Heather Ahtone Reads Beneath the Surface

Parking Lot, Joe Feddersen (Colville), glass, 2003

In her 2009 essay, “Designed to Last,” Choctaw-Chickasaw artist, writer, and curator heather ahtone proposed a means of critiquing Indigenous American art based on Indigenous art theory. In her essay “Reading Beneath the Surface: Joe Feddersen’s Parking Lot,” presented at the College Art Association Conference and published earlier this year in Wicazo Sa Review, she puts her ideas into action by critiquing a sculpture by Joe Feddersen using Indigenous methodologies.

Her introduction lets us know exactly what's at stake. “Every time an Indigenous artist creates an object that reflects concepts rooted within her culture this same artists is perpetuating the culture one more day as an act of self-determination,” Ahtone writes at the opening of the essay. She continues, “While every effort of political and religious assault has been made historically to subdue these same cultures, their survival can be partially attributed to the continued production of visual and performance arts” (Ahtone 73).

Ahtone writes that Indigenous epistemology—“ways of knowing”—differs fundamentally from Western ways of knowing (74). While this is relatively obvious to most readers, she further points out that Indigenous learning is not “parallel or perpendicular” (74); that is, Indigenous knowledge is not the Other or opposite of Western knowledge. Indigenous knowledge is not universal but instead must be grounded in local tribal cultures and worldviews. To critique an artwork based on Indigenous values, Ahtone examines materiality, metaphor and symbolism, and cultural reciprocity (74).

Joe Feddersen, whose glass sculpture is critiqued here, is Okanagan and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington State. He earned his MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a printmaker and basket weaver before moving into glass art. Using textures from Plateau textiles that symbolize aspects of the natural environment, Feddersen creates a dialogue about the shifting environment and the impact of human development in the Columbia Basin (Askren).

Collaborating with Tlingit artist Preston Singletary, Feddersen embarked on an Urban Indian series. In 2003, he created Parking Lot, a 14 inch tall blown and sandblasted glass sculpture. The translucent, milky-white surface carries the texture of …, which is overlaid with an olive green rim and structures of perpendicular black lines.

Ahtone sees the overall cylindrical form as being reminiscent of a “sally bag,” a flexible basket common throughout the Plateau region (76). The materiality of the piece juxtaposes the implied basket’s soft and pliable surface with the rigidity of glass. Navajo-Wasco artist and author Elizabeth Woody wrote, “Feddersen’s use of glass speaks of our human fragility” and of his choice of the color white, Woody writes “the shell of the basket with the ephemeral density of a cloud” (78).

Feddersen’s use of metaphor and symbolism is overt and deliberate. A metaphor directly substitutes on concept or object for another, while a symbol implies something else. The symbol might be a much more simplistic shorthand for the concept it references. The Plateau weaving designs that Feddersen has incorporating into his printmaking, weaving, and glasswork are extremely spare, abstract geometric designs, and yet they are symbolic and inspired by elements seen in daily life, such as snake tracks on the ground (Askren). The textured surface of Parking Lot has four repeating patterns of chevrons etched on its surface. Feddersen explains that the chevrons “are actually the designs for woman in Plateau culture, kind of like an hourglass design, kind of a winding vase” (79). He learned traditional symbolism from Okanagan weavers but an elder pointed out that the meanings of the widespread symbols change from community to communities (79). By using this symbol, Feddersen “invigorates it as a continued part of the cultural dialogue and… contemporizes the language in its usage” (79).

Vessels themselves are commonly allegories for women. In the Okanagan worldview, “woman is a living metaphor for the earth” (79). The art audience can automatically juxtapose this view with the European-American view of woman as earth, and therefore, ripe for domination. Dynamical tension is conjured between these two referenced worldviews. Okanagan oral history describes the earth “as a woman ‘who gives birth to life forms’” who was once a human being and is still alive (79-80). The etched basket surface suggested grass, which is seen as the hair of the living female earth (80).

Then the black lines on the vessel are diagrams for parking lots, invented in the late 1920s. Ahtone sees these as referencing contemporary migration patterns, which “form the basis of how most Americans relate to the earth—through a mediated system of transit routes…” (80).

Cultural reciprocity is the third lens in which Ahtone critiques Indigenous art and is “an act of gratitude by an artist for their culture heritage” (81). Feddersen is keenly aware of place-based culture, and he incorporates landmarks, or “vital signs,” such as electric lines and railroad tracks into his expression of evolving Okanagan culture (81). “By using the traditional signs,” Feddersen says, “we talk about what the meaning is and they become part of our visual vocabulary rather than something that is purely historical” (82).

