Native American Art

Native American Art, the visual works crafted by indigenous people of North America, starting after their arrival on the continent thousands of years ago and continuing until the present. These works may be painted, carved, woven, sewn, or built, and can incorporate such materials as feathers, porcupine quills, tree bark, animal skins and hair, and wood. They encompass a variety of objects, including clothing and jewelry, blankets and rugs, masks, totem poles, baskets, and bowls. Today, some Native American artists produce mainstream contemporary art—paintings on canvas, photographs, and performance art—while others continue to make art based on long-standing traditions. For information about native building traditions, see Native American Architecture.

Many Native American artworks were intended for use in daily life as well as in ceremonies and rituals. Some items were made as garments or to store food.

The ceremonies and rituals served various functions, including healing and maintaining success in hunting and farming, and they expressed beliefs about the relationship of Native Americans with the universe and the world around them. These beliefs gave shape and meaning to Native American art. Masks worn in healing ceremonies, for example, helped specialists in those rituals communicate with the spirit world. Carved wooden totem poles of the Pacific Northwest recorded family histories, and they were presented and displayed at elaborate ceremonies that helped the family preserve its history and status within the community. To serve its purpose effectively, a work of art was expected to be skillfully crafted and beautiful to its viewers.

No written records of Native American life exist before contact with Europeans during the 1500s, and so scholars consider the period before contact as prehistoric. During that time and afterward, Native Americans passed down their histories, traditions, and beliefs through their art, their ceremonies, and their oral literature (see Native American Literature). The arrival of nonnatives in North America produced some exchange of ideas that affected Native American art, although many concepts remained unchanged.

II

TRADITIONAL ARTS BY REGION

Scholars have grouped Native Americans into distinct culture areas on the basis of geographic boundaries, common languages, similar practices, and shared beliefs. This article discusses five principal areas in which art was created: the East, Plains, Southwest, Northwest Coast, and Arctic. Native Americans have their own ideas about their group memberships and histories, and these views may not be the same as those developed by nonnatives.

The forms of Native American art differ significantly from region to region, depending on the requirements of the society’s way of life, belief system, and natural environment, as well as on individual artists’ points of view. A painted tipi made of buffalo hide, which served native inhabitants of the southern Plains well, would not protect Arctic inhabitants from cold and snow. Nor would symbols meant to encourage rain, which were painted on Pueblo pots from the dry Southwest, even be thought of in the rainy Pacific Northwest. In some parts of native North America, individuals own the right to paint or carve specific images that record their own family or personal histories; thus, no one else can create quite the same work of art.

A

Arts of Eastern Native America

Eastern Native America stretches from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in the East to the Mississippi Valley in the West. Its southern boundary is the Gulf of Mexico; its northern boundary, the Great Lakes. Surviving artworks from the area date back further than those of any other region. The earliest works from this region were constructed of mounds of earth.

A1

Prehistoric Period

During the period from 3000 bc to 1000 bc people of mound-building cultures created massive earthworks in Eastern North America as sites for ceremonies and burial of prominent citizens. The earliest burials contained objects such as knives and spearheads made from hammered copper, and stone pendants and beads carved in the forms of birds and human figures. Artists of the Adena culture, which flourished from 1100 bc to 200 ad in what is now Ohio, engraved curvilinear (curved line) designs and carved elaborate stone pipes. One pipe took the form of a standing man with bent knees, his arms at his sides, wearing large ornaments called ear spools. Hopewell artists in the Ohio area cut delicate flat forms from sheets of mica in the shape of birds, human figures, and large hands. They also carved quite natural-looking birds and animals on stone platform pipes. These figures sat on the pipe’s flat base, or platform, and on some pipes they were part of the pipe bowl. Prominent people of these cultures were buried with a wealth of ornaments, such as jewelry of shells and copper, and headdresses elaborated with animal forms.

