First American Art Magazine No, 32, Fall 2021

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

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

NO. 32, FALL 2021

DISPLAY UNTIL JAN. 11, 2022

FIRST AMERICANS MUSEUM

JOHN HITCHCOCK

FLORIDA PATCHWORK

DOROTHY GRANT

WABANAKI BIRCHBARK CANOES

GEORGE LONGFISH

KACHEMAK STONE OIL LAMPS

GWEN WESTERMAN

EXTENDED THROUGH DECEMBER 2021

Shonto Begay

Eyes of the World

This solo exhibition features over forty works of Diné artist Shonto Begay. His paintings narrate his connection to the landscape, personal history, and Diné cosmology.

Wheelwright Museum Shonto Begay, b.1954 (Diné) Tumbleweed Crossing, 2020 Acrylic on canvas (Detail)

OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

Santa Fe, NM • wheelwright.org

Rick Bartow, Rick Bartow, Bird Transformation Bird Transformation I – For IJim, – For2007, Jim, monotype 2007, monotype on handmade, on handmade, antiqueantique Japanese Japanese paper,paper, with colored with colored pencil,pencil, 25˝x 20˝ 25˝x photo: 20˝ photo: Rebekah Rebekah Johnson Johnson Rick Bartow, Rick Bartow, Bird Transformation Bird Transformation I – For IJim, – For2007, Jim, monotype 2007, monotype on handmade, on handmade, antiqueantique Japanese Japanese paper,paper, with colored with colored pencil,pencil, 25˝x 20˝ 25˝x photo: 20˝ photo: Rebekah Rebekah Johnson Johnson

RICK RICK BARTOW BARTOW Mad Mad River River Band Band of BARTOW the ofWiyot the Wiyot Indians Indians RICK RICK BARTOW Mad Mad RiverRiver BandBand of the ofWiyot the Wiyot Indians Indians

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________

GAIL GAIL TREMBLAY TREMBLAY Onondaga Onondaga / Mi’kmaq / Mi’kmaq GAIL GAIL TREMBLAY TREMBLAY Onondaga Onondaga / Mi’kmaq / Mi’kmaq

SHATTERING SHATTERING IMAGES IMAGES monograph monograph available available SHATTERING SHATTERING IMAGES IMAGES monograph monograph available available _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________

December December 2021 2021 & January & January 2022 2022 December December 2021 2021 & January & January 2022 2022

Gail Tremblay, Gail Tremblay, Preserving Preserving Indigenous Indigenous Technologies, Technologies, 2013, 16mm 2013, 16mm film (from film “Fishing (from “Fishing at at the Stone the Weir,” Stone Weir,” 1967), 1967), film leader, film leader, metallic metallic thread,thread, 11˝x 8˝x 11˝x 8˝ 8˝x photo: 8˝ photo: Mario Gallucci Mario Gallucci Gail Tremblay, Gail Tremblay, Preserving Preserving Indigenous Indigenous Technologies, Technologies, 2013, 16mm 2013, 16mm film (from film “Fishing (from “Fishing at at the Stone the Weir,” Stone Weir,” 1967), 1967), film leader, film leader, metallic metallic thread,thread, 11˝x 8˝x 11˝x 8˝ 8˝x photo: 8˝ photo: Mario Gallucci Mario Gallucci

FROELICK FROELICK GALLERY GALLERY FROELICK FROELICK Portland, Portland, Oregon GALLERY Oregon GALLERY Portland, Portland, Oregon Oregon

64TH ANNUAL HEARD MUSEUM GUILD

INDIAN FAIR & MARKET PHOENIX, ARIZONA

INDIAN FAIR & MARKET MARCH 5 & 6, 2022 BEST OF SHOW RECEPTION MARCH 4, 2022 YOUTH ART SHOW & SALE MARCH 5 & 6, 2022 HEARD.ORG/FAIR

Announcing the new

virtual art gallery www.dorothygrantartgallery.com

TM

Art Gallery Phone: (778) 776-1822

issue no. 32, fall 2021

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

Dawning of a New Era: 18 First Americans Museum Opens in Oklahoma City

By Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke) Photography by Ann Sherman

Recent Developments

10

Seven Directions Shana Bushyhead Condill (Eastern Band Cherokee)

14

Art+Lit Richard Van Camp: Tłı̨chǫ Dene Writer

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

88

Calendar

By James Bland

94

Patchwork: Piecing It Together

By Michole Eldred (Catawba/Eastern Cherokee)

26

The Wabanaki Canoe & The Science of Perfection

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

34

Connections & Belonging in Stone Oil Lamps

By Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq)

42

50

REVIEWS

ARTIST PROFILES Dorothy Grant: Haida Fashion Designer

By India Rael Young, PhD

50

John Hitchcock: Comanche Printmaker, Musician, and Educator

By Dustin Tahmahkera, PhD (Comanche)

56

George Longfish: Seneca/Tuscarora Painter, Printmaker, and Sculptor

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

62

Gwen Westerman, PhD: Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate/ Cherokee Nation Poet, Educator, Historian & Textile Artist

By Staci Golar

68

56

62

68

Exhibition Reviews

74

Music Review

85

Book Reviews

86

IN MEMORIAM Lorene Drywater (Cherokee Nation, 1932–2021)

By Pamela Jumper-Thurman, PhD (Cherokee Nation)

90

Jesse Hummingbird (Cherokee Nation, 1952–2021)

By Sandy Hummingbird

91

Pitaloosie Saila (Inuk, 1942–2021)

By Michole Eldred (Catawba/Eastern Cherokee)

92

William S. Yellow Robe Jr. (Assiniboine, 1960–2021)

By America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

93

cover Winter solstice sun setting behind the earthwork at First Americans Museum, Oklahoma City. Photo: James Pepper Henry (Kaw/Muscogee). Image courtesy of the First Americans Museum, Oklahoma City.

NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 5

COLLECTIONS SPOTLIGHT a free interactive monthly online experience Native artists bringing us together to experience the Coe’s collection.

issue no. 32, fall 2021 ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Online) Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Literary Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD (Euro-Canadian) Contributing Editor: Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke) Marketing Director: Barbara Harjo (Cherokee descent) Circulation Manager: James Bland Copy Editors: Jo Ann Reece and Rosa Cays (Chicana) Proofreaders: Staci Golar, Kerrie Monahan-Peterson, Jo Ann Reece, and Angela C. Villa (Chicana) Layout & Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) and Corey Yazzie (Navajo) Social Media: Staci Golar, America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho), and Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke)

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

Editorial Advisory Board heather ahtone, PhD (Choctaw/Chickasaw) Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation) James T. Bialac, JD Cliff Fragua (Jemez Pueblo) Teri Greeves (Kiowa) Emily Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Sugpiaq) Linda Lomahaftewa, Hon. DHum (Hopi/Choctaw) Leah Mata Fragua (Coastal Chumash) Anya Montiel, PhD (Mestiza/Tohono O'odham descent) Jami Powell, PhD (Osage Nation) Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole) India Rael Young, PhD

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

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

Lena Adam (Dene and Metis (attrib.)) Moccasins, 1992.

Smoke tanned moose hide, red felt, flannel pajamas, and beads. NA0438

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ANITA FIELDS

SONNY ASSU

CATHERINE BLACKBURN

(Osage / Muscogee) Invited Artist Stillwater, Oklahoma

(Ligwiłda’xw of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nations) Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada

(English River Dene First Nation) Thornhill, British Columbia, Canada

ATHENA LATOCHA

STEVEN YAZZIE

(Húnjkpapȟa Lakota / Keweenaw Bay Ojibwe) Peekskill, New York

(Diné / Laguna Pueblo) Denver, Colorado

Catherine Blackburn (English River Dene First Nation) Trapline II, 2020, rabbit fur, beads, sinew, paint, traps, wood beam, nails Loan from the artist

Introducing the 2021 Eiteljorg Fellows PRESENTED BY

NOV 13, 2021–FEB 6, 2022 Eiteljorg.org/ContemporaryArtFellowship #EJShiftingBoundaries

SPONSORED BY

David H. and Barbara M. Jacobs Foundation David H. Jacobs

Fritz Scholder Beyond Stereotypes Through January 2, 2022.

Fritz Scholder, American Landscape (First State) (detail), 1976. Lithograph, 22 1/4 x 30 in. Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Bequest of Carl I. Singer, 2021.002 © Estate of Fritz Scholder

EDITOR'S GREETING

A

DESIRE TO DEVELOP a better picture of sustainability led me to read Jacqueline Novogratz’s brilliant Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World, in which she discusses how her desire to change the world led her to found Acumen, a nonprofit impact-investment fund that supports social entrepreneurs who create jobs and lift the poorest of the poor out of poverty through environmentally sustainable businesses. She describes businesses that sell affordable solar lights and manufacture antimalarial mosquito nets in Sub-Saharan Africa, eye surgery clinics and ambulance services in South Asia, and even a chocolate producer who works with the Arhuaco people in Colombia. With such worthy, pragmatic goals, I was surprised that Novogratz devoted her penultimate chapter to the concept of beauty.

“To paraphrase Dr. King, there is beauty in the struggle,” Novogratz writes, and she continues, “Beauty inspires and motivates. Beauty sustains. The key for each of us is to define what beauty means for us, to think of it not as superfluous or indulgent but as an essential part of what it means to be human.”1 Not all Indigenous art of the Americas may immediately be held up as beauty. I would love, for example, if an Andean scholar wrote about the grotesque in Nazca ceramics. However, beauty does lie in truth telling, in acknowledging trauma, in healing, and insisting upon remaining Indigenous despite all the external pressures to assimilate into the global mainstream.

I’m often glad that the role of Indigenous American art within the art world permits us to be earnest. We can state the truth, even if it is sometimes obvious: “The Earth is our mother. Water is life.

We are here.” We can also unabashedly pursue beauty. I believe this is, in part, due to the widespread Indigenous perspective that artists are responsible for their creations. This is what they

America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), ᎠᏙᏚᎯᏐᏗᏱ ᏌᎪᏂᎨ ᎤᎩᏥᏍᎬ, Adoduhisodiyi Sakonige Ugitsisgv (Remaking Blue Dawn), 2012, acrylic on hardboard panel, 40 × 30 in., collection of the Bardo Arts Center, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina. Image courtesy of the artist.

manifest into the universe. To express prayers and hope for the safety of one’s family or community often supersedes a Native artist’s concerns about art world expectations.

Sasha Sarago (Wadjanbarra Yidinji and Jirrbal clans), founding editor of Ascension Magazine in Australia, says, “If we indigenize beauty, the meaning is transformed from ‘aesthetically pleasing’ to a state of divinity. Beauty now becomes spirit manifested.”2 She goes on to say, “You cannot appreciate beauty if you cannot recognize it in yourself. So how

do we change our perceptions of beauty?

We have to get real with ourselves and start by asking, ‘Who am I? Where do I come from? The world that I live in—how did it come to be? And more importantly, Where to from here?’”

The challenge of self-understanding, self-acceptance, and seeing the beauty from within can be facilitated by art. Art is often more a catalyst for questions than answers, and this dialogue between you and the art can help lead you to beauty within and without.

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

1. Jacqueline Novogratz’s Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2020), 221.

2. Sasha Sarago, “Pretty Hurts: It’s time to decolonise beauty,” TEDxSydney, YouTube video, Dec. 16, 2020, 11:12, web.

8 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

THE SPACE BETWEEN ANITA FIELDS & MOLLY MURPHY ADAMS October 1 – November 21, 2021

Winter Tracks, by Molly Murphy Adams

www.108contemporary.org 108 East Reconciliation Way Tulsa, Oklahoma 74103 918.895.6302

Move Forward #2, by Anita Fields

FREE ADMISSION

This project is generously funded by Osage Nation Foundation, Flint Family Foundation, Mid-America Arts Alliance, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the state arts agencies of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.

NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 9

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS MUSEUMS FIRST AMERICANS MUSEUM in Oklahoma City opened to the public on September 18, 2021. The 175,000 square-feet museum showcases exhibitions tracing the history and cultures of Oklahoma’s 39 tribes—the 38 federally recognized tribes and the Yuchi, who are predominantly enrolled in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation—as well as broader pictures of Indigenous history and contemporary lifeways.

ART SHOWS The Myaamia Heritage Museum and Archive in Miami, Oklahoma, hosted its second annual EUGENE BROWN MEMORIAL ART SHOW open to members of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. Jared Nally won best in show for a twined panel bag. Josiah Dorey won best in show for youth and the Cultural Resources Office Theme Award. Gracie Williams won the People’s Choice Award.

The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the third largest tribe in the United States, opened its CHOCTAW CULTURAL CENTER in Calera, Oklahoma, in July 2021. More than 100,000 square-feet large, the museum holds interactive exhibits about Choctaw history, cultures, and politics, while a changing gallery and museum store showcase Choctaw artworks. The children’s area has small-scale version of Choctaw houses throughout time, the café serves Choctaw dishes, and an outdoor Living Village at the base of a massive platform mound teaches visitors about precontact Choctaw lifeways.

The MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON, hired Marina Tyquiengco (CHamoru) as its first Ellyn McColgan Assistant Curator of Native American Art. Previously a contemporary art curatorial assistant at the museum and a visiting instructor at Brown University, Tyquiengco earned her doctoral and master’s degrees at the University of Pittsburgh and her bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia.

The Reiter Family is donating 109 Indigenous American artworks to the LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART. Their generous gift includes 82 Southwestern ceramic pieces spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. Other remarkable pieces include Pomo feathered baskets, Northwest Coast woodcarvings, and artworks from Mexico and Central America.

10 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

RED FISH ARTS studio. Occupying a building that once served as a fish plant, the studio provides locals with space to learn and practice welding, painting, and other art forms. The studio was made possible by Arctic Inspiration Prize funding Nunavut youth won in 2018.

above SWAIA 2021 Santa Fe Indian Best of Show–winner: Rhonda Holy Bear (Cheyenne River Lakota), Lakota Honor–Sees the Horses Woman (SuWakan Ayutan Win), 2019, wooden doll, glass beads, porcupine quills, deerhide, 23 × 8 × 3 in. Image courtesy of SWAIA, Santa Fe.

Carolyn Pallett (Cherokee Nation) won the grand prize at the 26th annual CHEROKEE HOMECOMING ART SHOW in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Hosted by the Cherokee Heritage Center, the juried art show is open to artists from all three Cherokee tribes. Category winners (all Cherokee) were Perry Van Buskirk, traditional arts; Wills Brewer, contemporary pottery; Rose Drake, contemporary basketry; Jon Williams, visual arts; Charlies Nichols, sculpture; Karen Berry, textiles; Steven Morales, jewelry; and Andrea Tidwell, beadwork. Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation) won the Sequoyah Bicentennial Award, and Charlie Nichols won the Bill Rabbit Legacy Award and the Betty Scraper-Gardner Elder Award.

Devin Dry won the Jennie Ross Cobb Photography Award, and Joyce Lyle won the Emerging Artist Award.

GALLERIES & STUDIOS

ART MARKETS

The United Indians of All Tribes Foundation and Daybreak Star Cultural Center launched SACRED CIRCLE ART GALLERY in Seattle. The new retail gallery features Native American art, commercial prints, and gifts and plans to host live events such as concerts.

Kevin Horace Quannie (Hopi/Navajo) won Best of Show at the 4th annual B E R NA L I L L O I N DIA N A RT S FESTIVAL in Bernalillo, New Mexico.

Category winners were Melissa Antonio (Acoma), traditional pottery; Glendora Fragua (Jemez), contemporary pottery; Kevin Horace Quannie, sculpture; Prinston Collateta (Hopi-Tewa/Navajo), miniature sculpture; Robert Johnson (Navajo), traditional jewelry; Aaron Brokeshoulder (Absentee Shawnee/

Celebrating its 100th anniversary, Cambridge Bay, Victoria Island, Nunavut, improved its Itqaumavik Heritage Park and unveiled its new

Choctaw/Kewa), contemporary jewelry; Darius Charley (Navajo), diverse arts; Mike McCullough (Choctaw Nation), painting; Fernando Silvers (Navajo), photography; Mary Gutierrez (Pojoaque), personal attire; Celia Sinquah (Hopi), basketry; Prinston Collateta, wooden carving; and Betty Padilla (Navajo), beadwork and quillwork.

Angela Babby (Oglala Lakota) won Best of Show at NATIVE POP: PEOPLE OF THE PLAINS in Rapid City, South Dakota. Division winners were Susan Hudson (Navajo), adornment; Tani Gordon (Sicangu Lakota), two-dimensional; Gene Swallow (Oglala Lakota), three-dimensional; and Loriene Pearson (Winnebago), emerging artist. Tani Gordon won the Publicity Award, and Lorri Ann Two Bulls (Oglala Lakota) won the Innovation Award.

Rhonda Holy Bear (Cheyenne River Lakota) won Best of Show in the 99th SWAIA SANTA FE INDIAN

MARKET for her elaborately beaded doll, Lakota Honor—Sees the Horses Woman (SuWakan Ayutan Win) (2019).

Classification winners were Denise Wallace (Unangax̂), jewelry; Robert Patricio (Acoma), pottery; Thomas Tapia (Tesuque), 2-D art; Arthur Holmes Jr. (Hopi), Pueblo woodcarving; Raymond Chee Sr. (Navajo), sculpture; Tyler Glasses (Navajo), textiles; Dana Warrington (Menominee/Potawatomi), diverse arts; Rhonda Holy Bear, beadwork and quillwork; Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy), basketry, and Aydrian Day (Ho-Chunk/Lakota/Anishinaabe), youth. SWAIA offered no second place, third place, or honorable mention awards or awards at the division or category level this year, except for second place youth, Kiiyaanni Reeves (Navajo), and third place youth, Mosgadace Casuse (Fond du Lac Ojibwe/Navajo). This year’s special award winners were limited to the Excellence Award given to Wilmetta Kayquoptewa (Hopi) and the Indigenous Collections Grand Award given to Karen Clarkson (Choctaw Nation).

Sandy Fife Wilson (Muscogee) won Best of 3D art and Daniel HorseChief (Cherokee Nation/Pawnee) won Best of 2D art in the 2021 virtual SOUTHEASTERN ART SHOW AND MARKET, hosted by the Chickasaw Nation. Classification winners were Monica Jo Raphael (Grand Traverse Odawa/Ojibwe/Lakota), cultural arts; Desmond Ellsworth (Nansemond), baskets; Martha Berry (Cherokee Nation), beadwork and quillwork; Lokosh, Joshua Hinson (Chickasaw), diverse arts; Brian Waytula (Cherokee Nation), drawing; Mary Ruth Barnes (Chickasaw), graphic arts; Toneh Chuleewah (Cherokee Nation), jewelry; Dustin Mater (Chickasaw), mixed media; Chance Brown (Chickasaw), painting; Jim Trosper (Chickasaw), photograph; Chase Kahwinhut Earles (Caddo), pottery; Gene “Iron Man” Smith (Choctaw Nation), sculpture; Karen Berry (Cherokee Nation), textiles; Sheena Logan (Seminole Nation), traditional dress and regalia; and Wayne “Tay Sha” Earles (Caddo), weaponry.

NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 11

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

FORGE PROJECT awarded their FORGE PROJECT FELLOWSHIPS to four Native American artists and writers: Chris Cornelius (Oneida Nation), professor, architect, and designer; Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Luiseño), filmmaker; Jasmine Neosh (Menominee), writer, and environmental advocate; and Brock Schreiber (Stockbridge-Munsee), author, language advocate, and tribal councilman. Each fellow receives a $25,000 stipend and use of the Forge Project property in the Hudson Valley, New York.

The INUIT ART FOUNDATION gave illustrator, jeweler, and fashion designer Tarralik Duffy (Inuk) its 2021 KENOJUAK ASHEVAK MEMORIAL AWARD. The Saskatoon-based illustrator, jeweler, and fashion designer received a Can$10,000 stipend as part of the award.

The STATE OF MINNESOTA named Gwen Westerman (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate/Cherokee Nation) its POET LAUREATE. A poet, textile artist, and English professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato, Westerman is the first Native American to hold this title. Read more about her in her profile beginning on page 68 of this issue.

PRECONTACT SITES & ARTWORKS PICTURE CAVE, a two-cave system with more than 290 pictographs dating from 800 to 1100 CE, was auctioned off to anonymous, private buyers by Selkirk Auctioneers and Appraisers, based in St. Louis, Missouri. The cave and 43-acres lot in Warrenton, Missouri, sold for $2,200,000. The Osage Nation with ancestral connections to Picture Cave unsuccessfully tried to block the sale of this sacred site. Archaeologists have also condemned the private sale.

The MEXICAN AND COSTA RICAN GOVERNMENTS tried to halt an auction of pre-Columbian artworks by Gerhard Hirsch Nachfolger, a Munich-based auction house.

Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Arqueologia e Historia said these were “national patrimony” exported in violation of a 1934 Mexican antiquities law and identified one as a fraud.

Costa Rica’s Foreign Ministry petitioned the German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs to investigate the acquisition of these artworks. The National Museum of Costa Rica identified nine pieces as fakes. Germany did not halt the auction.

B R E N DA M A L LO R Y CROSSINGS lithograph, collaborating Master Printer Frank Janzen, edition of 14 40 x 30 inches, hand printed and published at Crow’s Shadow Press

C R O W S S H A D O W. O R G 4800412St.| FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM Andrews Road | Pendleton, Oregon 97801 | 541-276-3954

ERRATA In the review of Shonto Begay: Eyes of the World at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in FAAM No. 31 (Summer 2021), we mistakenly listed the curator Zachary Miller (Chickasaw) as Zachary Taylor. The review of Nicholas Galanin’s Never Forget in FAAM No. 31 mentions that “yellow caution signs with Cahuilla words are scattered about the city.”

A reader reminded us that these are Road Signs, a series of public art interventions by Gerald Clarke (Cahuilla Band of Indians) of Anza, California.

TAKE HOME A TREASURE FROM INDIAN COUNTRY

TAKE HOME A TREASURE FROM INDIAN COUNTRY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOW OPEN

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

SHANA BUSHYHEAD CONDILL An Eastern Band Cherokee Museum Director Shares Her Top Seven List

A

CITIZEN OF THE E A S T E R N BA N D O F CHEROKEE INDIANS, Shana Bushyhead Condill comes to the Museum of the Cherokee Indian from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The Museum of the Cherokee Indian was founded in 1948 in Cherokee, North Carolina, on the Qualla Boundary—the heart of ancestral Cherokee homelands. Condill became the museum’s executive director in May 2021, after serving as the National Gallery of Art’s budget and administrative coordinator for content strategy, publishing, and branding and financial manager for communications.

Condill earned a master’s degree in history and museum studies from the University of Delaware in Newark and a bachelor’s degree in history and English from Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington. She has worked in the museum and cultural field for more than 20 years, including working for the Delaware Art Museum, 200 Acres, and Thomas T. Taber Museum and volunteering at the National Museum of the American Indian. Bringing together conversations about preservation from a mainstream museum industry perspective and a Native perspective has been a focus of Condill’s work.

MCI.ORG ecstatic when, 20 years later, I read about their initiative to overhaul the Native galleries and hire Native staff. They are doing innovative work from exhibitions to webinars to podcasts and leading the way for many mainstream institutions. I always look forward to seeing what they have in store next. fieldmuseum.org

above, top Shana Bushyhead Condill. Photo: Kristy M. Herron (Eastern Band Cherokee). above, bottom Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois. Photo: Terrance Hatch (PD).

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NORTH. The renovation of the Native North American Hall at the FIELD MUSEUM in Chicago, Illinois. I have loved museums for as long as I can remember, and the Field Museum has remained one of my favorites. As I grew older and discovered my calling in museums, I took a long, hard look at the Field and their representation of Native people. I was

EAST. When I arrived at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, they were getting ready to install an exhibition called A LIVING LANGUAGE: CHEROKEE SYLLABARY AND CONTEMPORARY ART. I can take no credit for it, but I am incredibly proud that we have it in our museum. I love that I am able to take people through the museum and bring them to what is, to me, the perfect realization of our message that Native culture is not static but is always changing and evolving.

The incorporation of our 200-year-old writing system into these phenomenal works is incredibly meaningful to me. A Living Language was at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, North Carolina, and afterward it will move to the Asheville Art Museum in Asheville,

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

North Carolina, where it will be on view from November 3, 2021, through March 14, 2022. mci.org CENTER. JAMIE OKUMA’S ART TO WEAR. I’ve had to get used to occasionally being stopped in traffic here in the Smoky Mountains by elk. I was stopped and mulling over an issue, when I realized that I should be more like an elk—strong, calm, and resolute. I don’t need to be loud to make a point, but I do need to take up space and occasionally make people uncomfortable. The Luiseño/ShoshoneBannock designer and beadwork artist named this black, red, and white dress her D. Tunic. It features dramatic silhouettes of a bull elk and swallows in flight, as well as a printed ring of elk teeth around its collar. I was thrilled to wear this gorgeous Jamie Okuma dress for an introduction event at the museum. jokuma.com WEST. I get compliments on this ring by MARVIN SLIM, Navajo silversmith, often, and I love wearing it because it is not what people first think of when they think of Native jewelry. It’s unexpected and beautiful and a gorgeous example of an artistic practice he’s learned and made

his own. His mother taught him silversmithing in Torreon, New Mexico, and now he is based in Albuquerque, where he collaborates with his wife Luana Slim (San Felipe Pueblo). He does exquisite lapidary work with turquoise, spiny oyster shell, and other stones and shells from throughout the world. marvinslim.com

ab ove, top R h i a n n o n S k ye Tafoya (Eastern Band Cherokee/ Santa Clara Pueblo), ᎤᎵᏂᎦᏗ, Ul’nigid’, 2020, handmade paper, commercial paper, ink, book board, book cloth, magnets, 11 ¼ × 23 ½ × 5 5/8 in. assembled, edition of 44. above, bottom Shana Bushyhead Condill at left wearing Jamie Okuma’s D-Tunic in a gathering of relatives at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian.

NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 15

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

ABOVE Mvskoke poet and musician Joy Harjo’s “LIVING NATIONS, LIVING WORDS” PROJECT. My first month in Cherokee, the staff told me that Joy Harjo was coming to do a reading at our museum. I could not believe it. What an honor to meet her! She told us about her project with the Library of Congress as part of being the United States’ Poet Laureate: a map where each location marker indicates a Native poet. It not only lifts up these Native poets but is one of the best resources I’ve seen that introduces the myriad ways that Native people consider what “place” means to them. www.loc.gov/programs/ poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/ poet-laureate-projects/ living-nations-living-words/ SOUTH The opening of FIRST AMERICANS MUSEUM in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is something I have been looking forward to for a long time. This intertribal museum boasts an exclusively Indigenous curatorial team. What an amazing undertaking, with some incredible minds all coming together to make something epic.

I’m looking forward to visiting. See the photo essay and feature in this issue for more information. famok.org

above, top Marvin Slim (Navajo), Ring, sterling silver, turquoise, spiny red oyster. Photo: Shana Bushyhead Condill. above, bottom Kituwah Mound, the mother mound of the Cherokee people, Bryson City, North Carolina. Photo: Jam Willem Doormembal (CC BY 2.0). opposite, top Kiowa Black Leggings Society at the opening of First Americans Museum, Oklahoma City. Left to right: Goldie James Kaulaity, Lyndreth “Tugger” Palmer, Patrick Tsotigh, Blas Presidio, and Mary Zumwalt (all Kiowa). Touch to Above (2015) by Bill Glass Jr. and Demos Glass (both Cherokee Nation) in background. Photo: Karen Delaney, www.karendelaney.photography.

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BELOW CONNECTION TO OUR LAND. One question that has always been difficult for me to answer is, “Where are you from?”

This seemingly quick “getting to know you” question is incredibly loaded for me, because I moved around quite a bit. I’ve often been around Native communities, from my mom getting prenatal care at Crow Agency in Montana to my dad’s Native American ministry in downtown Milwaukee, but a sense of place has been elusive for me. My husband is a fifth-generation farmer, and his connection with the land is something I love and share with him. I’ve realized that connection to the land can be multiple places. My homeland in the Great Smoky Mountains means so much to me but so do sunsets on the plains of Illinois, the crisp mountain air in Montana, and crunchy, firm Wisconsin snow. Our land is a blessing.

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

IDYLLWILD ARTS SUMMER PROGRAM

NATIVE AMERICAN ARTS WORKSHOPS & FESTIVAL JUNE 13 - JULY 2

2022

BACK IN A BIG WAY!

Offering in-person workshops in a safe environment on our beautiful mountain campus in Idyllwild, CA Exhibition, Kabotie Lecture Series, Performances

Scholarships for Native American adults and teens available for 2022!

