First American Art Magazine No. 44, Fall 2024

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

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

NO. 44, FALL 2024

DISPLAY UNTIL JAN. 2, 2025

INDIGENOUS PUPPETRY MOOSEHAIR EMBROIDERY EXHIBITIONS IN VENICE BLACK-&-WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

LESTER HARRAGARRA DANIEL HORSECHIEF LINDA INFANTE LYONS GABRIELA MORAC

Panel #7, photo: Addison Doty.

October 13, 2024 – April 12, 2025 Celebrating the innovative vision of Hopi carver Mavasta Honyouti, Carved Stories presents thirty of his more recent works.

The centerpiece of his first solo exhibition is a new series of sixteen panels linked to the publication Coming Home.

ON VIEW NOW:

Pathfinder: 40 Years of Marcus Amerman Through January 11, 2025

Pablita’s Wardrobe: Family + Fashion Through April 12, 2025

505.982.4636 wheelwright.org

PO Box 5153, Santa Fe, NM 87502 704 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe, NM 87505

Gabriela Morac, Arbol de Sabiduria, 2024, watercolor &

Gabriela Morac, Arbol de Sabiduria, 2024, watercolor & ink on paper, 29.75” x 22”

ink on paper, 29.75” x 22”

GABRIELA MORAC GABRIELA MORAC

HECHO A MANO

129 W Palace Ave ~ Santa Fe, NM

HECHO A MANO ~ www.hechoamano.org

129 W Palace Ave ~ Santa Fe, NM

~

www.hechoamano.org

Dyani White Hawk (Siċaŋġu Lakota), Dreaming, 2022, Lithograph, Edition of 20, Photo courtesy Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts

Dyani White Hawk (Siċaŋġu Lakota), Dreaming, 2022, Lithograph, Edition of 20, Photo courtesy Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts

The Center for Native Arts & Cultures • 800 SE 10th Avenue, Portland, OR for theArts exhibition is provided by Ford Standard, OR TheGenerous Center support for Native & Cultures • the 800 SEFamily 10thFoundation, Avenue,The Portland, and Garth Greenan Gallery.

Generous support for the exhibition is provided by the Ford Family Foundation, The Standard, and Garth Greenan Gallery.

Become a Member — Help catalyze Native artists and culture bearers to influence positive social, cultural, and environmental change by joining our community of Become a Member — Help catalyze Native artists and culture bearers to influence members today! Learn more at nativeartsandcultures.org.

positive social, cultural, and environmental change by joining our community of nativeartsandcultures native_art_culture members today! Learn more at nativeartsandcultures.org. nativeartsandcultures

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issue no. 44, fall 2024

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES

Recent Developments

By Staci Golar and America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

11

Seven Directions

By George Growingthunder (Nakoda/Dakota)

17

Spotlight | Chief-of-All-Women Pole

By Kariel Galbraith (Tlingit)

92

Art+Lit | Lily H. Tuzroyluke: Inupiaq/Tlingit/Nisga'a Novelist

By Angela Startz (Inupiaq, Northern Slope)

100

Calendar

109

54

32

The Path to Venice: Originators 40 and Leaders Bring Native American Art to the Biennale

By Patsy Phillips (Cherokee Nation) 46

80 87 96

Lester Harragarra: 54 Otoe-Missouria/Kiowa Photographer

By Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa) 62

103

Lena Boone (Zuni/ 104 Cheyenne-Arapaho, 1946–2024)

By Evalena, Leland, and Marcella Boone (all Zuni/Cheyenne-Arapaho) Rance Hood 105 (Comanche, 1941–2024)

By Jason Asenap (Comanche/Muscogee)

Lester Harragarra: Context

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

59

Daniel HorseChief: Cherokee Nation/Pawnee Painter and Sculptor

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

62

Linda Infante Lyons: 68 Alutiiq Painter

By Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq) 68

Alex Janvier (Denesuline/ 106 Saulteaux, 1935–2024)

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Bruce LaFountain (Turtle 107 Mountain Chippewa, 1961–2024)

By Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke), and America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Jesse Monongya (Diné, 1952–2024)

By Christy Hanson (Diné)

Of the Twig Eater: The Quiet Revival of Moosehair Embroidery

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

ARTIST PROFILES

MEMORIALS Ron Anderson (Choctaw Nation/Chickasaw, 1938–2024)

By Joan Frederick

23

The Impact of American Indian Black-and-White Photography

By Matt Jarvis (Osage)

REVIEWS Exhibition Reviews Reports

Book Reviews

Native Puppetry Has Arrived

By Sheila Regan

Gabriela Morac: Zapoteca Printmaker and Painter

By Staci Golar

74

cover Linda Infante Lyons (Alutiiq), Aana (Mother), 2022, oil on panel, 30 × 30 in., collection of the Alaska Native Medical Center, Anchorage. Image courtesy of the artist.

108 74

This painting is installed in the Alaska Native Medical Center’s Labor and Delivery wing.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 7

issue no. 44, fall 2024 ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Digital)

EXPERIENCE the

DISCOVER ENGAGE CONNECT

Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Literary Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD (Euro-Canadian) Contributing Editor: Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke) Advertising Representatives: Barbara Harjo and Nicole Emmons (Citizen Potawatomi) Circulation Manager: Amy D. Bergseth, PhD Copy Editors: Rosa Cays (Chicana) and Angela C. Villa (Chicana) Proofreaders: Staci Golar, Christy Hanson (Diné), and Angela C. Villa (Chicana) with assistance from Andrea L. Ferber, PhD Layout and Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) and Corey Yazzie (Diné) Social Media: Staci Golar, America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), and Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho) Interns: Liam Hart and Abby Mikalauskas

Regional Representatives

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

®

Advisory Council

Miranda Belarde-Lewis, PhD (Zuni/Tlingit) Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation) Emily Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Linda Lomahaftewa, Hon. DHum (Hopi/Choctaw) Leah Mata Fragua (yak tityu tityu yak tiłhini Chumash) Anya Montiel, PhD (Mestiza/Tohono O'odham descent) Denise Neil, PhD (Delaware Tribe/Cherokee Nation) Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa) Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole Nation) India Rael Young, PhD

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EDITOR’S GREETING

I

N 1973, during the Wounded Knee Occupation, activist Vernon Bellecourt (White Earth Ojibwe, 1931–2007) traveled to Italy and claimed the country on behalf of the Ojibwe people. In a successful example of political theater, Belcourt used humor and historical references to call attention to the current issues that American Indians faced. Specifically, he was fundraising to support the Native activists at Wounded Knee. This was part of a larger diplomatic trip through Europe, and The New York Times quoted him saying, “We have gained a hell of a lot of support throughout Europe and many people are looking to the American Indian Movement for leadership.”1 My dad told me about Bellecourt’s claiming of Italy. Later, after I consulted with Ojibwe friends, his story sparked this painting, an imagining of what Bellecourt’s map might look like. I’m calling attention to his action, not trying to speak on his behalf. The fact that Italy is a free-floating island is a clue that this is imaginary and not an attempt at historical veracity.

What is historical is the fact that Native people have traveled widely and engaged with global societies. In 2005 James Luna (Puyukitchum/Ipai/Mexican-American, 1950–2018) performed and installed his Emendatio in Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Italy. Through his multifaceted artwork, he highlighted the story of Pablo Tac (Luiseño, ca. 1822– 1841), a Catholic convert who traveled to Rome in 1834 to study for the priesthood, leaving drawings and a manuscript, an early account of Indigenous life at Mission San Luis Rey, before succumbing to smallpox at the age of 19.

In this issue, Patsy Phillips (Cherokee Nation) discusses the work of Nancy Marie Mithlo (Fort Sill Chiricahua Apache) and her fellow scholars and artists who formed the Native American Arts Alliance (NA3) and organized collateral events during the Venice Biennale.

These events led to larger projects and paved the way for the triumphant solo exhibition, the space in which to place me, with Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw/

above America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Italy Is Discovered and Claimed for the Ojibwe Nation, 2006, watercolor and gouache on paper, 14 × 11 in. Photo: Ann Sherman. Image courtesy of the artist.

Cherokee). If there’s an ongoing theme to First American Art Magazine, it’s the understanding that we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

And, in turn, we need to lift up those who come after us.

My great-grandmother had the theory that Native people study and adopt what is most useful from the non-Native world. This might include certain embroidery techniques from Ursuline Nuns for moosehair, photography, or puppetry. We benefit from these many collaborations,

and it falls upon us to strive so that future generations can experience the wonders we experience despite present-day challenges like moose threatened by warming temperatures and parasites or the city of Venice vulnerable to rising seawater and storms. All the actions we take today can have massive ramifications for the future. Indigenous artists in particular encourage us all not to give into despair but to envision the future as a beautiful place filled with possibility.

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

1. “Indian Movement Is Short of Funds,” The New York Times, July 29, 1973, web.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 9

SPECIALIZING IN THE SALE OF ESTATE AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Fisherman with Halibut, 1984

by Lelooska (1933–1996)

Contact director@quintanagalleries.com

Q UINTANA G ALLERIES

for consignment and purchase inquiries

quintanagalleries.com 503-810-7525

10 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

head curator of the Museo Antropológico Reina Torres de Araúz in Panama City.

MUSEUMS

ART FAIRS

The MUSEUM OF INDIAN ARTS AND CULTURE appointed Danyelle Means (Oglala Lakota) to serve as its executive director. Means had been serving as interim director for eight months. She was the first Native American director of the Center for Contemporary Arts and also worked for First Peoples Fund, Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, and the Institute of American Indian Arts. She earned her master’s degree in museum studies from Marist College/ Instituto Lorenzo de’ Medici in Italy.

Heather Igloliorte (Inuk) will curate the 2025 BONAVISTA BIENNALE, an innovative, rural-based, public art event that occurs every two years on Newfoundland’s Bonavista Peninsula.

The NEW ORLEANS MUSEUM OF ART named Orlando Hernández Ying as the Lapis Curator of the Arts of the Americas. This is the first permanent curatorial role at the museum dedicated to an expanded look at the arts of North, Central, and South America. Hernández Ying was previously a curatorial associate, fellow, and intern at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library in New York and the

above Danyelle Means (Oglala Lakota), director of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. below Orlando Hernández Ying, curator at the New Orleans Museum of Arts.

Garth Greenan Gallery in New York presented a selection of works by several Indigenous artists including Fritz Scholder (Luiseño, 1937–2005), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish-Kootenai/Métis/Shoshone), and Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo) for the 2024 edition of ART BASEL.

ART SHOWS The Washington State Historical Society recently hosted the 19th annual IN THE SPIRIT CONTEMPORARY NATIVE ARTS in Tacoma. Sydney Akagi (Tlingit) received Best of Show for her Chilkat Killer Whale Tunic. Special award winners included Stephan Smith (Quinault/ Makah), Honoring the Ancestors; Megan

Specializing in Hopi Silver Jewelry

The very best Hopi Silver jewelry purchased directly from the Hopi silversmiths FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 11

McDermott (Little Shell Chippewa/Blackfeet/Cree), Honoring Innovation; James Johnson (Tlingit), Purchase Prize; and Vicki Harlan (Colville), Spirit of the Northwest.

The Cherokee Nation hosted its 29th annual CHEROKEE HOMECOMING ART SHOW in Tahlequah. Best of Show went to Troy Jackson (Cherokee Nation). Other award recipients were Carolyn Pallett, beadwork/quillwork; Vicki Coppedge, basketry; Mary Thompson (Eastern Band Cherokee), traditional basketry; Lisa Rutherford, contemporary pottery; Crystal Hanna, traditional pottery; Tyran Cartledge, jewelry; Gary Allen, sculpture; Valerie Kagan, textiles; Ronnie Morris, traditional arts; Anita Mitchell, photography and digital art; Kayla Anley, drawing, graphics and mixed media; and Robin Stockton, painting. All artists are citizens of the Cherokee Nation unless otherwise listed.

Sue Folsom (Choctaw Nation) won Best of Show at the 19th Annual CHOCTAW ART SHOW, hosted by the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma at the Choctaw Cultural Center in Calera, Oklahoma. Classification winners were Lizabeth Mitchell, basketry; Chrischelle Baker, beadwork; Jane Semple Umsted, drawing/painting; Sam Stitt, graphics/photography; Jennifer Byram, textile art; and Ross Ridge, diversified art. Teri Scroggins won the Himmawk Pila “Future” Award; Tiffany Baker won the Okla’s Choice (People’s Choice) Award, and Jennifer Byram won the Choctaw Heritage Award. All winners are citizens of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

ART MARKETS

WENDY RED STAR NEW PRINTS 48004 St. Andrew’s Road | Pendleton, OR 97801 | 541-276-3954

crowsshadow.org Where The Cranes Sit, 2023, nine-color lithograph, 26” x 22”, edition of 25 Collaborating Master Printer, Judith Baumann 12 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024

Daniel Vallo (Acoma) won Best of Show at the 102nd annual SWAIA SANTA FE INDIAN MARKET for his mixed-media sculpture, Pueblo Revolt Ensemble. Classification winners were Sarah Aragon (Diné), jewelry; Garrett Maho (HopiTewa), pottery; Johnson Yazzie (Diné), painting/drawing/ graphics/photography; Arthur C. Holmes Jr. (Hopi), wooden Pueblo figurative carving and sculpture; Ryan Benally (Diné), sculpture; Isabel Gonzales (Jemez Pueblo), textiles; Dan Vallo (Acoma), diverse arts; Monica Raphael (Grand Traverse Odawa-Ojibwe/Lakota), beadwork/quillwork; Aydrian Day (Ho-Chunk/Anishinaabe/Lakota), youth; and Caleb Hoffman (Cherokee Nation/Penobscot), basketry. The IAIA Distinguished Alumni Award went to Adrian Wall (Jemez) for his sculpture.

AWARDS & HONORS The MacArthur Foundation named filmmaker Sterlin Harjo (Seminole Nation/Muscogee) and visual artist and curator Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke) 2024 MACARTHUR FELLOWS. Dubbed the “Genius Grant,” these 22 fellowships in diverse creative fields from the arts and sciences to public policy include an $800,000 stipend.

Rebecca Belmore (Lac Seul Ojibwe) won the AUDAIN PRIZE FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, one of Canada’s most prestigious honors. This annual prize presented by the Audain Art

ACADEMY | NATIVE AMERICAN ARTS WORKSHOPS AND FESTIVAL WEEK 75 YEARS OF NATIVE AMERICAN ARTS Since 1950, Idyllwild Arts has explored and celebrated Native American Arts in the heart of Cahuilla country. We welcome you to join us in continuing a great legacy of artistic and professional development, respect, and advancement of Native American Arts.

Workshops | June 9-27, 2025 | Workshop Registration Opens February 1, 2025 Festival Week | June 16-21, 2025

Museum consists of Can$100,000 given to recognize established artists for their exceptional contributions to the art field.

Photographer and installation artist Joe Harjo (Muscogee) received a 2024 JOAN MITCHELL FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP. His fellowship includes $60,000 in unrestricted funds distributed over five years.

above Dan Vallo (Acoma), 2024 Santa Fe Indian Market Best of Show winner, Pueblo Revolt. Photo: Tira Howard/SWAIA. Image courtesy of SWAIA.

The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis selected five Indigenous artists for 2025 EITELJORG CONTEMPORARY ART FELLOWSHIPS. They are Jean LaMarr (Northern Paiute/Achomawi [Pit River]), John Feodorov (Diné), Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu Gingrich (Koyukon Dené/Iñupiaq) Maria Hupfield (Wasauksing Ojibway) and Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/ Hidatsa/Arikara/Lakota). Each fellow will receive $50,000, be included in an exhibition, and have their work purchased by the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art. FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 13

Woven Being www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu

14 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024

The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum of Lincoln, Massachusetts, awarded basket maker Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy) the 25th annual RAPPAPORT PRIZE, a $50,000 cash award to honor a contemporary artist working in New England.

The AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES inducted Lori Pourier (Oglala Lakota) on September 20, 2024. Pourier cofounded the First People’s Fund and served as its executive director. The Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums recognized Pourier with an International Guardians of Culture and Lifeways Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023.

ANONYMOUS WAS A WOMAN ENVIRONMENTAL ART GRANTS were awarded to 19 recipients including Roni Jo Draper (Yurok), Rebecca Jim (Cherokee Nation), Koyoltzintli (Mestiza/Ecuadorian-American), brooke smiley (Osage), Colleen Thurston (Choctaw Nation), and Loren Waters (Cherokee Nation/Kiowa). These one-time awards provide up to $20,000 to support environmental art projects led by women-identifying artists from the United States and U.S. territories.

The New York State Council on the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts named Samantha Jacobs (Cattaraugus Seneca) a NYSCA/NYFA FELLOW in Folk/Traditional Arts. The NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Program makes unrestricted cash grants of $8,000 to artists working in 15 disciplines. In 2024 finalists were recognized with additional unrestricted cash grants of $1,000.

REPATRIATION The National Museum of Denmark returned a sacred cloak to the Tupinambá people of Brazil. The nearly six-foot-long cloak made with 4,000 scarlet ibis feathers was stolen during Portuguese occupation. The museum has held the cloak for 300 years and has displayed it in Copenhagen since 1698.

The National Park Service awarded $3 million in grants to 13 tribes and 21 museums to assist in the consultation, documentation, and repatriation of ancestral remains and cultural items as part of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). They awarded five repatriation grants to two tribes and three museums to fund the transportation and return of human remains of 137 ancestors, 12 funerary objects, and 54 cultural items. A total of 34 grants to 11 tribes and 19 museums will fund consultation and documentation projects to support the repatriation process.

CRIME & LEGAL ISSUES A Thunder Bay court sentenced David Voss to five years in prison in Ontario for his role in producing and distributing thousands of fake Norval Morrisseau (Bingwi Neyaashi Ojibwa, 1932–2007) works from 1996 to the mid-2010s. He had pleaded guilty this June to one count of forgery and one count of uttering forged documents.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 15

A PAINTING EXHIBITION

July 20, 2024 - January 18, 2025

Amber Gunn Gauthier April Holder Avis Charley David Martin Ryan Singer

Center for Native Futures • 56 W. Adams St, Suite 102 • Chicago, IL 60603 • centerfornativefutures.org

16 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

Seven Directions

GEORGE GROWINGTHUNDER A Nakoda/Dakota artist and museum professional shares his top seven list

A

CITIZEN OF THE ASSINIBOINE AND SIOUX TRIBES of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, George Growingthunder is a beadwork artist, craftsman, machinist, and dancer whose cultural work is interwoven with his technical art forms. For the last three decades, Growingthunder has created regalia, beadwork, and parfleches. For the last 20 years, he has digitally fabricated metal.

Growingthunder earned his studio arts bachelor’s degree from the Institute of American Indian Arts, with a focus on digital design and cultural arts experience. He also studied exhibition design and installation. He works in graphic design and utilizes Indigenous knowledge in material cultural arts. He had a 2022 internship at the White House and a 2023 fellowship with the Minnesota Historical Society. He recently hosted workshops at the Bernisches Historisches Museum in partnership with the U.S. Embassy in Bern, Switzerland.

Raised in California and Montana, Growingthunder is now based in Kansas City, Missouri, where he is pursuing an Indigenous studies master’s degree at the University of Kansas. He is passionate about creating public artworks, functional designs, and contemporary art forms that connect with his cultural ties as a Nakoda and Dakota person.

GROWINGTHUNDERS.COM

above George Growingthunder. Photo: Jason S. Ordaz. Image courtesy of the author. below Vitoria Córreia and Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate (Chickasaw) perform at the Five Moons Dance Festival, University of Oklahoma. Photo: Kiana Wilson. Image courtesy of the OU School of Dance.

SOUTH. In August 2024, the Shawnee Tribe and University of Oklahoma School of Dance sponsored the third annual Five Moons Dance Festival. Directed by Maggie Boyett (Shawnee Tribe/Kiowa/Peoria/Delaware), the festival featured dancers from the Oklahoma City Ballet, Yvonne Chouteau School, American Ballet Theatre, Tulsa Ballet, OU School of Dance, and more.

Several Native American dancers, particularly Shawnee dancers, participated in the tribute to Yvonne Chouteau (Shawnee Tribe, 1929–2016), one of the five Native American prima ballerinas. It is encouraging to see Native American art expand to theater ballet. The Five Moons Dance Festival hosted Lilia Greyeyes (Muskeg Lake Cree) from the American Ballet Theatre, Raven Bighorn (Fort Peck Dakota/ Cherokee), Georgeanne Growingthunder FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 17

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

(Fort Peck Nakoda/Kiowa), and Heloha Tate (Chickasaw) from the Oklahoma City Ballet, Yvonne Chouteau School.

Artist and composer Elisa Harkins (Cherokee Nation/Muscogee) also participated.

The performance celebrated the legacies of the Five Moons, Native American ballerinas from Oklahoma who found international success in world dance.

Next year’s festival will honor Rosella Hightower (Choctaw Nation, 1920–2008).

NORTH. BAD WAR CLOUD SINGERS is a drum group from various tribal communities in Montana and North Dakota. The group of young singers’ ages range from 17 to 20 years old. They recently won the five-man drum contest sponsored in memory of elder Merle Tendoy (Chippewa Cree, 1957–2020). The five-man drum contest occurred at the 60th annual Rocky Boy Celebration on the Chippewa Cree Reservation in August 2024. Bad War Cloud brings high-energy, Northern singing to powwows across the country, including Crow Fair, Sycuan Powwow, and Gathering of Nations.

WEST. Painter DEL CURFMAN (Apsáalooke) hails from Pryor, Montana, and is now based in Santa Fe. In my opinion, he is a brilliant artist. During Santa Fe Indian Market, I visited his studio where I experienced even more connection with his work, which features likenesses of individuals in our tribal communities. I was happy to see Del depicting leaders like KamiJo Whiteclay (Apsáalooke) from the Bíawaatchaache Collective (Good Woman Collective), dedicated to learning and finding ways to combat environmental issues and violence against Indigenous peoples. Del’s work draws from his cultural knowledge as an Apsáalooke person. He earned his BFA in studio art and museum studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2017 and paints portraits in an energetic expressive style, often using palette knives for an impasto effect. Del is affiliated with Exclusive Collections (EC Gallery) in San Diego, Wyld Gallery in Austin, and Rainmaker Gallery in Bristol, United Kingdom.

18 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

above, left Installation view of Melissa Cody: Webbed Skies at MoMA PS1. Photo: Kris Graves.

Image courtesy of MoMA PS1. above, right Detail of 1974 Triumph TR6 roadster embellished and customized by a team of Native American artists to benefit SWAIA and the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2002. Photo: Tira Howard.

Image courtesy of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. opposite, top Bad War Cloud Singers at the Sycuan Powwow, El Cajon, California, hosted by the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, 2024. Image courtesy of Bad War Cloud. opposite, below Del Curfman (Apsáalooke) with his painting Food Desert Decisions: Flaming Hot Cheetos (2021), work in progress, at Crow Colors Studio, Santa Fe. Image courtesy of the artist.

EAST. A major solo exhibition for the dynamic Diné textile artist is MELISSA CODY: WEBBED SKIES. Presented at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) PS1, an artist-centered and community-driven space in Queens, New York, the show features 30 works spanning the Diné artist’s career. Visually appealing weavings, motifs, and technology patterning show off her unusual designs, dyes, and patterns.

Building upon a foundation of historical Germantown weaving styles, Cody takes her tapestries in new, surprising directions. The PS1 show highlights some of Cody’s best-known works. I appreciate seeing artists take their work beyond the norm and take on the major art scene. This international exhibition was a partnership between MoMA PS1 and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) in Brazil. It was co-curated

by Isabella Rjeille of MASP and Ruba Katrib of MoMA PS1.

CENTER. The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) celebrates the addition of its new JOANN AND BOB BALZER NATIVE MARKET AND CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY, which opened with Driving the Market: Award Winning Contemporary Native Art. Co-curated by Elisa Phelps and newly appointed MIAC director Danyelle Means (Oglala Lakota), the inaugural show opened Thursday night of Native Art Week in Santa Fe. The gallery intends to expand the definition of Native art by highlighting living artists, including artists with non-customary creative practices. The new gallery features over 45 artists who define prizewinning Native art. I especially like the gallery’s interviews, film, and display of living cultures. The large 1974 Triumph TR6 convertible as a collaborative piece welcomes visitors and lends to the update. For more about the exhibition, see its review by Michelle J. Lanteri on page 82 of this issue.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 19

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

above Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Three Sisters, 2022, archive digital photographic print, on view in Future Imaginaries, Indigenous Art, Fashion, Technology, curated by Suzanne Newman Fricke, and Amy Scott, Kristen Dorsey (Chickasaw), and Amber-Dawn Bear Robe (Siksika), and on view at the Autry Museum of the American West, in Los Angeles though June 21, 2026.

ABOVE. I am looking forward to seeing the show FUTURE IMAGINARIES: INDIGENOUS ART, FASHION, TECHNOLOGY, on view at the Autry Museum of the American West in collaboration with PST Art in Los Angeles through June 21, 2026. With inspiration to design and methods of future representation, this show interests me as it includes fashion, digital, and design, and provides an outlook of what is possible and what will come in Native American art. The show comprises designers like Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti), Pat Pruitt (Laguna Pueblo), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), and Ryan Singer (Diné). Curated by Suzanne Newman Fricke, Amy Scott, Kristen Dorsey (Chickasaw), and Amber-Dawn Bear Robe (Siksika), this exhibition and catalogue have been in the works for five years. It is an exciting chance to see what contemporary curation of Native American art can provide to audiences.

20 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024

BELOW. AUGMENTED REALITY ART is expanding the possibilities of what Native art can be. I am excited about artists Marlena Myles (Spirit Lake Dakota/Mohegan/Muscogee) and DeMar Galloway (Shoshone-Bannock) creating art with augmented reality. The art form that has caused concern across the art world provides unique experiences for visual learners. Virtual reality can encourage connections to the land through educational programming and share audio and visual displays in spaces limited or impacted by space constraints.

I am interested in how this art form relays messaging in ethnobotany through Dakota designs, as seen in Myles’s art.

Galloway’s work includes experiences of horseback riding and depictions of scenery that relate to tribal youth and connection to the land and culture. These artists and others are bringing Indigenous Futurisms into our present experience.

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Photo: Tom Fields (Muscogee/Cherokee).

NATIVE PUPPETRY HAS ARRIVED On stage, on screen, and in the community, Native puppetry artists explore new ground

By Sheila Regan

S

OME OF THE EARLIEST memories Hapistinna Graci Horne (Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota/ Lakota) has of art making relate to puppetry. Raised by a single mother in South Minneapolis, she spent many days of her youth at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (HOBT), where Horne developed her skills. The community-based theater also used to host a giant community MayDay Parade through city streets that ended with a festival in a park.

“I would say my first art form was puppetry because it was just accessible,”

Horne says. “I didn’t come from any sort of privilege of having somebody to show me how to do things like painting, ceramics, beadwork, quillwork, any of that. It was taking advantage of free art-making workshops for kids.”

Horne is part of a growing trend of Native artists exploring puppetry as a tool for storytelling, education, and cultural connection. The practice has been popping up in museums, theaters, festivals, and television programs in recent years, and it is still in a time of transformation.

For her MFA thesis exhibition at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA)

in the spring of 2024, Horne found herself making the case for employing puppetry techniques as part of her culminating project. A question came up, she said, of whether puppetry was a Native art form.

“I really had to show my mentors and cohort what it could be,” Horne says. “Native technologies are always adopting new practices and new means to tell a story.”

As a young person, Horne remembers watching Eva Two Crow (Mandan/ Hidatsa/Arikara, 1956–2019) operate and voice puppets at HOBT. “I just remember how beautiful she was,” Horne

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 23

“Native technologies are always adopting new practices and new means to tell a story.”

above Hapistinna Graci Horne (Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota/ Lakota) and colleague use overhead projectors for shadow puppet theater. Image courtesy of Graci Horne. opposite Yup'ik artist once known, Women’s Finger Masks, pre-1905, wood, fur, feathers, pigment, Cape Vancouver, collection of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

Photo: Daderot (CC0).

recalls. “She would be there puppeteering the large puppets, and I’d see her in the MayDay Parade.”

Horne remembers running into Two Crow at an art market shortly before Two Crow died in 2019. “She was doing these little, tiny papier-mâché masks.

They were only like maybe three or four inches,” Horne says. It reminded Horne of seeing Two Crow’s work years before.

“I loved seeing her work in that scale and I loved seeing that she never let go of that mask-making practice.”

Puppetry isn’t a Dakota art practice, but Two Crow made Horne feel a connection to mask making and large-scale puppetry—and that she had a voice too.

“I'm always going to be grateful for Eva,” Horne says. “She was doing something amazing and something beautiful that changed my life. She really impacted me.”

Now with children of her own, Horne remembers how wonderful it was to watch Two Crow in all her beauty. “I’m

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going to carry that and make sure that I’m proud of what I’m doing,” she says.

“It helps me progress in my art making.”

Besides her MFA, Horne holds an earlier degree in museum studies from IAIA. For many years, Horne worked tirelessly to educate her Native community about their rights in institutions and museums, help them navigate the system, and understand that they are stakeholders in these institutions.

Horne has since moved away from curation. “I don’t think I would be in a very safe environment if I [worked at] a museum,” she says. “It’s still racist, it’s still ageist, it’s still capitalistic, and so for me, I am at peace with making sure that my people understand that they know how to talk with these people in these positions.”

Instead, Horne has focused her attention on her practice as an artist and being accessible to her children and community. “I'm always going to be a storyteller, and that’s something that is very

“There’s a deep history of traditional puppetry within Native communities,” says Lee Francis IV .… much Dakota. It’s rooted in our way of life,” Horne says.

