the official archival records and also freeing these photos, so people in the communities could see them, reclaim them, feel reunited with them.

PS: It’s a good question. Obviously that balance of image and text is integral.

There is an aesthetic impact when we view the image on paper, but then the text adds another layer of experience, of interpretation, and of story. It’s subjective, but the photo books that most attract me are not only a visual experience but also a narrative one, especially when that narrative is open to interpretation. It takes that image, that moment of time, and transports us to a place that is not familiar. Because a photograph is open to many interpretations yet is firmly of the past—that it is a frozen moment in time and not replayable—so too is the text a means to fill in a story that tells what happened, or what may have happened, and in doing so reframes how we view the photograph. It enhances the possibility of seeing the image in a new, enlightened way: not conclusive but a means of interpretation and I think you find that flexibility, for lack of a better word, in the best of photo essays or photo narratives.

MRS: Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun displays vernacular life in Indigenous communities from 1925 to 1985, alongside your observations and analyses. Can you talk about these photographs?

PS: The history between Indigenous peoples and the camera is a complex and fraught relationship, often involving stereotyping, exoticization, and an anthropological and archaeological extractive experience. In contrast with Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun, I sought to reframe that photographic

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relationship, to highlight a positive, not intrusive, image-taking and, most importantly, to give back to the communities, the individuals in the photographs, and the readers, the ability to learn more and the ability for those photographs to segue into a more respectful and meaningful exchange.

MRS: A photo book is filtered. Some images are included, while others don’t make the cut. What was your approach to selecting images?

PS: In general, I was curating [out] photography that was not instructive— feeding into well-known tropes like beads and feathers—and was not also framing residential or boarding schools and poverty, colonialism, and all its impacts. This selection was an attempt to liberate the image from those themes and, instead, show the dignity and normalcy of day-to-day life and perseverance. A photograph without that context, without a name or a place or a story, is far too common in the history of the Indigenous image. I very much wanted to counter that with a tribute to the people in the photos.

MRS: As a non-Indigenous person myself, how do you wish your work to be received among non-Indigenous folks? Is there a way to read it differently? Responsibly? Empathetically?

PS: Obviously, when one is not from a culture or a community, one sees a photo differently than someone who is. There is a balance there, and by avoiding generalities and stereotypes, we can find the keys: the universalities that we all “get” or can relate to. The stories, if they are engaging and interesting, will create their own organic connection to the reader, regardless of background, and it is that common humanity that is the “connect” within the book.

MRS: You’ve curated major exhibitions of Indigenous photographers including Enclosing Some Snapshots: The Photography of Métis Activist James Brady at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum in 2020.

above Cover of Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun: Portraits of Everyday Life in Eight Indigenous Communities (Knopf Canada, 2019) opposite Paul Seesequasis (Willow Cree). Image courtesy of the author.

PS: Yes, which is now touring Saskatchewan and also several other photo exhibitions. Unfortunately a couple of the exhibitions scheduled prior to the pandemic became, of necessity, virtual.

It is better than nothing. But I do believe that the in-person experience with an exhibit— the tactile nature of being able to see (not on a screen), touch, and experience with other people is not something a virtual exhibit can replicate. I am excited to witness a return to live exhibitions and events. It means all the difference.

MRS: Right now, you are crowdsourcing funding to build an online archive for

the Indigenous Archival Photo Project.

Can you discuss your plans for it and how to contribute?

PS: Yes, I am fundraising and crowdsourcing via my website paulseesequasis. com. This will continue, but currently I am also investigating public and private support for a permanent website that could be a database with links to various archival collections, both private and public, as well as tools to research by name, community, region, and time period. Over the next while, I hope to develop this and also ensure that the NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 73

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project goes on, beyond my involvement, and leaves a lasting legacy.

MRS: Numerous Indigenous photographic archives out there in the world remain tucked away or protected, often for very good reasons. I’ve seen an extraordinarily beautiful and informative collection from Northern Ontario, Ojibway territory, shot with a cheap camera. It remains kept within the family. What do you say, or what is the protocol, to encourage such individuals to step forward and offer their pictures?

PS: I totally understand the issues of privacy, and also of protocols. Museums and galleries around the world are starting to deal with these complex issues.

Most of the photos I’ve posted through the years of the project are digitized and open to the public, but often these collections do not reach people in the communities [being represented]. The online part of the project enables people, say on Facebook, to see, often for the first time, a relative or even themselves, and that’s how the naming and the stories began, organically. I don’t have to spark them; they sparked themselves.

As you point out, many private collections will remain private and hopefully preserved, but there are also many, many that have been lost or are disintegrating in some garage. Those losses are not recoverable. Recently, several private individuals have approached me to post photographs of Indigenous people and communities that their parent or grandparent had taken. We have been able to not only identify [the subjects] because of this but also, in a few cases, have returned the photographic prints to the families.

That is a remarkable example of visual reclamation.

MRS: Why do these photographs matter so much today?

PS: They connect us to the past. They speak to our shared humanities. They make us see the world anew—the way a child does—and that’s invigorating.

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TRADITIONAL WAYS

By Paul Seesequasis (Willow Cree) Excerpt from Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada (Kids Can Press and Canadian Geographic, 2018), reprinted with permission

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AMES JEROME was born on July 31, 1949, in the northern hamlet of Aklavik, N.W.T. He grew up, as generations of Gwich’in children had, in a camp on the land known as Big Rock by the Mackenzie River. His father, Joe Bernard Jerome, was a special constable with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a trapper and chief of the Gwichya Gwich'in of Arctic Red River (Tsiigehtchic). His mother was Celina Jerome, née Coyen. The youngest of four brothers and two half-sisters, Jerome was able to spend years with his family, hunting and fishing, before having to attend Grollier Hall residential school in Inuvik, N.W.T. At the age of 12, Jerome received a gift that would change his life — his mother gave him his first camera.

Both of Jerome’s parents died before he completed high school. After graduation, he trained as a welder and travelled around Canada before

returning to his ancestral home in the Mackenzie Delta. There, his artistic inclinations were rekindled. As he spent time on the delta, his attachment to Gwich’in culture and traditions strengthened, as did his inspiration to record traditional ways that were gradually disappearing under the pressure of southern culture and technology.

Beginning in 1977, Jerome worked for the now defunct Native Press newspaper as a staff photographer for eight months before becoming a freelance photographer. His art took him into remote areas and into the skies for aerial assignments, though he also did studio work. While at Native Press he met professional photographer Tessa Macintosh, who’d recently arrived in Yellowknife to help train First Nations photographers.

Macintosh recalled their meeting: “He’d applied for the job to study photography and learn on the job. It was for reporters [who] weren’t really

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trained in photography but enjoyed it and did it. We started working together, and sometimes we did the same job together.

He had projects he found interesting and he had connections, so he’d go off and do them; stuff that was out there on the land and in the bush with First Nations friends.”

Over the next two years, Jerome took thousands of photographs around the Northwest Territories, including in Yellowknife and the South Slave region. Many of his photographs were taken in the Beaufort Delta region, documenting traditional Gwich’in life in the summer and winter camps and trapping and fishing activities along the river. He also travelled throughout the North, documenting large social events such as the Arctic Winter Games and the Northern Games in Inuvik.

He produced an impressive portfolio of portraits, self-portraits, and photos of contemporary life in the towns. Jerome developed his photos in the darkrooms of a research centre in Inuvik (now known as the Aurora Research Institute), as well as the Native Press offices in Yellowknife.

Macintosh points out that Jerome was doing this work before the days where signed permission forms were required to take someone’s photograph. For that reason, there was very much an element of trust involved. “He certainly had a passion and an eye and he had a rapport with the people of the North,” she says. “I went back and reviewed the contact sheets of that time in the bush, and you can see he worked in sync with people. There was a rhythm involved, and he never bothered people. It was just understood in the old bush way. Trust is there because you live together. James would have been in the tent next door, eating together and hunting. Knowing James, he would have put down his camera and gone hunting as well.

He was a real bushman.”

The career of this groundbreaking Indigenous artist was tragically cut short by a house fire in Inuvik on Nov. 17, 1979.

Incredibly, thousands of his negatives were salvaged by his partner, Elisabeth Jansen Hadlari. Jerome’s portfolio, a collection totalling more than 9,000 negatives, was deposited at the Northwest Territories Archives in 1982, in trust for his son Thomas Hadlari. In 1995, Thomas donated the negatives to the archives for the benefit of future generations. These photographs provide an invaluable picture of Gwich’in and Dene life captured during the short period Jerome had to devote to his passion. At the time of his death, it is believed he was focused on finishing a book about Dene Elders of the Mackenzie Valley, titled Portraits and History of the Dene Elders. It is assumed that this work was lost in the fire that claimed his life.

Territorial Archivist Erin Suliak of the NWT Archives says many of the negatives were seriously damaged, though the archives were able to do vital conservation work in concert with the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre to stabilize and preserve the collection. In 2008 and 2009, the archives received federal funding and were able to partner with the Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute on an identification

At the age of 12, Jerome received a gift that would change his life—his mother gave him his first camera.

above Jerome [James (Métis, 1949–1979)] captures the joy of three siblings playing on driftwood in the Mackenzie River. Both images courtesy of author and Kids Can Press. opposite A scene from the 1979 Northern Games in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, documented by Jerome.

project (the GSCI’s mandate is to “document, preserve and promote Gwich’in culture, language, traditional knowledge and values”). “The success of the project was due entirely to this partnership,” says Suliak. “We were able to do identification workshops up in the Mackenzie Delta in the communities of Tsiigehtchic and Fort McPherson. It was just incredible. We got information about people, places and activities from Gwich’in Elders. We also worked with the GSCI to get the traditional Gwich’in names for all of the places. To me, this was such an important part of this project.”

Through this work, more than 3,500 of James Jerome’s photographs were catalogued with detailed descriptions and digitized by the NWT Archives, ensuring Jerome’s legacy will last for generations.

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CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS

To Know the Fire: Pueblo Women Potters and the Shaping of History Krannert Art Museum

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SPECIAL EXHIBITION at Krannert Art Museum on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign celebrates a gift of more than 80 modern and contemporary Pueblo ceramics.

Professor Emeritus Shozo Sato and his wife Alice Ogura Sato gave her brother George Ogura’s collection to the museum in his honor. The Ogura collection complements previous gifts to the museum, including several exceptional works by Maria Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo, 1887–1980).

The collection reflects the influential roles of several matriarchs who revived historical modes of art making and then passed on their knowledge to their families. For these artists, harvesting and preparing clay, sculpting, polishing, painting, and firing are equally important parts of a deeply spiritual practice that results in living vessels. These works are all hand built using a coil and pinch method, never a wheel. Vessels in many

different shapes vary in size from less than one inch to more than a foot in diameter.

One dates to 1890 and another from 2001, but most are from the 20th century.