Looking at the artwork from a strict formalist approach, that is, looking only at visual aesthetic qualities of the work—an approach espoused by mid-20th century art critics—would completely miss the content of a work such as Parking Lot. Feddersen deliberately uses contemporary imagery and symbols to bring his cultural traditions into the present. Ahtone’s critique brings the content forward in a manner that could be understood by Native and non-Native readers alike. Personally, I’m well acquainted with the mental wall that some non-Native art audiences reach when viewing Indigenous artwork. Facing the situation of having to understand the cultural contexts of hundreds of different tribes seems overwhelming to fully understand Native art; however, it’s not a matter of getting cultural background to then get the works’ content. The cultural background is much the works’ content, and further understanding the worldview enhances the audience’s understanding of being Human.

• heather ahtone, “Reading Beneath the Surface: Joe Feddersen’s Parking Lot,” Wicazo Sa Review, 27, no. 1 (Spring 2012), 73–84.
• Mique’l.Askren,  “Joe Feddersen,” IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts: Vision Project. Web.

Messengers 2012 at Rainmaker Art Gallery, Bristol, UK

Messengers 2012 a group art show curated by Joanne Prince, an advocate for Native art and owner of Rainmaker Gallery in Bristol, England. The show features 18 contemporary Native American Indian artists from tribes across the continent.

As Prince says, "2012 is a pivotal year for the indigenous peoples of the Americas. As the current cycle of the Mayan calendar draws to a close, and in preparation for a new beginning when indigenous values will perhaps be more widely recognised and adopted, it is time to welcome the diverse and authentic messages and manifestations of contemporary Aboriginal American artists."

"My people will sleep for 100 years, and when they awake, it will be the artists who give them back their spirit." –Louis Riel, Métis revolutionary (Boyle and Racette 21).

Marcus Amerman (Choctaw), Sarah Sense (Chitimacha-Choctaw), Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne), and myself will fly in especially to attend the opening and give talks, demonstrations, film screenings and discussions on Thursday June 14th.

Please contact the gallery for details:
call 0117 944 3101 or email jo@rainmakerart.co.uk.


Participating artists include:

• 

  Cupcake (Pawnee), America Meredith, 2012

  Tony Abeyta (Navajo)
• Marcus Amerman (Choctaw)
• Shonto Begay (Navajo)
• David Bradley (White Earth Ojibwe)
• Kelly Church (Grand Traverse Odawa-Ojibwe)
• Melissa Cody (Navajo)
• Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheynne)
• Frank Buffalo Hyde (Onondaga)
• Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi-Choctaw)
• America Meredith (Cherokee Nation
• Chris Pappan (Kaw-Osage-Lakota
• Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez Pueblo
• Cara Romero (Chemehuevi)
• Diego Romero (Cochiti Pueblo)
• Mateo Romero (Cochiti Pueblo)
• Sarah Sense (Chitimacha-Choctaw)
• Ryan Singer (Navajo)
• Werewulf Micah Wesley (Kiowa-Muscogee Creek)

For more information, visit Rainmaker Art Gallery, online or at: 123 Coldharbour Road, Redland Bristol, BS6 7SN. Map.

• Boyle, John and Sherry Farrell Racette. Rielisms. Winnipeg, MB: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2001.

Review | Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism, Part 2

Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism features four essays by Nancy Marie Mithlo, Stephen Fadden and Stephen Wall, Sherry Farrell Racette, and Mario A. Caro. These alone are worth the price of the book.

The First Wave… This Time Around

In “The First Wave… This Time Around,” Nancy Marie Mithlo discusses the Vision Project in terms of the current state of affairs in Native contemporary art. She sees mainstream art critics being impatient with Native artists’ insistence on referencing their tribal communities and histories, but “Indian people continue to insist on being Indian” (Mithlo 18). “Why,” she asks, “when it would be so much easier to simply seek out hybrid, transnational, post-Indian or some such trendy association, do we insist on claiming our identities as Native peoples?” (19).

Mithlo asks the compelling question, “Is there bad Indian art?” (21), but doesn’t answer it, instead pointing out that markets and artists institutions make qualitative evaluations of indigenous art, as does the “intellectual capital” an artwork earns, through art writing. Most of the writing about Native art comes from the non-scholarly, “light press” (21). That’s especially evident here in Santa Fe, where local newspapers and magazines repeat each other’s same factual errors. She writes, “non-intellectual sources are guiding the assessment of contemporary American Indian arts, and that this casual, cultural art-of-the-week variety of arts writing has exerted a harmful influence on the development of a more serious field of inquiry” (21). She concludes that “[t]he ability to represent ourselves as Native peoples—intact and collectively—is a human right, too frequently ignored” (27).