Beginning around 2017, Horne tapped into skills she learned as a teen and young adult when she embarked on a career as a teaching artist. She reconnected with HOBT and other Minnesota puppet theaters and spent time watching other puppetry artists. She’d observe how they pulled together their parade section of large-scale puppets for the MayDay Parade. “I realized that I could use that knowledge to create my own workshops and teach them for libraries and Minnesota shelters, schools, and recreation centers.”

Using recycled cereal boxes, string, paint-mixing sticks from Home Depot, and other found materials, Horne embarked on a DIY practice of educational puppetry. She loves shadow puppetry as well as crankie boxes, where illustrations drawn on a scroll are rolled through a slot in a box. “It’s kind of like looking at a TV,” Horne says. “It’s like transforming old stories that I was told into that medium.”

ROOTS OF NATIVE PUPPETRY NATIVE PUPPETRY has emerged as a form ripe for new explorations, and yet its roots have a robust foundation.

One of the brightest stars that emerged in the 20th century is Buddy Big Mountain (Kahnawà:ke Mohawk), creator of numerous television programs that debuted in the 1980s. DerRic Starlight (Tsuut'ina) is another. He was a puppeteer with Fraggle Rock. Ty DeFoe (Oneida/ Ojibwe descent), meanwhile, has earned recognition for his work in theater, puppetry, and other expressive forms.

“There’s a deep history of traditional puppetry within Native communities,” says Lee Francis IV (Laguna Pueblo descent), who founded and directed the Indigenous Puppetry Institute, which held workshops in April at the First Americans Museum (FAM). “There’s mask work that has been done by Northwest Coast people for hundreds of years as part of their performative storytelling

and their object manipulation, which is sort of like the basics of puppetry,” he says. He adds that in the Pueblos, their practice was similar to toy theater.

Candice Byrd (Quapaw/Osage/ Cherokee Nation), who attended the Indigenous Puppetry Institute leading up to the Indigipop X at FAM, said the institute sparked conversations about the unbroken legacy of Native puppetry dating back to precontact days, “from Cherokee booger masks to the clowning techniques from the Southwest to the masking from the Northwestern Alaskan Native tribes,” she says.

For Byrd, attending the institute made her feel a bit less alone. “It was eye-opening to attend and look around the room and see that there are other Native puppeteers,” she says. “We just didn’t know that each other existed because this community is very niche.”

Byrd notes the diversity of puppetry artists represented at the institute despite the specialized vocation. “People come from all tribes,” she says.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 25

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26 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024

LEE FRANCIS IV’S FIRST MEMORIES of puppetry were watching Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock as a kid. “I found it just lovely and delightful,” he recalls. Then about ten years ago, he visited the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, which had a section focused on Native puppetry.

“I always look for that when I go to a museum,” Francis says. “I’m looking for Native representation.” Later, Francis had an opportunity to work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on a TV puppetry show called Sovereignty Gardens. It’s a show that follows a character called Stompy the buffalo and his friend Bran.

“That was really where I learned how to build my own puppets and work with television,” Francis says. “That was sort of the springboard for my involvement in puppetry.”

With a background as a comic book illustrator, Francis set about learning the mechanics of puppet making from online tutorials and trial and error. For the USDA project, he collaborated with actor and writer Kaylee Morrison (Mvskoke). He says the federal department was looking for innovative approaches to tell stories about food and nutrition.

Having already cofounded Indigipop X in 2016, Francis conceived of the Indigenous Puppetry Institute to bring Native people together interested in puppetry forms. “I think what I got most out of it was the number of people wanting to do puppetry in Native communities,” Francis says. He was especially struck by artists using puppetry to do language work with elders in the community. “It brought this new spirit for the elders. And so they were sharing much more openly with the language,” Francis says.

Oklahoma-based artist Nicole Emmons (Citizen Potawatomi), a stop-motion animator who also does puppetry, says the institute was an opportunity for different puppetry artists to share values across the board. “It was exciting to be uniting on certain themes and just listening to different people’s experiences in the industry,” she says.

BRINGING THE INANIMATE TO LIFE NICOLE EMMONS SAYS what she likes about puppetry and stop-motion animation is the way both bring the inanimate to life. “In Potawatomi, we have inanimate words and language, and you realize that certain objects within your space are actually living,” she says. “Animation and puppetry are about breathing life into things that otherwise wouldn’t be visibly alive. And that is pretty thrilling.”

Working in these forms, Emmons thinks of herself as a mini-magician. “With stop-motion, you can animate sand,

coffee, salt, paper, puppets—anything you can think of,” she says. “So there’s a big crossover with puppetry and stop motion, in the technique and the tech culture.”

In a recent project, The Circle of Chawce, directed by Randi LeClair (Pawnee), Emmons created puppets and animation about a Pawnee farmer. For the piece, Emmons made flat puppets from paper and string and used dowel rods and string for manipulation.

“I have a camera set up in front of it. I just hit record, go perform the scene, and then come back and cut it,” Emmons says.

Emmons took puppetry courses during her studies at the California Institute of the Arts, but many of the techniques she uses now weren’t covered during that time, like paper puppets used in a similar method as shadow puppetry with no screen. “I'm kind of learning as I go,” she says. above Participants of the inaugural Indigenous Puppetry Institute. Both photos by and courtesy of Lee Francis IV (Laguna Pueblo descent). right Nicole Emmons (Citizen Potawatomi) and Alicia Smith (Xicana) experiment with a marionette they created at the Indigenous Puppetry Institute.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 27

In January, Emmons will have an exhibition at the University of Oklahoma’s Lightwell Gallery called Black Wolf ’s Legacy. “It’s about one person’s experience with the Trail of Death, the forced removal of Potawatomi people from the Great Lakes Region in 1838.… Hopefully there will be some resonance experienced between the viewer and the installation.

That’s my dream,” Emmons says.

OSAGE STORIES & PUPPETS WAHZHAZHE PUPPET THEATRE, meanwhile, has employed puppetry arts to highlight stories from Osage culture.

The theater emerged in the spring of 2022 amid plans for the Osage Nation Sesquicentennial Celebration of the establishment of the Osage Nation Reservation in Indian Territory. Founder, curator, and artist Welana Fields Queton (Osage/Muscogee/Cherokee), playwright Candice Byrd, and stage director Russ Tallchief (Osage) worked with puppet maker Christopher Lutter-Gardella to create a performance theater piece for the festivity held at the Osage Nation Campus in Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

Parts of their source material were recordings of elders talking about Osage lifeways and values. They also wanted to

highlight beings who were a part of Osage oral history.

“These beings don’t get talked about a whole lot publicly,” Byrd says. “We can watch movies about Marvel superheroes, or we can watch TV shows about X-Men, but there’s not a whole lot for Native kids to [experience] stories from

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above Two stills from The Circle of Chawce, set and puppets by Nicole Emmons (Citizen Potawatomi) and Dylan Albertson. Both images courtesy of Nicole Emmons.

our own culture and be like, ‘Oh, I know that being’ or ‘I know that story.’”

Putting the show together was a community-supported effort. The team worked with an Osage language school, the Osage Nation Museum, and many volunteers. “We were bringing arts into the fold in that community,” Queton says.

“It was hard, I’m not going to lie,” she continues. She called on cousins, friends, and anybody who could draw, cut out a pattern, or layer papier-mâché.

“I think once people saw the size of everything, they understood, ‘Oh my gosh, okay, I see now. Yes, you need help. I’ll be back tomorrow.’”

That all-hands-on-deck effort led to great conversations, Queton says.

“We’re going to be standing here ‘papier-mâchéing’ for an hour together. We ended up having really cool conversations; like those discussions about what a word means or even digging into our worldview.”

Wahzhazhe Puppet Theatre has plans to continue its work and be a part of conversations going forward about new ways puppetry can be employed for storytelling. They also performed at Sugar Loaf Mound, a precontact earthwork owned by the Osage Nation, in St. Louis, Missouri, at the close of Counterpublic 2023 and later at First Americans Museum.

Byrd says one of the key takeaways she had from participating in the Indigenous Puppetry Institute is the importance of protecting the practice from theft. As part of April’s convening, artists shared about instances of work being stolen or appropriated. “I don’t think that’s anything really new,” Byrd says. “That is an issue just across the board in Native theater.”

Nonetheless, a new creative movement is developing with new connections growing between artists and tribal communities. Puppetry promises to add new possibilities of Indigenous storytelling.

Sheila Regan is a Minneapolis-based writer. Besides past contributions to First American Art Magazine, she has recently contributed to Craft Magazine, Bomb, and The Art Newspaper. An arts columnist for MinnPost, she also regularly writes for the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press and contributes radio pieces for KFAI’s Minneculture program.

above, top Wahzhazhe Puppet Theatre at Sugar Loaf Mound, St. Louis, Missouri. Welana Fields Queton (Osage/Muscogee/Cherokee) is behind giant squash with Candice Byrd (Quapaw/Osage/ Cherokee Nation) to her left, 2023. above, bottom Great Elk at Wahzhazhe Puppet Theatre performance, Osage Nation, 2022.

Both images courtesy of Welana Fields Queton.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 29

OKHVTA CHITO OKHOATALI C H OC TAW A N D F R EN C H TR A N SATL A NTI C LEG AC I ES

EXHIBIT NOW OPEN JULY 6 - NOVEMBER 30 Explore the continued relationship between the Choctaw Nation and France through a collaborative exhibit featuring items from the eighteenth century. Step into the Choctaw world of early European trade and how the relationship with France has continued to modern day.

DUR ANT,OK This exhibit was produced with the generous collaboration of the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac and the University of South Alabama Archaeology Museum.

Hattie Lee Mendoza (Cherokee Nation), Beaming Joy, gouache, watercolor, and ink, 20 × 16 in. framed.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 31

OF THE TWIG EATER The Quiet Revival of Moosehair Embroidery

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

I

N SOME WAYS, moosehair embroidery is no different than other Indigenous decorative arts, like birchbark etching. There is so little ink spilled and so little public knowledge shared about it that contemporary makers of this art form have taken it upon themselves to learn what their ancestors practiced only a hundred years earlier. With experience only in beading or quillwork, many have started their embroidery practice from scratch and now gather information, research archival documents, take photographs, and spend time with museum pieces. Though the history and ethics of art museum collection are being questioned—and rightfully so—these collected works continue to play a primary role in the distribution of moosehair embroidery’s old, singular knowledge.

When it comes to experimentation with the material, the process is trial and error—and error after error. Some forms of moosehair embroidery are arguably among the most difficult and demanding of all the decorative arts. It should also be no surprise, then, that it remains one of the least known, least practiced Indigenous cultural expressions in North America. Moosehair embroidery, rarely, if ever, appears in art markets or fairs and has taken a proverbial backseat to hair tufting in curated exhibitions.

The very recent and quiet revitalization of moosehair embroidery has been more of the tortoise than the hare.

Since the 1990s, it has gained popularity

among a handful of scholars, collectors, patrons, artists, and makers. I first encountered it through Ruth B. Phillips’s seminal book Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700–1900 and, more recently, Annette de Stecher’s impressive study Wendat Women’s Arts. What is glaringly missing from these texts about

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moosehair embroidery are the voices of contemporary Indigenous artists such as Samantha Jacobs, Noodin Shawanda, Michael Galban, and Louise Vien. These makers are happily entangled in moosehair embroidery and fashion a breadth of objects, from elaborate medallions and tumplines to ornate birchbark boxes and gooseskin pouches.

Though the learning curve has been steep and at times dotted by frustration, each artist is committed to honoring the artistic contributions of their ancestors while they also expand the aesthetic field of moosehair embroidery toward new, unexpected trajectories. As Samantha Jacobs (Seneca) of New York told me, “There’s just something special about using quills, hair, and shells in our traditional artwork that gives me hope for the future of the knowledge that will be passed down to the generations to come.”1

THE SOURCE TALK OF MOOSEHAIR embroidery should rightfully begin with the moose itself. While Plains tribes are historically and symbolically linked to buffalo, Anishinaabeg are connected to moose. In Anishinaabaymowin, mooz means “twig eater.” Weighing more than 1,000 pounds and able to provide several hundred

pounds of meat, it is no wonder that the word mooz is synonymous with life itself.

The moose, Alces americanus, averages 1.8 to 2 meters (almost 7 feet) tall and is the largest member of the deer family.

They thrive in the boreal forests across circumpolar North America into Siberia.

The hairs from the hump and the neck area of an adult bull moose during the winter season are ideal for embroidery since they are the longest, growing up to eight or nine inches long. They are also the whitest in color, making them easier to dye than brown or black shades.

Harvesting moose is often a shared activity. Noodin Shawanda (Wikwemikong Ojibway/Odawa/Potawatomi/ Cree) of Ontario tells me that members of his close and extended family gather in the bush during the fall season and set up a base camp for a week or two while the hunt is on. “It’s a big event,” he says, “because it’s a time when we can all spend time together, usually around

… the word mooz is synonymous with life itself.

above Female and male moose in Alaska. Photo: Ryan Hagery, USFWS. Image courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (CC BY 2.0). opposite Huron-Wyandot artist once known, Tray, 19th century, birch, moosehair embroidery, 10⅔ in. diameter, St. Laurent, Quebec, collection of the Penn Museum, gift of Marshall J. Becker, 92-12-10. Image courtesy of the Penn Museum.

1. Samantha Jacobs, in email communication with the author, May 24, 2024.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 33

above Moosehair bundles, Huron, mid-19th century, collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

Image courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum. ©ROM. opposite Huron-Wendat artist once known, Moccasins, 1820–1840, deer hide, moosehair, silk ribbon, dyes, 9 × 3½ × 2½ in., collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 2/5326. Photo: NMAI Photo Services. Image courtesy of the National Museum of the American. below F.G. Speck, “Huron Moose Hair Embroidery,” American Anthropologist 13, no. 1 (January–March 1911), 8.

Thanksgiving time. It gives us another reason to hang out and be with family.”2 When a moose is felled, its massive body is processed and divided among family and friends. Virtually nothing goes to waste. The hide is prepared for drums, leg bones are honed for hide scrapers, and hooves are employed in handicrafts. In the past, Shawanda would remove the hair and gift it to others for tufting, but more recently he and his friends have started to keep the hair for embroidery. This shift in focus from hair tufting to embroidery in Indigenous communities like Shawanda’s signals a slow but obvious change in thinking about the practice. Still, the revitalization is in its earliest days.

ORIGINS & TECHNIQUES HAIR EMBROIDERY is not new. About two-thirds of the Global North, from what is now Russia to Canada and the United States, holds a surprisingly rich history of embroidery made with the hair of moose, caribou, horse, deer, and other animals.3 In North America, this art form is considered to be an ancient aesthetic convention since animal hair was applied to a variety of objects before the arrival of Europeans to the continent.4 In fact, moosehair embroidery even appears in the story of Nanaboozhoo and Grandmother Moon. It goes: “Nanaboozhoo cares for Nookomis while she is on the earth, making her a wigwam, and bringing her furs. In return, Nookomis makes him clothes that are embroidered with moose hair, and it was the embroidery that told about a person.”5 One of the earliest academic studies of hair embroidery, published by Frank G. Speck in 1911, maintains that historical 2. Noodin Shawanda, in discussion with the author, May 17, 2024.

3. Geoffrey Turner, Hair Embroidery in Siberia and North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press and Pitt Rivers Museum, 1955), 13.

4. Vasanthi Pendakur and Elizabeth Kawenaa Montour, “Modification of records: A case study with moose hair embroidered birch bark boxes,” Library and Archives Canada Blog, March 25, 2021, web.

5. Lana Ray, “Mshkikenh Ikwe Niin (I am Turtle Woman): The Transformative Role of Anishinaabe Women’s Knowledge in Graduate Research” (PhD diss., Trent University, 2015), 12.

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design patterns and motifs are ordinarily derived from flora, which undoubtedly predates European contact. “Thus we have among them,” he writes, “representations of balsam fir, barberry, [ph]lox, marguerite, clover, and parts of plants such as roots, trunks, stumps, crossed branches, vegetation which conceals the roots, buds, fruit, and the part that covers the base of the branch.…6 Before and during the early colonial period, Indigenous artists developed natural dyes with organic compounds such as fruits, moss, and bark. By the late 19th century, aniline dyes almost completely replaced these due to their ease of use. Likewise the French and British rapidly expanded trade in the Northeast at that time, hastening the replacement of awl and sinew by needle and thread.

Possibly the most time-consuming and tedious approach to moosehair embroidery is the false embroidery

method once commonplace among the Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat people. “From many people’s perspectives,” says Michael Galban (Washoe/ Mono Lake Paiute), false embroidery “is the pinnacle of hair embroidery in North America. It’s the highest art form, most delicate, most involved, and aesthetically really beautiful.”7 Manager of Ganondagan State Historic Site, curator at the Seneca Art and Culture Center, and a teaching artist, Galban is researching moosehair false embroidery for his doctoral degree. False embroidery involves an additional material wrapped around the visible weft of a weaving or twined piece. Least known, deeply laborious, and painfully unforgiving, false embroidery remains less popular than other forms of hair embroidery yet highly prized.

Most moosehair embroiderers use couching or creweling (or a combination) when they apply hair to a surface

to create a pattern or motif.8 Moosehair and porcupine quills can be embroidered on birchbark or hide, and since their patinas are strikingly similar when dyed, they are often confused with each other, so much so that museums conflate them to this day.

Most scholars of moosehair embroidery focus on the extraordinary contributions of Huron-Wendat women.

The quality of linework in their floral arrangements, the subtle gradation of dyes that suggest the movement of light, and the application of distinct techniques not only distinguish their work from its European influences but also separate it from all other moosehair embroidery customs in North America. Around the turn of the 18th century in Quebec, French-Canadian Ursuline nuns appropriated moosehair ornamentation and functional birchbark objects from local and regional Indigenous nations.

6. F.G. Speck, “Huron Moose Hair Embroidery,” American Anthropologist 13, no. 1 (January–March 1911), 7.

7. Michael Galban in discussion with the author, May 14, 2024.

8. Couching is laying a fiber across a textile’s surface and affixing it with small stitches. Creweling, from the Welsh word krua for “wool,” uses different stitches to create textured designs on the surface of textiles. —Ed.

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above Huron-Wendat artist once known, Slippers, 1820–1900, hide leather, hide, wool, linen, silk, cotton; moosehair; sinew, dye, 2 × 3 × 9⅗ in., collection of McCord Stewart Museum, M16946.1-2 (CC0). opp osite M o h aw k a r t i s t once known, Burden Strap, 1760–1800, hemp dogbane, moosehair, glass beads, dyes, with false-embroidery, 198 × 2⅓ in., once owned by E. Pauline Johnson (Mohawk, 1861–1913), collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 2/5326.

Photo: Walter Larrimore. Image courtesy of the National Museum of the American.

Using their own specialized knowledge of ecclesiastical embroidery, the nuns began to experiment with embroidering moosehair on birchbark and later sold these souvenir items to wealthy European colonists, soldiers, travelers, and bureaucrats.9 In this moment, Europeans perceived moosehair through a lens of cultural exoticism because the moose, the giant and unpredictable beast of the boreal wilderness, symbolized the frontier

between civilized society and barbarism.10 Europeans applied this line of thinking to Indigenous populations, which the nuns reflected through iconographical choices that often pictured romanticized “scenes of Indian life,” naively living work-free under “Edenic” conditions.11 The trade and circulation of these fashionable yet misrepresentative items served to reinforce stereotypes of what some buyers already felt to be true. The impact of this racial prejudice continued while the early foundations for the Dominion of Canada were being laid and later reverberated throughout the 19th century.

The moosehair embroidery of the Ursuline nuns started to decline around the early 19th century. Around that time, the Huron-Wendat community of Lorette, Quebec, began to produce moosehair embroidery for personal items and souvenirs like footwear, cigar boxes, scissor cases, card cases, trays, and more.

This archetypal shift in the nun’s early subject matter dans le gôut sauvage (in the wild taste) to the Huron-Wendat women’s exquisite floral designs presents a renewed inclination toward self-representation and Indigenous worldviews.12 According to Ruth Phillips, “When Native women took over this iconography they exploited the preexisting tradition selectively, stressing aspects of self-representation that had value in [I]ndigenous systems of thought and eliminating others that made no sense within these systems.”13 Add to this embroidery created outside the tourist economy for purposes of ceremony, ritual, or formal clothing, which is one of the earliest instances of Indigenous cultural renewal in Canada.

Even so, moosehair embroidery practices disappeared among many Indigenous communities in North America for more than a hundred years.

After facilitating porcupine quillwork

9. Annette de Stecher, “Huron-Wendat Historical Visual Arts Tradition: Symbol of Cultural Continuity and Autonomy in the Past, Source of Inspiration in the Present,” St Andrews Journal of Art History and Museum Studies 13 (2009), 88.

10. Ruth B. Phillips, Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700–1900 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), 127.

11. David Howes, “In defense of materiality: Attending to the sensori-social life of things,” Journal of Material Culture 27, no. 3 (2022), 328.

12. Phillips, Trading Identities, 103, 116.

13. Ruth B. Phillips, “Nuns, Ladies, and the ‘Queen of the Huron,’” in Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds, ed. Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 34.

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workshops in Upstate New York, Galban found himself drawn to false moosehair embroidery. In Haudenosaunee art history, false embroidery most frequently appears on tumplines (straps hung from the forehead or around the chest that allow people to carry objects on their back), yet it is also present on bags, belts, straps, headdresses, sword belts, slit pouches, and other objects. He recalls that the last known moosehair false embroidery work in local Native communities was an unfinished tumpline from the 19th century found wrapped in newspaper in an attic by the maker’s grandnephew. The maker, known only as Kettle without a second name, likely did the work around 1830. Galban notes that a breakdown in the availability of materials, perhaps owing to a lack of trade with northern nations or that certain objects could have fallen out of cultural use, might account for the sudden disappearance of false embroidery work. Galban explains that the community of artists and makers consequently disappears too:

“You no longer have women collecting together and talking about their work or bringing their work to show together. [...] some of the traditions of that community-based artwork fade away, and so do the boundaries between what is considered masculine art and female art.”14 Today, almost two centuries later, Galban’s tumplines resume the artistic practice of the region while paying homage to historical women’s skill and wisdom.

Much like Galban’s, Samantha Jacobs’s fascination with moosehair embroidery stems from the lack of knowledge and ability among the living artists.

As a beadwork artist, her research into historical Seneca aesthetics attributed to women focuses on works where beadwork and hair embroidery coexist on the same surface. When books and archival documents fell short in their descriptions, namely of technical processes, museums helped to bridge the gap and clear the fog. “During my collections visits,” Jacobs explains, “I studied the stitches and the back of the embroidered pieces. I was able

to take close-up images of work. I have used these photos as a study guide to patterns and stitches.”15 Previous published research failed to mention that too much stress or tension in the stitch can spoil the consistency of the hair, leading to an asymmetrical composition. In recent years, beadwork has taken off in her community while hair embroidery trails behind, but Jacobs combats this trend on social media. She amplifies the practice of hair embroidery via social media, a crucial step to give it the visibility it has historically missed.

Before working in moosehair embroidery, Louise Vien (Red River Michif) worked in quillwork, beadwork, caribou tufting, and fingerweaving ceinture fléchée (arrow belts). Her story is familiar in that her early research into moosehair embroidery also uncovered historical analysis but little methodological expertise. So she moved toward how-to guides that detail the European embroidery tradition. “I bought a few reference books on French and British crewel embroidery work,” she remembers,

14. Michael Galban in discussion with the author.

15. Samantha Jacobs, email communication, May 24, 2024.

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“and compared the techniques to the pieces I have seen in pictures to understand the ‘how to’ and to enable me in some way or another achieve a similar outcome.”16 The Canadian Museum of History invited Vien to study moosehair embroidery objects and materials in its collection, which shed light on precisely how makers of the past selected certain approaches and for what purpose. “Many pieces in museums don’t carry the names of their creator,” says Vien. “So what I try to do is carry their legacy so it may no longer disappear, so that the beauty of their struggles may not be forgotten.”

Across the Great Lakes into the Subarctic, where the Huron-Wendat and Red River Michif communities live, floral iconography has been a central expression of Indigenous cultural identity.17 In works such as Poppy (2022), Vien first forges small birchbark baskets and wraps the edges with sweetgrass before painstakingly stitching moosehair into the surface to create floral themes. The stitching of hair is so linear, so meticulous, that it is often misjudged to be quillwork. And her work will not stop here. Vien is writing the first-ever book on moosehair embroidery techniques. This much-needed book would provide answers to centuries-old uncertainties.

Curiously, of the artists I spoke to, especially those in Canada, most were unaware of others who practice moosehair embroidery, which not only points to how few individuals are engaged in it but also how necessary it is to establish viable networks of exchange, particularly on reservation communities.

Reading about such work or looking at black-andwhite photo reproductions in old books is absolutely no substitute for the kinds of experiential learning offered by in-person visitations and engagement.

There is also no substitute for picking an object up in your hands, holding it, and mulling it over. These simple acts have unforeseen repercussions. “Looking at these old objects and being in direct contact with them,” Galban told me, “is the most important thing we can do for our future generations. In a way, we communicate with the past and the makers of the past, [and] learn from them as you might learn from a master painter at the Louvre.”

I am often reminded to look back to the thing in question for meaning, in this case the moose itself, because the future of embroidery depends on the health of the material in question, be it birch trees for baskets or porcupines for quillwork. Yet doing so is troubling.

Scientists warn that unseasonably warm temperatures 16. Louise Vien, in email communication with the author, May 17, 2024.

17. Abra Wenzel, “Valuable Materials, Invaluable Relationships: Exploring Indigenous Culture and Sovereignty Through Moose and Caribou Hair Tufting in the NWT” (PhD diss., Carleton University, 2022), 155.

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in the Northeast threaten moose populations by inviting an array of malignant pathogens. As winters become more moderate with less snow, deer populations migrate north and carry parasitic brain worms that spread to moose populations.

Packs of wolves follow, feeding on both the deer and infant moose. In Minnesota alone, it is estimated that the moose population, which once numbered over 10,000, has dropped by 64 percent since 2006.18 Without a robust population of moose, this source of sustenance and artistic heritage will return to scarcity. Those few who practice moosehair embroidery may be forced to turn to synthetic sources, which can take hundreds of years to decompose and return to the earth.

So, in the end, a familiar question arises: How can the future of a particular art practice be imagined when the present is perilous?

Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD, is the curator and head of collections at Glenhyrst Art Gallery in Brantford, Ontario.

18. Liz Scheltens, “Parasites that thrive in a warming planet are killing Minnesota’s moose,” Vox, January 28, 2022, web.

opposite Samantha Jacobs (Seneca), Have You Seen Me, the Rare Two-Spotted Ladybug, 2024, beadwork, moosehair embroidery, moosehair tufting, hide, seed beads, faceted beads, cloth.

Image courtesy of the artist.

above, top Huron-Wendat artist once known, Lidded Box, mid-19th century. collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

Image courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum. ©ROM

above, bottom Louise Vien (Red River Michif), Poppy, 2022, birchbark, sweetgrass, dyed moosehair. Image courtesy of the artist.

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THE PATH TO VENICE Originators & Leaders Bring Native American Art to the Biennale

By Patsy Phillips (Cherokee Nation)

T

ODAY IS A NEW DAY for contemporary Indigenous arts, though respect and recognition from the mainstream art world did not come overnight. The present acknowledgment is the manifestation of years of work. Individuals and organizations, past and present, have contributed to the advancement of contemporary Indigenous art on the world stage. As a result, the contemporary art world is finally taking note.

At the forefront of advocacy for contemporary Indigenous arts and cultures, the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) has the mission “to elevate contemporary Indigenous art through exhibitions, collections, programs, partnerships, and new research.”

Established in 1962, the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is the only fine arts college in the world dedicated to the study of contemporary American Indian and Alaska Native arts. At its beginning, IAIA collected student and staff artworks that led to the formation

of what is now MoCNA in 1972. In recent years, MoCNA has reached major milestones such as accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums. USA Today 10 Best Readers’ Choice identified MoCNA as one of the top ten art museums in the country four years in a row.

Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott recognized the museum as one of “286 Teams Empowering Voices the World Needs to Hear,” and the Ford Foundation designated the museum as one of America’s Cultural Treasures.

This year’s 60th Venice Biennale exemplifies the progression of Native American arts on the global scene. Jeffrey

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Gibson, a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, is the first solo Native artist to exhibit in the U.S. Pavilion since its construction in 1930. In 1932 the U.S. Pavilion presented works by the Kiowa Six, Pueblo pottery, and other Southwestern art forms in a large group exhibition.

Gibson’s solo exhibition, the space in which to place me, opened in April 2024.

Latin American countries, Australia, Canada, and others have shown Indigenous artists in their pavilions for decades.

Art experts assembled by the National Endowment for the Arts Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions choose an artist from applications for the U.S. Pavilion, and representatives from the U.S. State Department approve the selection.

Founded in 1895, the Venice Biennale Giardini consists of 29 national pavilions organized by their countries. Beyond these pavilions, the Biennale Committee endorses other exhibitions throughout Venice. Over the years, the committee

above, left Ceremonial (1999) poster, detail. Image courtesy of NA3 and the author. above, right NA3, 1998, front row, left to right: Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee Nation, 1916–2002), Harry Fonseca (Nisenan Maidu/Native Hawaiian, 1946–2006), and Floyd Solomon (Laguna Pueblo/Zuni, 1952–2008); back row: LaDonna Harris (Comanche), Bernard Pomerance (1940–2017), Bob Haozous (Fort Sill Chiricahua Warm Springs Apache), Nancy Marie Mithlo (Fort Sill Chiricahua Warm Springs Apache), and Patsy Phillips (Cherokee Nation). Image courtesy of the author. right Shelly Niro (Bay of Quinte Mohawk), The Shirt 1, 2003, photograph. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite, top Exterior view of the space in which to place me (Jeffrey Gibson’s exhibition for the United States Pavilion, 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia), 2024; forecourt sculpture, the space in which to place me.