MORE INFO:

idyllwildarts.org/nativeamericanarts (951) 468-7265 above, bottom Cover of Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry (W.W. Norton and Company, 2021), edited by US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Mvskoke).

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DAWNING OF A NEW ERA First Americans Museum Opens in Oklahoma City Native-led team actualizes an unprecedented vision for an intertribal museum

By Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke). Photography by Ann Sherman

D

AYS AFTER THE OFFICIAL OPENING of First Americans Museum (FAM), the autumn equinox sunrise shone directly through the center of the east-facing Remembrance Walls that guide guests to the museum’s entrance and the massive Hall of The People,1 silhouetting Touch to Above, a grand stainless steel arch by Bill Glass Jr. and his son, Demos Glass (both Cherokee Nation). The design of Hall of The People is based on Wichita and Caddo grass lodges, recognizing two of the Indigenous peoples from the land that is now Oklahoma.

The sun has lit the Remembrance Walls every autumn and spring equinox since 2008, when the main structure of the museum and the earthen mound alongside it were built. On the winter solstice, the setting sun aligns with a massive tunnel built through the mound, and on the summer solstice, it aligns with the apex of the mound.

FAM Executive Director James Pepper Henry (Kaw/Muscogee) explains that the entire complex is oriented on the cardinal directions and is designed as a cosmological clock.

“There are two circle designs that make up the design of the complex,” Henry says. “The larger circle, outlined by the mound, represents the people who were here before us, the ancient cultures that were here in Oklahoma. The smaller circle represents the modern world, and the Hall of The People is the intersection of those worlds.”

The mindful architectural design of FAM is carried throughout the campus.

The many Indigenous designers, curators, developers, and others involved in the creation of FAM worked to ensure that every detail of the museum and its

1. “The People” in the name “Hall of The People” is intentionally capitalized because many tribes call themselves “The People” in their own languages.

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grounds is meaningful to and respectful of Oklahoma’s Indigenous people—past, present, and future. After decades of planning, stops, starts, challenges, and changes, FAM in Oklahoma City opened on September 18, 2021, with two full days of programming featuring Native American speakers, performers, and culture-bearers.

While showcasing the shared history of Oklahoma’s Indigenous people, FAM also provides space to continue our story: to gather, to perform, to receive visitors, and to celebrate. FAM is not just about Indigenous people; it is for us as well—and Native American art and artists are key to FAM’s mission.

HISTORIES, STORIES & THE FUTURE FIRST AMERICANS MUSEUM acknowledges 39 tribes in Oklahoma: 38 federally recognized tribes and the

Yuchi Tribe of Indians, the majority of whom are enrolled in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Tribes who lived on this land prior to European contact include the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, Caddo Nation, Tonkawa Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, and Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. Indigenous nations with a historical relationship to the land include the Comanche Nation, Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, Osage Nation, and Quapaw Nation. The rest of the tribal nations of Oklahoma were forcibly relocated to what was then Indian Territory in a series of “removals” in the 19th century.

The ongoing story of Oklahoma’s Indigenous people is the first focus of FAM, but it is more than a place to learn history. It is a place to confront painful experiences and their legacies and to continue living the stories that were meant to become artifacts and memories.

“Oklahoma was meant to be a giant internment camp,” explains Henry. “There

above Joseph Erb (Cherokee Nation), Indigenous Brilliance, 2020, mural on copper sheets.

All photos: Ann Sherman Photography, Oklahoma City, annshermanphoto.com. opposite First Americans Museum entrance at dawn.

Bill Glass Jr. and Demos Glass (Cherokee Nation), Touch to Above, 2015, steel sculpture.

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was a complete ethnic cleansing of the South and other parts of the country, to move everybody here to Indian Territory. The narrative has been filled in by everybody but us, so at FAM we confront it head-on. Everything is told from a first-person perspective, and we have an all-Native curatorial team. A big part of our museum is to show that we’re very much living cultures. We’re resilient.

We survive. We’re thriving. That is an overarching message of FAM: We’re still practicing our cultures and traditions today.”

Interactive exhibits like a virtual chunkey game2 share space with largescale commissioned art pieces such as Caddo/Potawatomi potter Jeri Redcorn’s Ayo Wahdut Kuku, a 14-foot piece reflecting her Caddo pottery design.

It envelops the exterior wall of the Origins Theater section of the museum, where visitors can sit in darkened, circular spaces around virtual fires as the recorded voices of elders and storytellers tell origin stories and images are reflected on the walls in an immersive, meditative experience. Large murals

by Joseph Erb (Cherokee Nation) and Amber DuBoise-Shepherd (Navajo/ Sac & Fox/Prairie Potawatomi) impart dramatic visual scale.

The Thirty Nine Restaurant and Arbor Café, featuring Indigenous menus by Loretta Barrett Oden (Citizen Potawatomi), also offers catering for groups of all sizes who can use FAM’s many gathering spaces for events and performances. A full schedule of programming by Indigenous artists, educators, performers, and culturebearers is planned for the Xchange Theater and other spaces. The Festival Plaza at the foot of the mound is large enough for stickball tournaments, powwows, cultural events, and, in the next few years, a national art market.

2. Chunkey is a game once played across the Plains to Eastern Woodlands, in which a stone or ceramic disc is on the ground and two competitors try to throw a staff closest to the disc’s center. The game held ceremonial significance for some historic cultures, who also used it for divination.

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FAM STORE FOR ARTISTS THE FAM ART MARKET is still in its planning stages, but FAM supports Indigenous artists right now at the Museum Store at FAM, where more than 80 percent of the inventory is sourced from Oklahoma’s Native American artists. The store also commissions Oklahoma’s Native artists for an exclusive line of FAM products. Among the first are textiles featuring Jeri Redcorn’s Caddo pottery designs and items printed with Pagraahunye—First They Came, a piece by Kennetha Greenwood (Otoe-Missouria) inspired by the origin stories of Oklahoma’s Indigenous people.

Greenwood also designed the War Mothers Honor Blanket (2020), which was a limited-edition item given to early museum contributors and designated FAM Founders. The FAM store will also be first to offer the upcoming Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation) book from Native Realities Press.

FAM Store Assistant Manager Kristin Gentry, a Choctaw Nation artist,

explains that FAM’s employment of artists, the future art market, and the store fulfills a need for Oklahoma’s Indigenous artists. “Our store is run by two artists, me and [Otoe-Missouria/Cherokee FAM Store Manager] Tom Farris, and a lot of FAM staff members are artists as well,” she says. “We feel the struggle of needing

above, top FAM Store. above, bottom Interactive exhibit inspired by T.C. Cannon (Kiowa/ Caddo, 1947–1978) exploring American Indian homes today. opposite Hall of The People. Its design pays homage to the grass lodges of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes and the Caddo Nation, Indigenous peoples of Oklahoma.

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above Installation view of the entrance of WINIKO: Life of an Object, selections from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, located in the Mezzanine Gallery of the South Wing of FAM. This tenyear exhibition returns objects from the 39 tribes to Oklahoma for the first time in 100 years.

Winiko is a Caddo word that translates as “everything on earth, in the universe, and beyond.” Tribes selected the items by which they wanted to be represented. right Community Voices Theater, a performing space with benches lining a map of Oklahoma with tribal nations' lands delineated.

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to go to Santa Fe, Denver, or Arizona to make it as an artist, so we hope that FAM will give us a place here at home, in our own community, to support our artists.”

The store carries a selection of vinyl albums and merchandise from Indigenous musicians, as well as books by Native American authors. As pandemic precautions allow, the store will host programming such as book launches and author signings.

Much more than a gift shop, the FAM Store provides a marketplace that will help living artists continue their work. It also allows FAM visitors to take Indigenous art and designs back to their communities, where the story of the object, the design, and the acquisition of it will continue FAM’s mission of reminding the rest of the world that Indigenous people, and our traditions, continue on.

WINIKO: LIFE OF AN OBJECT US POET LAUREATE JOY HARJO (Mvskoke) often speaks of the “story field,” the matrix of stories constantly being told and lived. Henry says stories are the basis for FAM—and the museum itself is part of the story. The layers of stories in WINIKO: Life of an Object, the much-anticipated exhibition in FAM’s upstairs gallery, is an example.

WINIKO brings together historic objects from the Smithsonian. Many were acquired from Oklahoma tribes in the first decade of the 1900s for collector George Heye. Like many collectors of his time, Heye believed Native people would soon be extinct through war, disease, and/ or assimilation. Heye’s collection became the basis for the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. Heye hired other collectors, including Mark Raymond Harrington, who was sent to collect objects from Native people in Oklahoma. By that time, tribes from coast to coast had been “relocated” there.

“This is an Oklahoma story, but it’s a national story,” Henry says. “Our tribes are from all over the contiguous United States. We are diverse, with diverse languages, cultures, and beliefs.”

above Unrecorded Modoc artist, Basket Hat, pre-1874, twined rushes, cotton cloth, collected from Martha Lawver (Oklahoma Modoc), collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution 2/594.

MODOC BASKET HAT THE MODOC PEOPLE are originally from northern California and southern Oregon. In the late–19th century, the United States decimated them in years of state-sponsored genocide. For months during the Modoc War in the 1870s, a band of Modocs led by Kintpuash (Captain Jack, 1837–1873) hid out and fought from the caves of what is now Lava Beds National Monument. In that band was a little girl with a basketry hat. Through her people’s traumatic journey through internment camps across the country to where they were finally settled in Indian Territory, she kept her hat. Eventually, Mark Raymond Harrington, a collector for George Heye, acquired the hat. More than a century later, the little girl’s greatgreat-great-granddaughter and her family were able to see and touch the hat at FAM when it arrived for WINIKO.

Unlike many collectors, Harrington kept notes with names of the people from whom he acquired objects. As part of WINIKO, FAM enlisted representatives from all Oklahoma tribes to choose objects that would represent them. In many cases, FAM was able to bring descendants of the creators or owners of the objects to be present for the arrival of their ancestors’ belongings. The powerful reunions became part of the story of the objects, as did the communication with tribes about how best to display their chosen objects. A few of those stories are chronicled here.

FAM IN FIRST PERSON THE GRAND SCALE AND SCOPE of FAM, both architecturally and philosophically, is awesome, in both senses of that word. More than a place for non-Indigenous people to learn about Native American cultures, FAM is also a place for Indigenous people to gather, to hear and share stories, and to visit historical objects whose survival has helped ensure the continuance of people who continue to live the values and hopes of their ancestors and descendants despite generations of attempts to erase them.

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KAW OTTER PELT PECTORAL MOST FAM EMPLOYEES are Native Americans, so the stories the museum tells are personal.

That is also true for Henry.

This otter collar of Kaw design appears in a 1909 photograph of a delegation of Native people who went to Washington, DC, to negotiate treaties. One of those people is Henry’s great-grandfather, James Pepper. Next to him is Jesse Mehojah (1870–1935), who wears the collar that Harrington eventually bought.

“I had that picture of the Kaw delegation hanging on the wall my whole life,” says Henry.

“When I was going through the [NMAI] Kaw collections, I saw that otter collar and said, ‘No. It can’t be the same.’ I looked at [Harrington’s] purchase receipts, and sure enough, it was collected from Mehojah. I compared the picture, and that was it.”

Mejojah’s grandson and family members came to FAM to see the collar, and the two men took a photograph sitting next to each other, as their ancestors had.

above Unrecorded Kaw artist, Otter Pelt Pectoral, pre-1909, otter pelts, glass beads, thread, collection from Jesse Mehojah (Kaw, 1870–1935), collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution 2/7092. right Kaw Nation delegation to the US federal government in Washington, DC, ca. 1908. In the front row, Jim Pepper (Kaw) is second from the left, while Jesse Mehojah (Kaw, 1870–1935), wearing this otter fur pectoral, is second from the right (PD).

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Museums and other cultural institutions have long controlled not just the narrative of Indigenous people but much of our material history and even the very bones of our ancestors. Henry does not shy away from the complexities.

“We’re still a museum, and museums are inherently colonial,” he says. “They started out as repositories of conquest and war, and in a way, we are an extension of that. People often talk about ‘decolonization,’ but that’s a little disingenuous. You want to decolonize a museum? You give it all back and shut the museum down. We can’t decolonize something that’s inherently colonial, so let’s look at it a different way. Rather than trying to ‘decolonize’ the museum, let’s make it our own. Let’s indigenize the museum.”

Henry emphasizes the importance and impact of Native people’s authority in the creation and running of FAM. That, he says, is what makes FAM unique.

“We’re trying to connect on an emotional level to say, ‘We’re still here.

We’re diverse. We’re human,’” he says.

“The backbone of this place is our living culture. We don’t need non-Native people here to be a filter. We’ve taken full authority over the narrative. You can see it in the exhibits, in the content, in the media. These are our first-person voices.

We don’t need anybody else to tell our stories for us. We can tell our stories ourselves. We certainly have the ability to do that, and we’ve done it.”

Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke), is a poet, musician, and writer specializing in Indigenous arts and literature. A student in the College of the Muscogee Nation’s Mvskoke Language Program, she lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Ann Sher man i s a professional photographer based in Oklahoma City. She has published several books showcasing her photographic passions, including Car Collections of Oklahoma: Timeless Automobiles and the Obsessed Oklahomans who Collect Them (2013).

above Empty display stand and explanatory label.

SHAWNEE P'THEE'KAWEE (FOOTBALL) SOMETIMES THE STORY of an object is what’s missing. That is the case for this display from the Shawnee Tribe. “The tribe selected the football for the exhibition, but then they said, ‘But you can’t display it,’” recalls Henry. “We wanted to make that point: not everything in a museum collection is meant to be on display. That is counter to the methodology of most museums, but we don’t view it that way.

With this display, we want to make the point that the football is a very important item, but it’s not for the general public to see, so we don’t have it on display.” The ball is used for the ceremonial Spring Bread Game and is meant to be destroyed after use.

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PATCHWORK Piecing It Together Textile art of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians and the Seminole Tribe of Florida

By Michole Eldred (Catawba/Eastern Cherokee)

S

NIP, SNIP, WHIR, WHIR, WHIR, HUM, HUM, CHUKA, CHUKA, CHUKA. Scissors cut blocks of fabric. Hands carefully lay out fabric blocks into patterned designs. Sewing machines bind the designs into long bands. These are the sights and sounds of patchwork being sewn in the Miccosukee Creativity Center (MCC). Textile artists from the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, located in southeast Florida, are absorbed in the creation of their patchwork clothing and objects.

The Miccosukee Creativity Center is a place where tribal members can go to find the materials and tools that they need to create their patchwork. Khadijah Cypress (Miccosukee) founded the MCC three years ago. Born in Miami, Florida, Cypress lives on the Miccosukee Reservation. Several of the tribe’s reservations are spread throughout the Everglades of south Florida.

The creativity center launched with the mission to assist tribal members wanting to learn how to sew, bead, or basket weave. When Cypress first became interested in sewing at age 15, no central location existed where she could go to learn the skill. She learned sewing from family and friends. At 21 she learned how to make patchwork from her friend Ashley

Cypress (Miccosukee). Soon she could sew with precision, and other Miccosukee girls noticed her skills. They began asking her to show them how to sew.

Cypress explains, “When first learning how to make patchwork, we’re taught how to make rain. It’s very simple but very crucial … to learning patchwork.”1 Cypress stored her sewing tools and fabric in her mother’s sewing

shed. Soon she began to teach the girls sewing and patchwork design skills in the shed, which held five industrial machines with very little room to move around. They made it work for a while.

Eventually Cypress asked her parents to help find a larger space with enough room for all the seamstresses and their materials. Her grandfather, Roy Cypress Jr. (Miccosukee), was a council member

1. All quotes from Khadijah Cypress in discussion with the author, July 31, 2021. The author offers much gratitude to the artist for this conversation.

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at the time. The family discussed the need with him. He said that if they could find a space not in use, they could have it for the community center.

Searching the reservation for a building, Cypress found one. The council approved use of the building for the community center and donated items such as chairs, trash cans, fabrics, shelves, and sewing supplies. Cypress contributed her own personal funds to purchase the needed industrial Singer sewing machines. When the center opened, Cypress and her sisters taught other girls sewing basics. Soon students could sew unassisted. Now many tribal members come and go as they please. On any given day several girls sew patchwork and transform it into fashionable clothing and accessories at the center.

Cypress continues to sew patchwork using the industrial Singers at the center as well as an old portable Singer for smaller pieces. She creates original designs, some of which incorporate historical patchwork patterns. She says, “The older patchwork designs were simple and took shape after nature and some animals around the Everglades. Traditional patchworks mostly have names [such as] lightning, rain, fire, telephone pole, frog, turtle, worm, crayfish, spider, rabbit, and snakeskin. I love making the traditional patchworks and the different intricate diamond patchwork. As time went on, the patchwork designs grew more intricate and abstract but mostly did not yet have names.”

She continues, “I use all colors.

There are infinite color combinations to choose from. This is a personal choice, but I don’t like using fire colors combination, [which is] our flag colors [yellow, black, red, and white] with turquoise and camouflage. Most of my inspiration comes from taking color combinations that normally wouldn’t work together, pushing the idea any colors can work together.” She typically cuts cotton fabrics into pieces to create the patchwork. “[It] depends on the size of the patchwork and how many yards you want to make. I usually buy six yards of solid color fabrics for future uses. Most of the time it doesn’t take half a yard to make three-quarter yards of patchwork.” After the long strips of patchwork are sewn, she turns them

into skirts and dresses, hats, bags, and backpacks.

Cypress recently did a collaborative project with Chilean-born artist Felipe Mujica. The collaborative exhibition, Felipe Mujica: The Swaying Motion on the Bank of the River Falls, is on view at the Perez Art Museum in Miami through spring 2022. For the exhibition she created two-inch-wide patchwork strips, which Mujica incorporated into large panels he calls curtains. Cypress found the process inspirational: “I enjoyed working with him so much. He’s the one who pushed my abilities of making patchwork. It was so new and different on how to display patchwork. I enjoyed the whole process.”

above Miccosukee sisters holding their crafts outside of the Glades Cross Mission in the Everglades, Florida, 1933. Image courtesy of State Archives of Florida. opposite Khadijah Cypress (Miccosukee), Patchwork, 2021, coiled bands of cotton fabric, Miccosukee Creative Center, Miccosukee Reservation, Florida.

Image courtesy of the artist.

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US government forcibly removing most Native peoples from Florida. However, some of the people remained and hid in the Everglades, eluding capture. Their descendants formed the Seminole Tribe of Florida in 1957 and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida in 1962.

Readers can learn more about the vast history of these two tribes by visiting the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum in Clewiston and the Miccosukee Indian Village living museum in Miami.

THE HISTORY OF PATCHWORK

Si nc e many S e m i nol e and Miccosukee artists innovate new designs based on existing patchwork patterns, looking into the past can help trace the evolution. Seminole and Miccosukee histories are complex. The ancestors of both tribes date back thousands of years to Indigenous peoples in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, who spoke dozens

of different languages. The northern groups migrated to Florida for hunting and trade. Eventually bands of Muscogee (also known as Upper Creeks) and Hitchiti (Lower Creeks) migrated to Florida in 1813. These Muscogee people endured years of war with the United States, including the Creek War of 1813 and 1814, which ultimately led to the

INTERACTION WITH 18th-century European colonists influenced Seminole and Miccosukee clothing. The local cotton textile industry was in full production by the mid-18th century. By the early 19th century, the attire of the Southeastern Indigenous people began to morph from hides, feathers, and fur to European-style cotton clothing. Simple styles of cotton clothing were made and worn including the man’s garment called the plain shirt.2 By the 1880s clothing began to reveal the intricate style of appliqué, the technique of sewing one piece of fabric

2. Dorothy Downs, Art of the Florida Seminole and Miccosukee Indians (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1995), 14–15.

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onto a larger piece of fabric for decorative purposes. White traders traveled further into Florida in the 1890s to trade with the Native people and settlers. Trading posts popped up all over south Florida and exchanged staple goods, glass beads, fabric, and hand-cranked sewing machines to the Indigenous peoples for hides, pelts, and bird plumes. Two posts that are now famous are Stranahan’s on the New River in Fort Lauderdale and Ted Smallwood’s at Chokoloskee. Trade led to a shift for the Indigenous from a subsistence economy to a barter and later cash economy.

The wives of traders taught the Native women how to use the sewing machines. With machines, Native women could sew more intricately detailed garments. Around this time the plain shirt transformed into what is called the big shirt. The big shirt remained a long outer garment with an added waistband and partially opened front. Seamstresses added colorful bands of fabric to the cuffs and sleeves.3 In 1900 the US Congress passed the Lacey Law, a broad conservation act that also protected numerous Florida birds by outlawing the sale of their plumes. The draining of the Everglades began in 1906. A severe drought hit south Florida in 1913. These combined events led to a decline in the Indigenous means of economic support. The people had to find a new means of earning money. The newly introduced automobile brought a tourism boom to Florida in the early 20th century.

In 1914 Henry Coppinger opened a tropical garden, alligator farm, and Seminole Indian village in Miami. Several Seminole families already lived on the land when Coppinger purchased it. He bought some of the crafts that the families made and sold them to tourists.

During this period, appliqué was slowly being replaced by patchwork. Women pieced small rectangle blocks together with sewing machines to form patterns. Tourists embraced this new craft technique. John Roop opened a rival tourist attraction, Musa Isle, in 1917, which was larger than Coppinger’s attraction. Seminole families lived there part time at a camp as a living exhibition. Tourists gawked at them while they cooked, sewed, and lived. The Seminole made money by selling baskets, woodcarvings, and patchwork to the gift shop.

Mikasuki-speaking people call patchwork taweekaache.

At first only Mikasuki-speaking women made patchwork.

Muscogee-speaking women from the Lake Okeechobee area followed suit. Patchwork only came to Oklahoma Seminole much later.4 The first documented photograph of patchwork design consists of broad, alternating rectangles of two colors of cloth.5 This design, called rain, is the same design that Kadijah Cypress noted as the first pattern taught to beginning sewers.

When asked about names for patchwork patterns, Seminole and Miccosukee women often explain that the names were

above Jane Tiger Motlow (Florida Seminole, Otter clan, 1908–1993), Patchwork Skirt, 1954, satin, cotton, thread, rickrack, collection of the Museum of Florida History, Norton Collection. Image courtesy of State Archives of Florida. opposite, top Miccosukee Indians camp. Left to right: Annie Charlie, Frank Charlie, unknown, George Osceola, Minnie Micco, Deaconess Harriet Bedell (non-Native), 1945.

State Library and Archives of Florida, Bedell Collection, BD005 (PD). opposite, bottom Seminole family selling patchwork clothing near the Brighton Reservation, 1948. State Library and Archives of Florida, Joseph Janney Steinmetz Collection.

3. Downs, Art of the Florida Seminole and Miccosukee Indians, 69, 72.

4. Downs, 84–89. June Lee (Seminole Nation) was one of the first to sew patchwork in Oklahoma. She taught herself to do so by studying postcards of Florida Seminole clothing. See Mary Jo Watson, “June Lee: Seminole Textile Artist,” First American Art Magazine no. 10 (Spring 2016), 66–71.

5. Downs, Art of the Florida Seminole and Miccosukee Indians, 90.

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of patchwork often with a ruffle attached.

The capes worn were banded in a deep “V” pattern of appliqué or rickrack. The rows of patchwork for both male and female clothing were bold and wide.

DOLLS

assigned after the designs were created. In a 1981 interview, Linda Bowers (Florida Seminole) explains, “The first ones were not as complicated as now. They named them because they looked like something.

They weren’t named then. They were just blocks and like a ‘V’.”6 As patchwork developed, so did cultural protocols around Seminole and Miccosukee clothing. Lottie Huff (Florida Seminole) recounts the custom of babies wearing patchwork: “A little boy would wear a big shirt starting at four months when they see a full moon.

[Then] they shave hair off the boys. A girl

baby would wear a tiny dress.” Mildred Tommie (Florida Seminole) said in 1981, “Long time ago they [babies] would not wear designs until full moon—maybe two months. Now they can wear them anytime.” As for ceremonial patchwork, Tommie said, “There is no special meaning to the colors. It is just to see how pretty they look together; no special colors for celebration. But there were more designs worn for Green Corn Dance.”7 In the early 20th century, men’s patchwork was most commonly the big shirt. Women wore long skirts with capes. The skirts had one to three rows

BEFORE 1900 Seminole children played with simple dolls of sticks and cloth, but as the souvenir market grew, so did the need to create a variety of items that would appeal to the tourist’s eye, including dolls. The identity of the first person to make and sell a doll made from palmetto fiber and dressed in Seminolestyle clothing is still debated. The earliest dolls were female and dressed in clothing made of bands of fabric. As people’s clothing styles changed, so did the dolls’ styles. These dolls wore dresses in simplified skirts and capes with typically one row of patchwork. Artists sold dolls at the tourist exhibition villages.

In 1933 Harriet M. Bedell, an Episcopal deaconess, arrived at the Glades Cross Mission. Bedell encouraged better craftsmanship, which led to a higher quality doll. She sold the patchwork dolls at the mission and took souvenirs when she returned to New York during the off-tourist season. Bedell is often credited with the idea of the man-onhorseback doll. She knew that this doll required a higher level of skill and would naturally bring a higher cost. The male dolls were dressed in big shirts, and as styles changed, they wore Eisenhower jackets.8 Dolls remain popular among tourists and collectors.

MID-20TH CENTURY THE TAMIAMI TRAIL was completed in 1928. The trail is a scenic highway, US 41, that stretches from Tampa to Miami.

The opening of the trail brought more cars and non-Native people, leading the area to become overhunted and overfished. The Great Depression of the 1930s greatly affected the Seminole, who

6. “Interview with Seminole Linda Bowers,” October 24, 1981, reel-to-reel recording, State Archives of Florida, Tallahassee, FL. 7. “Interview with Mildred Tommie (with Sally May Hall interpreting),” January 29, 1982, reel-to-reel recording, State Archives of Florida, Tallahassee, FL. 8. David M. Blackard, Patchwork and Palmettos: Seminole/Miccosukee Folk Art Since 1820 (Fort Lauderdale, FL: Fort Lauderdale Historical Society, 1990), 56.

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sought agricultural jobs. Seminole men also worked for the Indian Division of the Civil Conservation Corps, where they had to conform to Western dress styles.

The big shirt transitioned into a shorter shirt or jacket that could be tucked into pants. The top of this transitional shirt had three or four rows of patchwork and a rounded collar. The shirt was usually worn with a long scarf.

Some families set up camps along the Tamiami Trail. They opened their own gift shops to sell their family-made crafts to tourists. The commercial Seminole exhibition camps in Miami provided subsistence. Women would stay in the camp to sew and sell patchwork to the tourists before returning to their own home camps.

Deaconess Bedell opposed the non-Native-run exhibition camps in Miami and found them degrading.

She encouraged families to control their own tourist camps and provided hand-cranked sewing machines for women to use. She advised, “Exhibit arts and crafts and not people.” She convinced women to make baskets and dolls as well as patchwork items for sale. She also encouraged women to make smaller items of patchwork like potholders and aprons to appeal to the tourist who couldn’t spend larger sums of money. She inspired creativity.

Along with other art forms, patchwork clothing became more intricate and individually created. Women added additional rows of patchwork to men’s shirts, women’s skirts, and other clothes.

Bedell convinced the women to name the patchwork patterns as a marketing strategy to appeal to the imagination of the tourists. Bedell wrote to the Episcopal bishop in 1941, “Each woman has a sewing machine, and the designs in their costumes are works of art.”9 A br i s k m ar ke t aro s e for custom-made patchwork pieces. Designs increased in numbers and level of difficulty. Animals found in south Florida, 9. Dorothy Downs, Patchwork: Seminole and Miccosukee Art and Activities (Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 2005), 24–25.

above, top Miccosukee women and children, sewing and selling patchwork at a camp on Tamiami Trail, Florida, 1974. Image courtesy of State Archives of Florida. above, bottom Rosa Billie (Florida Seminole), Girl’s Dress, n.d., cotton, rickrack, thread, 26 × 28 in., collection of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, 1996.57.2. Image courtesy of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, Clewistown, Florida. opposite Minnie Billie Doctor (Florida Seminole, 1927–2018), Doll, n.d., felt, wooden dowels, wood, lace, cotton, rickrack, glass beads, 20¾ × 5⅜ in., collection of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum 2018.32.1, donated by Virgil Doctor (Florida Seminole). Image courtesy of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum.

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By 1957 the Seminole Tribe of Florida ratified its constitution and gained federal recognition. The Miccosukee Tribe of Florida followed in 1962, and both tribes opened arts and craft shops.

