BELONGING:Contemporary Native Ceramics from the Southern Plains

belonging :

contemporary native ceramics from the southern plains

00

belonging :

contemporary native ceramics from the southern plains february 02–march 23, 2024

karita coffey comanche

chase kahwinhut earles caddo

anita fields osage.muscogee

raven halfmoon

caddo.choctaw.delaware.otoe

cannupa hanska luger

mandan.hidatsa.arikara.lakota

jane osti

cherokee national treasure

cortney yellowhorse-metzger osage

This publication accompanies BELONGING: Contemporary Native Ceramics from the Southern Plains which was organized by Landmark Arts, the Exhibitions and Speakers Program of the School of Art, Lubbock, Texas and presented at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, Lubbock. The exhibition was curated by Klinton Burgio-Ericson, Ph. D., Assistant Professor of Art of the Americas at Texas Tech University. The exhibition and catalogue accompany the 2024 Texas Ceramics Symposium presented in Lubbock February 23-24, 2024. published by

Landmark Arts in the School of Art | Texas Tech University | Lubbock, Texas 79409 | www.landmarkarts.org Copyright 2024 by the authors, artists, and Texas Tech University. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without permission from Texas Tech University.

Major support for the exhibition and the catalogue comes from the Still Water Foundation, Austin, Texas. Additional support is made possible, in part, with a grant from the City of Lubbock as recommended by Civic Lubbock, Inc., the Ryla T. & John F. Lott Endowment for Excellence in the Visual Arts administered through the School of Art, and from Cultural Activities Fees administered through the J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts. Support for the 2024 Texas Ceramics Symposium comes from the Helen Jones Foundation, Lubbock.

We are especially grateful for the generous collaboration of the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts in presenting the BELONGING exhibition and providing facilities for the Ceramics Symposium, with special thanks to Ms. Lindsey Masetri, Executive Director, and Ms. Taylor Ernst, Curator for their assistance.

ISBN: 978-0-692-96932-8 design. Carla Tedeschi | printing. Slate Group

table of contents

FOREWORD | joe arredondo

4

“in and through clay: Relations and Belonging in Contemporary Native Ceramics of the Southern Plains” | klinton burgio-ericson, ph.d.

5

“Belonging Then, Now, and Always” chelsea m. herr, ph.d. | choctaw nation of oklahoma

13

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES AND ARTWORK

17

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

44

FOREWORD

it is an honor and a privilege to present this important, and much overdue, exhibition of artwork by Native artists from the Southern Plains. Even before Dr. Klinton Burgio-Ericson had settled in Lubbock in fall 2022 as a new hire in the School of Art as Assistant Professor of Art History of the Americas, I contacted him to see if he would be interested in working with Landmark Arts and the Ceramics area on the production of an exhibition of contemporary Native American ceramic art of the region to accompany a regional ceramics symposium that Von Venhuizen, Associate Professor of ceramics, and I had begun discussing over the previous summer. Klint BELONGING: in contemporary native agreed to collaborate by curating the exhibition, ceramics from and I could not be happier with the results. He has the southern plains shown great consideration and thoughtfulness in identifying artists, artworks, and a guiding theme for this exhibition.

We were very fortunate that by early fall 2022, Lindsey Maestri, Executive Director of the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (LHUCA), agreed to collaborate with School of Art on both projects by providing exhibition space in the LHUCA galleries for the curated exhibition, and meeting space in their other facilities for the ceramics symposium sessions and demonstrations. This exhibition would not have been possible without a generous exhibition support grant provided by the Still Water Foundations of Austin. We are also greatly appreciative of additional support that has been made from a grant from the City of Lubbock

04

as recommended by Civic Lubbock, Inc., the Ryla T. & John F. Lott Endowment for Excellence in the Visual Arts administered through the School of Art, and from Cultural Activities Fees administered through the J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual & Performing Arts. The Helen Jones Foundation of Lubbock has generously provided a grant to support the 2024 Texas Ceramics Symposium.

In spring 2023, Texas Tech University’s Indigenous and Native American Studies Circle, with Texas Tech’s Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center, announced a three-year project to expand Texas Tech’s curriculum and to establish reciprocal relationships with Native communities in our region, including the Comanche Nation, the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. Expanding the Circle is funded by a Humanities Initiatives Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Next year, 20242025, the TTU Humanities Center’s theme will be “Celebrating Indigenous Resilience and Cultural Survival: Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Red River War.” Texas Tech School of Art is delighted to begin the conversation with this excellent exhibition.

Joe Arredondo Director of Landmark Arts Exhibitions & Speaker Programs in the School of Art

Klinton Burgio-Ericson, Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

in and through clay: relations and belonging in contemporary native ceramics of the southern plains

t

his is not a show about identity; it is a show about belonging. although important

and deeply felt, identity is too easily marginalized as “mere” politics, dividing people by the identities they project. Likewise, identity often carries a sense of choice in identifying one way, rather than others.1 Belonging, on the other hand, encompasses myriad relations among people, places, materials, and other inhabitants of our world; it is a richness of mutual obligation and reciprocity. I use the term affirmatively as “belongingness,” rather than possession or exploitation. Belonging in this sense is about connecting and generosity. To give, receive, and give back in turn. It is about caring, responsibility, and appreciation.

Belonging expresses the complexity and interrelatedness of being together: “[…] it is not simply who you IN AND THROUGH CLAY: claim to be, but also who claims you.”2 relations and belonging in contemporary native CERAMIC S of THE SOUTHERN PLAINS Belonging frames consideration of recent ceramics by Native artists in the Southern Plains. Their work expresses belongingness in kinship; amidst Native communities and cultures; in specific places and histories; and through time. Accompanying Texas Tech University’s 2024 Texas Ceramics Symposium, this exhibition is a collaboration among its artists, the TTU School of Art, the Landmark Arts Program, and the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts. Together, we focus on the essence of ceramics: the transformation of Indigenous land by water, air, and fire.

As a settler recently arrived in West Texas, my first concern was to ground this exhibit in the specific Indigeneity of this place, respecting the enduring relationships that Native people have with ancestral lands. I want to honor the history and caretakers of what is today Lubbock, situated in the homelands of the Comanche Nation. This region also has importance for the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, the Jicarilla Apache Nation, the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Mescalero Apache Tribe of the Mescalero Reservation. In organizing this exhibit, I hope to recognize Indigenous curatorial principles that include respect for Indigenous lands, collaborative engagement, and honoring mentoring relationships.3 With these objectives in mind, I reached out to Comanche artist Karita Coffey, whom I had always regarded for her artistic range and cooly conceptual style that is sincerely warm-hearted in tone. Coffey’s artistic career is noteworthy for her participation in the transformation of Indian Art that began in the 1960s with the foundation of the Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA) in Santa Fe, NM. She was among the first female students at IAIA, enrolling as a high schooler from 1963 to 1965. Her turn towards ceramics is notable because the historically nomadic Comanche people did not work in clay. In Native arts, where the choice of medium is often tied to customary practices, Coffey’s adoption of studio ceramics was a bold choice, and

05

part of the efflorescence of experimental Native art that developed in the later twentieth century.

In the 1980s, she worked as a professional artist in Corrales, NM before returning to IAIA to teach ceramics for over twenty-five years, retiring in 2015.4 As a teacher, Coffey contributed to the development of renown contemporary artists such as Courtney M. Leonard (Shinnecock), Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo), and Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/Lakota), each of whom has had far reaching artistic impacts.

Coffey’s career also served to inspire and motivate other artists such as Anita Fields (Osage/Muscogee), who looked to her example in establishing herself as a Native woman artist from Oklahoma. This exhibition developed through our conversations, and it is an honor to feature Coffey and Fields as keynote speakers during the Ceramics Symposium.

Out of the earth of the Southern Plains, Native ceramics comprise a vibrant artistic discourse embracing a breadth of cultural, technical, and formal approaches. Southwestern art markets cultivate expectations that Native ceramics mean customary pottery. The artists in this exhibition bely those expectations, adopting artistic solutions from re-envisioned vessels to experimental multimedia installations and performance. Their work demonstrates the range of ceramic approaches and vibrant creativity in this region, just the artists lend individual perspectives to the meaning of belongingness.

Based on these discussions, we have convened a dynamic group show featuring artists linked to the Southern Plains and representing diverse ceramic practices. My regional parameter—the Southern Plains—immediately evokes anthropological cultural-area paradigms, and artists from Southern Plains tribes (Comanche, Osage) are part of this exhibition. But as a geographic region, the Plains are not frozen in a moment of early contact with European settlers. Native American history comprises political and social histories, and today the Southern Plains reflect an extremely diverse Indigenous North America, as federal policies and settler pressures forcibly relocated many tribes to what is now Oklahoma, while institutions of Indian Country continue to draw other Native people to the region. Belonging thus features artists with deep historical ties to the region, but also from tribes (Caddo, Cherokee, Choctaw) who arrived through settler displacement. Finally, Luger represents a contemporary arrival, as an artist working in the vicinity of Santa Fe and residing near Glorieta Pass, a historic gateway between Plains and Pueblo Indian worlds.

≈

relating to place

intertwines phenomenological experience with memory

I

kinship and land

RELATIONALITY IS ESSENTIAL TO INDIGENOUS VALUES, WAYS

of knowing, and conceptions of the world for many Native communities. These connections entail shared responsibility and reciprocity: the understanding that we exist in mutual obligation to give, receive, and give some more.5 While each culture is particular, they frequently embrace ideas of kinship that include extended family, community, and other cohabitants of this world. Kinship may also include relationships with the “more-thanhuman” persons who dwell alongside us: animals, spirits, earth, and materials.6 From this perspective, clay is the flesh of the earth, and participates in relationships among artists, consumers, ancestors, and natural elements.7 Although coming from an experimental, studio perspective, Coffey’s work often engages notions of kinship, community, and place. Made in 2000, My First Memory (page 07) marks the beginning of her incorporation of everyday metaphoric ob-

jects. This piece honors a “flashbulb” memory of being wrapped in a blanket on her mother’s lap, amongst the vague figures of a Christian prayer meeting under kerosene lamplight. It was a small gathering of the Deyo Indian Baptist Mission church goers, which rotated prayer meetings amongst members’ houses. Coffey scaled up an old doll to represent herself as an eight-month-old baby, while the room comprising her body recreates that first memory, which took place in her grandfather’s home on the original family allotment near Faxon, OK in 1948.8 Coffey’s mother later confirmed this memory when she was thirty-five years old.

