Young Men’s Spring Ceremony, c. 1920–1921, watercolor on paper.
Painted what was in mind when out of home.
Represented ceremonies of the Pueblo people.
Arranged figures on a diagonal line.
Showed expertise in dance formation and body movement.
Expressed longing for home.
Showed knowledge of new experiences in art.
David Bradley (Anishinaabe)
Land o’ Fakes, Land o’ Bucks, Land o’ Lakes, 2006, sculpture.
Satirical work featuring young native women in a Great Lakes setting holding up butter for white person to consume.
Natives shown as capitulating to white presence.
Parity asks people to think about the offensive logo.
Challenges the marketing and messages conveyed.
Patrick DesJarlait (Anishinaabe)
Maple Sugar Time, 1946, watercolor on paper.
Drew colors from traditional culture.
Potentially influenced by animation (worked for Walt Disney).
Possible inspiration from Cubism.
Focused on traditional motifs.
Unrecorded Southwestern Chippewa (Anishinabe) artist
Early 20th-century bark contained with scraped decoration.
George Morrison (Anishinaabe)
Lake Superior Landscape, 1981, acrylic on canvas.
Changing idea of landscape.
Related to the American Indian Movement and connection to his upbringing.
Abstractions relate to the notion of landscape.
Irregular forms.
Colors are not descriptive.
Fishers point to changing environmental landscape, new experience, informing force to what he is looking at.
Experience of indigeneity toward modern abstraction rather than an alternative.
Oscar Howe (Yanktonai Sioux)
Umine Wacipi: War and Peace Dance, 1958, oil on canvas.
Transitional figure between federal/patronizing education and a generation seeking training outside native constituencies.
Definition of Native American (NA) art governed his work.
Exhibition participation limited by identity and expectation of ‘Indian’ work.
Rejection of his piece led him to protest restrictions on indigenous art.
Became a teacher for native and non-native people.
Inspired larger artistic conversations.
Showed bodies moving through space, experiencing ceremonial practices.
Collapsed art and life, a hallmark of modernism.
Conveyed experience in modernism.
Explored how to depict spirituality.
Defined a modern artist as one who explores modern ways to depict meaningful Dakota subjects.
Norval Morrisseau (Anishinaabe)
The Gift, 1975, acrylic on paper.
Bodies presented without shame, celebrating physical manifestation.
Victim of sexual violence, learned about shame in settler religious school.
Reclaimed sexuality that was colonized, rejecting lessons and shame.
Explored the connection between sexuality and colonial history.
Settler on the left, possibly a priest with cross on bag, interacting with a grown up person, touching and holding hands, covered with spots.
Gifts might be small px, covered in dots, diseases that were brought over, gift of christianity, eroticism of the interaction, intimate touch and closeness, not violent one of real intimacy.
Shelley Niro (Mohawk)
Iroquois is a Very Highly Developed Matriarchal Society, 1991, hand-tinted photograph.
Women's clan role continues, matriarchy.
Matriarchal powers passed down with beadwork; abstracted version on sky and tree of life.
References sky woman falls to earth and how humans begin to inhabit.
Matriarchy linked to the moment of creation.
Dome in image is from hair salon, moment where mother is beautifying self, playing with oneself in femininity, she can be a matriarch and care about her hair.
Traditions passed down by women over generations.
Explores sexuality impacted by settler colonialism and colonial violence enacted under institutionalized notions of sex/sexuality.
Critiques the Western induction of male supremacy, property rights, gender distinctions, and hierarchy built into the settler state.
Related to more than human concept and beings.
Boarding school as a site of sexual violence.
Contemporary artists engage with gender/sexual expression from a position of visual sovereignty.
Richard Ray Whitman (Yuchi-Muscogee)
From the “Street Chiefs” series 1970s-80s, black and white photograph.
Photographed homeless native men in Oklahoma to show the invisible and erased presence due to policies.
Sensitive portraits honoring elders as 'street chiefs'.
Gaze at even level into these pieces.
Cannon
Collector No. 5, 1980, woodcut.
Native figures form images in a contemporary setting, with European art behind them.
Flips the terms of collecting, suggesting that these chiefs were collecting ideas and information.
McMaster
Cultural Amnesty (detail of Savage Graces installation), 1992.
Highlighted how indigeneity shows up in mass culture.
Invited visitors to drop off racist items to unburden themselves from past thinking but also to leave natives alone.
Kent Monkman (Cree)
Trappers of Men, 2006, acrylic on canvas.