The period of Mississippian culture began about 900 ad. The best-known Mississippian earthwork, the Serpent Mound in Ohio, was built in the undulating form of a snake. Spiral designs, which may relate to beliefs about the nature and shape of the universe, appear on many works of art from this period, such as disk-shaped pendants made of shell, copper objects, conch shells (possibly used as cups in ceremonies), and ceramic pots. Other pieces carry the engraved figure of a dancer in elaborate dress. Markings near the dancer’s eyes resemble the patterns on the faces of falcons. These markings suggest that dancers may have impersonated a specific being in performances on ceremonial occasions. Human figures, modeled in clay or carved from stone in the Mississippian Period, suggest wealth and power through their impressive clothing and accessories.

A2

Historical Period

European explorers and settlers brought diseases to North America that killed a large portion of the native population in the East during the historical period. Many of the survivors were forced by settlers to leave their traditional lands and regroup elsewhere. Some artistic traditions survived and were transformed by these changes, but others were lost. In some groups, artists preserved tribal practices in images engraved with thin lines on birch bark or recorded tribal histories as symbolic patterns woven into wampum belts. These belts consist of tubular purple and white beads that are made from clam shells, threaded on string, and woven into beaded cloth. Wampum belts were taken out on special occasions when specialists educated to know the meanings of the designs “read” them aloud.

A2a

Clothing and Adornment

Much native artwork of the Eastern region involved clothing and other items of adornment. The spiral motifs of the Mississippian Period resurfaced in beadwork designs embroidered on fancy sashes, decorative bags, and garments. Bags twined (woven with a finger technique) of natural fibers, animal hair, and wool had patterned images of powerful supernatural beings such as thunderbirds and underwater panthers that played a role in native religions and philosophical thought in the Eastern region. The bags probably contained a collection of special “medicine” or power objects meant to provide spiritual help to the owner.

Women embroidered complex designs out of porcupine quills to decorate clothing and other objects. They colored the whitish, tubular quills by boiling them with dyes. After washing the quills they flattened them and created patterns on hide by attaching the quills with sinew (animal tissue) in rows. Other decorative elements, made by folding, braiding or weaving, could also be sewn onto the hide.

The production of decorated clothing and bags increased after contact with Europeans as a greater variety of textiles and other materials became available through trade. Imported glass beads inspired native women, who quickly adapted quillwork techniques for the creation of beaded apparel. European curvilinear and floral designs of the 19th century proved as meaningful for the native women who worked with them as they were for the nonnative women who purchased and wore them. Native women gained income by selling souvenirs, including beaded and quilled works such as moccasins and pin cushions, and birch bark objects such as miniature canoes, baskets, and boxes that were intricately embroidered with fine moose hair.

A2b

Masks

Some men of the Iroquois Nations of upstate New York and Ontario belonged to the False Face Society. Members of this society accepted offerings and performed dances in masks for the purpose of sweeping disease from the community. The society continues its work today. Some Iroquois people have requested that the masks used for this purpose not be placed on public display or included in museum collections. They consider these ceremonies to be private and powerful.

B

Arts of the Plains

The Plains region stretches from the Mississippi River westward to the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It includes adjacent areas in Alberta, Canada, to the north, and extends as far as the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Before European contact most Plains groups cultivated crops. Buffalo-hunting was central to their way of life as well.

American literature and mass media have popularized images of Plains Indians on horseback, wearing beaded clothing and feather headdresses. These images represent a period of Plains culture after Spanish settlers had introduced the horse in the early 17th century. Plains life also changed after native peoples acquired guns in trade for fur. With horses and guns, Plains people had greater success in buffalo hunting and could range over a larger territory. More food and additional territory encouraged population growth and the elaboration of artistic and architectural traditions.

B1

Riding Gear

The high value Plains peoples placed on horses was reflected in the flamboyant “costuming” of the animals. Beaded martingales (harness straps) might ornament the necks of horses. Symbols were painted on the horses themselves to give them greater power, and some horses wore masks as war regalia. Padded saddles for men had an hourglass shape and a covering of durable skins. Women’s saddles were made with a wood frame, carved with high pommels (saddle fronts) and cantles (saddle backs). Painted or beaded saddlebags showed riders and horses to best advantage on social and ceremonial occasions.