“Indigenous curatorial methodologies” Mithlo says are defined “by four criteria: it is long-term, reciprocal, mutually-meaningful, and includes mentorship” (24-5). To art critics that question the need for self-defined indigenous criteria, she writes, “A dismissal of the logic and strategies of Native nations (and their artists) to move forward with their own communities intact mirrors the logical colonialism” (25).

Invisible Forces of Change:

United States Indian Policy and American Indian Art

Steve Fadden and Stephen Wall, both professors in IAIA’s Indigenous Liberal Studies Department, co-wrote “Invisible Forces of Changes: United States Indian Policy and American Indian Art.” They share US Indian history 101 and put forward three examples of artists that exemplify major eras in Indian policy. David Cusick, a founder of the Iroquois Realist School, illustrates the Formative Era of 1776–1810 when tribes were relatively as strong as the fledgling United States (29-30). Angel DeCora, whose life and work is defined by Indian boarding schools, defined the Allotment Era of 1880-1932, when assimilation into European-American society was the government’s mission (32, 34). Allan Houser, the first Chiricahua Apache born outside of captivity since 1886, is part of the Indian Reorganization Era of the 1930s and 1940s. Houser directed benefited from the Indian New Deal reforms allowing tribal governance, education, and self-expression in the arts (34-35).

As destructive and capricious as US Indian policy has been, Fadden and Wall argue, it’s impossible to ignore its role in Native art history. They do not describe any of the three artist’s work. Is familiarity with Cusick and DeCora’s art a given for the general readership? It’s curious that they do not reference Rennard Strickland and Margaret Archuleta’s Shared Visions: Native American Painters and Sculptors in the Twentieth Century, which also traces the influence of US federal Indian policy on Native arts.

Encoded Knowledge: Memory and Object in Contemporary Native American Art

While pointing out the dangers of generalization about Native art, Sherry Farrell Racette puts forward some of the underpinnings of indigenous art theory, which takes a great deal of bravery. She does so in a lyrical manner, showing respect for the subject matter—cherished belief systems and values—which, in print, have most commonly been written in print in the cold, reductionist language of Western anthropologists. Racette quotes the Traditional Care Committee of NMAI: “Objects are alive and must be handled with respect” (Mithlo 41). Contemporary mainstream Western art tends towards the nonreligious, but for indigenous art, an animist reading is appropriate and should be explored further, because that quote is literately true.

“Oral traditions were never solely oral,” Racette writes (41), as many artworks are mnemonic devices with their own visual language. Through examples, she illustrates the need of living Native peoples to engage with Native art for meanings to be activated and realized. The challenges of writing about traditional knowledge is the vulnerability of sharing long held beliefs with the public and that, in my personal opinion, all Native artists and writers have a gate-keeping role—determining what is appropriate to share with the public and what is not.

Continuity is a guiding principle in comparing Native art throughout time. “New objects become the storied object,” Racette writes (43). The one aspect of Native art theory that seems most agreed upon is the narrative quality of the art.

In the section “To Make It Correctly” (43-45), Racette points out that process and materials can have meaning and significance beyond simply being a means to an end. Technique has been exalted in the Native art world; however, Racette writes that the attitude and energy of the process has its own importance (45).

Artists, such as Diego Romero and Nicholas Galanin, use “strategies of deconstruction and contradiction” to explore and disrupt colonial attitudes and racism (50). Because what is familiar to a Natives can be jarring and challenging to a non-Natives, artists have to be conscious of the multiple audiences for their work.

“Many objects are a form of visual literacy,” Racette concludes, “not only in terms of the symbols coded on their surface or the actions and gestures that provide their human context, but for the words, prayers, tears and fervent hopes that are spoken into them at the moment of their creation and over their lifetime” (52).

Owning the Image: Indigenous Arts since 1990

In his overview of developments in the last twenty years of Native arts, Mario A. Caro covers a lot of ground in a short space. He sees “a vibrant field with every-increasing participation by … Native practitioners involved in determining how Native art is contextualized” (56). He chose 1990 as a starting point, since that is when NAGPRA and the American Indian Arts and Crafts Act were both passed into legislation, rapidly followed by the 1992 Columbus quincentenary (57).