Three women from different pueblos—Maria Martinez, Nampeyo, and Lucy M. Lewis—resurrected unique approaches and styles by studying sherds at abandoned villages. Most of the 47 artists in this exhibition are related to or learned from these women. Nampeyo (Hopi-Tewa, 1860–1942) was inspired by ceramic remnants, which had been painted with white slip and decorated with red and black features, that were found at Sikyátki in Arizona.

This became known as the Sikyátki Revival style, and it is kept alive through Nampeyo’s descendants. Two of these are Nampeyo’s daughter Fannie Polacca Nampeyo (Hopi-Tewa, 1900–1987) and great-granddaughter Dextra Quotskuyva (Hopi-Tewa, 1928–2019). They frequently incorporated migration patterns on their works: intricate parallel and crisscrossed lines alongside wing shapes. This is one example of an ancestral design that is now passed on to and modified by new generations of artists.

Ceramic work in the Southwest is dominated by women; however, some male artists are included. Nampeyo’s grandson Thomas Nampeyo (Hopi-Tewa, 1935–2003) broke from the Sikyátki style and instead applied sgraffito to his pots

above Juana Leno (Acoma Pueblo, 1917–2000), Triple Canteen, black-on-white earthenware jar with Tularosa design, mid- to late 20th century, collection of the Krannert Art Museum, George Ogura Collection, 2020-8-22. ©Estate of Juana Leno. opposite Jobena Petonoquot (Kitigan Zibi Algonquin/Naskapi), Bringer of Death, 2018, damask, deer hide, wooden dowel rods, teacups, glass seed beads, cedar branches. Photo: A. Ferber

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by scratching designs into the surface of finished vessels. One miniature jar, just three inches tall, features a hummingbird with delicate flowers.

In the 1920s Maria Martinez worked with her husband Julian Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo, 1879–1943) to rejuvenate early Pajarito Plateau–style black-on-black pottery. They achieved a metallic sheen through polishing hardened clay with a stone rather than applying glaze. Slip painted over the polished surface becomes matte when fired, during which the pots become jet black. Maria and Julian spent a decade perfecting this technique.

Lucy M. Lewis (Acoma Pueblo, 1898–1992) revitalized fine-line patterns inspired by Mimbres pottery dating to the first century BCE. This fine black-onwhite painting became a common trait of Acoma pottery. Repeated horizontal lines often symbolize rain. Seven of Lewis’s nine children became artists, including Dolores Lewis Garcia (Acoma Pueblo) and Emma Lewis (Acoma Pueblo, 1931–2013) in the Ogura collection. In addition to other work, these women are represented in the exhibition by a trio of small white bowls with figures of Kokopelli playing his flute.

The only figurative sculpture in the exhibition is by Juanita Martinez (Taos/ Jemez). The “singing mother” motif presents a woman with many children on her lap and in her arms. Sometimes she plays a drum. The storytelling figures became dominant at Cochiti Pueblo in the mid-1960s, following the work of Helen Cordero (Cochiti, 1915–1994).

Nampeyo, Maria Martinez, and Lucy M. Lewis transformed the economies of their pueblos and became ambassadors for their cultures, traveling extensively and meeting with world leaders. To Know the Fire brings much-needed attention to their phenomenal legacies as entrepreneurs, artists, and diplomats.

This exhibition also provided an opportunity for the museum to learn the necessity of engaging in early and frequent dialogue with artists and members of the cultures represented in the galleries. Curator Allyson Purpura planned a sound component to share with visitors the voices of the pots, a concept often mentioned by artists in interviews and poetry. The goal was to foreground

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Native ways of knowing by providing visitors with a nondidactic, sensorial experience of these vessels as vibrant, living things. She intended to play recordings of sounds made by tapping a selection of pots. However, when she shared the plan with visiting artist Debra Yepa-Pappan (Korean/Jemez Pueblo), the latter was deeply unsettled by the act of forcing the pots to communicate/ perform with no interlocutor/interpreter.

Enacting communal Indigenous (and feminist) methods of inclusion, Yepa-Pappan sought input from Pueblo and wider Native American potter communities before bringing her concerns to the curator. Artists and knowledge keepers agreed that this would be disrespectful to the pots’ makers, amounting to an unethical sharing of protected language and wisdom, parallel to engaging uninitiated persons in religious ceremony. The pots’ voices would have been performative rather than communicative.

Yepa-Pappan approached Purpura with this feedback, and the soundscape was immediately deinstalled.

Purpura further responded to a second request to upright some pots that were initially mounted on a tilt to show the artist’s unique signatures.

Instead, photographs of the signatures were displayed next to the pots, which were reinstalled resting comfortably on the deck of the case.

The politics of interpretation are deceivingly complex. Even the most well-intended, well-researched ideas about the display of objects and attempts to center Native voices are best reviewed by the appropriate communities. In this case, Purpura is grateful to Yepa-Pappan for consulting with her Pueblo colleagues and for sharing their collective concerns with her. Indeed, the corrections that were made to the installation have become integral to the exhibition’s biography and its capacity to teach about the necessity for open dialogue, critique, and relationship-building with Native communities.

This collection can be viewed on the museum’s web page, along with a trove of related resources for further study.

—Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

OTTAWA

Jobena Petonoquot: Rebellion of my Ancestors Ottawa Art Gallery

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HE CRUX OF JOBENA PETONOQUOT’S artistic practice is a simple and horrifying fact summarized in the introductory text of her recent solo exhibition at the Ottawa Art Gallery: “religion was used as a justification for genocide.” Like so many Indigenous artists, this Kitigan Zibi Algonquin/ Naskapi woman attempts to process this international and familial trauma through creative outlets. In her sculpture, photography, prints, and installation work, she combines materials and symbols from Indigenous cultures and Christian settler/ colonial cultures.

Resilient Repugnance: Baptism Gowns (2018) is four white, infant-sized tunics suspended from a birch branch.

Christians continue the practice of dressing children and adults in a white robe for the sacrament of baptism, wherein it is believed holy water washes away one’s sins. In a missionary and residential school context, the ritual becomes contradictory since the settler colonists

were also actively annihilating Indigenous cultures and responsible for all the horrors of the boarding school system— from removing children to abusing and even killing them. Petonoquot indigenizes these symbols of purity by beading floral motifs and signs of the four directions onto them. She then documents the act of burying them in shallow graves at Kitigan Zibi, her reserve in Quebec. These photographs become more poignant and upsetting as children’s graves continue to be discovered on parochial residential school grounds.

In an interview with the Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone (BACA), the artist offers a glimpse into her thinking behind this project: “What does it mean to have a funeral? You are not forgetting. You are letting go.” Burying and unearthing the dresses is an act of letting go, but not forgetting.1 In 2021 when a mass grave holding 215 children was discovered on Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc territory, Petonoquot responded with a small assemblage work.

Sanctuary for the Children (2021) presents a pair of beaded child’s moccasins made from deer hide, muskrat fur, and lace. A coiled braid of sweetgrass tied with a red ribbon pays respect to those who never went home.

A suite of four baby bonnets in a nearby case comprise My Church (Red

1. Jobena Petonoquot, BACA, May 28, 2020, YouTube video, 6:23, web.

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Bonnet, Yellow Bonnet, Black Bonnet, White Bonnet) (2021). She beaded each bonnet with various images: a dead chickadee, a sleeping rabbit, spruce boughs, trillium, and more. The bonnets rest on stands above cedar clippings.

Representing the four directions with settler/colonial clothing, the bonnets can refer to Indigenous children who were assimilated into Christian and European ways of living through residential schools, as well as the present and future generations who keep Indigenous traditions alive and organic.

Several works in the exhibition pay homage to the artist’s grandfather, who resisted colonial rule by continuing to hunt, trap, and gather food for his family.

Gins of the Church (2022) presents a small game trap on a beaded red velvet pillow surrounded by lace. A red and blue rosary snakes through the gin (an alternate term for trap used numerous times in various biblical translations). The juxtaposition suggests that religion is also a kind of snare or that Catholicism itself has been bamboozled by Indigenous ways of knowing—or both.

Bringer of Death (2018) is a miniature tipi made with white damask fabric.

Petonoquot stitched a yellow oval emblem on its front that encircles a beaded crow.

This bird is a symbol of evil for the Algonquin. The omen could mean many things, but the artist says one of those is “death to colonial discourse.” Cedar branches surrounding the tipi provide a setting for four teacups, representing ancestors and the four directions.

Petonoquot taught herself to bead and continues to live and work on Kitigan Zibi. Co-curator Lori Beavis (Mississauga) explains, “This unceded territory has been closely linked with both the Hudson’s Bay Company and the religious Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate—connections with [economics and religion].”2 In her work, Petonoquot successfully critiques these larger powers and their continuing effects on her family.

Rebellion of My Ancestors premiered in 2019 at Dawson College in Montreal, Quebec. This iteration at the OAG was curated by Lori Beavis and Rebecca Basciano.

—Andrea L. Ferber, PhD 2. Lori Beavis, “Jobena Petonoquot: Beading Stories,” exhibition brochure (Montreal: Dawson College, 2019).

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below Andrew Michael (Yup'ik/Iñupiaq), Brown Angel, 2020, basswood, myrtle wood, oak, vintage pony hide, polyester fabric, glass beads, feathers, caribou hair, acrylic, copper wire, metal tacks, rabbit fur, air system ball joints, nails, screws, 28 × 24 × 9 in.

PORTLAND, OREGON

Where the Waters Come Together Center for Native Arts and Cultures

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M ONG PL ANTS AND WILDLIFE, the waters at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers provide habitat for salmon, birds, elk, and edible bulbs. Due to manipulations of the waterways, present-day Portland, Oregon, would not be recognizable to the previous occupants of the historical village sites it rests upon, such as the Cowlitz, Wasco, Kalapuya (including Tualatin), Molalla, Chinook (including Clackamas, Kathlamet, and Multnomah), and other tribes with seasonal encampments. The inaugural exhibition, Where the Waters Come Together, held from April 22 to June 30, explored Indigenous perspectives of humankind’s relationship with rivers and oceans at an extremely relevant location.

In 2021, as a land acknowledgment—not the usual mere words offered at the opening of a meeting or an event, but in an act of repatriation—the Yale Union building, a contemporary art center in Portland, transferred ownership to the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF). The building allows NACF to assert visibility of the Indigenous populations in the region.

Their mission is to strengthen Native communities by advocating for “positive social change with American Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native peoples in the United States.” NACF offers funding and resource opportunities such as mentor artist fellowships, partnerships with Native nations, and awards for individual artists through the SHIFT–Transformative Change and Indigenous Arts program as well as the LIFT–Early Career Support for Native Artists program.

NACF President/CEO Lulani Arquette (Native Hawaiian) stated in a press release that the NACF board and staff “believe that this free land and building transfer will set an example for

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recognizing the value of Native property ownership in urban areas.” The historic Yale Union, which encompasses about half a city block in Southeast Portland, is being renovated for a variety of Indigenous ceremonies, events, and artistic exhibitions. Now the Center for Native Arts and Cultures, and NACF headquarters, its first exhibition will be documented as Where the Waters Come Together.