Photo: Timothy Schenck. opposite, bottom Edgar Heap of Birds (Southern Cheyenne), Most Serene Republics, fabricated sign, 2007. Image courtesy of the author.

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above James Luna (Puyukitchum/Ipai/Mexican, 1950– 2 0 1 8 ) , E m e n d at i o , 2 0 0 5 , performance. Photo: Katherine Fogden. Image courtesy of National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, and the Institute of American Indian Arts. opposite, top Lozen Haozous (Fort Sill Chiricahua Warm Spring Apache) assisting with construction of Belly structure for Umbilicus, 2001. Photo: Nancy Marie Mithlo (Fort Sill Chiricahua Apache). opp o si t e , b ot tom James Luna (Puyukitchum/Ipai/ Mexican, 1950–2018), Emendatio, The Chapel for Pablo Tac, 2005, installation. Image courtesy of the author.

has used various titles for these affiliated exhibitions such as latera, parallel, extra 50, or collateral events, their current label.

If selected by the Biennale Committee, the recognition is prestigious, and the exhibitions are in the official catalogue and on-site location maps.

Indigenous peoples recognize those who come before us. In this regard, I along with Nancy Marie Mithlo (Fort Sill Chiricahua Warm Springs Apache), Bob Haozous (Fort Sill Chiricahua Warm Springs Apache), Harry Fonseca (Nisenan Maidu/Native Hawaiian, 1946– 2006), and others, have worked since

1997 to achieve acceptance of contemporary Native arts at the Venice Biennale.

Mithlo and Haozous visited the biennale in 1997 and returned home determined to bring Native art there.

The group established the Native American Arts Alliance (NA3), which organized its first official collateral event titled Ceremonial in 1999. Seven artists were featured in Ceremonial: Harry Fonseca, Bob Haozous, Frank LaPena (Nomtipom Wintu, 1937–2019), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish-Kootenai/ Métis/Shoshone), Richard Glazer Danay (Kahnawà:ke Mohawk), Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee Nation), and Richard Ray Whitman (Yuchi/Muscogee). IAIA alum Gabriel Lopez Shaw (Pyramid Lake Paiute) documented this event in his 1999 video.1 NA3 curated Umbilicus in 2001, followed by Pellerossasogna—The Shirt in 2003, a film by Shelly Niro (Bay of Quinte Mohawk), who translated the title as “Red Skin Dream.” The Shirt resonates with ideas of voyeurism, theft, and vulnerability while simultaneously asserting the presence of strong Indian women. Over 20 years, Mithlo led nine exhibitions and involved more than two hundred Native and non-Native curators, artists, art administrators, scholars, educators, students, and museum directors.

Stanford University Libraries Special Collections and UCLA American Indian Studies Center Library maintain Mithlo’s Venice Biennale archives. The University of Nebraska Press will publish her forthcoming book, Red Skin Dreams, which examines Native American curation at the Venice Biennale from 1997 to 2017.

In direct correlation to NA3’s biennale contributions, when I was employed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), the founding director, W. Richard West Jr. (Southern Cheyenne), supported two exhibition proposals for the U.S. Pavilion.

Emendatio by James Luna (Puyukitchum/ Ipai/Mexican-American, 1950–2018), submitted in 2005, paid tribute to Pablo Tac, a 19th-century Luiseño who traveled to Rome to study for the priesthood in

1. Gabriel Lopez Shaw, “Ceremonial: Contemporary Native Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale 1999,” ContempIndigenousArt, July 11, 2012, YouTube video, 13:37, web.

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1834. NMAI’s proposal in 2007 of the exhibition Most Serene Republics by Edgar Heap of Birds (Southern Cheyenne) addressed the creation of republics or nation-states through acts of aggression, displacement, or replacement of populations and cultures.

The U.S. Committee of Contemporary Art Experts rejected NMAI’s applications, even though they were well-qualified and thoughtful exhibitions. The Venice Biennale Committee endorsed these exhibitions as collateral events. Under my leadership and with the support of IAIA President Robert Martin (Cherokee Nation), MoCNA submitted a proposal to the U.S. State Department in 2011 for an accomplished Native artist from New Mexico. Denied, we did not apply for collateral status or proceed as an independent project. While these rejections were exasperating, we were part of a movement toward recognition of Native FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 43

above Richard Glazer Danay (Kahnawà:ke Mohawk), If Good Americans When They Die Go to Paris, Do Good Indians When They Die Go To Santa Fe?, 1999, in Ceremonial. Photo: Nancy Marie Mithlo (Fort Sill Chiricahua Warm Springs Apache).

American artists in the global art scene and paved the way for today’s Venice Biennale participation.

Twenty-five years after the first collateral event of Indigenous contemporary art organized by NA3, Portland Art Museum curator Kathleen AshMilby (Navajo), SITE Santa Fe director Louis Grachos, and independent curator Abigail Winograd collaborated on Gibson’s the space in which to place me.

Grachos said, “It was the right time to present Jeffrey, and we felt Jeffrey was ready.” Gibson had visited Luna’s biennale

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exhibition and later told me, “James Luna inspired me to strive for the U.S. Pavilion.” An outstanding curator, Ash-Milby is the first Native American to curate an exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion. She also co-curated Heap of Birds’s Venice Biennale collateral event in 2007. After years of creativity and exposure, Gibson was ready for the biennale, and the global art world was ready for him.

IAIA awarded Gibson an honorary doctorate of humanities in 2023 for his contributions to Indigenous arts. In celebration of Gibson’s biennale presence, a group of us including MoCNA chief curator Manuela Well-Off-Man, IAIA Museum Studies Chair Mattie Reynolds (Choctaw Nation), alum James Rutherford ’18, along with IAIA students Kashelle Brandon (Navajo) ’25 and Kim Becenti (Tohono O'odham) ’25, attended the opening. NMAI sponsored 26 jingle dancers and singers to perform; G. Peter Jemison (Seneca Nation) offered a prayer; Chief of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians Cyrus Ben (Mississippi Choctaw) presented; Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) performed; and Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota) MFA ’14 read her poetry. The Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander, NMAI Director Cynthia Chavez (San Felipe Pueblo/HopiTewa/Navajo), Abbe Museum Director Elizabeth Theobald Richards (Cherokee Nation), and others, were in Venice for the vernissage to celebrate this monumental achievement. The Indigenous takeover reverberated throughout the Venice Biennale Giardini.

Gibson’s presence inspired and encouraged dialogue among Native and non-Native peoples. Educational programming included IAIA’s MFA Studio Arts Program (MFASA). They organized the Venice Indigenous Arts School, a weeklong gathering of seminars and lectures. Ca' Foscari University of Venice held sessions focused on developing terminology from Indigenous perspectives relevant to discussions on contemporary arts. The Bard College Center for Indigenous Studies organized a gathering to examine how Native aesthetics, futurity,

and arts intersect with other practices and modernism. Gibson’s exhibition will close on November 24, 2024.

MoCNA is renowned for representing the most current and relevant Indigenous contemporary arts of our generation. As the contemporary art world progresses, Indigenous arts and cultures deserve to remain globally front and center. We must remember in all we do, we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

above Maria Hupfield (Wasauksing Ojibway), Jiimaan, 2015, three-part performance with 9-foot handmade industrial felt canoe, as part of Gan ni tha at We Crociferi Campo dei Gesuiti, Venice. Photo: John Paul Rangel (Mestizo/Mescalero/Lipan Apache descent).

below Grand Canal in Venice, left to right: Kimberly Becenti (Tohono O'odham), Mattie Reynolds (Choctaw Nation), Kashelle Brandon (Diné), James Rutherford, Patsy Phillips (Cherokee Nation), and Manuela Well-Off-Man. Image courtesy of the author.

Patsy Phillips (Cherokee Nation) has worked for more than 30 years with Indigenous artists, educators, scholars, and administrators who advocate for the advancement and understanding of contemporary Indigenous arts and cultures. Phillips has served as MoCNA director for 16 years and oversees the dayto-day operations of the museum.

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THE IMPACT OF AMERICAN INDIAN BLACK-&-WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY Perceived as visual truth, black-and-white photography can uphold or subvert stereotypes, depending on who wields the camera

By Matt Jarvis (Osage)

I

N THE LATE 19th and early 20th centuries, non-Indigenous photographers created and mass-produced images of mythological “Indians” to create a false perception through their black-and-white photographs.

Not until Indigenous photographers had the knowledge and resources to create “Real Indian” images could they combat the false perceptions. Native photographers forged their own visual narratives in the era of blackand-white film with chemistry and paper.

My love for the aesthetics of black-and-white photography began with the classic photo magazines that featured the likes of Gordon Parks and Margaret Bourke-White, not to mention John Huston’s The Battle of San Pietro (1945), a documentary shot during the Italian campaign in World War II that plays like a heroic war movie. Monochrome photography was allowed in courtrooms as evidence; color photography was not, because colors are not seen the same by all people, and colors could be manipulated and thus ‘falsified.’

When I took my first journalistic photos in the 1990s, they were with black-and-white film: 35 millimeter Kodak Tri-X, with its great tonal range and the ability to be pushed and pulled. Later I would switch to Agfa Scala black-and-white slide film, a little more expensive to have processed but worth its dark darks and all its greys to white. For serious photography, black and white was professional.

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EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY THE AESTHETICS of black-and-white photography as documentary and colonial public relations tools hark back to the 19th century. Photography came into being in the 1830s in Europe, not North America. The earliest surviving photographs of an Indigenous person of the Americas were of Reverend Peter Jones (Mississauga Ojibwe, 1802–1856) taken in Edinburgh in 1845.

By 1847 this technological innovation had reached St. Louis, Missouri, where Thomas Easterly photographed a delegation of Sauk and Fox. The government, then private enterprises, sent photographers to the West in the 1850s to capture on film the land and Indigenous Americans. The Civil War interrupted these fact-finding expeditions. There was no color film or printing yet.

By the end of the 1850s, the wetplate collodion transfer process allowed for a limited edition of multiple prints from one “plate.” This process became more accessible for professional photographers by the 1870s, the post–Civil War era of the Indian Wars when the United States was trying to clear the West for settlers and corporations. Government geological expedition photographers like Timothy O’Sullivan and William Henry Jackson documented Native Americans in their customary lives on the land the United States was surveying for mining development and railroad lines.

The 1890s brought mass-reproduced photography with new, faster, half-tone printing presses for magazines and newspapers and acetate photographic film. Photographs served as propaganda tools to embody Indigenous people as a hindrance to the white Americans, who attacked settlers and ambushed wagon trains before being defeated by the U.S. military. Photographs of Indigenous Americans from the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre were

some of the first widely published when the Army investigated the genocide.

The United States was expanding from overcrowded Eastern cities to the “open” West all the way to the Pacific Ocean, relieving the stress of urbanization and increasing the nation’s settled territory. Their Manifest Destiny doctrine portrayed Indigenous peoples of America as in the way and needing relocation to reservations to get them out of the picture or killed. Photographs also served as propaganda for boarding schools’ efforts to assimilate Native children into mainstream American white society.

above Nipakanticimi, Southern Paiute, men gambling in southwestern Nevada, 1873. Photo: Department of the Interior, Geological Survey (CC0). opposite Minchu Zhinga, Little Bear (Kansa), St. Louis, Missouri, studio portrait with albumen print, 1852. Photo: John H. Fitzgibbon (CC0).

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above Horace Poolaw (Kiowa, 1906–1984), Vivian Big Bow, 1945, photograph. Image courtesy of the Estate of Horace Poolaw. opposite, top Horace Poolaw (Kiowa, 1906–1984), SelfPortrait with Gus Palmer, ca.

1944, photograph. Image courtesy of the Estate of Horace Poolaw. The two men posed with their B-17 Flying Fortress at MacDill Field, Florida. opposite, bottom Lee Marmon (Laguna Pueblo, 1925–2021), Girls at Clothesline, 1954, photograph, Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections at the University of New Mexico.

SELFREPRESENTATION IN SHARP CONTRAST, early Indigenous photographers lived among and intentionally turned their cameras on Indigenous people to show real, contemporary Indigenous people to the American public. Writer, curator, and photographer Richard Hill (Tuscarora Nation) named the camera as a weapon for “art confrontation rather than military confrontation. Indians themselves now have taken the power of the image and began to use it … for its potential power as a political weapon.”1 Theresa Harlan

wrote that the equation inverted when the “Indian” began operating the camera.

Works by Indigenous photographers were informed by Indigenous experiences and knowledge instead of outsiders’ invented mythologies.2 Horace Poolaw (Kiowa, 1906–1984) began photographing Natives in the mid1920s for the public to view and buy photographs “made by a Kiowa Indian,” as he wrote on the back of his prints. He continued working in photography for the next 50 years. While his photographs never reached a wide national audience during his lifetime, they started with the intention of showing others what real Indians looked like to other real Indians instead of mythological Indians to non-Indians.

One of his photographs, Vivian Big Bow, features a young Kiowa girl at the 1945 American Indian Exposition.

Poolaw knelt, bringing the camera lower, closer to her level. Proudly wearing a patterned blouse, fringed skirt, and vest with matching cowboy hat and boots, Vivian stands in front of a Ford DeLuxe. She is a real Indian at the American Indian Exposition, not the mythic Indian.

Poolaw’s work celebrates his subjects and preserves an insider’s perspective on the Native America of the Southern Plains during the mid-20th century. It is a perspective that non-Indigenous photographers did not make and show to the public at the time. He was creating images of Indians who had not vanished, actively seeking out the juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary in his documentary images.

Poolaw had a sense of humor.

During World War II he made a series of images depicting himself in military uniform with a Plains headdress while training bomber crews in Florida. He deliberately wanted to show that while he was a member of the U.S. military, he was also still Kiowa. The wearing of the headdress was both serious and humorous, saying his culture persevered and that

1. Susan R. Dixon, “Images of Indians: Controlling the Camera,” Northeast Indian Quarterly IV (Spring/Summer, 1987), 25.

2. Theresa Harlan, “Creating A Visual History: A Question Of Ownership,” Aperture, New York, (Summer 1995), 20–21.

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his people were now training the same military that had sought to exterminate the Kiowa.

Lee Marmon (Laguna Pueblo, 1925–2021) was given a Speed Graphic large-format camera after he returned from World War II in 1946 by his father who ran the local trading post. Assigned to the Aleutian Islands in Southwestern Alaska, Marmon took an introductory course in photography. Back in Laguna he was asked to photograph a truck wreck for insurance documentation. His father thought instead of documenting automobile accidents, his son should photograph Laguna elders and their lifeways. My favorite is Girls at Clothesline (1954). It seems so simple and yet it shows what girls across America were doing at the time (the chore of hanging clothes to dry), except they are balanced on a winderoded wall doing this chore.

Marmon is best known for White Man’s Moccasins (1954), a photograph of a local elder wearing high-top sneakers.

Edward Curtis would have had the elder remove his sneakers and put on moccasins. Marmon realized the reality and strength of being Laguna was not denying the elder had “white man’s” shoes on his feet. The old man owned them and was comfortable in them. He didn’t need a costume.

RECLAIMING SPACE THE PHOTOGRAPHY of Zig Jackson (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara) explores how non-Indigenous people interact with Indigenous people and how Indigenous people interact with non-Indigenous photographers. He was the first American Indian to earn an MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute, where such storied photographers as Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Minor White taught in the mid-20th century. Following that, at a fellowship at the Headland Center for the Arts, he completed Entering Zig’s Indian Reservation in 1997.

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In using the Bay Area as his reservation, he inserted an Indigenous person into mainstream America in an area with a large urban Indigenous population still addressing reservation issues. In these images is Zig, a good-sized (and goodnatured) Indian wearing a blue jean jacket, blue jeans, sneakers, and a northern Plains headdress (the same uniform he wore in the Entering Zig's Reservation series). The other common elements are the two signs: ENTERING ZIG’S INDIAN RESERVATION and PRIVATE PROPERTY OPEN RANGE CATTLE ON HIGHWAY NO PICTURE TAKING NO HUNTING NO AIR TRAFFIC NEW AGERS PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM TRIBAL COUNCIL

Jackson’s use of humor bridged In d i ge n ou s p e opl e s w it h n on Indigenous peoples in perceiving his artworks. In a series about his “reservation,” he explores the problem with homeless people—American, not American Indian—on the San Francisco city hall lawn. At Golden Gate Park, his lovely reservation walk is interrupted by a white couple kissing on the viewing bench of the Pacific Ocean. At the sea’s cliff edge of the continent, his reservation’s space is no longer occupied by a lone, surviving Indigenous person looking for a place to go.

Another of his series are images of white people at powwows, where he photographs them taking snapshots of Indians who fulfilled their expectations of indigeneity. These images make it very apparent as to who the white

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tourists see as “Indian” in a whole landscape of Indigenous people dressed in everyday clothes. It is a humorous, not bitter, take on white vacationers stuck in their tunnel vision of the Great Plains Indians of the 19th century defined by Western movies and early documentary photography.

Jackson doesn’t just depict how white tourists act but also how Indigenous peoples act toward them. Another series features diptychs of white tourists posed with a loin-clothed and feathered Indian next to a similarly attired tobaccostore Indian statue at a trade shop. In one diptych, the second image shows the Native man getting upset at Jackson for taking a picture of the scene.

How dare Jackson photograph another Indian assuming a stereotypical role to get a few bucks from tourists. Jackson doesn’t just take on non-Indigenous people and the myth of Indians they have made and accepted, but also the Indians who have willingly accepted this mythology for a few dollars.

Larry McNeil (Tlingit/Nisga'a) is another Indigenous photographer who takes on serious issues with a degree of humor. He started out with excellent technical skills in the film era, then learned digital imaging and capture as these technologies evolved. His unique artistic presentation introduces audiences to a new way of looking at photography through mixed-media printmaking techniques with innovative digital imaging. He typically avoids stereotypical images of Indians unless he is being overtly satirical, such as with his Tonto and Lone Ranger images “re-scripted” by Tonto.

McNeil’s series of feathers exhibited in Indelible: The Platinum Photographs of Larry McNeil and Will Wilson at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in 2014 returned to what is now considered an alternative method, film printed with a platinum developing process for durability and a richer range of values. This series looks at how one item, a feather, used to identify Indians, excludes the individuality

of Indigenous peoples by focusing on a supposed Barthesian sign.3 A scholar of Edward S. Curtis’s photography, McNeil didn’t photograph Indians wearing feathers, rather he wanted to show in his photograph that a feather is just a feather, not a cigar or a Freudian association. A feather can be beautiful in photographs. A feather can be seen in negative in the photographs.

Most importantly a feather does not make a person Indian.

To me, the most iconic of Larry McNeil’s images is Real Indians from 1977. Dressed in clothes of the era, with long hair and a mustache, he leans against

a rusted vintage automobile in front of a trading post with a sign stating, “Most Interesting Spot in the Old West, visit, watch, trade where Real Indians trade.”

The real Indian is newer than the old derelict car of the past that used to be a symbol of the “Happy Days” of America.

Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora) says her photography is “manipulations of light and texture and the representations of cosmological space and spirituality of earlier generations of Haudenosaunee beadwork artists.”4 For a long time, certain scholars and collectors of American Indian art did not accept photography as an artistic medium. One concern was

3. Andrew Robinson, “Roland Barthes and Semiotics,” Ceasefire, September 23, 2011, web. Roland Barthes, the French philosopher who defined semiotics, saw “a sign, in this context, refers to something which conveys meaning—for example, a written or spoken word, a symbol or a myth.”

4. Patti Witten, “Jolene Rickard’s Work in Major Exhibition of Art by Native Women,” Cornell AAP Art Architecture and Planning News (March 2, 2020).

For a long time, certain scholars and collectors of American Indian art did not accept photography as an artistic medium. above Larry McNeil (Tlingit/ Nisga’a), Masks, Masks, and More Masks from the Tonto and Lone Ranger Satirical Series, 2006, inkjet print. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite Zig Jackson (Mandan/ Hidatsa/Arikara), City Hall from the Entering Zig’s Reservation series, 1997, gelatin silver print.

Image courtesy of the artist.

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above Larry McNeil (Tlingit/ Nisga'a), Real Indians, 1997, platinum photograph, 40 x 28 in. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora Nation), Sky Women Looks Back II, 1997/2022, installation with inkjet print, transparency, and red whip vine (dogbane, Apocynum). Image courtesy of the artist.

photographic equipment’s prices and knowledge of chemistry excluded more marginalized Indigenous communities. Rickard declares photography is an Indigenous American art form as much as beadwork is, due to Indigenous artists’ visualization skills. She incorporated beaded whimsies of passenger pigeons

by Tuscarora and other Haudenosaunee beadwork artists in her 2018 creation …the sky is darkening, a photographic installation about Tuscarora reclamation of their identity.

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Since the 1980s, Rickard’s photography explores how culture can’t survive if ecological issues are not addressed. The endangerment of eagles and fish, depleted from Indigenous lands, means their sacred ceremonies are threatened, not by just laws, but by extinction. Her work Sweka and PCBs presents another way of looking at environmental issues. Indigenous physical survival as a people would be in vain if they lost who they were culturally, because their culture depends on the survival of their environment.

In Sky Woman Looks Back (1995) and Sky Woman Looks Back II (1997/2022), Rickard presents an image of a woman’s eye superimposed over an image of earth cracked by drought. The first artwork features this combined image alone, a transparency lit from below. The second piece includes another image of the Tuscarora land seized by eminent domain to become the New York State Power Authority Reservoir. She wrote, “This photographic installation recognizes that we are in a time of deficiency, with drought as an indicator of our carelessness with water.”5 Rickard visually shows that a dam built to create power for people elsewhere in the state, off reservation, has created an insufficiency of water for the people on the reservation. The dam ruined the land’s ability to be farmed or hunted.

She wrote, “I applied the term ‘visual sovereignty’ to photographs as both an intervention on the narrow interpretation of sovereignty and to recognize the importance of visuality in the formation of Indigenous cultures.”6 Indigenous peoples’ photography is evidence that we survived. Our images are more real than the monochromatic photographic “studies” that created a monolithic mythology of propped-up Indians posed with objects provided by the photographer and not by the person portrayed. We have maintained visual cultures of our own, which adapt to meet our cultural needs rooted in our histories and spiritual foundations. We address how we are seen. We communicate in the digital age. This is sovereignty.

Matt Jarvis (Osage) became a self-taught professional photographer in 1990, then went back to art school and earned his MFA in media arts from the University of Oklahoma. He currently lives on his great-grandfather’s allotment on the Osage Reservation.

5. Jolene Rickard, “Holding Ground as Nation” in Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography, John Rohrbach and Will Wilson, ed.

(Santa Fe, NM: Radius Books and Fort Worth, TX: Amon Carter Museum of Art, 2022), 163.

6. Jolene Rickard, “Holding Ground as Nation,” 162.

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PROFILE

Otoe-Missouria/Kiowa Photographer

LESTER HARRAGARRA

By Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa)

L

E S T E R HA R R A G A R R A harnesses photography to shape the future. Based in Yukon, Oklahoma, he is making a mark on Native American history with his camera. His vibrant photographs are transforming the way Native American culture is viewed and known throughout the region.

Inspired by the prolific photographer Horace Poolaw (Kiowa, 1906–1984), Harragarra has dedicated more than 30 years to the practice of photographic documentation of Native American cultures and heritages. Harragarra photographs what is most important to him: family gatherings, cultural events, parades, and, when appropriate, ceremonies. He began cultivating visual histories through photography in the 1980s while attending the University of New Mexico.

As a Kiowa and Otoe-Missouria photographer, Harragarra seeks to shape the future of nationhood by recording life in the moment. Legacy, family, and community play central roles in both subject matter and as sources of inspiration.

JPC: What inspired you to begin photography?

LH: At an early age, the mechanics of the camera fascinated me. I was probably in sixth or seventh grade when the Polaroid camera [became more widely available].

The novelty of receiving a print in less than a minute—in black and white at first.

The color prints came out later.… Going into college at the University of New Mexico, I learned how to develop prints in the darkroom in the late seventies.

JPC: Was there a large cohort during that time or was it a developing program?

LH: I was in the first program for Native Americans, the Native American Program College of Engineering. There was a large presence of Native American students at UNM. The Indian club had around 800 members. It was interesting to be within an environment with so many Natives from across the country.

After graduation I went on to work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

Back then the BIA staff was 92 percent Native Americans. The department I worked in was called the facilities engineering staff. We were responsible for operating, constructing, and maintaining all the bureau-owned day and boarding schools from Florida to Alaska to Diomede Island on the Russian–American border. I was still developing my photography skills. Between the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Health Service, and the colleges, there was a rich hub of

American Indian art in New Mexico. I was there for about ten years.

JPC: When did you begin using photography to record history?

LH: I started using photography as a tool for documentation in the mid-nineties.

After college I decided to move home to Oklahoma. My grandfather Lewis Toyebo [Kiowa, 1892–1987] developed health issues. I began work in the BIA in Anadarko and then worked for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation until retirement. As I traveled across the state, I rekindled my passion for photography visiting tribal complexes. Everyone says there are 39 tribes in Oklahoma,1 but really there are over 60. … One thing I noticed in every tribal office, there were photographs of ancestors. I was drawn to early photographs of the culture and the ancestors beginning in the late 1800s and increasing by the 1920s–1930s due to access to the medium.

1. Oklahoma has 38 federally recognized tribes. —Ed.; Bureau of Indian Affairs, “Indian Entities Recognized by and Eligible to Receive Services from the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs,” Federal Register 88 FR 2112 (January 12, 2024), 2112–16.

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I became inspired to create my own photographic documentation beginning with my own family, our prayer meetings, and eventually Kiowa cultural dances including the Kiowa Gourd Clan and Kiowa Black Leggings Society. I purchased my first digital camera in early 2003. Prior to that, the limitation of photography was working with prints. With the newer technology, there was less concern about how many images were shot as well as a greater capacity to review the shots in real time versus waiting for the film to develop. I started using more color in the nineties and didn’t begin doing art shows for another 20 years.

[I photographed] the cultural events in Southwestern Oklahoma including the Anadarko Parade [at the American Indian Exposition], and on occasion I traveled north to Otoe. I concentrated on things I felt would be important. I photographed the O-ho-mah Lodge this past weekend. I do have photographs of all our Kiowa societies.

JPC: What role does legacy play in your artwork?

LH: I see my photography as my contribution to our culture. Other people contribute in different ways; this is my contribution. Other people are more culturally involved than I am. My grandpa Lewis Toyebo contributed many songs. The exposure of being around him, his interests, and his gifts was very inspiring. The work of Horace Poolaw was a source of inspiration. Similarly I am interested in photographing our way of life from the mid-nineties until today. I often think of older generations and the change we experience with each passing generation. My father was fullblood Otoe-Missouria, Jiwere-Nutachi, a veteran of WWII. My last Otoe relative passed away in 2014, Delphine

Harragarra Hopper [1923–2014]. She was from the Buffalo clan.

I am glad to see the revitalization of our languages and culture. Realizing that eventually our grandchildren will view these photographs in the future, we can store these moments forever. As I grow older, I recognize the changes in America. Every time we lose an elder, we lose cultural knowledge. I want to preserve as much of our culture as I can, [and] my determination is to record what’s currently happening with my camera.

Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa) is an Indigenous scholar, beadwork artist, and curator of Indigenous art at Crystal Bridges Museum. Cocker’s curatorial practice centers on Indigenous ways of knowing and doing and linking relational worldviews to Indigenous Futurisms.

above Comanche John, ca.

2005, digital photograph on aluminum panel, 34 × 40 in.

Photograph of the late John Keel (Comanche/Pawnee/ Otoe-Missouria, 1964–2024) at the annual Tinker Air Force Base Inter-Tribal Council event held in the early 2000s. 2014, digital photograph, digitally edited. Comanche John Keel was a noted Southern men’s traditional dancer. opposite Lester Harragarra. All images courtesy of the artist.

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Lester Harragarra (Otoe-Missouria/Kiowa), Black Leggings Society, 2022, digital photograph, dimensions variable, at the annual Ton Kon Gau, Black Leggings Warrior Society Ceremonial, October 2022, in Anadarko, Oklahoma.

PROFILE

above Lester Harragarra (Otoe-Missouria/Kiowa), Sanctified by Sacrifice, 2022, digital photograph, 41 × 42 in. framed. opposite FAM OKC, 2004, digital photograph, dimensions variable. This was photographed at the groundbreaking ceremony of First Americans Museum, in Spring 2004 in Oklahoma City.

Sanctified by Sacrifice: The family camp of Vanessa Paukeigope Jennings (Kiowa/Plains Apache/Pima), who honor their family’s many Native veterans, at the annual Ton Kon Gau, Black Leggings Warrior Society Ceremonial, October 2022, in Anadarko, Oklahoma.

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LESTER HARRAGARRA: CONTEXT

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

L

ESTER HARRAGARRA is one of those community advocates who doesn’t promote himself and instead quietly lifts up those around him. He comes from a family of warriors and leaders, including his mother Delores Toyebo Harragarra (Kiowa). She has served as a librarian in several tribal communities and has taught Kiowa language courses. She donated her extensive archive of 200 hours of recordings in nine Indigenous languages to the Sam Noble Museum in Norman, Oklahoma. Lester’s Kiowa grandparents were Lewis and Richenda Toyebo.