In the 1990s, identity politics figured largely in the mainstream art world, when James Luna participated in the Whitney Biennial and later collaborated with outspoken Latina/o artists Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña.

Art history and anthropology have guided Native art writing, often with damaging effects, leading to their reassessment. Caro sees Native Art History finally emerging as a coherent discipline, and “it is the entry of Native scholars into the field that advanced theoretical frameworks based on paradigms of thought originating from within their communities” (60). The exoticism, objectification, and general “Other-ing” of Native art are cut through by self-representation.

Jolene Rickard’s doctoral thesis states “that Native art is, and has always been, a form a knowledge production informed by Native perspectives” (60). This might seem obvious but it is anything but, especially in light of the abundance of narcissistic 20th-century writing by European-Americans suggesting Native art was created and controlled by European-American institutions for a European-American audience.

The increasing corpus of Native art writing is rich in exhibition catalogs and anthologies, but still lacking general art surveys and scholarly art criticism (61). What surveys exist do not begin to cover the last several decades of artist production. Monographs are slowly increasing in numbers. Writing about individual might go against the collectivist impulse of Native scholars but are opportunities for in-depth investigation and analysis often lacking in Native art writing.

Museums have been primary sources of information about Native art, and the increase of tribal museums founded on indigenous perspectives, as well as the establishment of NMAI in DC, has drastically changed the institutional landscape of the indigenous art world (63). NMAI and indigenous curators participating in major biennial art fairs creates an international presence for indigenous arts of the Americas (64). Museum collections have influenced the market value of art.

The gallery system is not as strong, and prominent contemporary Native art galleries are located away from major art centers such as New York or London. Indian art markets have increased dramatically in number; however, these compete against themselves.

A lack of support network and infrastructure hampers the growth of many indigenous artists; however, community-based non-profit centers have increased and provide some mentorship (66-7).

Thoughts

Perusing the footnotes, one can see the impact of the internet in fostering dialogue. Personal interviews and correspondence directly with the artists is common. One of the draws of Native art, for natives and non-natives, is that most of the artists are accessible and willing to communicate to the public.

While certainly valuable for a collective updating of contemporary art for the general readership, is Manifestations really art criticism? W. H. Auden (Anglo-American, 1907-1973) is quoted in A Short Guide to Writing About Art defining what functions a critic can provide:

1. Introduce me to authors or works of which I was hitherto unaware.
2. Convince me that I have undervalued an author or a work because I have not read them carefully enough.
3. Show me relations between works of different ages and cultures which I could never have seen for myself because I do not know enough and never shall.
4. Give a “reading” of a work which increases my understanding of it.
5. Throw light upon the process of artistic “Making”
6. Throw light upon the relation of art to life, to science, economics, ethics, religion, etc. (Barnet 8).

Seen in this light, Manifestations is a success. Evaluation is only one aspect of art criticism and not the most vital. Introducing and mapping the artists’ perspective backgrounds and philosophical perspectives as well as their cultural contexts is invaluable. The book lets the public know that the Native American art world is building firm ground on which to stand.

So far the book is only available through the MOCNA gift shop. Their website is "under construction," but their phone number is 1-888-922-4242. It's finally available on Amazon.com, at a good discount too.

• Mithlo, Nancy Marie, senior editor. Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism. Santa Fe: Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 2011. ISBN 978-0-615-48904-9.
• Sylvan, Barnet. A Short Guide to Writing about Art. 6th ed. New York: Longman, 2000.
• Video interview with Will Wilson about the Vision Project, by DeCoy Gallerina (Chiricahua Apache). Indian Country Today.
• The Vision Project website

Blood of the Sun: Artists Respond to the Poetry of Suzan Shown Harjo, opening May 13

Red King Ghidorah, Melissa and Marlon Melero

Santa Fe, NM — The powerful poetry of Susan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne-Holdulgee Muscogee) will be celebrated and explored by visual artists in a unique exhibit, Blood of the Sun: Artists Respond to the Poetry of Suzan Shown Harjo, opening Friday, May 13, 2011 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm at Ahalenia Studios (1422 Second Street) in Santa Fe. Harjo will attend the opening. She made her first appearance at Ahalenia Studios to read poetry created for the Freedom of Information: The FBI, Indian Country, and Surveillance exhibit.
Blood of the Sun will remain on display until Sunday, May 22, 2011. An installation and performance piece created by artist DeCoy Gallery (Warm Springs Chiricahua Apache) will occur at both the opening and closing receptions. The closing reception will be Sunday, May 22nd, 2:00 pm—4:00 pm.