Beyond personal significance, this work speaks of broader socio-historical concerns, such as the Christianization of the Comanches. The Deyo mission (established 1883) represented more than acculturation, however, and has been a community focal point, bringing people together to sing Comanche-language hymns and speak the language, and listen to Comanche and Kiowa preachers. The cemetery is a resting place for their relatives, and Coffey describes the church as a different kind of belonging that provides a “real shot of culture.” It protected aspects of Comanche culture during the years of reservation confinement, allotment, and boarding school reeducation.

The model of her grandfather’s home points to other aspects of belonging. As the Federal Government sought to eradicate Indigenous cultures, the Dawes Severalty Act (1887) broke up tribal land by allotting portions to individual families, while selling the remainder to settlers.9 Allotment led to a massive diminution of reservation lands, but some families managed to hold onto chosen areas.

Comanches had lived nomadically in the Southern Plains, but typically camped in certain places in relationship to the land. Some encampment areas became Comanche allotments, allowing families to retain significant places and relations. Coffey’s grandfather’s land was of this sort, where her elders had camped until constructing the house in 1907.10

as a geographic region, the plains are not frozen in a moment of early contact with european settlers. native american history comprises political and social histories, and today the southern plains reflect an extremely diverse indigenous north america 06

Karita Coffey My First Memory, 2000. earthenware clay and glazes, 5 x 9 x 20 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist.

it’s hard to describe how it feels to be

connected to a place. it’s kind of what your feet know. it’s what our face knows when the breeze blows.

A sense of belonging is intertwined with this place; Coffey speaks of returning to the family allotment over the years, and walking it to recenter herself, while bringing back lichen-covered rocks to Santa Fe to maintain connections to the land. Relating to place intertwines phenomenological experience with memory: When you come into consciousness on the land, and you play on that land, it really does shape you.

And you belong to that land [….] It’s hard to describe how it feels to be connected to a place. It’s kind of what your feet know. It’s what your face knows when that breeze blows. It’s the smell. It’s the sounds. You know, it’s all of that. And every now and then, even here, if the wind blows a certain way, it takes me back home.11 Coffey’s brother, former Chairman of the Comanche Nation Wallace Coffey, reiterates this sense of belonging, noting that many Comanches refer to Mother Earth as the “Soul’s Source.”12 Family Heirloom (2023, page 20) is another remembrance of this homeplace and kinship. It appears to be an unfunctional teapot, with a carinated body, funnel-like rim, and inverted foot. Press-molded pipes form an upwardly curved spout and a downwardly curved handle. Laser-printed decals from old photos of Coffey’s mother, grandfather, and uncle appear over the creamy blue glaze and a wallpaper pattern that unifies the piece. This work commemorates Coffey’s family and connections to the allotment land, of which she says,

belonging is a relational concept that includes family, but also beings to whom one owes attention, care, and responsibility.

Life was without any of the conveniences of today—no running water or electricity. We had an outhouse…So the pipes on this teapot reference an absence. Water had to be hauled from a well, and this was tough during the winter. Yet it was the best time of my life.

Whereas typical settler heirlooms include precious vessels of delicate bone china, Coffey uses organic forms and rustic moldings to represent her own “salt-of-the-earth” people.

Other artists in this exhibition also address connections to nature and place. For instance, Raven Halfmoon references Caddo rivers and lands with an interlocking spiral motif, while Chase Kahwinhut Earles alludes to this ancestral cultural landscape through garfish, snapping turtles, bears, and birds. For Jane Osti, forest leaves, dogwood flowers, water spirals, and turtles point to the wooded landscapes of Cherokee ancestral lands in Appalachia, but also the rolling hills of eastern Oklahoma where they were relocated.

Through Indigenous ontologies, humans belong to relationships with other more-than-human persons: the animals and living beings whom they dwell amongst, as well as the land and rivers themselves. From such a perspective, belonging is a relational concept that includes family, but also beings to whom one owes attention, care, and responsibility.

07

II

c u lt u r a l b e l o n g i n g

CULTURE IS ESSENTIAL TO NOTIONS OF BELONGING,

and as a concept it seems much like a ceramic vessel. One can imagine the walls of a culture; its connections to specific places and people; and its contents of knowledgeable insiders who belong, unlike outsiders who seem essentially different.

Originating with anthropology, this “container” metaphor is fraught with problems. In reality, cultures change, respond to social and historical contexts, and evolve over time through the actions of participants. Cultures have porous boundaries and emerge through interrelations with wider contexts, while sensibilities of belonging vary according to how individual members perceive themselves.

These issues seem to be at stake in a work such as Coffey’s Plains Indian Woman’s Leggings.

(1986, page 18) This is a detailed rendering of buckskin clothing in the rigid, fragile medium of white earthenware clay. The Leggings are twin containers of a sort, with their soles and handbuilt walls enclosing inner volumes. They evoke presence—the Indigenous body that would occupy them—but they are not inwardly oriented. Instead, they project their significance outward, in dialogue with viewers and the social world where they find themselves, signifying cultural belonging to those who can read them.

Coffey describes her Leggings as remembrances of her home community. As a young adult she had danced powwows and made her own buckskin leggings. In translating these forms to clay, Coffey omitted the cuff-like Comanche-style fringes along the top, which would have been too fragile. The generic title reflects these alterations. By transforming customary arts, Coffey reinforced her personal sense of belonging and asserted that she had not forgotten her roots. As customary “containers,” the Leggings are oriented outwards, towards Coffey’s home community, although non-Native collectors seemed to appreciate them too.

08

Cultural traditions weave together symbols, patterns of expression, and beliefs, from which emerge the possibilities of replication, but also innovation to keep them relevant and alive.

Contemporary art is simply that of living and recently deceased artists. Therefore, belonging to an Indigenous expressive tradition is just as contemporary as the most experimental new-media provocation. Traditions provide lexicons of symbols and motifs, as well as the structuring elements of materials, techniques, and forms, but meaning emerges through individual performance in which artists combine elements in their own creative expressions.

Cultural belonging informs the work of many Native artists. For instance, Jane Osti has been part of revitalizing Ancestral Cherokee ceramics, using paddle-stamped patterns and incised curvilinear designs. She learned from working with Anna Sixkiller Mitchell (Cherokee Nation), who revived customary pottery in Oklahoma where it had disappeared during relocation and assimilationism. Osti has passed on her knowledge to her granddaughter Lillie Vann and students such as Karin Walkingstick (both Cherokee Nation). Osti’s Circles of Belonging (2023, page 39) materializes cultural connectedness and her commitment to sharing it. A bulbous eight-part squash pot forms the base, rising to a long neck with incised spirals and a flaring eight-pointed rim. Spirals are the most common pattern in Southeastern pottery, suggesting swirling water and movement through life, although Osti also relates them to the ascension of prayers and the return of blessings.

She connects squash pots to Cherokee culture as a food source and effigy that expresses gratitude towards the plant for sustaining life. Osti’s use of these forms embodies her sense of belonging within the circle of her people, of belonging to Cherokee culture and history.16 Anita Fields wrestles with histories of cultural loss and resilience in Do Your Best (2020, page 28).

The Osage word pronounced Wah-skah’ projects from the center of three gleaming panels of white

porcelain, bearing the words: “Boarding School Loss of Land Relocation Trauma!!” This textual field declares the pressures contributing to Osage language loss, but some words expressing foundational Osage principles never fell out of common usage, such as Wah-skah’. Meaning “Do your best,” it admonishes and encourages recipients in their various endeavors. It aspires to the essential order that Osage philosophy perceives in the world, which Fields enshrines like a religious icon with golden color and a triptych format.17 The piece also seems to speak to those who have lost Osage fluency, implying that their best efforts will be enough. Within the white field of oppressive words, the Osage axiom encourages cultural belonging as a matter of self-definition and acceptance, not outsider judgments of “authenticity.”

Cortney YellowHorse-Metzger’s recent work reflects this embrace of intergeneration caretaking.

Tho-dah-they (To Live in Friendship) centers on a bowl of impressed fingerprints and red glaze (2023-2024, page 42). Close inspection of these petal-like forms reveals the incised faces representing the elders and ancestors whom YellowHorse-Metzger relates to and collaborates with.

From that central nucleus, slip-painted handprints and daubs of clay radiate out, indicating the infinite potential of relational connections. The artist specifies that in her Gray Horse district, handprints signify friendship: It’s a friendship, but also like a comforting, helpful [gesture]. And I am just so hopeful that that is how I have my relationship with those that came before me, and how I choose to navigate this world, that we are doing this together, we are in connection, we are in friendship and kinship, doing this together.18 For her, this work is about belonging to culture, community, and enduring kinship, as well as the natural relations under Osage caretaking.

It expresses a joyful engagement with her own community and ancestors.

<

a llano interlude

III

CERAMICS TRANSFORM PLACE, AS THE MANY ARTISTS WHO

dig and process their own clay know. Through water, shaping, drying, and firing, the material of Indigenous lands, the “flesh of the earth,” becomes art.19 At times, this art comes to materialize the deeply fraught and traumatic histories colonization has inflicted upon Native peoples. On September 9, 2007, representatives of TTU and the Comanche Nation met in Lawton, Oklahoma’s Medicine Park for a ceremony of invitation, using an unusual set of ceramic pitchers and urns that condensed time, space, and violent settler histories.20 In 1874, Comanche and allied Kiowa and Cheyenne warriors encamped in Palo Duro Canyon scrambled to defend against a surprise attach by the Fourth U.S. Calvary under Colonel Ranald MacKenzie. As families fled, MacKenzie ruthlessly burnt the camp and its winter supplies, driving more than 1,100 captured Indian horses towards nearby Tule Canyon, where the killing began.