His father, Kenneth Harragarra (Otoe-Missouria, Buffalo clan, 1920– 1993), was a World War II Army veteran

who served as tribal chairman. Kenneth’s father, Moses Harragarra, was among the last hereditary Otoe-Missouria chiefs who walked the forced march from the Otoe homelands in Nebraska to Indian Territory. Kenneth’s mother, Mary Harragarra, helped found the first all-American Indian War Mothers Chapter in the United States.

Lester serves on the Otoe-Missouria Development Authority (OMDA) board and has led ambitious tribal projects such as RedWire, which provides free internet access to low-income Otoe-Missouria neighborhoods, and PK Propane, which supplies tribal citizens with affordable heating fuel and accessories.

Fellow artist and language advocate Kennetha Greenwood (Otoe-Missouria)

says, “Working with Lester at the Otoe-Missouria Development Authority for many years has given me the opportunity to experience his creativity and generosity firsthand. He can always be seen at tribal events for his Kiowa and Otoe-Missouria people, capturing today’s culture in the most beautiful light.” His photography reflects his “unique perspective with his years of experience shining through.

“During his time at OMDA,” Greenwood continues, “he has always supported our youth, education, and senior programs through his tireless efforts, but the project closest to my heart was when he had us set up a photo shoot for our Otoe-Missouria elders. This gave them the chance to be professionally

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above Old Warriors Meet, ca. 1997, blackand-white photograph, 20 × 28 in. framed.

Photograph of Dixon Palmer (Kiowa, 1920–2011), standing, and Leonard Cozad Sr. (Kiowa, 1916–2005) at the annual Black Leggings ceremonial. Both were WWII combat veterans. opposite A New Day Is Coming, 2016, digitally manipulated photograph on aluminum panel, 32 × 39 in. Taken at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in 2016.

photographed. Then we supplied them with the photos. Many of them may not have had this opportunity otherwise.”

Harragarra’s family gave him his first camera, a Polaroid, when he was a young boy.1 He learned to process

his own film while at the University of New Mexico. He’s honed his skills, documented Native communities in the ensuing decades, and shown in art markets, starting with the annual Red Earth Festival in 2011. He only started

1. Julie Pearson-Little Thunder, “Lester Harragarra,” Spotlighting Oklahoma: Oral History Project, May 19, 2016, PDF, 7.

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exhibiting his art in museums more recently. The Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko, Oklahoma, gave him his first solo exhibition in 2009. The Black Leggings Society, or Ton Kon Gau in Kiowa, one of the Kiowa warrior societies still active today, invited Harragarra to serve as their official photographer and permitted him to document their ceremonials and public appearances.

In 2017 Oklahoma Contemporary hosted Photos of Northern Plains Culture, a solo exhibition of Harragarra’s photographs that coincided with Speak to Me, an exhibition of work by Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee). That same year, Red Earth Art Center hosted Kiowa Black Leggings: Through the Lens of Lester Harragarra.

“Through his photography, Lester masterfully captures the spirit of Native cultures, particularly his documentation of the Black Leggings Warrior Society,” says Chelsey Curry (Tlingit), executive director of Red Earth, Inc. “His deep connection to the traditions of the Kiowa and Otoe-Missouria people is evident in every image he creates.” She says

she is “proud to have worked with him throughout the years” and looks forward to future collaborations.

Adding digital photography to his practice allowed Harragarra to experiment freely; he’s shot 100,000 to 200,000 photographs. Harragarra’s dramatic images stand out for their skill and vision. Unafraid of massive crowd shots, he’s tackled some of the largest powwows including Gathering of Nations. He is able to document fast-action dancing in crisp, precise detail, and experiments with techniques made possible through digital photography, like inverting lights and darks and adding electric colors to create otherworldly views, such as his dramatic image of Apache Mountain Spirit dancers.

He has also created subtle, quieter works with sepia tones or duotones, such as predawn views of tipis or expansive herds of bison in vast Plains landscapes.

Harragarra travels across the West and has friends and relatives in many tribes, including the Crow Tribe of Montana. Harragarra shot an array of images from the 100th annual Crow Fair in Montana and provided a photo essay, “A Century of Crow Fair,” and the striking cover photo for FAAM No. 21, Winter 2018/19. He captured the Indian Relay, horse parades, grand entry, powwow dancing, and casual moments with thoughtful portraits.

“He knows what is supposed to be captured in that moment,” says Tahnee Ahtone (Kiowa/Seminole/Mvskoki), curator of Native American art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. “He has an intertribal understanding. He’ll take a photo of one of the hardest, toughest times to dance—but still show that this is a celebration. He captures the intent of the dance. That is what makes his photography so different from the others.”

LESTERHARRAGARRA.MYPORTFOLIO.COM America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) is an artist, writer, critic, and publishing editor of First American Art Magazine based in Norman, Oklahoma.

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Cherokee Nation/Pawnee Painter & Sculptor

DANIEL HORSECHIEF

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD bronze monument of a lighthorseman at the U.S. Marshals Museum in Fort Smith, Arkansas. This monument honors the collaboration between tribal law enforcement and the U.S. Marshal Service in the 19th century. Currently, he is working on a monument for the Cherokee Nation to address the events surrounding the Trail of Tears and its aftermaths.

Daniel HorseChief lives in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, on the Cherokee Nation’s reservation.

B

ORN IN 1969 IN MUSCOGEE, Oklahoma, Daniel HorseChief was raised by his mother, the painter and educator Mary Adair (Cherokee Nation), after his father Samuel HorseChief (Pawnee, 1936–1975) passed away at an early age. Daniel HorseChief ’s interest in fine art led him to Bacone College, where he studied under artist Ruthe Blalock Jones (Shawnee/Delaware/Peoria), and later to the Institute of American Indian Arts and Northeastern State University.

A naturalist painter interested in transcultural subject matter, his work has engaged a breadth of historical figures and events such as Captain Shoe Boots, the Trail of Tears, and the Battle of the Greasy Grass. His paintings have earned many awards including the Best of Show at the 2018 Cherokee National Holiday Art Show (CNHAS), Best of Classification (two-dimensional) at the 2023 Santa Fe Indian Market, and, most recently, Best in Show, Chief ’s Choice, and Judge’s Choice at the 2024 CNHAS. While he is well-known for his paintings, HorseChief has also received several commissions for bronze public sculptural installations. In 2009, he unveiled a nine-and-a-half-foot bronze sculpture dedicated to Sequoyah, the revered originator of the Cherokee syllabary, at Northeastern State University. Several years later, in 2021, he installed a nearly thirteen-foot-high 62 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024

MRS: Both your parents were artists. Your mother Mary was not only an accomplished artist but also an art educator at Sequoyah High School in Tahlequah. Can you talk about their lasting influence on your work?

DH: The act of creation was inspired by my family. It was a part of everything and could be shared. We could see how art provided so much purpose and balance in so many situations.

Art made so much seem complementary, things that others might view as conflicting. My dad was also a great athlete and loved to coach. He was a dreamer, and my mother was the practical influence. Both were great teachers.

Since I was the youngest of four, I became a very good observer, soaking in whatever I could all the time. This hasn’t really changed. Different cultures interest me, and I can see just from my upbringing how perceptions differ at times greatly between them. My Native cultures, for instance, are much more accepting that someone can be both an artist and an athlete. This is almost expected in so many Native households and families.

But then the larger culture and other cultures around us see that as being a very conflicting pair of interests.

What would a simple observer make of all of this? To me, it is ironic that the origins of Western thinking presented creativity, science, and athletics as very compatible, even complementary.

When did that attitude begin to unravel? Maybe Native diversity, cultures, and attitudes can remind us so much of the world whatever it is we all tend to forget about—what it is we are supposed to be about. Simple sharing has to go beyond a theme, it can become a lifeway. Art is a way to get out messages, not just of hope, but reminders of what it is we already know and are supposed to be doing. One recent observation that I have made is that the input of others close to me has transformed many of my pieces when in progress. To have that input available, as I was growing up and still yet, is a blessing.

MRS: You mentioned your mother’s influence, but in addition to her, you were also fortunate to be educated by Ruthe Blalock Jones. Your work differs from hers in many ways, specifically with the use of space, though you both have an

DANIEL HORSECHIEF

electricity to your colors that many don’t possess. Can you talk about her and her lessons?

DH: It’s funny, while growing up my brother Dave and I were both used to seeing Ruthe, who was a good friend of my mother in the art scene. She is like an auntie. It was always a joy to see her and to have her as a teacher. She was very patient and motivating with a laugh and smile.

She made the setting of Bacone College— the art building especially—a great place to be and learn. That made art studies cut through any dysfunctional college or life crisis here and there. I concentrated on my painting again, but I struggled with my grades. I would eventually take my art training and join the military in order to gain a little more in life and discipline, which I sorely lacked. Later I went into museum studies at IAIA in Santa Fe with a minor in art and history.

MRS: So, you had completed your studio art training with some classes in art history as well. What came next for you?

DH: Marriage and children appeared around this time. That was truly a transformative period when reality hit. It seemed that before then, I didn’t really have a vision. You might as well be blind, an artist without a vision, but like I said, it all changed after marriage and children.

This is when I actually began working toward any sense of having a promising art career for the first time. Age 27 is not the earliest age to grow up, but that period brought in a lasting vision with a better appreciation for art and life. I have been very fortunate.

About this time public art appreciation, and assistance, began to sprout up way more often. In the past, it was almost nonexistent compared to today.

Basket making, pottery, beadwork, and other skills began to grow again as well.

It was a great time to observe. I was given some very early opportunities to expand on work and grow the vision, opportunities that others before me did not have.

Still, I live by and remember the advice an older artist once gave to us students in New Mexico. He said that “the world doesn’t owe an artist anything, so create with that in mind.”

MRS: That’s fairly poignant advice, and it instills a sense of independence.

Let’s break down your painting practice. I would describe your work as an amalgam of historical and contemporary events and figures. Is that accurate? What am I missing?

DH: Visually, that is very much the case. There is a lot of fusing shapes, movement, colors, and symbols just as much as subject matter. I try to see past any dysfunction and show that there is order at a much greater depth and form than what our physical world conveys sometimes. The imagery in my work conveys this, I hope, and shows that we are important, and we are connected.

There tends to be a visual composition formed because of this philosophy. They

above The Lighthorseman, 2022, bronze, 156 in. tall, commissioned by the Intertribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes, installed at the U.S. Marshals Museum, Fort Smith, Arkansas. Unless otherwise noted, all images courtesy of the artist. opposite Daniel HorseChief at the Artesian Arts Festival, Sulphur, Chickasaw Nation, Oklahoma. Photo: FAAM.

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as a whole, has such a good beat for others to see and hear. Sometimes it takes an individual to remind a group what it has forgotten. Sometimes that person likes to wear a military hat, carry a brace of pistols and a sword, wear riding boots, and crow like a rooster. Shoe Boots finally broke through my density and the image flowed out when the time was right.

above Hope and Healing, bronze sculpture, front and back view. opposite Captain Shoe Boots, 2011, oil on canvas, 24 × 16 in.

can be seen as visual songs of sorts. Just like some forms of music, the upbeat, colorful music can differ a great deal from a somber subject, but it can work. Like in the paintings, both the seen and unseen are taken into account—all connected to us, to our Creator. I also sometimes like to mix images and symbols from the different groups I am a part of.

The two Native peoples, Pawnee and Cherokee, Western Plains and Eastern Woodlands, still have some commonalities. Combining them usually gives a dynamic result.

MRS: One of your most memorable paintings, for me at least, is Captain Shoe Boots (2017). In your words, “Shoe Boots bravely chose his own path and disregarded unjust (and deadly) cultural restrictions on marriage as he married a former slave and sired many children.”

What drew you to Shoe Boots? And

can you talk about your aesthetic decisions in that painting?

DH: This was a work long in the making.

I was familiar with Shoe Boots and knew his story.1 My mother emphasized him, and the subject matter was powerful. In time, I approached the Shoe Boots story.

It really tied into my approach by then, his story—very bittersweet. I wanted him and his family to be celebrated at a priceless moment. The sad song is still there, but it is just a part of the story.

Humanity is betrayed by any culture of bigotry, of putting others below them.

That is actually compromising one’s own humanity, to live with that low thought process and be guided by it. It can infect a whole group and be passed along by “culture.” It is not ingrained but learned and accepted. I grew up in a predominantly Black area and school. Being Native and having mixed heritage gave me so many vantage points to observe from. I understood Shoe Boots. His story,

MRS: What is your research process like? Can you walk me through it?

DH: That process varies greatly and much of it is happenstance. Since I was a boy, book pages have taken up much of my time. With observation, I think that just resulted in an approach that wants to include as much perspective as it does inspiration. I have been brought up knowing and wanting to know the history of all parts of my family. No walls, no attitude of “this or that.” All histories interest me. We are all under the same massive blueprint displayed for all to see in the sky and space. I think this time we live in is critical, and change is like a daily hustle.

That is what drew me into anything that chronicled our stories or the written pages. I was a Navy corpsman who worked long enough ago to remember taking care of guys from WWII and Korea in the hospitals. I listened to them, and they liked that—to get something off of their chest. I was good at rolling cigarettes and was quiet as a young man. That could be it too [laughs].

Anyway, I have a mother who traveled by wagon until she went to college, with no running water and electricity, and my dad the same way. In their generation, the world turned quickly. My mother’s brother went from that to flying jets in Vietnam, commanding a nuclear aircraft carrier. All of this is so highly linked to our past and ancestral experiences, philosophies. I think all peoples of the world once had similar or identical thoughts and practices, as Native groups exhibit and hold onto. That a commonality and hope we can choose to see.

So, my research is constant and ongoing. Sometimes it hits something that needs recognition. Then all of that

1. Shoe Boots (Cherokee, ca. 1770–1829) was a hero in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend with a complex life story. He married Doll, an enslaved African woman, and they had several children, whom Shoe Boots unsuccessfully tried to emancipate through the Cherokee council. Their daughter Elizabeth Kahuga Shoeboots (1809–after 1860) succeeded in gaining freedom and Cherokee Nation citizenship only to be forcibly removed to Indian Territory along with the majority of her tribe, including her mother who eventually achieved freedom. See: Tiya Miles, Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). —Ed.

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series of paintings, which revolves around family, care, and love, is a bit of a departure from your historically based works. Can you talk about that transition, that change in theme?

DH: You know, that goes straight to the experience of having children, being a father. You just want to make this a better world for all those faces in the future we need to picture. We live in a time of holding onto so many destructive mindsets [that are] made to appear like reason. It is culminating, it seems, that is how you begin to feel. But, hope has come as well. People should realize that they are not without guidance or Creator, and that means we are all connected.

Creation itself is a gift. Gifts are shared and cherished, not broken and cast aside.

I think that is one of the deeper messages within those colors and shapes of those paintings. I hope so anyway [laughs].

“You just want to make this a better world for all those faces in the future we need to picture.”

above A New Beginning, 2024, oil on canvas, 20 × 16 in. opposite Judgment Day, Keogh’s Stand at the Greasy Grass, 1876, 2023, water-based oil on canvas, 36 × 24 in.

previous research kicks in. My painting, Judgment Day, Keogh’s Stand at the Greasy Grass, 1876, was the result of decades of such off-and-on research.

That piece burned me out, there was so much involved in it, but I was so glad it was well-received at the Santa Fe [Indian Market]. It was my first participation in that event, and I loved just being back and seeing all of the mind-blowing works.

MRS: You just received several awards for the painting A New Beginning (2024) at the Cherokee National Holiday Art Show. It’s a painting about maternity. I understand that it also has two sister paintings: a young couple in courtship and, the other, their small but growing family. This

MRS: Your portrait of Sequoyah titled The Gift (2006) is another remarkable work. Against an autumnal background of falling leaves, he holds a paper in one hand and a quill in the other, referencing his invention of the Cherokee syllabary. At first appearance, it’s a painting that could be 200 years old or finished today. Can you describe the meaning of honoring these and other tribal leaders?

DH: You can’t help but try to look through their eyes, each one. They say that Sequoyah lived for a time in the pasture across the road.2 That’s pretty much in my lap here [laughs]. So, I put the Cherokee teacher in a nearby setting, where the land quickly transforms from valleys into hills, streams, and trees. This man and his surroundings have a shared dignity. I am sure that continued in so many other places as Sequoyah traveled so many roads in many directions. When you think about how so much of our history speaks about migration by land and sea, it all can seem like a continuation of that pattern. This need for outreach over great distances is something that we still carry on today.

MRS: The Gift is different from your other work because Sequoyah was also

2. Sequoyah’s Cabin built in 1829 in present-day Sallisaw, Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma, is on the National Register of Historic Places and opened as a Cherokee Nation museum. —Ed.

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the subject of a large bronze monument at Northeastern State University.

How do you approach sculpture as opposed to painting?

DH: The two interplay from the beginning. The image was taken from one of the sketches I was doing for a 3D rendering of Sequoyah. It has always worked out this way because I have always seen sketches and paintings with three-dimensional ideas, even before the sculpting. When I stepped into sculpting, it was like finding that missing piece. Throughout my life and training, I have gotten into video, photography, stone carving, and especially wood carving. It all came together when I began to seriously sculpt. That is a huge part of my attraction to sculpting: playing out the actual process with a joy that says, “This is what I am supposed to be doing.”

MRS: What do you want audiences to take away from your work?

DH: I have always looked at the work of others, and my biggest takeaway is that

sincerity often shines the brightest. I just hope that can be seen and felt in what I do.

MRS: What artists’ work are you looking at these days?

DH: Oh, I am always looking out for some artists who I respect, a couple who my mother taught. Danny McCoy is one artist whose work I am always glad to see being shown in any setting, along with a multitude of others. I especially like the work of potters and basket makers using natural materials. Artists like Starr Hardridge and Bill and Demos Glass have been big inspirations. I think we are a very supportive group of artists here.

MRS: I interviewed Dan a few years ago for FAAM; I’m also a fan of his work. Can you run down the project you’re currently working on, the Trails of Tears monument?

DH: We are experiencing a great resurgence here in Cherokee Nation that is shown through the arts. I submitted an idea that could include works from many artists in the total project. The central piece I chose to be a bronze work. It begins with a teardrop shape that has within it a growing flame. That then stretches and twists upwards like smoke and turns into a Phoenix-like falcon.

It portrays our resilience and ability to recover. So many people can identify with that. Only from a power greater than ourselves can we regain our direction. Let all of that be remembered and celebrated, but above all, [the monument] can show that those who suffered and were lost are still carried with us. That soaring falcon is almost angelic symbolizing the continuation of so much that is priceless. I hope it is pleasing to those we remember, always.

FACEBOOK.COM/DANHORSECHIEFARTS Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD, is the curator and head of collections at Glenhyrst Art Gallery in Brantford, Ontario.

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PROFILE

Alutiiq Painter

LINDA INFANTE LYONS

By Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq) If you spend time looking at landforms, there is a story to be told. There are things that have happened over time. Specific landforms carry evidence of stories we remember and pass on.

—Linda Infante Lyons

the natural world and an ongoing interest in exploring her Alutiiq heritage, worldview, and cosmology.

I had a chance to connect with Infante Lyons via Zoom this summer while she was working in her Anchorage-based studio, which she shares with her husband, Graham Dane, also a painter. This interview is an excerpt from our conversation together.

A

L ASKANS ARE ACCUSTOMED to being surrounded by spectacular landscapes.

We watch the sky change from brilliant pinks in the morning to orange-colored hues in the evening. We learn to read the layers of colors on the water to see patterns where fresh waters from the rivers turn brackish before meeting the salt waters of the bays. We are reminded of the power of the land we live on when we see plumes of smoke escaping from volcano vents.

We are attuned to the changing seasons. In the winter, our landscapes sparkle with hoarfrost that decorates the trees, and light that bounces off surfaces of ice and frozen lakes. In the late summer, we watch the hillsides change as berries and fireweed pop with color.

We know these landscapes viscerally from our experience living here, with embodied knowledge gained through generations of harvesting and travel on the lands and waters. Nature creates an ever-changing backdrop that invites us to pause and take in the beauty around us.

Alaska’s landscapes are well represented in the paintings of Linda Infante Lyons. Her work sometimes portrays luminous images of coastal Alaska, towering mountains, glacial ice, and tidal flats, but also quiet spaces in the woods.

Sometimes her work incorporates intimate portraits of plants like cotton grass, fern, and cow parsnip, precious resources that for centuries have offered medicinal and nutritional value to our communities. She also makes iconic portraits of

Alaska Native women who uplift the power and beauty of community matriarchs and youth. Equally captivating are her portraits of our wild relatives: seal, kingfisher, bear, arctic hare, snowy owl, silver fox, ringed seal. Her images capture the essence of place through calming color palettes, soft brushstrokes, and an underlying vibrating energy.

Over a two-decade art career, Infante Lyons’s work has explored the beauty of Alaska and cultural identity.

Born in 1959 and raised in Anchorage, she has family ties to Karluk on Kodiak Island. Infante Lyons completed her BA in biology at Whitman College in Washington State before studying art at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Viña del Mar in Valparaíso, Chile, where she lived for 18 years. She moved back home to Alaska in the 1990s and opened her studio.

Infante Lyons’s travels in Alaska shaped her work through close observation of

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NS: Thank you for taking the time to connect with me. I have long been drawn to your work and have included images of your landscape paintings in art history courses that I teach. I have been thinking about how Indigenous representations of landscapes are different from representations by artists coming from the outside. Artists like Sydney Lawrence painted our homelands as these wild, empty, and imposing places, yet I see paintings like yours as representing a more intimate view of our lands.

Could you share a bit about your concept of wilderness?

LIL: I grew up in Anchorage when the city was not very developed. There was nothing [developed] around us, just bogs and land.

I spent a lot of time as a free-range child and had time to connect with everything: the plants, the dirt, and all the cycles. I had an innate interest in plants and biology, and a lot of my work is a fusion of art with science and biology. I went on to get a degree in biology but came to realize that my focus is on something more spiritual.

My scientific research was leaning toward trying to understand our relationship of who we are in this world.

Nature itself is cyclical and sustainable, and Indigenous knowledge systems recognize this. A Western view is linear and ends in apocalypse. It does not give any solutions to the problems that we are

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in right now. It sets up a hierarchy of winners and losers. There is a certain aspect of dominion over the land and ownership of the land, which is exactly the opposite of my ancestors’ worldview. I have been painting in that space between Western and Indigenous worldviews.

My landscapes do not always depict specific places. I create more of a perspective that takes in balance … which reflects reciprocity. The compositions are very much set up to be complete and timeless, maybe something to meditate on.

NS: I like that concept of reciprocity, and this shows up in a lot of our historical arts. I would love to hear more about how you see your work as part of a system of reciprocity.

LIL: More than anything, the landscapes that I create are not meant to impose. In my paintings, in an abstract sense, everything is connected. I spend a lot of time trying to create a place in which everything exists in a harmonious balance. That may mean starting out with one color, an underpainting behind the composition

above Sovereign of the North, 2022, oil on panel, 30 × 30 in., private collection.

Sovereign of the North is part of Rising Voices 3: The Bennett Prize, a touring exhibition of the ten 2024 Bennett Prize finalists, showing at the Bo Bartlett Center, Columbus State University in Georgia through November 30, 2024. opposite Linda Infante Lyons, 2024. All images courtesy of the artist.

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PROFILE

above Our Lady of Qalnga'aq, 2021, oil on panel, 30 × 30 in., private collection. opposite Sunset on Pyramid Mountain, 2019, oil on canvas, 48 × 60 in., collection of the Alutiiq Museum, Kodiak, Alaska.

that appears later. Everything radiates from that underlying energy. I really believe an underlying energy exists and pulls us all together.

I am interested in a deeper understanding of Alutiiq cosmology and worldview, as well as exploring other Indigenous traditions. As an adult, certain books really resonated with me, especially writing by the author and biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer. She fuses [Western] science and Indigenous

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knowledge in her research, which is meaningful to me. There is a sense that everything has a spark of the divine equally—a rock, the air, the water. Everything has a divine soul, and we as humans have a place in this world. In Western culture, we remove ourselves from the natural world, believing that human beings do not belong. Everything in my paintings, every element, has been placed to give a sense of connectivity and balance. Much of my focus is working on

LINDA INFANTE LYONS

composition, deciding how this twig will go there, or that angle will go there.

Everything shifts until I finally reach a composition where everything settles, and everything belongs.

NS: What are your favorite landscapes to paint?

LIL: I absolutely love painting Alaskan coastal landscapes. Alutiiq territory and the land I explored as a child with my grandmother on Kodiak consists of coastal landscapes and islands. There is the juxtaposition of sky, water, and land, and all of these elements interact with each other. The light is reflected on the waters, and then you get the reflections of the islands. The water acknowledges the land and the sky. The air is reflected in the light on the water. It is a whole, beautiful system that to me represents reciprocity and balance.

NS: Let’s talk about your icon portraits. What inspired this series?

LIL: I have long been interested in the power of iconography and symbols. In a way we have been bombarded with Christian imagery, and I have borrowed from that. I grew up with a Catholic background going to church on Sundays.

I did not buy into all the aspects of the religious dogma, but as a child was enthralled with church aesthetics and mysticism, such as sculpture, paintings, stained glass, and the smell of incense.

Certain shapes, colors, and marks appear over and over. The halo itself is not unique to Christianity; it is a sign of divinity used in many cultures. Alutiiq masks have embellishments around them which are like halos. I use these symbols along with customary Indigenous elements in my paintings to portray Alutiiq beliefs as equal to Western beliefs.

My first icon portrait was made for the exhibition Decolonizing Alaska, which was organized by Asia Freeman at the Bunnell Street Art Center. This group exhibition explored different aspects of decolonization. For my contribution, I created a portrait of my great-grandmother, Katherine Reft, who was from the village of Karluk on Kodiak Island.

She spoke only Russian and Alutiiq. I did not have much information about what my great-grandmother looked like, but I heard a lot of stories about her. I know that she died at a fairly young age of tuberculosis. I wanted to honor her.

I see icon portraits as a template where I can explore the different aspects of spiritual views and relationships with nature. I like to present images of Alaska Native women, inspired by friends, family, and fellow artists as the powerful beings that I know them to

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“In Alutiiq culture, animals can be guides or messengers between the natural and spiritual worlds.”

above Sunrise on Cape Alitak, 2023, oil on canvas, 36 × 60 in., collection of Koniag, Inc.

“Cape Alitak is a remote site on Kodiak Island that is an important Alutiiq heritage site known for its petroglyphs etched on granite boulders. This work was created as a part of a commission for Koniag, Inc.” —Linda Infante Lyons opposite Bear’s Blessing, 2019, oil on panel, 30 × 30 in., private collection.

be. When representing individuals, it is important for me to interview, spend time with them, and get to know their backgrounds, which animals they feel attached to, and how they are influenced by their ancestral lands.

One of the icon portraits, the Ahtna Madonna, represents Melissa Shaginoff.

She is a member of the Ahtna Caribou [Udzisyu] clan, so she is pictured holding a caribou calf. I attended Melissa’s silverberry harvesting workshop a few years ago. In this image Melissa is wearing the same shirt that she wore at the workshop.

The background in this image is specifically the area of the Knik River where her family is from, near Chickaloon. The image shares an Indigenous perspective of land use. Women know these places intimately; they were the ones that gathered food from the land. This is why Melissa has a halo of silverberry beads circling her head.

A lot of my portraits are inspired by people who I know but are not specific people. In the last couple of years, I have often used the likeness of a cousin of mine; her name is Tava. These images are not direct portraits but are more symbolic

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representations of Alaska Native women.

There is a different focus when I paint someone specific versus a symbol.

NS: I see that you often include seals in your work, and they appear with halos too. Is there a reason that seals show up repeatedly in your work?

LIL: Seals are beautiful, amazing animals, and we see them often in Kodiak. They are human-like too. They live in this environment with land and water, which I feel very attached to. I started to paint the animal as the icon to recognize their spiritual power. In Alutiiq culture, animals can be guides or messengers between the natural and spiritual worlds.

NS: In addition to your practice with painting, you are also a photographer.

What is your process like when you are working in photography? Do you use your photographs as studies for your paintings?

LIL: A photograph gives me information that I can refer to—a particular mountain looks like this, the trees look like this, the beach looks like that. When I put a painting together, I move things

LINDA INFANTE LYONS

around so that everything is placed, and change the colors but hopefully capture the essence of the place so that it is recognizable to the people who live there.

A lot of the photographs on my website are from the time that I spent at a fellowship with the Santa Fe Arts Institute in 2015. I was there to explore landscape painting, but I became fascinated by the weather and the clouds in the sky. It was so dynamic and powerful.

There were certain things that I would see that were interesting: a certain light or cloud structure. I wanted to capture the mystical moment of the day.

NS: Some of your photographs refer to time you spend working with children in rural villages too. Is that something you are still doing?

LIL: I was able to travel to some of the villages through the Artist in Schools program with the Alaska State Council on the Arts. Some of the work was making murals in schools and teaching painting.

It was wonderful to spend time meeting students and experiencing these different landscapes. I would love to go back and spend more time in the villages but have not been doing that as much since the pandemic started. Maybe it is time to find a new grant to go back.

NS: What are you excited about that you are working on right now?

LIL: Right now I am preparing for a solo exhibition that will be shown next year at the Stremmel Gallery in Reno, Nevada. It is a landscape-focused exhibition. I also have three paintings that will go to the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation this fall for the exhibition Citizen Fellow: Art as Archive and Memory. My work is also part of a traveling exhibition, Rising Voices 3: The Bennett Prize, alongside nine other female artists [who work in figurative realism]. This exhibition will open next at the Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus, Georgia. I am also excited to be part of an Arctic landscape cohort that has recently formed with Erin Gingrich

[Koyukon Denaa/Inupiaq] and Ikimaliq Pikilak [Kalaaleq].