B2

Tipi Painting

Cone-shaped tents called tipis (also spelled tepees) were constructed of wooden poles covered with buffalo hides, which women prepared and sewed together with sinew. Prominent families or individuals might treat their tipi as a surface on which men could paint their military exploits or record supernatural experiences gained through dreams or visions. Each painting was unique, but figures in paintings were typically flat, simplified, and shown in profile. Some men rode horses in these images or listed their successes in battle through drawings of stacked guns or other weapons in long rows. In visionary images, men represented their helping spirits, often thunderbirds and eagles, which were sometimes accompanied by powerful bolts of lightning.

B3

Clothing and Adornment

Images like those painted on tipis also adorned robes of buffalo hide and elaborate shirts worn by high-ranking men in Plains tribes. These garments might be quilled and beaded as well, in collaboration with a female artist. Men also painted these personal images on their shields and shield covers. In subject matter and linear style, these images recall rock art made in the region hundreds of years earlier.

Traditionally, men and women made different types of art. Representational, relatively naturalistic paintings recorded the experiences of men, whereas the creation of abstract, geometric designs in paint, quillwork, and beads belonged to women. Plains women acquired porcupine quills and quillwork techniques from native women in the Northeast. They also wrapped quills around the long stems of pipes, along with feathers, bird skins, and other items. The pipe stems were then inserted into carved stone pipe bowls. Quills in carefully conceived patterns also adorned clothing, moccasins, bags, tipi liners, and horse gear. Some women claimed that ideas for their most creative arrangements of quills came to them in dreams.

The first glass beads reached the Plains by around 1790. They were relatively large and opaque. Brought to the area on horseback, they were called pony beads, although some people said they got their name because a pound of the beads could be traded for a horse. Pony beads had almost completely replaced quills by about 1840. At that time, smaller “seed beads,” were imported from Italy. More regular in shape, seed beads made it easier to create even, balanced patterns. After World War I (1914-1918), Czechoslovakian glass beads replaced Italian beads. Some native groups developed distinctive beadwork styles. The Western Sioux, for instance, used characteristic thin lines and forked elements on a solid background. The Eastern Sioux beaded with curved lines and floral elements. The Crow produced heavily beaded garments with large diamonds shapes, triangles, and other geometric designs in pinks, lavenders, yellows, blues, and greens often bordered in white.

After about 1900 and relocation on reservations, many native women increased their production of heavily beaded works. They no longer needed to keep their burdens lightweight for a semi-nomadic way of life. Many nonnative collectors of beaded works preferred richly decorated pieces, and women were aware of the tastes of their customers. Marketing these artworks successfully was crucial to income because it was difficult to farm on reservations and other work was hard to find.

Women’s societies honored women for artistic achievement. Prayers and ceremonies accompanied certain acts of decoration, which were considered equivalent to the acts of bravery that brought men honor in warfare. By the 1920s, traditional beadwork was in decline, although some horse tack (saddles, bridles, and other equipment) was still produced for use on holidays and on other public occasions. Today, beading and tailoring are popular again for the creation of elaborate items of traditional-style clothing worn at festivals and dance events called powwows.

Manufactured fabrics became an alternative to hides in the late 19th century, as soldiers, traders, and settlers brought these materials to the Plains. Nonnative people also brought ink and paper with them, and Plains men used ledger books (bound books meant for accounts) in which to make line drawings. Their drawings recorded traditional practices as well as a world that was changing rapidly around them.

C

Arts of the Southwest

The Southwest, including New Mexico, Arizona, and southern Colorado and Utah, was the home of various native groups with different origins and histories. They include the Pueblo people, who probably descend from the prehistoric Anasazi; the people known today as the Mogollon or Mimbres; and the ancestors of the Pima and Papago, who are called the Hohokam by archaeologists. Apache and Navajo people arrived in the Southwest relatively late from an earlier homeland in western Canada.