Through correspondence, Arquette stressed the intentionality of the water theme: “Focusing our first exhibition on the importance of water as a precious, life-giving source and its significance to Native peoples couldn’t be more appropriate as we continue to experience the pollution and destruction of our waterways.”

Curated by Reuben Tomás Roqueñi (Chicanx/Yaqui/ Mayo descent), director of the transformative change programs, the exhibition features diverse carving, glass, weaving, painting, and canoes. Featured artists included Greg Archuleta (Grand Ronde Chinook/Kalapuya/Shasta), Lehuauakea (Native Hawaiian), Brenda Mallory (Cherokee Nation), Andrew Michael (Yup'ik/Iñupiaq), Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos), Shirod Younker (Coquille/Coos/Umpqua), and Sean Gallagher (Iñupiaq).

Canoe maker and woodcarver Gallagher addressed today’s human impact on these waterways in his piece, In Our Nature. He carved his life-sized figure of a human from a single piece of red cedar and, in ink, overlaid imagery that depicts Bureau of Land Management protests, organized labor, and equitable transit. Gallagher said his piece represents the human body’s connection to the earth and universe with an emphasis on honoring the whole person, environment, and human labor. The artwork also relates to, as he said, “themes such as climate resiliency, Black Lives Matter, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives.”

At 5-foot-11-inches tall and 3-feet wide, Gallagher’s carving seemed to occupy the gallery space with the same omnipotent presence humans occupy within the Portland water basin region. The soft, light, organic woodgrain and unassuming nude quality of the figure contrasted against the dark, angular images that depicted generations of conspired manipulations of landscapes and waterways. The masks on the wall, two by Gallagher and two by Michael, bear witness to these narratives.

The Portland Basin is all-encompassing. People in Portland occupy the watershed of small local waterways. A partially exposed underground stream flows through the Center for Native Arts and Cultures’ sub-basement. The stream is evidence of the site’s connection to the life force of the confluence. Arquette explained that NACF will preserve the underground natural stream to create a beautiful and contemplative area focused on the confluence of local waterways. The stream will be incorporated as a sacred space to honor the evolving narrative of regional Native identities, tribes, and cultural practices. She says, “The peaceful space will reflect a connection to nature and provide opportunities for creative inspiration and cultural enrichment.”

—Nanette Kelley (Osage Nation/Cherokee Nation)

Now hiring!

Assistant Professor in Native American and Indigenous Arts Qualifications: Ph.D. in art history, visual culture, or a related field in hand or expected by Sept. 2023

Deadline: Dec. 1, 2022

• Tenure track • Native American and Indigenous arts/visual culture • 17th to 19th-century transatlantic encounter focus preferred but not required • Position commences Fall 2023

employment.williams.edu NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 79

REVIEWS

SANTA FE

Athena LaTocha: Mesabi Redux

below Athena LaTocha (Hunkpapa Lakota/Ojibwe), Untitled (Mesabi #11), 2019, sand-cast iron, 36¾ × 22½ × 4 in.

IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

T

HE SOLO EXHIBITION Athena LaTocha: Mesabi Redux (June 10, 2022, to December 25, 2022) presents viewers with a strategic process of reimagining and recreating to yield a series of metal earthworks. LaTocha (Hunkpapa Lakota/ Ojibwe) cast a group of sculptures through pouring molten iron into sand beds during her 2019 residency at the MacRostie Art Center in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, a program supported by the Minnesota Museum of Mining. The artist made these works in situ in the iron deposits in the Mesabi Mountain Range (Misaabe Wajiw, or “Giant Mountain” in Ojibwe). The process enables a transmission of healing through inversion.

Throughout her work, LaTocha’s conceptual process emerges from repetitive travel. These movements allow her to observe the land around her and take note of the temporary and permanent changes in a place. In this case, she saw piles of mine tailings and waste from the Hull Rust Mahoning Mine, an open iron ore pit that created mountainous forms alongside a pit in the land. From here, LaTocha reimagined these byproducts as a concept for her sculptures. In this series, she redirected molten iron ore into something unexpected—abstract sculptures that allowed the material to be seen in a new, restorative way.

LaTocha’s restorative approach to creating these sculptures contextualizes her desire to build a relationship of trust with the land and to embark on a journey that embeds many histories of harm. Through the process, she finds an avenue for redemption and the beginning of a new conversation about northern Minnesota mining and the mining industry writ large. She puts strength into play, enacting a process that takes note of time passing and damages that continue, while contributing a method of 80 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

reuse to these same areas. LaTocha gives new stories to these locales through layers and changing definitions of permanence in these places.

LaTocha’s concept clearly evokes the exhibition title, Mesabi Redux. In these works, she adds layers to the iron’s identity through collaborating with the material to create swirling, curved forms that reveal nuance in the medium’s texture.

Her process also adds layers to the history of the land by initiating a series of actions where the land, in a sense, rebirths the iron for a reciprocal use in art. Positioning the land as a site of support that shapes the forms of iron, LaTocha works in tandem with the earth to complete the casting of sculptures. This process recognizes the possibilities of transformative relationships between all participants in the ecology of a particular place.

The sculptures mesh LaTocha’s Indigenous perspectives with practices of Abstract Expressionism and Land Art. The forms rely on the artist’s performances of intense gestures to create sinuous patterns and geometric notches in the iron. Turning attention to the resulting rippled texture of the medium also serves as an archive of LaTocha’s performative collaborations with the land.

Her Indigenous worldviews allow her to consider the medium of iron within a cycle of rebirth and repurposing—from blurred pathways through destruction and creation and from illness into health.

Her work also poses questions about Native tribes’ metal use in the Great Lakes area, where copper holds a history of thousands of years.

Presenting the medium of iron as one born of gesture, LaTocha opens opportunities for previously unseen

REVIEWS

characteristics to be named and felt. She allows the iron to reveal unexpected images to audiences and facilitates a complex dialogue surrounding the medium. As metal imprints of the Mesabi Mountain Range area, these sculptures perform acts of remembering—from their creation to their display in the museum. As archives, they function as receivers—a complicated task given the medium’s troubled history.

The installation in the South Gallery of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts presents this body of work as a constellation of ten sculptures. Each cast reveals numerous shadows through downward angled lights. The shadows fuel the transformation of new identity in these sculptures. They evoke creative energy and highlight endless, delicate connections in the material, from one swirl to the next. This materiality alludes to the tenuousness of iron, and how it lives with boundaries and limits but also exists in a vulnerable state. The shadows afford a relatability to the medium, through a sort of camouflage.

Each sculpture is dark brown, with twists and turns of nodules and ripples, and they hold space through pronounced shadows. Each work has bridges of iron that could easily break, and some of the forms resemble numbers or symbols. The series offers a sense of lyricism, fluidity, time, and landscape, as LaTocha archives these aspects in each sculpture.

Through her residency, LaTocha tackled an angle of Turtle Island’s colonial history that remains conflicted.

The damage to the land ripples out in the ongoing shifts in climate and toxicity in local ecologies—implications of the mining industry, its part in mass-produced objects, and its role in art production. In her process, she reconfigures the medium of iron from a gentle standpoint, asking it to show another side of itself through the sand casting.

Her work finds a kinship with Native artists making jewelry from silver, minerals, and stones, or Native artists making sculptures in bronze and marble, and she opens another dialogue along these lines. How do Native artists find balance between their art practices and their medium’s direct relationships to

mining? Can conversations through art offer a line of communication between past and current trade in materials and the last century’s market for mined resources? If so, how does one locate healing within these contexts?

Another implication of the Hull Rust Mahoning mining site emerges through industrial travel. Considering the hauling and transport of iron from this locale to a variety of destinations provides LaTocha with an entry point into this aspect of the series. Through her direct experience of traversing the land, she meditates on the colonial history of industrial travel and its interdependency with the mining industry, which unveils layers of implications.

As metal imprints of the Mesabi Mountain Range area, these sculptures perform acts of remembering …

Through Mesabi Redux, LaTocha situates her iron sculptures within a revised set of bearings. She looks at the medium squarely, re-presenting it as a mode of transformation—another parallel to Native artists working in jewelry as well as bronze and marble sculpture. She alludes to the intersections of tourism, including herself and others visiting the “Hull Rust Mine View,” and the visitors to her exhibition, while also examining the interdependency of art, industrial production, sightseeing, and tourism.

Through her process of reimagining the medium of iron, LaTocha finds a way to reinvent it through an Indigenous perspective. Offering it as a site of both learning and healing for herself and museum visitors, she reconfigures the iron into a new language—one of shadows of the land.

LaTocha’s acts of re-creating infuse the medium of iron with love and as a series of abstract correspondence in sculpture for generations to come.

—Michelle J. Lanteri, PhD

SANTA FE

Here, Now and Always Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

I

N A WAY, two hand-sized fragments of copper are the least remarkable objects on display at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture’s completely redesigned permanent exhibition Here, Now and Always. They don’t awe visitors with their size or color or intricacy like the pots and jewelry and paintings on view.

In another way, however, they are the exhibition’s most remarkable objects for they embody the drama and courage of the first revolution to take place in what is now America. One of the first successful Native uprisings in North America against a colonial power. That would be the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, when the Pueblos across present-day New Mexico united in armed opposition against the Spanish and took back their freedom.

The ordinary looking chunks of iron on view at Museum of Indian Art and Culture (MIAC) are in fact fragments of a church bell unearthed at the Palace of Governors on the Plaza in Santa Fe during an archaeological excavation in the early 1970s. Both pieces were recovered from Pueblo Revolt Occupation levels and likely came from a chapel in the area, removed, destroyed, scattered, and buried during the revolt.

The Pueblo Revolt before your very eyes.

The bells signified oppression to the Pueblos. Ringing bells told the local people when to wake up. When to go to church. When to start working. Ringing bells told them when to stop working. The ringing of the bells dictated their lives.

They hated the bells. By removing them, smashing them to pieces, and dispersing the remnants, it was hoped that they would never ring again, and the Spanish would never rule here again. That was the case for 12 years until the Spanish reentered New Mexico.

The gravity of these objects didn’t dawn on me until days after first seeing them. Among the innumerable amazingly NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 81

REVIEWS

beautiful items on view—some 600 in total—these pieces of iron don’t particularly stand out. When snapshots of the exhibition played back through my mind, I again overlooked them. The bell fragments are displayed near the galleries’ exit. Retracing my steps through the presentation, I finally stopped there.