Soldiers roped the frantic horses and led them to a firing squad, massacring them and effectively ending a nomadic way of life. This tragedy was deeply personal for Comanches, for whom horses were relatives and family members. It was a killing of kin and “a stunning interruption” of a people’s culture, history, and lives.21 As a visiting scholar to TTU in 2003, Barry Lopez proposed a ceremony to acknowledge Comanche people’s belonging to the Llano Estacado where

≈

IV

the university stands, but also the violent end of their customary lifeways. Working with TTU collaborators, hapa artist Richard Rowland, and Harry Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache/Comanche), the group collected clay and bones from Tule Canyon; Llano mesquite and hackberry wood; and beaver-chewed cottonwood from Oklahoma’s Cache Creek.22 Taking these materials back to his Oregon studio, Rowland produced a series of prototypes and ceremonial vessels, firing them in his anagama kiln. Four wide-shouldered, straightnecked urns richly textured with russet fire-clouds, pearl-like feldspar eruptions, gritty accumulations of dry ash, and thick, frothy glaze emerged. With them were four wide-mouthed pitchers, with strap handles and brassy metallic glaze melting into caramel-colored perspiration over a glassy network of fine-hairline crazing.

soldiers roped the frantic horses and led them to a firing squad, massacring them and effectively ending a nomadic life.

photo credit: Marcey Hoelting

After preparing Medicine Park with a procession and opening statements, representatives from TTU and Comanche Nation took the pitchers full of water from the Ogallala Aquifer to the four directions, as drummers sang about the battle at Adobe Walls. They poured the water slowly into the four urns, and then out onto the earth.23 This collaboration transformed the tragedy-laden earth of Tule Canyon through fire and water in ways that are still remembered, as ceramics and ceremony mediated between TTU and the Indigenous caretakers of this place.

During the Ceremony of Invitation, Texas Tech officials transferred Ogallala Aquifer water from pitchers into urns held by Comanche Nation elders, which was then poured back to the earth. The vessels had been crafted from wild harvested clay from Tule Canyon, site of the 1874 massacre of hundreds of Comanche horses by U.S. 4th Calvary troops.

place and history

As the 2007 ceremony illustrates, history enmeshes with the materiality of place; the ways in which Native people belong amongst places include both ancestral presence and the impressions of particular cultural memories that endure colonial displacement. Anita Fields describes the land and its living clay as having memory.24 Her Movement of the Sun II (2011, page 26) explores the place-based emergence of Osage philosophies. Using black underglaze and white slip across six wall-hanging panels, she represents a landscape of rolling Ozark hills and valleys from Osage ancestral homelands. This work reflects upon

09

tribal histories in places where her ancestors formulated the unique world view that still guides Osage lives today, emphasizing relationships among earth, sky, water, and affiliated clans.25 Within this cosmology, humans learn from natural phenomena: for example, the golden luster-glazed discs across the sky signify the sun’s passage, its forward movement from east to west inviting us to focus on moving forward in our own lives. Both simple and profound, Osage philosophy represents the places where it originated, and where Fields still finds great comfort and connection.

water protectors learn firsthand the harm

that even non-lethal flash-bang grenades, bean-bag shotguns, and mace can cause.

The land has memory, and places such as Tule Canyon and the Ozark mountains recall their pasts.

Ceramics offer eloquent means for thinking about belonging to these histories, and while Cannupa Hanska Luger’s creative practice embraces many experimental media, he repeatedly returns to clay as a human universal. The stuff of the earth, clays are indigenous to all the world and offer a connective medium amidst difficult histories.26 The Red River War, including the Tule Canyon massacre, was a settler project to displace and contain the Southern Plains tribes, effectively ending the “Indian Wars” in the region. As Luger has pointed out, Indian Wars did not benefit all American people; rather, conflicts such as what happened in West Texas sought to destroy noncompliant communities and open land for white settler exploitation.27 As part of the TTU community, we all belong to and are implicated in this history of displacement and violence, without which Lubbock as we know it would not exist.

Rounds (2022, page 34) speak to this history,

with twelve large-caliber slip-cast bullets sporting colorful decoration, suggesting crayons, blueand-white porcelain, gilded bathroom fixtures, wiffleballs, and military camouflage. They take the forms of rounds: the “expendable component of a weapon system that creates the destructive effect on a target.”28 Indigenous losses in the Red River War were among the destructive effects of

10

such rounds in the Southern Plains, and they still project ominous silhouettes in a world rife with gun violence. Yet, Luger has transformed the bullets: cast in soft, pliable clay that becomes fragile and breakable, their materiality is nothing like their referents. They recast “harmful objects of colonization as purely aesthetic ones.”29 These are rounds that Luger has “fired,” and they hint at the activist subtext of his work, seeking to impact the world into which he casts them. 30 As a part of mobilizations against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock Reservation, Luger is well-aware of assaults against Indigenous lands and sovereignty that continue today. Facing off against police, assault rifles, attack dogs, and fire hoses in the freezing Dakota winter of 2016-2017, Water Protectors learned firsthand the harm that even non-lethal flash-bang grenades, bean-bag shotguns, and mace can cause. Luger used his visibility as an artist to mobilize support, noting at the time that, “my weapon is my privilege.” Rounds may be read in this light: decorative, beautiful, ineffective as actual projectiles, but powerful in their range and impact when art becomes a prologue to activism. Belonging to Indigenous histories and places includes the traumas of genocide, but also ongoing struggles to protect Native sovereignty today. Through transforming Rounds, Luger asserts the power and relevance of art within this arena.

V

belonging in time

The imposing scale of Raven Halfmoon’s Red River Dreaming (2022, page 31) asserts a dominant presence. Two cojoined women face opposite directions with the spiraling symbol of the Red River like a thought balloon between their heads.

This monument fuses multiple persons, suggestive of generations and ancestral presence, but the arrangement of two heads facing opposite directions also indigenizes the ancient Janus-headed allegory of past and future. The river motif between insinuates a different temporality: at the point where

Monuments are typically retrospective in content, but future-oriented in constructing collective memory. They are poor transmitters of historical facts, but shape future generations by teaching an attitude towards the past. In contrast to commemorating Confederates and conquistadors, Halfmoon memorializes marginalized voices: Indigenous women, Caddo people, ancestors, and survivors of assimilationism. Standing at eye-level but with outsized presence emanating from corrugated surfaces and gestural painting, they assert the temporal belonging of their subjects: in the tellings of the past, today, and into the future. The piece thus expresses the logic of seven generations: We’re always taught to think seven generations ahead. We’re thinking about the past… what we’ve been through. Then the present—what I’m going through, but also what are my kids going to go through? What does the future look like?34 Likewise, in works of Indigenous Futurisms, Chase Kahwinhut Earles explicitly addresses temporal concerns, embracing science fiction, popular culture, and the paranormal.35 These pieces declare that Indigenous people belong as producers and consumers of popular culture, rather than as stereotypes for settler media. Science fiction embraces narratives of encounter and colonization; by reworking such images, Earles asserts agency over these present-day mythologies, and posits an alternative temporality. Indigenous Futurisms are not simply about the future, which would reinscribe a problematic linear narrative. Instead, Earles argues that his works are part of simultaneous temporalities, proposing that as Native people, “we exist in all times at the same time.” As a way

of thinking, this perspective embraces continuous ancestral presence, but also responsibility towards all future generations. As an illustration of simultaneity, Earles points to Caddo oral histories of interrelations with “Star People,” and sees these stories as akin to interstellar encounters.36 The flying saucer of Sky People (2013, page 23), with its extraterrestrial and family taking selfies while a man fishes off the edge embodies this simultaneous copresence of past, present, and futuristic stories.

<

past and future meet, the fleeting ephemeral “now” is instead a spiraling symbol of cyclical time and fluidity. This work speaks to belonging through time, therefore, not in the linear sense of settler cosmologies, but rather the simultaneous and interwoven temporalities of Indigenous presence.33

VI

belonging is a way of theorizing connectedness to our families, chosen and

biological, extended, and complex, as well as the more-than-human persons

who share the world with us, and to whom we have responsibilities.

belonging in relation

As this catalog came together in the fall of 2023, I was watching the final episodes of the FX Productions series Reservation Dogs, created by Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/Muscogee) and Tika Waititi (Māori/Jewish), and filmed in Oklahoma. I share these memories with many of the exhibition’s artists, some of whom had relatives in the show, and which has been a touchstone for many of our conversations. From the surreal encounters of Bear Smallhill and his spirit guide William Knifeman, to the impassioned conspiratorial futurism of Uncle Maximus, to Willie Jack’s dedication to Old Man Fixico, Reservation Dogs delivered humor and insightful storytelling about the intergenerational traumas, hopes, and connectedness of the fictional Muscogee community of Okern, OK. While every episode has its own excellence, the finale entitled “Dig” was masterful, as the entire community gathers to bury Old Man Fixico and send him off in a good way.37

munity, to kin, to the complexities of history, and to the intergenerational sharing essential not only to the show, but also to the artists of this exhibition.

Belonging is a way of theorizing connectedness to our families, chosen and biological, extended, and complex, as well as the more-than-human persons who share the world with us, and to whom we have responsibilities. In the end, clay is again a mediator, in the form of the unfired earth that the Okern community members dig by hand, returning their late elder and friend to his resting place, together.

In the casual familiarity, teasing, and sincere caring throughout “Dig,” the show presents a radically simple case for the value of belonging: to a com-

11

notes 1 For a critique of identity from an Indigenous perspective, see Kim TallBear, “Identity is a Poor Substitute for Relating: Genetic Ancestry, Critical Polyamory, Property, and Relations,” in Brenden Hokowhitu, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Chris Andersen, and Steve Larkin, Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies (London: Routledge, 2021), 467-478.

2 Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) Council Statement on Indigenous Identity Fraud, September 15, 2015, accessed October 27, 2023, https://naisa. org/about/documents-archive/previous-council-statements/

22 The TTU contingent included Andy Wilkinson and Bill Tydeman. TTU representatives at the ceremony included then President Jon Whitmore and Senior Vice Provost James Brink. See Chappell, “Bone of Conciliation”; and Caswell, “Looking Across.” Although the group found numerous remnants of bones in the canyon, it was not certain if they came from the Comanche horses more than a century before.

Many of the remnants of the Tule Canyon massacre were likely scavenged by bone pickers in the nineteenth century (Andy Wilkinson, personal communication to the author, October 13, 2023).