C1

Pottery

Anasazi women produced remarkable pottery during the prehistoric period. The most numerous examples have geometric designs painted in black on a white background. Mimbres people made white bowls shaped like smooth hemispheres and painted with black lines. Their images range from geometric designs to animals and humans in what looks like the representation of a miniature world. Are the human figures engaged in ritual activities or do they represent legendary figures? No one today knows. Some of the animals are familiar—sheep, fish, and reptiles—but others consist of animal features in unusual combinations and probably represent mythological beings. These bowls are found in burials, placed over the faces of the deceased. Scholars have noted a long-standing Pueblo belief that the sky is a similar dome that arches above the earth. Each bowl had a small hole at its base that might have been considered a passage to the spirit world. The hole also may have referred to distant Pueblo ancestors who were said to have emerged from a hole in the ground to begin their lives on Earth.

During the historical period Pueblo people constructed pottery by hand by stacking coils of clay, smoothing the surface of the clay, and painting the pot with slip (a thin mixture of clay and water) before firing. Pottery types vary from village to village. Women from Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico paint delicate and intricate geometric designs on pots that are made of a fine, lightweight white clay. Potters of the San Ildefonso Pueblo, also in New Mexico, specialize in heavy black on black ware, in which matte black designs appear on a shiny black background, although they also produce works in red. Many of these pots feature images of water serpents, important in legendary histories of the area, or patterns based on feather forms. Although the history of pottery making in a village seems to dictate current styles, anthropologists have found that many Pueblo potters stress the individuality of their designs within those traditions. Many women claim that some of their most original ideas come to them in dreams.

In the early 20th century some talented potters, such as Maria and Julian Martinez of San Ildefonso, became known as artists by signing their names to their works, encouraged by enthusiastic tourists and collectors who wished to purchase their pieces. Maria constructed the pots that Julian painted. Hopi potter Nampeyo became known for designs that are based on ancient potsherds (pottery fragments) recovered from Sikyatki, site of an ancient Hopi village near her pueblo. Nampeyo’s Sikyatki-style pots have characteristic geometric and curved forms that seem to refer to the wings and beaks of birds. Native peoples of the Southwest also are known for their baskets. The shapes, patterns, and weaving styles of these baskets make them recognizable to experts as the work of an artist from a particular native group.

C2

Kachina Figures

Many works of art are related to the Kachina religions of Pueblo peoples, best known from the traditions of the Hopi and the Zuni. Kachina has several meanings. Kachinas are spirits closely bound to the agricultural cycle of life, death, and rebirth, which helps explain the appearance and disappearance of kachinas according to the seasons. After death, people themselves are said to join the kachinas in the form of rain clouds. Kachinas are also the name given to costumed dancers who in seasonal ceremonies represent the presence of the kachina spirits in Pueblo life. There are hundreds of different kachinas, yet specific mask features, costumes, colors, and other accessories identify the particular kachina associated with a dancer. Finally, the name kachina also applies to the carved, painted, and decorated figures originally made to educate Pueblo children so that they could recognize the different dancers in ceremonies. Since the start of the 20th century, some artists have made kachina figures for nonnative collectors. Some Pueblo people approve of these sales as a way to make a living, whereas others insist that kachinas are a form of religious art and never meant to be playthings.

C3

Textiles and Jewelry

Navajo women are known for their woven textiles made from sheep’s wool, especially blankets for wearing and rugs. Some of these textiles are striped. Others, called chief’s blankets, are patterned with a combination of stripes, crosses, and diamond shapes. During some periods chemical imports replaced natural dyes, with weavers using yarns manufactured by machine. The bright and lively patterns that resulted are called eye dazzlers. At other times weavers have responded to demands of purchasers and made textiles with natural materials in softer colors that buyers considered more authentic.

Navajo artists also work in silver, using methods developed from those first taught to Navajos by a Mexican blacksmith around 1850. Early works in silver include belt buckles and horse gear such as bridles. Today, Navajo people wear intricate silver jewelry including pieces set with turquoise and other stones. They also sell this jewelry to outsiders. Zuni jewelers are known for complex mosaic inlays of colored stones set in complex patterns in their silverwork.