NS: Is there anything else you would like to share?

LIL: It is always inspiring to be part of group exhibitions. The Salmon Culture exhibition especially helped connect some of the dots in thinking about this ecosystem that we all rely on.1 The salmon feed the people but also feed the land, and the trees, and a whole ecosystem that revolves around that. Being part of this exhibition was meaningful. I have had a few interviews about my work related to Salmon Culture, including a recent interview with the Nature Conservancy.

One of the things that we talked about is the idea of returning the authority to the people who have the generational relationship to the land and its resources. I really like that. It is a concept embedded in the way that I see things.

Quyana, Linda, for sharing your time and your beautiful visions of Alaska. We are experiencing a time when our landscapes are modified through climate changes, development, and population growth.

Hopefully images of our lands as living landscapes will help viewers to think about the preciousness of our wild spaces and consider ways of living in reciprocity with the world around us.

LINDAINFANTELYONS.COM Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq), is an art historian and museum consultant based in Homer, Alaska. Her work is focused on supporting Alaska Native arts revitalization, museum sovereignty, and Alaska Native arts documentation. She is a research associate with York University’s “Curating Indigenous Circumpolar Cultural Sovereignty” program and a recipient of the 2024 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant program.

1. Salmon Culture, a traveling exhibition, opened at the Pratt Museum in Homer, Alaska, in 2022 before traveling to the Anchorage Museum from 2023 to 2024. The exhibition was discussed in FAAM No. 37, Winter 2023.

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PROFILE

Zapoteca Printmaker & Painter

GABRIELA MORAC

By Staci Golar

T

AKING IN GABRIELA MORAC’S RELIEF PRINTS for the first time is a bit like looking up to the vast, dark night sky away from any city lights or populations to interrupt it. The work feels layered, mysterious, and somehow deeply connected to both the here and now and the ancient. Opaque ink fills most of the volume of the subject matter while the white marks, the areas removed by carving a linoleum or wood block, define figures, flora, and fauna, and a personal iconography that borrows from the rich history and symbols of Anáhuac, or the ancient core of Mexico. A characteristic of many pieces are the hundreds, sometimes thousands, of small specks where Morac has carved the print block bit by bit to create a pointillism effect that seems both cosmic, like the stars, and grounded, like the texture of volcanic rock.

Born in San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya, a small Zapotec village about 21 kilometers east of Oaxaca de Juárez, Oaxaca, Morac spent her childhood exploring the mountains, ponds and

tadpoles, and other phenomena of the natural world. “Every day on my way to school, I saw a lot of grass, animals, and the blue sky,” she remembers.1 The artist unravels a few layers of time and colonization when she explains that her village is better known by the Nahuatl name of Tlacochahuaya, but that its Zapotec name is Zunni. The word Zapotec is also from the Aztec’s tongue, Nahuatl, and was the name the Spanish colonizers recorded for Benizáa, what the Zapotecs called themselves. Morac refers to herself as a Zunni woman. Her printer’s chop mark reasserts this identity with the words Bën Zunni (people of Zunni) placed underneath the outline of an ancestral Zapotec figure and her name. While Tlacochahuaya is known to outsiders for its 16th-century Dominican church that houses cochineal and indigo-painted murals, the little town has sustained families like Morac’s long before any invaders left their mark.

Though no one else in Morac’s family is a visual artist, they have nurtured creativity of other kinds. Her paternal grandfather played the organ, one considered a Mexican Baroque masterpiece housed in the aforementioned church, and her father is a skilled mechanic who at one time studied music as well.

Both parents tend to the land; her mother has a special gift for cultivating spices and fruit trees and for fixing the delicious, customary dishes of the region. In any case, Morac’s introduction to making two-dimensional studio art was through a painting class around the year 2000 with a local Tlacochahuaya artist.

She recalls that she and her older sister worked on just one easel painting at that time. A few years later she wanted to learn music and went to the Casa de Cultura Oaxaqueña in the capital, Oaxaca de Juárez, but felt a strong pull to painting and ended up enrolling in art classes instead.

In 2005 Morac sought more formal schooling in the arts at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). When asked why she decided to go to this school, she laughs and says, it’s a “very, very long and strange story. I never really had it in my mind to study arts; I always had an affinity and a deep desire to study science.

But after six months at the Puerta Azul Workshop [at Casa de Cultura], I learned more about the arts and knew that there was a degree in art at a university in Mexico City. In reality, I had never visited Mexico City. In fact, I had never left the state of Oaxaca, so it was a very risky and adventurous decision.”

Morac ended up taking an admission exam to pursue a bachelor’s degree in design and visual communication rather than fine art at UNAM. This was due to the widespread and long-held belief that “de artista te vas a morir de hambre” (“If you become an

1. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes by Gabriela Morac in discussion via email with the author, August 9, 2024. Some responses have been lightly edited for clarity after translation.

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GABRIELA MORAC

artist you are going to die of hunger.”) She laughs when pointing out that she is 38 and hasn’t starved just yet. She passed the exam and made the daring move from her home village, population 5,764, to Mexico City, population 8.84 million.2 Even though she started out on the design and visual communication track, Morac graduated with a degree in arts with a specialty in printmaking on metal. She says the path that led her in that direction was another fortuitous one.

Academic focus areas were chosen in the second year of the degree program, and at that time she shifted her focus to engraving, creating prints with her professor María Eugenia Figueroa who introduced her to printmaking. Figueroa is also from Oaxaca, so Morac not only felt an affinity for the engraving process but for Figueroa herself. Morac says she believes in destiny, and that hers “was to dedicate myself to creating images that convey very specific ideas” through visual arts.

After university, Morac returned to Tlacochahuaya to live and work. “For me, it is vital to stay in my homeland. I feel an inherent bond, and there is no place where I enjoy living more,” she says. “The tranquility, the landscape, the mountains, and the way of life of this small town where I was born is something necessary. I don’t like cities. Obviously I have no problem visiting them, but I always need to come back. This is what is probably called a sense of belonging.”

For about a decade after her return home, she worked on restoration projects for cultural assets in various locations in Mexico and in different media, everything from mural painting to gilding. She even made a small nicho for an altarpiece in a nearby community.

In 2016 Morac decided she needed more space to create her own work and to store a newly purchased printing press.

She took matters into her own hands and started a printmaking studio, Espacio Panoplia, in Tlacochahuaya. “I rented a place in the central part of town. It had a large window that overlooked the street, so every time someone passed by, they would look in and ask what I was doing, especially the children.”

This constant inquiry by the little ones inspired Morac to make the studio into a community space. She did so without accepting funding from the municipality or others so that she could avoid any of the obligations that might come with outside money. This meant she had to be creative in keeping the space open. At first she gave a variety of workshops on drawing, painting, soundscaping, basic bookbinding, and even how to germinate seeds. Her sisters offered macramé weaving and chess workshops. Other friends donated time to teach workshops on screen printing, alebrijes (Zapotec wood carvings of fantastical animals, painted with bright and colorful patterns), self-defense, Zapotec

“For me, it is vital to stay in my homeland.

I feel an inherent bond, and there is no place where I enjoy living more.”

above Peyotl, 2022, linocut on Canson Edition cotton paper, 14¾ × 11 in., edition 15/25. opposite Gabriela Morac. Photo: Eva Lépiz. All images courtesy of the artist.

2. “San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya,” Gobierno de México, accessed September 1, 2024, web; “About Mexico City,” Gobierno de la Ciudad de México, accessed September 1, 2024, web.

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PROFILE

above Ollin Mecatl (Movement–Measurement), 2023, linocut on paper, 15 × 11 in., edition 19/35.

“The word Olmec has its root in Ollin (movement) and mecatl (measurement).”

—Gabriela Morac opposite Mater, 2023, linocut on Somerset cotton paper, 33 × 15 in., edition of 30.

“Coatlicue is the mother of all the deities of the Aztec pantheon. Symbol of fertility and giver of life, she is also the devourer of everything that has life in its transit to death.

And it is after her that all the stars disappear.”

—Gabriela Morac

and English language courses, and even Zumba. Morac says that even though some of these activities might seem unconnected to a printmaking studio’s purpose, in the end they “contributed to developing this more cultural, human part” of the space. The costs of all of these workshops were kept purposely low so that more people could attend.

Espacio Panoplia has since moved and now operates as a small gallery in the center of Oaxaca City. It provides exposure for printmakers from all over Mexico, highlighting those with advanced technical skills. The space joins the graphic arts and printmaking legacy that exists in Oaxaca, thanks in part to Oaxaqueño artist Francisco Toledo (Zapotec, 1940– 2019) who is widely regarded as one of Mexico’s most important contemporary

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artists. He is also the reason Oaxaca has the only art library in Mexico dedicated to printmaking, the Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (IAGO).

Along Morac’s printmaking journey she joined the women’s printmaking collective Hoja Santa Taller. While she is no longer a part of Hoja Santa, she supports them and says it was eye-opening to meet so many other women working in the medium. “In fact,” Morac admits, “until that moment, I didn’t take into account that there were so many women making prints, as it always appears to be men who are printmakers. However, I know this isn’t because there is an absence of women in this profession and discipline but rather due to their lower visibility.”

Indeed, some of Morac’s greatest artistic influences are women printmakers. In addition to her professor, she names Andrea Gómez, Celia Calderón, and Mariana Yampolsky as historic artists who have made an impact on her work.

Other influences include Leopoldo Méndez (Nahua, 1902–1969), cofounder of Mexico’s famous Taller de Gráfica Popular. Morac says, “I love his technique and the strong way he represents his ideas both in composition and in the handling of gouges,” meaning how he carves the print block. She also enjoys the work of “19th-century Mexican printmakers, and in technique, they inspire me a lot, as well as other printmakers of this era.”

Morac’s work is also deeply influenced by the rich visual history of Mexico and, of course, that of her culture. In many ways her work is reclaiming things that have been lost. In her creations, one sees Zapotec effigy vessels, serpents, corn, agave, sacred hearts, skulls, and much more. She says, “A large part of what I reference in my work is from the Mexican imagination, although it was not always like that. I am not a fan of saying or believing that things or ideas come from nowhere, and I think that in moments when I have little creativity is when I understand this the most. Creativity for me implies constantly working to acquire knowledge.

“Since I was very young, I have had a fascination with archaeology. I remember that the first Muy Interesante magazine [a popular science magazine in Mexico] I had in my hands talked about

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the Nazca Lines,” in Peru. Morac continues: “For a long time I focused on reading diverse content about Mexican archeology, and over time I began to understand more … the meaning and worldview of ancient cultures, not only of Anáhuac, which is now Mexican territory, but also of ancient cultures in the world and how they shared this worldview.”

Morac says, “It is from this past that I was able to understand many things that are part of my identity and how life develops in a community that has a genetic and historical memory that goes back thousands of years.” It should come as no surprise that the land is also integral to Morac’s work. “The earth is where I was born, I belong to the earth. It is part of my identity.

How it influences me, well, it’s something so inherent in me that I do not consciously notice what it does or does not do.”

When Morac starts a new print that involves engraving, she spends more time planning out the image than in the actual execution.

She’ll gather ideas from reading, conversation, or personal reflection on some topic or internal conflict. “In the end, as humans we share a cultural base, emotions, and other aspects that allow us to recognize ourselves in ideas projected through these images,” she says, then laughs. “Sometimes I think I think too much about the content, so it makes it hard for me to nail down the image.”

In contrast to the preparation and palette of her print work, Morac’s watercolor paintings are “more introspective and impulsive,” she says, and they burst with color and surreal narrative.

While the prints are constructed with a prior message in mind, her watercolors are directed more by intuition. “I rarely exhibit or sell the paintings, perhaps because of my attachment to them. When I make a watercolor, it is, as I say, my kintsugi moment,” alluding to the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by rejoining pieces with gold.

“Printmaking represents her rational self,” Karina Ruiz Ojeda wrote for Hecho a Mano, a Santa Fe gallery that carries Morac’s work. “By contrast, watercolors manifest Gabriela’s intuitive side. For her, painting could be regarded as journaling, in the sense that it is an intimate and recurrent manifestation of her most visceral emotions. She paints a lot, especially when she has a moment of introspection, or when experiencing a difficult emotion, whether it be conflict or uncertainty.”3 3. Karina Ruiz Ojeda, “(Re)creating new originary identities: the work of Gabriela Morac,” Hecho a Mano, November 18, 2021, web.

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above Nan Gubidxh (Señora del

sol de la luz / Lady of the Sun of Light), 2023, watercolor on cotton paper, giclée edition of 33. opposite Don nan yuu, ne lo yuu

ibi’n (De tierra somos y a la tierra volveremos / We are of the earth and to earth we will return), 2023, watercolor on paper.

“The creation of the human being was conceived in many ways by the cultures of Anáhuac and all over the world; however, they all agreed that the human being was part of a whole.

“Today science confirms that we are composed of more than 90 percent stardust.…

“The only certainty is that when we die, we will be returned to the earth, becoming part of it no matter what. In the end, we will become part of the whole again.”

—Gabriela Morac

Morac has shown work in group exhibitions across Mexico and abroad in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and the United States. In 2022 she exhibited with 24 Mexican, Mexican-American, Native Hawaiian, and American Indian artists in Reclaiming Identity, a show curated by Dakota Mace (Diné) at the Trout Museum of Art in Appleton, Wisconsin. Morac’s exposure in the U.S. continued in 2023 with the exhibition Nexo Entre Raíces / Nexus Between Roots at the El Paso Museum of Art. Morac has also collaborated through the years on projects such as “Memoria

de los Pueblos,” organized by the Taller Grieta Negra for the National Indigenous Congress in the city of Puebla and a cultural exchange with the Experimental Graphics Workshop of Havana, Cuba.

In one of Morac’s first solo exhibitions, Lad Ru Ra Gal Una (whose literal translation from Zapotec means “the place where I become a woman”), at Casa del Artista in Tlaxcala, Mexico, she showed both prints and watercolors that examine eroticism and femininity, not explicitly, but instead she is exploring how organic forms relate to the concept of being a woman.

Morac has no shortage of ideas and experiences that she wants to communicate through her work, even as she gains a wider audience. “I am always telling stories through my images,” she explains. “I am just a narrator of the world we share and of my world that is undoubtedly common to many other people. When I receive visitors in the workshop or sometimes people write to me or tell me about their feelings regarding one of my impressions, many times it is precisely my feeling. Other times it is a new interpretation that is also wonderful. It’s rewarding for me to know that my work not only communicates my ideas but that it is flexible enough to allow a new interpretation from the heart of another.”

While Morac doesn’t always expect viewers to take something specific from her work, she does “hope there is something that another can recognize in it without my intent taking over. I want to invite reflection on the image. We currently live in a world full of images that are often meaningless. With my images I try to share the idea that we all have the same root, the same origin, and that, regardless of location, gender, or other things, we all come from the same place to share the same world, and that once our time is over, we must all return to it.”

GABRIELAMORAC.COM Staci Golar is an arts and culture writer and nonprofit arts and communications consultant who has had the privilege of sharing artists’ stories in publications across the continent.

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GABRIELA MORAC

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REVIEWS

EXHIBITION REVIEWS

LAWRENCE, KS

Native Fashion Spencer Museum of Art

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HE CURRENT EXHIBITION at the University of Kansas’s Spencer Museum of Art, Native Fashion, is a celebration of exactly what the title says and more.

Curator Sydney Pursel (Iowa) and Native Community Advisors Christina Haswood (Diné), Alicia Swimmer (Oglala-Sicangu Lakota), Felicia Miner (Cheyenne River Sioux), and Miranda Bradford (Citizen Potawatomi) along with two curatorial interns, Elena Theresa (Apache Tribe of Oklahoma) and Dominique Stringer, collaborated to develop a program that would be holistically inclusive.

“We intentionally developed the exhibit to include as many local designers as possible,” said Pursel. “We have so

above Installation view of Native Fashion with dresses by Jontay Kahm (Plains Cree), Patricia Michaels (Taos), and Sage Mountainflower (Ohkay Owingeh/Taos/Diné). Photo: Ryan Waggoner, Spencer Museum of Art. Image courtesy of the Spencer Museum of Art. opposite Patricia Michaels (Taos), PM Waterlily, Antlers in Aspen Meadows, 2019, couture dress. Photo: Joshua Tso (Diné). Image courtesy of the artist and Spencer Museum of Art.

many wonderful Native designers living right here!”

Lawrence is not only home to Haskell Indian Nations University but a strong Native American community and Indigenous studies program at the University of Kansas. The two universities collaborate often. Lawrence is near to the Kansas City metropolitan area, the capital city of Topeka, and the four federally recognized tribes in the state. As a result, more than 100 tribes are represented in the exhibition, locally and from coast to coast, as designers, artists, content creators, participants, advisors, and curators.

The team started working on the exhibition design in 2022, and one of the first tasks was to identify the themes that would be addressed. Representation,

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Resilience, Resistance, and Relations, while separated into sections throughout the exhibition, can all be considered throughout the show. For example, the resilience of Indigenous people to use what materials are available is shown through pieces from different eras in the Resilience section but also throughout the four sections.

Every piece has a story, which connects the four themes, and also a backstory special to the artist or nation.

One exceptionally touching piece, She Brings the Rain by Sage Mountainflower (Ohkay Owingeh/Taos/Diné), illustrates a story from 2017 when the Pueblo experienced a lengthy drought. The skirt is made up of 365 ribbons hanging vertically, one prayer for each day of that year,

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laid out from dark to light representing the water flow and movement with each step of the wearer. The deeper in, the darker the water. The accompanying beaded vest represents lightning and the gentle rain “making the land, flowers, and skies vibrant. As she [the rain] fades away, you see the cloud blossoms fade back into the mountain,” the label reads.

The exhibition covers clothing and accessories, including jewelry and shoes. Each of these reflects various eras and regions. One pair of shoes from the late 19th or early 20th century are particularly graceful and embody all four exhibition themes. A pair of beaded moccasins with heels, made by an artist now unknown, demonstrate cross-cultural stylistic exchanges and portray how Indigenous people incorporate Eurocentric fashion while maintaining their own identity. Juxtaposed with these shoes are a variety of more recent shoes including beaded high-heeled sneakers, hand-painted shoes, as well as shoes by

commercial athletic manufacturers who now partner with Native designers. In years past, these manufacturers were creating “Native-style” designs but after much public outrage and media coverage, relationships are developing with Native American artists.

Streetwear is clearly a crossover.

Possibly the most visible of Native fashion to the world at large, Native streetwear intertwines culture with Western clothing, highlighting resilience. For example, Bless All Those Who Walk Here are a pair of hand-painted shoes by Chris Pappan (Kaw/Osage/Cheyenne River Lakota) that are fine art, comfortable on the runway and on the sidewalk. A hand-painted vegan leather jacket by Konrad Pumpkin Seed (Oglala Lakota) was worn on a Los Angeles red carpet and is also right at home on the campus or at a concert.

Diversity is key to this exhibition.

Every age group as well as the LGBTQ2+ community are represented.

The opening reception featured Native clothing modeled by the attendees.

Ribbon skirts, shirts, vests, moccasins, hair ties, and jewelry were all there at their finest—each representing Native designers from everywhere. While my attention was drawn to a ribbon skirt made of Blue Bird Flour sack, a small toddler ran by in his perfectly fitted ribbon shirt. And where was he going? To the doll section, of course! A selection of handmade dolls by Rhonda Holy Bear (Cheyenne River Lakota)—delicate and intricate—are alongside Barbies in the exhibition.

Although the Spencer Art Museum will be hosting a runway show in December with live models, the runway has not been neglected in Native Fashion. One gallery has been dedicated to Indigenous Couture Goes Vogue, a runway show that was hosted by Haskell Indian Nations University in April 2024.

The original show, organized by Esmarie Cariaga (Isanti Dakota) and Ryia LeBeau (Cheyenne River Lakota/Diné), was recreated in the gallery with clothes on mannequins, video of the runway models, and seating. It feels like the live show. Included is an interactive screen with fashion photography, providing a wall-mounted, digital lookbook.

Entry to the museum evokes a New York department store with the wonderful lightbox windows. Tables covered in tablecloths with ribbon weaving and designs line the red reception carpet.

The tall pillars in the main gallery hold enormous banners created by Mona Cliff (Aaniiih/Nakota), echoing designs from her recently commissioned mural on bridge piers near Haskell. The banners’ title, NDN-uity, comes from a phrase Cliff ’s grandfather would say, “We had to make do with what was around to accomplish a task.” The banners are made from cotton, satin ribbon, Pellon, and tin jingles. All of the elements in the exhibition remind the visitor that Native fashion and design aren’t just for wearing.

The show inspires Natives to look their best, be creative, and represent their tribes everywhere, every day. It also educates patrons that the vibrant cultures of Native Americans are not just historical tributes, but part of life today.

—Lisa LaRue-Baker (Cherokee Nation)

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SANTA FE

Driving the Market: Award Winning Native Contemporary Art Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

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N VIEW through January 18, 2025, Driving the Market: Award Winning Native Contemporary Art is the inaugural exhibition in the JoAnn and Bob Balzer Native Market and Contemporary Art Gallery at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC). The show features artworks created by more than 45 Native North American artists between 1922 and 2024 and highlights a variety of Native art markets in Turtle Island with an emphasis on the SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market.

I found four themes emerging from this exhibition: driving art into the future, carrying on legacies, connecting with the skies, and protecting the earth.

These intentions, deduced from the artworks on view, lead viewers through a whirlwind of Native-designed patterns, textures, and color palettes complemented by Native artists’ voices in a video providing context on the annual markets and the state of Native northern North American art today.

One artwork underlines the exhibition title, Driving the Market, and embodies a combination of the four themes. A 1974 Triumph TR6 roadster at the entrance of the gallery radiates the collaborative work of eight Native artists to indigenize this vehicle in 2002 by way of a partnership between the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) and the Institute of American Indian Arts. The custom-embellished car was made for sale in a fundraiser to support both organizations, and the participating artists were Dan Namingha (Hopi-Tewa), Jeanette Ferrara (Isleta Pueblo), Laura Fragua-Cota (Jemez), Bennard Dallasvuyaoma (Hopi/Akimel O'odham), Frances Dallasvuyaoma (Hopi), Oreland Joe Sr. (Diné/Southern Ute), Teri Greeves (Kiowa), and Marcus Amerman (Choctaw Nation).

Namingha’s painted designs include a colorful flock of birds with outstretched wings adjacent to black and white checkerboard sections—suggesting birds flying over cornfields—to signify that protecting

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the land and skies is the key legacy for Native people to carry into the next chapters of life on earth.

Nearby, several artworks portray the theme of driving art into the future.

On one pedestal, Picuris/Diné artist Connie Tsosie Gaussoin’s Key Dazzler (2002) offers a direct visual dialogue with the roadster in her interpretation of a key chain—the key to traveling between Native places and times. Green macaw feathers with quills housed inside a sterling silver cone honor ancestors in a visual suggestion of dance regalia, and an elongated spiral in 14-karat gold that holds a key suggests ancestral migration pathways.

Gaussoin’s sculptural assemblage converses with Diné artist Shonto Begay’s Going to Ceremony (1998) acrylic painting on canvas. Created in Impressionist style with dashed brushstrokes, Begay’s narrative features three men in a Chevrolet pickup truck with a blue door and hood, red side panels, and two four-legged animals in the truck bed. Between Gaussoin and Begay’s works, a tandem association between the traveling necessary to participate in Native gatherings takes form.

The theme of carrying on legacies resonates through many works in the exhibition. A strong correspondence emerges between Laguna Pueblo artist

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Pat Pruitt’s Water Jar (2017) made in titanium and San Ildefonso Pueblo artists Maria and Julian Martinez’s Polychrome Pottery Jar (1922) made in clay. Pruitt’s vessel gives the sensation of the energy lines of a water jar with its vertical, geometric posts in silver enacting the role of the structural “bones” of a vessel. However, this artwork creates a play with its vertical metal ribs in place of Pueblo pottery’s customary horizontal coils in clay.

Pruitt’s Water Jar pays homage to the power of Pueblo pottery to forge a pathway during the early Southwest tourism period for Native artists to participate in an ongoing global exchange of art.

The Martinezes’ vessel in an olla, or water jar, shape honors the importance of carrying water from the river to the village in vessels made watertight for this purpose. A water jar made as art that metaphorically rather than physically carries water, its polychrome designs of stepped patterns in red and black emphasize the olla shape as a repeating, visual sign for water, complemented by feather designs.

While the Martinezes are renowned for their black-on-black pottery, they established their career making polychrome vessels. Further in the gallery, a black-onblack plate in clay with avanyu, or water serpent, and lightning symbols made in 2009 by Cavan Gonzales (San Ildefonso Pueblo), the Martinezes’ great-greatgrandson, carries on their legacy.

A constant in this exhibition, the theme of connecting with the skies, holds a bright presence throughout the gallery. Conveying this theme in jewelry highlights the alignment of reflective art media to represent the cosmos. Big Dipper/Milky Way (2015), a beaded buckskin cuff bracelet by Kiowa sisters Keri Ataumbi and Teri Greeves, demonstrates the possibilities for any art form to honor the sky. A wearable artwork for the wrist, the glass seed bead bracelet features a dark night sky studded with gold and an area of large diamond accents with orbit rings surrounding each stone. A pun becomes visible in the allusion to the Beatles’ 1967 song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and creates a multisensory tension with the quiet yet vibrant aesthetic of the

above 1974 Triumph TR6 roadster painted and customized by a team of Native American artists in 2002 to benefit SWAIA and the Institute of American Indian Arts. Photo: Tira Howard. Image courtesy of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. opposite, left Maria Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo, ca. 1886–1980) and Julian Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo, ca. 1889–1943), Polychrome Pottery Jar, 1922, clay, pigment, 14 × 171/8 × 352/3 in., collection of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, 18783/12. Identified in MIAC records as “Award winner 1922 Southwest Indian Fair and Industrial Arts and Crafts Exhibition." opposite, right Pat Pruitt, Vase, titanium, 7 in. tall. Image courtesy of Charles King, King Galleries.

bracelet. The value of both seeing and protecting the sky comes to mind with thoughts of defending the land as an underpinning.

Stories of protecting the earth dot the gallery. Diné artist Tony Abeyta’s Entering the Sacred (2024), a three-panel drawing made in charcoal and ink wash on paper mounted on canvas, portrays a cyclical life existence of interdependence between all species. A dense, round path of overlapped shapes representing life forms from the sea, earth, and sky depicts the necessary harmony between all beings to prepare a way into the future.

Conveying a pathway from the past to the future, Osage/Muscogee artist Anita Fields’s Buffalo Sculpture (2004), made in clay, features overlapping symbols in a silver metallic color overlaid on the entirety of the animal’s head. Migration spirals and dragonflies interlock with the bodily form of the buffalo and its nearby horns. This patterning offers a way to remember trauma and pain with a way of healing and resurgence, all through memories brought together.

Adjacent to Fields’s sculpture, Jemez artist Kathleen Wall’s Plant the Corn and

Your Heart Will Grow (2011), a figurative sculpture in clay, portrays a female Pueblo dancer holding a small polychrome olla and wearing a headdress with painted butterflies. The water to earth to sky connection visually resounds through this figure. Wall’s sculpture communicates the position of the Pueblo people as the bridge between above and below, in the middle place. It spotlights the power of dancing as the nourishment and vibration of that bridge.

The artworks in this exhibition hold deep layers of meaning and prayer that carry messages from Native homelands all over the world. The artist-to-collector, intercultural market interface facilitates a sharing of these visual expressions between communities that may not otherwise be in conversation. It is the artworks that ensure that Native stories move across time, and it is the continuity and commitment of the people keeping these artistic legacies alive. It is the next generation that drives these narratives into new realms with annual reunions that take new forms.

—Michelle J. Lanteri, PhD

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PLYMOUTH, NH

Of Baskets and Borers: The Past, Present, and Future of Indigenous Basketry in the White Mountains Museum of the White Mountains

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HAT M A K E S T H E brown or black ash tree (maahlakws) so important to Algonquian peoples is its unique ring structure. Like any tree, each year brings a new growth ring. But this tree, which prefers wet, forested areas and has a range along the U.S.–Canada border from Newfoundland to west of Lake Superior—basically matching the homelands of northeastern Algonquian-speaking peoples—can, with both care and some force, be stripped apart to make the long, thin strips that have been the raw material for basketmaking for time immemorial.

“Black ash is the only tree that you can pound and separate the year’s growth.

A year’s growth is this year’s inner bark … will be next year’s splint. And depending on the nutrition that the tree gets will depend on the thickness of that next year’s splint,” explains tribal elder and Mi'kmaq Nation vice chief Richard Silliboy (Mi'kmaq). “And when you pound

that, it breaks the fibers between the years’ growth and each splint will separate. And that’s what we use to make our baskets out of.”1 The inclusion of the interview with Silliboy, from a lovely short film that is part of the They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration project produced

by Emergence Magazine,2 illustrates the collaborative, multidisciplinary approach of Baskets and Borers.3 The exhibition weaves various specialties and collections to capture an expansive, symbiotic tale of a tree and its peoples: a story of loss, survival, and a new threat.

The exhibition grows concentrically, at its core inspired by a recognition of unfamiliarity and absence, expanding to tell an eclectic tale spanning distinct human specialties, cultural and biological adaptations, and migration. It does so using historic and contemporary baskets, the tools for making them, raw wood, videos, maps, photos, scientific material and equipment, and information about the

emerald ash borer (EAB), the invasive species now a mortal risk to the maahlakws.