23 Caswell, “Looking Across,” 870-871. Concrete actions accompanied this ceremony, including a memorandum of understanding between TTU and Comanche Nation College to facilitate the transfer of CNC students; resolutions to undertake an ethnomusicological study of Comanche music and two distinct oral history projects; and a 04 For a discussion of Coffey’s experiences at IAIA as a student, see her interview in collaboration between the TTU herbarium and Comanche elders to identify cultural Women of Sweetgrass, Cedar and Sage (New York: Gallery of the American Indian contexts for specific plants. See copy of an undated letter from Barry Lopez to Don Community House, 1985), 7-8. [last name not included], after Sept. 9, 2007, in the Comanche Pots Collection, Box 1, 5 Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowlfolder 1, “Papers including correspondence […] 2007,” Southwest Collection/Special edge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2013), 8, 23-28; Collections Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 24 Anya Montiel and Sequoia Miller, “Memory, Landscape, Knowledge: The Clay Prac2nd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2023), 125; Shawn Wilson, Research is Ceremony: Indigetices of Indigenous Artists,” in Form and Relation, 24; heather ahtone, “Anita Fields nous Research Methods (Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2008), 11.

Honors an Osage Way of Thinking,” in Fluent Generations: The Art of Anita, Tom, 6 Zoe Todd, “Fish, Kin, and Hope: Tending to Water Violations in amiskwaciwâskahikan and Yatika Fields, ed. Daniel C. Swan (Norman: Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of and Treaty Six Territory,” Afterall: a Journal of Art, Context and Inquiry 43, no. 1 Natural History, 2018), 8.

(2017): 106-107.

25 Anita Fields, personal communication to the author, October 6, 2023. For further 7 Gwyneira Isaac, Klinton Burgio-Ericson, Lea McChesney, Adriana Greci Green, Karen discussion of Osage cosmology and its articulation among cultural structures and Kahe Charley, Renee Dillard, and Kelly Church, “Making Kin is More Than Metaphor: artistic production, see Garrick A. Bailey, “Osage,” in Raymond J. DeMallie, ed., Implications of Responsibilities Towards Indigenous Knowledge and Artistic Traditions Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 13, part 1 Plains (Washington, D.C.: for Museums,” Museum Anthropology (in press); Jami C. Powell, “Introduction: On Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 476-496; and Garrick Bailey and Daniel D. Swan, Indivisibility and Relationality,” in Form and Relation: Contemporary Native Ceramics Art of the Osage (Seattle: University of Washington Press with the Saint Louis Art (Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, 2020), 14-15.

Museum, 2004).

8 Karita Coffey, personal communication to the author, November 21, 2023.

26 Cannupa Hanska Luger, interview with Ginger Dunnill, Broken Boxes Podcast, podcast audio, October 7, 2015.

9 Lawrence C. Kelly, “United States Indian Policies, 1900-1980,”in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 4. History of Indian-White Relations, ed. Wilcomb E. Wash27 “Cannupa Hanska Luger: Hostile Territory,” Garth Greenan Gallery, January 19, burn (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988), 66-68.

2023, accessed October 14, 2023, https://www.garthgreenan.com/exhibitions/cannupa-hanska-luger-hostile-territory/press-release.

10 Coffey, personal communication, April 8, 2023. For the selection of allotments, see Thomas W. Kavanagh, “Comanche,” in Raymond J. DeMallie, ed., Handbook of North 28 Ibid.

American Indians, Vol. 13, part 2 Plains (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 29 Joshua Hunt, “Cannupa Hanska Luger Is Turning the Tables on the Art World,” The 2001), 899.

New York Times Magazine (June 16, 2022).

11 Coffey, personal communication, November 22, 2023.

30 John P. Lukavic, ed., Each/OTHER: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger 12 Quoted in personal communication by Karita Coffey, December 27, 2023.

(Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2021), 12.

13 Coffey, personal communication, November 15, 2023.

31 For an Indigenous account of the #NoDAPL movement and Standing Rock Water Protectors, see Nick Estes, Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus 14 For an overview of the “container model of culture,” see Carola Lentz, “Culture: the the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance making, unmaking, and remaking of an anthropological concept,” Zeitschrift für (London: Verso, 2019).

Ethnologie, 142, no. 2 (2017): 181-204.

3 For sources on Indigenous curatorial protocols, see Nancy Marie Mithlo, “Decentering Durham,” in Knowing Native Arts (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020), 207-209.

15 Coffey, personal communications, November 9, 2022, August 20, 2023, and October 6, 2023.

16 Jane Osti, personal communication to the author, November 24, 2023.

33 For a critique of settler linear time, see Estes, Our History, 14-15.

17 Anita Fields, personal communication to the author, October 6, 2023.

34 Qtd. in Tara Escolin, “Past, present, future, always: A conversation with artist Raven Halfmoon,” Arkansas Times, November 10, 2023.

18 Cortney YellowHorse-Metzger, personal communication to the author, September 25, 2023.

19 Powell, “Introduction,” 14-15.

20 Henry Chappell, “Bone of Conciliation,” Orion Magazine, accessed October 27, 2023, https://orionmagazine.org/article/bone-of-conciliation/.

21 Juanita Pahdopony, qtd. in Kurt Caswell, “Looking Across the Red River, Reaching Over the Plains,” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 18, n. 4 (Autumn 2011): 868. Notably, Comanches remember an even more extensive massacre, comprising thousands of horses; Coffey, personal communication, December 27, 2023.

12

32 Cannupa Hanska Luger, interview with Ginger Dunnill, Broken Boxes Podcast, podcast audio, November 29, 2023.

35 Indigenous Futurisms describes an interdisciplinary movement of interweaving science fiction and futuristic settings with customary knowledge and culture. See Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past/Present/Future (Santa Fe: IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 2020).

36 I thank and credit heather ahtone for this concept of “simultaneity,” personal communication to the author, November 14, 2023.

37 Season three, episode 10, “Dig,” was written by Chad Charlie and Sterlin Harjo, was directed by Sterlin Harjo, and aired on September 27, 2023.

Chelsea M. Herr (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma)

BELONGING: THEN, NOW AND ALWAYS

the many forms that “belonging” takes—whether

belonging to a community, to a place, or to a way of knowing and being in the world—are bound by relationality. We live in relation to everything that has existed, currently exists, and could exist in the future. The key to futurity lies in our relationships with those who have gone before us, with the places that we call home, and with the generations who will follow us. Each of these relationships are predicated on values of belonging—not simply that they belong to us, but that we belong to one another. Cree scholar Dwayne Donald describes these reciprocal relationships as “ethical relationality,” which is woven into how we treat “the relationships we have with others, how our histories and experiences position us in relation to one another, and how our futures as people in the world are similarly tied together.”1 More than just a description of these relationships, “it is an ethical imperative to remember that we as human beings live in the world together and also alongside our more-than-human relatives.”2 In other words, to live ethically in relation to one another, we must acknowledge that our existence affects and is affected by more than just ourselves. We must not only belong, but also extend belonging to others.

Ideals of belonging and relationality are inherent to the work of Caddo ceramic artist Chase Kahwinhut Earles, and many of my own ideas about belonging have grown through conversations with him and his work. I have been drawn to Earles’ work not only as an historian of Indigenous art, but also as a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a sovereign nation that currently occupies a portion of the Caddo peoples’ ancestral homelands. This discordant reality is not one that I personally, nor my community at large, have fully reconciled. Fol-

lowing the signing of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830, most Choctaws were removed from our lands east of the Mississippi River to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), which was the western-most portion of the territory of the Caddo Confederacy. While the Choctaw and the Caddo may share similar experiences as hattak vpi humma (how Choctaw refer to all Native people), my own community remains complacent in the further dispossession of Caddo resources.

We live on the land which has provided the clay for pottery like Earles’ for generations. For centuries prior to removal, we had known various Caddo WE MUST NOT ONLY BELONG, but also extend

BELONGING TO OTHERS

communities as our neighbors, at times as allies, and at other times, as adversaries. Yet following the agreement we made with the federal government to occupy what is now the southeastern portion of Oklahoma, we shrouded ourselves in the cloak of the abinili (settler). We displaced the Caddo from this place, claimed it as our own, and gave Choctaw names to land from which we did not originate. This was a means of survival for the Choctaw people, but at the expense of other communities who also fought for survival under the weight of colonization.

How do Choctaw peoples belong in a place that was not ours until the settler colonial state said it was? How do we contend with our own role in the unsettling of Caddo peoples? And how should Indigenous communities relate to one another, to their intersecting histories, to the places they consider home, and to the potential futures they may share? I do not claim to have answers to

these questions, nor would I argue that Earles or his art provide a thorough resolution. However, the more we question and complicate notions of belonging, especially as Indigenous artists and scholars, the more generative our work becomes.

When we confront the traumatic histories of our ancestors without discounting their determination to ensure our own existence, we are empowered to imagine futures for our own descendants. In our many conversations about his work as an artist and my work as an art historian, Earles and I have contemplated how we could each benefit our own communities by honoring the work of our ancestors, while simultaneously focusing on creating a better future for those to come.

For years, Earles has drawn inspiration from the pottery of his ancestors, without explicitly replicating their work. Rather than ceremonial or functional vessels, he makes pottery that he intends to be displayed, to educate, and to encourage Caddo peoples to learn their own history and to imagine their own futures. Recently, Earles has begun integrating themes of Indigenous Futurisms, further adapting his distinctly Caddo aesthetics to reference what is widely considered science fiction. For Indigenous peoples, however, imagining possible futures is not a work of fiction. Futurity is deeply embedded in our knowledge systems and cultural practices.

Anishinaabe scholar Grace Dillon first theorized Indigenous Futurisms as a literary tool that examines the many ways Indigenous peoples conceptualize the future.3 While it is easy to correlate Indigenous Futurisms with mainstream science fiction, such an analysis would do a disservice to both the artist who creates a work of Indigenous Futurisms and to the culturally specific knowledge systems from which their work is borne.

13

The fundamental tenets of Indigenous Futurisms pervade Earles’ oeuvre. In his reimagining and resituating the forms and designs of Ancestral Caddo pottery, he brings generations of knowledge and cultural production into the present. His artistic practice emphasizes that the concept of belonging is not ephemeral, nor is it rooted in a Western notion of linear time. Rather, it is perpetual, cyclical, and adaptive. Earles’ work in this show embodies the connections among belonging, relationality, and futurity. In their totality, they express that Indigenous people and our relations belong in the future, and that, likewise, the future belongs to us.