C4

Sand Painting

An art form for which Navajo healers have become widely known is sand painting, an elaborate kind of dry painting made for ritual purposes. At the ritual the healer sings about the legendary Holy People (Navajo creator gods and cultural heroes). Some of the songs or chants take years to memorize. The healer then makes images from dry materials, such as sand, crushed stone, and plant pollen, according to strict design formulas. The patient sits upon the painting itself to be restored to a state of harmony and health. Finally, the healer destroys the dry painting he has assembled with great effort, to allow the materials to return to the earth. Today, some Navajo artists weave rugs that resemble sand paintings or glue sand in place on boards to create the same effect. These works are sold in shops and art galleries and are not considered to have the powerful effect of those created by ritual healers.

D

Arts of the Northwest Coast

The Northwest Coast region includes parts of southeastern Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. Climate and environment play key roles in the cultural and artistic practices that are characteristic of the area. Although many people associate dark nights and freezing temperatures with the region, southeastern Alaska and British Columbia are warmed by the Japan Current and have very wet, temperate climates. Rain forests cover much of the land, and beaches run along the coast. Not surprisingly, native economies in the Northwest depend heavily on fishing, especially for salmon, and on hunting sea mammals such as whales and seals. These creatures are all frequent subjects of Northwest Coast art.

D1

Totem Poles

The abundance of lumber from Northwest forests fostered the development of woodworking techniques. Native peoples of the Northwest used these techniques in making totem poles, an original Northwest Coast art form, as well as in building canoes and houses from wooden planks. Totem poles consist of stacked, interconnected images that are carved and painted. These images record family histories and identify the ancestry and affiliations of chiefs and other high-ranking members of the community. Some totem poles were built as memorials to important chiefs and may have niches or supports for the chief’s remains.

D2

Potlatch Ceremonies

Another factor that influenced arts of the Northwest Coast was social standing. Traditionally, Northwest groups such as the Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl), Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), and Tlingit lived in hierarchical (ranked) societies that categorized people as chiefs, commoners, or slaves. People acquired high rank as well as privileges regarding territory and rituals by having a heroic ancestor or ancestors who had encountered a supernatural being or an extraordinary animal. Each generation maintained their privileges and those of their descendents by hosting ceremonies called potlatches. The word potlatch derives from the word “to give” in Chinook jargon, a simplified version of the Chinook language used in trade. In these ceremonial gatherings the family enhanced its prestige by giving payments and gifts to those who listened to and remembered the family history. Wealthy and important families might hold potlatches to confirm a person’s new title or to commemorate an event in the life of a community member, such as birth, puberty, marriage, or death.

Many Native American and Native Canadian communities in the Northwest Coast region continue to hold potlatches to remind young people of the histories of their families and social groups. Sometimes a potlatch dedicates a newly built house. The ceremonies vary from group to group, but they usually incorporate speechmaking or oratory about prestigious histories and are often accompanied by masked dances. The masks take different forms. Some resemble human faces whereas others look like the fantastic faces of supernatural creatures. Some masks split open during a dance, when the performer tugs on strings, to transform into a second creature. Potlatches traditionally took place in a communal house, and the setting required additional works of art such as carved houseposts, painted screens, and dishes for the accompanying feast. Participants wore regalia (artistic dress) related to their social position.

D3

Family Crests

Northwest Coast practices, including potlatches and the maintenance of social status, gave rise to the creation of images of humans, animals, and supernatural beings for use as emblems called crests. The crests are carved and painted on totem poles, the facades of houses, interior screens, boxes, feast dishes, and other objects. For designing crests Northwest artists originated a graphic art system now known as formline. In formline a continuous line, usually black, narrows and widens as it sweeps through an entire composition, outlining the most important shapes of the creatures represented. These abstract shapes that make up a crest creature are called ovoids, U-shapes, and trigons (T-shapes). Secondary design elements are usually painted red, although in some cases artists reverse the use of red and black. Less important forms are usually painted blue-green. The shape of the object on which the crests are painted tends to influence the composition more than the physical appearance of the creature itself does.