The Seminole Okalee Arts and Crafts Center opened on the Hollywood Reservation in 1960, and the Miccosukee Gift Shop and Cultural Center opened along Tamiami Trail in 1978.

As men and women began to work in their own tribal offices, they wanted professional attire. Patchwork vests were created to fill the need for an on-the-job look. The vest is typically made with one color fabric on the back with rows of patchwork in the front. Women who did not work out of the home wore patchwork skirts, but most lost the ruffle. For daily wear, the skirt was worn without a matching cape.10

CONTEMPORARY ERA

such as the turtle, alligator, crayfish, and rattlesnake, inspired fresh designs.

Letters of the alphabet became designs.

Those artists may have used them as initials or purely aesthetic designs.

Color and fabric choices expanded in patchwork that were vivid and bold.

In the 1940s artists added even more rows of patchwork and often three colors for each design. Fabric printed with geometric designs enlivened the spaces between actual patchwork. Artists sewed old designs in a slanting pattern.

They attached wide rows of rickrack and lace to the bottom of the capes.

The big shirt grew more like a jacket by adding a fitted band at the bottom and buttons down the front. By the late 1940s, non-Native customers requested that

jackets have collars. Seamstresses added rickrack to the edge of the collar.

During the 1950s, more fabric types, such as satin, were used to create fancier dress styles. Seminole and Miccosukee wore these dressier skirts and jackets to celebrations and ceremonies.

They continued to reinterpret old design patterns. For example, the storm design previously featured two colors of fabric in a checkerboard pattern. The redesign comprised four colored rectangles defined by two narrow bands through the middle. Skirt styles, following the fashion of the time, were shortened to calf length.

Women paired them with store-bought blouses. Misappropriated patchwork fashions began to appear in non-Native stores and sewing patterns.

10. Downs, Art of the Florida Seminole and Miccosukee Indians, 95–111.

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IN THE 1970s both tribes introduced their own art festivals, attended by both tribal members and non-Natives. These provided showcases and markets for the finest of patchwork and a forum to exchange ideas about patchwork design.

Tribal fairs and art events featured fashion shows. Designers and seamstresses won cash prizes in a variety of categories, from adherence to historical styles to original styles. These were considered friendly competitions meant to support each other. The 1980s were not subtle years in the fashion world. Patchwork followed the trend of vibrant colors and styles.

This anything-goes design mentality continues today.

Indeed, patchwork design does allow freedom of expression for the artist.

Colors can be subtle or bright. Any type of fabric can be used. Patchwork is not limited to skirts and jackets. Any item that the artist can design—from purses and pillowcases to face masks—is acceptable.

Marketing of patchwork continues at fairs and fashion shows, but it has also moved onto social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Some artists choose not to

sell their patchwork. They enjoy the freedom of creating without marketing. One such artist is Ida Osceola.

IDA OSCEOLA BORN IN MIAMI, Ida Osceola (Miccosukee) lives on the Big Cypress Reservation near the Tamiami Trail. Her mother, Debbie S. Osceola (Miccosukee), taught her to sew at age ten. Just like many other girls learning to make patchwork, the first design that she sewed was the rain pattern. Osceola enjoys creating old designs as well as new ones, depending on what she has on hand. “Whatever I can buy or make,” she says. “I’ve used old styles and modern designs as well. I like them all. It tells about a time of our surroundings when cameras weren’t so available.”11 Osceola enjoys creating children’s clothing for her family and friends. She makes the patchwork pieces from broadcloth cotton utilizing the colors of the rainbow. She explains her technique: “First, pick your colors. I think my mom just picked up scraps that she had left from her previous project. If I were to start on a new piece, I was taught to cut strips of the fabric from the selvage. You lay the strips down in front of you and start cutting pieces. I don’t usually use measurements or any cutting tools. It’s up to you about what size to cut. I usually cut a few pieces to sew together as a sample.” She uses the straight stitch on a Singer industrial sewing machine to piece the fabric together.

Most of the items she makes require no less than three yards.

Osceola draws on her mother and grandmother, Frances J. Osceola (Florida Seminole), for inspiration, but also her late grandfather, “Wild Bill” M. Osceola (Miccosukee). “He had a lot of influence on my mother and pushed her to connect with the art.”

Reflecting on patchwork in general, Osceola says, “I think it’s important, because it arose from an era when Native people were displaced and pushed aside. My late grandfather taught me that he remembered when the deaconess brought Singer sewing machines to the women of the camp. He remembered that his mother cut triangles. He remembered that those pieces sewn together would be the fire design that is still worn today.

It’s worth more than money. Its existence is just a small piece of the puzzle, but it’s become a technique usually associated with the south Florida Native population.”

Today’s art builds upon the past. This is also true of the textile art form of patchwork. Seminole and Miccosukee textile artists are much freer from the necessity to sew to provide food for themselves and their families. Now they have the freedom to express themselves as artists.

Michole Eldred (Catawba/Eastern Cherokee) is a writer, curator, and educator who received her master’s in education from Berry College in Georgia. She believes that art-making and enjoyment of the arts should be accessible to all peoples, especially those with disabilities.

11. All quotes from Ida Osceola in discussion with the author, July 31, 2021. The author offers much gratitude to the artist for this conversation.

above, top Ida Osceola (Florida Seminole), detail of Woman’s Patchwork Shirt, 2021, cotton fabric, rickrack, thread. Photo: Mae’anna Osceola (Miccosukee). above, bottom Ida Osceola (Florida Seminole), detail of Woman’s Patchwork Skirt, 2021, cotton fabric, thread. Photo: Mae’anna Osceola (Miccosukee). opposite Khadijah Cypress (Miccosukee), Basket Bag, 2021, sweetgrass, cotton fabric, thread, Miccosukee Reservation, Florida. The base of the bag is coiled sweetgrass, attached to the base by hand-sewing. Image courtesy of the artist.

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THE WABANAKI CANOE & THE SCIENCE OF PERFECTION

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

I

N 2002 canoe maker Steve Cayard was invited by then–Chief of Penobscot Nation Barry Dana to deliver a canoebuilding workshop on Indian Island, Maine. Nearly 80 years had passed since the Penobscot Nation had last constructed canoes using historical methods.1 Cayard was joined by his friend and collaborator, Passamaquoddy artist David Moses Bridges (1962–2017), along with 26 others representing the Penobscot, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy nations, who together with the Mi'kmaq comprise the Wabanaki confederacy. The proceedings of the workshop were recorded—from harvesting birchbark skin to the launching ceremony—by filmmaker D’Arcy Marsh in the documentary feature Agwiden: Building a Birchbark Canoe. Ultimately, the 2002 workshop marks a critical event in the renewal of birchbark canoe–making among the Wabanaki, and the consequences are still unfolding today.

Penobscot Elder Arnie Neptune suggests that canoe making was never a “lost” art form, per se, but one that was “sleeping” and recently “reawakened.”2 Though he is not of Indigenous descent, Cayard is recognized as one of the seminal canoe makers in the region and rigorously adheres to customary techniques and devices. As a teenager, Cayard left high school to immerse himself in the Maine woods and live off the land, which subsequently led him to explore the cultural history of Maine’s Indigenous peoples. He was struck by the design elements of Wabanaki canoes and absorbed what he could about them in libraries and museums. Upon discovering Edwin Tappen Adney’s, The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America, Cayard used it as primary source material to build his first birchbark canoe at age 22.

Cayard was teaching boat making in Eastport, Maine, when he met Bridges,

a new student in the early 1990s. The pair became fast friends through their shared study of Wabanaki canoes. “My desire from the age of six was to build a bark canoe,” said Bridges, “and with knowledge of the forests, the sea, and the gathering processes in hand, I sought to solidify my knowledge by studying traditional boat building and naval architecture.”3 Bridges’s great-grandfather, Sylvester Gabriel (Passamaquoddy, ca. 1885–1972), was one of the last Wabanaki canoe makers, and Bridges connected to his ancestor’s “way of thinking” by entering the forest, gathering raw materials, and assembling a vessel with his hands and rudimentary tools.4 Wabanaki canoes are far more than pragmatic objects that navigate water—they store a breadth of meanings and metaphors that are often spiritual and symbolic. For instance, the body of a canoe may function as a metaphor for

1. D’Arcy Marsh, “Agwiden,” Vimeo, 2013, video, 52:42, web.

2. Arnie Neptune, “V1: The Significance of Birchbark Canoes,” directed by D’Arcy Marsh, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 2002, video, 3:04, web.

3. Patricia Ayala, “A Life from Two Directions on a Twisted Path: David Moses Bridges, Passamaquoddy Canoemaker,” Oppositional Directions 4, September 28, 2020, web.

4. Laurie Schreiber, “Passamaquoddy craftsman maintains tribe’s traditions,” The Working Waterfront Archives, May 20, 2014, web.

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the human body. Its parts are sourced directly from nature—from birch trees, white cedar trees, and spruce roots—but also from water and fire, which serve to treat the bark and bend the wood into molds. The vessel’s skin, ribs, and sinew are analogous to the body’s flesh and bone. One of Cayard’s carved knives was gifted to him by an Abenaki friend and features the head of Gluskap on the handle. The giant Gluskap, a hero in Wabanaki stories, is a determining figure in the Wabanaki creation story. At the end of Cayard’s knife, Gluskap’s lips are puckered to ensure that “he’s blowing life into the canoe as it’s being carved.”5 Such affinities between the physical body and the vessel hold significant meaning because, for millennia, human beings of many cultures have associated watercraft

with subsistence-gathering as a harbinger of survival.

Bridges’s Indigenous worldview and connection to ancestral knowledge, together with Cayard’s technical aptitude, worked in concert to restore Wabanaki birchbark canoe practices, one of the finest achievements in history with a design virtually unchanged for thousands of years.

WABANAKI NATIONS shifted from dugout canoes to birchbark canoes an estimated 2,500 years ago,6 though this shift probably occurred earlier. Demands on trade, subsistence-based migration, and intertribal relationships expanded, and dugout canoes had cumbersome weight. Early experiments with birchbark material and structural components increased maneuverability, stability, and

above Frank Atwin (Passamaquoddy), with his model birchbark canoe. Image courtesy of the Mariners' Museum and Park, Newport News, Virginia. opposite Reuben “Butch” Phillips (Penobscot), Birchbark Canoe Model, collection of the Hudson Museum, University of Maine, Orono, HM9255.1, purchased with a grant by the Belvedere Traditional H a n d c ra f t s F u n d , M a i n e Community Foundation.

5. Annie Graves, “The Spirit of the Birchbark Canoe,” Yankee Magazine, April 28, 2021, web.

6. “Bark Canoe Building at the Abbe Museum!” Abbe Museum, 2013, web.

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above Wabanaki birchbark c a n o e , c a r b o n - d a te d c a .

1750–1800, collection of the Pejepscot History Center, New Brunswick, Maine.

speed, which positively impacted trade economies and increased foodstuffs. This in turn led to the expansion of populations; so much so, that rivers became highways for Wabanaki communities during the archaic period. By mapping available linguistic information, seasonal water levels, and various archaeological sites, researchers have been able to demonstrate how this superhighway functioned and evolved. The result provides a clearer picture of the Wabanaki’s migration and trade patterns among the lands now known as Eastern Canada and the Northeastern United States.

The transition from dugout to birchbark canoes is likely a consequence of sustained innovation with physical materials like birchbark. Birchbark “by all accounts, is the most important

material in Wabanaki culture,” says Chief Dana, “so many things depend on it—for shelter, for clothing, for food, medicine, for transportation, for baskets. The birch tree is the one tree of the Wabanaki that produces so much.”7 If birchbark is one of the Wabanaki’s most valuable materials, as Dana contends, then the birchbark canoe might be the Wabanaki’s principal technological feat.

Precontact Wabanaki nations fabricated ocean-worthy canoes with deep “V” hulls and sloping ends for coastal exploration. Conversely, river and tributary canoes ordinarily had extended sides and flat bottoms for drifting with the current.

A single Wabanaki canoe could travel from riverway to ocean with relative ease, proving that the canoe was not only sound in its design but versatile as well.

7. Bob Keys, “Exhibition at Colby shows Wabanaki art as it is today,” Press Herald, August 11, 2019, web.

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Cayard’s research affirms that the reliability of food sources on the Maritime coast opened the opportunity for early Wabanaki peoples to concentrate their efforts on producing radical technologies like the canoe. Years of experimentation and innovation culminated in the creation of the later Wabanaki chiman style toward the end of the 19th century and was soon widely adopted by settler-traders and Ojibwe people. Wabanaki canoes look familiar today because commercial canoe manufacturers such as Old Town, E. B. Town, Chestnut, and others appropriated the structure and aesthetic details of the chiman for their own ends. This suggests that the basic design principles of the Wabanaki canoe are transcendent and nearly impossible to improve upon.

Speaking of the Wabanaki peoples in The Maine Woods, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Nature must have made a thousand revelations to them which are still secrets to us.”8 AFTER LEAVING the Art Students’ League of New York due to a lack of funds, a wandering 19-year-old Edwin Tappan Adney journeyed to Woodstock, New Brunswick, in 1887 for a retreat.

There, while capturing landscape vistas and learning Indigenous crafts, he met and befriended Maliseet canoe maker Peter Joe. “When we first came to Upper Woodstock in 1887,” Adney recalled, “Peter Jo or Joseph, on the Point, was living in a house with walls and roof entirely of birch bark, and in summer his old mother did cooking out of doors, and some of their dishes were neatly made of birch bark also.”9 In 1889, Adney and Joe collaborated on the assembly of a birchbark canoe in the historical Maliseet style. Adney meticulously recorded Joe’s gathering of material and building process through a series of written notes and drawings.

In his writing and images, Adney was quick to point out small but critical

alterations to the canoe’s production that differed from historical knowledge. For instance, during the build, Joe began to fasten the gunwales together with newer nails rather than “with wrappings of split spruce roots in the ancient manner.”10 Harper’s Young People first published Adney’s conclusions in 1890. In 1964, Howard I. Chapelle of the Smithsonian Institution compiled Adney’s documents and notes and published The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America, 14 years after Adney’s death. Adney’s invaluable documentation of Joe’s canoe build is widely considered to be the earliest written description of birchbark canoe making. Bridges and Cayard can be seen mulling over the pages of Adney’s book in the Agwiden documentary.

During the early 19th century, Wabanaki canoes of the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, and Maliseet appear to have shared nearly identical forms and featured, as Cayard observes, “sharp, raking end profiles which placed the extreme ends of the canoe at the top of the stems.”11 He adds that high-ended profiles are pragmatic since, when they could be flipped over on land, they included more headroom and facilitated protection at night from animals and inclement weather. As the aftermaths of colonialism obstructed travel, spread disease, quelled trade, and curbed subsistence-based living, the canoe’s high-end structure was deemed impractical and time-consuming. End heights were “re-curved” and lowered dramatically, which became fundamental characteristics of the chiman style.

The financial challenges facing Wabanaki nations during the late 19th century necessitated the sale of original and second-hand canoes to settlers in Maine and throughout New England. In 1863, a second-hand canoe was priced as low as $5 whereas a sizable and well-made canoe could fetch as high as $25.

Collaborations between Adney and Joe and Cayard and Bridges mark critical events in the recent history of Wabanaki canoe making, but another critical event occurred in the 1920s. With few Wabanaki canoe makers alive to share their knowledge to the next generation, the practice faced a profound risk of falling dormant.12 One canoe maker able to build canoes in the historical style into the early 1920s was Louis Gill (Abenaki, 1856–1923) of Odanak, Quebec. Gill constructed an extraordinary 14-foot birchbark canoe that now resides in the permanent collection of the Hood Museum of Art, epitomizing the last era of canoes produced in the old way.

The Great Depression only exacerbated the canoe’s dormancy, and Wabanaki canoe making transformed from a practice rooted in oral tradition to written instructions. Canoe builds came to rely heavily on the meticulous schematics and blueprints in Adney’s, The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America.

THE DOCUMENTATION from Adney’s collaboration with Joe is instrumental to our current understanding of Wabanaki canoe making, yet Adney also attempted to explain meanings and metaphors associated with canoes and other boats that extend far beyond pedantic blueprints and measurements. These include the cosmology of pictographs and geometric patterns etched into bark predominantly at the canoe’s ends and along its gunwales, or topmost edges. Winter bark is particularly ideal for canoe making and etching for its thickness and low sap content.

When moistened with water, the rind can be easily scraped away or etched into, but it is a misnomer to assume that all canoes forged by the Wabanaki nations were decorated since, when subsistence-gathering, trade, and armed resistance are imperative for survival, aesthetic devices such as etching were a low priority.13

8. Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods, ed. Sophia E. Thoreau and William Ellery Channing (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1964), 185.

9. James W. Wheaton, “Tappan Adney’s Maliseet Studies: More than Canoes” (paper, 34th Algonquian Conference, Language, and Linguistics, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, October 24–27, 2002), web.

10. Wheaton, “Tappan Adney’s Maliseet Studies,” web.

11. Steve Cayard, “The History of the Birchbark Canoe,” web.

12. Steve Cayard quoted in Christine LaPado-Breglia, “Passamaquoddy Ceremony Launches Birchbark Canoe Built at LA,” The Lincoln County News, May 3, 2017, web.

The full quote reads: “There hadn’t been any builders of the traditional canoes since about 1920 in the Wabanaki community. They maintained a strong oral tradition of canoes, but the actual practice of building them basically was left to dormancy.”

13. Tobias Francis in discussion with the author, July 28, 2021.

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above Portaging a canoe at Green River, near Edmundston, New Brunswick, 1887, collection of the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick George Taylor Collection P5-137. opposite Maliseet canoe decorations after Edwin Tappen Adney, illustration by Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD.

Adney’s research into precontact and early contact Mi’kmaq canoes illustrate that pictographic imagery and geometric patterning is rare, though he resolves that the Mi’kmaq later featured elaborate decoration on their canoes due to their alliance with the Maliseet. He demonstrates that formal designs did not generally include totems, mythological, or spiritual iconography, but instead contained secular and individualistic marks or signatures used to identify the canoe’s owner. Of these expressions, half-moons, stars, fleur-de-lis, triangles, salmon, moose, northern lights, and other imagery became symbols of identity.

When Roman Catholicism germinated in the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada, surviving photographs revealed bare crosses etched into the end bark of several canoes and pictographs

of an ichthys, or “sign of the fish,” if the canoe was launched on a Friday,14 the day Jesus is said to have died.

Adney perceives that the elaborate aesthetics and patterning of Mi’kmaq quillwork likely influenced the decorative imagery found on Mi’kmaq canoes.

He is almost certainly correct—the complicated symmetry and geometric patterning found on Mi’kmaq quill boxes, clothing, baskets, and other objects would inescapably influence different forms of cultural expression. A series of chevrons and curvilinear etchings from the “woods” or “rough water” canoe illustrated in The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America are nearly identical to those found on 19th-century Mi’kmaq quill boxes. “It is quite possible,” Adney proposes, “that such quillwork was once used in Micmac [sic] canoe decoration.”15

14. Edwin Tappan Adney, The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America, ed. Howard Irving Chapelle (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1964), Project Gutenberg, web, 84.

15. Adney, 68.

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The historical gender roles between men and women determine that canoe making was a men’s occupation while quillwork was the domain of women, since they were imbued with spiritual power. Quillwork canoe decorations seem improbable since puncturing the outer skin may compromise the hull’s integrity and seaworthiness. Adney’s notes also express the idea that paints derived from natural dyes were applied to bark covers under the cap and outwale pieces, though there is little evidence of this in surviving canoes or photographs.

Of all the Wabanaki nations, the Maliseet and Passamaquoddy decorated their canoes the most, according to Adney. He believed that “the beauty of the Malecite [sic] canoe designs lay not in the barbaric display of color characteristic of the large [settler] fur-traders’ canoes, but in the tasteful distribution of the scraped winter bark decoration along the sides of the hull.”16 The personal mark or signature of the owner is typically etched into winter bark on the flaps near the canoe ends, or wulegessis (exterior birchbark).

The wulegessis was not only used to aestheticize the canoe ends, but it also protected the gunwale-end lashings from exposure to the sun and splashing water.

Wikhikon, the proto-language symbolism of Maliseet and Passamaquoddy canoe makers translates to picture-writing or mapmaking on birchbark and includes a host of paradoxical meanings that are tricky to corroborate. For instance, half or full circles can represent either the sun or the moon, while zigzag lines can characterize the silhouette of an encampment or the score stick used in a popular game.

Still, certain Maliseet iconography, such as the “cloud passing over the moon,” are specific, like semicircles that represent the canoe launching during a new moon.17 Ultimately, many of the wulegessis are firmly idiosyncratic and have as much to say about the individual canoe maker as the decoration itself.

By reviewing Adney’s drawings and historical photographs, wikhikon such as pipes, tomahawks, or stars can be located

on wulegessis along the gunwales for purely aesthetic reasons—simply because the canoe maker “likes it,” because it “looked nice,” or “looked good.”18 Adney approached Maliseet canoe maker Joe Ellis and asked him why the “earrings” pattern repeatedly appeared along gunwales. Ellis responded by saying that the canoe maker “might have seen his wife at [the] bow of [the] canoe and put it on [there].”19 Adney asked Ellis’s wife about right triangles etched along the gunwales.

She answered by referring to the vision of

when cloth is lifted from the camp door to the side when entering, “what you lift with your hand, we call it that—camp door.”20 Ellis and his wife’s responses are telling. The lack of information in Adney’s book on spiritual meanings associated with Wabanaki pictographs and other iconography might be due to the canoe maker’s focus on individual forms of expression; however, it’s also possible that those Adney questioned did not want to share their customs or beliefs with an uninitiated outsider.

16. Adney, 88–89.

17. Adney, 83.

18. Adney, 83, 87, 122.

19. Joe Ellis quoted in Adney, 86.

20. Mrs. Ellis quoted in Adney, 86.

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DURING THE LATE 19TH and early 20th centuries, when the residential school systems in Canada and the United States broadened, so did the appearance of the English lexicon on Wabanaki canoes. Chief Tomah Joseph (Passamaquoddy, 1837–1914) etched his written signature into the gunwale near the end of one of his canoes. Joseph features prominently in Adney’s The Bark

Canoes and Skin Boats of North America, particular for producing the “last known Passamaquoddy decorated ocean canoe to be built” in 1898,21 yet he was also a prolific birchbark artist whose pictographic etchings appear on boxes, letter holders, baskets, and backrests. Joseph wintered at Peter Dana Point, Maine, where he later served as governor around 1882. As summer approached, Joseph,

his wife Hanna, and his son Sabattis maneuvered the rivers of St. Croix to Passamaquoddy Bay by canoe until they reached their destination on Campobello Island where they set up camp for the season. Wealthy vacationers often hired Joseph as a fishing and canoe guide, while he sold his wikhikon artwork. One summer James Roosevelt of Hyde Park, New York, hired Joseph to teach his young son Franklin how to canoe, and soon Joseph and Franklin established a lasting friendship. Some critics have argued that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s reformation of US government policies affecting Native American nations, such as the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, was directly influenced by his relationship with Joseph.22 Joseph gifted a birchbark canoe to the young FDR inscribed with the words Mikwid hamin (“Recall me in your mind”) as a mnemonic device. This canoe, now in the permanent collection of the Roosevelt Campobello International Park, features several etchings on the wulegessis based on characters and stories passed down through generations. At the end of the port side, Joseph etched a grinning figure sitting on a stump smoking a calumet and holding a bow surrounded by trees and grass. The figure, a mikamwes, is a type of Little Person who lives in the woods and is friendly towards humans, often warning them of approaching dangers by appearing in person or writing on rocks.

In one story, told by Penobscot hunters during their war with the Mohawk, two mikumwesuk appeared and followed the hunters in a canoe. Soon they called to them, “Nowut Kemaganek Meguyik” (At Nowut Kemaganek there are Mohawks), so the hunters immediately returned to Oldtown to inform the people of their approach, which saved them from capture or death.23 In the etching, the contour of an owl resting in a tree at the top-left of the composition overlooks the mikamwes and stares out at the viewer. Joseph understood that kokogus, or wise owl, was his spiritual helper and periodically employed it as his personal hallmark.

21. Adney, 82.

22. “Tomah Joseph, the Indian Elder Who Taught a President,” Maine Historical Society, web.

23. Willard Walker, “Wabanaki ‘Little People’ and Passamaquoddy Social Control,” Papers of the 27th Algonquian Conference, ed. D.H. Pentland (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 1995), 355.

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WHEN PASSAMAQUODDY knowledge keeper Edward Bassett returned to Pleasant Point Reservation in Maine in the 1970s, he contacted friends and family about building a canoe but found that “no one knew how to make them.”24 Consequently, he enrolled in the boat school in Eastport, Maine, the same school David Moses Bridges attended several years later. In 1980 Bassett traveled to Maniwaki, a small town adjacent to the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg community in Quebec, to apprentice under former band chief and canoe maker Ojshigkwanàng (William Commanda, 1913–2011). Bassett later returned home to Pleasant Point and made a canoe using Commanda’s teachings. Bassett continues to build models from four to nine feet as a means of keeping his “mind sharp” and for the joy of the process. “Making canoes (large or small) is good medicine for the spirit,” he writes. “It is a way to connect

with Nature and the Ancestors. I fall in love with every canoe I make.”25 Allyship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities has proved important to canoe building today. Bridges, who collaborated with Cayard, was publicly open about his second cancer diagnosis and continued to build birchbark canoes until his death in January 2017. Later that year, Bridges’s son Tobias Francis (Passamaquoddy) joined Cayard on a canoe build at Lincoln Academy, a private school in Newcastle, Maine. To be “hands-on and literally connected to the earth,” Francis remembers, “getting the roots and harvesting the birch, felling a cedar tree, that’s extremely spiritual to know that you’re carrying on a tradition, I know this is what my father felt.”26 Though it was dormant for many decades, today workshops and lessons dedicated to Wabanaki canoe making in the historical style ensure that this faultless technology remains awake.

above Franklin D. Roosevelt in his birchbark canoe at Campobello, New Brunswick, Canada, 1907, collection of the Franklin D. Roosevelt P re s i d e n t i a l L i b ra r y a n d Museum, CC0. opposite, top Tomah Joseph (Passamaquoddy, 1837–1914), etching on the canoe made for FDR (front end flap, port side), ca. 1907, collection of the Roosevelt Campobello International Park, New Brunswick, Canada. opp osite, bot tom To m a h J o s e p h ( Pa ss a m a q u o d d y, 1837–1914), etching on the canoe made for FDR (front end flap, starboard side), ca. 1907, collection of the Roosevelt Campobello International Park, New Brunswick, Canada.

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

24. Edward Bassett in discussion with the author, July 28, 2021.

25. Bassett, August 10, 2021.

26. Tobias Francis in discussion with the author, July 28, 2021.

NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 41

CONNECTIONS & BELONGING IN STONE OIL LAMPS

By Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq)

H

OLDING A STONE OIL LAMP (naniq) in my hands, I think of the woman who tended it centuries ago. She would have filled the center with oil rendered from seal or sea lion or whale fat and lit a wick made from cotton grass, lichen, or sphagnum moss. The light it gave off would be a welcoming comfort and heat source in a land where darkness and cold are present for long periods of the year. This is an

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environment that I know. We enjoy the long days of summer and curl up when winter’s darkness brings us inside and out of the cold. Kachemak stone oil lamps fill me with awe and connection. They are gifts from past generations of this land’s inhabitants and a physical reminder of their lives spent here. For thousands of years, our ancestors have been part of this ecosystem and thrived within it.

Kachemak Bay is in south-central Alaska in the lower Cook Inlet. It is a

dynamic place, sculpted by glaciers, and surrounded by volcanic mountains. We experience frequent earthquakes and some of the largest tidal variations in the world. The Kachemak tradition was first described by archaeologist Frederica de Laguna in the 1930s and refers to a period between 1000 BCE and 500 CE. Recognizable traits of the Kachemak tradition have been found from Kachemak Bay to the Kodiak Archipelago and parts of the Alaska Peninsula. Today this area is

a crossroads between Alutiiq (Sugpiaq) and Dena'ina cultures.

On the shores of Kachemak Bay, few obvious signs of the original inhabitants of this area are visible today. As Dena'ina artist Joel Isaak has stated, “We did such a good job taking care of and protecting this place that colonial expansion and settlers did not know we were here, because they could not see us or our impact on the land.” There are no standing historic buildings that are Indigenous to this area, no sculptures, and few examples of what one might label art.