V

belonging to place

For all Indigenous peoples, place is integral to who we are—past, present, and future. Our homelands are directly tied to our origins, whether we emerged from that land, fell to it from the stars, or swam to its shores from the sandy bed of a lake, river, or ocean. In one version of the Choctaw creation story, we emerged from a sacred mound in what is now Mississippi, similar to the Caddos’ own origins. Our ancestral teachings tell us that just as we come from a particular place, we will also eventually return to it. Many of Earles’ ceramic pieces maintain these connections, as he often sources his clay from the banks of the Red River.

He explains, The Caddo homelands are centered around the Red River, in what’s now Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. I gather clay from that area, before bringing it home to process it and use it in my work. Not a lot of contemporary artists are able to choose where their materials come from, so it’s special when a piece was made in the traditional manner with clay from our homelands. Maybe our ancestors used the exact same clay from that location.4 The Caddo origin story narrates their emergence from an underground world to this world, directly connecting them to the soil from which they surfaced. The clay that has formed Caddo pottery for 14

millennia exemplifies their ontological relationality with their homelands. Just as they have dug into the earth to produce ceramic vessels for generations, they have also returned both vessel and ancestor to the earth for interment.

Pottery itself demonstrates the depth of both time and space. The historical dispersal of ancestral pottery speaks to how long a people lived in one place, the time and labor required for a potter to create a piece, and how interactions with different communities and knowledge systems shaped the form and function of pottery over time. For a vessel like Large Caddo Utilitarian Jar (2019, page 25), the original function would have been to serve food for special occasions, rather than everyday use as a service or storage jar. Earles describes the setting in which Caddo ancestors would have used such a piece: The place where Caddo ancestors lived was sovereign territory. If other Native (and later non-Native) dignitaries entered the region, it was immediately known. Our borders were watched over—not just by our tribe, but other subtribes within the confederacy and by our allies. We didn’t have palisades or walls around our mound communities, like other Mississippian cultures. We didn’t need them, because as soon as someone entered, we knew. You’d be welcomed into town, greeted by a priest, then presented to the chief in his hut. Then you’d be offered food in an ornate vessel like this.5 In essence, Large Caddo Utilitarian Jar exemplifies the Caddo practice of welcoming people into the community, and reveals the importance of the community’s relationship to a particular place, to the people who live in that place, and of welcoming others. This is a fundamental tenet of Caddo relationality, to nurture an environment of belonging for themselves and others.

the future belongs to us, and we belong to the future Over time, Earles’ pottery has begun to take on more figurative and sculptural qualities, which have fortified the narrative nature of his vessels. Two of his most recent works, The Scout (2023, page 24) and Sky People (2023, page 23), seamlessly unify his commitment to restoring the relationships among Caddos and their own culture, and his exploration of Indigenous Futurisms. The Scout depicts a ceramic Imperial Scout—or probe droid— from the Star Wars franchise. First appearing in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), the Galactic Empire used these droids to gather information and assist military operations. Earles’ scout is recognizably Caddo, however, as he replaces the Imperial probe’s clawed appendages with Caddo weapons, including a bow and arrow and a carved stone mace. Additionally, he modeled his ceramic drone after an Ancestral Caddo vessel, with two bulbous forms stacked atop one another, topped by a cylindrical spout, such as he replicates in Kahun Kawis: Traditional Compound Caddo Bottle (figure 01). Earles explains that he found

the visual correlation between a traditional vessel and the Imperial Scout immediately obvious, since “many Ancestral Caddo forms are so unique and complex that they can look ‘new’ or futuristic.”6 The Imperial Scout’s function also invokes the real histories of Indigenous peoples working on behalf of our own imperial oppressors. Native scouts working with colonial militaries have existed since contact, but they were ubiquitous during the nineteenth century Plains Indian Wars. Members of enemy warrior societies allied themselves with the United States Army to force other Natives onto reservations, often with the (eventually broken) promise that the federal government would protect their own communities. While this conflict may not appear in the same way in twenty-first century Native life, the underlying sense of betrayal, acquiescence, and the struggle to survive remains. The Scout deals with Earles’ own frustration about the gatekeeping, internalized colonialism, and lateral violence that can occur in Indigenous communities.

It also suggests a potential loss of autonomy—in the fight for survival, we risk losing ourselves and becoming the perpetuators of colonial violence against our relatives. Like droids programmed to spy and relay information to the Empire, we may jeopardize the well-being of our relatives in our own determination to endure. Nonetheless, Earles views The Scout as not only a warning, but also a message of hope and empowerment: our choices shape our futures. “The lack of clarity on its meaning is intentional. There are specific layers that allow the viewer to experience it on their own terms,” whether that be a condemnation of Native complicity in colonial violence, or an optimistic view of survival based on ethical relationality.7 Sky People depicts a woman and child taking a

photograph with an archetypal alien figure, while a man leisurely casts his fishing line over the edge of the vessel. Its disc-shaped tripod form is based on Ancestral Caddoan ceremonial vessels, which often featured pebbles in the feet, forming tripod vessels that served as rattles, when movement shook the pebbles against the fired clay. Earles has referenced ancestral saucer-like vessels numerous times, for example his Nah-ka-kah-hi-yoo: Disc Above (figure 02), but in his recent Indigenous Futurist pieces like The Scout and Sky People, the saucers become overt references to extraterrestrial ships.

The juxtaposition of traditional elements, such as the intricate designs engraved into the vessel’s surface after smoke firing, with more jocular features, like the smartphone selfie, may seem jarring at first glance. However, they are products of the same knowledge system that generations of Caddo people have transmitted. Earles notes that “there is already a familiarity and comfort with alien beings because they’re part of Caddo culture, our knowledge, our reality. These are not figures or ideas imported from American pop culture.”8 He entwines Caddo past, present, and future as a singular occurrence, rather than as discrete points in time.

While the flying saucer vessel is simultaneously a Caddo pot and an extraterrestrial vehicle, Earles emphasizes that he does not view it as an “unidentified” flying object, or the visitor as an unfamiliar, foreign being. Rather, he sees them as welcomed guests, just like those who would have been greeted in Ancestral Caddo territory with offerings of food in a container akin to Large Caddo Utilitarian Jar. It is a recurring act of Caddo kinship, diplomacy, and belonging that welcomes foreign people and folds them into the community, even if only temporarily. Earles explains, Again, there is a direct connection between time and place. We—the Caddo—are Native here. We are sovereign. We can take care of ourselves. And while you’re not Native to this place, you’re not in a UFO or UAP [unidentified aerial or anomalous phenomenon]— you’re not unidentified. We’ve known you for a long time because we’ve known about sky beings forever.9

figure 01 Chase Kahwinhut Earles Kahun Kawis:

Traditional Compound Caddo Bottle,

2023. hand dug traditional clay

with mussel shell temper, approx.

12 x 8.5 inches.

For all Indigenous peoples, integral to who we are—

past, present, and future. our homelands are directly tied to our origins whether we emerged from this land, fell to it from the stars, or swam to its shores from the sandy bed of a lake, river or ocean.

figure 02 Chase Kahwinhut Earles Nah-ka-kah-hiyoo: Disc Above, 2023. hand dug traditional clay with mussel shell temper, approx. 12 x 13 inches.

15

Earles’ observation that Caddo people have known about extraterrestrial entities since time immemorial typifies Grace Dillon’s description of Indigenous Futurisms as enactments of Anishinaabe biskaabiiyang, or “returning to ourselves.” She explains that this involves “discovering how one is personally affected by colonization, discarding the emotional and psychological baggage carried from its impact, and recovering ancestral traditions in order to adapt” for the future.10 Earles reifies this idea, stating that Caddo artists are not “meant to be static or stuck in one way of creating pottery. We’ve always had lineages of artists who have been open to adapting different mediums and forms, and I’m continuing that.”11 I would argue that returning to ourselves also requires transparency and a willingness to acknowledge difficult truths—such as the displacement of Caddo communities in the wake of Choctaw forced removal or Native scouts working for the US military at the expense of other Natives.

in reality, cultures change, respond to social and historical contexts, and evolve over time through the actions of participants

For Earles, this return to self includes more than a revitalization of ancestral pottery techniques; it also involves embracing knowledge systems and cultural narratives that include the world beyond that which we currently observe. Moreover, these acts of returning to ourselves speak to Indigenous values of belonging. When we return to the places, the people, the knowledge, and the potential futures that have sustained our communities for generations, we realize that these relationships are reciprocal, that they require us to give just as we take. We belong to them just as they belong to us, in networks of ethical relationality.

notes 1 Dwayne Donald, “From What Does Ethical Relationality Flow? An ‘Indian’ Act in Three Artifacts,” Counterpoints, 478 (2016): 11.

2 Ibid.

3 There is a growing body of scholarship on Indigenous Futurisms, which is far too voluminous to include in this essay. For key readings on this theory, see Grace Dillon, Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012); Indigenous Futurisms special issue of Extrapolation Vol. 57, Nos. 1-2 (Spring-Summer 2016); Indigenous Futurisms special issue of World Art Vol. 9, No. 2 (September 2019); and Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past/Present/ Future (Santa Fe: IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 2020).

4 Chase Earles, interview with author, Tulsa, Oklahoma, March 14, 2022.

5 Earles, interview with author, Tulsa, Oklahoma, October 31, 2023.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Dillon, Walking the Clouds, 10.

11 Earles, interview with author, March 14, 2022.

16

Karita Coffey comanche

Chase Kahwinhut Earles caddo

Anita Fields

osage | muscogee

Raven Halfmoon

caddo | choctaw | delaware | otoe

Cannupa Hanska Luger

mandan | hidatsa | arikara | lakota

Jane Osti

cherokee national treasure

Cortney YellowHorse-Metzger osage

17

Plains Indian Woman’s Leggings, 1986. acrylic paint on fired clay with metal decoration, 15 3/4 x 4 x 9 inches. (each, 2 pieces). albuquerque museum, gift of the estate of ruth and sidney schultz, PC2022.44.152.A-B. photo credit: David Nufer

18

KARITA COFFEY |COMANCHE Karita Coffey’s career spans from the early years of IAIA and emergence of experimental Indian Art, to the development of today’s contemporary Native Art world. Becoming an art educator gave her the freedom to pursue expressive works that are equally conceptual and narrative, based on careful manipulation of form and everyday, metaphorical objects.