Harjo is a poet, curator, and likely the most influential policy maker in Indian Country today. She has helped Native nations to regain ownership and control of over one million acres of ancestral lands. She also has been involved in drafting and securing the passage of key legislation to promote and protect Native nations, sovereignty, children, arts, cultures, languages, and sacred spaces, as well at the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act, 1989 National Museum of the American Indian Act, 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and the 1996 Executive Order on Indian Sacred Sites. She served on the Native American Policy Committee for Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign and as an advisor to the Transition in 2008-2009.

Suzan Shown Harjo, photo by Lucy Fowler Williams

President of the Morning Star Institute, a national Native rights organization founded in 1984 for Native peoples' traditional and cultural advocacy, arts promotion and research, Harjo was one of seven prominent Native people who filed the 1992 landmark case, Harjo et al v. Pro Football, Inc., against the disparaging name of the Washington professional football team. She has been a featured guest twice on the Oprah Winfrey Show and has been profiled and her work included in myriad broadcasts, newpapers, magazines, and books. On May 13, 2011, she will receive an honorary doctorate degree for a lifetime of advocacy and contributions to Native American arts, cultures, and rights from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe.

"It's an honor to be associated with such extraordinary artists," said Harjo. "Many of these artists have inspired my created and policy works for years. I look forward to the interpretations of and commentary on my poetry by these diplomats, resisters, and catalysts in the arts." Both emerging and internationally exhibited artists will be a part of Blood of the Sun, each responding to a poem or phrase of Harjo's in order to create a finished piece.

Participating artists include:

• Marcus Amerman (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma)
• David Bradley (White Earth Ojibwe)
• Kelly Church (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa Chippewa Indians)
• Anita Fields (Osage Nation)
• DeCoy Gallery (Chiricahua Apache)
• John Hagen (Aleut-Iñupiaq)
• Bob Haozous (Chiricahua Apache)
• Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne-Arapaho)
• April Holder (Sac and Fox-Tonkawa-Wichita)
• Kenneth Johnson (Muscogee-Seminole)
• Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi-Choctaw)
• Marlon Melero (Reno-Spark Paiute-Modoc-Tlingit-Haida)
• Melissa Melero (Fallon Paiute-Modoc)
• America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)
• Diego Romero (Cochiti Pueblo)
• Mateo Romero (Cochiti Pueblo)
• Hoka Skenandore (Oneida-La Jolla Luiseño-Oglala Lakota)
• Dr. John Torres-Nez (Diné)
• Richard Ray Whitman (Yuchi-Muscogee Creek)
• Brandon Williams (Diné)

Daily viewing hours for the exhibit vary. Please email for an appointment.

By Staci Golar (Welsh-American)

Art show website: www.ahalenia.com/harjo

Cheyenne Quilling Society

For thousands of years, indigenous people created and evaluated art according to our own standards. In the last few centuries, non-Native people have collected, critiqued, categorized, and theorized about Native art to such an extant, that in some venues they temporarily drowned out Native perspectives. Fortunately the tide is turning, with more tribes establishing their own museums, more Native peoples curating their own art shows, and more Native writers contributing to the canon of Native American art history. One window into historical indigenous perspectives on one genre of art can be found in Plain’s women’s quilling societies.

While warrior societies among Plains tribes are well known, many tribes also had artistic guilds. One such guild was the quilling society, which was the most prestigious women’s society among many Plains tribes. Specifically I want to look at the Cheyenne women’s quilling society. The Cheyenne name for their quilling society was Mëëno’istst , which meant “quiller”–specifically “one who applies quills to hide”. Eme e ni means “she sews on quills” (Grinnell 160). The women who belonged to the society were known not only for their artistic skill but also for their moral standing (Western History Association 6).

Quillwork, the aesthetic use of porcupine quills on textiles, hides, and other surfaces, is an art form unique to North America. Quillwork has been popular from coast to coast, taking hold throughout the range of the porcupine. The earliest examples of quills used as binding agents were found in caves in Utah and Nevada, dating back to 530 BCE, and the oldest quillwork found on moccasins date back to the 6th century CE (Palmer 75).

My incomplete understanding is that a cultural hero named the Buffalo Wife first brought the art of quilling to the Plains tribes. Picking Bones Woman, a Cheyenne told the story about Buffalo Wife to anthropologist George Bird Grinnell, and she describe the human man who married Buffalo Wife. This man learned quilling while living among the buffalo. When he returned to Cheyenne society, he created the quillworkers’ society and instructed the women in the sacred protocol of quillwork (Grinnell 163).

