Meta-Criticism: Responding to the Response to the Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains at the Brooklyn Museum, Part One

New York is arguably the center of the art world, and the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit, Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains puts Native art, both historic and contemporary, in crosshairs of mainstream art writers. That it received so much attention from art writers is a coup for curators Nancy Rosoff and Susan Kennedy Zeller. However, the quality of much of the writing leaves something to be desired.

Johnson, Ken. “Plains Indian Culture, as Seen Through the Ingenuity of the Tepee.” New York Times. 14 March 2011.

I’ll begin with Ken Johnson’s New York Times review of Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains, as it stands out as the most flippant and dismissive. He approves, albeit condescendingly, of the historical works but disregards the “kitschy pieces” by living artists.

Johnson’s critique opens with, “You know there’s trouble when the first object you encounter in a museum exhibition looks as if it had been misplaced from the gift shop.” The art piece to which Johnson refers is 21st Century Traditional: Beaded Tipi, a miniature tipi by Teri Greeves (Kiowa-Comanche-Italian), which he describes as “cartoonish” and “cheerfully saccharine.” Art is subjective and certainly he has no obligation to like the piece, but if it’s a true critique, the description should be accurate. The tipi, commissioned by the museum of the show, stands 46” tall and is made of brain-tanned deer hide, various seed and bugle beads, silver, pearls, raw diamonds, copper, cotton, rope, pine, poplar, and bubinga, a tropical African hardwood (Rosoff and Zeller 35). Kitsch refers to work that is cheap and mass-produced; this is a labor-intensive handmade piece with precious and semi-precious materials.

The beaded imagery is celestial (sun, morning star, and moon), zoomorphic (three buffalo), and various Native figures – faceless adults and children, a drum circle with microphone, and dancers. Nothing particularly screams “saccharine” — the palette is bold with the only pastel color being sky blue. Perhaps the imagery of adults holding or walking with children is too sweet? That’s a sad state of human affairs is that is the culprit. Otherwise, the “fault” must lie in the diminutive size of the piece. The art world is rife with size queens.

Johnson writes about the tipi, “the object has a relationship to the historic material that is perplexing at best.” Sorry, the relationship is painfully obvious and the title even underlines the point. The figures are all Plains Indians in 21st century dress—some Kiowa, some intertribal—and the piece shows that songs, dances, familial relations have maintained continuity over the centuries, as have Plains peoples relationships to celestial forces, despite changing technology, as exemplified by the microphone. Miniature tipis have an historical antecedent as young girl’s toys, but in the 20th century, they have increasingly been commissioned by museums. Just as the tipi is portable, the miniature tipi is a portable expression of Plains culture. The piece is upbeat, but that is part of the message: Kiowa people are alive and have much to celebrate. Greeves’ art statements are included in the labels and wall text; however, none of the art writers referred to these texts.

Johnson is disappointed that he believes the show “speaks down to its audience, assuming a low level of sophistication,” but frankly that’s not an inappropriate assumption—very unfortunately non-Natives tend to not have extensive knowledge of Native culture, as Johnson illustrates when he switches his spelling to “tepee” and simultaneously points out that Lyle Heavy Runner (Blackfeet not “Blackfoot” as Johnson writes) created a tipi with a “sacred design…handed down for generations” but describes it as looking “as if it had been borrowed from a roadside souvenir stand.” Which one is it? Apparently Johnson has only encountered tipis at roadside tourist traps and refuses to make the conceptual leap that tipis (and by extension Indians) have an existence independent of tourism and kitsch in the 21st century.

Húŋkpapȟa Lakota Butch Thunder Hawk’s Horse Head Effigy Stick is described by Johnson as resembling “a war club, with a horse-head-shaped business end.” The writer has never heard of the Horse Dance and doesn’t know that when a beloved horse dies, its owner will make or commission a wooden sculpture in the likeness of that horse to carry in ceremonial dances. Fair enough. But if I went to a museum and wasn’t familiar about art form, personally, I would opt to not publicly parade my ignorance; I would either read up or ask questions, but that would require the desire actually to learn about the art form in question.

Johnson suggests that the Native American Church material deserves its own exhibition, because he has never heard of the 2002 traveling exhibit Symbols of Faith and Belief: Art of the Native American Church with a superb catalog. Perhaps Google was down that day?