If you look closely at the landscape though, you may see the depressions of house pits where ciqlluaq (sod houses) once stood. If you walk along the beach an artifact might show up that has eroded from the banks of the bluffs or emerged from a construction site. If you look closely at the rock walls on the caves on the south side of Kachemak Bay, you might be lucky to come across slowly fading pictographic images. Archaeological excavations have unearthed

labrets, rings, combs, tools, and carved figurines that all bear witness to Alaska’s unwritten past. The stone oil lamps are perhaps the most stunning examples of historical arts from our area.

Kachemak stone oil lamps are found in personal collections and scattered throughout museums, notably the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum, and the Penn Museum. Closer to home in Alaska, the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak, the Pratt Museum in Homer, the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, and the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, also hold small collections of these lamps. Some lamps are small and portable, designed to fit in one’s hands, including some that are so small that they may have served as children’s toys. There are also surprisingly large and heavy lamps, some weighing as much as one hundred pounds. They are made from granite, basalt, dolerite, sandstone, and a variety of other local volcanic rocks.

above Kachemak stone oil lamp, collected from the Kenai Peninsula, collection of the Penn Museum, object #NA9251. Image Courtesy of the Penn Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. opposite Kachemak lamp, ca. 500– 1100 CE, stone, Cook Inlet, Alaska, 161/2 × 141/2 × 6 in., collection of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 4/9236, collected by Anderson Ankehl. Photo: NMAI Photo Services.

Image courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC.

NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 43

above, top Kachemak stone oil lamp, excavated from Yukon Island, collection of the Penn Museum, object #32-8120. Image Courtesy of the Penn Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. above, bottom Stone oil lamp found on the beach at Homer, Alaska. Image courtesy of the author. opposite Stone oil lamps in collections storage of the Pratt Museum, Homer, Alaska. Image courtesy of the author.

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Most stone oil lamps are simple, unadorned, and oval-shaped with slight depressions in their centers created through pecking and grinding. Most are slightly beveled along the rims, sometimes with decorative encircling grooves. Sometimes the lamp bowl has a groove in the base that would have held a wick. Some examples are also

expressively sculpted with representations of human figures, bears, and seal heads. At least one lamp shows two whale figures.1 The most iconic Kachemak style of lamp includes a sculptured torso of a male figure emerging from the bowl of the lamp. One example unearthed from Yukon Island depicts a figure with its head tilted back as if looking at the sky.

I can imagine this lamp lit with a flame casting shadows and light on the sculpted figure to make it appear alive. Another common decoration on lamps includes two sculpted mounds in the bowl of the lamp, breast-like in appearance, which may have functioned to hold a piece of blubber while its oils slowly melted and flowed to the wick.2 How did the creators of these lamps see this world? Who or what did the sculpted figures represent? What is the meaning of lamps for community members when they are encountered today? Although we cannot reconstruct all the details of the history of these lamps, we can try to connect threads of knowledge to better understand them.

Stone oil lamps are found throughout the circumpolar world from Greenland, Canada, and Alaska to Siberia. In addition to their use as a light and heat source, some northern communities used stone lamps for cooking and to create soot for customary tattooing practices. By the light of these lamps, babies would have been welcomed to the world; women would have sat together repairing clothing, weaving baskets, talking, and sharing stories. Celebrations and dances would have been animated by their light. In this regard we can think of a stone oil lamp as a community connector, a belonging that brought people together through heat and light.

Making and using stone oil lamps is still practiced in some communities in the North, and some artists are reviving the practice of creating them.

Marjorie Tahbone, or Kunaq (Iñupiaq/

1. Frederica De Laguna and Bruno Oetteking, The Archaeology of Cook Inlet, Alaska (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1934), 86.

2. De Laguna and Oetteking, 64.

3. Kunaq Tahbone, “Lighting a Naniq,” November 1, 2020, YouTube video, 7:09, web.

Kiowa, from Nome and now living in Fairbanks) has taught stone oil–making classes over Zoom and has created a YouTube video that shows her stone oil lamps in use.3 Kunaq notes that teaching others how to make stone oil lamps is a way to reestablish cultural identity and something that she is still learning about.

When I pick up a stone oil lamp, I feel a deep connection to the land that I know so well. Part of this is simply the materials that connect me. Rocks, like the ones used to make lamps, surround us. Embodied knowledge is in these rocks—knowledge that comes from our day-to-day lives of living in this environment, from harvesting, and from traveling on the land and waters. We use stones like this to lay out our salmon after pulling in a subsistence net. They are the source to hold the heat inside a banya (steam bath). My children use them as toys on the beach when designing pretend houses in the sand. I think of them as deep markers of time: the time when the rocks were eroded from the glacier, or the time when the volcano spat out the rocks, the time it took for the rocks to be sculpted through the forces of nature by wind, water, and waves, and then the time that it took for the lamp to be lovingly shaped by human hands. These lamps will outlive me and my children and my great-great-grandchildren.

THESE LAMPS ALSO REMIND ME of kinship ties, relationships that go deeper than blood to extend to relations with non-human beings such as animals, plants, rocks, and beyond. My 11-year-old daughter tells me that each rock has a spirit, a thought that comes to her naturally, and one that I share.

Does she know this because we live in a land where we experience plate tectonics, so we literally feel the earth move as if alive? Or perhaps it is because we are part of a culture that recognizes that everything has an awareness (a sua) including animate and inanimate things. We have a relationship with rocks because we live alongside them, just as we have relationships that extend to the animals who

we know, live alongside, and rely on for sustenance. These relationships extend to the waters, mountains, plants, and other ecological nuances that are Indigenous to this area. Our cultures are cocreated with the environment and have evolved within this ecosystem. Being Indigenous to this place is belonging to this place and being shaped by it and all the elements that make it what it is.

When I hold a stone lamp in my hands, I feel the truth of our presence in the world today. Being from this place, I am intentional about my presence here and the responsibilities that this brings

with it. I am here because I am descended from peoples who have thrived here since time immemorial, and this lamp is a reminder of the connection to past, present, and future generations.

IF YOU FIND A STONE OIL LAMP (or other artifacts) today that has eroded on a beach or is uncovered when digging, please think twice before you collect it for yourself. Unless issued a permit for scientific research, artifacts may not legally be collected from federal or state lands. Materials found on state land are said to “belong” to the state, while those on federal land are said to “belong” to the

NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 45

When I hold a stone lamp in my hands, I feel the truth of our presence in the world today.

above Kunaq, Marjorie Tahbone, (Iñupiaq/Kiowa), video still from “Lighting a Naniq,” 2020, featuring a stone oil lamp she carved.

federal government.4 Materials found on private lands “belong” to the landowner.

Perhaps it is more accurate to note that these items are of the land and belong to the land where they were created.

If you have a stone oil lamp in a personal collection, I encourage you to consider depositing it with a local tribe or cultural center, who will care for it and keep it safe for generations to come. If you come across one in your travels in Alaska,

perhaps you should leave it right where you found it to be a future reminder of our deep time connections to place.

For museums that hold these lamps in collections far from home, where lamps sit lonely on museum shelves and in collection drawers, perhaps it is time for them to come back home, so they can be a light of inspiration for connections to the past and this place for future generations.

Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq) is an art historian and museum consultant based in Homer, Alaska. As a program director at The CIRI Foundation, she oversees a program dedicated to supporting Alaska Native arts and artists. Her research interests include Alaska Native art, cultural revival, and Indigenous curation.

4. Relevant laws include the Archaeological Resource Protection Act of 1979 and the Alaska Historic Preservation Act of 1971.

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NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 47

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PROFILE

Haida Fashion Designer

DOROTHY GRANT

By India Rael Young, PhD

I

NDIGENOUS FASHION DESIGN has exploded onto the international scene in the past decade, and Indigenous designers have garnered space in major fashion publications, from Vogue and Harper’s to Elle. Toronto and Vancouver now boast Indigenous Fashion Weeks and SWAIA’s fashion show is more competitive and popular than ever. And through it all, Dorothy Grant has modeled the craft and the business of Indigenous design.

Grant has been at the forefront of contemporary Indigenous fashion since the 1980s. Her endurance within a largely aloof fashion industry proves a testament to perseverance and to carving one’s own path. Throughout her career she has charted her own route, which today has become the roadway upon which a new generation can travel. Grant established cross-border visibility for her Haida clothing designs in the same era that Isaac Mizrahi—pardon the epithet—bastardized a centuries-old visual legacy. In 1988, Grant attended Helen Lefeaux School of Fashion in Vancouver, and she has not looked back since.

Grant’s designs have traversed the Oscars red carpets, runways from New York to Paris, and uncounted ceremonies and gatherings in her home communities on Haida Gwaii and Southeast Alaska. Her designs are held in museum collections throughout Canada and the United States.

Notably, while many fashion designers only see their clothes in museums for retrospective or monograph fashion exhibitions, Grant’s designs often hold the distinction of being the only clothing in the room. Her work has been featured in landmark exhibitions on Indigenous arts, from Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada (1992) to Native Fashion Now (2015–17) to, most recently, the traveling exhibition Hearts 50 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

of Our People: Native Women Artists (2019–21). Her work has shown alongside that of James Luna (Payómkawichum/ Ipi, 1950–2018) and Sonya KelliherCombs (Iñupiaq/Athabascan) and her more abstract meditations on textile arts.

To fully appreciate Grant’s unique path, we must set the scene. Grant sat at the heart of what has often been termed

the Northwest Coast revival. Although the notion of “revival” remains hotly debated, the 1960s through the 1980s produced a vibrant, thriving arts community on the coast and British Columbia in particular. A new generation of carvers, including Bill Reid (Haida, 1920–1998), Robert Davidson (Haida), Joe David (Tla-o-qui-aht), Tony

DOROTHY GRANT

Hunt Sr. (Kwagu'ł, 1942–2017) and others, brought monumental sculptures into public spaces. Freda Diesing (Haida, 1925–2002) became a respected carver, and Susan Point (Musqueam) grounded herself in an interdisciplinary practice. Yet, at the time, art practices on the coast remained gendered.

The majority of women artists in the era focused on sustaining established Indigenous textile practices. From basketry hats to button blankets, to Salish and Northern weavings, clothing at Northwest Coast gatherings and ceremonies looked as flashy as ever.

Mabel Taylor, also spelled Mable Taylor (Tseshaht, 1901–1984), Primrose Adams (Haida, 1926–2020), and Isabelle Rorick (Haida) became master basket makers; Evelyn Vanderhoop (Haida), Teri Rofkar (Tlingit, 1956–2016), and Clarissa Rizal (Tlingit, 1958–2016) honed and perfected ancestral textile naaxin (Chilkat) and Ravenstail weaving. Grant, herself, learned to weave spruce-root hats from the Haida matriarch Florence Davidson (1896–1993). Perhaps unsurprisingly, curators and dealers who brokered access with the larger public spared little time for women’s work compared to that of their male counterparts in the arts.

Grant broke through two glass ceilings simultaneously and on her own.

Her fashions garnered the same art world acclaim as the sculptures, installations, paintings, and prints by the men in her arts circle. Moving Haida designs from customary textiles to high couture might seem the smaller leap. And yet, for decades, Grant persisted as a rare Indigenous voice in the world of fashion.

IY: How did your solo leap into fashion come about?

DG: Back in the ’80s, there would be a lot of artist gatherings. Whether it was through getting together in our home—when I was married to Robert [Davidson]—they would all come out and we’d have table talks about innovation, the keyword being innovation. How do we progress the art form beyond a traditional sense of the art, yet hold on to all of those

aspects of the art? How could we push the boundaries? It was always about pushing to another medium. So prints were, at the time, what everybody was doing. It was Bill Reid who had just come back from Paris. He said, “Now somebody has to do fashion, or some mainstream designers are going to do it and do it really bad.”

That was the same era as the Isaac Mizrahi dress on the cover of Time [in 1991]. I used that as a catalyst. We were all appalled by that [dress]. It was just hideous, not having [a Native designer] in the mainstream designer fashion world. I thought, I have got to do better than this.

It was in a sense of educating the public about the elegance of Haida designs and

above Killer-Whale Shawl, jacquard fabric woven with silk and wool, 72 L × 28 W in. opposite Dorothy Grant at right wearing her Raven Shirt and felt appliqué hat with one of her students, at left, wearing her Raven One Should Dress with felt appliqué hat, 2021. All images courtesy of the artist, unless otherwise noted.

NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 51

PROFILE

how I could transform that into fitting into the body better. So, when Bill said somebody had better do fashion and do it better than anybody else, I took that as, Okay, I think he’s talking to me.

IY: Back then were you aware of the scarves and ties and things that had been created by Ellen Neel [Kwakwaka'wakw, 1916–1966] and Doug Cranmer [Kwakwaka'wakw, 1927–2006] before then in the ’60s?

above Interior of Dorothy Grant’s clothing store in Sinclair Centre, Vancouver, 1994. opposite Raven in Fireweed Evening Dresses, 2018, Raven Comes Full Circle silk fabric is the underlay dress with the sheer tulle lace flower fabric on top, coral at left, black at right.

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DG: It wasn’t on my radar. You know, I would have seen a few things, but it wasn’t making a statement about [Native fashion], like a full line of clothing or making a career out of fashion. It was dabbling in that idea.

IY: You’ve accomplished so much in your career. You received the governor general’s award here in Canada, your clothing has been on the Oscars red carpets. When you think back on all

of your many accomplishments, what career highlights stand out for you?

DG: Well, I did 17 years of retail in three different stores consecutively. First, it was Sinclair Centre. Then it was 75th Avenue, off the beaten track in Vancouver. The third was on Sixth Street and Manitoba in the fashion district. This is when we had just opened the Vancouver store before customers even came in. The dressing rooms had hand-carved doors by Don Yeomans [Haida]. You can see the Haida influence in the architecture with the ceiling beams. It’s got that longhouse vibe.

IY: Can you tell me a bit about the business of running a clothing store?

DG: Those 17 years were difficult—the most difficult years of my life. Just keeping all the balls in the air and paying everything: rents, wages, seasonal productions lines of clothing, traveling, trade shows, and marketing. You know,

DOROTHY GRANT

I was always moving with constant challenges and problems that I had to deal with on a daily basis, like keeping up with social media constantly changing.

When in 2011 my lease was up, I made a decision: I’m not doing this anymore and I’m okay with that.

That was 10 years ago. I have managed to keep a high profile, the business profile. I’m still producing. I’m just not running a [physical] business according to the way the fashion standards in this trade would want me to. I’ve done it on my own.

I grew up in the era of you must have your own store, you’ve got to brand yourself, you’ve got to produce three lines of clothing a year, you’ve got to be in all these fashion shows. So you’re really on a treadmill—a fashion treadmill—and nobody gives you permission to step off of it. But you don’t want to suffer burnout, because then you’ll lose your inspiration or your vision about what you’re doing.

I took a year off, and then in 2012, I came back and started making things again. It was almost back to square one, where I was in a little 20-by-20-foot studio, like the longhouse in South Surrey from when I was married, and that’s where it all began. I felt like I was back in that space again where I’m creating out of my own home studio and pulling fabric out of a back room. Social media was booming. And I was putting [my designs] out there and only doing the Santa Fe [Indian Market] and some new markets.

Fashion is all about perception and how people perceive themselves. But it’s also a perception about who you are as a person and what drives you. Do people want to wear your clothes because of what you stand for? My clients basically followed me. They came through and supported me throughout these last ten years of not having a brick-and-mortar store, which I found to be inspiring, because that’s why we do things.

Number one, for me, is satisfying a customer and making that person feel like

I’ve given them more than what they paid for or expected. It’s about how they look in one of my garments. They feel fantastic.

That, for me, is the biggest satisfaction and the reason why I do what I do, and I was able to continue that. Now, I’ve set up my own couturière studio in my home.

IY: Your career is also unique because you’ve managed to create cross-border recognition, by being so visible here in British Columbia and in Southeast Alaska, but also in the general American public psyche as well.

DG: You know, my whole life and career have been [spent] as a cross-border artist, businessperson, and Native person.

IY: What made you first go to SWAIA? How did it first hit your radar?

DG: Santa Fe Indian Market is important to so many artists and particularly the Southwest region and has supported families for a hundred years. It was not an easy market to get into because I’m Alaska Native living in Canada. So the perception of me was that I was Canadian NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 53

PROFILE

“The next journey in my career could be to teach.” and, at that time, they didn’t allow any Canadians into the market. I did the fringe market and hotels for many years.

Then the directors changed at SWAIA and, somehow, they realized, Oh, she’s an American. It really wasn’t that long ago that I’ve been doing the actual market, about 10 years out of 25.

The benefit for me was not the clientele, which happens automatically, but it was camaraderie and collaboration with other artists. I gained solid relationships in Santa Fe. I could almost consider Santa Fe like a second home. It just felt like you were coming home again to a very familiar place.

IY: I know you have a lot going on right now. What else are you working on these days?

DG: Where do I begin? In March 2020 I was awarded the Katrin H. Lamon

Fellowship at the School for Advanced Research to start writing my memoir.

This [memoir] was going to be my project and then the pandemic broke out, and we really had to think fast about how to make my business survive. That became the project. I started to make face masks through Zoom calls to my [fabric] suppliers here [in Vancouver]. My project became a way to think about how artists survive this. It really was that sense of survival. Who’s going to make it through this as an artist and keep a lifestyle that we’re used to?

IY: The memoir has now turned into what will become a book, short video, and a traveling retrospective exhibition featuring the Museum 2020 Collection, of 35 to 45 designs created over the span of your career. It will be hosted by the Haida Gwaii Museum in 2024, and the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Museum of the American Indian have expressed interest.

DG: Now there’s an opportunity to photograph the Museum 2020 Collection up in Haida Gwaii’s sacred village sites [Gwaii Haanas]. We will produce a 20-minute video as well as photographs for the

book. I don’t want the book to be about Dorothy Grant so much. It really is about pioneering Native fashion back in the ’80s—about hurdles and the perceptions about Native fashion at the time, because it was scary.

The show will already have been written with, of course, the video, where I’m speaking over these incredible scenes.

It’s educating the public about Haida history, Haida art, and our survival through the last 150 years of smallpox and other sorts of things that have happened within First Nations communities. And now this pandemic! So it’s really about survival, how I’ve done it through fashion.

[Museums] are extremely excited, because I am writing the content. It’s not coming from a kind of colonial viewpoint, from an anthropological viewpoint. It’s coming from me as an artist.

There’s one more thing to add. I have been asked to be the first Bill Reid Scholarship Fellow at Simon Fraser University, which started September 1. It goes through one whole semester. They have this library that George MacDonald created about all things Haida: every photograph he had taken over the years, all of those slides that made up the books that he’s written—it’s all there.1 It will be a resource for me to go in and study whatever I choose. I’d like to use that time to build more inspiration for doing more design work but also to add more content to the Museum 2020 project based on what I’m going to be studying.

IY: Can you tell me about the hat-making course you taught this summer?

DG: I taught in Hydaburg, Alaska, which is where I was born. [The Hydaburg Cooperative Association] reached out to me through their administration and said: “Dorothy we have this funding available for artists to come in and teach. Do you have something that you could offer?” At the time I was making, and I still am making, felt hats. I said, "Absolutely. I can teach my own people first!”

1. George F. MacDonald, a Canadian anthropologist whose ethnographic texts focus on the Haida, directed the Canadian Museum of Civilization from 1993 to 1998.

54 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

DOROTHY GRANT

I did a lot of preparation for it.

We had to order the hat frames from a guy in Juneau. He made them on a lathe according to my dimensions, which was different than what he already had for other cedar bark and spruce root weavers. Then I ordered what are called the hoods, or hat blanks, from a milliner supplier in New York and had them shipped. Everything was there when I got [to Hydaburg], including these ten eager students. I didn’t want anyone to walk away without what they had finished.

And they did. They all finished in four days! I was really impressed with the students. They were like sponges. I was very pleased.

IY: What was the sort of age range of your students?

DG: The youngest was 18 or 17. She was just finishing high school. She didn’t think she could do it. And I just said: “Of course you can. If you’ve got two hands, you can do it.” And too, a 69-year-old woman. I taught them, throughout the five days that I was with them, that you can make a living out of this. We didn’t get into a lot of the business aspects of it, but I can also teach all of that with people. I think the next journey in my career could be to teach. I have put it out there to a few other people and places. We’ll see who brings me in.

IY: Did students do their own designs, or did you come with designs for them to apply?

DG: I came prepared with some designs for them to apply. There were about five or six who took my designs. I had ten prepared. And three of them worked all night on their own designs. That was really, really nice. Just a lot of pride in the work, you know? It was very satisfying for me.

IY: I heard you’re developing a new website?

DG: I’ve added another dimension to my business with a newly released virtual Dorothy Grant Art Gallery. This gallery features the finest of Northwest Coast art. On my site, I feature high-end artworks such as glass sculptures, textiles, masks, jewelry, and original paintings. I’m excited about this new release, because it allows me to support other artists and promote their art. Many of my own textiles and glassworks are featured.

above New York Swing Coat, 1950s–inspired coat with short bell sleeves, high collar neckline, and one silver Raven button closure, polyester crepe, acetate lining, red silk threads, part of the Feastware collection. opposite Limited DG Facial Mask, 2020, cotton, silk, double layers with an open insert pocket for a filter, elastic bands.

Ten percent of revenue from all sales are donated to Battered Women’s Support Services.

Image courtesy of the Royal BC Museum and Archives, Victoria.

DOROTHYGRANT.COM DOROTHYGRANTARTGALLERY.COM NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 55

PROFILE

Comanche Printmaker, Musician & Educator

JOHN HITCHCOCK

By Dustin Tahmahkera, PhD (Comanche)

B

ORN IN 1967 in the Comanche Nation capital of Lawton, Oklahoma, John Hitchcock earned a BFA from Cameron University and an MFA in printmaking and photography from Texas Tech University. For the past 20 years, he has served on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he is an artist and professor and recently wrapped up a five-year stint as associate dean of the arts. Hitchcock has exhibited his artwork around the globe, from Tulsa, Minneapolis, and New York, to Italy on the occasion of the 54th Venice Biennale, as well as in China, England, South Africa, and elsewhere. He also has been an artist in residence in Argentina, Belgium, China, and Italy. Constantly creating and innovating art through printmaking, painting, music, and other media, Hitchcock is an inspirational visual artist and musician whose work humbly honors those who have inspired him.

Among his recent works is Bury the Hatchet, a multimedia art installation and album of historical and contemporary intercultural soundscapes fused from Hitchcock’s old cassette recordings of family interviews and songs mixed with new musical compositions by Hitchcock, soprano Caitlin Mead, and the band Nate Meng and the Stolen Sea in Madison. Bury the Hatchet moves toward, and beyond, its namesake. To “bury the hatchet,” in conventional understanding, is to make peace.

At first glance, the album title suggests cliché and stereotype.

At first listen, the album carries far more depth from Hitchcock and his Native and non-Native collaborators. Bury the Hatchet challenges how listeners hear, and mishear, the stories, songs, and sounds of Kiowa and Comanche peoples and geographies.

Through original arrangements with guitars, piano, synthesizer, and other instruments, paired with intergenerational Kiowa and Comanche songs, stories from Hitchcock’s family recordings, and an invited recording of a Comanche prayer by the late Juanita Pahdopony (Comanche, 1947–2020), Bury the Hatchet includes more than 90 lush minutes of colliding sounds, such as hearing old Native stories or powwow songs layered with Hitchcock’s pedal steel, lap steel, and electric guitars, all coexisting together to tell a contemporary story of family, cultural healing, history, and the future.

To illustrate, the track “Jimmy Creek (A Comanche Story)” features steel guitar, clarinet, and bass leading into a 1978 recording of Hitchcock’s grandfather Johnny Reid retelling a story he heard from Old Man Toheen, a Comanche elder, in 1926 about where Comanches camped and how they used everything from hunted buffalo. The story stops and the instruments continue as the track moves into an old Kiowa powwow song recorded in 1996. In the track “Star House-Set’tainte Song,” Reid 56 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

extends the narrative by quoting Toheen talking of Comanche women as “really smart” who countered others’ perceptions of them as wild Indians. “People say, ‘Oh, they were just running around and all that,’ but women folks were setting and tanning hides” to make “wonderful” tipis, among many other tasks. From Toheen to Reid in the 1920s, Reid to Hitchcock in the late 1970s, Hitchcock to listeners now, the story travels through generations to set the record straight.

Hitchcock and I recently visited on Zoom, where we talked further about his aesthetic elders and teachers of influence and their lasting imprint on his work, including Bury the Hatchet and new work in these pandemic times.

DT: Who are your aesthetic elders when it comes to creating your art?

JH: I like that: “aesthetic elders.” We’re going to start with my kaku, my grandmother Peggy Pohocsucut Reid. Grandma was probably the first to help me with learning how to draw. When I was a little kid, we’d all sit around at the table. There was this room, the south room, in Grandma and Grandpa’s house with a beading table. It was set up with her beads lined up in little brown pill bottles and beads spread everywhere. She’d have her needles out, sitting there working. Mom would drop me

JOHN HITCHCOCK

off in the morning, and I spent all day at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. She’d be there working and hand me an old paper bag. She would tear off a piece of it and say, “I want you to draw me a design.” She’d hand me some pencils and then eventually Mom bought those little cheap matte color pencils. Grandma had a bunch of them too, and then I had my own set there. She would ask me to design a shape. I would ask, “What shape?” And she showed me a bunch of beadwork and regalia. She’d say, “I want you to look at that and just draw from it.” So, I would

draw from it. And then she’d say, “I want you to go outside and draw flowers.” So, I’m outside drawing flowers.

I come back in, and Grandpa says, “Hey, you want a workingman sandwich?”

He said it’s for when you’re working. I’m thinking, I’m drawing flowers. All right, I’m working. So, he’d pour honey or syrup on white bread and hand it to me. I’d eat the sandwich and be out there drawing.

Then I’d come back in and Grandma would look at the drawings. She’d give me a critique. Like: “Oh, that looks good.

Maybe you should put some more leaves

above She Scattered Her Beads on the Table, 2020, acrylic paint and serigraphy on wooden panel, 30 × 30 × 2 in. opposite John Hitchcock.

Photo: Slikati Photography, Missoula, Montana. All images courtesy of the artist.

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explain Comanche colors. I remember once, years later, asking if she could bead me a guitar strap when I was playing in metal and rock bands. I had designed it and said I wanted it to be black. She said no because Comanches don’t use black. I said, “Oh, come on, please.” And she said, “Okay, I'll do it for you.” So, she made one, but she sneaked in all these other color beads. A lot of yellow and blue and turquoise.

DT: Are there other early influences?

above Detail of Buffalo Head, part of Manifest Destiny: The Peacemaker, 2019, installation with serigraphy and taxidermied bison head, Missoula Art Museum. Photo: Slikati Photography, Missoula, Montana. opposite Installation view o f M a n i fe st D e st i ny : Th e Peacemaker, part of Bury the Hatcher: Prayer for My P'ahBe, 2020, neon and print installation at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon.

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in there. You should go draw some more.”

So, I’d go draw some more and come back. Then she’d look at that drawing and say: “Good. Now, I want you to make one up.” So, I’d make up a drawing.

In designing back then, I was learning about all that we do as professors now, or as you learn in art school.

I realized it’s instilled already within the culture I grew up in. The whole idea of observation, the beauty of looking at what is there and what’s not there, the looking at shape and line and color, the symbolism within color as she would

JH: Going around with Grandma and Grandpa, I would see Woogie Watchetaker [Comanche 1916–1993].

You’d see Woogie’s work everywhere. He lived not far from us. Also, the Kiowa [Six], Oscar Howe [Yanktonai Dakota, 1915–1983]. Then in middle school in Elgin, Oklahoma, we started to have guest teachers. One of them was Juanita Pahdopony [also a Tahmahkera] and she brought in Cynthia Clay [Comanche].

Also, Weckeah Bradley [Comanche, 1920–2014]. My first visiting artists.

Then Juanita started teaching art at Elgin High School, and I was so excited to take art again. We discussed Oscar Howe [Yanktonai Dakota], T.C. Cannon [Kiowa/Caddo, 1946–1978], and Fritz Scholder [Luiseño, 1937–2005]. Then in college at Cameron University, I heard about Edgar Heap of Birds [Southern Cheyenne]. Katherine Liontas-Warren was my professor there. Jaune Quickto-See Smith [Salish/Cree/Shoshone] was a really big influence and mentor still to this day. In grad school, influential artists include James Luna [Payómkawichum/ Ipi, 1950–2018] and Guillermo GómezPeña [Mexican-American].

DT: How have these aesthetic elders and where you grew up inspired your art, including your multimedia installation and album Bury the Hatchet?