Coffey began exploring clay when she arrived at IAIA in 1963, working primarily with Ralph Pardington. It was not a self-evident medium, since Comanches had no ceramic tradition. Heavy, fragile pots were simply not practical for a nomadic people. The first time Coffey tried ceramics during orientation, however, was a revelation: “I liked how clay felt […] I knew then that that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I guess I got my soul’s calling at sixteen.”1 Coffey went on to B.F.A. and M.Ed. degrees from the University of Oklahoma, returning to Santa Fe and in 1980 became a full-time artist. Native art markets were skewed towards male artists and work with visible ethnic or cultural signifiers. Coffey responded by drawing on Comanche material culture to produce shields and items of clothing such as moccasins and leggings (page 18). This work resembled contemporary mainstream trends towards hyper-realism, such as non-Native artists Marylin Levine or Richard Shaw, but Coffey intended it for her home community and other Native people, sharing Comanche culture with those who might not have been able to appreciate it in person.2 Coffey also produced untitled hand-built pots (page 21, left) with inlaid beads and geometrical designs. She chose muted colors similar to the gouache palette of Southern Plains flat-style painters such as Doc Tate Nevaquaya or Leonard Riddles (both Comanche), visually connecting her vessels with other Native artworks.3 She typically smoked these pots with sawdust to produce a mottled, aged appearance and inlaid monochromatic strings of beads to signify Native cultural belonging in the art market of that time.

Coffey likes the challenge

of repeating, cutting, and recombining simple molded shapes.

Returning to teach at IAIA in 1989 allowed Coffey to shift towards more conceptual ceramics and metalwork.

She began focusing on the symbolism of everyday objects, while sustaining an exacting formalism. Her mature style reproduces the impersonal aesthetic of hardware and consumer goods, using press molds to minimize evidence of process. The richness of her personal symbolism animates this otherwise cool conceptualism, as she often incorporates natural materials and familiar children’s toys as referents.

Fabricating Nature (page 21, right) exemplifies what might be called Coffey’s “truth to form.” She multiplies

a press-molded hemispheric bowl to produce the trophy-like body, while molding volumetric handles from a toddler’s plastic ring toy. Coffey likes the challenge of repeating, cutting, and recombining simple molded shapes. The smooth regularity of the handles contrasts with organic press-molded twigs encircling the vessel and animating it. Coffey used a dark, reflective Albany slip to unify the work, while silver luster emphasizes the twigs and birds that represent her connection to nature and the countryside where she grew up. [kbe]

1 Karita Coffey, personal communication to the author, November 24, 2023.

2 Coffey, personal communication, November 21, 2023. For hyper-realism, see Paul Greenhalgh, Ceramic Art and Civilization (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021), 420-421.

3 Coffey, personal communication, November 21, 2023.

19

Family Heirloom, 2018-2023. stoneware clay, reduction fired with glaze and decals, 7.5 x 5 x 9.5 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist. photo credit: Alex Peña.

20

Earthenware Clay Pot, 1984 red earthenware clay, underglazes, seed beads, 13.5 x 16.5 x 15.5 inches. on loan courtesy of maggie coffey-pilcher, albuquerque, nm. photo credit: Alex Peña.

Fabricating Nature, 2018-2023. stoneware clay, reduction fired with glaze and luster, 12.75 x 5.5 x 8.5 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist. photo credit: Alex Peña.

21

CHASE KAHWINHUT EARLES |CADDO As a Caddo artist and participant in reviving one of North America’s great ceramics traditions, Chase Kahwinhut Earles demonstrates the elasticity of customary forms, while seeking to reunify Caddo people with their own culture. In trying to understand his own ceramic heritage, Earles worked with Jeri Redcorn (Caddo/Potawatomi), who begun resurrecting Caddo ceramics in the early 1990s.1 Cultural responsibility is crucial to Earles’ approach, as he consults with elders about the significance and use of particular motifs, while avoiding making exact copies of customary symbols. To him, a significant part of cultural belonging is the responsibility and humility not to appropriate symbols that one does not understand, or which may have been lost over time.2

It is not enough to belong to

a particluar place; people must belong amidst one another as a community.

Reuniting Bonds (page 25, top) is not a customary form, but looks more like a sleek, black butter churn, with a linked chain hanging from lug handles on either side. The glossy, burnished rim rises to four points around a koo-hoot kee-wat (Caddo grass house) on the lid. The artist imbued this pot “with cultural knowledge […] to enrich Caddos who may feel disconnected for various reasons.”3 That knowledge informs the imagery of the grass house, the linked chains, and an incised picture of fishermen seated in a dugout canoe, searching for alligator gar. Each element speaks to the Caddos’ relationships with one another and their homelands, as well as the conviction that those relationships require tending.

As he was constructing a koo-hoot kee-wat at Caddo Mounds State Historic Site in Texas, elder Phil Cross jokingly remarked, “Mow your lawn. That’s the first Caddo rule,” meaning that care for the land also provides for the community.4 In order to sustainably construct their homes, Caddos must maintain a symbiotic relationship with their environment, tending the land and other living beings, without taking more than they give. Reuniting Bonds emphasizes the obligation that cultural practitioners have in transmitting knowledge.

It is not enough to belong to a particular place; people must belong amidst one another as a community.

Earles signifies this imperative with two hands grasping one another in linking the chain, symbolizing the simultaneous strength and relative fragility of cultural knowledge.

Unfortunately, many Indigenous communities continue experiencing intergenerational trauma, violence that may be lateral, driven by strict blood quantum requirements that the federal government created. It may be the legacy of boarding schools that ripped the language and culture from generations of elders, or other assimilationist policies that still affect Indigenous communities. Reuniting Bonds expresses the idea that community healing comes from welcoming Caddos home to their land and their people. Earles observes, “a lot of the younger people are coming back to the culture after having been away […] There are ways to reconnect and reunite without having to feel fear or shame for having been disconnected.”5 Passing on cultural knowledge of clay and ecology can once again fortify these bonds. [cmh+kbe]

1 Chase Kawinhut Earles, “Ancestors and Identity: Reconnection and Evolution,” in Duncan P. MiKinnon, Jeffrey S. Girard, and Timothy K. Perttula, Ancestral Caddo Ceramic Traditions (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021), 290-292.

2 Earles, “Ancestors,” 291, 298-299; Chase Kawinhut Earles, personal communication to Burgio-Ericson, March 14, 2023.

3 Earles, personal communication to Herr, October 31, 2023.

4 Phil Cross, quoted in “Koo Hoot Kiwat-Caddo Grass House,” Texas Historical Commission, March 19, 2019. https://youtu.be/PlHLqZCqzMY .

22

5 Earles, personal communication, October 31, 2023.

Sky People, 2023. ceramic, 10 x 13 x 15 inches. on loan courtesy of the sam noble oklahoma museum of natural history, norman.

23

The Scout, 2023. ceramic and mixed media, 30 x 12 x 12 inches. courtesy of the artist and king galleries, scottsdale, az.

24

Reuniting Bonds, 2018.

Ceramic, 19 x 12 x 12 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist and the national museum of the american indian, washington, d.c.

Large Caddo Traditional Utilitarian Jar, 2019. ceramic, 24 x 20 x 18 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist.

25

Movement of the Sun II, 2011. clays, slips, gold luster glaze, 21 x 31.5 x 1.5 inches. on loan courtesy of dr. & mrs. lamar meadows, richmond, tx.

26

ANITA FIELDS |OSAGE.MUSCOGEE Through a diverse creative practice, Anita Fields asserts the importance of belongingness in relationships, in culture, and with the land. She attended IAIA for two years after high school, where the experiential environment led her to shift from painting to ceramics. She got her B.A. from Oklahoma State University, but Fields waited until after the birth of her three children to fully commit to artmaking and “honoring what I believed I was supposed to be doing.”1 Early in her career in the late 1980s, Fields looked to the examples of other women artists such as Karita Coffey and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish-Kootenai/Métis/Shoshone), while she also acknowledges mentorship of Ralph Pardington (IAIA) and Richard Bivens (OSU). Strategically placing an exhibit at the Southern Plains Museum in Anadarko, OK helped Fields reach a wider audience as she shifted from utilitarian wares to narrative works drawing on themes from cultural memory, personal experience, and archival research.

Humor transformed a racist

Belonging to Osage culture and community is essential to Fields’s artistic practice, although she wants to evade expectations that Native artists should focus on customary symbols. For her, underlying Osage philosophical concepts are more important than specific motifs, as she hopes that viewers will “understand the viewpoints and the things that guide us today [that were] created eons ago come from a very complex intelligence and way of thinking about your position in the world,” which she finds beautiful.2 Her Movement of the Sun II (page 26) speaks to the origins of Osage philosophy in specific places and accounts, while a new installation using cast logs entitled Building Fires (page 28, top) connects to the cultural importance of fire, an element essential in Osage beliefs, feasting, and ceremony.

and dehumanizing moment, into familial bonding, draining it of its venom.

Osage feasting and kinship also underlie the sharp critique and witty humor of It’s a Bucket with a Lid on It (page 29), despite its appearance like a Duchampian readymade. Fields has been a cook in her community for years, and she notes that Osage women are always looking for large enamelware dishes and buckets for serving ceremonial gatherings. Her grandmother and aunt would frequently tell a story of shopping in Florida, where they were discussing such a vessel. Speaking in Osage, her grandmother asked her aunt, “Hanontze” or “How much is it?” The young salesman got in her face and yelled, “It’s a Bucket with a lid on it!” as if she could not understand. Her feisty grandmother got the last laugh, responding in English without missing a beat, “I know it’s a bucket with a lid on it,” and she kept on laughing, recounting the story of the clerk’s ignorant microaggression again and again as a family joke.3 Humor transformed a racist and dehumanizing moment into familial bonding, draining it of its venom. As an artist, Fields further transforms the story into a ceramic memorial to her family members, while also warning against settler prejudices that unfortunately remain present today. [kbe]

1 This essay is based on Anita Fields, personal communication to the author, October 6, 2023.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

27

Building Fires, 2023. press molded clay, underglaze wash, 18 x 30 x 30 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist.