The quilling society was an intergenerational institution, with older women instructing younger women. “Not only were the quillwork guilds instructional, but they embodied a religious element as well, not unlike a sisterhood. To join this prestigious society was to assume a station of respect and power” (Her Many Horses and Horse Capture 9). Women created other art forms, which had their own societies, but quillwork was considered the pinnacle of women’s artwork (Williams 70).

The accomplishments of quillers were on par with battle honors among men’s societies (Grinnell 159). As Beatrice Medicine and Patricia Albers write, “[T]he contributions of women were recognized by the Plains peoples, even though they have not been so recognized by anthropologists and art historians. Excellent in craftwork brought prestige and wealth to the woman and to her family” (Albers and Medicine 109). The artist had a place in Cheyenne society.

When the women decided upon a quilling project, a specialized camp crier would publically announce their plans to the whole camp (Grinnell 160). Quills had to be harvested, dyed, and processed. They were softened with saliva and pulled between teeth to flatten.

When a young woman quilled her first robe, she threw a feast. She would sit in the back of the lodge with the elder who instructed her sitting on her right. A poorer member of the tribe would be invited to witness the young woman quill her first robe and this poorer individual would be given a present, often a horse. Afterward if the visitor were a man, he would ride through the camp and sing a song mentioning the young women’s name and that she quilled her first robe (Grinnell 161).

To protect the robe while it was being quilled, a woman would covered her hands with white clay or burnt gypsum (Grinnell 164). If a woman made a mistake when quilling, a ceremony had to be preformed, in which a brave man counted coup on the robe being quilled. The man would say, “And when I scalped him, I did it in this way,” as he cut the errant quills from the robe with a knife owned by the quilling society (Grinnell 166).

To ensure success of a relative or to health someone in ill health, a girl or young woman could create a quilled robe for a healer, religious leader, or warrior in a specific ceremonial manner. The girl would offer a gift to an elder member of the quilling society and ask her help in the project. The elder would respond with a particular ceremony and then she would instruct the girl. Upon successful completion, the girl could attend quilling society feasts and teach others the techniques she learned (Grinnell 160).

At certain gatherings, women would recount the quilling accomplishments, which would be attested to by a witness or said over an arrow or pipe (Grinnell 162).

The elder members of the quilling society “had strict rules in their designs and they kept secret the meaning and arrangement of the colors, as well as the relation of the designs to each other,” as Rodolphe Petter wrote in his 1915 Cheyenne-English Dictionary.

When preparing to quill a hide, a woman might ask an elder to visit her lodge and draw a design on the robe with a stick and white clay, for which she would be given a gift or clothing and food (Grinnell 163).

As Petter wrote, “The designs were always symbolic and talismanic, representing concrete organic objects, whereas the color were more emblematic of the abstract in creatures and creations, e.g., white for active life, very light blue for quietness, peace, serenity (from the cloudless sky); green for growing life; red for warmth, food, blood, home from blood); amber yellow, ripeness, perfection, beauty (from the sunsets); black for cessation of enmity, hostilities (from a dead glow being no more hot)” (Grinnell 168-9).

It’s intriguing that genres within quilling fell into a strict hierarchy. Woman began quilling moccasins, then cradleboards, stars or circular disks for lodges, buffalo robes, then finally lodge linings, backrests, and “possible sacks” (Grinnell 161). Those who completed these increasingly prestigious items increased their own prestige. Quilling an entire lodge by oneself was a great accomplishment but the highest accomplishment was quilling thirty complete buffalo robes. Doing so guaranteed the quiller a “long life full of good fortune" (Neithammer).

The quilling society came to an end in the late 19th century (Her Many Horses and Horse Capture 9), after the Southern Cheyenne relocated to Indian Territory and the Northern Cheyenne moved onto their reservation in Montana. However, quilling itself never died and has never been completely replaced by beadwork.

“Sacred protocol” and “moral standing” are not exactly common art terms today. It’s interesting to consider how many community members were involved in creating quillwork, or repairing it, or celebrating its creation. Wealth was tied to art before the reservation era, as was prestige; however, the nature of wealth is different in a reciprocal society than in a capitalist society. The Cheyenne quilling society is an example of how certain artists were perceived by a tribe and how their work strengthened relationships within the community.