JH: Bury the Hatchet brings together printmaking, installation, performance art, and music, which I’ve been playing for many years. It brings together land, language, and visual symbols of the Great Plains, especially where I’m from in the Wichita Mountains and its relationship to Fort Sill and tribal lands. I grew up going to Grandma and Grandpa’s. They would

JOHN HITCHCOCK

have powwows on their dance grounds every summer, on Comanche land. The multimedia aspects of Bury the Hatchet relate back to the powwow and community. If you think about the powwow circle, you’ve got an audience that sits around. You’ve got the drum, which is the heartbeat of the people. You've got the singers, which are singing the songs that carry the voice too, to the spirit, and then the spirit of the people [who] dance around the drum. Head lady dancer, head man dancer, and the other dancers. Then you’ve got the administration like the emcee and the arena director. Everybody’s got to know their role to make things happen and make community.

Another multimedia aspect of Bury the Hatchet and its influence from back home is my use of neon to show the buffalo. That has a lot to do with going to Comanche chief Quanah Parker’s Star House in Eagle Park in Cache, Oklahoma.

There’s a giant sign in Eagle Park where

all the neons have been shot out by .22s, but the sign remains. It says Indian souvenir and has all these relics. Also, on the way to Albuquerque every summer to visit family, we’d see more neon. It would always be some stoic Indian or other stereotypical imagery of Native people. What’s this neon about? How does it function within a visuality and how does it function as a new marker of Manifest Destiny? You’ve got this taking, controlling, putting the markers in. It’s a new flag of commerce being sold as a souvenir, where taken land is repositioned with bright, colorful lights. The land has become a commodified identity; so, where do we go from here?

DT: For Bury the Hatchet, how would you describe what you’re doing with the neon and other visual symbols?

Are you rerouting the neon to make it something more identifiable to you and Indigenous audiences?

JH: They resonate with my growing up around a community with the power and importance of light and its ability to transfer things. Being at a powwow is one thing, but at a peyote meeting or other spiritual event, there’s a gathering of people who are bringing some form of light that shines on all of us. So, I’m thinking about how can you take the neon and grab it back. We’re taking the neon back to rethink the process and then tell our own stories. It becomes something that brings us to a better space that’s healthful and helpful rather than hurtful. The hurtful is in the souvenir and the stoic Indian. My use of neon buffalo is saying, “This is a very important component of who we are and to being centered like the drum.” That’s where the best part of beauty and light comes from.

And here it is in the form of a visual in this contemporary age.

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DT: Is grabbing it back and telling our own stories part of what the title Bury the Hatchet is getting at?

JH: It’s one of those stereotypical phrases I’ve heard over and over, and I hesitated to use it at first. But then at a work meeting, someone said, “Let’s bury the hatchet.” I’m always sketching during meetings, so I just wrote “bury the hatchet” and thought this is odd. I asked them about it, and they started apologizing and asked if I was offended. I told them they seemed to offend themselves with saying phrases like that in typical conversation.

It’s good to ask questions and always have the curiosity to look at all sides, which is what I try to do with my work.

So, when they said, “Bury the hatchet,” I’m like, it’s time to go back and revisit a lot of our history and untold tribal stories and beliefs and start to really work with it. That’s when I started to bring in the neon and the stories from recordings of Grandma and Grandpa that I made back in the 1980s when I was playing in metal and rock bands and leaving home for the first time. I was trying to open up a doorway for others to hear this and not knowing when, but I remember Grandpa saying that “You’ll know when to use these recordings and what to do with them.” It was a reel-to-reel of Grandpa telling a story of Toheen, the 101-year-old man he met at the Indian hospital. I also have a lot of Grandpa's cassettes and recordings of him and Grandma singing. These are our stories and songs from older generations. They’ve been recorded, singing songs which were passed down. The fact that we’re able to retell and reposition ourselves at every step is crucial as we survive.

DT: What about your new work during this pandemic?

above, top Detail of Manifest Destiny: The Peacemaker, 2020, neon light, Portland Museum of Art, Oregon. above, bottom Detail of Manifest Destiny: The Peacemaker, 2019, neon light, Missoula Art Museum.

Photo: Slikati Photography, Missoula, Montana. opposite Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever, 2020, serigraphy, acrylic paint, and dye on paper, 22 × 15 in.

JH: I was starting to go to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West and look at their archives and others’ archives, but I realized I’ve got my own archives, and I started to examine them more closely during COVID. I have a collection of my grandmother’s beadwork in the house and looking at it and the belongings of my family feels comforting—like home. So, I’m looking at what belongs to my family, starting to draw them and work from them, and kind of do what Grandma wanted me to do to begin with: to look at these, observe them, think about them, and then create something new. It’s like being at her table. She’s still here, but she’s here in another way. So having her to be able to speak through the voice of the objects that belong to her, that belong to us, I can now look at them and come up with new patterns, new ways of thinking and of looking at life around me.

I also can prepare myself, knowing that there’s another round to this, and that this is one step of it. Each step of the way, hopefully Grandma has had my back, and now I can have someone else’s back and help them as they create something. So, there’s a continuation of learning and teaching and of helping others by first helping ourselves to have the right health to do that. And COVID has been an eye opener to realize that self-care and self-worth are crucial for existence and taking care of yourself, your mind and your health, as we go forth and honor those before us and honor the history of what elders like Grandma and Grandpa knew.

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JOHN HITCHCOCK

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Seneca/Tuscarora Painter, Printmaker & Sculptor

GEORGE LONGFISH

By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

W

OR K I NG I N H I S S T U D I O, G e o r g e Longfish paints an homage to Jim Thorpe, one of the greatest athletes in world history. Titled Jimmy, the work presents Thorpe, or Wathohuk (Sac & Fox, 1887–1953) in a Canton Bulldogs football uniform against a background of vibrant patterns. Overlaid text commemorates his birth and death dates and the records for which he is best known: gold medals in both the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. Thorpe was stripped of his medals after the committee learned he had previously been a paid baseball player, but these were reinstated posthumously.

Known for his rainbow palette, integration of text, and tongue-incheek humor, Longfish has produced paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, and several short films. Today he prefers acrylic on canvas. He has had dozens of solo exhibitions, including a 2007–08 show at the Montana Museum of Art and Culture, curated by Manuela WellOff-Man. Surveying Longfish’s output, one may be surprised to learn that he initially was known as an “angry Native American artist.” As he puts it, “I was the bad guy. I was classified as a young angry ethnic artist. I just had to laugh.” On the contrary, in light of his background, it is surprising that so much of his work is playful—even whimsical.

Longfish was born on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Ontario on August 22, 1942. When he was five, Longfish and his younger brother were placed in the Thomas Indian School on the Cattaraugus

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Reservation in western New York.

Usually the product of a joint effort by governments and Christian churches, hundreds of these Indian boarding schools were established across the United States and Canada in the 19th century. Based on military and correctional systems, boarding schools for Indigenous children aimed for complete cultural genocide. Severe abuse and death from neglect, punishment, and disease were widespread.

Longfish survived Thomas for ten years until the school closed in 1957.

From there he took a train to Chicago, where his mother lived. He describes the moment of his arrival: “Until then my experience of city life was [limited to] Buffalo, New York, where you could walk down Main Street in ten minutes.

When I walked out of the train station in Chicago, I was in total shock at the size of the city. I’d never seen anything like it.”

GEORGE LONGFISH

With some exposure to art at the Thomas Indian School, Longfish knew that was what he wanted to study. A student teacher at Tuley High School in Chicago introduced Longfish to the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). There he studied painting, sculpture, and film, earning a BFA in 1966 and an MFA in 1972. Chicago is known as a holdout for figurative artists when Abstract Expressionism was the predominant trend in New York. Longfish became well versed in European art and history.

As a student and early in his career his work was not about his cultural or ethnic heritage, yet critics projected “Indianness” onto it anyway. His turn to Native American history and culture came after studying Armenian artist Arshile Gorky (ca. 1904–1948), whose early work was deeply autobiographical.

When Longfish completed his education at the AIC, Neil Parsons (Blackfeet) was director of the American Indian art graduate program at the University of Montana in Missoula.

Parsons invited Longfish to teach there after completing his degrees.

“When I walked into the university, Neil announced he was leaving, so I became the head of the department. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing,” Longfish recalls with a laugh. He recruited new MFA students, worked to secure studio space for students and brought in outside lecturers; however, the program’s funding ended, and he was abruptly fired after his first year.

Fortunately, artist and famed World War II code talker C.N. Gorman (Navajo, 1907–1998) was retiring from the University of California at Davis, and the Native American studies department invited Longfish to replace him. He taught Native American studies there for three decades and directed the art museum founded in Gorman’s honor for 22 years—a position now held by artist Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (Navajo/ Seminole/Muscogee). “When I first started out, I was doing ten exhibits a year.” He estimates he organized over

200 shows, both group and solo. “It was intense. We had full house openings where people would come just to see what the Indian artists were doing.” Beyond the Gorman, California Governor Jerry Brown invited Longfish to select work for his office in Sacramento, where he exhibited more than 85 artists. In a 1994 interview, Longfish recalled his greatest satisfaction during his tenure at the Gorman was seeing young Native artists discover and reclaim their culture. “They begin to ... see the lies that are said about [Native] cultures. They begin to publicly talk about that.”1 Longfish chuckles when I ask if he was ever involved with the American Indian Movement (AIM), which was

“I was the bad guy.

I was classified as a young angry ethnic artist. I just had to laugh.”

above Jimmy, 2021, work in progress, acrylic, mixed media on unstretched canvas. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite Chief Running Two Wheels of Davisville, 2007, photograph self-portrait.

1. Lawrence Abbott, ed., I Stand in the Center of the Good: Interviews with Contemporary Native Artists (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 171.

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above As Above So Below, 1999, acrylic on canvas, 71½ × 53 in.

Image courtesy of the artist. opposite A Fish in Hand is Worth Two in the Bush, 1987, acrylic on paper.

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founded when he was a sophomore in college. “Peripherally. I was picked up and put in jail for four days. AIM bailed me out. I met all of them: Dennis Banks, Russell Means …” He describes his work from the seventies to the nineties as more politically charged. Later, he created several works in response to the 1990 Canadian Oka Crisis but does not consider himself an activist artist.

“When I moved to California in 1973, I had the biggest group of Native peers who were making art,” Longfish shares. “Jaune [Quick-To-See Smith] showed up at my house with her people.

We became friends and put together several exhibitions.” These included

Frank LaPeña (Nomtipom Wintu, 1937– 2019), Brian Tripp (Karuk), and Jean LaMarr (Northern Paiute/Achomawi).

Many of these artists had their first major exhibitions at the Gorman, organized by Longfish. He also connected with G. Peter Jemison (Seneca) in New York, who invited Longfish and QuickTo-See Smith to bring exhibitions there.

Reflecting on his work as a director, Longfish says, “When I took over the gallery my goal was to make a space for contemporary Native American artists.”

The C.N. Gorman remains one of two museums, along with the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Arts, dedicated to contemporary Native art.

Longfish speaks with humility.

His influence and contributions to promoting Native American art have not yet been fully recognized. Quick-To-See Smith tells me in an interview, “George is like a brother to me,” and eagerly shares details of his accomplishments and generosity.

Together they organized contemporary Native conferences: one with Atlatl Native Arts Network, during author and arts advocate Erin Younger’s tenure as director, and later Confluences of Tradition and Change, which Smith describes as: “our first grown-up conference with a keynote and artist panels. ... George Horse Capture, Bob Haozous, and Bob Boyer were speakers. We thought we were movers and shakers— that contemporary Native art has come into its own. Little did we know that it would be another 30 plus years before there was change or some acceptance in the [mainstream] art world.”

Quick-To-See Smith also puts Longfish’s advocacy in perspective: “At that time there were no exhibit spaces of note [on the West coast] for Native American artists. ... The Gorman Museum became the most prestigious exhibit space in California. It became so because of George’s big heart and willingness to grow into this important role with a ton of hard work on a pitiful budget.”

Longfish’s early studio work was influenced by hard-edge abstraction

GEORGE LONGFISH

and basket weaving patterns. Becoming a father motivated him to represent his children through symbols, such as feathers, or more figuratively. Since the 1980s he has increasingly drawn from popular culture and often appropriates historical photographs of Indigenous people. Several times he has reproduced a ca. 1858 image of Pawnee warrior Petalashara, who was also the subject for T.C. Cannon’s Collector #5 (1975), as seen in As Above So Below (1997).

In this striking image Petalashara (ca.

1823–1874) wears an impressive bear claw necklace and holds a pipe. Next to this portrait, Longfish painted a large cheeseburger, suggesting Indigenous history and culture are viewed as equally consumable, like fast food. He references the long legacy of broken treaties in overlaying words such as truth, honor, and lies. Petalashara also appears in The End of the Innocence (1991–92) next to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the latter representing Longfish’s Turtle clan connection.

Some titles of his works reference popular songs by the Beatles, Johnny Cash, and other musicians: Take These Broken Wings and Learn to Fly Again (1986), Don’t F— with a Boy Named Sioux (1990). The latter is a mixed-media work on paper, part of his War Shirt series, and was featured on a cover of Wíčazo Ša Review. Longfish listens to all genres of music. The End of the Innocence is a large triptych inspired by Don Henley’s song, which Longfish describes as a “wake up call for artists.” The work was made for Gerald McMaster’s exhibition Indigena: Contemporary Native Perspectives in Canadian Art (1992) at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History), as a response to the Columbus quincentennial. “The work does not wander that far from the music,” he says. Longfish also finds motivation in movies, such as The Wizard of Oz (1939), because the narrative is about finding home.

Two of his paintings were included in The Decade Show: Frameworks of

Identity in the 1980s, which remains an important milestone exhibition for its focus on art’s connection with current events and its integration of many Indigenous artists (Edgar Heap of Birds, G. Peter Jemison, James Luna, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Kay WalkingStick, and Longfish) with more mainstream artists (Hans Haacke, Alfredo Jaar, Bruce Nauman, and Lorna Simpson).

The titles of his works, A Fish in the Hand is Worth Two in the Bush (1987) and Goodbye Norma Jean, the Chief is Dead (1988) weave together references from popular and Indigenous culture.

Speaking about the latter, Longfish has said, “Just as Norma Jean’s true identity and personality was subsumed within the mythic persona of Marilyn Monroe, so too are the actual identities of Native people often subsumed within the mythic notion of ‘the chief.’” The Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, the New Museum, and the Studio Museum in Harlem organized The Decade Show in 1990.

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above Goodbye Norma Jean, The Chief is Dead, 1988, acrylic on canvas, 86× 57½ in.

All images, unless otherwise noted, courtesy of the Montana Museum of Art and Culture, Missoula, Montana. opposite Thunder Stick Mask No. 2, mixed media, 28½ × 8½ × 8½ in., collection of Richard Goldwach.

Six works by Longfish are on permanent display in the Shield Library on the University of California, Davis, campus, including a lithograph triptych titled Modern Times (1994). The left panel reproduces a photograph of the artist against a background of skyscrapers.

Red text reads 20th Century/Tribal/ Seneca/Warrior/Artist/Healer. In the center, a jar of Seneca brand applesauce is surrounded by the words Progress, 2. Abbott, I Stand in the Center of the Good, 169.

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Acculturation, and Assimilation. On the right, blue text “America/White Bread/ Mom/Apple pie/The American Dream” overlays an image of a fancy dancer in regalia. With this work Longfish grapples with the dissonance of having a Native American identity that does not align with dominant settler-colonial ideals of “an American,” yet also how these cultures collide and mix.

Integrating text into his work connects him to modernist painters such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braques, and more recent artists like Jasper Johns, who also preferred stenciled letters.

Conceptually, however, his use of both politically charged and playful phrases relates him more to Quick-To-See Smith and Edgar Heap of Birds.

Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses? (2001) juxtaposes five Native warriors with text fragments, most prominently Freedom of Religion and Ghost Dance Wounded Knee. With this painting (later produced as a digital print), Longfish questions the meaning of the first amendment, which was not applied to Indigenous religions in federal bans against numerous practices. This is especially ironic considering people seeking freedom of religion founded the United States.

Many times when working with images of historical figures, Longfish has felt impeded in his progress until he asks their spirit for permission to paint them. In Lawrence Abbott’s interview with the artist, Longfish recalled his mother teaching him about the spirit world. She told him, “Be observant.

See when people come in, who comes in with them. There’s one person who came in; well, who are those other people that came in?”2 While primarily a painter, Longfish has created several masks from cloth and assorted materials. His Montana retrospective featured Thunder Stick Mask No. 1 and Thunder Stick Mask No. 2. He crafted both from blue denim with beaded designs and spaces to hold bullets. Thunder Stick Mask No.

GEORGE LONGFISH

1 is decorated with silver stars and elk teeth. Thunder Stick Mask No. 2 features lightning bolts on the sides and a flower on the forehead, with strands of hair creating fringe along the bottom.

Later work such as Blood Line or Accepted Federal Government Standard for Blood Quantum (2005) stands apart from his known painterly and expressive approach, closer to On Kawara or John Baldessari than Elizabeth Murray or Richard Diebenkorn. This painting consists of six panels painted deep red with black text marking a spectrum of measurements from Red Man to 1/2 Breed to 1/16 Blood. This work speaks to illusions of racial or ethnic purity and imposed systems of Othering, which are serious issues; however, many Native viewers find this work humorous, even having their photo taken by their supposed blood quantum.

Longfish says, “Sometimes I find even if some work is angry ... people can still laugh at it.” Working at the intersection of scathing critique and humor connects him with artists such as James Luna (Payómkawichum/Ipi, 1950–2018) and Larry McNeil (Tlingit/Nisga'a).

“Humor is my saving grace,” Longfish explains, adding that he relies on humor for a sense of control over his life. “When the younger people started getting angry, I thought, I don’t have to do that anymore.” Recently he made a painting about a stationary bicycle purchase. The assembly instructions inspired him to use the drawings in a painting titled, The Aboriginal and His Iron Horse. As Molly McGlennen (Ojibwe descent) writes, “Humor challenges the rage in order to provide healing.”3 When asked about what artists interest him now, Longfish asks rhetorically, “How long can you hold on to Fritz Scholder? Jeffrey Gibson is doing some exciting work.” Longfish retired to Maine, where he maintains an active studio. Currently, he is reading a monograph on Robert Indiana. Throughout

his career Longfish has mentored many artists in the next generation, including Duane Slick (Meskwaki/Ho-Chunk).

The advances for Native art in the last two decades, from an increasingly robust discourse at conferences and in publications to the integration of Indigenous artists into the most prestigious collections and more solo exhibitions build on the foundations laid

by Longfish and his generation. These

elders model how truly great artists don’t only create aesthetic objects, but also invest significant time and energy in advocacy for the field by creating opportunities for their peers and emerging artists. Working as an activist, director, writer, educator, and mentor, in addition to time invested as a studio artist, demonstrates amazing agility and passion. And it helps to have a sense of humor.

3. Molly McGlennan, “Text-Messaging Prayers: George Longfish and His Art of Communication” in Visualities: Perspectives on Contemporary American Indian Film and Art, ed. Denise K. Cummings (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011), 216.

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Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate/Cherokee Nation Poet, Educator, Historian & Textile Artist

GWEN WESTERMAN, PhD

By Staci Golar

O

N GWEN WESTERMAN’S website, she shares that she has “worked as a proofreader, a waitress, an editor, a sandwich delivery driver, a technical writer, and a teacher”—a refreshingly real way to describe oneself.1 With a little more digging, however, one quickly discovers that Westerman’s professional life has been far from conventional. Her writing, artistic practice, and teaching have countered one-sided interpretations of historical events and caused people to pause and examine the current world in new ways. She is someone who has stayed deeply rooted to the land she comes from and to her culture and language, while staying genuinely curious about everything else around her.

We s t e r m a n’s f at h e r, C h r i s Westerman (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota), and her mother, Mary Chuculate (Cherokee Nation), met in trade school at Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Nations University), in Lawrence, Kansas.

Westerman grew up in Wichita and graduated high school at 17. She became a chemistry major at Oklahoma State University, having always loved math and science. A first-generation college student, she had no intention of teaching at a college or changing her major, but an elective class, the Second American Literature Survey, taught by Dr. John Milstead, changed her trajectory forever.

“The Second Survey was post–Civil War to contemporary times,” Westerman explains.2 “[Milstead] knew everything about everything. We would talk about a poem or a novel or short story, and he would fill in what was happening historically, what was happening culturally, how influences from other places and other people were working within this circle

for continuing education. Soon she had written her dissertation on computer-human dialogue and earned a doctorate in English from the University of Kansas. After several years in corporate communications, she moved to become an English professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato (MSU), where she would discover a direct, centuries-old connection to the land there and to one of the most important historical events that ever happened in Minnesota.

of writers that we were reading. And I thought, Wow, I want to be like him, to be able to understand the power of words and that they are more than just type on a page. There is all of this other background behind it: things that are happening in society, culture, history, science, astronomy, and everything. So, I changed my major to English my senior year,” she laughs. “And I have never regretted it. I had so much science already; I was an automatic fit for the technical communication focus of the English department. It has served me well, that curiosity. I don’t know what the opposite of tunnel vision is, but I still have that.”

Westerman earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English from Oklahoma State University and then moved to Kansas City to work as a technical writer, documenting computer systems for a large financial services company. There she decided to pursue a doctoral degree, bolstered by the company perk that helped pay

1. “Gwen Westerman: Writer. Artist. Teacher,” accessed August 2021, web.

2. All information, unless otherwise noted, is from Gwen Westerman in discussion with the author, August 6, 2021.

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IN AN INTERVIEW with journalist John Biewen on the radio show This American Life, Westerman says that when she took the job at MSU, her father and uncle said, “‘Well, we'll see how long you last there.’ But they never did explain why they had questions about whether I would stay here or not.”

Then, on December 26, 1993, she and a Native friend at the university, Kimberly Summerfield, decided to check out an event. Her friend said, “There are Indians coming. Let's go see what they're doing.” Westerman agreed and her friend came to pick her up. They ended up being late to the ceremony and stood in the back for prayers and songs, still not realizing what exactly it was for. Then it was over.

Kimberly and I got back in the car, and she was driving, and she started to pull around the corner of the building. And I don't know if your parents drove fast on backcountry roads when you were small, up and down the hills—we used to love it when my parents would do that because you’d go over the top of the hill, and then your stomach would kind of come up. But as we rounded the corner of the building, my stomach came up just like that. And I started to sob. And Kimberly stopped the car and

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said, “What's wrong? What's wrong?”

And I told her I had no idea what was wrong. It was incredible sadness.

I didn’t really say anything to anybody about that until a few days later when I called my uncle and

explained to him what had happened.

After I finished my story, he was quiet for a long time. Then he finally said, “Well, my girl, you’re connected to that place. You are physically and spiritually connected to that place.”3

above Waci Au (Song for the Horses), 2012, hand-quilted cotton. opposite Gwen Westerman, 2021. All images courtesy of the artist.

3. Gwen Westerman, “479: Little War on the Prairie | Act One,” interview by John Biewen, This American Life, November 23, 2021, audio, 5:57, web.

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It turns out that Westerman and her friend had arrived at the end of an annual ceremony in Mankato that commemorates the public hanging of 38 Dakota warriors that day in 1862.

Ordered by President Abraham Lincoln, it was the largest one-day mass execution in US history and marked the end of the US–Dakota War of 1862. A military commission had initially sentenced 303 Dakota to death, the trials of which were handled unfairly and with sparse evidence. Lincoln commuted 264 of those but ended up approving 39 others. One was later spared.

After this profound experience, Westerman dove in to learn all that she could about her connection to this time and place. She discovered that Taoyateduta (His Red Nation), known as Little Crow in English, the Dakota chief credited with leading the uprising in 1862, was the brother of her great-greatgreat-great-grandmother Taṡinasapawiŋ.

She learned that another relative, Mazamani, was killed in the last battle of the war, as well. Looking back at the experience with her friend, Westerman felt that the land had recognized her and

essentially reached out and claimed her.

Eventually, Westerman’s research led her to coauthor an award-winning book, Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012), that tells a detailed history of the Dakota people in these homelands—from their creation stories to their forced exile to South Dakota and Nebraska. After the war Congress broke treaties with the Dakota and passed legislation making it illegal for them to live in Minnesota.

Incidentally that law, the Dakota Removal Act of 1863, is still on the federal books.

WESTERMAN CONTINUOUSLY researches history and writes for scholarly publications and books, but her writing isn’t confined to the nonfiction realm.

Her poetry has been published in When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, POETRY magazine, Yellow Medicine Review, New Poets of Native Nations, and several other publications. In September 2021, when Minnesota named her as the state’s poet laureate, she became the first Native American to ever hold the role.

4. Gwen Westerman, Follow the Blackbirds (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013), 29.

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Follow the Blackbirds (Michigan State University Press, 2013) has poems Westerman wrote in English and Dakota.

The title and a poem by the same name reference her grandmother’s advice to follow blackbirds when you’re thirsty, as they will always lead you to water. The official description for the volume reads, “An intense homage to the power of place, this book tells a masterful story of cultural survival and the power of language.” But it also represents, as Westerman notes, a journey “not only of coming home but also a journey with the language.”

“I did not grow up learning either of my parents’ languages,” she remarks. While her grandparents on both sides spoke their first languages, her parents went to boarding schools where Indigenous language was forcibly suppressed. “So, I’ll be a Dakota language learner all the rest of my life,” she says.

Her husband, Glenn Wasicuna (Dakota), is a Dakota language teacher who she first met while taking his classes. Westerman doesn’t believe that having fluency (or not) should hold one back from writing in their Native tongue. When she holds poetry workshops for Native people, she always tells them to use the words in their languages that they know.

The first poem she wrote that incorporated the Dakota language was “Journey.” Composed in 2005, she published it in Follow the Blackbirds.4 Though only five stanzas, it represents the beginning of reclaiming her linguistic roots and serves as an instruction manual of sorts for others to do the same.

WHILE SOME of Westerman’s earliest childhood memories are of writing, she also remembers constantly drawing and making things as a child. Though she didn’t really start sharing her textile art with the public until 2005, her mother and grandmother laid the groundwork for this artistic expression.

“My mother taught me how to sew when I was 10 or 11,” Westerman recalls.

“She had started a dress for me, and she didn’t finish it and didn’t finish it. I got mad and wanted to know what I needed to do so I could wear that dress, and she said, ‘Well then you should just finish it.’ She taught me how to use the sewing

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machine, and I have been making my own clothes ever since.”

“My grandma, my mother’s mom, was a quilter. She never would have considered herself an artist. All the scraps that I had left over from the clothing that I made all through junior high and high school and college I would put in a bag and give to my grandma. She never bought new fabric to make quilts, she always used old clothing or scraps of material. She tried to teach me to quilt.

She would cut out a little cardboard pattern from a cereal box or the cardboard that came with hosiery at the time, and she would cut out each fabric piece one at a time. When she was showing me how to quilt, I had my little piece, and I had my scissors, and I thought, Well, this is ridiculous. I said, ‘Grandma I can fold

this piece of fabric four times and cut out four at a time,’ and she said ‘No! It’ll never fit together right,’ so that was the end of my quilting lesson.”

Westerman has since made up for any lost lessons. Her quilts are now in museum collections and galleries across the United States. Quilting appeals to what she calls her “dinosaur brain,” and her love of organizing. “I’m always categorizing and numbering and piecing things together. That is why I liked physics and organic chemistry and formulas. Quilting to me is the same kind of thing. You have one element here and another element over here and then something new comes out of it,” she says. “I went to the Northern Plains Indian Art Market with a friend of mine in 2003, and that was the first time I had seen quilts exhibited

a b ov e S t a r K n ow l e d g e , 2014, cotton fabric, glass beads, Swarovski crystals in constellations, hand-quilted with metallic thread. opposite Detail of Return to Crow Creek, 2015, hand-quilted cotton, 40 × 41½ in.

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above Owamiyomni (Whirlpool), 2010, hand-dyed and hand-quilted cotton, glass bead and shell embellishments, mounted on stretcher bars, 40 × 36 in. opposite From These Hands, 2009, hand-quilted cotton, floss, fringe, leather, bead, and needle embellishments, 205/8 × 16½ in. This quilt features tracings of the hands of artist Gwen Westerman's grandmother and mother.

as art. My feeling was that quilts were utilitarian, you know? They were not art; they were functional. So, at the Northern Plains Indian Art Market, I saw the quilts of other artists and thought, I can do that.

I went back the next year and entered a star quilt. I thought, What can I do to make mine different? so I put a shadow on it to make it more dimensional, and it won a prize. That opened my eyes to textile art as part of the whole American Indian art community. I think about all of the different ways we make art and quilting is an extension of that.”

While missionaries introduced quilting to Native people, Native people quickly made the medium their own.