References American landscape painting, like Albert Bierstadt's Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 1868.
Replaces deer with Ms Eagle Testicle rising from water.
Figures stare at her instead of the landscape.
Plays with art history by inverting it, addressing sexuality and racism.
Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee) and Charles Loloma (Hopi)
Kiva bags, 1960s.
Translated designs into consumables.
Textile designer; patterns derived from other Indians' designs, from 2D canvas to 3D fabric on the human body.
Handbags/Kiva bags with unique leather designs.
Appealed to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee)
Chief Joseph Series, 1975–77, acrylic & wax on canvas.
Negotiated native and mainstream art spaces.
Grappled with indigenous identity in artistic practice.
Large series of same-sized paintings with pigmented wax layers and carved arc forms.
Abstract exercise; engaged with color and patterning.
Series relates to Chief Joseph, who resisted colonial efforts and was captured/sent to Oklahoma.
WalkingStick refused to make her native identity explicitly visible in her work to avoid being pigeonholed.
Alex Janvier (Dene)
The Unpredictable East (Beaver Crossing), 1967, painting on Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67.
Idea of break up of land.
Governed by Treaty 287, practice of political protest.
Addressed understanding in a colonial setting.
Abstract mural blending Western abstraction with Indigenous symbolism to assert cultural survival and identity.
Challenged viewers to recognize Indigenous perspectives in Canadian history and culture.
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People), 1992, mixed media.
Suggested indigenous people gave settlers help/support but received racist items in return, not reciprocity.
Addresses stereotypes within broader representation.
Critiques the idea that native artists have opportunities to participate in the mainstream art world.
Incorporation into the mainstream is present colonialism because modernism isn't built to accept a diverse constituency.
Basic of modernist is rejection of the past, earlier ideas of what art can and should be, NA are not in rejection of past, no need to reject what comes before, finding ways to innovate the past, NA artists do not need to reject the past, need to reject exclusion form west art, how do we find visual strategies to
James Luna (Luiseño)
The Artifact Piece, 1987, performance.
Mimicked culture of non-Western civilizations in museums with manikins and artifacts.
Displayed himself to question ethnographic understanding.
Used labels to tell viewers about him.
Called into question reductive and objectifying representations.
James Luna
Chapel for Pablo Tac, installation and video.
Modeled after mission churches.
Contained paintings by converted natives.
Features crosses and diamonds.
Displayed historic and contemporary objects.
Showed translation of Pablo Tac’s writing with history and conversion, woven into textile.
Included basket, abalone shell, chandel, and chalice as intertwined sacred symbols.
Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabe)
Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother, beginning 1991, sound installation.
Used a cone hooked up to a microphone to amplify sound.
Encouraged people to speak native languages to the land.
Amplifies native voices in protest against alienation from territories and treaty rights.
Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit)
Tsu Héidei Shugaxtutaan, 2006, mixed media.
Suggested innovation is an indigenous tradition, responding to changing circumstances with changing materials.
Critiques the idea that modern tech is unable to produce traditional work.
One channel features an indigenous person hip-hop dancing with traditional music/chanting.
Addresses the question of people wanting work to 'look Indian'.
Alan Michelson (Mohawk)
Third Bank of the River, 2009, digital montage.
Documented both sides of the St. Lawrence River near Mohawk territory.
Referenced the panorama.
Included audio tracks of community members and tourist guide.
Features photo painted on metal on wall of international entry point.
Gail Tremblay (Mi’kmaq/Onondaga)
Strawberry and Chocolate, 2000, 16mm film.
Used familiar elements like strawberry baskets.
Played with color and texture to honor tradition/creation story.
Made art with new materials, rendering older images useless.
Truman Lowe (Hochunk)
Feather Canoe, 1992, wood and feathers.
Grew up in the Great Lakes.
Family involved in craft making for trade and family use.
Explores meaning and creativity in artistic cultural tradition.
Asks how artists engage with collective and individual practice.
Explores how artists come from a variety of standpoints (growing up in the reservations, displacement, etc.)
Nora Naranjo-Morse
All-American Woman (Someone take that Credit Card away from Pearlene), 1988.
Continued poetry for culture and production to sell.
Depicts clay women that she has invented, moved through life as a pueblo person and life outside,
Referenced tradition of storyteller dolls.
Storyteller dolls are used to show passing down of wisdom
Pueblo clown figures are included and are in conversation with her niece who is another artist who has made representations of these clown like figures to fallibility of human beings.