• Albers, Patricia and Beatrice Medicine. The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983.
• Grinnell, George Bird. The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972.
• Her Many Horses, Emil and George Horse Capture, eds. Song for the Horse Nation: Horses in Native American Cultures. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2006.
• Neithammer, Carolyn. Daughters of the Earth: The Lives and Legends of American Indian Women. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977.
• Palmer, Jessica Dawn. The Dakota Peoples: A History of the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota through 1863. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008.
• Petter, Rudolphe. English-Cheyenne Dictionary. Kettle Falls, WA: Valdo Petter, 1915. Link.
  
• Western History Association. The American West. Volume 10. Cody, WY: Buffalo Bill Historical Center, 1973.
• Williams, Lucy Fowler. Guide to the North American Ethnographic Collections at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum, 2003.

For Cheyenne art in the collection of NMAI, including quillwork, click here.

Heather Ahtone: Designed to Last

“Designed to Last: Striving toward an Indigenous American Aesthetic”
The International Journal of the Arts in Society. Volume 4, Number 2, 2009: 373-386.
Heather Ahtone (Choctaw-Chickasaw)

When I got my hands on “Designed to Last,” I handed it out to people like Chick tracts. So many people write about the need to assess Indigenous American art based on indigenous values; however, this essay was the first time I have ever seen anyone propose a way to do so. I will attempt to summarize her main points.

Choctaw-Chickasaw scholar Heather Ahtone is a doctoral candidate at Kansas University and a research associate for the University of Oklahoma’s Diversity in Geosciences Project. She draws upon the traditional knowledge of her relatives, tribespeople, and members of other tribes to complement her academic studies.

Ahtone was conducting research for the American Indian Cultural Center and Museum, when a Ponca man explained to her how the design of his floral beaded pipe bag was a map with a related hunting song (373). This revelation crystallized the complexity of Indigenous American art for her.

In the past scholarship of Indigenous America art came from a Eurocentric perspective. Art historians examined art collected with little information or cultural context or judged the art solely by its decorative. This formalist approach, popular in the Modern Era, barely skims the surface of the artwork’s meaning. The need for Indigenous methodologies in art history is clear. Donald Fixico (Shawnee-Sac & Fox-Muscogee Creek-Seminole) writes, “The scholar must consider the worldview of an Indian group to comprehend its members’ sense of logic and ideology” (374). Aaron Fry writes that “…after 150 years of ethnographic studies of Pueblo peoples, art historical examinations of twentieth-century Pueblo arts have failed to fully engage Pueblo concepts and perspectives on the production of these arts” (374). Western scholars often tend to divide ancient or contemporary Native art, instead of acknowledging the cultural continuity between the works.

In his article “In Search of Native American Aesthetics,” Leroy N. Meyer describes tribal cultures as “deeply integrated, unlike the fragmented, cosmopolitan culture of the dominant society” (375). Indigenous art cannot be separated from philosophy, spirituality, or daily life—different expressions of Indigenous cultures are integrated and complement each other.

Steven Leuthold proposed a framework for understanding Native art in his book, Indigenous Aesthetics: Native Art, Media, and Identity (University of Texas Press, 1998), that “addresses the relationship between aesthetics and other cultural realms with reducing one realm to the other. In this sense an artwork can be valued for its expressiveness, complexity, creativity, or formal structure… without artificially separating the experience of art from other valuative dimensions of experience: the moral, economic, political, interpersonal, or spiritual” (376). Leuthold’s methodology makes it clear that Western art theory, as Ahtone writes “serves to seek out point of distinction and difference, to use a linear approach to hierarchy for identifying culturally based expressions” (376). Leuthold applies his method to indigenous film and video, but Ahtone wonders if his approach would work the non-Western media of tribally specific traditional arts.

Instead of focusing on points of difference, Ahtone suggests that Indigenous art theory should be based on “finding relationships and shared commonalities” (376) She writes, “The use of relationships is a part of the coded language embedded in all aspects of Indigenous American culture” (376). These relationships can be expressed through “living metaphors” that are expressed through visual arts, dance, song, and oral history. Relationships of natural forces, including humans, reflect two fundamental values in indigenous society: balance and reciprocity. Balance, or harmony, reflects “the mutually dependent relationship that all forms of life have with each other.” Reciprocity is expressed through generosity and “the necessary acts of generosity that maintain balance between interacting forces, including human, natural, and spiritual” (377). Together these are part of “an interdependent pattern that extends like a spider web and draws strength form the interdisciplinary, yet tangible connections” (377). Looking at Indigenous aesthetic, one should also study science, humanities, religion, politics, and other disciplines because an integrated, interconnected, interdisciplinary approach will enhance one’s understand of all these and other fields.