The eight-pointed star quilt has become an iconic visual expression in Northern Plains Native communities. It is a symbol of honor, respect, and generosity. “When 72 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

somebody has a major life event, they receive a star quilt,” Westerman says. “If someone gets married, they have a star quilt wrapped around them. If you come back from military service, you get a star quilt. When people pass on, star quilts are brought to the ceremonies and services.

When my uncle Floyd [the well-known actor, musician, and artist Floyd Red Crow Westerman] passed away, I had been in the process of making a quilt for him, so we took it to the cemetery after the funeral service. They put that quilt on top of his coffin because I had made that for him. I wasn’t going to give it to anyone else. He was buried with it. It’s that kind of symbol of respect, honor, and achievement.”

Another of Westerman’s star quilts, Star Knowledge, is now on permanent display at the Minnesota Historical

Society. The vibrant piece is the first thing visitors see when they come into the main exhibit hall of the “Our Home: Native Minnesota” wing. Westerman sewed it in 2014 when she was a Native American artist-in-residence at the historical society. Constellations that appear in the northern sky between January 14 and March 21, which represent the birth dates of her children, are stitched on the quilt using Swarovski crystals. Orion, Gemini, Leo, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Cassiopeia, Aries, and Taurus can be spotted sparkling on the outer, darker portions of the piece. Westerman says, “I always make one extra big diamond when I’m doing a quilt, and then when I have enough, I put those together.” This multicolored star includes a piece of the first quilt she ever made and entered in an art show, as well as pieces from quilts she made for her daughter, son-in-law, father, uncle, daughter’s professor, her professor, and Kris Kristofferson. Westerman’s uncle was a good friend of the singer-songwriter. “I was driving home one day, and my uncle Floyd called and asked, ‘Do you know anybody makes quilts?’ And I thought, Oh my gosh, how can you even ask me that?” she recounts, laughing. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’m sure I can think of somebody, what do you need?’ He wanted someone to make a quilt for Kris, and he wanted it to be kind of tropical colors because Kris lives in Hawaii. I made it, but that was the year my uncle got really ill, so I presented the blanket to Kris on behalf of my uncle Floyd, and my uncle passed away later that December.”

Westerman’s mixed-media piece, Caske’s Pardon, is built around the star quilt design and is now part of an educational resource the Minnesota Historical Society offers about the US–Dakota War of 1862. The Minnesota Historical Society purchased Caske’s Pardon in 2012.

The work is about Caske, or Wicaƞḣpi Waṡtedapi (Dakota), who received a federal pardon. Caske had helped protect a non-Native doctor’s wife during the war, and his name was not on the original list of those to be executed. However, he was still charged with murder and later executed with the rest of the Dakota 38. On Westerman’s piece, his figure is wrapped in a grey blanket and floats in the center of the eight-pointed star, surrounded by an oval shape with words stitched above

GWEN WESTERMAN

and underneath that offer more context.

“I had been to the Denver Art Museum and saw a series of retablos to honor Spanish saints, so I kind of reproduced that idea, but on top of a small star quilt,” Westerman explains. “There are 38 blue glass beads around him, and his Dakota name is stitched underneath. I used sisal to border the oval on the outside and inside, and you see a little of it dropping down, because the men had been hanged with rope. The panel above is the Dakota version and below the English translation of ‘Forgive them for they know not what they do,’ a prayer for those who had executed Caske.”

Another of Westerman’s pieces references the Dakota 38, but this time as a group. Ded Uƞk’uƞpi/We Are Here (2012), comprising four hanging fabric panels, showed at Gustavus Adolphus College’s Hillstrom Museum of Art in St. Peter, Minnesota, in early 2021. The large, gauzy, rayon pieces diverge from Westerman’s stitched and appliquéd work by featuring hand-painted blue figures on white backgrounds. Two of the panels contain ten figures, and the other two contain nine. The see-through nature of the fabric creates layers of depth and shadow since the figurative shapes are hung close together. After it was installed in the gallery, Westerman said the panels would move, apparently from the body heat in the room, both toward observers and then away. She said she did this piece because she “wanted people to know how many 38 really is. It’s an abstract number when we talk about it historically.” However, as the exhibition catalog says, each of these 38 “were fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, and grandfathers who fought to protect their homeland and their people.”5 Westerman’s other textile work includes pictorial quilts and dyed pieces that reference landscapes, cultural stories, personal histories, and sometimes include words. In Buffalo Ridge I, for instance, a bison strolls over Dakota words in the foreground while wind turbines spin in the background. This quilt comments on how the bison have been integral to the Dakota way of life but now their habitat is integral to wind energy. The Dakota

words on the piece come from an old song and when translated to English they say, “My friends, many things are chasing me but I am not afraid because I still live.”6 AS WESTERMAN LOOKS AHEAD, she sits in a place where so many others do right now, somewhere between the known and unknown. She is the director of the Native American Literature Symposium but is unsure if their annual national conference will take place next year due to concerns about COVID19. She is writing a small poem for the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota in Mankato that will accompany a quilt that depicts the four seasons.

Scholarly pieces and a book manuscript are due. Westerman acknowledges that it has been hard to concentrate on creating new artwork, especially when so many shows are postponed, but she is simultaneously thinking ahead to the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Art Market, and how to represent what has happened in the pandemic for a piece she plans to take there. Just like the obligation she feels to create work that shares the difficult things Native people endured in the past, here she feels compelled to document things happening in the present. “We have to respond in some way,” she says thoughtfully, “We have to acknowledge it.”

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5. From These Hands: Fiber Art and Poetry by Gwen Westerman (St. Peter, MN: Hillstrom Museum of Art, 2021), n.p.

6. From These Hands, n.p.

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left Airi Kuikuro (Kuikuro), Kuikuro Monkey, 2018, wood, natural pigments, beeswax, snail shell, 271/2 × 271/2 × 571/2 in., collection of Coleção BEĨ, São Paulo.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA, AND VIRTUAL

The Indigenous Benches of Brazil Fralin Art Museum, University of Virginia, and Coleção BEĨ

T

HE LAST YEAR AND A HALF have been challenging for many reasons, especially for public cultural institutions and social issues. The Indigenous Benches of Brazil is a refreshing exhibition that offers a positive response to the present challenges facing the Indigenous and public arts communities. In the pandemic, digital advocacy couples strongly with online exhibitions. As the Fralin’s banner proclaims upon entering the website, “While the museum is closed, we are getting creative with ways to bring the museum to you!” Benches in Brazil is the latest of several art exhibits the Fralin has put online. Another hybrid exhibit includes The Inside World: Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Memorial Poles, both as a physical exhibit and a digitally available documentary.

The University of Virginia’s Fralin Museum of Art collaborated with the Coleção BEĨ, a collection of BEĨ, a São Paulo–based publisher, to create this exhibition. A third collaborative partner and supplemental source is the Instituto Socioambiental (the Socio-Environmental Institute, or ISA), a Brazilian environmental advocacy NGO founded in 1994.

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The wholly digital Benches of Brazil exhibition includes 118 individually hand-carved benches. The contemporary artists come from 34 different tribal communities in northern and central Brazil. Benches can be ceremonial and convey elements of Indigenous cosmology. These works come from the larger collection of Coleção BEĨ. Coleção BEĨ has collaborated internationally with artists to positively represent all the different customary forms of carving benches among Native Brazilians. Many of the works featured are anonymous, while the known authorship of others enables interviews and artist highlights.

In addition to profile photographs of the benches themselves, the exhibition offers thematic reflections on Indigenous life within the larger conditions of Brazil.

Many of the Brazilian tribal communities have had their livelihoods, ancestral territory and communal adhesion threatened by increased industrialization and mega-agriculture as Brazil’s economy increasingly enters the global market. The subsistence poverty and fringe social position of Brazil’s tribes have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Organizations such as ISA advocate for tribal sovereignty and responsible environmental stewardship.

Palikur anthropologist and teacher Adonias Guiome Ioio states on the exhibition website: “Even though non-Indigenous people sought various strategies to vanish, minimize, exclude and exterminate the Indigenous peoples in Brazil, fortunately my PalikurArukwayene people used their ancestral

intelligence and strategy to preserve their culture, art, language, and ways of being. That is why, today, my people still produce their art, which is our cultural heritage.”

The exhibition is located on the Fralin’s website within the University of Virginia (UVA) umbrella domain.

Labels and interpretation are in English and Portuguese. A physical map of Brazil serves as the exhibition’s background, with the location and labels of each involved tribal group marked. No political borders or cities appear on the map, and locations in the English descriptions are given in relation to the Amazon River. Brazil’s political and geographical intricacies are a new world for many North American readers and patrons.

The exhibition jumps into the artworks, and readers may be quickly disoriented without a second window open for easy reference. Thankfully, the exhibition needs only to load once, and shifting between windows and tabs for background information has been worked into the reading experience. Links are provided to the ISA’s bilingual database of Indigenous Brazilians, tribe-by-tribe as the material is introduced.

The material for the online digital exhibition was curated by Mariana Brazão (UVA, 2019), Marina Frúgoli, curator of the Coleção BEĨ, and Adriana Greci Green, Fralin’s own curator of Indigenous arts of the Americas. Numerous regional scholars and culture bearers provide commentary and documentary material.

The Indigenous Benches of Brazil was created using ArcGIS. The Geographic

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Information System (GIS) program has been used for mapping and presentations in a variety of fields, from architects’ drafting tables to county assessor’s offices.

Public institutions use GIS and its sister programs to create maps, trail layouts, and exhibit storyboards. GIS software is available in many tiers of expense and accessibility, including some free open-source programming.

For someone unaccustomed to navigating the ArcGIS program, the layout of the exhibition may initially prove a little disorienting. The whole exhibition loads in a single page with hundreds of individual text labels, archival-grade photographs, and vignette documentary videos. Resolution may require patience for a few minutes as the reader scrolls incrementally. Thankfully, navigation is not complex. The material functions like a folder or book that is unidirectional, and one tribal collection (with artist highlights and thematic reflections) follows the next, with the background map adjusting focus to reflect the tribe’s location within Brazil.

The unique shapes and largerthan-life color schemes of the benches speak for themselves. The exhibition’s strength is in the variety of styles that the patron can absorb in one sitting. The vivid coloring on the angular GalibiMaworno animal benches (the vibrant colors are reminiscent of West African Kente cloth) is a world apart from the minimalist, smooth Karajá seats whose only decorations are stark, uncompromising eyes that stare back at the viewer.

From an artistic perspective, Benches of Brazil is guaranteed to surprise most patrons with something new— whether it is the beautifully rich tropical wood, the festive geometric style, or even the idea of sitting on a throne shaped like a manta ray. The platform heralds good news for institutions moving forward in quarantine: the affordable interpretation curates copious material in an accessible format. The show itself offers quick portals to deeper information and connections to the advocacy and tribal preservation behind ISA and the Coleção BEĨ’s mission.

Ultimately, Benches achieves the two most important things any Indigenous exhibition can do: it responsibly

introduces the patron’s interest to a new aspect of Native life and facilitates that patron to discover more about the communities behind the art.

—James Bland

Mesa, Arizona Passage Mesa Contemporary Art Museum

I

N THE EXHIBITION Passage at the Mesa Contemporary Art Museum at Mesa Art Center, contemporary artists organized by Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/ Lakota) demonstrate how indigeneity expands far beyond a static attachment to place. Indigeneity relates to how we travel, migrate, and move through space. With a focus on the settlerimposed, militarized US–Mexican border, Luger and accompanying artists and contributors confront how colonial governments, legitimized by borders, have disrupted natural migration, and continue to disrupt tribal sovereignty through movement.

Passage illuminates the interconnectedness of concepts like migration, immigration, and indigeneity through the combination of installation, photography, writing, and mutual aid. Participating artists illustrate that Indigenous identity and livelihood are deeply tied to land but also to mobility, and they show how settler colonialism has criminalized that inherent mobility.

The collaborative installation Something to Hold Onto (2021) is a standout and the focal point of Passage.

Cannupa Hanska Luger in collaboration with artists Thomas “Breeze” Marcus (Tohono O'odham) and Dwayne Manuel (Onk Akimel O'odham) created the installation which takes the form of a winding and permeable labyrinth.

The exhibition includes “journalistic documentation” from Thosh Collins (Onk Akimel O'odham/Osage/Seneca-Cayuga) and Chelsey Luger (Turtle Mountain Chippewa/Lakota) of the popular Native wellness organization Well for Culture, as

well as an educational mutual aid project

by Tanya Aguiñiga (Mexican-American).

In the installation of Something to Hold Onto, Marcus and Manuel painted an undulating floor mural, echoed by strings of unfired clay beads that cascade from the ceiling. The shape of a maze fits perfectly in the space and reminds viewers of the site-specific nature of this work. One might recall the “man in the maze” design seen in art such as baskets, jewelry, and tattoos associated with the Tohono O'odham, whose historical lands overlap the areas surrounding Mesa.

Both the mural and the hanging beads are intricate, but in different ways. Precise red line drawings form the mural. In an alternating, but cohesive pattern, the red designs create curved shapes and patterns that I associate with Aztec stonework, interlaced with sharper, more angular patterns, like that of O'odham designs. This mural is the visual marriage—or perhaps reunion—of aesthetics on either side of the border.

Differently, the clay beads were created by the hands of many contributors—not just those in the exhibition, but from collaborative community events hosted at several museums and other institutions. Each bead is formed by the tender strength of clay pressed within the palm of a fist or imprinted by fingerprints. Each clay bead is dried but not fired—the usual last step in ceramics. They still form a memorial, an artwork, a string of beads thus somewhat incomplete. There are around 7,209 clay beads total, meant to represent the approximate number of migrant lives that have been lost crossing the US–Mexico border over the past 20 years. Like the journey many migrants embark on, each bead remains unfinished and like the path of the maze. At the same time, noting that the work is site-specific to the borderland of southern Arizona, the beads’ impermanence, or rather ability to change, mimics the ever-moving and ever-changing state of Native peoples.

Each bead appears individual, with unique sizes and patterns, some just palm prints, others with indents from fingernails or x’s. They remind me of the phrase “press the flesh” meaning “the act of greeting and shaking hands with people especially while campaigning for political office,” as Merriam-Webster NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 75

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above Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/Lakota), Something to Hold on To, part of the Counting Coup series, 2021, approximately 7,209 unfired clay beads, social collaboration, with mural on floor by Thomas “Breeze” Marcus (Tohono O'odham) and Dwayne Manuel (Onk Akimel O'odham), installation at Mesa Arts Center, Tempe, Arizona. opposite New Red Order (Sault Ste. Marie Ojibwe and Tlingit), Feel at Home Here, 2021, installation at Artists Space, New York. Photo: Taylor Rose Payer (Turtle Mountain Chippewa).

defines it. Politicians press flesh with their constituents to advocate for their specific policies and agendas. Similarly, as the contributors press flesh against clay to make beads, they also advocate for the humanity of the thousands of lives lost while attempting to cross the border. This work is part of Luger’s Counting Coup series, “which aims to utilize social collaboration to re-humanize large and abstract data through the process of creating handmade objects,” as Luger’s artist statement says. Each bead puts a palm or a touch to a person, so the lives lost— difficult to picture when represented as numbers—become embodied once more.

Regarding the work, Luger continues in his statement, “This collective call to action is not designed to confront policy change but creates an opportunity to embed handmade earthen objects with empathy—from nation to nation, from human to human.” This is 76 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

evident not only in the primary work of the exhibition but also in those who contributed to it. Many connections emerge in these works. The tribes and shared homelands, the network of community, the location of the exhibition—all those involved remind me that the connection from place to place, and people to people, remains despite the enforcement of colonial borders.

Equally powerful to the work itself is its afterlife. Since the exhibition closed and the central work was taken down, the maze work was returned to the earth, specifically at the US–Mexico border.

The artists broke up the unfired clay and returned it to the ground. Luger shared this process on his Instagram in the days after the exhibition closed, which signals its end in the institution and the part of the journey that surrenders to the earth.

Just as a hand once enveloped the clay, the earth will now consume and absorb

the palm-printed clay. It represents the lives that never made it but also the relationship and belonging to the land even as one migrates.

Also included in the exhibition were photographs of O'odham land taken by Thosh Collins between 2014 and 2020. These images are intimate and showcase the lands in a way only possible by someone with intimate knowledge of it could. A particularly striking image, Hu'u ch Hasañ (Stars and Saguaro Cactus) (2014), depicts a pair of saguaro cacti—one of the many plants and parts of the natural world destroyed during the construction of the border wall—and the time-lapsed movement of stars at dusk.

Passage is about caring for one another and extending ideas of Indigenous community care across colonial borders. Tanya Aguiñiga’s infoshop and mutual aid project adds another layer. She encourages exhibition

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goers to compile packages for women, men, children, babies, and LGBTQ+ people crossing the border. While her displays showcase items to be included in each package, they are deeply heartbreaking. Aguiñiga makes material the literal needs, including things like period products, disposable face masks, baby socks, toys, and more, of those crossing a fabricated border, reminding us that, like the banner hanging over her section states, “survival is resistance.”

Passage is powerful, because it complicates the line of a border seen on a map. Using Something to Hold Onto as its central work of art, Passage shows that the border is more than a line to those who cross it, but a complex space of emotion, survival, culture, and community. While I visited the show, others, including children, joined me in walking the labyrinth. Being in and moving through the delicate, carefully designed space with others was special. Not often does a work of art and an exhibition go beyond thinking and viewing pleasure to become a walking meditation.

—Isabella Shey Robbins (Diné)

NEW YORK

New Red Order: Feel at Home Here Artists Space

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HE WORK OF ARTIST C OLLECTIVE New Red Order is both fiercely funny and precise in its argument: their exploration of the “desire for indigeneity” is illustrated by everything from beach balls to a full-sized real estate office for land repatriation.1 Feel at Home Here at Artists Space in New York City is the culmination of a multiyear collaboration between the gallery and New Red Order (NRO), a self-described public secret society composed of core members Adam and Zack Khalil (both Sault Ste. Marie Ojibwe) and Jackson Polys (Tlingit).

The exhibition occupies two floors and seems to be organized around rescuing Indigenous people from the museological and archival past of the bottom floor,

and “promoting Indigenous futures” against the backdrop of red, yellow, white, and black medicine wheel colors on the top floor. The entrance, a sort of physical midway point and metaphorical purgatory, commands attention with a large, upside-down bobblehead of a white man with historic Indigenous objects flashing in his eyes. Together, the brightly colored and multimedia installations mix in cacophony, asking: What do we do with the pervasive and undeniable desire for Indigenous identity, land, and life? Could these desires be used for something good?

With their first known exhibition in 2017, New Red Order is a collective of both contemporary Indigenous artists and their non-Native “informants” or, in anthropology, the people one meets in the field to get information from.2 NRO’s core contributors are well-known for their individual work and have seen success in their careers. Polys is known for his Tlingit sculpture, while the Khalil brothers are regarded for their experimental films that often rely upon Ojibwe

1. “New Red Order: Feel at Home Here; Announcement,” Artists Space, web.

2. See, for example: Bruchac, Margaret M., and Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel, Savage Kin: Indigenous Informants and American Anthropologists (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2018).

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storytelling and mythology. While both sculpture and film are components of Feel at Home Here, this New Red Order presentation reads as distinct from their previous individual work.

At least two historical references tell us something about the show’s imagined audience. First, the name of the New Red Order collective is a reference to the Improved Order of Red Men, an all-white fraternal organization whose history demonstrates that “playing Indian” is as old as America itself. They trace their origins back to the Sons of Liberty who, in 1773, donned red face and Mohawk regalia to protest British taxation during the event that would come to be known as the Boston Tea Party.3 With famous members like Theodore Roosevelt in their ranks, they organize their meetings after the Iroquois Confederacy and name their chapters after local tribes. Much of this dark history is made material in a fun house display of infographics and historic seals, including the one used by the Degree of Pocahontas, the female auxiliary of the Order.

A second important histor y component is invoked by the videos and light boxes in the lower level of the gallery that depict sculptures of Native Americans by James Earle Fraser. The most prominent of these is End of the Trail, the 1918 bronze sculpture created by the non-Native artist as tribute to the damage settlers inflicted on Native Americans. For some, the sculpture—which features an exhausted Native man atop an equally downtrodden horse—exemplifies Indigenous resilience. For others, its enduring place in museum galleries and popular consciousness has represented the “defeated Indian” and other stereotypical images of indigeneity. In the New Red Order show, the digital versions of such sculptures are covered with flesh and blood in a grotesque film shown in the dark lower level. By addressing histories of cultural appropriation and settler violence, both the infographic and lower-level film installations seem to nod toward the title of the show: Feel at Home Here. Who should feel at home here? In other words, who is—and who is not—the intended audience?

The main video at the center of the large, beach-themed installation

suggests that the work of New Red Order is oriented toward the non-Native viewer. In the 55-minute-long film, a white male actor becomes an educator on all things of settler colonialism. A work of satirical brilliance, the film does not depict the artists or, seemingly, any other Indigenous people. Instead, the actor, a “reformed Native American impersonator,” performs a sort of reversal of the pivotal moment in which Sacheen Littlefeather declined the Oscar in the name of Native rights and on behalf of Marlon Brando. Perhaps the choice not to include Indigenous people in the film was a sort of “ethnographic refusal” by the artists, putting a rare impetus on non-Natives to perform their relationship to indigeneity instead. The work is something like a parodic infomercial, but instead of the white guy selling you a vacuum cleaner, he is recruiting you to become an informant for New Red Order.

In keeping with a long history of Native people deploying humor and teasing to survive tragedy, the film also features an “alcoholics anonymous”–style segment, during which white accomplices respond to the question: “When did you know you were living on stolen land?” One white woman responds to the question with the kind of quip Native people might be used to: “I know it’s not about me, but for me, it is.” In a productive paradox, the film at once mocks “woke” white allies for extracting knowledge from Indigenous communities while also genuinely asking for engagement in and solidarity with Indigenous rights.

With an array of materials and cryptic strategies, Feel at Home Here, NRO’s most comprehensive show to date, does not provide easy answers. In lieu of prescriptive wall labels or title information, the gallery show offers its viewers a series of visual challenges and, within the resulting confusion, the opportunity to turn their assumptions about indigeneity upside down.

By illustrating the violence against Indigenous people and lands, New Red Order also urges settlers to take action. In doing so, they ask: What happens when allies, or “informants,” use their guilt to make palpable change?

—Taylor Rose Payer (Turtle Mountain Chippewa)

3. Philip Joseph Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 66–68.

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OKLAHOMA CITY

Fritz Scholder: Beyond Stereotypes Oklahoma City Museum of Art

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NEW EXHIBITION Fritz Scholder: Beyond Stereotypes is on view at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art through January 2, 2022. Curated from the permanent collection by Catherine Shotick, the exhibition includes ten lithographic prints and one large acrylic painting, Laughing Indian (ca. 1976), from Scholder’s controversial Indian series, which sought to challenge stereotypical images painted in a style attractive to tourists. The “backstory” to his emergence as a (non–)Native American painter was contradictory.

His father, a Luiseño Californian Indian and administrator for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, “was ashamed,” according to his son, of “being an Indian.”1 After living in the Midwest, where Scholder’s high school art teacher was the distinguished Yankton Dakota painter Oscar Howe (1915–1983), the family moved to Sacramento in 1957 where he studied with Wayne Thiebaud, a painter sometimes associated with Pop Art. Following this, in the summers of 1961 and 1962, Scholder participated in an experimental project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. This program sought to deflate the so-called “Traditional Indian” style of painting taught at The Studio of the Santa Fe Indian School by introducing the ambitions and aesthetics of modern artists. Although he claimed that up to that point he had never identified as an Indian artist and guessed that his father had enrolled him in the Luiseño tribe, John Lukavic, curator of a recent Scholder retrospective, has demonstrated otherwise. In 1959, two years before the Rockefeller project commenced at the University of Arizona, Scholder submitted an entry to the 14th annual National Competition of American Indian Painting and Sculpture staged at the Philbrook Museum of Art in 1. Fritz Scholder, quoted in K. Kimberly King, “Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian,” ArtCyclopedia, web.

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above Fritz Scholder (Luiseño, 1937–2005), Indian with Feather, 1970, lithograph, 30 × 24 in.

Oklahoma City Museum of Art, museum purchase with the assistance of the National E n d ow m e n t fo r t h e A r t s “Purchase of the Works of Living Artist” Fund, 1971.034 © Estate of Fritz Scholder.

Tulsa. In a powerful harbinger of the New Indian Art just over the horizon, Scholder was awarded first honorable mention in the non-traditional painting category for his painting Mission Canyons.2 The Rockefeller Project proved quite successful, especially with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which resulted in the closing of The Studio in Santa Fe and its replacement in 1962 with the more progressive Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). After Scholder completed an

MFA degree in painting at the University of Arizona, he was hired in 1964 by the IAIA to teach painting.

Although, upon his arrival in Santa Fe, Scholder vowed never to paint Indians, it didn’t take too long for him to change his mind. He began his radical Indian series in 1967 and by the early 1970s his work had been exhibited and published widely, in both the United States and Europe. He was invited to lecture at prestigious conferences and universities and was selected for a two-person show with his former student, T.C. Cannon (Kiowa/Caddo, 1946–1978), at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Ironically, Scholder’s work was well received by collectors, curators, and critics in the urban East, especially New York, while in the Southwest, many viewers, Native and non-Native alike, found his work violent and degrading.

In the East, at Dartmouth, for example, his figurative imagery was seen as a sophisticated synthesis of color field painting, gestural abstraction, and Pop Art. He employed the same ensemble of techniques and styles in the Southwest to reveal his Monster (or Super) Indians, authentic, but painful representations of certain characteristics of contemporary Indians: drunken, impoverished, wounded, defeated, massacred, dead.

Both then and now, many viewers, Native and non-Native alike, found them hateful and hurtful. But, as I have noted elsewhere, “the fact that the traditionalists, Indian and Euro-Americans alike, found the ‘Super Indians’ so controversial … only demonstrates” that Scholder had effectively “interrogated colonial representations of Indian subjectivity.”3 His justification for painting Indians after he had sworn that he wouldn’t was his frustration, so he said, over his students’ inability to do something with Indian subject matter that was not a cliché. The facts, I believe, indicate that he was both frustrated and inspired by their efforts to recontextualize pictures of Indians.4

2. See John Lukavic, “Re-Figuring Scholder: His Indian Series, 1967–1980,” in Super Indian: Fritz Scholder, 1967– 1980 (Denver Art Museum, 2015), 26–27.

3. W. Jackson Rushing, “Authenticity and Subjectivity in Post-War Painting: Concerning Herrera, Scholder, and Cannon,” in Shared Visions: Native American Painters and Sculptors in the Twentieth Century, ed. Margaret Archuleta and Rennard Strickland (New York: The New Press, 1991), 17.

4. See the comments by IAIA cofounder Lloyd New in Rushing, “Authenticity and Subjectivity in PostWar Painting,” p. 17, and the comments by Alfred Young Man (Chippewa-Cree) in King, “Fritz Scholder,” ArtCyclopedia, web.

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Schotick has installed the current exhibition thoughtfully. The entrance to the modest, curved gallery is dominated by a life-size figure, Laughing Indian, acrylic on canvas, whose demeanor is either menacing or clownish or both: a ghoulish smile reveals a mouthful of skeletal teeth, giant carnival feet, sunglasses, and an exaggerated, elongated arm whose hand might be retrieving some hidden talisman. The joke here—at least in 1976, perhaps—is that if viewers went to see Scholder’s work expecting the quasi-abstract, quasi-primitive, decorative imagery of “traditional” Native genre painting, they were confronted instead by ragged expressionist brushwork, a Pepto-Bismol pink background, and, God forbid, the kind of figuration that linked it to the New Realism. Even today the scale and ersatz authority of the Laughing Indian signals a change in the rules of the game.

After the Tamarind Institute was established in Albuquerque in 1960, Scholder helped make lithography an important medium for contemporary Native artists. As defined by the Tate Gallery, “lithography is a printing process that uses a flat stone or metal plate on which the image areas are worked by using a greasy substance [such as tusche] so that the ink will adhere to them . . . while the non-image areas are made ink-repellent.”5 Scholder’s first lithograph, Indian at the Circus (1970), is quirky and almost cartoon-like, its title is a double entendre making fun of both modernist primitivism and a Wild West Show—an alternate surreal Surrealism, if you will.