Do Your Best, 2020. porcelain with luster glaze, 3 panels each 12.25 x 12.25 x 1 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist.

28

It’s a Bucket With a Lid On It, 2016. ceramic, 10 x 7.5 x 7.5 inches. on loan courtesy of the sam noble oklahoma museum of natural history, norman.

29

RAVEN HALFMOON |CADDO.CHOCTAW.DELAWARE.OTOE Raven Halfmoon’s monumental sculptures draw on Indigenous histories while foregrounding marginalized perspectives, matrilineal cultural values, and a vigorous, gestural approach. Halfmoon’s first ceramic experiences were with elder Jeri Redcorn (Caddo/ Potawatomi), who revived Caddo pottery techniques.1 Halfmoon went on to study painting, sculpture, and anthropology at the University of Arkansas, and continues to see herself as a multimedia artist.

Halfmoon’s sculptures allude to Caddo culture and ceramics, for example using coil construction. Although the clay is commercial, it retains the dark color that Ancestral Caddo potters preferred. The earth itself is significant; Halfmoon points out that Ina (a frequent word in her titles) means both earth and mother. The earth nurtures all living beings, and becomes the body of Halfmoon’s powerful female figures, bringing an Indigenous ontology into gallery spaces.2 Ancestral Caddo histories of mound building, such as the Spiro Mounds site on the Arkansas River, inspire her large scale, as do other monumental traditions, including Easter Island moai and Olmec sculptural heads.3

the earth itself is

significant; Halfmoon points out that Ina means both

earth and mother.

The back-to-back heads of Red River Dreaming (page 31) have faces with square jaws, fleshy lips, and thick necks encased in white helmet-like hair. They are calm and resolute, despite the urgency of the gestural surface texture. Halfmoon expresses fascination with female forms and “imagery of the very voluptuous woman,” which she sees as inherently feminist. The spiraling Red River motif comes from Ancestral Caddo pots, evoking her region of Oklahoma, as well more prosaic football clashes between the universities of Oklahoma and Texas, known as the Red River Rivalry.4 Cowgirl at Heart (page 32) is more playful, with another monumental female figure dripping in red and white paint. A cowboy hat

perches on full hair falling over her small shoulders. According to Halfmoon, humor lightens the mood of her studio practice that otherwise addresses “the dark side of history.” Adding fashionable accessories—cowboy hats, sunglasses, and luxury brands—along with the flowing, gestural paint instills a playful quality. The colors still suggest a range of symbolic content, however, such as the red of Oklahoma soils and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (#MMIW) movement, while black reflects the color of the natural clay along the Red River.5 Cowgirl offers a charismatic, even campy rejoinder to difficult histories of assimilationism in Oklahoma, where stereotypes often pit “cowboys” against Indians, overlooking robust histories of Indigenous cowboys, showmen, country music, and rodeo participation.

Halfmoon further counters the double exclusion of Indigenous women in these arenas, adding to the extensive history of Native artists undermining cowboy stereotypes, including Jean LaMarr (Northern Paiute/Achomawi), Fritz Scholder (Luiseño), and T.C. Cannon (Kiowa/Caddo).6 Despite the weight of socio-historical burdens, Cowgirl at Heart projects jaunty confidence and security in her own monumental presence. [kbe]

1 J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, “ ‘Clay…lets you leave your mark exactly how you put it down’: An interview with Raven Halfmoon,” The Forge Project, Sep.20, 2023, https://forgeproject.com/forging/raven-halfmoon-interview.

2 Tara Escolin, “Past, present, future, always: A conversation with artist Raven Halfmoon,” Arkansas Times, November 10, 2023.

3 Chadd Scott, “Raven Halfmoon’s Monumental Homage to Indigenous Women,” Forbes (July 6, 2023).

4 Halfmoon, “We Are Here!”; Escolin, “Past, present, future.”

5 “Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers,” The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, June 25, 2023, https://thealdrich.org/exhibitions/raven-halfmoon.

6 Ann M. Wolfe, “The Art of Jean LeMarr,” in Jean LeMarr (Reno, NV: Nevada Museum of Art, 2020), 20, 28; Nathan Young, “Indian Cowboys,”

in Ascendant: Expressions of Self-Determinization, ed. by Alecia Harris (Norman: University of Oklahoma School of Visual Arts and Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, 2022), 23-25.

30

Red River Dreaming, 2022. glazed ceramic, 55 x 53 x 35 inches. on loan courtesy of historic arkansas museum, little rock.

31

Cowgirl at Heart, 2022. glazed ceramic, 54 x 32 x 32 inches. on loan courtesy of stephen f. austin state university, nacogdoches, tx.

32

CANNUPA HANSKA LUGER | MANDAN.HIDASTA.ARIKARA.LAKOTA Cannupa Hanska Luger sees his work as acts in progress, rather than discrete, finished objects. Exhibits present the relics of his creative processes, challenging viewers to understand them in non-conventional ways. Luger grew up in proximity to the Santa Fe Indian Market helping out his mother, artist Kathy Whitman-Elk Woman (Mandan/ Hidatsa/Arikara), seeing the romanticization of cultural signifiers and frequent indignities imposed upon artists like her. Perhaps in a reaction against these experiences, Luger is among a cohort of Native artists who largely eschew customary references as things to be closely held, and focus instead on broader issues.1 Luger enrolled at IAIA in 2006 at the age of twenty-seven, with an added drive that came with maturity. As his instructor, Karita Coffey recognized his dedication, and allowed him to work independently in classes so he could freely explore and learn on his own.2 Luger partnered with fellow students to create the Humble Art Collective, launching an ambitious program of monthly exhibitions out of Luger’s Santa Fe warehouse.3 Social practice has remained an important component in his work, along with crowd sourcing and collaboration.4 Luger’s pieces for Belonging adapt colonial processes of domination towards better ends. Having observed the violence inherent in artworld removal of Indigenous customary items from their cultural contexts to become objects of aesthetic contemplation, Luger was inspired to neutralize objects of social harm with similar processes.5 For example, Rounds (page 34) strips away the function of large caliber, killing ordinance through repeated slip casting, celebrating instead the aesthetics of the cylindrical form. Decorative ornamentation further distances each of these ceramic bullets from their original, violent instrumentality. According to Luger, Plains war clubs underwent similar transformations from ceremonial war functions when they became dance paraphernalia, converting weapons into expressive cultural elements, maintaining warriors’ social roles, but safely out of harm’s way.

Decortive ornamentation

further distances each of these ceramic bullets from their original, violent instrumentality.

Luger extends his critique of extractive industries with Dance Clubs (page 35), seeking to strip the harmful power of a gas-pump handle, as a synecdoche for the entire fossil fuel industry. Seeing the industry as a combative enemy, Luger casts these handles in clay to transform them, doubly removing them from power, first as aesthetic and cultural objects, and secondly as precious museum accessions that one can neither touch nor hold. Wooden stocks echo war clubs, while blond hair spewing from the nozzles looks like gasoline but also scalp locks.6 Both works are remnants of a conceptual distillation through repeated adaptations, which Luger intends to move the original harmful object towards a benign form, sapping their violence with aestheticization. Luger seeks to mine the histories of colonial oppression for subversive tools that can be turned against harmful social structures today. Although critical, his work also embraces a profound optimism and expansive sense of belongingness.

Speaking to the theme of this show, Luger generously states, “We all are a part of this place, we all have purpose, and make a difference.”7 [kbe]

1 Cannupa Hanska Luger, interview with Ginger Dunnill, Broken Boxes Podcast, podcast audio, March 9, 2014; Joshua Hunt, “Cannupa Hanska Luger is Turning the Tables on the Art World,” NY Times Magazine (June 16, 2022).

2 Cannupa Hanska Luger, personal communication to the author, October 30, 2023.

3 Luger, Broken Boxes Podcast, March 9, 2014.

4 See for example, John P. Lukavic, ed. Each/OTHER: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger (Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2021).

5 Luger, personal communication, October 30, 2023.

6 Ibid.

7 Cannupa Hanska Luger, interview with Ginger Dunnill, Broken Boxes Podcast, podcast audio, September 27, 2017.

33

Rounds, 2022. ceramic and mixed media, twelve elements, dimensions variable. on loan courtesy of the artist and garth greenan gallery, new york.

34

Dance Clubs, 2022. ceramic and mixed media, six elements, dimensions variable. on loan courtesy of the artist and garth greenan gallery, new york.

35

JANE OSTI |CHEROKEE NATIONAL TREASURE

Cherokee pottery’s long history goes back to the Southeastern Early Woodlands, and while artists sustained the tradition in North Carolina, removal and assimilationism interrupted it in Oklahoma.1 Jane Osti has contributed to revitalizing this tradition, basing her works on Cherokee customary styles but introducing a sensibility for elegant, non-functional forms.

Osti took up ceramics upon returning to Oklahoma as an adult in 1985, completing her B.F.A. and M.S. Ed. at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah. She took a ceramics class and conducted an oral history interview with the late Cherokee National Treasure Anna Sixkiller Mitchell. Mitchell initiated the Oklahoma revival in Cherokee pottery through personal explorations and study of museum collections.2 With Mitchell, Osti learned to dig and prepare clay, and build using coils and paddle-stamping. While Mitchell continued replicating ancestral pottery as a personal exploration, Osti began showing professionally in 1990. She explores dynamic forms and adaptations of older pottery in dialogue with fine arts studio traditions and market expectations. Showing at Indian art shows and markets, she often encountered collectors better acquainted with Southwestern pottery. It took time to build awareness of Cherokee aesthetics and appreciation for her larger and more sculptural vessels.

As a gift from the

mother earth it responds best to relations of respect, love, and gratitude.

Osti’s Large Coiled Cherokee Pot (page 37) has a wide-mouthed form from Ancestral Cherokee utilitarian vessels for cooking and storage, and occasionally burials. As such, these pots sustained people in life and accompanied them after death.3 While Osti has dug clay from native deposits and loves its smoothness, the processing is labor intensive, and she reserves it for special projects.