Surely these can’t be period authentic, I remember thinking, not having read the object text carefully. What are the chances that any of the actual bell pieces from 300 years ago revealed themselves to be put on view in a museum? I figured they were reproductions but checked in with Diane Bird (Santo Domingo Pueblo), MIAC archivist and curator for the “Survival and Resistance” portion of the exhibition to be sure. I was floored when she shared proof of their authenticity with me. Upon learning this, the fragments became not only the most remarkable objects to me in Here, Now and Always, but the most remarkable objects I’ve ever seen in any museum. Additionally surprising, they weren’t on view previously. The original version of Here, Now and Always, which opened in 1997, didn’t have a “Survival and Resistance” section. No mention of the Pueblo Revolt, or of Bosque 82 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Redondo, or water protectors. All of these important events have been included in the updated version.

The more than 30 Indigenous collaborators on the exhibition—artists, scholars, and community members across the region—in conjunction with more than a dozen co-curators, decided the time was right to share these stories here.

They were ready to have that conversation and audiences were ready to listen.

Printmaker and painter Jason Garcia’s (Santa Clara Pueblo) Tewa Tales of Suspense series of prints, nearby to the bell fragments, further tell the story of the Pueblo Revolt. As do three knotted cords of Hopi construction based on the genuine Hopi-made cords that were used to count down to the opening of the revolt, and a reproduction Fred Kabotie (Hopi, ca. 1900–1986) painting depicting a hanging priest about to be burned.

“Survival and Resistance” occupies a small portion of Here, Now and Always, but I found it to be the most powerful, and the most eye-opening. My one wish is that this part of the exhibition was larger.

The pots and blankets and regalia that fill the remainder of the exhibition are exceptional, but comparables can be

seen elsewhere. I’ve not seen anything comparable to the bell fragments and the cords. Or to Deb Haaland’s (Laguna) inaugural dress worn at her swearing-in as a congresswoman from New Mexico, and the Zuni Olla Maiden figure, which communicates the importance of water here and water rights.

These items directly connect the history of Pueblo art and culture with the contemporary successes and setbacks being experienced among Native people.

“Survival and Resistance” reinforces that whatever those specific present-day successes or setbacks might be, from Deb Haaland’s ascension to Secretary of the Interior, to ongoing resistance over pipelines on Indian land, these events are grounded. They come from somewhere: from Spanish colonial rule, and from American colonial rule.

I would have liked to see more attention in Here, Now and Always devoted to contemporary matters as, for me, that has become the best way of understanding the history of Indigenous people across America. The present tells of the past even louder than the past tells of the present.

—Chadd Scott

REVIEWS

WEST BEND, WISCONSIN

Tom Jones: Here We Stand Museum of Wisconsin Art

F

ROM ACROSS THE ROOM, the oversize portrait of Raymond Goodbear by Ho-Chunk photographer Tom Jones shimmers brilliantly in the gallery light. The Ho-Chunk Nation citizen is dressed in dance regalia, well adorned with a variety of colored and textural detailing.

He holds an eagle-feather fan and decorated war club and stares beyond his frame at passersby, challenging them to understand and, perhaps, embrace his Ho-Chunk culture. His image is surrounded by a web of intricate white beads, rhinestones, and shells, stitched

by Jones himself, that represent the spirit world that embraces us all.

Goodbear, who is Jones’s cousin, is part of the photographer’s Strong Unrelenting Spirits series, a group of fine art portraits that also includes a similar

above Tom Jones (Ho-Chunk), Raymond Goodbear, from the Strong Unrelenting Spirits series, 2019, archival digital print with beadwork, 40 × 60 in. opposite Installation view of Here, Now and Always at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

ACONAV gown worn by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (Laguna), designed and created by Loren Aragon (Acoma Pueblo). Photo: Tira Howard. Image courtesy of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.

portrait of Elizah Leonard. Earlier this year, that work captured second-place honors in the Smithsonian’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and hangs on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Although the Leonard portrait is currently on loan, Goodbear and other similar portrait subjects serve as a cornerstone of Tom Jones: Here We Stand, a retrospective of the photographer’s work that opened July 23 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) in West Bend, just north of Milwaukee.

The comprehensive exhibition includes 140 photographic works by Jones, a photography professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, that cover 16 different series spanning 25 years of Jones’s career. “All my work deals with Native American issues,” Jones told me. “It’s Indian first, and then art comes second.”

This comprehensive, retrospective gallery exhibition for Jones embraces numerous approaches, from photojournalism to fine art. But all the works are designed to tell the story of Native Americans, with a particular emphasis on the Ho-Chunk people. Some series feature beautifully conceived portraiture, such as the one Goodbear’s portrait is from. Other series, such as Encountering Cultures (2008), Ho-Chunk Veterans Memorials (1999–present), and Ho-Chunk Warrior (2002–03) serve as cultural mirrors of contemporary Ho-Chunk life. Still others, including Identity Genocide (2012), offer visual commentary on the Ho-Chunk’s place in the modern, commercialized world.

Jones, whose Ho-Chunk name Caxŝepska translates to “White Eagle,” started out as a painter. He became a photographer and was drawn to the greater immediacy of the medium. He NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 83

INDIGENOUS APPALACHIA Creative Work by 15 Contemporary Indigenous Artists Indigenous Native Nations Today Complexities

History | Discussions | Collections | Portrayals A multidisciplinary exhibit by West Virginia University Art in the Libraries & Native American Studies Program launching Fall 2022 at West Virginia University Downtown Library Proud sponsors:

exhibits.lib.wvu.edu/exhibits/indigenous-appalachia

84 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

lets his artistic nature come through in several photo series, most notably Remnants (2017–18), a series of images coupled with carpet patterns from various tribal casinos, and Studies in Cultural Appropriations (2019), a series of 19 of the same water-stained, 1920s-era illustration of a white couple in which the man’s suit is beaded and decorated with different tribal patterns.

One of the most controversial series, Dear America (2002), delves deeper into the past as well as racial themes.

In one piece, Sweet Land of Liberty, an historic sepia-toned photo of a group of Native people commemorates the execution of 38 Dakota men who were hanged south of Mankato, Minnesota, in 1862 under the orders of then-President Abraham Lincoln. A contemporary photo of a white trapper holding up a dead beaver is superimposed on the image.

In another historic photo from the series, Our Fathers’ God to Thee, a large group of Native American children are shown standing in front of the Bethany Indian Mission in Wittenberg, Wisconsin. A dozen white faculty members stand on the building’s balcony above the children. Corresponding text mentions the punishment the children received for speaking their own languages.

Among the most evocative pieces, however, are simple shots of contemporary tribal members who support one of the credos of Jones’s work: that the Ho-Chunk and other tribal members are alive and well, have not disappeared, nor have they been full assimilated into mainstream society. They maintain their own unique identities and culture, something that Jones’s photography is meant to exemplify.

Bill “Beaver Head” (Potawatomi) (2008), part of the Encountering Cultures series, sits outside his tent, cane in hand, wearing a top hat and leather leggings and looking slightly askance and a little skeptical. Eye contact is a central part of the photographer’s techniques to bring subject and audience closer together.

In Elliott and Edward Littlejohn (2003) Elliot, a uniformed Vietnam-era veteran, stands next to a homemade memorial and photo of his late father Edward, dressed in World War II military garb. Part of the Honoring the Ho-Chunk Warrior series, the memorial is a photo nailed to a painted post accompanied by a basket of cigarettes so that visitors may honor Edward’s memory by sharing a smoke. The photo within a photo is another of Jones’s favorite techniques.

And in Bill O’Brian (2000), part of the Ho-Chunk People series, an aging tribal member sits quietly in his parlor chair.

Behind him a painting of what could be a much younger O’Brian clutching a single-shot carbine rifle and wearing a bone-handled knife in a sheath on a US military belt looks out wistfully from a much earlier century.

There is no end to the breadth and depth of Jones’s iconic images, something that prompted MOWA’s Graeme Reid, who curated the exhibition, to reflect on the importance of the photographer’s art form.

“Jones and his photography act as a conduit for better understanding and knowledge of the role and place of the Ho-Chunk in modern society. He is, after all, an educator,” Reid told me. “We just felt it was time to do a retrospective before someone else did.”

—Michael Muckian

REVIEWS

WHITEHORSE, YUKON

Tether Yukon Arts Centre

W

alking into the exhibition Tether at the Yukon Art Centre, part of the Arctic Art Summit in Whitehorse, Canada, I was met by Journey of the Hunt, a beaded and tufted moose antler harness with floral designs that references the experience of a successful harvest. A stunning work of art by Kaylyn Baker (Northern Tutchone/Tlingit), her artist statement shared that “the land holds such a fantastic colour palette in the fall.… I mimic topography and go beyond vegetation to convey subtle references of a successful harvest.” This piece set the tone for a colorful exhibition of more than 50 artists whose work collectively expresses what it means to be from the North.

A team of emerging curators hailing from throughout northern C anada, D arcie “O uiyag hasia k” Bernhardt (Inuvialuk/Gwich’in), Leanne Inuarak-Dall (Inuk), Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé (Upper Tanana), and Heather Von Steinhagen (Cowessess Cree), organized Tether. The exhibition includes prints, regalia, tools, film, photography, skin sewing, tapestry, and sculpture. The curatorial team was mentored by Dr. Heather Igloliorte (Inuk). As the curators shared in their introductory wall text: “We have come to the conclusion that there are meaningful threads between regions and communities across the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Inuit Nunangat. The exhibiting artists use their work as a tool for sovereignty and a way to connect past, present, and future.” A few overlapping themes are present throughout the exhibition, such as the importance of Indigenous relationships to the land, the significance of passing on stories and knowledge through family, and artwork inspired by the aesthetics of Northern landscapes.

Some of the works of art that especially stood out for me in the exhibition

above Kaylyn Baker (Northern Tutchone/Tlingit), Journey of the Hunt, 2022, moose antlers, acid-washed moose hide, beaver fur, velvet, glass beads. Photo: N. Jackinsky-Sethi.

included a large, stretched caribou hide made by sisters Montana and Delaney Prysnuk (Vuntut Gwitch'in), and a pair of beaded Ski-doos made as a mother-daughter collaboration by Angela and Mary Code (Sayisi Dene). I was also drawn to a pair of beaded moosehide mukluks with decorative lynx trim by Karrie Brown (Champagne and Aishihik Southern Tutchone), using skills that Brown learned from her grandma, Audrey Brown (Southern Tutchone), who instilled in her a love for beading.

The curators commissioned some artworks especially for this exhibition.

Other works of art were on loan from seven different Canadian collections.

I appreciated the inclusion of contemporary art alongside historical works of art and seeing Inuit art exhibited alongside Yukon First Nations art. A small detail on the choice of exhibition label text stood out to me, where ancestral works of art such as combs and snowshoe-making tools were lovingly labeled

as “ancestor artist” in place of the more typical gallery label “unknown artist.”

Tether opened during the 2022 Arctic Art Summit, a three-day convening of artists, performers, policymakers, and scholars from throughout the circumpolar world. It is the third Arctic Art Summit that has taken place since 2017.1 Opening the exhibition during this summit provided an opportunity for attendees visiting from throughout the North to consider the artwork in relation to the rich discussions that took place during the summit’s many panels and keynote speeches.