“The traditional knowledge of Indigenous American culture, largely anchored to concepts of regeneration and reciprocity, is expressed and practiced in a network of symbols, metaphors, and myths,” Ahtone writes, which manifest in “ceremonies, prayers, songs, dances, and the arts—largely communal experiences” (377). Regeneration, or renewal, also play a key role in indigenous cultures.

Art materials can have intrinsic meanings and significance in Native art. Many indigenous art forms are made from materials gathered from the natural environment. A protocol of reciprocity often guides the gathering of the material, which reflects the artist’s relationship to the land or water. For example, indigenous California basket weavers have specific songs for gathering certain plants and observe strict menstrual taboos. Ahtone gives the example of Southwestern potters praying and giving offerings before gathering clay. The clay is often shaped into a hollow round form with a circular opening, resembling the earth and the emergence of the people from the underground to the surface. Designs painted on the clay can reference natural phenomena such as weather patterns. “Through this process of reverence and utilization of materials,” writes Ahtone, “many Indigenous people share a reverence for the objects based just on materials alone that is without comparison in the Western culture” (379).

Indigenous artists might use new designs with traditional materials, or they might use traditional designs with new materials, but either way, they are “expanding the visual dialogue about the Indigenous experience”—as opposed to departing from it (379). Ahtone credits art’s ability to convey traditional knowledge and spiritual beliefs as one of the reasons tribal cultures have survived despite centuries of colonialist suppression (379).

Metaphors—symbols used to represent related concepts or objects—are central to Indigenous art. The metaphoric mind—an intuitive mind in direct communication with the subconscious and nature—can perceive “beyond the limitations of our rational mind” (380). The symbols that create a metaphoric narrative were created and regenerated over generations. They represent natural forces and cosmological, both of which are timeless and interconnected. Many tribes’ oral histories contain both the past, present, and future, and much Native art is equally timeless in scope.

Leroy Little Bear (Blackfoot) writes, “The Native American paradigm is comprised of and includes ideas of constant motion and flux, existence consisting of energy waves, interrelationships, all things being animate, space/place, renewal and all things being imbued with spirit” (381). In this state of flux, symbols “provide anchoring points for Indigenous peoples to acknowledge and be reassured that their current dilemmas and circumstances are no more than an evolution of the difficulties and bounties shared by their ancestors,” write Ahtone (381).

The strength of symbols is that they can have multiple interpretations, and the artist can add their own personal meanings to the larger cultural meanings. These multiple readings enhance each other. This flexible and additive nature of symbolism helps Indigenous American arts “serve as a conduit for cultural perpetuity” (382). The repeated use of symbols invites personal memories to become attached to them and can invite self-reflection. An example new symbols being created is Seminole and Muscogee patchwork, which is a 20th century development. Seminole patchwork developed as an art form primarily in the 1920s and 1930s. By creating colorful appliqué patterns from scraps, Seminole women could create beautiful attire for themselves and their families during hard economic times. The patchwork designs were given names connected to natural forces, such as lightning or storms. Stories related to the imagery followed, and clans connected to the natural phenomena adopted certain designs. Worn during dances, state occasions, and ceremonies, the patchwork patterns become intertwined with self-identity and tribal self-determination.

The ability of these multilayered, collective and personal symbols, metaphors, and content-laden materials to relay cultural knowledge is reflected in many Indigenous artists’ statements. Ahtone cites the artist statement of the late Michael Kabotie (Hopi) as a prime example. He painted the Hopi feathered serpent, which, as Ahtone writes, “represents the dynamic between heaven and earth and the constant power struggle between these two energy sources” (383). In his work, the feathered serpent also speaks to our dangerous dependence on oil—a contemporary interpretation of a timeless symbol.

In oral societies, the arts have served as a visual language and connect tribal members across space and time. Ahtone concludes, “Using this aesthetic, those concepts of the metaphoric mind, uses of symbols and myths, within a culturally specific context, allows for a discussion about the art that incorporates the metaphysical without becoming romantic or sentimental” (383-4). She invites critical review and is currently putting her methodologies to work in critiquing contemporary Indigenous American art.

The entire essay can be ordered through: The International Journal of the Arts in Society.

Heather Ahtone is presenting her paper, “Reading Beneath the Surface: Joe Feddersen’s Parking Lot” at the College Art Association Conference in New York on Wednesday, February 9, 2011.

The Michael Kabotie interview is online here.