D4

Shaman Art

Shamans, people with the special ability to communicate with the spirit world, benefited their communities by healing the sick, affecting the weather, or guiding hunters to game. Shamans had their own, unusual works of art, including masks, charms, and other ornaments. These objects represented the supernatural creatures that helped shamans in their work. In many of these works, octopuses, fishing birds, and animals not known in the physical world appear to be interconnected. The skeletal structures are sometimes visible as well, an indication of the shaman’s special ability to see right through the animals.

E

Arts of the Arctic

Parts of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland lie at latitudes near the Arctic Circle where long hours of daylight during summer are followed by periods of almost total darkness in winter. Extreme cold and difficult terrain present a challenge to habitation. To protect themselves from the cold, human inhabitants of the Arctic built heat-trapping igloos (ice houses) and earth lodges and wore specialized clothing. They also developed hunting skills and exceptional artistry based on their belief that certain objects of beauty helped them in hunting and other important activities. As in other regions, the animals that the people depended upon for food—for example, seals, walruses, whales, fish, caribou, and polar bears—figured in many of their works of art.

E1

Clothing

Arctic peoples made clothing primarily from caribou hide, but they also used sealskin, walrus, and other furs. Winter garments were constructed in two layers: an inner one with fur facing the wearer’s skin, and an outer one with fur facing outward. Hooded parkas overlapped pants for additional protection from the cold. Parkas had decorative insets or borders of geometric designs constructed from a patchwork of different colored skins. Hoods were edged with fur ruffs. The more highly decorated outfits were worn on ceremonial occasions; after contact with outsiders, these items were offered for sale. Other garments acted as waterproof rain gear or protected the wearer from sea spray when in a kayak or umiak (large, open boat). These garments were finely tailored of seal gut (intestines) and decorated with fur, embroidery, or feathers.

E2

Masks

During the 19th century missionaries and others collected a wealth of artworks related to the traditional dances—including masked religious dances—of the Yup’ik and Inupiaq people of Alaska. In their efforts to convert the Arctic peoples to Christianity, the missionaries also suppressed traditional religious ceremonies. The activities of collectors and missionaries were so successful that masked dancing had completely disappeared from the region by the beginning of the 20th century. Cultural programs today are encouraging the revival of mask making and traditional dance performances.

The Yup’ik used masks for performances of songs, dances, and stories related to religious practice. Because wood was scarce in the Arctic region, they carved the masks from driftwood. The mask forms represented a range of animals and mythological beings, and made their spirits, called inua, visible. In many masks the inua appeared as small, secondary faces inserted within the overall composition. These spirits represented a category of creatures, such as the fox, rather than the soul of an individual animal.

Shamans or their representatives wore masks at festivals or in individual performances to demonstrate their ability to communicate with spirit beings as a service to their community. Some performances recalled the shaman’s first encounter with his personal helping spirits. A bird mask, for example, might open its mouth to show the spirit inside, or the inua might be carved on the stomach of an animal mask. Many Yup’ik masks are surrounded by bent wooden hoops that support small carvings of seal flippers, fish, or four-fingered humanlike hands. Other masks had painted frames that recalled the realms where shamans traveled in spirit: under the water, in the air, or on land. Certain masks may have been used at festivals that honored the spirits of game animals. The souls of seals and other creatures were believed to reside in their bladders. Hunters saved the bladders each season and after the festivals returned them to the water they had been taken from.

E3

Ivory Carvings

Archaeologists have recovered ancient carvings of walrus ivory in the Arctic. Carvers created figurines (tiny figures) of women and delicately engraved harpoon heads from about 1,500 to 2,200 years ago. Ipiutak artists made intricate burial masks that combine the features of humans and animals. They also carved continuous chains from a single walrus tusk and created many elegant images of loons. Punuk artists, who worked from about 800 to 1,500 years ago, carved wrist guards that protected their wrists from the slap of a bowstring after the string was released. The wrist guards, as well as carved snow goggles and other objects, were engraved with decorative lines, which typically ran along the edge of an object as if to form a frame. In the Canadian Arctic, Thule artists created small, portable carvings of humans and animals at about the same time as Punuk artists worked, and Dorset carvers later specialized in polar bears.