European Surrealists (e.g., André Breton, Max Ernst) eagerly collected Katsinam and other ritual objects. Kachina Dancers (1971), Shotick observes, is the most “traditional” print in Scholder’s Indians Forever portfolio, in terms of color and subject matter. Based, perhaps, on a 19th-century photograph, the print reveals a complex cultural practice in Hopi villages, in this case, the Niman or “going home” ceremony. Indian with Feather (1970) features a velvet darkness and massive solidity that Shotick compares to the sacred monuments of 5. “Art Term: Lithography,” Tate, web.

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ancient Greece and Rome, and rightly so.

Positioned slightly off-center and framed by the darkness, Scholder’s “Indian” is a compelling image, with a coarse, animalistic face. The scale of the rigid feather launched from the back of his head, the shadow-splotched rustication of his shroud, and the certainty that a raw vocable is being expelled from his open mouth, all testify to the presence of a vital force.

Like Indian with Feather, Scholder’s Indian at the Bar (1971) relies on a haunting darkness and a gulf of emptiness that clings to the surface and plays a game with our perception. He has no lower jaw and most of his “body” suggests a cut-out borrowed from a collage and pasted on.

The drinker, whose eyes hide behind sunglasses, is a metaphor for alcoholism.

The monster’s suffering is emphasized by a tiny bit of blood-red on the Coors beer can. Where the Indian rests his right arm on the bar, it accommodates him without any effort as it “flows downstream” beneath the weight of his arm. Together, his hand and the beer can cast a phallic shadow.

The prints in this show are being exhibited in the museum for the first time—kudos to the curator—and they testify to the diversity of style, subject matter, and content of Scholder’s first decade of lithography. Indians with Umbrellas (1970–71), for example, has a creamy orange sky with puffy clouds, below which a line of Indians spreads out across the horizon, while the grassy plain below them is flecked with light. Calm and still, with a touch of the cinematic west, it hardly seems kin to American Landscape (First State) (1976) wherein Scholder sets the stage by lowering a dramatic curtain of midnight blue, in front of which you-know-who is making his last stand. You couldn’t miss him, really, with his golden hair, white buckskin, and blue boots, standing atop a writhing mass of bodies soaked in blood.

Banners, guns, spears, and clubs pointing at the sky, horses busting into the melee, carnage, and chaos everywhere. Who but Scholder could do that and an Indian Encampment After Blakelock

(State I) (1977), a moody, enigmatic, visual tone poem in dialogue with An Indian Encampment (ca. 1880–1900) painted by a New Yorker, Robert Albert Blakelock, and now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum?

Two other prints, Dancers at Zuni (1978) and Snake Dancer (1979), made in different styles, affirm the importance of performance in Indigenous cultural life, with its insistence on customs and continuity. And one last note: in a display of respect for Indigenous sovereignty, Shotick asked Adrienne Lalli Hills (Wyandotte), associate director for learning and community engagement at First Americans Museum, to peer review her exhibition text and was grateful for the information Hills shared with her.

I hope we will continue to see more of this kind of support and respect where Indigenous arts are concerned.

—W. Jackson Rushing III, PhD

OKLAHOMA CITY

Memorial: Positive and Negative Space Myriad Botanical Gardens

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NDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, Myriad Botanical Gardens and its Crystal Bridge Tropical Conservatory is a wonderland of life and color surrounded by the business and industry of downtown Oklahoma City. The 13,000-square-foot conservatory houses an indoor waterfall amid two distinct tropical climate zones full of dramatic plants and flowers.

In April, the conservatory closed for renovation, but the gallery in its lobby stayed open to host art exhibitions, including Tony Tiger’s Memorial: Positive and Negative Space. There could hardly have been a better time or place, particularly for this exhibition, which returns color and contemplation to the gardens amid the debris of renovation.

Tiger’s solo exhibition considers how we memorialize the past. From the artist statement: “in memorializing the past one should evaluate the positive and

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negative of that remembrance in hope that future actions would advance in wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.”

Memorial is dedicated to “the many Indigenous individuals who died during the challenging time,” including the artist’s family member, Sac and Fox veteran Harry D. Wood.

This exhibition, focused on making meaning from loss, is presented during a pandemic. I visited days after 13 American military members and hundreds of Afghan people were lost during the traumatic end days of a 20-year US–led war, just after Hurricane Ida decimated the United Houma Nation, as well as the ancestral homelands of many Indigenous people. Of course, the exhibition was not planned to coincide with these historical moments of loss, but art often has an uncanny way of being where and when it is needed.

Memorial includes work from several of Tiger’s series from the last few years, including Indigenous Horse Culture, Oklahoma Tribal Identity, Woodland Expression, and Spiritual Transformation.

It is anchored by large, intensely colored pieces such as the stunning acrylic Time and Place: Egmont Key–Indian Territory–L.A. which combines elements of Seminole patchwork and Sac and Fox ribbonwork in shifting patterns of color.

Triangular points at the top of the piece point away from or toward lines overlaid with the curvature of the Thakiwaki designs, which take on color patterns that become their own shapes and directions.

Seminole people were held in an internment camp on Egmont Key, an island off the coast of Florida, prior to being forcibly relocated to Indian Territory in the 19th century.

Environmental damage over generations has winnowed away Egmont Key, but the island still stands as a wildlife refuge.

Indian Territory, of course, is now the state of Oklahoma, and L.A. is Los Angeles, the California city built on the ancestral homelands of the Tongva, Chumash, and Kizh people, among others. Los Angeles was often an end-point for Native people during the Indian Relocation era of the

above Tony Tiger (Muscogee/Sac & Fox/Seminole), Stars and Stripes, 2020, acrylic on paper, 22 × 30 in.

1950s and 1960s. Los Angeles is also the location of Hollywood, the center of US filmmaking, through which Native people were misrepresented onscreen for generations. The movement of this large piece reflects both physical and spiritual movement between disorientation and steadiness, recalling the experience of generations of Indigenous people put in motion by force.

Time and Place is one of several large, abstract works in the exhibition, which also features smaller abstract pieces and works, incorporating patterned, figurative silhouettes as well as mixed-media works that integrate historical and personal photography and documents. What they all share is vivid color evocative of the most dramatic natural occurrences: incandescent pink from the edge of the sun as it rises; the first brilliant green against wet, dark spring ground; bright red and deep red of blood at different stages of life/death; and so many others. Tiger curated The Evolution of Color in Oklahoma Indian Art (2017), and color in his own work is often symbolic. In this exhibition, the vivid hues contrasting with each other reflect how color is retained in memory,

particularly for people removed from one landscape to another, whether a physical landscape or a spiritual one, across space and/or time.

The works featuring figurative silhouettes speak to this removal. Most feature community. Feminine figures are prominent, numerous, and active.

Masculine figures are presented as fathers or young men with families or in community rather than as the stereotypical, romanticized lone figure on a horse, vanishing into a sunset.

In Tiger’s Indigenous Horse Culture series, silhouettes of people interacting with horses are patterned with designs reminiscent of ribbonwork. The large painting Stars and Stripes presents masculine and feminine silhouettes against wide, multicolored stripes interspersed with stars patterned with fragments of the same designs that make up the people and horses. Smaller works in the series separate individual people and horses from the whole, calling attention to their own experiences of movement through space, spirit, and history—apart from yet part of their family, community, and continually expanding circles of human experience.

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above David Andree (Red Lake Chippewa), Freezing Cast, 2018–19, archival inkjet print.

In this series, the individual and collective experience is memorialized beyond the facts of history, even beyond time.

Memorial hangs in the lobby of an indoor, human-made garden in the process of being reborn, amid outside, cultivated urban gardens in the last days of a hot summer in the capital city of a state that began as the end of painful exile for so many Indigenous people. This exhibition, along with its programming of live painting and screen printing, is a generous motion toward healing. It is a non-nostalgic encounter with Indigenous history through the artist’s personal and community history.

In nature, color functions to attract life or deter enemies. The colorful Memorial: Positive and Negative Space, on view through November 5, 2021, provides a space to consider which is needed— attraction or protection—when facing loss or the prospect of loss, at a time when both are especially ubiquitous.

—Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke) 82 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA

Many Waters: A Minnesota Biennial Minnesota Museum of American Art and NewStudio Gallery

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N THE STOREFRONT WINDOW facing Robert Street in St. Paul, a curious art installation was on view from July through October 2, 2021.

At first you might have thought you were looking at the moon, with its bright, circular luminescence. But look more closely and you’d see fish swimming inside of the glowing circle, almost as if they were living inside a petri dish.

Accompanying this mesmerizing footage of underwater life was the voice of artist Mona Smith (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota), who spoke of the relationship between the water and Dakota people. The piece, Cloudy Waters: Dakota Reflections on the River, which first showed at the

Minnesota History Center in 2004 and 2005, hummed between documentary and poetry with artful musicality.

Smith’s video installation was part of Many Waters: A Minnesota Biennial, an exhibition on view “at” the Minnesota Museum of American Art, despite the museum not being open to the public.

Additional pieces in Many Waters showed at NewStudio Gallery. The art at the museum could be seen from the street through the storefront windows of the Pioneer Endicott Building that houses the museum. A few pieces were also visible through the glass walls of the St. Paul Skyway system.

Among the works on view from the skyway was Anthropocene Refusal (2019) by Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe) and Amina Harper. The video piece presented a visual argument that pushed against the absolutism of Anthropocene theory, which characterizes our current epoch as the one in which earth is ultimately destroyed by humans. Drawing on Afro-futurism and Indigenous Futurism aesthetics, the work offered a more hopeful vision for the future.

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The video employed the Ojibwe language to list Dakota and Lakota women artists, activists, and thinkers based near the Mississippi River on Dakota land. Meanwhile, the screen depicted a hand, superimposed with watery footage that made it look as if it was glistening, reaching out onto the water. Thus, there were two layers of water footage: one part that took up most of the screen, and the other that fit inside the outline of the moving hands. Later, the film incorporated footage of the intricate beading work of bandolier bags. At one point, the hand was superimposed with the beading imagery as it dipped into the shores of the water.

This dancing imagery imparts a feeling of delight. The motion of the water and the hands stirred up hope. Juxtaposed with the names of fierce Native women working to create a better future for the land, their tribes, and the earth in general, the piece offered a hopeful message about what the future might bring for the Anthropocene.

D av i d A n d r e e ( R e d L a k e Chippewa) also played with an ethereal quality that bore similarity to Carlson and Harper’s project in his work in the exhibition, Freezing Cast (2018–19).

Andree’s sculptures were created by freezing fabric in the northern climate’s cold temperatures. After making the form, Andree then moved the frozen cloth into a different context and photographed it before it collapsed. The results were mystical-looking blobs of pastel fabric, seemingly floating midair over the water.

They spoke to the precariousness of our ecosystem, but also the delicate beauty of our natural world.

In Waters of Tomorrow (2019), Moira Villiard (Fond du Lac Ojibwe descent) took a dreamlike approach in presenting a relationship to the water. The painting employed fantastical elements within a realistic framework. A young boy, depicted with an illustrative aesthetic, dipped his pail into the swirling lines and circles that made up what appeared to be water. The water, like the sky, escaped the bounds of regular dimension. Villiard allowed the warm hues of the sky and the cool squiggles of the water to overtake the backyard scene. It acted as a love poem to the life-giving nature of water.

The works of Native artists were also featured in the second space of the exhibition located at NewStudio Gallery, also in St. Paul. Karen Goulet (White Earth Ojibwe) used quilting to reflect on water. In Mermaid Blues: Sweet Notes Found in a Bitter Lament (2020), she drummed up imagery of a winter sky above the frozen water. The background was a lavender color, evoking a period of waiting as the long days of winter passed until spring.

Niki Pico (Winnebago/Dakota) used Winnebago design elements and colors in a piece called Generations (2020).

The expertly crafted ribbonwork panel represented the Water Spirit clan, with a red ribbon dividing the panel in half. Each side contained a flow of generations— indicated by leafy forms, flowing from one side of the panel to another.

In all, Many Waters—an exhibition that boasted numerous prominent Native artists with connections to the Mississippi River and other important waterways in Minnesota—offered a rich investigation into the vitalness of water to our existence, our past, and our future.

—Sheila Regan

VICTORIA

On Beaded Ground Legacy Art Gallery Downtown, University of Victoria

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ITTING IN A CABIN, with the sweet smell of the ocean drifting through the open door and through my hands, I reflect on my time spent with On Beaded Ground. This exhibition is the second show curated by Lorilee Wastasecoot (Cree), the newly appointed curator of Indigenous arts and engagement at the University of Victoria’s (UVIC) Legacy Art Galleries, located on the Lək̓ʷəŋənspeaking territories of the Songhees and Esquimalt nations, known as Victoria, British Columbia.1 On Beaded Ground features multiple works from ten artists identifying as woman, nonbinary, trans, and two-spirit, each with connections to the West Coast, and with connections

to living and working with the smell of the ocean drifting through their hands.

Throughout the exhibition, Wastasecoot and assistant curator Melissa Granley (Métis) have integrated examples of beadwork from the university’s collection.

For this, Wastasecoot worked with Gerry Ambers ('Namgis/Kwakwaka'wakw), Elder in residence at UVIC, to bless each piece with sage and cedar and bring this beadwork—these hands—into conversation and into relation with the artists.

The unfolding narrative highlights ways in which beading connects to stories, to reclaimed teachings, and to the care and patience developed through the mentorship of creative practice.

Being cared for—this is the feeling that greets you as you walk into the gallery, under the velvet roof and sweeping ribbons of The Birthing Tent (2021) by Daphne Boyer (Métis). The ribbons, made to honor the teachings of the ribbon skirt, are adorned with designs of healing medicines, like berries, seeds, and flowers used by women on the Prairies. The berries are harvested, beaded, then photographed and printed on silk. During a tour of the exhibition with Wastasecoot, Boyer, her sister, and a friend, I had the chance to listen to stories exchanged about the women, the makers, the healers in families, who traveled and traded across Turtle Island. Boyer’s Grandmother Éléonore was a midwife who moved across the Prairies to bring new life into the world, to help women be cared for, and here, Boyer’s work honors her grandmother’s teachings. These are the stories that surface on beaded ground.

So, too, do stories of identity and belonging. Beading through the exhibition is presented as a process that connects the past to the present: a connection between what has been and the possibilities of what can be.

With Nindanikoobiijganag: We Are Star People (2021), Estrella Whetung (Alderville Mississauga), highlights the intergenerational bond between Elders and young people, connecting her own love of the cosmos and the art of sci-fi with the ribbon skirt that dons Star Wars character, Elder Yoda, who carries Baby Grogu in a delicately beaded moss bag

1. The University of Victoria itself is located on WSÁNEĆ territories. The Legacy Art Gallery Downtown is located in downtown Victoria.

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above Estrella Whetung (Alderville Mississauga), detail of New Traditions: 1967 Uranium City Mukluks Revisited, 2021, recycled cashmere wool, melton wool, recycled fox fur, smoked deer hide, smoked caribou hide, commercial brain-tanned deer hide, recycled fleece, antique and contemporary seed beads (Toho, Miyuki, Czech), thread, acrylic wool. Photo: Kyra Kordoski.

adorned with beaded cosmos and water lilies. Beading, as a way to play with identity and pop culture, can also be found in the three pieces by Bev Koski (Anishinaabe), Upper Peninsula Michigan #1 (2013), Upper Peninsula Michigan #2 (2013), and Toronto #3 (2014), where seed beads cover plastic figurines depicting Indigenous people, delicately reclaiming cultural stereotypes, one bead at a time.

Accompanying the exhibition is a series of talks, jointly programmed by the Legacy and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. During the talk “Potlatch Punk and Contemporary Beading,” Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé (Upper Tanana), Whess Harman (Carrier Wit’at), and Audie Murray (Michif) reflected how beading anchors cultural meaning in their lives. Beading gives teachings in patience and humility, provides love, and creates space. Potlatch Punk is also the name of the series of jackets on which Harman beads the ethos of punk as expression into statements of lived experience, such as Tell Me About First Contact (2015) and Our Blood Runs the Redder (2018), akin to Buffy Sainte-Marie’s (Cree) “My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying.”

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to create the feathers in the figure of The Raven (2018), alongside seed and bugle beads. In Murray’s Celestial Gloves (2021), a set of gloves are reimagined as a place where the past moves through hands of the present and on to the possibilities for the future with the Seven Sisters beaded cosmos resting in the palm of the hand.

All the artists honor mentors as they hold up their teachers—the hands they watched bead and who gave encouragement to use beadwork as a place from which to ground love.

In the collaboration between Margaret August (shíshálh Coast Salish) and Nicole Mandryk (Anishinaabe descent), the nature of relationships between two-spirit peoples with each other and with their bodies is celebrated in You are Sacred 2S Tunic (2021) made from deer hide, acrylic paints, mixed Charlotte cut and seed beads, rabbit fur, and gold fixings. The tunic is accompanied by Fire Back Mask (2021) and 2S Moccasins (2021) beaded by Lynette La Fontaine (Nehiyaw/Michif ), who mentored Mandryk with her beading practice. The delicate precision of La Fontaine’s hand is also seen in Kokuminawak Sakihitowin Kayas Ochi (Grandmothers’ Love from Long Ago) (2021), with naming credit to Dianne Ludwig (Michif). This beaded

embroidery hoop is made of wool, seed beads, dyed caribou hair, and whitefish scales dyed with Kool-Aid—scales that sparkle a light blue, sparkling as though the ocean is drifting through them.

Circling back to the center of the exhibition, and circling back to care, sits a set of regalia, including Beaded Tunic, Butterfly and Thunderbird Dress, and a button blanket sewn with motherof-pearl and abalone beads created

by Maxine Matilpi (Kwakwaka'wakw; Ma'mtagila/Tlowitsis) in partnership with her late partner, John Livingston.

A small, intimate event held in the gallery in August honored Livingston’s life. The fact that close family and friends felt welcome and safe to honor a life in the walls of a university arts institution speaks fully to the success of the exhibition and to the lovingness of Wastasecoot’s way of working. In the space of love Wastasecoot’s strength as a curator comes through in this exhibition.

She so carefully holds each artist up, whether emerging or established, to show how beadwork continues to move across time and territories to ground cultural meaning, as it always has, in lives of Indigenous people.

Though not employed by the Legacy, I disclose here that I work as adjunct faculty at UVIC, and I am, like many working in the creative sector in Victoria, a colleague of both Wastasecoot’s and Mary Jo Hughes, the current director of the Legacy. In a city the size of Victoria, working in partnership to lift each other up is part of the methodology of working from this place. I make this disclosure to note that as Hughes prepares to retire in early 2022, the concerns of many for the future of the Legacy after her departure are fueled by the admiration for the work that has taken place through this gallery over the last several years to create a critical space for Indigenousinformed curating and programming.

Through mentorship and collaboration, Hughes insured with her leaving that Wastasecoot’s position moved from a contract to a permanent position. With the ground now laid with beads, the arts community in Victoria looks forward to what Wastasecoot creates next while the ocean breeze drifts around her.

—Jennifer Claire Robinson, PhD

MUSIC REVIEW

MUSIC YA TSEEN

Indian Yard Sub Pop Records, 2021

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NY READER of this magazine is certainly aware of Nicholas Galanin’s visual work. He has seamlessly moved from medium to medium, based on what the work calls for. In this case it’s sound, and he has carved a radical, hyperpop album called Indian Yard for the legendary, Seattle-based label Sub Pop Records. Galanin is releasing this album as Ya Tseen, from his Tlingit name Yéil Ya-Tseen, which translates as “to be alive.” According to the liner notes, “Galanin began working on the record in 2017 while going back and forth between his home in Sitka and Juneau, Alaska, where he was carving a totem pole. The album entwines falling in love and the birth of a child with the urgency of current social and environmental justice movements to tear down destructive systems and build anew.”

The album cover by Merritt Johnson, Galanin’s wife, is an acute and inspiring visual expression of this music. The imagery is striking and subtle, playful and disconcerting. It pops in color and concept. A toddler sits otherwise unadorned inside a matrix graph wearing a woven basket, Johnson’s Mindset, over their eyes as if it were a pair of virtual reality glasses. The concept here poses questions that parallel a predominant trope in our hypertechnological world: Do we choose our realities or are they chosen for us? To what degree are we self-actualized? Are we even given the opportunity or is it chosen before we are even aware we have a choice? It seems every aspect of our existence is currently being questioned in broad swaths of our society for

both altruistic and nefarious reasons. It is rapidly encroaching on our individual and collective psyches. But of course, for Indigenous populations worldwide, this has been the case since first contact with Europeans.

Overall, this is a great pop album by any measure. Soaring vocals and synths melt into each other over an irrepressible backbeat and growling bass lines. It sounds like it was birthed right out of Sub Pop’s catalogue. The most difficult part of writing this review is to sit still long enough to type my response to it; I just want to get up off my chair and move. The production quality is superb, rich sounds with attention to granular-level nuance. The voices are crystal clear and luscious—welcoming, warm, and mysterious. Each song seamlessly transitions into the next, sliding from backbeats to wormholes to backbeats again, into tiny yet expansive sonic worlds. Today through new technologies, an infinite amount of sounds are at anyone’s fingertips, yet I appreciate the economy that Ya Tseen utilizes here. There is a wonderful cohesion from song to song as though the album were one long composition. At the same time, this isn’t a concept album in the established sense, but rather a suite of individual songs very well matched and sequenced.

Several guest artists appear on this record starting with the first track “Knives” and the Alaskan-based band Portugal. The Man. Other collaborators include Zak D. Wass, Otis Calvin III, Benjamin Verdoes, Shabazz Palaces, Nick Hakim, and fellow Alaskan singer-songwriter Stephen Qacung Blanchett (Yup'ik).

Two music videos accompany the album: “Close the Distance” and the opening track, “Knives.” Both videos develop the concepts of the cover art in their own way, juxtaposing our biological experience with our digitized society. Directed

by Stephan Gray, “Close the Distance” is a love song of sorts describing a corporeal experience of sexuality and desire portrayed by close-up shots of flowers seemingly reaching out to caress each other, followed by two robots in the heat of passion, and eventually consummated by two metal monoliths, similar to the structure at the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), that melt and intertwine with each other. Finally the video returns to the original scene of a woman swiping and scrolling on her cell phone as the lyrics “Here you are here you are/In the flesh no internet fishnets” end the song.

Directed by Carlos Cruz and Sam Méndez, “Knives” is a wondrous clay and digitized, stop-motion animated short of memorable scenes, one after the other. The video depicts a young person faced with a variety of temptations trying to navigate this absurd world. Interstellar travel takes place, and eventually a TV set is plugged into humans either sucked of their energy or force-fed the programming—or both. “You in that fatal light/There’s no need to fight/You’ll just sharpen up your knives/Take me, take my vice and live it/Break me take your time with leaving.”

This album is full of songs that seem destined to be independent radio hits for years to come. If you are looking for new radical pop, listen no further (well, always listen further).

This is an ambitious undertaking with inspiring results dealing with important topics relatable through a slick production of songs that replay repeatedly in your head, and most assuredly on your sound system.

–Thollem NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 85

REVIEWS

Eva Mirabal: Three Generations of Tradition and Modernity at Taos Pueblo Lois P. Rudnick with Jonathan Warm Day Coming Museum of New Mexico Press, 2021

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HIS BIOGRAPHY shines a much-needed light on the art and life of Eva Mirabal (Eah-Ha-Wa, Fast Growing Corn, Taos Pueblo, 1920–1968), a muralist, painter, cartoonist, World War II veteran, teacher, wife, and mother of two sons. As a collaboration between Lois P. Rudnick and Mirabal’s son, Jonathan Warm Day Coming (Taos Pueblo), this book reveals many nuances of the artist’s professional career and personal life through the authors’ use of archival material. These primary sources include correspondence, photographs, and diary entries that Jonathan and his brother, Christopher, contributed to this book project. As a result of both collaboration and a variety of first-person texts, this biography offers readers detailed insights into the life of Mirabal—a prolific painter who underwent enormous challenges during her artistic career. This book serves to introduce a fuller picture of Mirabal to the field of art history and offers a solid foundation for those looking to delve into the artist’s paintings, with many of the finer details of her life and practice gathered within a single volume.

The book provides several necessary contexts, placing Mirabal within the era in which she lived. Showing the changes taking place at the village Mirabal belonged to, the authors begin by touching on the dissenting religious views at Taos Pueblo in the 1930s, as some tribal members participated in the Native American Church. Sharing this history provides greater perspective on Warm Day Coming, since he and his father, Mirabal’s husband Manuel Gomez (Taos Pueblo) were members of the Native American Church. Gomez took part in the religion that met his spiritual needs, despite differing views at the pueblo.

Warm Day Coming carries on legacies from both his mother and father of giving voice to his beliefs.

Warm Day Coming cofounded Residents in Support of Education (RISE) to advocate both for Taos Pueblo children to complete classroom education with 86 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

parental support and for people from the village to become educators and teach Tiwa language classes to their students.

Warm Day Coming’s activism both in art and education follows in his mother’s footsteps, as the book’s epilogue shows.

Mirabal grew up making watercolor paintings and began her formal art education in the 1930s at the Studio, founded by Dorothy Dunn, at the Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS). There, Native students studied Flatstyle painting in addition to marketing, as their paintings were exhibited across the United States and internationally. The authors highlight a key facet of the phenomenon of the Studio—that Native education reform in the 1930s relied upon Native women to become professional artists and teachers to train the next generations. Because of the SFIS art program, the All Indian Pueblo Council advocated for the school to remain open in opposition to John Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945, who sought to close American Indian boarding schools.

Mirabal broke many boundaries during her years as an artist. Her paintings, shown nationally, conveyed scenes of everyday Pueblo life, while her comic strip, G.I. Gertie, commented on the independent spirit of those serving in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. She was likely the first Native American woman cartoonist published

in a nationally distributed newspaper (AIR WAC) in the 1940s. Mirabal was also profiled in Mademoiselle magazine in 1944.

Then, in the first Philbrook Indian Annual in 1946, she entered her paintings—and was the only Native woman artist who did so. She taught as a visiting artist at Southern Illinois Normal University and curated exhibitions, including one with artworks by former SFIS students. She also spoke out on a campus radio show about the critical need for teaching Native American art in American schools, and that, without this knowledge, children’s learning was vastly incomplete.

When her mother became sick in 1950, Mirabal returned to Taos Pueblo.

There she married Manuel Gomez, who spent much of his time away from home while serving in the Navy. During this time, Mirabal enrolled at the Taos Valley Art School where she studied with its founders, artists Louis Ribak and Beatrice Mandelman. The school became a center for the Taos Moderns—artists incorporating abstraction into their paintings inspired by the area. Mirabal attended with funding from the G.I. Bill, and as part of her studies, she experimented with her painting style and media. She made portraits and still lifes in both pencil and oil paint as she explored different concepts of perspective. To her art from this time, she added more modeling and shading, while using negative space as well as a shallow, yet dense, depth of field. These combinations allowed Mirabal to further fuse abstraction into her semi-realist style.

During this period, she showed at Eulalia Emetaz’s La Galeria Escondida in Taos—a space devoted to modern art.

After Mirabal gave birth to her children in the 1950s, her career shifted into one of selling paintings to support her family, as she and Gomez lived separately for most of the years between 1950 and 1965. In the late 1950s, she exhibited her work at La Fonda Hotel in Taos, but by the early 1960s, she struggled with her alcoholism that eventually caused her passing in 1968. This part of Mirabal’s life has remained largely unknown to the public, along with her accolades and prolific career. Rudnick and Warm Day Coming paint a complex picture of Mirabal in this biography, presenting a true portrait of her to the rest of the world.

—Michelle J. Lanteri, PhD

REVIEWS

Through a Native Lens: American Indian Photography Nicole Dawn Strathman, PhD University of Oklahoma Press, 2020

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N 2006, the C.N. Gorman Museum published Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (Navajo/Seminole/Muscogee) and Veronica Passalacqua’s survey of early Indigenous photography Our People, Our Land, Our Images: International Indigenous Photographers. That survey and the accompanying exhibition made so many aware that Indigenous peoples had been photographing more and earlier than the tenuous Native art canon acknowledged. Through subsequent publications and exhibitions, scholarship on early Native photography is unfolding at a dizzying pace. Nicole Dawn Strathman’s excellent study of early Native American photography (both as artists and subjects) shows how far the field has come in an astonishingly short time, yet she freely acknowledges that it is a new field of inquiry and further research will likely upend our current perceptions.

Strathman, a lecturer in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Riverside, builds on her 2013 dissertation, “Through Native Lenses: American Indian Vernacular Photographies and Performances of Memories, 1890–1940.” She divides her 2020 book into sections about “participants”—sitters who used photographic images of themselves to convey messages to the general public, and “practitioners,” whom she divides into “professional, semiprofessional, and amateur.” Strathman doesn’t delve much into the history of photography (so many other sources cover that), but instead discusses the earliest known images of a Native American, defined as an Indigenous person of what is now the United States. Four years after the invention of photography in 1843, a Native Hawaiian diplomat Timothy Kamalehua Ha'alilio (1808–1844) commissioned a photographic portrait in Paris. The first known photographs of a First Nations person, Rev. Peter Jones (Mississauga,

1802–1856), are a series of photographs taken in Scotland in 1845, in which he wore Western and Anishinaabe attire.