The gift shop with tipi-related products is repugnant to Johnson in light of “the tragic, still painful history evoked” by the exhibit. These reflect some of the “rules” about Indians that firmly implanted into the mainstream American psyche:

• Indians are historic.
• Indians are tragic. 
• Indians are dead.

“The Plains Indian culture that gave rise to these kinds of objects,” Johnson insists “was practically destroyed by the United States government’s campaign to clear land for settlement by white people over a century ago.” But it wasn’t destroyed. The artists Kevin Pourier, Butch Thunder Hawk, Teri Greeves, Lyle Heavy Runner, and others are explicitly spelling this fact out through their art—Plains culture and Plains Indians is alive in the 21st century. These artists still have a relationship to their spirituality, their land, and their people, as well the buffalo, deer, and horse that have been so integral to Plains culture. It is an important message, which was lost on a man wearing his “selective-attention goggles,” but hopefully will not be lost on other museumgoers.

Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains, Brooklyn Museum website

Adventures in Egg Tempera

I finally got to answer a question that crosses the mind of every beginning egg tempera painter. Perhaps chicken eggs are the best-suited eggs for painting, but what about other bird's eggs? I finally got the opportunity to deviate from the prescribed course when I found quail eggs for sale at Talin International Market in Albuquerque. Ideally you paint with the freshest, organic eggs available, so it's definitely a risk to paint with quail eggs shipped in from California and have been sitting on shelves for an indeterminate period of time.



Egg tempera is an ancient painting medium using egg yolk as a binder for pigments. The yolk has to be separated completely from the white (paint with egg white paints was used in European medieval manuscripts and is called "glair"). The quail eggshells are quite beautiful, cream with brown speckles and pale blue on the inside. They are softer than chicken eggs and don't break as cleanly. On the plus side, probably due to the smaller surface area, the yolk sac isn't as fragile as a chicken's.

The quail egg yolk handled very much like chicken yolk. I use a 1:1 yolk-water ratio with a drop of vinegar to keep the paint from spoiling quickly. I had a 7"x5" true gesso panel and found an 19th-century tintype of a Cherokee girl from Indian Territory, that was in the public domain, to provide subject matter for this experiment. The underpainting is built up with transparent layers. Ideally you get some paint on your brush, wipe it off, and then create barely perceptible layers, but my patience only goes so far before I finally resort to cross-hatching the top layers. I leave visible brush strokes, but I like the energy this gives the work. Egg tempera is about the least spontaneous art medium I know of.

The handling and the end results of the quail egg tempera were good. The only advantage I can see to painting with quail eggs is the smaller yolks allow you to use exactly as much as you need every time you painting, instead of leaving the remaining yolk mixture in the 'fridge.

Although I've never heard it suggested that precontact peoples in the Americas used egg tempera, many tribes domesticated turkeys, so at least it's possible that egg tempera might have a history here. Indigenous paint binders I do know about include bear grease, lime, blood, squirrel fat, cherry sap, milkweed juice, cucumber juice, and pine pitch. I'd be very curious to know if tribes used rabbit fat or walnut oil as a paint binder.

From Ahalenia

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.

53rd Annual Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market

The Heard is perfectly timed because, after hibernating all winter, we all want some sun and to see each other. This year bought some structural changes, including an additional 100 artists. The larger tents were so much nicer with fewer tables and more escape routes. The economy kept many seasoned veteran artists at home, giving opportunities to new artists.

One of the first-timers did spectacularly well: 32-year-old Jeremy Frey, a Passamaquoddy basket weaver from Maine, who won Best of Show will his Point Urchin, a gorgeous sweet grass and brown ash basket with unbelievably fine point curls and a lid with a wrapped ring handle. He learned basket weaving from his mother Gail Frey, and, recently, National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a major grant.

Northeastern artists did well throughout the show. Theresa Second (Penobscot) won third place in baskets, while another newcomer Eric Otter Bacon (Passamaquoddy) won second place. I picked up an incised birch bark piece mounted on wood with black ash splint wraps by Otter Bacon. The way he takes basic design elements from historical birch bark art and enlarges it to a new abstract form reminds me a bit of Tlingit sculptor James Schoppert’s work with formline elements.