Bodies as record keepers of our lives, sight of our own self transformation, acceptance and healing that takes into consideration acceptance of our imperfections, woundedness that people have.
Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo)
Maria, 1985 Chevy El Camino, 2014.
Focused on the intergenerational traumas.
Figures are typically bandaged.
Black on black style, derived the most famous potter– Maria Martinez. She references watching people with lowriders.
The communities in which she moved– the men were eh. But the women could fix anything. She learned mechanics from her own mother. The resourcefulness and self-reliance is a compliment to her own imperfection?
Nadia Myre (Algonquin)
Indian Act (1985), 1999, seed beads, stroud cloth, thread.
Taken Indian Act of Canadian govt introduced in 1876, in generations that came after, guiding Canadian legislature over rights and responsibilities over gov and native peoples.
Idea that indigeneity will disappear, it is a culture that can be erased and canadians will be left behind, governed education, relationships with churches.
Beaded over the indian act so we cannot see the text, we see beads, expressions of long standing artistic practices, refusal to absorb settler language and putting a visual language and ties back to creation story and role beads have played.
Unfinished piece, beads have not gone across, paper being taped down, just as the work of settler colonialism is incomplete so is this work, community work that others engaged in
You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone; You Can Feel It All Over, 2016, found materials and textiles
Grew up outside of community, did not feel like he belonged, use art to think through were and how he belonged
Work is about radical inclusivity, connect with different artist traditions from indigenous backgrounds to create work that is known for vibrance to show kind of resilience
Reclaiming and reformulation for modern times
Takes up boxing and think about punching bags as recipients of repeated violence like indigenous violence, yet still in existence
Using color fringe and jingles, adaptations part of being indigenous today, sight of intertribal gathering, see the kind of kaleidoscopic view
Music is another important factor, frequently has phrases that have multivalence, how songs talk about resilience, see punching bags incorporating parts of songs
Employ others to help him, community of people around him as they incerate more, learn together
Melissa Cody (Diné)
Landscapes of Home, 2023, Jacquard wool tapestry.
Looks like multiple window screens of a computer. Technology as a constituent part of Dine weaving. Allows her to assist in the currency.
Pixelated diamonds
She is underscoring that her predecessors were interested in technology. She saw herself as someone who had an entire digital life. Visual culture that she has been embedded in her entire life.
Jamie Okuma (Luiseño/Shoshone-Bannock)
Adaptation II, 2012, customized Christian Louboutin shoes.
using traditional materials like ribbons and transformed for multiple directions, fluidity of garments in contemporary silhouette
Shows that these institutions that have been the palace of putting up best native art to control and police tridation have expanded in 21st century to include other elements.
Allows artists to be involved with modes of making as legitimate ways of being native.
One of the best prices is beaded Louboutin, celebration of traditional technique, bead world huggin exterior of the shoe, using quill work and feathered cones, hallmarks of historical regalia
Douglas Miles and the A Team
Apache Skateboards, early 2000s.
Reaching indigenous youth who struggle with economic condition on reservations, ongc ring pressure of stereotypes, impact of intergenerational trauma
Wide ranging, in art spaces, refer to dislocation of Apache people, removal to Oklahoma with his work of suitcases
Creating apache skateboards, interested in applying anime native people and interest in historic photographs apply them to skateboards, something more productive to do, opportunity for some learning, the scabbard he has decorated and sold through his company, allowed for pride and continuation of knowledge and tribal accomplishment for contemporary apache youth
Fought hard against those who say it is taking them away from culture
Innovating the past but not needing to adhere to the past to keep the main idea
Additional Artists and Works Mentioned
Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabe), The Named and the Unnamed, 2002, performance/video (Vigil)
Christi Belcourt (Métis) and many contributors, Walking With Our Sisters, 2014, crowd-sourced installation
Brian Jungen (Dane-zaa and Swiss), Shapeshifter, 2000
Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora) with Anita Ferguson, Janice Smith, Mary Annette Clause, Judy Judware, Anita Greene – … the sky is darkening …, 2019, dye on aluminum/fabric with beaded birds
Will Wilson, Auto Immune Response #5, 2004. Archival inkjet print, 112 x 277 cm. Collection of the artist.
Cara Romero (Chemehuevi) – Water Memory, 2015, inkjet print
Norman Akers (Osage), Drowning Elk, 2020, oil on canvas
Alien Onslaught, 2020, monoprint
Alex Janvier (Dene), Colony of Alberta, 1980, painting
Roxanne Swentzell, The Things I Have to Do to Maintain Myself, 1994, ceramic