Throughout the participants section, from the Hawaiian royal family and Red Cloud (Oglala Lakota, 1822–1909) to Sarah Winnemucca (Northern Paiute/ Shoshone, ca. 1844–1891), Strathman discusses possible motivations for Indigenous people wearing Western or Native attire, and she presents her interpretations as her opinions. These can seem judgmental at times, for instance, her opinion on Winnemucca’s creation of flashy fringed dresses and a felt crown.

Today, Winnemucca might be celebrated for her innovative fashion design.

People of the Big Voice: Photographs of Ho-Chunk Families by Charles Van Schaick, 1879–1942 (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2011), an anthology by Native scholars would have been a great reference.

The bulk of Strathman’s book focuses on Native photographers, beginning with professionals, such as ethnographers George Hunt (Tlingit, 1854–1933) and Louis Shotridge (Tlingit, 1883–August 6, 1937) and studio

photographers Richard Throssel (Cree/ adopted Crow, 1882–1933) and Benjamin Haldane (Tsimshian, 1874–1941). Next are semiprofessionals, such as Horace Poolaw (Kiowa, 1906–1984)—now possibly the best-studied early American Indian photographer—and John Leslie (Squaxin Island Tribe, 1873–1956)1 — whose lack of documentation leaves one with more questions than answers.

What I found most exciting was Strathman’s exploration of amateur photographs, which adds new ground to the history of Native American photography. Chester Cowen (Choctaw Nation) researched the early photography of Parker McKenzie (Kiowa, 1897–1999) and Nettie Odlety McKenzie (ca.

1896–1978), who purchased cameras around 1915 while attending Phoenix Indian School, and Strathman put this information into print along with their extraordinary images. Strathman digs deeper into the photography of Jennie Ross Cobb (Cherokee, 1881–1959), the earliest known American Indian woman photographer. She also introduces the work of Harry Sampson (Reno-Sparks Paiute, 1892–1975) and George Johnson (Tlingit, 1897–1972), both of whom are completely new to me.

Strathman’s writing is buoyant and absorbing. Her book is lavishly illustrated with black-and-white photographs, which show Native people existing in specific times and spaces. She acknowledges the complexities and diverse agendas of the different photographers, but numerous glitches arise with tribal affiliations.

Strathman provides a list of Indigenous photographers from Canada and the United States who are not discussed in the book. She is clear about the need for so much more research and that her book is a link in a much larger chain.

Yet, Through a Native Lens is accessible, thought-provoking, and well cited. This survey moves the fascinating conversation about Indigenous photography in the United States and Canada much further along its path.

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

1. Listed as being Puyallup by Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Leslie was born on Squaxin Island and is listed on the US federal Indian rolls as belonging to the Squaxin Island Tribe.

NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 87

ART+LIT

Tłįchǫ Dene Writer

RICHARD VAN CAMP

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD a film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2019 his collection of short fiction, Moccasin Square Gardens (Douglas and McIntyre, 2019), was shortlisted for the ReLit Award for Short Fiction.

MRS: Thank you very much for speaking with me, Richard. Can you tell us about the transition from writing and consulting for the CBC to producing your own stories? What did you take from it and what did you leave behind?

A above Richard Van Camp (Tłįchǫ Dene), 2017. Photo: William Au Photography, Edmonton and Winnipeg. opposite Cover of Moccasin Square Gardens: Short Stories (Douglas and McIntyre, 2019).

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MEMBER of the Tłı̨ c hǫ Dene Nation from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada, Richard Van Camp graduated from the En’owkin International School of Writing and earned a BFA from the University of Victoria in creative writing and an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia.

Van Camp’s professional writing career began with a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) internship on the hit series North of 60. That role evolved into a full-time script and cultural consultant for the CBC. Van Camp has published widely, producing a series of children’s books, poetry volumes, graphic novels, and short stories. In 2012 director Anita Doron adapted his first novel, The Lesser Blessed (Douglas and McIntyre, 1996), published when he was 24, into

RVC: Mahsi cho, Matthew. Yes, I was very lucky to be a writer trainee for a month for CBC’s North of 60 series and ended up being a cultural consultant with them for three seasons. For readers looking for a superb TV series, every episode and movie of North of 60 is on YouTube for free with full permission from the producers. It was shot in Bragg Creek, Alberta, and remains to this day one of Canada’s most beloved series.

To answer your question, I was working on The Lesser Blessed, my first novel, while living in Calgary and commuting with cast and crew to set. It hit me that I enjoyed working on my own writing so much more than team writing.

It was fun and an honor to help out as a writer trainee and cultural consultant, but honing my own work made my spirit purr every single day. I’m always happy to collaborate, as that has its own magic as well, and it was such a wonderful time to be part of the North of 60 team.

MRS: You’ve spoken about your faith in and enjoyment of storytelling. How do you capture the performance of storytelling in words? Is there a strategy, a technique?

ART+LIT

RVC: You channel when you share stories based on the people in the room. You’re echoing the energy and taking your cues from the crowd. Sometimes, you go enter a room to share stories with a set list of stories that you think would be great for the event, but that can go quickly out the window when you see who’s there, because it’s about energy and what the audience may need. With writing, it’s about you and your characters, but story is the boss.

With storytelling, the audience is the boss and it’s also about the spirit in the room that you create together.

MRS: What were your concerns when The Lesser Blessed was adapted for film? How did you approach the idea that your book would become reanimated, interpreted, and ultimately transformed?

RVC: I love the cinematic adaptation of director Anita Doron’s vision of the novel. I am so grateful to her. That took seven years of our life getting it ready for the world. She took it to a place of grace and dignity. I am so proud of her and our producers, Christina Piovesan and Alex Lalonde of First Generation Films.

I’m so grateful to the cast and crew and for the Ontario Film Commission. You can watch the movie for free on CBC Gems online. Enjoy!

MRS: What keeps you returning to Fort Simmer, the fictionalized version of your hometown that features prominently throughout your work?

RVC: I always put my heartbreak into my short stories, novellas, and novels, and I lace these with hope and humor. I’m proud to place my graphic novels in my hometown, because I want Fort Smithers residents to see themselves in my work. But some stories are too ferocious to put there, so I invented Fort Simmer: a safe place to put Fort Smither’s pain and sorrow and secrets.

Fort Simmer is where Fort Smithers go to confess. The fun I have now is deciding which stories happen where.

MRS: As a professor of creative writing, what are some critical lessons that students should grasp and hold?

RVC: Writing is about hunger, craft, discipline. They say a page a day is a book a year. We’re all looking for the one mentor at the right time to believe in us to help us on our way, and I love being that mentor, that cheerleader for others.

MRS: What are the benefits of writing in different genres— poetry, fiction, children’s fiction? How does this develop your writing skills?

RVC: The story is always the boss, so the story shows me quickly what it wants to be. I’ve learned to listen and respect what wants to bloom through me.

MRS: What are some struggles and difficulties that you encounter when writing?

RVC: No struggles. Only awe that I’ve been chosen to untangle something mighty, huge, and beautiful.

MRS: Following this logic, what can be learned from such experiences? How do they make you a stronger writer, a stronger person?

RVC: I don’t know about stronger. I only know about being far more grateful to have a craft and to live each day as a listener for stories. I listen with my soul, my body, my everything for stories, because you can’t just write a story because you want to. I can’t anyway, but I can respect a story that’s coming from my confusion and/or concern about something. And then we get to play.

MRS: Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful responses, Richard.

RVC: Well, mahsi cho for asking. Take care, everyone. Mahsi cho. Thank you very much.

RICHARDVANCAMP.COM NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 89

MEMORIAL

LORENE DRYWATER June 19, 1932–July 30, 2021

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HEN I WAS A LITTLE BITTY THING—I must have been around three, four—that’s when Mama started teaching me. I was the only one crying for a doll.” When young Lorene Drywater was told there was no money for a doll, she and her mother sat together, and that was the first time that Lorene learned how to make her own doll from grass. She thought it was the most beautiful doll she had ever seen. But then, she saw beauty in everything.

Lorene could take most any material and make something.

She was a creative seamstress who not only made Cherokee tear dresses and ribbon shirts, but she saw turtles and other creatures in pieces of felt. Never letting a scrap of fabric go to waste, she fashioned turtle pincushions and turtle bookmarks. Her beautiful hands were never idle. But most of all, she enjoyed making tiny dresses and slips for her treasured buffalo grass dolls.

The first time Lorene handed me one of her dolls, her eyes sparkled. She immediately turned the doll upside down and explained, “This is how the grass grows. I wash the roots really good and braid them to make the hair, then I get to make the tiny dresses and petticoats because they always wore petticoats.” I honestly don’t believe that Lorene ever expected that her buffalo grass dolls would bring her such renown. In 1990 Lorene was named a Cherokee National Treasure. The title of Cherokee National Treasure is bestowed upon Cherokee Nation citizens who have shown exceptional knowledge of Cherokee art and who actively work to preserve and revive customary cultural practices that are in danger of being lost to future generations.

National Geographic covered Lorene’s buffalo grass dolls in a 1995 feature article. She has been featured in numerous videos, television programs, and in various newspapers, as well as an article in Southern Living magazine. She participated in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC, in 2019 and 2020, and her hand-sewn tear dresses are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

Lorene Morris Drywater was born in Vian, Oklahoma, to Luther and Nancy (Leaf) Morris and grew up with four sisters and two brothers. Family was always important to Lorene. She met and married Jess Drywater and began her own family, raising five daughters and two sons, Ida, Pearl, Raymond, Thomas, Elaine, Becky, and Susie. In addition to her domestic accomplishments, Lorene was adept in gardening and cooking, and frequently brought happiness and big smiles to her family and friends with wonderful meals of her fried chicken and fresh fried fish, caught by Jess. She enjoyed caring for and talking with her menagerie of creatures, both winged and four-legged. She deeply loved her home life and her family.

Lorene spoke the Cherokee language and, though she may not have been officially recognized as a storyteller, she always had a story to share. Her wit and sense of humor will be greatly 90 | FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM

missed in Cherokee art circles. She had a story about almost everything, and often shared stories about turtles. “Our people always believed that turtles were a very important animal,” Lorene said. “They had told us, ‘You take that home with you if it’s dead, set it up somewhere along the edge of the roof of your house, because a turtle doesn't get blown away.’ And if you have a turtle sitting up there along the edge of your roof your house won’t get blown away.”

I vividly recall the first time I met Lorene. It was 1980, and I was working in the Cherokee Craft Store in Tahlequah.

Lorene came in with a small bag of buffalo grass dolls, some turtle pincushions, a few turtle bookmarks, and a big smile.

She perched on a tall stool behind the counter, and we visited for three hours. I learned so much about Lorene and her dolls.

It was as if we had known each other for years. Really, she was like that with everyone. She loved life and loved people. She knew almost every customer and artist who walked through the door that afternoon, and I heard a lot of funny stories. Lorene Morris Drywater was a beautiful force of energy and will forever be an inspiration to younger artists. Although she will be sorely missed, Lorene left an amazing legacy of family love, Cherokee culture, and creativity.

—Pamela Jumper-Thurman, PhD (Cherokee Nation)

MEMORIAL

JESSE T. HUMMINGBIRD February 12, 1952–June 17, 2021

left Jesse Hummingbird (Cherokee Nation), at right, celebrating being named a Cherokee National Treasure, with Bill Glass Jr. (Cherokee Nation), at left, who nominated him for the honor, 2017. opposite Lorene Drywater (Cherokee Nation) and her buffalo grass dolls. Photo: Jeremy Charles Photography, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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FTER POWERING through a broken back and bout with cancer, Jesse Hummingbird succumbed to a gastric bleed at the age of 69. He is survived by his wife Sandy, brother Eddie Morrison and his wife Faye, sister Nancy, and many nieces and nephews, as well as his beloved pups, Sister and Stanley.

Jesse, who was three-quarters Cherokee and a tribal member of the Cherokee Nation, was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to Jess and Margaret Hummingbird. He was the baby of seven children. He attended junior and senior high schools in Nashville, Tennessee, and went on to study art at Watkins Institute in Nashville, Tennessee State University, University of Tennessee, and the American Academy of Art College in Chicago. After moving to Bisbee, Arizona, he took printmaking classes at Cochise College.

Jesse established himself as a successful printer, graphic artist, and commercial illustrator before becoming a full-time artist in 1983. He painted Cherokee and other Native American themes. While painting images in acrylic,

Jesse drew inspiration from the Flatstyle of Oklahoma Native painters.

After moving to Arizona from Oklahoma, Jesse exhibited at shows primarily in the Southwest, showing his original paintings and mixed-media masks. He and his wife Sandy coauthored and illustrated five children’s activity books. Jesse also illustrated the books Native American Night Before Christmas (Clear Light Publishing, 2010) and Native American Twelve Days of Christmas (Clear Light Publishing, 2011), which were later released as DVDs. His artwork also graced the cover of Where We Live: A Puzzle Book of American Indian Art (National Museum of the American Indian, 2011). He had been illustrating a children’s book, Don’t Step on Me, for the Book Publishers of Nashville with 14 paintings of insects in their habitats— done in Jesse-style!

Jesse won awards for his paintings at the Santa Fe Indian Market, Heard Museum Guild Fair, Five Civilized Tribes Museum, Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, Pueblo Grande Museum Indian Market, St. George Art Festival, and Tesoro Cultural Center Art

Market. He was proud to have won first place in painting at Tesoro on June 6, 2021, and very proud that his brother, Eddie, won first place in sculpture.

His artwork has been shown in public collections in the United States and abroad, including the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, and the Richard E. Mansfield Collection and the James T. Bialac Native American Art Collection at the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. In 2009 Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona, gave Jesse a solo exhibition featuring 22 pieces.

In 1996 the Indian Arts and Crafts Association named Jesse Artist of the Year, and the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts gave him a fellowship. In 2015 the Cherokee Nation named Jesse a Tribal Elder, and in 2017 the nation named him a Living Treasure—an honor that he cherished.

At his request there will be no services, memorials, or celebrations.

Jesse would want all to remember him in their own way and recall his “wicked sense of humor,” as described by one of his mentors.

—Sandy Hummingbird NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 91

MEMORIAL

PITALOOSIE SAILA July 11, 1942–July 24, 2021

A above Pitaloosie Saila (Inuk), The Good Omen, 2021, lithograph on Arches cover white paper, 20½ × 28 in. Printer Niveaksie Quvianaqtuliaq (Inuk).

Image courtesy of Dorset Fine Arts, Toronto. opposite William S. Yellow Robe Jr. (Assiniboine, 1960–2021).

Photo: Laurie Lambrech.

GREAT LOSS has been felt in the Inuit art world. The skilled artist and printmaker, Pitaloosie Saila (Inuk) has passed away. She was born in 1942 in the Kinngait community, also known as Cape Dorset. Most of her childhood was spent in hospitals in Ontario and Quebec for the treatment of tuberculosis. During her time in the hospitals, she learned to speak English and some French. Saila used her language skills to translate for friends and family and later to promote her art. She returned to her Cape Dorset community at 15 years of age to live with her grandparents. Upon her return Saila realized that she could no longer speak Inuktitut and had the difficult task of relearning the language of her own culture.

Saila came from a family of recognized artists, many of whom are graphic artists. However, as Saila began drawing and printmaking in the 1960s, she developed her own unique style which ranged from realism to abstract. Her subject matter was typically strong women, children, birds, and Sedna (Inuktitut:

Sanna). Sedna is the mother of the sea in Inuit culture. Saila used her art to express the Inuit way of life as well as topics that concerned her. Feheley Fine Arts in Toronto shared: “Throughout her career, Pitaloosie Saila was innovative both in the subjects and in the style of her images.

She had a special place in her heart for the depictions of strong female figures as well as for the power of mother and child.”1 Saila’s first solo exhibition, which she attended in person, was in 1974 in the city of Hamilton, Ontario. Successive exhibitions allowed her to travel to cities in southern Canada, the United States, and Europe. Her artwork was featured in more than 150 exhibitions, and her prints can be seen in galleries and museums around the world.

Saila was selected as the artist to represent the Northwest Territories in the centennial celebration of the Canadian National Parks in 1967. In 1977 Canada Post issued a stamp featuring her 1971 stonecut print Fisherman’s Dream. In 1990 Amnesty International used her drawing Mother and Child for their Christmas card.

In 1960 she married renowned sculptor, Pauta Saila (Inuk, ca. 1916– 2009). The couple spent their lives together in Cape Dorset. In 2004 both Pitaloosie and Pauta joined the prestigious Royal Academy of the Arts. Pauta Saila passed away in Cape Dorset at age 93. Pitaloosie continued to live in Cape Dorset and enjoyed time with her children and grandchildren. She was 79 years old when she passed away.

Saila’s own words describe her reasoning for creating art: “I started because I wanted to make something out of me. Put food on the table for my kids.

I wanted people to see something about our culture. I am very pleased that I can tell all my stories, and future generations will know who I am.”2 —Michole Eldred (Catawba/Eastern Cherokee)

1. Elizabeth, “Inuk artist Pitaloosie Saila has passed away,” New in 24, August 31, 2021, web.

2. “Pitaloosie Saila: A Personal Journey,” Winnipeg Art Gallery, March 7, 2018, YouTube video, 1:47, web.

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MEMORIAL

WILLIAM S. YELLOW ROBE JR. February 4, 1960–July 19, 2021

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HEN THEY REALIZED just how serious their son was about theater, Bill Yellow Robe’s parents advised him to leave the reservation to pursue his career. He took their advice and worked throughout the United States, but often returned to reconnect with his Assiniboine family and dreamed of a future where young Native playwrights and actors would have their own theater troupes on their own tribal lands.

While his accomplishments in his 61 years were considerable, Bill was always quick to acknowledge those who went before him. He helped pave the way for Native theater and was always willing to help students and emerging thespians. Colleagues remember him being piercingly honest in his plays, speaking to Native American realities without concern for white fragility.

This fearless playwright and educator was a member of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana. His parents were William Stanley Yellowrobe Sr. (Assiniboine, 1915–1991) and Mina Rose Forrest Yellowrobe (Assiniboine, 1930–1991), the last member of the Assiniboine Horse Society. His mother was a masterful seamstress, and Bill wrote the play The Star Quilter in her honor.

While his parents did not graduate high school, they read voraciously and encouraged their son in his literary pursuits. “As, sometimes, you do not need a church in order to pray, you do not need a classroom or an institute in order to read and learn,” Bill wrote.1 Bill attended the University of Montana, Missoula, which bestowed upon him an honorary doctoral degree in 2020. He married his first wife, Diane Ruth Lamar (1933–1996), in 1987 in Roosevelt, Montana.

The prolific writer penned more than 50 one-act and full-length plays.

Published collections include Where the Pavement Ends, Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers and Other Untold Stories, and Restless Spirits: Plays, in which he confronted the realities of being Black and Indigenous. Other plays and essays he wrote appear in anthologies.

Bill taught creative writing, theater, and playwriting at the University of Montana, Brown University, and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). His fellow IAIA creative writing teacher, Barney Bush (1944–2021) also recently passed on. In recent years, Bill was the Libra Professor in the English department at the University of Maine, Orono.

He was a member of numerous theaters throughout the country, including the Penumbra Theatre Company in St. Paul, Minnesota, and La MaMa and the Ensemble Studio Theatre, both in New York. He also served as an advisor to Red Eagle Soaring Native Youth Theatre in Seattle. Bill regularly broke new ground for Native theater, from founding the nation’s first play development center for Native American playwrights in Arlee, Montana, to being a founding member of the American Indian Playwrights Guild and the National American Indian Theater and Performing Arts Alliance. In 1997, he founded the Wakiknabe Theater Company in Albuquerque.

“Playwriting, and all the other art forms, are political when people of color do it because we empower ourselves, we take control of our past, present, and future,” Bill once wrote.2 For all the work he devoted to creating new opportunities for the next generation of Native playwrights, directors, and actors, Bill received a multitude of awards, including a 1989 Princess Grace Theater Fellowship, a 2014 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

residency, and a Native American Achiever’s Award from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. He also received a New England Theater Conference Award for Excellence and a Jerome Fellowship from the Minneapolis Playwrights’ Center.

Just before his passing, Yellow Robe also received a Helen Merrill Award from the New York Community Trust, and a Dramatists’ Guild Award.

Bill walked on in Bangor, Maine, after battling heart attacks and the effects of diabetes. He is survived by his wife Jeanne Domek-Yellow Robe.

“He alchemized the pain of genocide, racism, and an American theatre too fearful to widely produce his work into transcendent moments of comedy and truth,” wrote Bill’s former student Rhianna Yazzie (Navajo). “Bill’s plays were for Native people, period. But the honesty, the craft, and artistry he channeled into his plays from his life’s broken hearts, hard-fought wins, and unexpected deep joy—that was for everyone.”3 —America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

1. William S. Yellow Robe Jr., Where the Pavement Ends: Five Native American Plays (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), ix.

2. Elvira Pulitano and William Yellow Robe, “Telling Stories Through the Stage: A Conversation with William Yellow Robe,” Studies in American Indian Literatures 10, no.

1 (Spring 1998), 19, web.

3. Rhianna Yazzie, “Bill Yellow Robe Spoke Native Truth to White Power,” American Theater, August 9, 2021, web.

NO. 32, FALL 2021 | 93

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October 9, 2021–January 30, 2022: Birmingham, AL Voices so True: New Native American Art from the Clyde Oyster Bequest at the Birmingham Museum at Art, 2000 Rev. Abraham Woods Jr. Boulevard (205) 254-2565 | artsbma.org

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October 9, 2021–February 6, 2022: Birmingham, AL Lost Realms of the Moundbuilders: Ancient Native Americans of the South and Midwest at the Birmingham Museum at Art, 2000 Rev. Abraham Woods Jr. Boulevard | (205) 254-2565 | artsbma.org October 11, 2021–January 29, 2022: El Prado, NM New Mexico A-I-R: IAIA Artist Residents in Visual Dialogue at the Millicent Rogers Museum, 1504 Millicent Rogers Road | (575) 758-2462 millicentrogers.org October 13, 2021–May 29, 2022: Kleinberg, ON From Water to Water: A Way Through the Trees at McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 10365 Islington Avenue | +1 (905) 893-1121 | mcmichael.com October 14–December 11: Minneapolis, MN biskaabiiyang (returning to ourselves) at All My Relations Arts, 1414 E. Franklin Avenue | (612) 235-4970 | allmyrelationsarts.com October 14, 2021–November 20, 2022: Arcata, CA BDT: A Retrospective at Goudi’ni Native American Arts Gallery, Humboldt State University, 1 Harpst Street | (707) 826-5253 | art.humboldt.edu/galleries

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October 16–December 19: Homer, AK Ron Senungetuk: A Retrospective at the Pratt Museum, 3779 Bartlett Street (907) 235-8635 | prattmuseum.org October 16, 2021–January 30, 2022: Athens, GA Collective Visions: Modern Native American Printmakers at the Georgia Museum of Art, 90 Carlton Street | (706) 542-4662 | georgiamuseum.org

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October 21, 2021–January 8, 2022: Warm Springs, OR

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October 23–November 20: Toronto, ON Shuvinai Ashoona: Kinngait Visions at Feheley Fine Arts, 65 George Street +1 (416) 323-1373 | feheleyfinearts.com October 24, 2021–July 17, 2022: Denver, CO ReVisión: Art in the Americas at the Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway | (720) 865-5000 | denverartmuseum.org October 24, 2021–January 2, 2023: Phoenix, AZ Remembering the Future: 100 Years of Inspiring Art at the Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Avenue | (602) 252-8840 | heard.org/exhibits October 29, 2021–April 24, 2022: St. Louis, MO Woodlands: Native American Art at Saint Louis Art Museum, 1 Fine Arts Drive | (314) 721-0072 | slam.org/exhibitions

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November 3–5 & 10–11: Virtual Native American Art Studies Association (NAASA) Conference online.

Fees range from $40 to $60 | nativearts.org | attendify.co/PgSNbPb November 5–December 18: Lander, WY Art of Home: A Native American Art Show Celebrating Wind River at the Lander Art Center, 258 Main Street | (307) 332-5772 | landerartcenter.com November 5–TBA: Phoenix, AZ Toward the Morning Sun: Navajo Pictorial Textiles at the Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Avenue | (602) 252-8840 | heard.org/exhibits November 5, 2021–March 19, 2022: Lincoln, NE A Vital Presence: Native Art at the Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q Street (402) 472-3082 | unl.edu/plains November 6, 2021–April 3, 2022: Santa Fe, NM Activation/Transformation at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 704 Camino Lejo | (505) 982-4636 | wheelwright.org

November 12–15: Tucson, AZ Celebration of Basketry + Native American Foods Festival and Symposium at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, 2021 N. Kinney Road (520) 883-2702 | desertmuseum.org November TBA, 2021–February TBA, 2022: Saskatoon, SK Leah Marie Dorion: Thirteen Moons at Wanuskewin Heritage Park, RR #4 Penner Road | +1 (306) 931-6767 | wanuskewin.com

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November 19: Lehi, UT Native American Artifact Symposium: New Technologies for Cultural Preservation at the Megaplex Theatres at Thanksgiving Point, 2935 N. Thanksgiving Way | (801) 768-7361 | johnhutchingsmuseum.org November 19–21: Grand Junction, CO 4th Annual Native American Market Days at Colorado Mesa University, 1100 North Avenue, hosted by Native American Cultural Programs (775) 777-4063 | nacpcolorado.org November 19, 2021–March 14, 2022: Asheville, NC A Living Language: Cherokee Syllabary and Contemporary Art at the Asheville Art Museum, 2 S. Pack Square | (828) 253-3227 | ashevilleart.org December 1, 2021–January 29, 2022: Portland, OR Gail Tremblay at the Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis Street (503) 222-1142 | froelickgallery.com December 1, 2021–January 29, 2022: Portland, OR Rick Bartow at the Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis Street (503) 222-1142 | froelickgallery.com December 3, 2021–April 3, 2022: Toronto, ON Robert Houle: Red Is Beautiful at the Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street West | +1 (877) 225-4246 | ago.ca December 4 & 5: 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

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December 18, 2021–April 17, 2022: San Francisco, CA Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo at the de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, includes Pomo basketry and regalia (415) 750-3600 | deyoung.famsf.org January 14–16: Colorado Springs, CO 40th Annual Colorado Indian Market at the Colorado Springs Event Center, 3960 Palmer Park Boulevard. Admission $15/day, children under 12: free (505) 273-7363 | dashevents.com January 22–October 2: Santa Fe, NM Abeyta: To’Hajiilee Ké at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 704 Camino Lejo | (505) 982-4636 | wheelwright.org January 28, 2022–January 29, 2023: Washington, DC Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight at the National Museum of the American Indian, 4th Street & Independence Avenue SW (202) 633-1000 | nmai.si.edu

28th Annual

Warm Springs Tribal Member Art Exhibit October 21, 2021 - January 8, 2022

February 6, 2022–May 8, 2023: Denver, CO Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche at Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway | (720) 865-5000 | denverartmuseum.org February 19–October 31: Phoenix, AZ How Old Is It: Southwestern Silverwork, 1850–1940 at Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Avenue | (602) 252-8840 | heard.org/exhibits February 25–27: San Francisco, CA 37th annual American Indian Art Show | San Francisco at Fort Mason Center, Festival Pavilion, 2 Marina Boulevard | objectsofartshows.com For more events, visit our online calendar at

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LOST REALMS OF THE

MOUNDBUILDERS ANCIENT NATIVE AMERICANS OF THE SOUTH AND MIDWEST

Lost Realms of the Moundbuilders: Ancient Native Americans of the South and Midwest (originally titled Spiro and the Art of the Mississippian World) is organized by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

This exhibition is supported in part by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Kirkpatrick Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The local presentation is made possible by the Estate of Mr. Harris Saunders, Jr. and Jean Saunders.

Additional support is provided by the Jefferson County Community Service Fund at the recommendation of Alabama Representative Jim Carns, HD 48.

Effigy pipe of seated male figure. Identified as Morning Star or the hero Red Horn. Le Flore County, Oklahoma, Spiro site, 1100 – 1200. Bauxite (flint clay).

Photograph by John Lamberton. Image courtesy the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Fayetteville, University of Arkansas Museum. 47-2-1.

Birmingham Museum of Art