During my time in Whitehorse, I was impressed with the many examples of First Nations public art that decorate the waterfront walk along the Yukon River including totem poles, murals, and sculpture. I was also glad to see the many art galleries that highlight First Nations art in this thriving artistic community.2 —Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD

1. See arcticartssummit.ca.

2. A few galleries of note include the Unorthodox Gallery (unorthodoxyukon.com), Arts Underground (artsunderground.ca), and the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Center gift shop (kwanlindunculturalcentre.com).

NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 85

MOVIE REVIEW

Prey Directed by Dan Trachtenberg Written by Patrick Aison 20th Century Studios, Hulu, 2022

D

IRECTOR DAN TRACHTENBERG tackled an ambitious project. Prey, the fifth installment of the Predator franchise, pits a young Comanche woman, Naru, played by Amber Midthunder (Fort Peck Assiniboine–Sioux), against an extraterrestrial big-game hunter with superhuman strength, invisibility, gadgets to rival the Swiss Army, and an aristocratic love of the hunt. More daunting yet, Midthunder has Schwarzenegger-sized shoes to fill.

Combining Predator and Indigenous warrior culture is a match made in heaven. The first inspiration for the Predator came from Richard Connell’s 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game.”

The pulpy suspense story inspired many adaptations and reimaginings , but none so commanding as 1987’s Predator. The Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle was one of the most successful action movies of the decade. With a plethora of one-liners, expert make-up prosthetics, special effects, and tightly edited suspense, the film inspired sequels, video games, and crossovers, most notably with the Aliens franchise.

After 35 years, the 21st Century Fox franchise has had its ups and downs. Prey was the first Predator project to debut after Disney purchased the rights with the company-wide acquisition of Fox in 2019. Premiering in August 2022 on Hulu, the film was met with praise, with some critics going so far as put it on par with the original 1987 movie.

Comparisons to the original are quickly apparent. The characters are quickly thrust far out of their league as they encounter the Predator’s hunting spree and piece together the menace as he picks them off. A few of the original taglines are redelivered. The Predator maintains his sense of fair play, and the finale squares him off against the heroine, Naru, who has progressed from aspiring hunter and medicine gatherer to a harrowed survivor over the story’s arc.

This mostly loyal-to-franchise plot takes place in a mostly accurate-to-history world set in 1719, with a few noticeable changes. In one scene, Naru is meticulously sharpening her stone throwing axe through the chipping and flaking process—a neat detail that shows the work involved in maintaining preindustrial tools. In the next scene, she uses the same newly sharpened weapon to chop into the dirt as she digs for roots. The movie was filmed in Alberta; the mountains and pine forests—gracefully swept over by crystal-sharp drone cameras—are a far cry from Comancheria in the Southwest and Southern Plains.

Small details like these may stand out to a historian or an art critic, but they don’t detract from the story.

Prey didn’t have an easy road to release. Work on the script and consultation with Comanche advisors began in 2017. Between Disney’s acquisition of Fox, the pandemic, and the critically panned bomb that was The Predator (2018), it seemed the franchise would be in development hell for good. The final budget was a limited $65 million.

Compare that to the same summer’s Thor: Love and Thunder at $250 million released in theaters and 2018’s $88 million predecessor The Predator. In some ways, the limited budget shows; some digital effects are unconvincing.

The Predator himself, menacingly played by 6’9” actor Dane DiLiegro, exploits special effects to complement a creative costume and superb body language. To achieve the Predator’s chilling cackle, the sound designer laid down backward and played his voice in reverse. Combined with weapons and gadgets created new for this film, this incarnation of the Predator makes for a brutal, visceral villain, especially within the production’s restraints.

Action flick lovers and history buffs can debate Prey’s faithfulness as a successor movie or the accuracy of throwing axes as weapons of war rather than tools for hunting. But a lot of the marketing and reception of the film both focused on the representation and vibrancy of the Native characters in Indian country. Did Prey do justice as a Native story?

1. All Dustin Tahmahkera quotes from discussion with the author, September 7, 2022.

86 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

Numunuu (Comanche) professor and writer Dustin Tahmahkera has a higher aim in mind for the story of Prey. “As my late auntie and fellow Prey consultant Juanita Pahdopony said, ‘We’re obligated to tell our story.’ To be obligated is to be bound by principles to do something, in this case, a storytelling of self and community that recognizes our principled roles in relationships, kinship, and accountability.”1 Tahmahkera has long studied and created “real-to-reel” Comanche stories and how genuine Numunuu ideas, heroes, and experiences are portrayed and often misrepresented in pop culture. Trachtenberg approached him to consult for the film in 2017. He and his aunt “advised on technical aspects like clothing and weaponry and, as storytellers and writers ourselves, on story and character development.”

Along with cultural consultations, the film’s creators collaborated with the Comanche Nation to write and record a Comanche language dub of the film, with all the actors reading their respective roles’ voices.

Tahmahkera is the great-great-greatgrandson of Quanah Parker (Comanche, 1845–1911), the legendary Comanche chief. In the early 20th century, Parker represented his people at public gatherings like the World’s Fair and starred in silent films, like The Bank Robbery (1908). Tahmahkera has kept up his family’s legacy as a writer, performer, and professor at the University of Oklahoma, where he teaches Native media and sound.

Tahmahkera and Pahdopony shared information from bow making and Plains sign language to clothing design and spirituality. “Auntie’s and other Comanches’ relational stories of talking animals return to an ancestral time, as shown in Prey, of truly practicing the art of listening closely—tubitsinakukuru—to Comancheria soundscapes and spaces inhabited with various relatives. Some viewers may dismiss such sentiment as myth or tall tales, but our traditional stories suggest otherwise,” he says. “And yes, Prey may be fictional, but it was made in part from the nonfictional creativity and labor of real-to-reel Comanches.”

MOVIE REVIEW

The behind-the-scenes storytelling manifests through the Native actors on screen. Midthunder as Naru and Dakota Beavers (Mestizo) as Taabe have an engrossing chemistry as younger sister and elder brother. As elder sibling, Beavers exudes calm leadership as he shelters his sister and leads fellow hunters.

While Naru finds balance as a healer and helper to her elders, she ultimately aspires to be a hunter.

Comanches’ renown as hunters and fighters shines on-screen. Naru proves as resourceful as any action hero.

She makes her own throwing axes and rivals the Predator in tracking and setting traps—the same way that Quanah Parker and the Comanches historically outfoxed the American cavalry.

Another element of Comanche identity that charmed audiences was Naru’s relationship with her loyal dog Sarii. The dog actor, Coco, was a rescue dog selected specifically because her face and build resembled the historical profile of breeds many Plains nations used as beasts of burden, guardians, trackers, and companions. “We have old stories of listening to and talking with animals, and animal-to-animal stories and encounters, from pasiwo (frog) to tasiwoo (buffalo),” says Tahmahkera. “The close communications and understandings between Naru and Sarii visually illustrated some old ways, without resorting to stereotypes or romanticization.”

Naru shows reverence to the land.

In one of the more jarring (and realistic!) scenes, Naru encounters a field full of slaughtered and skinned buffalo, an early display of the decimation to come.

Midthunder’s character shows sincere grief as she prays in Numunuu over the animals’ bodies.

Conveying genuine moments of resourcefulness, reverence, and terror, Midthunder portrays a rounded character that Tahmahkera judges to be representational justice to Comanche women and says: “To hear of a Comanche lead in a feature film was very rare. To hear of a Comanche female lead was rarer in a Hollywood industry known to silence, sexualize, abuse, and otherwise dehumanize Native women’s on-screen representation.”

Rather than a victim or trophy, Naru makes choices and goals—to hunt,

above Prey, 2022, film poster, action, 1:39, directed by Dan Trachtenberg, 20th Century Studios, Hulu.

to protect, and to heal her relatives, to be safe within her land—that drive the story, even more than the Predator’s hunt.

“This time, Naru and other Comanches steal the show. Probably would have stolen horses, too, if there had been any on-screen,” jokes Tahmahkera.

Whatever potential critiques from franchise loyalists or action buffs, Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, and highlighting an Indigenous language in a decent Predator movie make Prey an energetic and positive depiction of

American Indians in mainstream culture.

Prey proves that genuine Native characters and Native values are compatible with 21st-century blockbusters and enjoyed by a mainstream audience.

“Like Phillip Meyer once had a Comanche say to a captive in his novel The Son: ‘Everybody in the world wants to be Numunuu,’” Tahmahkera reflects.

“After my Comanche relatives' appearances in silent films, we appear to see a resurgence in recent years of every filmmaker wanting to film Numunuu. Aye!” —James G. Bland NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 87

BOOK REVIEWS

Postindian Aesthetics: Affirming Indigenous Literary Sovereignty Debra K. S. Barker and Connie A. Jacobs, eds.

University of Arizona Press, 2022

L

ITERATURE CLASSES can focus on a single author or even a single work. Lovers of the written word can delve into an author’s vocabulary, symbols, and rhythm to appreciate and empathize with the style and experiences of that individual creator.

Middle school students who earnestly waded through The Great Gatsby or Hamlet learned to understand many literary conventions used throughout fiction—all through paying meticulous attention to only one work by one author.

The writers of Postindian Aesthetics: Affirming Indigenous Literary Sovereignty understand this truth well. In this edited volume, contributors explore and celebrate works of individuals. The reviews and critiques meet each author on their own terms, rejecting the harmful and regressive stereotypes of a monolithic and static American Indian culture. The 19 spotlighted authors in this collection are present-day living proof of the individual styles, experiences, and communities that constitute the current Native literary 88 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

world. In fact, editor Debra Barker asserts that the Postindian in the title refers to the subverting and refutation of colonial attitudes towards American Indian sovereignty: whether that self-determination is literal (activism, political power, tribal treaty rights, etc.) or metaphorical (like the trailblazing works examined in the volume).

Most of the volume’s highlighted creators have a tribal heritage, community role, and journey into literature and writing tool set unique to themselves.

Each article celebrates an artist for their own experience, their own challenges, and their own artwork. Rather than a blanket, Euro-American–oriented explanation of “What is Indian Literature?,” Postindian Aesthetics’ roster of writers shows that there are as many Native literatures as there are Native writers.

The book is divided into four sections, each focusing on a method of writing or American Indian experience that several authors have in common.

The first section, “Nurturing Culture Through Ancestor Words and Stories,” is a collection of authors whose stories emphasize decolonization through stories of endurance and resistance. Each of the writers in this section draws on heritage and personal history to create stories that reject patronizing and stereotypical views of Native America.