As Museum of White Mountain Director Meghan Doherty explains in the accompanying introductory label, the spark for the exhibition was an old postcard that is “the only representation of Abenaki peoples in the White Mountains in our collection [which] led me to learn more about the Abenaki and their long-standing connections to the region.”

For two primary reasons, those connections are much diminished today.

First, the northern White Mountains, like the neighboring Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and Maine’s Lakes and Mountains region, is a rugged place to live. It’s full of granite precipices and thick forests. To mash up some lines from Game of Thrones: “Winter is coming and full of terrors.” Even mitigated by climate change, winters in northern New England still feature dead car batteries, frozen water pipes, and evenings that start in the afternoon. It’s never been a place where humans have lived densely.

Second, during the 18th century, the region’s Algonquin tribes—already under demographic pressure due to the impact of European diseases—allied themselves first with the French against the British and, later, the British against the rebellious American colonists. This led most Western Abenakis to migrate north to Canada, where today’s Odanak First Nation and Wôlinak First Nation reserves are nestled south of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec (no Western Abenaki are federally recognized in the United States).4 The long and the short of it is that Doherty’s interest in the Abenaki, whose presence in northern New England has been radically diluted, led her to Daniel Nolett (Odanak Abenaki), general director, or Kin8dokawawinno, of the Abenaki Band Council of Odanak. This led her to the Musée des Abénakis in Odanak, which provided several of the basketry pieces and lore for the exhibition.

1. Jeremy Seifert, “They Carry Us With Them: Richard Silliboy,” Emergence Magazine, November 4, 2021, video, 7:39, web.

2. “They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration,” Emergence Magazine, web.

3. “Of Baskets and Borers: The Past, Present, and Future of Indigenous Basketry in the White Mountains,” Museum of the White Mountains, web.

4. Mark Bushnell, “Then Again: As Americans Fought the British, Abenaki People Were Caught in the Middle,” VTDigger, September 25, 2022, web.

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Which circles back to that postcard. The image, printed in 1920, is of an Abenaki family from Odanak at their summer camp in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, about 45 miles north of Plymouth.

They traveled to it—175 miles south of their home—to sell baskets to summer tourists in an echo of earlier seasonal migrations. Other Abenaki families of the era did the same in various locales, with a label explaining that “Between 1870 and 1920, basketmaking was the primary source of income for many families in Odanak.”

Prior to air travel becoming commonplace, northern New England was where many urban dwellers from downcountry (and some Montrealers) spent their summers, usually traveling by train for extended stays. Known hereabouts as flatlanders, today they travel by car and continue to bring disposable income to the region as skiers, mountain bikers, and craft beer connoisseurs.

One of the most recently created pieces in the exhibition links to this heritage. Sun Basket with Basketmaking Family Names (2023) by Annette Nolett (Odanak Abenaki) includes the names of Odanak’s basket weaving families. She includes 23 names, and three—Wawanolett, Benedict, and M’Sadoques—are represented in the eight individuals from that 1920 postcard. The piece also features one blank space, with the label informing: “Nolett said she plans to add her daughter’s name, Thompson, as she is continuing to make baskets and keeping the tradition alive.”

Although pride and endurance are themes of the exhibition, anxiety and loss course through it. Not only the absence of the Abenaki in the contemporary culture of this specific place, and the material holdings of a museum dedicated to it, but the dire risk of emerald ash borer to the trees that are deeply entwined with the Eastern Algonquian peoples. Like Europeans flooding the eastern seaboard, it is an aggressive invasive species wreaking havoc on longstanding ecosystems. And like last century’s chestnut blight fungus—another “global economy” import from Asia that wiped out what was once one of the primary trees of eastern North

above Installation view of Of Baskets and Borers: The Past, Present, and Future of Indigenous Basketry in the White Mountains. opposite Three Abenaki black ash baskets with dye, two with sweetgrass.

America—the borer is now swinging its scythe after first being detected in Michigan in 2002.

But Of Baskets and Borers is also a call to action. The exhibition includes a wealth of forestry materials about identifying at-risk ash trees and ongoing mitigation efforts—though it’s clear these are rearguard actions at this point. The best hope is the “lingering ash,” the very few individual trees that have survived where the borer has killed every other mature tree in an area. These are now serving as source material for selective breeding programs. It is a current, scientific approach to a current reality taking its place in a very old story.

“Working with the brown ash is very spiritual. When I’m working on a basket, you know, I’m using something that is very sacred to all the Wabanaki people. The climate change, or the emerald ash borer, will totally wipe out the brown ash,” says Silliboy in the They Carry Us With Them. “It would be very devastating for the Wabanaki people of the Northeast. They’re saying that 50 years from now there will be no ash in this area because everything is just moving north. We’re collecting seeds; we’re going to store ’em and preserve them, and hopefully, at some point in time we’ll be able to replant.”

—Peter Letzelter-Smith

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WEST BEND, WI

Weaving a Legacy: Ho-Chunk Black Ash Basketry Museum of Wisconsin Art

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ALKING INTO THE COOL, contemporary Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) in West Bend, one’s viewpoint will be immediately transformed by the sight of more than 200 baskets produced by the Indigenous Ho-Chunk people from Wisconsin. The colors shimmer among the muted strips peeled from native black ash trees and woven into baskets large and small and in all shapes and sizes.

MOWA’s exhibition Weaving a Legacy: Ho-Chunk Black Ash Basketry, on display until November 10, 2024, is one of a growing number of the museum’s exhibitions dedicated to the art of the Indigenous people in Wisconsin. What sets this exhibition apart is the sheer scope and size of the installation and its comprehensive nature in dealing with the subject matter at hand.

“The exhibit contains a lot of baskets of various types,” says MOWA curator Jane Aspinwall, who worked closely with co-curator Tom Jones (Ho-Chunk), an artist and University of Wisconsin– Madison professor of photography, on the exhibition. “We have them arranged in the galleries, sorted by function. There are market baskets, shopping baskets, sewing baskets, kettle baskets, barrel baskets, and large baskets to collect eagle feathers.”

The 200 baskets are only one-tenth of those Jones has photographed over the years in Ho-Chunk households around the state. Some also are drawn from Jones’s personal collection and all of them represent what might be called the golden age of Ho-Chunk basketry. This also is the largest-ever exhibition of this nation’s basketry ever to be mounted, Aspinwall says.

According to the curator, there is a backstory to the art form that has been handed down through the Ho-Chunk’s oral histories over generations. Like the

Ho-Chunk themselves, who were driven off their historic lands seven or eight times yet always managed to return, basketry has a significant origin appropriate to the culture it represents.

Many years ago, a story tells of a woman who had a relative die, which customs said required a weeklong medicine dance and sendoff for the departed spirit.

But the woman had no money for such an event and prayed to the Great Spirit for help. The Spirit came to the grieving

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woman in a dream and directed her to a certain black ash tree. It instructed her to cut strips of wood from the tree and weave them together to create a beautiful basket that she could then sell to raise money for the medicine dance. She did as she was told, created what may have been the first Ho-Chunk basket, and raised the money from the sale of this beautiful object to pay for her loved one’s sendoff.

The baskets on display at MOWA carry much of that history and all of the artistry with them. The oldest basket dates back to 1910, with some wool-sided bags also part of the exhibition that were produced in the 19th century. Aspinwall told me that 40 percent of baskets on display were produced by known artists, while the remaining 60 percent come from unknown creators, lost in the mists of time.

Contemporary Ho-Chunk Nation artists whose work is part of the display include Helen Lonetree, Joyce Buchanan, Lila Greengrass Blackdeer, Ruth Cloud, Truman Lowe, Christopher Roth, Christine Hall, and others. Hall’s Rocking Doll Cradle, produced in 1980, is one of the more interesting pieces on display, while

above, top Ho-Chunk artist once known, Feather Basket, ca. 1950s, black ash, dye, collection of Michael Schudlach. above, bottom Christine Hall (Ho-Chunk), Rocking Doll Cradle, ca. 1980, black ash, dyes. Both photos: Tom Jones (Ho-Chunk) for Museum of Wisconsin Art.

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the vivid colors in Blackdeer’s Barrell Basket from 2011 stand out even among the bright colors used in the more contemporary works. The styles and textures in just about anything by Lonetree count among the best of the exhibition.

By the mid-20th century, the Ho-Chunk sold their baskets from roadside stands in and around Wisconsin Dells and other tourist areas. The stands have largely disappeared, Aspinwall says, depriving Ho-Chunk artists from what was once a major commercial avenue.

Further, challenges posed by the emerald ash borer and other environmental threats also raise concerns about the future of the Wisconsin ash tree population and what it could mean for the continuation of the art form, the curator says.

But there’s no doubt that, as the Ho-Chunk have managed to survive and thrive, so will their basketry, no matter what threats come along.

—Michael Muckian

REPORTS MONONA, WI

Harry Whitehorse International Wood Sculpture Festival San Damiano Park

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EW HONORS MEAN MORE to an artist than an art festival created in his or her name. After multiple years in the making, the late Ho-Chunk sculptor Harry Whitehorse (Ho-Chunk, 1927–2017) was so honored with the inaugural Harry Whitehorse International Wood Sculpture Festival held from June 14 through 22, 2024. The nine-day event was held on the grounds of San Damiano Park on the shores of Lake Monona in a suburb of Madison, Wisconsin. The ten-acre park, home to the Frank Allis House that once served

as a novitiate, or housing for novices, for the Norbertine Catholic order, is located within historic Ho-Chunk tribal land.

WHO WAS HARRY WHITEHORSE? WHITEHORSE WAS BORN in 1927 near the Indian Mission in Black River Falls, Wisconsin.1 He showed an early interest in and aptitude for art, and as a boy, he apprenticed with an established woodcarver and silversmith.

When Whitehorse enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War II, his travels exposed him to some of the great art museums of Europe and Asia. After the war he studied human and animal anatomy at the University of Wisconsin and attended the former Colt School of Art, both in Madison. He also learned welding and metal fabrication at a local technical college.

Whitehorse eventually settled in Monona, where for 40 years he owned and operated Chief Auto Body. He designed race cars as well as created art based on his heritage and nature in metal, wood, and other media. Ten of his large sculptures serve as public art installations throughout the Madison area, including a ten-foot-long bronze badger just outside Camp Randall Stadium, home to the University of Wisconsin Badgers football team. Whitehorse died at age 90 in 2017.

“He was very driven—driven to create art and beautiful things,” Deb Whitehorse, the artist’s widow, told the Wisconsin State Journal at the time of his passing. “He had a pencil in his hand almost up to the very end.”2

WHY A FESTIVAL? THE HONORARY FESTIVAL idea came from Gene Delcourt, a sculptor of Odanak Abenaki and Filipino descent who served as an apprentice to Whitehorse. In 1993, Whitehorse was invited to a European wood sculpting symposium but sent Delcourt to compete in the older sculptor’s place.

above Linda Lou Metoxen (Diné) carving Not My Mother, But An Idea Of Her, basswood, 311/2 × 17 × 16 in. Photo: Jessica Koopman, Harry Whitehorse International Wood Sculpture Festival.

Since that time, Delcourt has attended seven such symposia throughout Europe and marveled at the work on display.

When Whitehorse died, Delcourt knew he wanted to launch a similar event at home in his mentor’s name and began planning the festival while returning from a symposium in Germany two years ago. It is believed to be the only international art festival dedicated to a Native American artist.

“He was a great, great artist, and not just at woodcarving,” Delcourt said during the festival. “He worked in every medium, but woodcarving held a special place in his heart.”

Delcourt, who taught art and history at Madison’s Malcolm Shabazz City High School named in honor of slain civil rights leader Malcolm X, credits much of what he knows about sculpture to Whitehorse.

“He was patient, hospitable, and inviting,” says Delcourt. “He liked to stay within the bounds of Ho-Chunk culture and its woodland nature. We started off with tiny chickadees and studied the

1. Harry Whitehorse’s mother was Annie Greencrow Whitehorse (Ho-Chunk, 1906–1990), and his father, born Ralph Rubinofsky in Ukraine, was Ralph Rubin Whitehorse (1894–1987). —Ed. 2. Samantha Kalk Derby, “Renowned local sculptor and painter Harry Whitehorse dies at 90,” Wisconsin State Journal, December 1, 2017, web.

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above Dancing at the opening ceremony. Photo: Jessica Koopman, Harry Whitehorse International Wood Sculpture Festival. Both photos: Jessica Koopman, Harry Whitehorse International Wood Sculpture Festival. below Carlos Olivera Aguirre (Quechua) with his sculpture, The Awakening of PachaMama, 2024, basswood, 119 × 31 × 19 in.

bird’s physiology and structure to better understand their features and their appearance. I owe him so much.”

For this first Whitehorse festival, eleven artists-in-residence were selected from dozens of global applicants. Each artist created a wood sculpture on San Damiano grounds throughout the festival’s run. In addition to Delcourt, sculptors came from the Czech Republic, Germany, Ghana, India, Peru, 88 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024

Poland, and Switzerland. Indigenous American sculptors were in short supply, and festival organizers found no applicants with Ho-Chunk heritage.

June in Wisconsin is usually sunny and temperate, but this year artists labored under Ho-Chunk-style structures erected to ward off the effects of the dreaded Heat Dome as it crawled its way across the Midwest and multiple drenching rain showers.

Despite the weather, a steady stream of onlookers came by to watch the sculptors work, chat with them about their technique, and otherwise enjoy the park’s sunset view across the lake of the State Capitol building on Madison’s isthmus.

The event, supported by a grant from the Monona Tourism Commission, cost roughly $175,000 to mount. It opened with appropriate fanfare, including a Ho-Chunk Color Guard and Ho-Chunk Nation singers and dancers. Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe, and Seminole cultural presenters demonstrated painting, weaving, and other cultural art forms to augment the sculptors’ work.

AND WHAT ABOUT THOSE SCULPTURES? THE SCULPTURES RANGED FROM ABSTRACT to impressionistic to hyper-realistic. A sculpture of a young woman carved

by Linda Lou Metoxen (Diné), from Montello, Wisconsin, was a simple telling of an Indigenous subject. Czech artist Oldřich Pliska’s life-sized mountain lion was realistic enough to startle onlookers. Oversized hands thrust out of the top of a sevenfoot tree trunk in Quechua and Peruvian artist Carlos Olivera Aguirre’s work, while East Indian artist Gadadhar Ojha’s intertwined twin trunks proved to be one of several festival head-scratchers.

Artists worked in their choice of pine, spruce, basswood, red oak, white oak, and cherry wood; all contributed to the festival and milled in Delcourt’s own sawmill. “I think my biggest surprise as both an artist and an organizer was the amount of time each of us spent talking to visitors to the site,” Delcourt says.

“We had seven hours each day to carve, and I bet I lost three to four hours per day talking to well-wishers and answering questions. But I didn’t mind that because they were interested in our work.”

Artists were on hand on June 22nd during the closing ceremony to discuss their work and answer questions. A potluck dinner followed the official ceremonies. Of the sculptures, which became the property of the festival, five are on display until June 30, 2025, at nearby Olbrich Botanical Gardens.

The next Harry Whitehorse International Wood Sculpture Festival is already being planned for 2026. Applications are due in November 2024, and Indigenous artists from the U.S. and all countries are invited to apply, Delcourt says.

“I hope a lot of Indigenous artists see this article and are inspired to join us for the next festival,” the artist adds.

—Michael Muckian

JACK SABON Handmade Drums

www.sabonart.com nerak194@gmail.com

REPORTS

WASHINGTON, DC

Indigenous Voices of the Americas Smithsonian Folklife Festival

S

INCE 1967 the Smithsonian Institution holds its Folklife Festival each year in Washington, DC, to celebrate culture and art. Originally focusing on regions of the United States, the festival has grown in the last decade to include cultures from around the world. With its theme of “Indigenous Voices of the Americas: Celebrating the National Museum of the American Indian,” it did both by not only highlighting Native Americans, but Indigenous peoples from all of the Americas. As hosts and headquarters, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) served as a venue for performance art, educational programming, and viewing of the museum’s exhibitions, such as Americans.

The National Mall served as event space for demonstrations, workshops, lectures, and music and dance.

Cultural and ancestral stories were intentionally interwoven throughout the event to make the festival a holistic experience. Land issues, self-governance, spirituality, self-expression, and Indigenous knowledge were key points in the design of the program, while four themes were used in the planning, as shared in the festival brochure: “RELEVANCE shows how traditional knowledge impacts our collective future, highlighting innovations and sustainability—both cultural and environmental.

“REPRESENTATION conveys how Indigenous communities control their own stories. They define who they are and how they see themselves. And how they express their identities and make their voices heard.

“RESISTANCE has many faces: in advocacy and protest, in teaching and transmitting suppressed culture, and in the fabric of daily life, Indigenous people work in countless ways to strengthen their communities and protect their lifeways.

“RECLAMATION speaks to the challenging and rewarding process that Indigenous communities undertake to

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reclaim their ways of knowing, languages, protocols, and ancestral ties. Indigenous knowledge keepers work at the intersection of culture, language, and land.”

The festival included all arts such as performing, culinary, cultural, and visual. Numerous events took place over the five-day festival, with key highlights reported here. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) spoke at the opening ceremonies before joining the Native American Women Warriors, the first all-women Native American color guard, along with early festival attendees in carrying the eagle staff and colors to the National Native American Veterans Memorial. Haaland was also one of the first to visit the Imilla Skate’s workshop.

Imilla Skate (Aymara/Quechua) is a collective of young women from Bolivia who skateboard while wearing their polleras, or customary colorful and layered skirts associated with Indigenous Andean women.

Their mission is to spread confidence, selflove, and pride among young Natives.

Native skateboarder Di’orr Greenwood (Diné) is also a skate deck artist and designer who paints, uses pyrography (wood burning), and inlays stones such as turquoise to create moving canvasses. She also designs wearable art, carves cedar flutes, has created a stamp for the U.S. Postal Service, and most recently, partnered with Nike to design Nike SB Dunk shoes.

Various tents on the National Mall explored two ceramic practices, five basketry practices from North America, and four weaving practices from Alaska to the Andes. Artists from the Amondawa community shared how art, environmental knowledge, and social protocols support their efforts to remain on and protect the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous land, located in the rainforest region of Rondônia State, Brazil. On the basketry stage, Kelly Church (Gun Lake Pottawatomi/Ottawa/Ojibwe) and Ronnie-Leigh Goeman (Onondaga) discussed environmental stewardship and threats to black ash basketry due to the emerald ash borer, disease, and misguided gathering practices. They also demonstrated and showcased the basketry of each of their respective nations. John Paul Darden, Scarlett Darden, and Tribal Chairperson Melissa Darden (all Chitimacha) are

among the few who carry on the ancestral Chitimacha split-cane basketmaking today. John Paul has worked with tribal citizens and government agencies to restore the rivercane habitat around their tribal lands in Charenton, Louisiana.

Ceramic artists Macrina Mateo Martínez (Zapotec) and her family workshop Mujeres de Barro Rojo (Women of Red Clay) are known for their openness to new shapes and products, while remaining rooted in centuries-old techniques of San Marcos Tlapazola in Oaxaca, Mexico. Artists at other tents demonstrated processing hand-dug clay, working with natural dyes, and processing organic fibers while displaying the art that resulted from these methods.

Culinary arts were featured in the Foodways demonstration kitchen and the Kitchen Garden where Indigenous chefs from diverse regions explored plant knowledge, heritage foods, and the indigenizing of today’s popular foods. Among them was Claudia Serrato

above Mural on the Wall collective paints Buffalo Dreamer. Photo: Sydney Pursel (Iowa). opposite “Songs from the Rainforest with the Amondawa,” presented by artists from Amondawa the Amondawa community use songs, stories, and personal adornment to sustain their cultures and share their contemporary struggle to remain on and protect the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Land in Brazil. Photo: Katherine Fogden. Image courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution.

(Xicana/P'urhépecha/Zacateca/Huasteca descent), a culinary anthropologist, chef, and educator from East Los Angeles. She is recognized for her efforts to preserve and promote Indigenous culinary techniques and ingredients, as well as advocating for food sovereignty and sustainability. She cofounded Across Our Kitchen Tables, a culinary hub and event series that generates and supports socially responsible, food-based work by women of color.

Community-based mural painting is the specialty of sisters Reyna and Sonia Hernandez (both Yankton Nakota) and Amber Hansen, who formed the collective Mural on the Wall. The team unveiled their piece Buffalo Dreamer, which depicted an androgynous, shirtless figure wearing athletic shorts and footwear and

a knee brace, lying on the ground with the back the viewer. Surrounding the figure is imagery inspired by Reyna’s mother’s quilts. The mural design was intended for a downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota, parking ramp, but the mayor declined the mural after the Visual Arts Commission had selected it. Instead, the mural was completed by attendees at the festival working with the artists and was completed on-site at the National Mall.

Dancers, musicians, artists, and other culture bearers of more than 60 Indigenous communities participated in the festival which took place June 26 through July 1, 2024. Next summer’s Folklife Festival from July 2 to 7, 2025, will focus on the youth and the future of cultures. —Lisa LaRue-Baker (Cherokee Nation)

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SPOTLIGHT

CHIEF-OF-ALL-WOMEN POLE October 18, 2024, marks the 125th anniversary of a stolen totem pole being erected in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. How does this artwork and its replica connect to Seattle and its home community?

By Kariel Galbraith (Tlingit)

I

N SEATTLE’S PIONEER SQUARE, nestled behind a bust of the city’s namesake—Chief Siʔaɫ (Suquamish/Duwamish, ca. 1786–1866)—a 50-foot Tlingit totem pole competes in height with several nearby historic buildings.1 This totem, credited as “a gift to the city” on the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture’s website, is a replica of a pole stolen by members of the City of Seattle Chamber of Commerce (SCC) in 1899. Though often called the Seattle Totem, this pole is more accurately called the Chief-of-All-Women Pole. Its first rendition was a 19th-century mortuary pole that contained the human remains of a woman from the Gaanax.ádi clan from Taant'a Kwáan, near Ketchikan in what is now the state of Alaska. The first Chief-of-All-Women Pole was raised in Taant'a Kwáan in the late 19th century to honor the life of Aanseet (Tlingit, ca.

1800–1870) by her daughter and noblewoman Anisalaga Mary Ebbets Hunt (Tlingit, ca. 1823–1919).2 A few decades after Aanseet’s passing, members of the SCC stumbled upon the totem on their northward journey for suitable art pieces for the city. The SCC assumed the empty village was abandoned, so they cut the pole down and into halves for easy transportation.3 When tribal members returned from the fish camps and gathering spots to find their totem gone, they were devastated.

above Postcard of the original pole, circa 1903, collection

of the New York Public Library Digital Collections, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, b12647398 (CC0).

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1. This work is based on my own research and consultation with my relatives. The story of this pole deserves to be shared, and I hope to aid in pushing visitors’ curiosity toward the truth of its history in this place. Please forgive me if I misspeak or misrepresent any part of this story. If you have corrections, please share them at galbk@uw.edu.

2. Mary Stephenson, “S'eiltin I Aanseet–Chief of All Women (1800–1870),” Academia.edu, January 31, 2016, web.

3. Emily L. Moore, Proud Raven, Panting Wolf: Carving Alaska’s New Deal Totem Parks (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018), 110.

SPOTLIGHT

SCC returned to Seattle with the pole and erected it in the heart of the city’s Pioneer Square.4 The totem pole towered in the square, competing in height with memorable Seattle landmarks of the time like the Olympic Hotel and Merchant’s Café— still backdrops of the totem today. The natural subjects and color palette of the totem against Seattle’s rapidly urbanizing background struck visitors as soon as it was raised and continues to inspire curiosity in visitors and residents alike.

The people of Taant'a Kwáan fought for the return of the pole shortly after its theft. They pursued legal action only to be ridiculed by Seattleites. SCC was ordered to pay a small fine the same year the pole arrived, 1899, but community members, online articles, and the stories of tour guides offer different stories when it comes to amounts and who received it. Some stories offer that the funds went to descendants of Aanseet’s family, while archival history sheets reported by Seattle Park’s Don Sherwood tell that the $500 fine supported an Alaska Native school in the Ketchikan area.

Four decades after it was raised in Pioneer Square, the Chief-of-AllWomen Pole was damaged by a nearby arson attack beyond repair.5 In 1939, a year after the arson attack, the U.S. Forest Service’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) program that promoted the reproduction of Southeast Alaskan totem poles funded the replication of the Chief-of-All Women Pole on the condition the original pole would be returned to Taant'a Kwáan.

Following the arson attack, the village received the damaged totem pole, and it was allowed to decay naturally in

above Postcard of the original pole, ca. 1903, collection of the New York Public Library Digital Collections, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, b12647398 (CC0). below Installation of second Chief-of-All-Women Pole, 1940, Item 111240, Fleets and Facilities Department Imagebank Collection (Record Series 0207-01), Seattle Municipal Archives. (CC BY 2.0).

4. Coll Thrush, Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017), 113–14.

5. Sources reporting on the fire conflict as to whether the pole was a target or merely an unfortunate casualty.

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SPOTLIGHT

its homelands. It is vital that poles be allowed to decay naturally and return to the earth. When totems have decayed, they have served their purpose. Clan members can decide to erect new poles to ensure the culture remains active and that new stories are being told, or that old stories are being uplifted once again by the new generation. The CCC commissioned a talented group of Tlingit woodcarvers led by Charles W. Brown (Tlingit, Neix.ádi clan, ca. 1902–ca. 1976) to create a new version of the Chief-ofAll-Women Pole to be raised in Seattle in 1939.6 This replica pole has had one repair since, by carver John C. Hudson Jr. (Tsimshian, ca. 1936–2019) and art historian Bill Holm (ca. 1925–2020) in 1972.

The replica retains the imagery and story of the original pole. The top of a totem shows us first the moiety or crest of the clan who owns the pole. Tlingit people are divided into two moieties: Eagle and Raven. Some villages may also use Wolf instead of Eagle or may use them interchangeably. As matrilineal people, Tlingits take their moiety, clan, and house from their mother’s side but maintain a significant connection to their father’s people, including certain permissions to use clan crests and imagery. When it comes to crest ownership, these rights are earned, most often through death of a clan member or other equal hardship.

On the Chief-of-All-Women Pole, Raven sits at the top, the moiety and a crest of the Gaanax.ádi clan. A trickster and the Tlingit creator, Raven can be distinguished by his long and straight beak and dark features. Details added to Raven can refer to creation stories. The crescent moon he holds in his beak on this pole depicts a scene from when Raven stole the stars, moon, and sun from his grandfather, Naas Sháagi Yéil (Raven at the Head of Nass River). A human is depicted below Raven on the pole. This figure is most likely The Woman who Married the Frog, sitting atop her husband while carrying her child. Next below on the pole is a mink, characterized by his long thin tail between his legs, and then below him sits a smaller figure of Raven. These two creatures are notoriously mischievous,

especially when placed together. This small Raven perches on top of a killer whale who is mid-meal with a seal caught between his teeth. At the bottom of the pole is Raven’s grandfather, Naas Sháagi Yéil, with a large, curved, hawklike beak, who serves as foundation for the pole, crests, and stories that it holds.

Original black-and-white photos highlight the contrast between the original pole’s natural wood (likely red cedar) and the vibrant blue and green paints, which would have been sourced from local blue and green earth minerals (vivianite and celadonite, respectively).

White, used quite sparingly on Tlingit totem poles, can be found on the teeth and as highlights in both the original totem and its replica. This white pigment may have been made from baked clam shells. Striking reds and blacks would have been made from red earth (iron ochre), and every pigment would have been mixed with water or chewed with egg roe as a binder. These were later covered over with garish commercial paints.

The practice of making and raising poles is changing with time. For convenience and longevity, commercial dyes are often used in place of natural pigments. Totems, once placed to welcome you ashore to Tlingit lands as you moor your canoe, now serve several new functions. They act to keep Tlingit culture alive and moving forward, imitating and honoring the ancestors who shared knowledge with new Tlingit generations. Poles educate visitors. Totem parks throughout Southeast Alaska have attempted to package Tlingit culture for consumption by cruise ship travelers: they are placed in a way most effective to complete a walking tour, and they are arranged most aesthetically for memorable photographs and postcards. As in the case of these parks, in Pioneer Square neither the original Chief-Of-All-Women Pole nor its current replica face west towards the Puget Sound for guests but rather stares north up First Avenue and toward its Tlingit homelands.

Totem poles are a product of place. They are raised in specific areas

6. Other carvers include William Brown, James Starfish, Robert Harris, William Andrews, and James Andrews (all Tlingit), many of whom are members of the Kininnook and Kyan families. “Seattle Totem Pole,” Seattle Office of Arts & Culture: Public Art Archive, web.

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SPOTLIGHT

to commemorate important events, stories, and histories that happened there.

Tlingit ancestors would find it odd to see this pole raised 500 miles from Tlingit lands. However, the creation of totem parks has altered custom, and it is now common for the crests of a clan to be represented in a park where a clan does not claim rights to land.

Seattle is not Tlingit land, but Alaska Natives from the Northwest Coast and beyond have been calling it home for many years under the stewardship of Coast Salish peoples. The Washington State Chapter of Tlingit and Haida reports roughly 7,000 enrolled members in the Seattle area. Without this context, it can be easy to misunderstand, simplify, or even demonize the centralized placement of art that is not native to this place, such as the Chief-Of-All-Women Pole. Though similarities between the formline of Tlingit and Northwest Coast nations exist, formline remains distinct from Coast Salish art of the Salish Sea region. Ovoids, U-shapes, and S-shapes are key components to formline design, while crescents, trigons, and circles are key to Coast Salish art.