Life changed dramatically for Arctic people in the 20th century as nonnatives settled in their territory. Many lost their livelihood or died of diseases to which the outsiders had exposed them. In the American Arctic, some individuals earned their living as ivory carvers, drawing upon traditions of the past. They engraved ivory tusks, cribbage boards, and other objects and filled in the engraved lines with soot or other blackening agents. In the Canadian Arctic, government-sponsored programs from the mid-20th century on encouraged handicraft industries that could improve the quality of life for Canadian Inuit people. Soapstone carvings of game animals and of Inuit in traditional dress became the most commercially successful works. Artists continue to work in this material today, but they have become more experimental in their forms. Printmakers, trained in workshops, produce stone-cut prints and lithographs that describe the Inuit way of life.

III

CONTEMPORARY NATIVE AMERICAN ART

Contact with European Americans, for the most part, proved enormously damaging to the continuation of traditional Native American cultural activities, religious ceremonies, and artistic practices. Yet despite illness, economic disadvantage, lack of political power, and inadequate educational and employment opportunities, Native Americans have not forgotten the histories and traditional practices that make their cultures distinct.

A

Maintaining Artistic Traditions

A number of cultural events bring different groups of native people together and encourage the production of artworks. In the Eastern United States, for instance, the Mashantucket Pequot in Connecticut host a large annual powwow known as the Celebration of Green Corn, or Schemitzun. Like other contemporary powwows, it features dance competitions accompanied by drums, traditional-style foods, and the sale of jewelry and other artworks. Women and men make stunning new outfits for the powwow based upon the styles worn by their ancestors. Many of these are heavily beaded. People of Tlingit and other Northwest Coast ancestries gather every two years in Juneau, Alaska, to dance at an event called Celebration, express pride in their culture, and introduce children and grandchildren to hereditary crests and traditional practices.

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, most contemporary Native artists on the Northwest Coast continued to work in traditional styles. Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) sculptor Tony Hunt and Haida artist Robert Davidson carved and painted totem poles and masks. They based these works on traditional design rules but have developed their own styles. Their works are used at potlatches or sold at art galleries to collectors. Printmaking became popular among Northwest Coast artists in the late 1960s, and images based on crest creatures in the formline tradition appear in many prints.

A few Northwest Coast artists are more experimental. Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) printmaker Doug Cranmer, for instance, experimented with abstract shapes derived from the forms of canoes. Coast Salish artist Susan Point works with carved glass, stainless steel, and other unusual materials in three-dimensional works. The paintings of Cowichan-Salish artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun address a range of issues, many of them controversial and political. His works feature humanlike creatures with masks instead of heads, operating in landscapes made up of distorted elements derived from the formline tradition.

Artists from other regions adopted concepts and materials from nonnative art earlier in the 20th century. On the Plains, a watercolor painting tradition began in the 1920s with the formation of a group called the Kiowa Five. The artists in this group—Spencer Asah, James Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, and Monroe Tsatoke—attended art classes at the University of Oklahoma. They specialized in depictions of traditional native life in which figures in ceremonial dress appear on a solid-colored background. Their style is reminiscent of the Plains ledger art produced in the last quarter of the 19th century.

In the Southwest during the 1920s, some nonnatives encouraged art education as a means of preserving the beauty and history of native life. Pueblo painters Crescencio Martinez, Tonita Pena, and Awa Tsirah got their start at San Ildefonso Pueblo, not far from Santa Fe, New Mexico, from a schoolteacher who encouraged her students to draw. Martinez was later commissioned by an American archaeologist to paint watercolors of the ceremonial dancers at San Ildefonso. Many of these artists were interested in the depiction of traditional dress, which they painted in great detail.