Luci Tapahonso (Navajo) uses personal memories of her youth and traveling songs to invoke her love for the “profound…. energies of the natural world,” as she writes on page 22. Jeanette C. Armstrong (Penticton Okanagan) uses her literature and survivance philosophy to create literature that aids in the healing and recovery of the youth in her Okanagan reserve. Kimberly Blaeser’s (White Earth Ojibwe) poetry is a written method of capturing tribal oral history and rhetoric. In her own words, her “tribalography” tells the story of a whole community, with her work intending to make oral communication “come off the page and affect life,” as written on page 33. Joseph Marshall III (Sicangu Lakota) reflects on his role and methods of continuing the legacy of the Lakota woyaka, or community storyteller, in the contemporary age. Marshall both continues the woyaka role and rebuts

the vilification of his people in the mainstream Manifest Destiny narrative of the Wild West.

The s e cond s e c t ion, “Ne w Directions in Tribal Literature,” examines the new methods and styles within literature that Native authors are using to express their particular journeys and identities. The first of these is a eulogy for Janice Gould (Concow Maidu descent, 1949–2019). Her work and life are commemorated through a touching commentary on her lived and written contribution to the lesbian, Indigenous, and literary communities. Dean Rader’s personal connection to Gould gives his account all the more impact. LeAnne Howe (Choctaw Nation) has created many works throughout a variety of genres, each one exploring the “tribalography” of the Choctaw world. Illustrator Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (Haida Nation) combines Haida stories with the style and format of manga, Japanese graphic novels. He frames his stories in panels to reflect the iconic Pacific Northwest Coastal art. Heid E. Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) explores the experience of holding multiple identities across multiple places and institutions: from reservation to city, boarding school to college, art galleries to the internet.

Erdrich’s experiences are Ojibwe and Métis, French and German, North Dakotan and Minnesotan, and past, present, and future. Deborah A. Miranda’s (Ohlone descent) connects her two-spirit identity and experiences with her own abuse with the historical abuse inflicted on California Native women.

The third section, “Art in the Quotidian,” reminds readers that perpetuating Native heritage in today’s world is living, working, and praying in day-to-day life. These authors create meaningful stories through sharing their day-to-day lives, and what indigeneity and survival are found in their everyday (“quotidian”) survival. For Cheryl Savageau (Abenaki descent), her poetry and writing are her recollections of living with bipolar disorder, comparing her mental health to a forest in flux. For nila northSun (Shoshone), this is a combination of tribal daily life with a parody of mainstream magazines, like Cosmopolitan’s list of “99 Things To Do Before You Die.”

BOOK REVIEWS

The essays of the final section, “Affirming indigenous Literar y Sovereignty,” reflect on authors who defied the outwardly imposed label of the Native American literature genre in different ways. Be it Robert J. Conley (Cherokee Nation), who took the broader historical fiction genre by storm, or Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet), who subverts many forms of popular horror fiction, this section affirms that successful Native writers are not limited to Native American topics. Readers interested in recreational fiction may find this section handy as a source for enjoyable future reads, and the quotes of the authors provide a preview of their style.

While some chapters focus on a single work or a single theme within Native literature, most chapters focus on a particular writer and the influences from their tribal culture, lived experience, and career development.

This is a pleasantly intimate approach, introducing the reader to new people, new artworks, and new concepts all at the same time. In many chapters, these introductions are brought through articles, reviews, and statements. The volume includes very few first-person interviews conducted by the authors, which would have emphasized the personality and individualism of the creator in question.

For academics and regular readers of critical theory works, the dense language of this volume will likely not be anything new. Many reviewers and great thinkers in Indigenous fields read and write with heavy use of the industry terms found in academia, such as in legal studies, art and literary criticism, anthropology, and critical theory. For readers only casually connected to these fields, some chapters’ vocabulary may be momentarily disarming or send readers to the dictionary. However, the volume’s division of one topic per author per chapter keeps the reviews brisk and allows Postindian Aesthetics to introduce and explore not only concepts but authors and their contributions from across contemporary Native America.

For lovers of Native literature, particularly those with an eye for emerging trends in the current generation of successful creators, this text will prove worthwhile.

—James G. Bland

Virgil Ortiz: ReVOlution Charles S. King Museum of New Mexico Press, 2021

V

I RGIL ORTIZ (Cochiti Pueblo) is a consummate artist who continually experiments with form, scale, and media. His unique style, however, is firmly rooted in the generations of art created by his Cochiti Pueblo ancestors.

The new monograph, Virgil Ortiz: ReVOlution, looks into Ortiz’s varied career thus far. Published through the Museum of New Mexico Press, Virgil Ortiz is a beautifully designed and heavily illustrated book. Amazingly, it covers his work in ceramics, glass, video, printmaking, jewelry, fashion, and interior design.

Divided into ten chapters, the main text is authored by Charles S. King, the owner of King Galleries and a gallerist who has worked with Ortiz since 2000.

King clarifies that this monograph is not a career retrospective and explains on page 9, “Virgil is a force of nature, always working, designing, creating, and thinking about what comes next.”

The book includes an artist statement

by Ortiz, and each chapter opens with a quote from him.

Karen Kramer, curator of Native American art and culture at the Peabody Essex Museum, provides the introduction. She observes on page 8 that, “[Ortiz’s] vision—in all its various manifestations—is at once firmly rooted in Cochiti aesthetics and principles, and

tied to global conversations about design, Indigeneity, sovereignty, social justice, and futurisms.” Kramer describes how his vision conveys the personal and universal at once with a fearlessness to address “five centuries of America’s historical amnesia about Spanish contact, colonization, and genocide in the Southwest.”

Most of the chapters are arranged thematically with notable exhibitions highlighted. The first chapter is a historical introduction to Cochiti Pueblo alongside the biographies of some of the matriarchs in Ortiz’s family, such as his maternal grandmother Laurencita Herrera (Cochiti, 1912–1984) and his mother Seferina Herrera Ortiz (Cochiti, 1931–2007). Likewise, there is mention of Ortiz’s early years from making his first clay figure at age six to the influence of fashion and clothing in his teenage years.

Ortiz explains on page 21, “By deconstructing clothes, I was able to understand how patterns came together. I couldn’t afford the cool clothes in magazines, so I picked up vinyl and leather and began working with them.” Patternmaking and clothing construction became a vehicle for personal expression but also paved the way for a future endeavor into fashion design.

The second chapter gives a brief overview of the ceramic-making process for the Ortiz family. There is information about the time-intensive process of gathering clay, cleaning the clay, hand building the vessels, firing the vessels, and refining the wild spinach leaves into paint. Ortiz mentions on page 40, “I try to add a tiny bit of my mom’s earlier wild spinach paint with each new batch, to symbolize the continuation of her legacy and passing it on.” He then explains on page 41, “I would watch my mom work with clay every day.… That was how I learned to coil a pot or make a figure and then eventually how to put arms on it. Just watching her doing it every day.

I thought it was a normal part of everybody’s life.” Throughout the book, Ortiz pays tribute to the women in his family who have guided him and supported him.

Sometimes called a provocateur, Ortiz isn’t afraid to address social issues and difficult truths. Chapters three and seven cover his artworks that acted as NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 89

BOOK REVIEWS

social commentary on current events and exposed hypocrisies. The third chapter, aptly named “Saints and Sinners,” refers to his 2005 series by the same title. The ceramic pieces included Catholic saints like Saint Michael and Saint Sebastian alongside “sinners” such as Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson. However, Ortiz depicted all the figures in the same manner. He said on page 57 that he wanted the viewer to notice, “You never really know who is the saint and who is the sinner in real life.” Ortiz never shied from addressing the trauma caused by the Catholic Church and the legacy of Spanish colonialism on Pueblo life and culture. Chapter seven covers his 2017 and 2019 Taboo series about topics that are considered taboo to discuss such as sexual desires, gender nonconformity, and addiction. Included in that series was a work titled, Spirit World Army, about veterans suffering from PTSD and destigmatizing treatment and therapy.

Chapters four and six demonstrate how Ortiz is a keen observer of people and culture, not unlike his ancestors. In the 1990s, Ortiz and his friends would travel across the country to underground clubs in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. The club scene and the goth subculture became part of his art with ceramic depictions of androgynous figures covered in tattoos and piercings wearing leather and S&M gear. There is a clear homage to the historical monos figures that Cochiti potters created in the late 19th century depicting circus performers, tourists, and other “foreigners” who traveled through New Mexico. Later Ortiz would make his own monos figures, even recreating the 1880s black-andwhite image of monos by photographer Ben Wittick. Ortiz made many of the large monos figures and asked his family, representing four generations of potters, to create the others. As Ortiz reflects on page 109, “The Monos figures and their reflection of society have allowed me to create my own contemporary designs and characters and base them on something deeply imbued with tradition.” These chapters are heavily illustrated with beautiful photography of his ceramics alongside his fashion editorials.

In 2002 fashion designer Donna Karan called Ortiz and asked him to 90 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

“How could I get my nieces and nephews interested in pottery or the Pueblo Revolt when all they wanted to do was play video games and watch DVDs?”

collaborate on her 2003 fashion line. That experience gave Ortiz a peek into the New York fashion world, and he soon created his own fashion lines, beginning with Rezzurect and Indigene and then followed by his brand, Made in Native America, in 2009. The fifth chapter covers his foray into fashion spanning clothing, handbags, jewelry, and more. The 2004 exhibition, La Renaissance Indigene, organized by Joe Baker (Delaware Tribe) at the Heard Museum first brought together Ortiz’s clay and fashion pieces. Ortiz assisted with the selection of the pieces and the exhibition’s displays. Later Ortiz would design entire rooms with his fashion and interior design during the Santa Fe Indian Market.

The last three chapters, eight to ten, examine Ortiz’s ongoing series about America’s First Revolution, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. When Ortiz visited Paris in 2001, he was surprised that Parisians knew about the historical Indigenous uprising against the Spanish colonizers in New Mexico, but it was relatively unknown to most Americans. Ortiz then wanted to tell the story of the Pueblo Revolt, not just for non-Native people but for the Pueblo youth as well. He wonders on page 147, “How could I get my nieces

and nephews interested in pottery or the Pueblo Revolt when all they wanted to do was play video games and watch DVDs?” Ortiz remembered his own fascination with the characters and storylines in the Star Wars movies in his youth. He then created a storyline addressing the revolt through sleek outfits and characters with names drawn from Keres and other Puebloan languages. Later his series, Pueblo Revolt 1680/2180, combined the past with the future and allowed his characters to travel back and forth in time, thereby seeing the effects of history repeating itself. These chapters, likewise, are heavily illustrated with his works in photography, graphic novels, clay, and glass, and they highlight many of the characters from the series such as Tahu, Mopez, Translator, and the Venutian Soldiers.

While Virgil Ortiz: ReVOlution contains many images of Ortiz’s artworks through the years, there is no source information for them. Especially for researchers, it would have been helpful to know which artworks were in museum or private collections. Also, one chapter could have been an interview with Ortiz to understand more about his process and passion. However, the monograph is a stunning, page-turning publication.