No plaque labels the Chief-ofAll-Women Pole as Tlingit nor once stolen, though the city seems interested in changing that. This art without story has perpetuated homogenization of Northwest Coastal arts. The Chief-ofAll-Women Pole is just one example of Tlingit impact, cultural exchange, and settler theft that cast long shadows in the Pacific Northwest. The pole’s story is entwined with Seattle’s history, not only as a hub of Native and settler activity but as a herald for the continued westward and northward expansion of the United States territory. It is our duty to breathe life into these stories, honoring both the real histories of place and the stories they continually weave by the ways we interact with them.

Kariel Galbraith (Tlingit, Dakl'aweidí clan) is a writer and fiber artist from Sitka, Alaska. She lives, works, and weaves stories on Coast Salish territory in Seattle, Washington. She is the FAAM Alaska Native Art Writing Fellow, sponsored by The CIRI Foundation.

At the bottom of the pole is Raven’s grandfather, Naas Sháagi Yéil, with a large, curved, hawklike beak, who serves as foundation for the pole, crests, and stories that it holds.

above, right, and opposite Charles W. Brown, William H. Brown, James Starfish, Robert Harris, William Andrews, and James Andrews (all Tlingit), Chief-of-All Women Pole, 1940, Western red cedar, paint, 50 × 42/3 feet. Photos: Kariel Galbraith (Tlingit).

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REVIEWS

BOOK REVIEWS Collecting Mesoamerican Art Before 1940: A New World of Latin American Antiquities Andrew D. Turner and Megan E. O’Neil, editors Getty Publications, 2024

D

ETERMINING THE OWNERSHIP of artworks is a surprisingly complicated process. A cursory glance at the process of evaluating museum objects shows the many steps and conflicting claims that can pile onto an object that the museum presumably acquired ethically. Was the object sold by the legal owner? Are elements within the piece illegal or unsafe—say, elephant ivory or ornamental feathers from an endangered bird? Does the piece and its interpretation violate the privacy or religious sanctity of non-consulted parties?

All of these questions are relevant to artworks or other items that are accepted and registered into a museum in the current era of instant-access paperwork, cloud memory, and infinite data of a permanent non-degrading quality. Accession information from earlier eras could be faded, erased, unverified, misplaced, or written too vaguely to be useful in arbitrage or research.

When a project as complicated as repatriation and good stewardship becomes an international affair, the complexities multiply. With the ongoing process of truth and reconciliation in Native art (from groups with different levels of recognition internationally), the process becomes all the more labyrinthine. From Cortés’s first entrance into Tenochtitlan, the western collection of Mesoamerican artifacts has been a story of zealous priests, spell book–stealing pirates, shifty diplomats, under-the-table sketch artists, and blockade-dodging candy makers.

Thus enters Collecting Mesoamerican Art Before 1940: A New World of

Latin American Antiquities. Rather than the work of a single author or research team, this book is an edited volume of 15 essays. Edited volumes are common in academic circles, and often have a limited self-revealed vocabulary and steep knowledge floor of their own. Unlike self-selecting university presses, this volume was edited by the Getty Institute as a part of their new program, the Pre-Hispanic Art Provenance Initiative (PHAPI). The initiative focuses on precontact materials taken out of Mesoamerica in collections that were gathered before 1940. The collections are primarily focused on Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, and PHAPI researchers track down these objects’ provenience, that is, an object’s lineage of ownership.

The Institute of the Getty is itself an interesting story. In the glittering city of Santa Monica, up a hill from the Will

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Rogers State Beach (near the ranch of Cherokee celebrity and humorist Will Rogers) lies the main plot of the Getty.

The museum is the legacy of the Getty family, who include oil tycoons and antiquities collectors. Over time, the family collection became one of the largest modern and ancient art collections in California.

California antiquities is the beginning of only one of the 15 stories included in Collecting Mesoamerican Art. The introductory chapter relates the story of Earl Stendahl, the founding collector of the Stendahl collection. Earl Stendahl was a chocolatier who came to California at the turn of the century to seek his fortune. As a side job, he bought and sold art for the backdrops of Hollywood sets, dealing with creators as far away as Europe.

When World War II closed the European market, Stendahl looked for art south of the border and met Diego Rivera. Through Rivera’s connections throughout Mexico, Stendahl’s dealership in Hispanic and pre-Hispanic art was renowned in galleries and museums throughout the United States. In 2017, Stendahl’s grandson donated his family’s papers, a century-long story of art in California, to the Getty. Thus began the PHAPI’s mission of research for the provenance of pre-1940s Mesoamerican art, and the anthology of this volume.

A personal takeaway from this volume is the surprising connections between world events and local landmarks and artifacts. One chapter follows the story of a singular shield of ocelot hide and feathers. It was one of three feathered Aztec works to survive the transatlantic journey to Vienna, seat of Charles V of Habsburg (Cortés’s emperor). Despite a general disregard for Native art’s value beyond the surface, the Habsburg Court was so impressed by the objects’ rarity they purposefully conserved the featherwork shields in Vienna’s art collection—two of three remain in Vienna to this day. Three

KARMA HENRY OWENS VALLEY PAIUTE SWAIA Winter Market

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KarmaHenry.com Tabedua-ti nüga-ti tongobi (Sunlight Dancing on the Clouds) 2024, acrylic on canvas, 24 × 3o inches

hundred years later, another European family had invaded Mexico to rule.

Maximilian von Habsburg and Carlotta of Belgium, a French courtier and his wife, ruled a shaky dynasty for a few years before being executed by Mexican revolutionaries. Ironically, Maximilian sought to create a Mexican national museum by petitioning his Austrian cousins to send Mexican objects back to Mexico from Europe. While Maximilian did not survive his time in Mexico, the ocelot shield did and remains in the National Museum of History at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City today.

Maximilian’s remains were sent to Yale a decade after he died. When he was executed, the Emperor’s “personal effects” included chests of artifacts and artwork, featuring a monogrammed, embroidered saddle and several chests of precontact jade artworks. Maximilian

When Fischer was arrested, he had hidden the Habsburgs’ collection so well that the Mexican government could not find it. trusted his personal affairs to Father Augustin Fischer, a Rasputin-like figure.

Born in Germany, Fischer migrated to North American, left his wife and family in Texas before he crossed the border into Mexico, became a Catholic priest, and joined Maximilian’s court. When Fischer was arrested, he had hidden the Habsburgs’ collection so well that the Mexican government could not find it.

For years, Julius Skilton, an American doctor and U.S. consul to Mexico, negotiated for Fischer’s release and ultimate turnover of the collection. Some of this was sent to the Peabody Museum, more still went to Maximilian’s widow.

Ultimately, Collecting Mesoamerican Art does precisely what its team set out to do. Inspired by the museum’s new mission with PHAPI, the contributing authors for the Getty Research Institute created a selection of mystery stories—some swashbuckling, some cloak and dagger, and some more conventional paper trails. In so doing, they provide the reader with a deep but well-introduced examination of Mesoamerican artwork and the moral, practical, and legal mechanics of antiquities collecting. This review finished the volume with an increased interest in both.

—James G. Bland

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BOOK REVIEWS

a constellation of color: The Art of Benjamin Harjo, Jr. heather ahtone and Victory Rowe Berry, editors First Americans Museum, 2024

T

HE MONOGRAPH, a constellation of color, is a partnership between First Americans Museum and the Oklahoma State University Art Museum that traces the career, life, and artistic legacy of Benjamin Harjo Jr. (Absentee Shawnee/ Seminole, 1945–2023). “Benjamin Harjo, Jr., was a talented artist whose artwork, until this publication, has not been closely studied or approached by scholars despite his work being in every major Native American art collection in the country,” writes editor heather ahtone (Choctaw/ Chickasaw Nation).

Harjo was born in Clovis, New Mexico, and grew up in New Mexico and Oklahoma. He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe from 1964 to 1966 and received his bachelor of fine arts from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater in 1974.

He went on to become an internationally celebrated Native American painter and printmaker. This publication, along

with the recent retrospective exhibition benjamin harjo jr.: from here to there at Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, serves as a posthumous analysis and recognition of Harjo’s impact as a contemporary First American painter of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The literature included in the book, written by multiple authors, ranges from commentary on the life and legacy of Harjo by his friends and colleagues to academic art historical analyses of Harjo’s artwork set in a global context. Three-time US poet laureate Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) and Laura Da' (Eastern Shawnee) contribute poetic expositions; Stacy Pratt (Mvskoke), Kenneth Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho/ Seneca), Suzan Shown Harjo (Southern Cheyenne/Muscogee), and Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho) share community member statements. America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) provides biographical background in “Cosmic Trickster.” Ashley Holland (Cherokee Nation) contextualizes Harjo’s work within the mainstream art world in “Rethinking the Canon,” and heather ahtone examines Shawnee aesthetics and Indigenous philosophies evident in his art in “Ben Harjo’s Eloquent Dance.”

The publication itself could not have been conducted without the main researcher, Barbara Harjo—Benjamin Harjo Jr.’s wife of more than 40 years— who coordinated the documentation of his artwork. a constellation of color presents 130 of Harjo’s works all in one place, numerous examples of iconic, colorful art mostly from the 1990s to 2010s now in public and private collections. This includes pencil drawings, woodblock prints, paintings, and ephemera such as holiday ornaments and Christmas cards.

Throughout the essays, the theme of trickster comparisons to Benjamin Harjo Jr. often resurface. He was constantly likened to the positive values of wit and wisdom possessed by trickster figures of First American cultures. He had intelligence, humor, magnetism, a bright personality, as well as joy of life and adventure.

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With so many details, descriptions, and explorations of Harjo and his work, the publication occasionally leaves the reader hoping for more. One of the reflections by longtime friend Kenneth Williams Jr. mentions a caricature drawing he received from Harjo during a road trip. One would like to see an image of that treasured keepsake. One analytical essay mentions a 1990 work commissioned for the Eiteljorg Museum, but I cannot find the visual reference within the publication.

Overall, however, the publication is a great visual, poetic, and reflective look into the life and work of Benjamin Harjo Jr. The reader steps away with a very nuanced understanding and familiarity of Harjo, the friend, artist, and mentor known throughout the Southern Plains and the Southwest.

The last essay in the volume by heather ahtone explores Harjo’s works in terms of Indigenous influences specific to the context of Shawnee culture.

This includes aesthetics, space, color, symmetry, and composition. She draws attention to the colors and patterns reflective in historical Shawnee cultural objects, such as a fingerwoven belt and a pair of moccasins, reflective of Harjo’s works. Both heather ahtone and Ashley Holland’s essays deeply read and analyze Harjo’s artworks in terms of Indigenous aesthetics and cultural values as well as 20th-century European modernism and Abstract Expressionism. The authors set Benjamin Harjo in a complex context as a contemporary Indigenous artist within the global art world.

One gets a rich understanding of Harjo’s importance in First American art. As this volume insists and illustrates, Benjamin Harjo Jr.’s friendship, mentorship, and artistic career spanning decades left a lasting legacy for the Indigenous and American art world. It is a beautifully rendered and visually stunning memorialization and celebration of the life and work of Benjamin Harjo Jr. Hopefully this book will inspire further scholarship.

—Amy D. Bergseth, PhD

BOOK REVIEWS

Survival Instincts Rainy Dawn Ortiz Magic City Books, 2024

N

O MATTER what, Mvskoke/ Acoma artist and writer Rainy Day Ortiz’s biography threatened to overshadow any poetry book she might have released. The daughter of iconic Native poets Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) and Simon Ortiz (Acoma), Rainy Day wrote under the usual pressure of artists who are children of famous creatives. But, as her mother writes in the book’s introduction: “Rainy could not help but be poetry. She arrived bearing many gifts including insight, an innate wisdom, beauty, and artistic talents.”

Rainy walked on suddenly at a young age of an aggressive cancer,1 leaving her many friends and admirers in shock. Her passing in such a manner adds to the poignancy of her debut chapbook, Survival Instincts.

I came to know Ortiz first through her mother’s poetry and later as a social media friend. I fangirled on her beadwork page, and she loyally “liked” my cat photos. I knew she wrote poetry, but she had only begun posting it regularly in the last few years of her life. Like her beadwork,

her poems are courageously vulnerable, passionate, and unexpected—grounded in her tribal cultures, and wholly her own.

I first read Survival Instincts in California, where we had come to sit vigil with my beloved sister-in-law, who also died young of an aggressive cancer that took her within a month of diagnosis.

The book, full of life and love, was both devastating and comforting, as its very existence reflects the vastness of loss when a person passes away.

Harjo writes in the introduction, “The delicate rendering of form and meaning in her beadwork you will also find in her wordcraft.” One example of several poems that exhibit that quality is “Sobering.” The repeated infinitive phrases of the poem call to mind the rhythm of beading: “…To breathe air / To breathe in blue / To breathe in red / To breathe sweet / To taste bitter / To taste nothing / To taste everything.…” They appear on the page as a string of short phrases, recalling a line of beadwork carefully sewn, precisely placed with hope that the image it creates will last through wearing. The poem is dedicated to “my dad who is sober now,” and it is an invocation and meditation of great love and hope, as are many of the poems in this collection.

As Harjo notes in the introduction, in both Mvskoke and Acoma cultures, “Words have power.” Literal power to heal, “to make change, mark transformation, to honor truth, or to collect beauty.” Ortiz’s words do all of these things, as do her beaded pieces. Readers who arrive at these poems without knowing her beadwork will still receive the beauty and power they contain. They are the poems of an artist.

In “The Weaver,” the narrator describes the experience of a spider spinning a web. Spiders are a recurring motif in Ortiz’s beadwork, including the piece on the book’s cover. In Acoma belief, “Old Spider Woman” is one name given to the entity who begins their origin story. The poem details the wrenching and intimate physical and spiritual experience of an anonymous spider weaving: “…She doesn’t do it with the reckless abandon / She feels within her. / She takes her time… / She weaves, / One line at a time, / Taking the time to speak / Honestly, / With

“Words have power.” integrity hoping that / It doesn’t fall on deaf ears.”

The spider’s weaving represents the emergence of art, of poetry, of self, and it is sometimes painful: “She weaves, / Feeling pain as she does so, / Knowing she is opening herself, / Knowing she is letting pieces of her / Drag behind.” Those pieces that drag behind are the things an artist leaves behind when they depart earthly life—pieces of themselves that take on new meanings as time passes. Art and poetry retain the origin-al piece of their creator, the spark that caused them to express themselves in a tangible way.

At the end of the poem, the exhausted weaver begins again, “To weave us / Into her story.” As readers of poetry, we are woven again and again into the story. In that way, poets and artists (even when their names are lost to history) continue to create long after their time on earth has ended. Our experience of art and poetry adds to its story/meaning each time we approach it, and the poems in Survival Instinct reflect that phenomenon.

In one of the collection’s final poems, “50 Years,” Ortiz describes with gentle humor and poignant detail the intimate family celebration of what would be her final birthday, which was also her third chemotherapy appointment. It is followed by the collection’s title poem, “Survival Instincts”: “We find power within ourselves… / We have to. / That’s where our spark / Begins. / Even if it’s a small one.” We are fortunate beyond words that she lit so many fires with that spark, artistically, poetically, personally, and as a friend, mother, daughter, person.

Ortiz was able to hold the first printing of this book in her hands before she passed, so she knew the Survival Instincts she left for us. Those who knew her or her work wish that this book were just the start of her writing career, but it is at least a starting place for anyone who encounters it. These brave words are written to inspire, that is, to breathe strength, power, and a unique spirit into all who read them.

—Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke)

1. Stacy Pratt, “Rainy Dawn Ortiz (Mvskoke/Acoma), 1973–2023,” First American Art Magazine, no. 42 (Spring 2024), 108.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 99

ART+LIT

Inupiaq/Tlingit/Nisga'a Novelist

LILY H. TUZROYLUKE

By Angela Startz (Inupiaq, Northern Slope) the 2024 Alaska Woman of the Year, which recognizes women who have made a significant impact in their communities and across the country.

AS: Congratulations on being named USA Today’s Woman of the Year! How excited are you about it?

LHT: It was such a surprise. When I first received the email, I thought, Is this real? I just did a quick search of the reporter, and I was like, Wow, this is real. It was a very, very humbling experience.

They have this recognition every year for women across the United States. Publishing my first book, Sivulliq: Ancestor, has been an incredible experience from start to finish. I’m so grateful for the support that I’ve received.

AS: What inspired your book?

LHT: The people at Point Hope are my true inspiration for writing this story. When I started, it began as a Tlingit story. I was living in Skagway and working for the Skagway Traditional Council. I loved working for tribal governments. That was my goal throughout college. While I was working for the tribe, I did write as sort of a hobby.

Then I got the opportunity to work for our tribe at the Native Village of Point Hope. That was transformative for my storytelling. Listening to elders, whalers, hunters, and gatherers. There’s a wealth of information in talking with our people.

Surprisingly, a lot of information has been recorded by explorers and historians, but you have to read it with caution. Some of the historical data were very prejudiced. I’m grateful that history was recorded, but you also have to filter out [the ethnographer’s] opinion and ask yourself, What is their bias in this information?

L

ILY H. TUZROYLUKE is a captivating new Arctic Indigenous writer. Her Inupiaq, Tlingit, and Nisga'a people originate from the villages of Point Hope and Klukwan in Alaska and Gingolx, British Columbia.

Having started her career in village governance, she never saw an opportunity to become a writer until, in his Inupiaq way, her mentor Rex Tuzroyluke not-so-subtly pointed out that while many authors write about her people, few are from the Native communities of the Arctic.

Tuzroyluke’s debut novel, Sivulliq: Ancestor (Epicenter Press, 2023), is historical fiction set in Alaska at the close of the 19th century. The Library of Congress included Sivulliq in its 2023 Great Reads List. USA Today named Tuzroyluke 100 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024

AS: What made you switch over to Inupiaq?

LHT: Listening to these incredible whaling and hunting stories and interactions with the interior Koyukon—that’s when I knew that the story was changing. I worked with elders in a number of different programs there. It was eye-opening. One of them would tell me stories about hunting out by the tip of Point Hope, looking out through his rifle scope and seeing a submarine looking back at him. It’s stories like these that give a writer a feeling of euphoria. You know it is going to be in a book. That’s the feeling that writers love.

AS: Your novel is like two different books, comparing how we see ourselves and how the whalers saw us, usually as “savages.”

LHT: It’s the 1890s. I had to use the lingo of the time, but it’s said by racist characters in a demeaning way. It’s not me as a writer saying this. It’s the whaler character who’s saying it. At

ART+LIT

some point, I knew that I would need to see the perspective of the whaling ships.

AS: Can you share what your writing process is like?

LHT: My writing process is very structured because I need that structure. I have concrete goals that I shoot for that day. Freewriting is my foundation. I start the day by setting my goal, say 1,500 words for the day. This is where my best ideas come from.

Research is my favorite form of inspiration. I find my research in several avenues: talking directly to elders in person; going to library collections; going to an archive and looking at what they have in their collections.

We’re very lucky in the Arctic Slope region that there have been conferences where they’ve recorded elders talking about their childhood or telling stories that have been translated from Inupiaq to English.

After freewriting, I go into what I call my harvest process because I’m taking what I want from the freewriting document into the final. I have two screens: one with my freewriting, one with the final document. It’s just cut and paste, cut and paste.

With the first book, I was learning my writing process. I feel like my next book is going faster than the first one.

AS: Are you still in Tikigaq (Point Hope)?

LHT: Luke, my son, has autism. I had to move to Anchorage after his diagnosis.

Luke was raised in Point Hope until he was seven years old. At that point, I knew that I’d need more assistance for him. I miss being there. It was a hard move because I had to leave behind my profession, which I loved, and leave behind the community. I was mourning a number of things: his diagnosis and my career.

After the move, writing became a necessity. I had to say to myself, I have this opportunity, and I’m going to do it now. I credit my son for that because without this path he led us on, I don’t think I would have ever sat down and dedicated the time. And it’s been a journey: a glorious and triumphant journey.

AS: This novel is a great way to combat the invisibility of our Arctic peoples.

LHT: Being Indigenous to Alaska can very much feel like we’re a footnote. Like, “Oh, there’re Alaska Natives?” There are something like 200 tribes in Alaska, but it can be frustrating trying to get our stories out there. I’m so happy for True Detective and Alaska Daily. Incredible writers for True Detective. They had Alaska Native women writers in that. I loved it and watched every episode. I just applaud them.

above Sivulliq: Ancestor (Epicenter Press, 2023), with cover art by Holly Mititquq Nordlum (Inupiaq). opposite Lily H. Tuzroyluke.

Image courtesy of the author.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 101

ART+LIT

If you’re on a four-wheeler, you can go from Point Hope to Thompson in about 40 minutes. You’re just driving on beach.

That was one of my favorite things to do. I miss that.

Lily H. Tuzroyluke. Image courtesy of the author.

AS: Another thing that I really appreciated about the book is that it is a page-turner. It is full of action. How hard was that? Did you watch a lot of action films or were you just feeling that urgency of the mother saving her child?

LHT: I do watch a lot of war films. That’s definitely one of my favorite genres of movies. But as far as the action, yes, I did want a sense of urgency. There is just one chance to rescue her family. It was this long journey that they’d have to take, using their traditional knowledge to help save them.

Too many readers have asked, “Were there really children who were taken aboard ships?” Yes. “Would there really be African-American whalers on a ship?” Yes. As a writer, my instinct is to find proof and to say … that it really did happen.

But at the same time, I don’t want to put in the energy. The problem isn’t the history or what I’ve written. The problem is they likely wouldn’t believe a lot of what I write because I am an Indigenous writer.

AS: How did you decide on that image for your book’s cover? It’s beautiful.

LHT: The book cover was designed by Holly Mititquq Nordlum (Inupiaq). She does traditional Inupiaq poke tattoos, and she is also an [illustrator]. She’s created some very significant art installations in Anchorage. She is so inspiring. She’s done all my tattoos, and I knew that I wanted her to do the cover.

Then I picked up Nasuġraq Hopson’s Eagle Drums and read that. It is another excellent piece of literature out of Alaska.

So many great awards. I’m glad that we’re getting the recognition. Our books were published around the same time, and I’m just so happy. We have two women from Point Hope who published books. I’m so proud of [Nasuġraq].

AS: I’m proud of all of it! I had never been to any of the coastal villages, so your book was a chance for me to experience it. Then I finally got to Kotzebue, and I was like, Yeah, she really built that world!

LHT: I absolutely love that, seeing it with fresh eyes. Thank you for that. The beaches are heavenly. Time just stops. There’s nothing like it. The dark, sandy beaches and the rounded rocks.

AS: What is next for you?

LHT: My next book is focused on Indigenous children.

It’s inspired by my grandfather who went to the school in Chilliwack.1 Even while the children are being starved, assimilated, and subjected to sexual abuse and neglect, they still have this courage, imagination, and will to continue our cultural traditions. I want it to be a story of glorious, triumphant revenge.

It is coming along. I’m a good, solid 30 percent into [it].

AS: How are you caring for yourself while you’re researching and writing such a heavy topic as this?

LHT: I’m so glad that you asked that. Normally you’d see somebody writing about these tough topics and then having to do a ceremony to cleanse themselves. But for me, I have to write in order to cleanse myself. It’s almost like it builds up in my mind, and I need to sit down and get it out. It is very therapeutic for me. I need to write this story to give them justice. To give our people justice from the starvation to the unmarked graves that we’re finding. It is a lot to digest, but I hope I’m capturing history.

TUZROYLUKE.COM

Angela Startz (Inupiaq) is a public affairs professional, producer of Reel Indigenous podcast, and actor, who earned her journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma.

1. Chilliwack Home, or Coqualeetza Institute, was a residential school in Sardis, south of Chilliwack, British Columbia, operated by the Methodist United Church and United Church of Canada between 1886 and 1940.

102 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024

MEMORIAL

RON ANDERSON September 1, 1938–August 6, 2024

A

TRAILBLAZER in contemporary Native American art, Ronald Wayne Anderson (Choctaw Nation/Chickasaw) eluded widespread recognition. His abstract take on Native art spoke from a vast knowledge of art history, but he always stirred in potent messages from the rez, whether a biting comment about all the Trails of Tears or a metaphysical vibe about the cosmos before colonialism. He kept up with current trends and embraced Arte Povera where unexpected media or processes were “performed.”

Larger than life, Ron produced enormous abstract sculptures from wrecked cars that he erected across the back roads of Oklahoma, transforming them into buffalo skulls or the famous image of Ira Hays erecting an American flag on Iwo Jima. Ron created his most famous installation when he hoisted his wrecked vintage Mercury Cougar onto a burial scaffold by the highway in rural Oklahoma, which was a onetwo punch against the insurance company that wouldn’t pay anything on his wrecked car claim. Ron was an anomaly: obsessed with the Native world he lived and breathed while trying to make sense of the mainstream world.

Ron constantly changed, adding philosophical, astral, and spiritual meaning to the abstract imagery he threw into his work, and he enjoyed experimenting with techniques and/or materials. His paintings ranged from historical imagery before conquest to the Trail of Tears or Vietnam or even passion plays at art openings. One night he showed me all his new work and then … turned out the lights, transforming them into animated ghosts with phosphorescent paint! His art was full of abstract visual imagery where he hid all the swirling galaxies of his take on the contemporary Native world, and with rez humor, he might hide a secret message with invisible ink but not tell the gallery or patron.

He was a contrary. Being born in Talihina, Oklahoma, near a sinkhole where the nearby flowing water defied geography, sealed his fate. He pushed any boundary, whether flying the U.S. flag upside down at his opening (and getting the show shut down) or entering late to his exhibition from the exit. He lived out in Binger for several years without running water or electricity in the 1990s, yet produced some of his most groundbreaking and thoughtful art. He lived his art, like when he camped out in a tipi in a friend’s front yard but hooked up a TV with a long cord so he could watch his favorite shows.

Who does that these days?

above Ron Anderson at the Southern Plains Indian Museum, Anadarko, Oklahoma, 2008. Photo: Joan Frederick.

His artworks were his “children” born from his soul, so he rarely sold or parted with any. He would price them at one million dollars or decide not to sell them, saying, “He’s not ready for it yet.” At one of his major shows at a tony gallery, a big hitter wanted to buy most of his paintings, but Ron kidnapped them all back to Arizona. He left many works along the trail with friends, galleries, and restaurants.

He was a U.S. Marine Vietnam veteran, but like many Native patriots exiled in their own homelands, it saved him in the end at an Arizona nursing home. His life turned out to be his greatest work of art. He never got the recognition he deserved from the art world, but many Natives know of his unique and powerful art, and they went on to influence the contemporary Native American art scene in a huge way. Performance and mixed media are now understood.

Rest in peace, Ron Anderson. Know you did it for the right reasons and with honor. And it's just like you to leave only your art behind. —Joan Frederick

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 103

MEMORIAL

LENA BOONE October 13, 1946–August 8, 2024

H

ER ANCESTORS ANNOUNCED THEMSELVES from the North; the rolling thunder came to the Middle Place the evening before Lena’s passing. Grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles, and aunts encircled the valley sky to guide Lena to her ancestors and bless the Fourth World with gentle rain for four days and nights when the family observed her wake and cultural ceremonies. Her life spanned over 77 years, filled with grace and a rich love of family and tradition. Lena’s love and care for everyone was boundless.

She ensured they had food and shelter and knew their true life worth. This love was founded on her belief in humbleness, from pulling a chair to extend an invitation for dinner to driving out of her way to pick up a child and return them home to Zuni.

Lena’s artistic journey was a personal calling and a testament to her passion and dedication to family. Her ability to be innovative and challenge herself to pursue new and unusual materials was a touch of grace witnessed by many. Lena’s unquestioned artistic vision often led to mentoring other artists, sharing her business knowledge, and guiding young artists into a trajectory of success in the American Indian art market. She was Zuni and Cheyenne-Arapaho, and her upbringing in the rich history of the Weahkee and Leki families, her time in Cleveland, Ohio, and her unwavering belief in Zuni culture all shaped her art. This journey, marked by her passion and dedication, left a lasting impact on the Zuni community.

After finishing high school in Zuni, Lena packed her bag and traveled by train to Cleveland, Ohio, to enroll in a business college. She completed her program, worked for General Electric, and returned home to Zuni. She married Rignie Boone (Zuni, 1945–1984). Lena worked for New Mexico State University and the Zuni Artist Co-Op but chose to be an artist. The business knowledge she gained in her professional life led her to entrepreneurship, as her life now included a daughter.

Her artistic career began with assisting her mother, Edna Leki (Zuni/Cheyenne-Arapaho, 1924–2003), and her husband, Rignie. Lena and Rignie grew their business and enjoyed life.

They embraced the extended family in pursuing wealth and searching for new materials. On weekends, the family traveled to the White Mountains of Arizona to harvest serpentine along the Salt River. During this time, Lena and Rignie adopted a nephew and niece, making it a priority for their children to see life beyond Zuni Pueblo. The family explored the Southwest while valuing Zuni culture, language, and the importance of education.

After the passing of her husband, Rignie, in 1984, Lena and her children traveled to the American Indian art markets and gallery shows. In this process, Lena established herself as a renowned artist. She earned a portfolio of awards, including recognition from the Santa Fe Indian Market, Heard Museum Guild Fair and Market, and Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial. Lena’s influence had a significant and lasting impact on Zuni art history. She opened the door to new markets and extended invitations to Zuni artists to her shows in Los Angeles, 104 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024

above Lena Boone with an owl sculpture carved from slag glass. Imagery courtesy of the Boone Family.

Denver, Phoenix, and numerous gallery shows nationwide. She emphasized the value of one’s artwork and the importance of communicating one’s passion.

