Native American Art: Key Concepts and Issues module 9 done

NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1992):
- U.S. federal law mandating the return of "cultural items" (human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony) to tribes.
- Requires tribes to demonstrate "lineal descent or cultural affiliation."
- Many U.S. museums actively repatriate items and human remains.
- Example: In 2011, a museum returned a wooden box drum, hide robe, wooden masks, a headdress, a rattle, and a pipe to the Tlingit T'akdeintaan Clan of Hoonah, Alaska. These objects were purchased in 1924 for $500.

19th-century violent displacement of groups from ancestral homelands onto reservations.
Art changes, sometimes dramatically, in response to these upheavals.
Avoid viewing post-transformation artworks as less authentic due to European or Euro-American influences.
Native artists responded to new, radically changed circumstances.

Twentieth and twenty-first century artists like Oscar Howe (Yanktonai Sioux), Alex Janvier (Chipewyan [Dene]), and Robert Davidson (Haida) see themselves as working within "traditional arts."
Oscar Howe's 1958 letter:
- Defended his methods against jurors who denounced his work as not "authentic" Native art.
- Stressed power, strength, and individualism in old Indian paintings.
- Argued against suppressing Native art and dictating its form.
- Asserted Indian Art can compete with any Art in the world, but not as a suppressed Art.

Problematic terms:
- "Indian" is considered offensive by many; derived from Columbus' mistaken belief he had found India.
- Other terms: Native American, American Indian, Amerindian, Aboriginal, Native, Indigenous, First Nations, and First Peoples.
- Native American is commonly used but problematic as it applies to peoples throughout the Americas.
- Importance of representing individual cultures.
- Essays use specific tribal and First Nations names.
- SmartHistory: Native American Art includes works from the United States and Canada.
Social Groups:
- Tribes (U.S. government term).
- Bands (Canadian government term).
- Nations (preferred by many communities in Canada).
Legal Classification:
- In the U.S. and Canada, legal classification as Indigenous requires official listing as belonging to a specific tribe or band.
- Identity issues reflect the continuing impact of colonial policy.
Contemporary Artists Addressing Identity:
- James Luna (Pooyukitchum/Luiseño) and Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes).
- Luna's Artifact Piece (1987) and Take a Picture with a Real Indian (1993) confront identity issues and stereotypes.
- Artifact Piece: Luna in a glass vitrine with personal items, challenging static museum portrayals.

Geographic Focus:
- Typically refers to peoples in the U.S. and Canada.
- Sometimes called Native North American art (excluding Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America).
- Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America are included in Mesoamerica.
Geographic Divisions:
- Eastern Woodlands (North and Southeast).
- Southwest and West (California).
- Plains and Great Basin.
- Northwest Coast and North (Sub-Arctic and Arctic).
Chronology:
- Arranging events into specific time periods is tricky.
- Each region has different names for time periods.
- Ancient Eastern Woodlands: Late Archaic (c. $3000-1000$ B.C.E.), Woodland (c. $1100$ BCE- $1000$ C.E.), Mississippian (c. $900$ -c. $1500/1600$ C.E.), and Fort Ancient (c. $1000-1700$ ).
- Southwest: Basketmaker (c. $100$ B.C.E.- $700$ C.E.) and Pueblo ( $700-1400$ C.E.).
- Pre- and post-Contact (before and after contact with Europeans/Euro-Americans).
- Reservation Era (late nineteenth century).
- Terms may reflect colonial legacy.
- Terms like Prehistory are problematic.

Native American and First Nations material prior to c. $1500$ is in a separate section.
- Includes Ancestral Puebloans, Moundbuilders, and Mississippian peoples.
Objects and buildings created after c. $1500$ are in their own section to highlight diversity and transformations.
Artists working after 1914 are in both the Art of the Americas section and in modern/contemporary areas.

Anishinaabe outfit, c. 1790, collected by Lieutenant Andrew Foster.
- Materials: Birchbark, cotton, linen, wool, feathers, silk, silver brooches, porcupine quills, horsehair, hide, sinew.
- Moccasins made by the Huron-Wendat people.

More than 15,000 artifacts unearthed at Pueblo Bonito.
Pottery sherds with traces of cacao from Mesoamerica.
- Black-and-white cylindrical vessels for drinking cacao, similar to Maya vessels.
Remains of scarlet macaws from Mexico.
- Evidence of attempts to breed them for feathers.
- Room with guano suggests an aviary.
Copper bells from Mexico.
Chaco likely traded turquoise for these materials.

Oil drilling and fracking.
Chaco Canyon is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Greater Chaco Region not protected.
Need to survey Greater Chaco Region for undiscovered structures.
Destruction of the Greater Chaco Region erases an important connection to the ancestral past of Native peoples.

Includes Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and El Salvador.
Covers the period Before 7,000 B.C.E - c. 1500 C.E.
Food items from Mexico: Avocado, tomato, and chocolate (Nahuatl words: ahuacatl, tomatl, and chocolat/).

State names derived from Native American sources: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, the Dakotas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
Common words from Native languages: Pontiac, moose, raccoon, pecan, kayak, squash, chipmunk, Winnebago.
- Pontiac: 18th-century Ottawa chief (Obwandiyag).
- Moose: From Algonquian languages.

Stereotypes persist in discussions of Native American arts and cultures.
Common stereotypes: warrior/chief on horseback with headdress, "Indian Princess."
Popular culture and movies perpetuate these images.
Homogenization of diverse Native groups across North America.
Diversity in languages, cultural traditions, cosmologies, and ritual practices.
Term "primitive" is deeply problematic and reflects colonialism.
Europeans and Euro-Americans viewed Amerindians as noble savages.
Native objects were seen as curiosities or specimens of "dying" cultures.
Sacred objects were removed and displayed for non-Native audiences.