It brings together his print fashion ads with his 3D artworks and personal photographs. Also, it includes the famous photograph of singer Nona Hendryx performing at the Kennedy Center in an Ortiz-designed outfit. When viewing his early works addressing sexuality, gender nonconformity, and leather subculture, it is amazing how Ortiz brought voice to topics and worlds when other Native artists rarely did. Ortiz is a documentarian and a keen observer. Virgil Ortiz: ReVOlution is a reminder that there is a need for more solo publications on Native artists and that a book’s design can reflect their unique artistry.

—Anya Montiel, PhD (Mestiza/Tohono O'odham descent)

MEMORIAL

RICHARD AITSON December 26, 1953–June 24, 2022

T

HE PROUDEST MOMENT of his career, Richard “Rich” James Aitson II (Kiowa/Kiowa Apache) once said, was being named Master Artist by the Kiowa Tribe. Versed in Kiowa culture and protocols, Richard made beaded regalia for primarily Native clients to be worn ceremonially. He balanced community needs with the demands of the art world and won major awards for his beaded cradleboards, medallions, earrings, and even stethoscopes—but especially moccasins. “There are a couple of truths that will always exist. Indians need moccasins. Indians will spend money on moccasins,” he said.1 Born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, his parents were Marland Aitson (Kiowa, 1928–1983) and Alecia Keahbone Gonzales (Kiowa/Kiowa Apache, 1926– 2011), an educator who published Kiowa language materials. While his relatives are extremely prominent in the Kiowa Tribe, his mother was an Apache tribal princess in the 1950s. Her grandfather Se-Tine Tennyson Berry (Kiowa Apache, 1881– 1971), a Carlisle alumnus, was a headman of the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, also called Plains Apache and Kiowa Apache.

Rich primarily learned how to bead from observing his parental grandmother Clara Mammedaty Aitson (Kiowa, 1900– 1987). He was sickly as a young child, so he often stayed home from school with her at Fort Cobb, Oklahoma, where she cooked, quilted, tanned and scraped hides, and beaded. “I became a six-year-old Kiowa grandmother,” Rich told me.2 At Fort Cobb, Rich’s second-grade teacher declared that all Indians could draw, so he never saw barriers to being an artist. His relative Al Momaday (Kiowa, 1913–1981) inspired Rich greatly as an artist and a teacher. Rich briefly attended the Institute of America Indian Arts in

above Richard Aitson (Kiowa/Kiowa Apache) wearing one of his signature beaded medallions.

high school, before being encouraged to leave after taking part in a protest building occupation in Albuquerque. He graduated from Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire, then was accepted into Stanford University in California, but experiencing an earthquake at the beginning of the semester convinced him to go to Oberlin College in Ohio instead. He said he was eight credits short of his degree, but that didn’t dampen his teaching career, which included teaching beadwork at Bacone College.

While best known for his beadwork, Rich also wrote poetry. Influenced by Pablo Neruda, his poems garnered awards and were anthologized. Alan R. Velie wrote, “Aitson’s poetry is characterized by an Indian kind of surrealism which combines the dream vision with animism to produce strikingly powerful imagery.”3 Rich taught Native American literature at Anadarko High School and elsewhere.

Rich started beading because he wanted new moccasins to wear to the Kiowa gourd dance in Carnegie. His grandmother told him that he knew enough to make his own and provided him with supplies. “A lot of our headsmen came to me for moccasins,” he said. Even though he was uncertain of his ability at the time, he knew he could not refuse their request. His first competitive show was the 1969 Indian Exposition in Anadarko. Later, he showed at the Heard Fair, Autry Marketplace, and Red Earth Festival, where he won the Grand Award for a complete gourd dance outfit.

“I avoided Santa Fe Indian Market for years,” but when he finally exhibited there, he won major awards, particularly for his cradleboards.

Rich owned an historic Kiowa cradleboard and learned to make them by studying the earlier works. He could make a miniature cradleboard in a week of nonstop beading. He took great pride in following Kiowa protocols and building on Kiowa aesthetics, ignoring what the self-proclaimed non-Native “experts” said. “If I had the audacity to say my beadwork came from the same bloodline as Lois Smoky, then by golly, I better prove it, at least with quality.”

The next generation of beadwork artists impressed him greatly, and he praised Teri Greeves (Kiowa), Kenneth Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho/Seneca), and Jami Okuma (Luiseño/Shoshone-Bannock) for their superb beading skills.

Accepted into the 100th Santa Fe Indian Market, Rich had even made dinner plans during market. In June, he passed on in his home in Yukon, Oklahoma, that he shared with his partner Linda Blackburn and their beloved dogs.

He is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Anadarko. His friend Shirley Williams wrote, “This seems like a bad, bad dream, but maybe God needed moccasins.”

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

1. Richard Aitson, interview by Julie Pearson-Little Thunder, “Oral History Interview with Richard Aitson,” October 1, 2012, Oklahoma Oral History Project, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, 21.

2. All quotes, unless otherwise specified, from Richard Aitson in discussion with the author, November 26, 2021.

3. Alan R. Velie, ed., American Indian Literature: An Anthology (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 297.

NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 91

MEMORIAL

TONEH CHULEEWAH February 7, 1959–August 1, 2022

C above Toneh Chuleewah (Cherokee Nation) at the Cherokee Arts Center, Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

92 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

H E R O K E E NAT I O N metalsmith Toneh Chuleewah was known for his artistic style in different metals including copper. His nation commissioned him to create his signature Southeastern gorgets and medallions presented to the Cherokee National Treasures and awardwinning artists at the Cherokee Heritage Center. The Spider Gallery in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, represented his artwork.

From Evening Shade, Oklahoma, Chuleewah learned metalsmithing and jewelry design from his father, Quannah Archer Chuleewah (Cherokee Nation, 1926–1990). Chuleewah created his first masterpieces at the young age of 14. He owned a bike shop for 18 years in Wichita Falls, Texas, which put his art career on hold, but he honed his metalworking skills by fabricating custom bicycle frames. He went on to earn a bachelor's degree in fine arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Chuleewah interned at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, which gave him more opportunities to share his wisdom and culture with others. In the Smithsonian collections, Chuleewah studied Eastern Woodlands

artworks, such as precontact copper repoussé artworks and engraved shell gorgets. He incorporated these designs into his copper jewelry.

Callie Chunestudy (Cherokee Nation), the Cherokee Heritage Center’s curator and a personal friend of Chuleewah, first worked with him in 2012 at the Spider Gallery and Cherokee Arts Center. She writes: “Other artists utilize the same methods as Toneh did, but no one can finish a piece the way he could— smooth edges, flawless dimensions and curves, the brightest, most flawless surfaces, and hard, clean etch lines made it apparent he was a master of his craft.

“Toneh Chuleewah was the first person commissioned to create the Grand Prize and Trail of Tears awards for the Cherokee Heritage Center in 2014. Last April he became our sole commissioned jeweler through his final show with us, the Trail of Tears Art Show.” Artists prized his handmade copper gorgets, which were presented as top awards. “We understand the personal cost and heart instilled in each piece he crafted,” said Chunestudy.

Chuleewah touched many hearts as a coworker, friend, and artist. Matthew Anderson (Cherokee Nation), artist and manager of the Spider Gallery, said: “Toneh was instrumental in starting the metalsmithing classes at the Cherokee Arts Center. He will be remembered as the artist who revived the Mississippian period iconography in his unrivaled copper work. Perhaps Toneh’s legacy will be remembered 800 years from now as students of Cherokee and Southeastern Woodland people’s art study his jewelry.

“His kindness, gentle smile, and corny dad jokes will be missed at our monthly SEIAA meetings,” says Anderson. “Toneh was a treasured friend.

His light will be remembered with fondness; all his life.”

“Toneh was funny, adventurous, caring … Cherokee spirit is embedded in his surviving work,” Chunestudy concluded, “and he is never truly lost to us.” —Chelsea Whittington (Chickasaw)

MEMORIAL

BLAKE DEBASSIGE June 22, 1956–June 13, 2022

O

jibwe artist and knowledge-keeper Blake Randolph Debassige was born on the M'Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. He passed away at his home on June 13, 2022.

I never met Blake Debassige but I knew of him since I was a boy. He and his wife, Shirley Cheechoo (James Bay Cree), appeared in a 1988 TVO series called Dreams, Myths, and Memories.

In the episode, he mainly spoke about Ojibway history, culture, and art. When I rewatched the show today, I was able to appreciate his meticulous research, his experimentation, and his multitude of influences far more than I once did. He not only honored the style he adopted but the stories he painted, too.

Debassige was the son of late Chief James David Debassige and Pauline Debassige. He began painting early in life, at age 16. Later, he took up painting in the Woodland Style after meeting artist Carl Ray (Sandy Lake Cree, 1943–1978), a member of the Professional Native Indian Artists Inc., during a presentation at a West Bay high school. Soon after, he attended art classes on Schreiber Island, organized by the Manitou Arts Foundation. Its director, Tom Peletier, took notice of the emerging artist. So in 1973, Peletier offered Debassige his first solo exhibition at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education building at the University of Toronto. The show was a critical and commercial success. He sold all 40 paintings.

Afterward Debassige studied the paintings and teachings of Ray, Norval Morrisseau, and Daphne Odjig, among others, and took them in new trajectories and implications, but he wasn’t alone. He and artists Cheechoo, Leland Bell, Joseph Linklater, Martin Panamick, and Randy Trudeau, to name only a few, soon became recognized as the “Second Generation” of Woodland School artists for expanding the aesthetics and subject matter of the “first generation.” Namely, they incorporated contemporary social,

above Blake Debassige (M'Chigeeng Ojibwe), video still.

political, and economic issues affecting First Nations people and communities in Canada. That being said, Debassige was quick to challenge the label “second generation,” since it lumped these artists together into a neat category regardless of their interests, influences, and style.

Debassige participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada and internationally, including those circulated by the Thunder Bay Art Gallery and the Royal Ontario Art Gallery. His work also resides in galleries and museums around the world, notably, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, Canadian Museum of Civilization, and the gallery in which I am curator and head of collections, Glenhyrst Art Gallery.

During my tenure at Glenhyrst, I first spent time researching Debassige and his work; namely, the collection’s series of eight paintings titled Six Little Hawks, based on the Anishinaabe story of the same name. In short, the young hawks are left to fend for themselves and find nourishment during repeated threats

from a white owl. The moral of the story is that selfless acts and a connected family can overcome tremendous challenges.

The meaning of a white owl taking food and sustenance away from the group of hawks is a powerful metaphor that speaks to the history of colonialism in Canada. From what I’ve read and come to learn, the story of the Six Little Hawks also represents the things that Debassige valued most in his life—family, nature, culture, and resilience.