She adds paddle stamping or incised patterns to her coil-built vessels while still wet; techniques distinctive of Ancestral Cherokee pottery that provided texture, ornamentation, and better heat conduction.1 White Oak Pot (page 38) adds incised spirals and linework to an upright, oval form owing as much to American prewar Art Pottery as Cherokee customs, with an Art Nouveau touch in the overlapping leaves. Osti smoothly blends the affinities of these artistic traditions. Oak symbolizes endurance and strength, burnished to a darker, glossy finish in contrast to the matte linework. Osti does not use slip and burnishes her pots while leather hard, producing the warm, subdued glow typical of her work. While she has open-fired in the past, she now double-fires her pottery in an electric kiln, followed by a “flash” firing with pine needles, sawdust, manure, and occasionally reduction to color the vessel.

Osti combines customary elements with a refined sense for scale and gently swelling and flaring forms to produce her signature pots. She approaches clay with gratitude and works in relation with it. The finished results rarely resemble her initial sketches; rather, the clay actively dictates these outcomes, and Osti feels that one must listen to the clay. As a gift from the mother earth, it responds best to relations of respect, love, and gratitude. [kbe]

1 This essay is based on Jane Osti, personal communication to the author, November 24, 2023.

2 See “Jane Osti, Our Pottery Our People,” OsiyoTV, Youtube video, accessed Sept. 16, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frdVcGOCW3A;

“Revivalist Anna Mitchell and Her Cherokee Pottery Legacy,” Osiyo: Voices of the Cherokee People, accessed Sept. 16, 2023, https://osiyo.tv/revivalist-anna-mitchell-and-her-cherokee-pottery-legacy/ ; and Roxanne Beason, “Lost and Found: Anna Belle Mitchell, Jane Osti, and the‘Revival’ of Cherokee Pottery in Oklahoma,” The Coalition of Mater’s Scholars on Material Culture, 2022.

3 See for example W. H. Holmes, “Aboriginal Pottery of the Eastern United States,” Twentieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1898-1899 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1903), 37-39.

4 For paddle stamping, see M. Anna Fariello, Cherokee Pottery: From the Hands of Our Elders (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2011), 86-90.

36

Large Coiled Cherokee Pot, ca. 2015. large coiled pot with incised patterns, 11.75 x 19 x 19 inches. on loan courtesy of the cherokee national collection, tahlequah, OK. (P23549). photo credit: Chase Kahwinhut Earles.

37

White Oak Pot, ca. 2009. large coiled pot with incised patterns, 19 x 13 x 13 inches. on loan courtesy of the Cherokee national collection, tahlequah,ok (P28303). photo credit: Chase Kahwinhut Earles.

38

Circles of Belonging, 2023. ceramic, 19 x 14 x 14 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist. photo credit: Chase Kahwinhut Earles.

39

CORTNEY YELLOW HORSE-METZGER| OSAGE Cortney YellowHorse-Metzger transforms her fingerprint, that ultimate signifier of individual identity, into a mark of cultural belonging, as part of a trajectory from mournful introspection to joyful connectedness with her ancestors and kin.

Coming from the Osage Grayhorse district, YellowHorse-Metzger studied at Missouri State University, with professors Keith Ekstam and Kevin Hughes, who imparted strong foundations in formal design, technical construction, and Asian-influenced process-oriented aesthetics.1 Graduate school at the University of New Mexico pushed her concepts, as did Professor Clarence Cruz (Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo), who teaches customary Pueblo pottery. With its diverse Native communities and colonial histories, New Mexico produced a “mini-identity crisis” for the artist, who felt her Indigeneity challenged: “I became disconnected from who I was. I felt that I was not tan enough, my hair not black enough, nor my blood red enough to claim my Native heritage.”2 Working through self-doubts, YellowHorse-Metzger produced a series of ceramic body casts (figure 03) signifying her experiences as a Native woman.

She presses her tears into

The busts led to ritualized performances on Osage lands, pouring clay slip directly over her body in a natural extension of her casts, marking a turning point in her work:

a plaster mold with her fingertip, a comforting and meditative process of repeated action.

[They] defiantly say, I am who I say I am, and you can’t question me on that. So after I had those moments of reconciliation within myself, the only natural thing left to do was to have conversations with my elders and my ancestors… and know quite confidently that we are together, we are here together, we are doing this together. And the joy of doing this together.3 In YellowHorse-Metzger’s original busts, she pressed clay into a plaster cast of her torso, leaving impressed fingerprints on the backside. In seeking to make this evocative texture more visible, she began to think of the fingerprint impressions as collective ancestors, the generations supporting her. Faces emerge from the center of Tho-dah-they (To Live in Friendship), bringing this concept to life (pages 42–43). She covers the wall with red-colored handprints of raw slip, radiating out from the puki bowl as if her constellation of kinship might fill the cosmos.

Most recently, YellowHorse-Metzger has transformed fingerprints into sculptural modules: thousands of droplets comprising Tears of the Sky People (page 41). She presses her tears into a plaster mold with her fingertip, a comforting and meditative process of repeated action. The drops have fired clay exteriors, while inside a blue glaze obscures and augments the whorls of her fingerprints. The sky people are her ancestors, the “people who walk with me.”4 Although YellowHorse-Metzger began with ideas of sorrow, she has come to understand Tears more optimistically as it has progressed. The tears are not alone, but exist in kinship with one another. Crying itself is not inherently bad either, but can be a healthful, cathartic experience.

These droplets signify the togetherness and belonging that she feels with her ancestors, “a very happy people, and very connected people.”5 Collectively, the accumulated marks materialize the kinship-based way of relating that YellowHorse-Metzger finds absolutely essential. [kbe]

figure 03 cortney yellowhorse-metzger Installation from her M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition

1 Ekstam and Hughes were part of the Prairie Fire group of Midwestern ceramics artists, who often collaborated and exhibited together from the

1990s until the early 2000s, emphasizing a commitment to clay as an expressive medium and its material qualities as part of the finished aesthetic; Jeff Johnston, personal communication to the author, January 3, 2024.

2 Cortney YellowHorse-Metzger, artist statement, 2020, collection of the author.

3 Cortney YellowHorse-Metzger, personal communication to the author, September 26, 2023.

3 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

40

Tears of the Sky People, 2023–2024. glazed ceramic installation, dimensions variable. on loan courtesy of the artist. photo credit: Sallie Scheufler.

41

42

Tho-day-they (To Live in Friendship), Lubbock, Texas installation 2024.

glazed stoneware and unfired slip installation, dimensions variable. on loan courtesy of the artist.

43

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST Karita Coffey|comanche ..............................................

Earthenware Clay Pot, 1984 red earthenware clay, underglazes, seed beads, 13.5 x 16.5 x 15.5 inches. on loan courtesy of maggie coffey-pilcher, albuquerque, nm.

Plains Indian Woman’s Leggings, 1986. acrylic paint on fired clay with metal decoration, 15 3/4 x 4 x 9 inches (each, 2 pieces). albuquerque museum, gift of the estate of ruth and sidney schultz, PC2022.44.152.A-B. My First Memory, 2000. earthenware clay and glazes, 5 x 9 x 20 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist.

Fabricating Nature, 2018-2023. stoneware clay, reduction fired with glaze and luster, 12.75 x 5.5 x 8.5 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist.

Family Heirloom, 2018-2023. stoneware clay, reduction fired with glaze and decals, 7.5 x 5 x 9.5 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist.

Chase Kahwinhut Earles | caddo ..............................................

Reuniting Bonds, 2018. ceramic, 19 x 12 x 12 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist and the national museum of the american indian, washington, d.c.

Large Caddo Traditional Utilitarian Jar, 2019. ceramic, 24 x 20 x 18 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist.

The Scout, 2023. ceramic and mixed media, 30 x 12 x 12 inches. courtesy of the artist and king galleries, scottsdale, az.

Sky People, 2023. ceramic, 10 x 13 x 15 inches. on loan courtesy of the sam noble oklahoma museum of natural history, norman.

44

Anita Fields | osage.muscogee ..............................................

Movement of the Sun II, 2011. clays, slips, gold luster glaze, 21 x 31.5 x 1.5 inches. on loan courtesy of dr. & mrs. lamar meadows, richmond, tx.

It’s a Bucket With a Lid On It, 2016. ceramic, 10 x 7.5 x 7.5 inches. on loan courtesy of the sam noble oklahoma museum of natural history, norman.

Do Your Best, 2020. porcelain with luster glaze, 3 panels each 12.25 x 12.25 x 1 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist.

Building Fires, 2023. press molded clay, underglaze wash, 18 x 30 x 30 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist.

Raven Halfmoon | caddo.choctaw.delaware.otoe ..............................................

Cowgirl at Heart, 2022. glazed ceramic, 54 x 32 x 32 inches. on loan courtesy of stephen f. austin state university, nacogdoches, tx.

Red River Dreaming, 2022. glazed ceramic, 55 x 53 x 35 inches. on loan courtesy of historic arkansas museum, little rock.

Cannupa Hanska Luger | mandan.hidatsa. arikara.lakota ..............................................

Dance Clubs, 2022. ceramic and mixed media, six elements, dimensions variable. on loan courtesy of the artist and garth greenan gallery, new york.

Rounds, 2022. ceramic and mixed media, twelve elements, dimensions variable. on loan courtesy of the artist and garth greenan gallery, new york.

Jane Osti | cherokee national treasure ..............................................

White Oak Pot, ca. 2009. large coiled pot with incised patterns, 19 x 13 x 13 inches. on loan courtesy of the cherokee national collection, tahlequah, ok (P28303).

Large Coiled Cherokee Pot, ca. 2015. large coiled pot with incised patterns, 11.75 x 19 x 19 inches. on loan courtesy of the cherokee national collection, tahlequah, ok. (P23549).

Circles of Belonging, 2023. ceramic, 19 x 14 x 14 inches. on loan courtesy of the artist.

Cortney YellowHorse-Metzger | osage ..............................................

Tears of the Sky People, 2023—2024. glazed ceramic installation, dimensions variable. courtesy of the artist.

Tho-day-they (To Live in Friendship), 2024 glazed stoneware and unfired slip installation, dimensions variable. on loan courtesy of the artist.