Classification winners included Maria Samora (Taos)–jewelry; Lisa Holt (Cochiti) and Harlan Reano (Kewa)–pottery; Thomas Tapia (Tesuque Tewa)—painting, drawings, graphics, photography; Stetson Honyumptewa (Hopi)—wooden carvings; Marcus Amerman (Choctaw)—sculpture; Kenneth Williams, Jr. (Northern Arapaho-Seneca)—diverse art forms; and basket classifications have been mentioned above.

I’m not sure how they organized judging, but judges also competed, which seems like a conflict of interest.Lacking much inventory, I didn’t bother entering the competition, and I have to say, it was rather nice to not be emotionally invested in the outcomes—I was happy for my friends and pleased to see some amazing work. Randy Kemp (Yuchi-Choctaw-Muscogee) and Ryan Singer (Diné) both had hilarious paintings that won. I was surprised to hear they don’t know each other already. A show of Kemp, Singer, and Daniel McCoy (Muscogee-Potawatomi), who shares their humorous social commentary, would be a great thing.

The Heard is much more relaxed and genteel than Indian Market, although structural changes between the Heard Museum and Heard Museum Guild made for some interesting developments—the funniest being the bathroom cops. Apparently the Heard Museum has an aging plumbing system. May I suggest private donors be solicited to overhaul the system? They could then have plaques on each toilet, dedicated to the enemy of their choice.

The extensive network of demonstrators in the main museum courtyards represented area tribes and was an interesting, educational additional to the market. For instance, Jacob Butler (Pima-Maricopa) of the Pima-Maricopa Cultural Resources Department shared detailed information about etching shell with cactus juice.

It was great to see everyone—even if fleetingly. Thanks to Andrea Hanley for sharing information about challenging new artists’ works at the Berlin Gallery. I pillaged the new museum bookstore. Thanks to the best booth mates in the world, Marcus and Linda. Thanks to Francis and Jose Burruel for their incredible hospitality. Thanks to Staci for being a most excellent traveling companion. Oh yes, and thanks to Linda and Gloria for taking me to IKEA for the first time in my life. And I am still finding oranges in my boxes.

Questionartist #2

Do you have any advice about writing artist's statements?

It is usually very difficult for artists to write effectively about their own work. There is a good reason for this; they are artists not writers. Having someone else write the artist statement is advised.

Ideally, the artist can work with an art historian, a curator, a gallery owner or even a professional creative writer so that their "authentic" (this work is used with caution) voice and comes through. Although, depending on the person chosen to write about the work, it can get to pompous and be filled with art-speak. It’s a tough call.

The bottom line is that artists need to have someone else write about their work in an effective, non-flowery and honest way. The artist statement can make or break interpretation or a sale.

–Traci L. Morris, PhD (Chickasaw),
Owner/Homahota Consulting,
Policy Analyst/ Native Public Media

Personalize the art form or yourself as an artist. People become involved with art and/or artists, when they can feel a sense of connection.

Make it relevant for others. One of the challenges with specific art genres or niches is that people are looking for ways to make the aesthetics, or content relevant to themselves.

Share the "quirky" or the "behind the scenes" story that shapes the artwork or influences the artist. People are often drawn in by the story that offers some interesting aspect about the process for making the artwork. Keep it simple assuming that the audience is not familiar enough with the process to identify what is the"out-of-the-ordinary" aspect. When I interview an artist I am always interested to uncover what engages them in the process.

One artists relayed that he is actually interpreting traditional songs through very abstract markings and the tools he prefers are not the conventional painting tools such as paint brushes, instead he uses many different kinds of objects we encounter daily to make these markings. Another friend who is a painter is so engrossed in the process of under-painting that there are often many different images, objects and whole paintings buried below the final piece.

A filmmaker friend of mine shared a really funny story about how he solved the dilemma for feeding the actors during the filming with little budget to work with - it involved "a borrowed frybread trailer." This made everyone laugh when they heard the story. I would have loved to have been able to feature a photo of the frybread trailer with the promotions but we couldn't find one. So save everything and document the off the wall stuff, it humanizes the artists or the story and might be the very thing that makes you as an artist stand out from the rest.