Though he may be best known for his painting, his interest in the arts extended far beyond it. He and Cheechoo worked together to establish the Debajehmujig Theatre Group and the Weengushk Film Institute, both based on Manitoulin Island, and both invested in revitalizing Anishnaabek culture, language, and history for the next generations.

Blake Debassige is remembered by his wife Shirley, their son Nishina, and granddaughter Nakoa. He is remembered by close and extended family alike. And he will be remembered as one of the most important artists in Canada.

—Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 93

CALENDAR October 1–December 31: Albuquerque, NM When the Dogs Stop Barking at 516 Arts, 516 Central Avenue SW. (505) 242-1445 | 516arts.org October 1, 2022–April 2, 2023: Minneapolis, MN Paintings from South America: The Thoma Collection (1600–1800) at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2400 3rd Avenue South | (612) 870-3000 new.artsmia.org October 6–December 17: Minneapolis, MN She Who Lives on The Road to War at All My Relations Gallery, 1414 E. Franklin Avenue. Installation and in-gallery performances by Rosy Simas Danse | (612) 235-4970 | allmyrelationsarts.com October 7–9: Catoosa, OK 17th annual Cherokee Art Market at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tulsa, Sequoyah Convention Center, 777 W. Cherokee Avenue. Awards ceremony: Friday, October 7, evening | (877) 779-6977 | cherokeeartmarket.com October 7–December 15: Homer, AK Salmon Culture at the Pratt Museum and Park, 3779 Bartlett Street (907) 235-8635 | prattmuseum.org October 7, 2022–March 5, 2023: Phoenix, AZ Elegant Vessels: A Century of Southwest Silver Boxes at the Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Avenue | (602) 252-8840 | heard.org/exhibits October 8 & 9: Salt Lake City, UT Indian Art Market at the Natural History Museum of Utah, Rio Tinto Center, 301 Wakara Way, 10:00 am–5:00 pm | (801) 581-6927 | nhmu.utah.edu October 8–10: Oberlin, OH Ohio Indigenous Documentary Film Festival at the Apollo Theater, 19 E. College Street | (440) 774-3920 | indigenousoberlin.wixsite.com/website

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October 8, 2022–January 29, 2022: El Prado, NM Southwest Reflections: In Between Shadows of the Land at the Millicent Rogers Museum, 1504 Millicent Rogers Road. Curated by Michelle J. Lanteri (575) 758-2462 | millicentrogers.org October 8, 2022–March 12, 2023: Santa Fe, NM The Mary Morez Style: Transformations of Tradition at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 704 Camino Lejo. Solo exhibition for this Navajo artist | (505) 982-4636 | wheelwright.org October 8, 2022–March 27, 2023: Winnipeg, MB Robert Houle: Red is Beautiful at Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG), 300 Memorial Boulevard. Retrospective for this Saulteaux painter +1 (204) 786-6641 | wag.ca October 13–December 3, 2022: Arcata, CA Recalling From The Source at Goudi'ni Native American Arts Gallery, Cal Poly Humboldt, 1 Harpst Street | (707) 826-5253 | facebook.com/GoudiniGallery October 15, 2022–February 26, 2023: Portland, OR Jeffrey Gibson: They Come from Fire at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Avenue | (503) 266-2811 | portlandartmuseum.org October 20–22: Anchorage, AK Alaska Native Customary Art Fair at the Dena'ina Civic and Convention Center, 600 W. Seventh Avenue. Part of the Alaska Federation of Natives convention, 8:00 am–5:00 pm | (907) 274-3611 | nativefederation.org/artists

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October 20, 2022–January 7, 2023: Warm Springs, OR 29th annual Warm Springs Tribal Member Adult and Youth Exhibit at the Museum at Warm Springs, 2189 US Hwy. 26 | (541) 553-3331 museumatwarmsprings.org October 21, 2023–March 31, 2023: Anchorage, AK Protection, Adaptation & Resistance at the Anchorage Museum, 625 C Street | (907) 929-9200 | anchoragemuseum.org

October 24–27: Funner, CA American Indian Tourism Conference at Harrah’s Resort Southern California, 777 Harrah’s Rincon Way | (505) 724-3592 | aianta.org/aitc October 25–27: Temecula, CA International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries, and Museums at the Pechanga Resort, 45000 Pechanga Parkway | atalm.org October 25, 2022–January 29, 2023: Windsor, ON Daphne Odjig: Our Mothers at the Art Gallery of Windsor Essex, 401 Riverside Drive West | +1 (519) 977-0013 | agw.ca/exhibition/547 October 29, 2022–May 14, 2023: Portland, OR Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Avenue. Curated by Kathleen Ash-Milby (Navajo) (503) 266-2811 | portlandartmuseum.org October 30, 2022–January 22, 2023: Fort Worth, TX Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 3501 Camp Bowie Boulevard (817) 738-1933 | cartermuseum.org November 3–March 12, 2023: New York City, NY Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field at the National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center americanindian.si.edu

2022 Cape Cape Dorset Dorset Annual Annual Print Print Collection Collection 2022

November 4 & 5: Clewiston, FL American Indian Arts Celebration at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, 30290 Josie Billie Highway PMB 1003. Arts, dance, music, and alligator wrestling, 9:00 am–5:00 pm | (877) 902-1113 | ahtahthiki.com November 5: Tahlequah, OK Skasdicon at Northeastern State University, University Center Ballroom, 612 N. Grand Avenue, 2nd floor, 10:00 am–5:00 pm | skasdicon.com November 5: Cherokee, NC Kananesgi Art Market and Fashion Show at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, 777 Casino Drive | kananesgi.com November 5: Claremore, OK Native American Art Show at the Claremore Museum of History, 121 N. Weenonah Avenue | (918) 923-6490 | claremoremoh.org November 5: Cartersville, GA Native American Heritage Day at Etowah Indian Mounds State Historic State, 813 Indian Mound Road SE, 9:00 am–5:00 pm | (770) 387-3747 gastateparks.org/EtowahIndianMounds

RICK BARTOW Frog Talk Seriously | December 1, 2022–January 28, 2023

November 6, 2022–April 16, 2023: Seattle, WA Body Language: Reawakening Cultural Tattooing of the Northwest at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, UW Campus, 17th Avenue NE and NE 45th Street | (206) 543-5590 | burkemuseum.org November 6–TBA: Phoenix, AZ Substance of Stars at the Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Avenue. Curated

by Chuna McIntyre (Central Yup'ik) and Sean Mooney | (602) 252-8840 substanceofstars.org November 10, 2022–March 13, 2023: Montreal, QC Museum Born of the Cold: Inuit Art, Dance, and Song at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1380 Sherbrooke Street West +1 (514) 285-2000 | mbam.qc.ca November 10, 2022–March 19, 2023: Spokane, WA Savages and Princesses: The Persistence of Native American Stereotypes at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, 2316 W. First Avenue (509) 456-3931 | northwestmuseum.org November 11–13: Washington, DC Dedication Ceremony of the National Native American Veterans Memorial and Weekend Celebration at the National Museum of the American Indian, 4th Street & Independence Avenue SW (202) 633-1000 | nmai.si.edu

FROELICK GALLERY Portland, OR | 503.222.1142 Frog Talk Seriously, 2015, acrylic on unstretched canvas, 72˝x 72˝ photo: R. Johnson

NO. 36, FALL 2022 | 95

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November 11–13: Virtual Ezhishin conference, and workshops about Indigenous typography hosted by the Type Directors Club | tdc.org/ezhishin

Elk

by Troy Sice Zuni Pueblo

November 12, 2022–January 28, 2023: Victoria, BC The Stories We Belong To at Open Space, 510 Fort Street, 2nd floor +1 (250) 383-8833 | openspacearts.ca November 14, 2022–May TBA, 2023: Morgantown, WV Indigenous Appalachia at the West Virginia University Downtown Campus Library, 1549 University Avenue | (304) 293-0355 exhibits.lib.wvu.edu/exhibits/indigenous-appalachia November 19 & 20, December 17 & 18: Seattle, WA United Indians Native Art Market at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center in Discovery Park, 5011 Bernie Whitebear Way, 10:00 am–4:00 pm (208) 285-4425 | unitedindians.org November 18–25: Virtual 2022 Native Cinema Showcase hosted by the National Museum of the American Indian | americanindian.si.edu/events November 21, 2022–April 2, 2023: New York, NY Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1005 5th Avenue | (212) 535-7710 | metmuseum.org November 25: Collinsville, IL Native American Holiday Market at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, 30 Ramey Street, 9:00 am–5:00 pm | (618) 346-5160 | cahokiamounds.org Since 1981 Fetishes Jewelry Pottery 227 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe 505.989.8728 keshi.com

November 26: Vancouver, BC Guud sans glans Robert Davidson: A Line That Bends but Does Not Break at the Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street | +1 (604) 662-4700 ext. 0 vanartgallery.bc.ca December 1, 2022–January 28, 2023: Portland, OR Rick Bartow: Frog Talk Seriously at the Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis Street | (503) 222-1142 | froelickgallery.com

Native Native American American jewelry jewelry and arts and arts marketplace marketplace 2 Christensen Lane 2 Christensen Lane Kennebunk, Maine Kennebunk, Maine 207 423-8473 207 423-8473

shop shop online: online: www.homeandaway.gallery www.homeandaway.gallery

December 3: Lancaster, SC Native American Studies Center Winter Art & Craft Sale at the USC Lancaster Native American Studies Center Galleries, 119 S. Main Street, 9:00 am–4:00 pm | (803) 313-7172 | sc.edu December 3: Victor, NY Native American Winter Arts Festival & Hodinöhsö:ni' Art Show at the Seneca Art & Cultural Center, 7000 County Road 41 | (585) 398-6151 ganondagan.org December 3 & 4: Washington, DC & New York, NY NMAI Native Art Market at the National Museum of the American Indian, 4th Street and Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC, and National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center, 1 Bowling Green, New York, NY, 10:00 am–5:30 pm | americanindian.si.edu/artmarket December 3 & 4: Oklahoma City, OK Winter Holiday Art Market at First Americans Museum, 659 First Americans Boulevard, 11:00 am–4:00 pm | (405) 594-2100 | famok.org December 10 & 11: Norman, OK 28th annual Calendar Signing & Holiday Show at Tribes Gallery, 512 W. Main Street | (405) 329-4442 | tribes131.com

Jacob Jacob D. D. Morgan Morgan

January 13–15: Colorado Springs, CO 41st annual Colorado Indian Market and Southwest Art Fair at the Colorado Springs Event Center, 3960 Palmer Park Boulevard (505) 273-7363 | dashevents.com For more events, visit our online calendar at

Jewelry Jewelry | | Baskets Baskets | | Prints Prints |Beadwork |Beadwork |Sculpture |Sculpture 96 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM/ CALENDAR

– COMING 2023 –

PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA

– Featuring – AGUA CALIENTE CULTURAL MUSEUM THE SPA AT SÉC-HE • OASIS TRAIL & GATHERING PLAZA visionaguacaliente.com