By 2000, Lena settled into her life, raising her nieces and nephews and continuing to mentor artists. This is how family, friends, and collectors knew her: her love to accept them, her warm smile, and her grace in making one feel at home. Her defining art form was carving materials from all over the world.

Her gracefully carved hummingbirds, which embraced the quiet beauty of Baltic amber, were her hallmark.

Lena passed on to her Zuni ancestors in the early hours of August 8, 2024, surrounded by her children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and many friends. The Zuni community witnessed her passing with the female rain that came to bless the Middle Place to acknowledge Lena’s life in the Fourth World.

Her path into the next world was paved with rich love and grace.

To the many families, friends, and collectors worldwide who knew Lena, may you have a long breath of life.

—Evalena, Leland, and Marcella Boone (all Zuni/Cheyenne-Arapaho)

MEMORIAL

RANCE HOOD February 9, 1941–August 30, 2024

above Rance Hood. Photo: Stephen Collector. Image used with permission from the Estate of Rance Hood.

T

HERE ARE TWO PAINTERS whose work those of us from Southwest Oklahoma instantly recognize.

Most Native people can instantly spot a T.C. Cannon or a Rance Hood painting—their styles being so distinct. I would argue many Native people of culture will have a T.C. Cannon or Rance Hood print displayed on their wall.

When I see this in a home I visit, I automatically assume the person has great taste.

Why is Rance’s artwork so recognizable? The movement of Rance’s Comanche warriors on horseback, caught in mid-flight, arrests you and demands closer inspection of the warriors and horses, galloping at a high speed on a seemingly lunar surface, the flat plains of Comancheria. Born in 1941, this legendary Indian artist was born in Cache in Southwest

Oklahoma. Rance’s work and aesthetic are embedded in the Southern Plains Flatstyle. I’m from a Comanche community in Walters, Oklahoma, near Cache and Lawton, and now live in Albuquerque. Possibly this is why this artist was and remains a huge artistic influence. Rance had such unique styles and made a huge imprint on Indian art.

Notable, charismatic, funny, and just plain talented, Rance Hood epitomized the archetypal “Comanche artist” or how I imagine a writer or filmmaker might have drawn one up.

My memories of him: always cowboy-hatted, telling outrageous stories, cracking jokes, smiling, and full of life. When he came to visit my mom and dad in Dallas, Texas, he would always refer to my dad as “Hollywood,” the wood portion drawn out for emphasis, an old nickname that stuck throughout their long 60-year friendship.

“He was a great friend,” said my dad Hollis Asenap (Comanche), a close friend of Rance, also a painter. “If he told me he would be there or meet me somewhere or go someplace, he would show up. I was a big fan of his all around, as a person, as a painter.” Dad marveled at Rance’s ability to speak his language. “He could speak Comanche and that’s what I had trouble with ’cause I couldn’t talk to older people ’cause I didn’t speak Comanche.” This was undoubtedly a valuable skill to be able to ask questions and gain cultural knowledge from elders.

“He talked to [Comanche painters] Woogie [Watchetaker] and Doc [Tate Nevaquaya] in Comanche, and there was a real tight bond between them.”

Rance’s work, usually a stylized Comanche warrior riding on the plains, was just plain cool. His paintings are, to me, what being Comanche means. To be bold, to be on horseback, to be cool, to be wild, to be feared, to be free. When I think of the old ways, the raiding ways, the fighting days, this is what I see on Rance’s canvases. Rance’s stylish and unique vision is Comanche personified. One can try to replicate this vision and style, and I’ve noticed a few have tried, but in my eyes, there can be only one Rance Hood.

My dad attended Rance’s funeral at Post Oak Cemetery in Indiahoma, Oklahoma, and discovered that the place where he will be buried is only 40 feet away from Rance’s grave site. “Me, Johnny [Wauqua], and Rance are pretty close together.” It was as much of a surprise to him as it was to anyone. It makes sense though, their friendship/brotherhood has always been close.

My dad said of Rance: “He was different, he was bold, he demanded [what he was worth]. He didn’t have a gallery to help him or anything. He did it his way, like Frank Sinatra.”

—Jason Asenap (Comanche/Muscogee) FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 105

MEMORIAL

ALEX JANVIER February 28, 1935–July 10, 2024

S

HOWERED WITH ACCOLADES and with works in major museums across the nation, Alexandre Simeon Janvier (Denesuline/Saulteaux) maintained his sense of perspective and sense of humor throughout his life.

Curator Gerald McMaster (Siksika Plains Cree) called Janvier “the first Indigenous modernist artist in Canada.”1 Janvier cofounded the Professional Native Indian Arts Inc. (PNIAI), which brought Indigenous art to the forefront of mainstream Canadian consciousness. He served on the board of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and was an outspoken advocate for First Nations and environmental issues.

Janvier was born on the Cold Lake First Nations’ Le Goff Reserve on Treaty 6 territory in Alberta. A residential school survivor, he started Blue Quills School at age eight and later said, “The art is what saved me at those residential schools.”2 The principal introduced him to Carlo Altenburg, a University of Alberta professor, who tutored Janvier in painting in the 1950s. Janvier graduated from the Alberta College of Art with honors in 1960 and the University of Alberta hired him to teach studio arts. He continued to study art through 1962 and taught at numerous institutions.

As he garnered recognition, the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs commissioned Janvier to paint 80 new works on a tight schedule in 1966. The department sold 38 works but kept the rest. Furious with this theft, Janvier only signed paintings with his treaty number 287 from 1966 to 1977.

Janvier contributed a mural and was an advisor to the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montréal—a pivotal moment in Canadian Indigenous art history. In 1971 he committed to art full-time, and in 1973 he cofounded the Professional Native Indian Arts Inc., nicknamed the Indian Group of Seven, with Jackson Beardy, Eddy Cobiness, Norval Morrisseau, Daphne Odjig, Carl Ray, and Joseph M. Sánchez.

Janvier’s abstract paintings often featured vast, light negative spaces with dancing marks that coalesced into structures, some echoing geological formations or riverbeds. He and his family founded the Janvier Gallery on Cold Lake First Nations 149B. In 1993 the Canadian Museum of Civilization, now the Canadian Museum of History, commissioned him to paint the 4,500-square-foot mural, Morning Star (Gambeh Then').

Fellow PNIAI member, Joseph M. Sánchez (Tiwa descent/ Spanish-American), recalls how he first witnessed Morning Star at the Canadian Museum of History: “As we shook the winter off of our snow boots and big coats, it took a few minutes for the staff to recognize the ‘master,’ Alexangelo. The love for him

above Alex Janvier looking up at Morning Star (Gambeh Then').

Photo: Joseph M. Sánchez (Tiwa descent/Mexican-American).

was obvious and respectful.” The two found no chairs on the top floor to view the mural, so as Sánchez recounts: Janvier said, “‘Just lay here on the floor, and look up,’ and he begins to tell me the story of this great painting. Two Indians in their boots and parkas lying on the floor off the escalator was quite the sight for the tours of people getting off on the third floor; whispers of drunk Indians and such could be heard. Alex loved it. This little event inspired the museum to have chairs made so you could lay back, look up, and have the story of Morning Star narrated by Alex.”3 Reflecting on his life challenges, Janvier said: “The only thing that really, really helped me is just a paintbrush. That was my most powerful weapon that I could use. In fact, if I ever die … instead of a cross—I want a paintbrush in my coffin.”4 —America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

1. Gerald R. McMaster, “Alex Janvier,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, July 11, 2024, web.

2. Alex Janvier, “Alex Janvier paints the vast landscape of Indigenous life,” The Globe and Mail, September 21, 2018, YouTube video, 2:33, web.

3. Joseph M. Sánchez, email message to author, September 10, 2024.

4. Alex Janvier and Greg A. Hill, “Alex Janvier: In Conversation,” National Gallery of Canada, March 2, 2017, YouTube video, 39:18, web.

106 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024

MEMORIAL

BRUCE LAFOUNTAIN March 14, 1961–September 11, 2024

“H

IS WORLD KNEW no borders,” artist Hillary Kempenich (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) wrote about her uncle. Indeed, Bruce LaFountain’s sculptures are found in galleries, museums, and public spaces across the United States and Canada. His legacy also continues in the artists he mentored, taught, and encouraged.

Born in Los Angeles, California, and raised on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Reservation near Belcourt, North Dakota, Bruce Ambrose LaFountain was also of French and Cree ancestry.

His Chippewa name, Ojaanimakwa’am, translates as “Rolling Thunder,” and he carried this power and motion into his artwork. After his service for the U.S. Army in Germany, he began working as an assistant for his brother, sculptor Presley LaFountain (Turtle Mountain Chippewa, 1956–2023) in Colorado.

When he was 21, he and his brother moved to Santa Fe where they built impressive art careers.

In 1984, SWAIA named Bruce the Most Promising New Sculptor at Santa Fe Indian Art Market. As he developed his signature style, more awards, commissions, and museum purchases followed.

Today his sculptures are in the collections of major museums including the Heard Museum, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, and the National Museum of the American Indian. His work and likeness graced many magazine covers, notably Indian Artist (Summer 1996). He also created several public monuments including the nine-foot-tall bronze sculpture Wisdom Keepers (1998). An edition of seven, Wisdom Keepers can be seen at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis and in the Ville-Marie borough of Montréal. The elegant, Art Deco-esque Transitions stands at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut. His bronze bas-relief Breath of Life (1995) and limestone All My Relations

above Bruce LaFountain (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), Wisdom Keepers, 1998, bronze sculpture, 7/7, collection of the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, gift of Mike and Juanita Eagle, Terry and Becky Rader, and the artist. Photo: Picture Library, Alamy.

(2001), which explores humans’ interconnectedness to other animals, are viewable in Albuquerque.

LaFountain carved alabaster, limestone, marble, and other stones and cast bronzes into stylized, figurative forms with graceful, flowing lines. The confident

lines of his work reflect the diligence, vision, and determination with which he faced the joys and challenges of a complex life. He found that the challenges inspired him: “When I work, I think about these experiences. Sculpture takes them all and puts them in a medium that I can look at and see the truth. My challenge is to remove the excess, to return to an original state of simplicity.”1 LaFountain’s daughter, Eve Lauryn-LaFountain (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), says her father started her on her own artistic path as a multimedia artist and filmmaker, first by giving her a camera when she was 13. “He showed me what a life as an artist could be, the joys and the hardships,” she wrote. “I want to honor and remember the incredible artist he was.… His creativity was immense.”2 Kempenich recalls his encouragement as well. “He introduced me to so many people, helping to support my journey as I tried to build a life in the arts,” she writes. “That generosity was just who he was. He was especially kind to our girls, encouraging them in the way only he could—making sure they knew how special they were, how capable they were, and reminding them to strive to be the best versions of themselves.”

In 2022 LaFountain was among the first artists to move into Siler Yard, a Santa Fe housing community designed for artists. When he passed, many artists mourned his untimely loss and shared tales of his humor and spirit. He had taught many artists how to carve, including Robert Dale Tsosie (Diné/Picuris).

“I will be forever grateful he came into my life,” wrote metalsmith Pat Pruitt (Laguna Pueblo). LaFountain purchased one of his bracelets at Heard Fair early in Pruitt’s career. “Since that time, we traded over the years, told our stories to each other, and I genuinely looked up to the man. We lost one of the greats.”3 —Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke), and America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

1. Bruce LaFountain quoted in “Bruce LaFountain,” Blue Rain Gallery, web.

2. Eve-Lauryn LaFountain (@songsoffilm), “My dad, Bruce LaFountain, was an absolute icon,” Instagram, September 13, 2024, web.

3. Pat Pruitt (@PatPruittMetalsmith), “My sincere condolences to the LaFountain family,” Instagram, September 13, 2024, web.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 107

MEMORIAL

JESSE MONONGYA August 13, 1952–August 6, 2024

above Jesse Monongya (Diné, 1952–2024) with Bear Pendant, c. 1990, jet, coral, malachite, turquoise, shell, 14-karat gold, collection of the Heard Museum Collection, gift of Andrea and Robert Morrison, 4908-1. Image courtesy of the Heard Museum.

“T

HE ONLY WAY TO MAKE things beautiful is to be in tune with God and yourself. You can never just say, ‘I’m going to pick up a stone and make something beautiful,’” Jesse Lee Monongya (Diné) said.1 When he first made a piece of jewelry with a turquoise stone, he dedicated a prayer to it with his inspiration being a powerful bear, a Diné symbol of strength and healing.

At age three, Monongya and his three older siblings were found abandoned at the Grand Canyon, near where their mother, Ida Mae Lee Costello (Diné), had been working. Monongya was adopted by Lucille and Allen Mailman and raised in Two Grey Hills, New Mexico. Unbeknownst to Monongya, his father had stayed in the military service and did not return, and his mother had gone missing from Grand Canyon National Park.

In Two Grey Hills, his adoptive parents, Lucille and Allen Mailman (both Diné), raised Jesse, his brother Kenneth, and sister Peggy, with Diné values and spirituality. The children were given the surname Lee. Monongya was a studious boy. He graduated from Fort Wingate High School as a top scholar and athlete. As a new graduate, he trained to be a heavy equipment operator. While training, something else grabbed his attention: enlistment in the U.S. Marine Corps. With the idea of exploring new horizons, Monongya enlisted and was sent to fight in the Vietnam War for 18 months.

Upon his return, Monongya began searching for his biological father, whom he had never known. He was able to locate Preston Lee Monongye (California Mission Indian, 1927–1991) with the help of a federal agent. Father and son gradually grew to know one another. Monongya discovered that his father had also been adopted as a child (into the Hopi tribe), had served in the military, and had become a well-known Indigenous artist and silversmith.

Fine jewelry crafting did not initially strike Monongya as a potential career path. He was still interested in heavy equipment operation. Just before moving away to learn the trade, Monongya experienced a life-changing dream. He dreamt that his mother had visited him and presented him with the tools to become an artist as his birthright. From that moment, Monongya decided to pursue jewelry crafting as a full-time career.

As a jeweler, Monongya had a natural eye for detail. His adoptive father, Allen, who was skilled in carpentry and blacksmithing, had taught him brick-laying and cutting techniques as they both worked on stone walls and homes. He applied the same principles to his jewelry while learning as many techniques as he could from his biological father, Preston, who passed away in 1991.

Over Monongya’s career, he experienced many firsts.

According to the Heard Museum, he became the first Native American jeweler to inlay a Hopi sun with individual stones on a reversible bear pendant, which won Best of Show at Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial. He was also one of the first Diné artisans to create a reversible, stone-inlaid bolo tie of a bear. According to Craft in America, Monongya let his Diné cultural knowledge of the four directions guide his creativity in selecting a rich palette of coral, turquoise, and gaspéite, a process he likened to watercolor painting.

Monongya curated notable Native American jewelry for the Heard Museum and served as artist-in-residence in 1986 and 1987. While there, he taught Diné jewelry crafting techniques and held demonstrations.

In 2002, author Lois Sherr Dubin penned a book on his works, Jesse Monongya: Opal Bears and Lapis Skies. Diana Pardue curated a 2010–11 retrospective of the same name featuring three decades of his artwork at the Heard Museum.

In his lifetime, Monongya won top awards and honors at O'odham Tash, Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, and Santa Fe Indian Market. His collectors included John D. Rockefeller, Senator Barry Goldwater, Lynn Sherr, Eddie Basha Jr., and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

In his later years, Monongya called Scottsdale, Arizona, home. His family and friends remember him as a hardworking man of integrity and decency who integrated inner and outer beauty with his art.

—Christy Hanson (Diné)

1. Carol Sauvion and Patricia Bischetti, producers and directors, “JEWELRY: Jesse Monongya,” Craft in America, APT PBS, November 4, 2021, video, 55:06, web.

108 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024

CALENDAR October 2, 2024–January 17, 2025: Paris, France An Inuit Art Cooperative in Canadian Great North at the Canadian Cultural Centre, 130, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Curated by Catherine Bédard | +33 1 44 43 21 90 | canada-culture.org October 3–November 30: Seattle, WA Luminosity: Annual Group Glass Exhibition at Stonington Gallery, 125 S. Jackson Street | (206) 405-4040 | stoningtongallery.com October 4–28: Santa Fe, NM Daniel McCoy at Hecho a Mano, 129 W. Palace Avenue (505) 916-1341 | hechoamano.org October 4, 2024–January 12, 2025: Phoenix, AZ Meryl McMaster: Bloodline at the Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Avenue. Organized by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in partnership with Remai Modern | heard.org October 4, 2024–January 19, 2025: San Antonio, TX Storytellers: Narrative Art and the West at the Briscoe Western Art Museum, 210 W. Market Street | briscoemuseum.org October 5–November 1: Oklahoma City, OK Photography in Motion: A Native Youth Exhibit at the Red Earth Art Center, 100 N. Broadway Avenue, Suite 110 | redearth.org October 5–November 30: Howes Cave, NY Unique & Individual: A Portrait of Autism by Mohawk Photographer Angel Horn at the Iroquois Museum, 324 Caverns Road (518) 296-8949 | iroquoismuseum.org October 5, 2024–June 29, 2025: Tulsa, OK War Club: Native Art and Activism at the Philbrook Museum of Art, 2727 S. Rockford Road | (918) 749-7941 | philbrook.org

Jodi Webster (Ho-Chunk and Prairie Band Potawatomi Nations), Skoden, 2023

On view through Jan 5, 2025 SPENCER MUSEUM OF ART www.spencerart.ku.edu

October 9, 2024–January 19, 2025: Toronto, ON Lucy Qinnuayuak at the Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street +1 (877) 225-4246 | ago.ca October 11–13: Catoosa, OK 19th Annual Cherokee Art Market at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tulsa, Sequoyah Convention Center, 777 W. Cherokee Avenue (877) 779-6977 | cherokeeartmarket.com October 12–14: Salt Lake City, UT Indigenous Art Market at the Natural History Museum of Utah, Rio Tinto Center, 301 Wakara Way, 10:00 am–5:00 pm | nhmu.utah.edu October 13, 2024–April 12, 2025: Santa Fe, NM Carved Stories by Mavasta Honyouti at the Wheelwright Museum of the American, 704 Camino Lejo. First solo exhibition for this Hopi painter and woodcarver | (505) 982-4636 | wheelwright.org October 14: Idyllwild-Pine Cove, CA 4th Annual Idyllwild Arts Indigenous Peoples Day Celebration at Idyllwild Arts, 52500 Temecula Road #38, and eventing events at Harvey House, 54420 S. Circle Drive, 6:00–9:00 pm | idyllwildarts.org

naaainc.com | (855) NAAA-INC

October 15–November 30: Nome, AK Uaptiktun Inniguq: Doing Things Our Way at Nome Museum, 100 W. 7th Avenue | (907) 443-6630 | bunnellarts.org October 18, 2024–January 11, 2025: Coral Gables, FL Virgil Ortiz: Slipstream at the Lowe Art Museum, 1301 Stanford Drive (305) 284-3535 | lowe.miami.edu October 19: Dragoon, AZ Amerind Autumn Fest at Amerind Museum, 2100 N. Amerind Road.

Celebrating the history, culture, and arts of the Apache nations. 10:00 am–4:00 pm. $10 per vehicle | (520) 586-3666 | amerind.org FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 109

September 28, 2024 – January 5, 2025

2316 West First Avenue Spokane, Washington 99201 United States 509-456-3931

October 26: Marksville, LA 8th Annual Intertribal Basketry Summit at the Tunica-Biloxi Gymnasium, 171 Melacon Road, hosted by the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana. $25 registration that includes lunch | (318) 427-7430

November 1 & 2: Clewiston, FL American Indian Arts Celebration at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, 34725 West Boundary Road, Big Cypress Seminole Reservation. Arts, dance, music, alligator wrestling. 9:00 am–5:00 pm | ahtahthiki.com

October 26, 2024–February 10, 2025: Chicago, IL Jeremy Frey: Woven at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Avenue | (312) 443-3600 | artic.edu

November 1, 2024–February 1, 2025: Montclair, NJ Land Back at the Tiny Gallery, 8 Stanford Place. Curated by Jennifer Ley. Reception: Friday, November 1, 5:00–8:00 pm | tinygallerymontclair.com

October 27: Santa Ynez, CA 18th Annual Santa Ynez Chumash Culture Day and Powwow at CA Highway 246 and Meadowvale Road | chumash.gov October 27 & 28: Mendocino, CA Native Arts Expo 8 at the Mendocino Art Center, 45200 Little Lake Street (707) 937-5818 | mendocinoartcenter.org October 28: Norman, OK Land, Community, and Culture in Contemporary Indigenous Art: Holly Wilson and Zachary Miller in Conversation with Denise Neil at the Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West, Old Faculty Club, University of Oklahoma, 409 W. Boyd Street.Cohosted by First American Art Magazine. 5:00–7:00 pm | ou.edu/finearts October 28–31: Marksville, LA American Indian Tourism Conference: “Cultural Tourism: Changing the Narrative” at the Paragon Casino Resort, 711 Paragon Place. Hosted by the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association | aianta.org October 28, 2024–February 16, 2025: Busan, South Korea Cultures and Histories of Indigenous People in North America at the Busan Museum, 58 APEC-ro, Haeundae-gu. Co-organized with the Denver Art Museum | +82 51-744-2602 | art.busan.go.kr October 31–November 2: Green Bay Woodland Indian Art Show and Market at the Oneida Hotel, 2040 Airport Drive | woodlandindianart.com 110 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024

November 6, 2024–February 8, 2025: Warm Springs, OR 31st Annual Warm Springs Tribal Member Art Exhibit at the Museum at Warm Springs, 2189 Highway 26 | museumatwarmsprings.org November 8, 2024–March 9, 2025: Indianapolis, IN Raven and the Box of Daylight at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, 500 W. Washington Street. Traveling exhibition of works by Preston Singletary (Tlingit), curated by Miranda Belarde-Lewis, PhD (Zuni/Tlingit) | (317) 636-9378 | eiteljorg.org November 8, 2024–TBA: Montréal, QC ᐆᒻᒪᖁᑎᒃ uummaqutik: essence of life at the Montréal Museum of Art, 1380 Rue Sherbrooke O. Survey of Inuit art, curated by asinnajaq (Inuk) +1 (514) 285-2000 | mbam.qc.ca November 9: Cherokee, NC Kananesgi Art Market and Fashion Show at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, 777 Casino Drive. Art market, art show, fashion show | kananesgi.com November 9: Roseville, CA All Nations Native Craft Fair at the Maidu Museum and Historic Site, 1970 Johnson Ranch Drive. 10:00 am–3:00 pm | roseville.ca.us November 9: San Antonio, TX Yanaguana Indian Arts Festival at the Briscoe Western Art Museum, 210 W. Market Street, 10:00 am–4:00 pm. Free admission | briscoemuseum.org

Joe Feddersen, Stripes, 2021. Blown glass, 11 ½ x 9 ½ x 9 ½ in. (29.2 x 24.1 x 24.1 cm).

Courtesy of the artist and studio e gallery, Seattle, WA. Photograph by Dean Davis.

RETROSPECTIVE

November 9: Tahlequah, OK 3rd Annual Skasdicon at the Chota Conference Center in the Cherokee Casino Tahlequah, 3307 Seven Clans Avenue. Indigenous comic-con hosted by the Cherokee Nation. Free admission | skasdicon.com November 10, 2024–January 7, 2025: Chandler, AZ Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories at the Chandler Museum, 300 S. Chandler Village Drive | chandleraz.gov November 12: Denver, CO Hindman Western and Contemporary Native American Art Auction, live. Begins 12:00 pm MT | hindmanauctions.com November 12–14: Palm Springs, CA International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries, and Museums at the Renaissance Palm Springs Hotel, 888 Tahquitz Canyon Way. Hosted by the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM) | atalm.org November 12, 2024–January 12, 2025: Cornelius, NC Generations: Highlighting Indigenous Peoples, Cultures & Artwork at the Cain Center for the Arts, 21348 Catawba Avenue | cainarts.org November 16, 2024–March 15, 2025: Brookings, SD Creation.Story at the South Dakota Art Museum, 1036 Medary Avenue.

Curated by Keith BraveHeart (Oglala Lakota) with Jhon Goes In Center (Oglala Lakota) and Marlena Myles (Spirit Lake Dakota) sdstate.edu/south-dakota-art-museum November 18 & 19: Norman, OK 29th Annual Native American Art Calendar Signing and Holiday Show at Tribes Gallery, 512 W. Main Street | (405) 329-4442 | tribes131.com November 23 & 24: Santa Fe, NM Pathways Winter Market at Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino, 30 Buffalo Thunder Trail. Hosted by the Poeh Cultural Center. Saturday: 9:00 am–5:00 pm, Sunday: 9:00 am–4:00 pm | poehcenter.org November 23, 2024–January 19, 2025: Palm Beach, FL Past Forward: Native American Art from Gilcrease Museum at the Society of the Four Arts, 100 Four Arts Plaza | fourarts.org

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November 23, 2024–February 6, 2025: Albuquerque, NM Water Is Life: 44th Annual Native American Student Art Show at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, 2401 12th Street NW. Opening reception: Saturday, November 23, 1:00–4:00 pm | (505) 843-7270 | indianpueblo.org November 24 & 25: Seattle, WA United Indians Native Art Market at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center in Discovery Park, 5011 Bernie Whitebear Way. 10:00 am–5:00 pm (208) 285-4425 | unitedindians.org November 24–December 4: Virtual Native American and Tribal Art Auction, Bonhams Los Angeles. Begins 12:00 pm Eastern time | (323) 850-7500 | bonhams.com November 26, 2024–January 2, 2025: Placitas, NM Native Visions: Celebrating Native American Heritage Month at the Placitas Community Library, 453 Highway 165. Reception: Friday, December 6, 5:00–6:30 pm | (505) 876-3355 | placitaslibrary.com November 30–December 1: Santa Fe, NM SWAIA Indian Winter Market at Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy Street. 9:00 am–5:00 pm. $15/day | swaia.org/wim22 December 2: Montrose, CO Ute Indian Museum Holiday Arts and Crafts Festival at the Ute Indian Museum, 17253 Chipeta Road. 9:00 am–3:00 pm | historycolorado.org December 3, 2024–February 1, 2025: Portland, OR Rick Bartow at the Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis Street | (503) 222-1142 froelickgallery.com December 5–8: Boston, MA Cultural Survival Bazaar at the Prudential Center, Belvidere Arcade, 800 Boylston Street | (617) 441-5400 x15 | bazaar.culturalsurvival.org

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FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024 | 111

December 6–8: 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 6, 2024–May 2, 2025: Carson City, NV Where My Eyes Have Walked: Karma Henry at the Great Basin Native Artists Gallery at the Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum, 1 Jacobsen Way | (775) 687-7608 | stewartindianschool.com December 6, 2024–2029: Rochester, NY Hodinöšyö:nih: Continuity | Innovation | Resilience at the Rochester Museum and Science Center, 657 East Avenue. Curated by Jamie Jacobs (Tonawanda Seneca) | (585) 271-4320 | rmsc.org December 7 & 8: Washington, DC Native Art Market at the National Museum of the American Indian, 4th Street & Independence Avenue SW | americanindian.si.edu December 10: Santa Fe, NM IAIA Holiday Art Market at the Institute of American Indian Arts campus, 83 Avan Nu Po Road. 9:00 am–4:00 pm | iaia.edu December 11: Los Angeles, CA Native American Art Auction at Bonhams Los Angeles, 7601 W. Sunset Boulevard. Starts 10:00 am Pacific time | (323) 850-7500 | bonhams.com December 12–14: Shakopee, MN Waniyetu Art Market at Hoċokata Ti Cultural Center, 2300 Tiwahe Circle.

10:00 am–6:00 pm daily | (952) 233-9151 | hocokatati.org December 14 & 15: Phoenix, AZ 47th Annual S’edav Va’aki Museum Indian Market at the S’edav Va’aki Museum (formerly Pueblo Grande Museum), 4619 E. Washington Street.

9:00 am–4:00 pm | (602) 495-0901 | svmfoundation.org December 14 & 15: Thackerville, OK 2nd Annual Hushtola Art Market, hosted by the Chickasaw Nation, at Winstar World Casino, 777 Casino Avenue. 11:00 am–7:00 pm (580) 272-5520 | hushtolaartmarket.com December 21 & 22: Seattle, WA United Indians Native Art Market at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center in Discovery Park, 5011 Bernie Whitebear Way. 10:00 am–5:00 pm (208) 285-4425 | unitedindians.org December 22–Ongoing: Denver, CO SUSTAINED! The Persistent Genius of Indigenous Art at the Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway | denverartmuseum.org

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January 2–31: Norman, OK Art by Wichitas and Descendants at Tribes Gallery, 512 W. Main Street.

Co-curated by Robin Williams (Wichita/Caddo) and America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) | (405) 329-4442 | tribesgalleryok.com January 13–February 21: Norman, OK Black Wolf ’s Legacy: Reimagined Histories at the Lightwell Gallery, School of Visual Arts, second floor, University of Oklahoma. Solo exhibition for Nicole Emmons (Citizen Potawatomi) | ou.edu/finearts January 18–August 10: Hanover, NH Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) at the Hood Museum, Dartmouth, 6 East Wheelock Street. Curated by Jami Powell (Osage) (603) 646-2808 | hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu January 24–July 13: Evanston, IL Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak / Chicagoland at the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, 40 Arts Circle Drive | blockmuseum. northwestern.edu For more events, visit our online calendar at

FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM/ CALENDAR 112 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE, NO. 44, FALL 2024

In one place, visitors experience the collective histories of 39 distinctive First American Nations in Oklahoma today. WINIKO: Life of an Object, Selections from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian includes over 100 cultural materials collected from tribes in Oklahoma in the early 1900s.

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