Make your statement somewhat relevant to the institution that is featuring your artwork. This really goes back to making it relevant for others. In this case it is making it relevant for the patrons at that particular venue. If your work is going to be featured at MOMA, tweak the statement slightly so that it speaks to the audience that will be viewing your work at that venue or the theme that was used to curate the show. If that same piece travels to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, there is probably a very different curatorial approach, so find a way to communicate with that in mind.

Find a way to pose questions in your statement that positively encourage the viewer to interact in some way with the work.

—Shoshana Wasserman (Thlopthlocco Tribal Town
and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation),
Director of Marketing & Public Relations,
American Indian Cultural Center and Museum

Denver Art Museum in the News

The Denver Art Museum just completed a massive renovation of their Native American galleries. The changes were heralded by a number of newspaper articles, including front page of the New York Times (thanks to M for point this out!). It’s heartening to see intelligent conversation about Native American art and the issues of its display in the mainstream media.

Roxanne Swentzell (Santa Clara Pueblo) is spending the next six months working on a monumental straw and clay sculpture, Mud Woman Rolls On. This beautifully drives home the point that Native art is alive and evolving, since visitors witnessed the construction as soon at they enter the third floor gallery.

Most of the articles focused on the museum’s and specifically Curator of Native Arts Nancy Blomberg’s efforts in presenting the work as art instead of ethnography, and de-emphasizing the history. For instance, the work is not arranged chronologically (Ellingboe). A common criticism of the National Museum of the American Indian was that it presented little or no history, but personally. Personally, I think that is fantastic. Not that learning our histories isn’t incredibly important, but it’s also important to drive home to the general public the fact Native Americans are living today. In one of their displays, DAM directly asks the viewers, “what is Indian art? Must it be old? Must it be functional?” (Ellingboe).

Several of the articles also focused on the museums’ efforts to attribute works to specific artists and list their names. Through persistence in research, Blomberg identified the creator of a 19th century representational ink-and-watercolor painting of a Ute Bear Dance. After visiting other museums and asking Colorado tribes, she happened to notice a similar styled painting in a Bonhams and Bonhams catalog that was sign "Fenno," which enabled her to identify the artist as being Louis Fenno, a Ute painter who passed on in 1903 (Dobrzynski).

Traditionally many artists did not sign their works. The Western notions of the lone artist superstar doesn’t translate well to Native American art world, and I can’t imagine an Indian Damien Hirst. For the most part, friends and family keep people’s egos in check; however, attributing art is good because it humanizes the work. For most of last four centuries, Western collectors and others have exoticized Native American art, so the pendulum swinging towards humanity is a great thing.

DAM doesn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater: directly after the artists’ name, when known, is their tribal affiliation, then date (Macmillan). They provide contextualizing information about the subject matter and the piece’s provenance — telling the stories that draw in viewer’s who might have minimal experience with Native art.

Ironically on the subject of attribution, the New York Times mistakenly gave the wrong name for the current president of NAASA, Karen Kramer Russell. But this illustrates that it’s better to try, and some mistakes on the way that can be corrected, than not even make the effort. Scholars are other institutions have been able to attribute art even back to the 18th century.

Congratulations to the Denver Art Museum on their two new Native galleries and kudos and thanks to the art writers for bring Native American art issues to the reading public.

• Davis, Joyce. “Going Native: American Indian exhibits relaunch in Denver.” Daily Reporter-Herald. 4 Feb 2011. Web.
• Dobrzynski, Judith H. “Honoring Art, Honoring Artists: Denver Museum Uses Scholarship To Attribute Native American Works To Individuals, Not Just To Tribes.” New York Times. 6 Feb 2011: 1. Web.
• Judith Dobrzynski also has a daily blog.
• “Corrections: Arts & Leisure.” New York Times. 12 Feb 2011. Web.
• Ellingboe, Sonya. “Display showcases American Indian art.” Highlands Ranch Herald. 4 Feb 2011. Web.
• Macmillan, Kyle. “Denver Art Museum offers a new way to see American Indian art.” Denver Post. 21 Jan 2011. Web.
• Photos of Louis Fenno (Ute, d. 1903) and his family at the Mountain West Digital Library.

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.