In 1932 an influential nonnative teacher named Dorothy Dunn established The Studio for Native Painting in Santa Fe. She advised a generation of native artists to study traditional works such as pottery designs and murals painted on the walls of ceremonial structures called kivas. Although some Plains artists studied hide paintings and ledger-book drawings, the studio stressed models from the Southwest. Paintings from the studio tended to be extremely precise line drawings showing figures in native dress on flat backgrounds. Other works showed an idealized past in a decorative style sought by nonnative buyers. Artist Pop Chalee from Taos Pueblo worked in the “Studio style.” His painting Enchanted Forest, for example, depicted wide-eyed and elegantly elongated deer that cavort through a forest of decorative plants.

B

Contemporary Experimentation

The next important development in the education of native artists was the establishment of programs run by Native Americans. The Indian art program at Bacone College began in 1935 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Among the people who ran it are Creek-Pawnee Acee Blue Eagle and Creek-Potowatami Willie Crumbo. In 1962 the Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA) in Santa Fe was established to encourage greater artistic experimentation by native artists. IAIA produced one of the best-known contemporary native artists, Fritz Scholder, a Luiseño who commented on the plight of Native Americans in such works as Indian Wrapped in Flag, painted around the time of the United States bicentennial in 1976. As the United States celebrated its 200th anniversary, thoughtful artists raised such questions as what it means to be an American and what it means to paint like an American Indian. T. C. Cannon’s woodcut Osage with Van Gogh or Collector #5 (1980) reverses past roles by showing a Native American man as a collector of nonnative art. Today, many young Indian artists attend mainstream art schools.

Native American artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries work in a variety of materials and styles. A number of them claim a special relationship to nature when asked about their work. For instance, Walla Walla artist James Lavadour makes multi-paneled paintings that appear to be somewhat abstract but also refer to the landscape. Lavadour claims that his paintings reflect his experience of growing up on a reservation in northeastern Oregon and his thoughts about his relationship with his home, family, and native identity.

Luiseño-Digueño performance artist James Luna draws inspiration from both the native and nonnative worlds. His Artifact Piece (1990) referred to the relationship between museums and native people, and commented on the way that museums have treated native people more as objects of study than as human beings. In this work Luna reclined inside a museum exhibition case, naked except for a breechcloth. He surrounded himself with artifacts from his personal life: his divorce papers, college diplomas, photos, clothing, and so forth.

Cheyenne-Arapaho artist Hachevi Edgar Heap of Birds has used varied materials to make conceptual art pieces that are about ideas as well as art-making. A number of his works use language and its associations. In one series of two-panel works, for example, he wrote words in different colors on one panel and painted the other panel with similarly colored, abstract forms that resemble leaves. Heap of Birds also used billboards to make public political statements. In his “Native Hosts” series, he installed signs at six locations in North America that named the indigenous group that originally inhabited each location. A sign in New York, for example, said, “Today your host is Shinnecock,” reminding nonnative onlookers of the people they had displaced.

Chippewa artist Jane Ash Poitras from Alberta uses paint, photographic images, and other elements on her canvases. Her three-panel piece Shaman Never Die V: Indigena (1990), for instance, expressed her feelings about the contempt of outsiders for traditional native religion and the need to focus once again upon native spirituality for healing purposes.

Early in his career, Jimmie Durham, a Cherokee artist, worked on paintings and mixed media pieces that most people recognized as American Indian. His paintings represented animal skulls, and his dangerous-looking constructions incorporated bone, hide, feathers, beads, and other materials. In the early 2000s Durham continued to incorporate found objects, but they included such items as refrigerators and maps. He drew and wrote on paper as well and posted some of his drawings and texts on the World Wide Web .

Cherokee painter Kay Walkingstick works in acrylic, oil paint, and wax on canvases in two sections, placed side by side. One side has an expressively painted landscape and the other an abstract image. She builds up layers of paint on parts of the canvas, and cuts or scrapes away the paint in other areas.

Two artists from the Eastern region work with photographic images: Mohawk photographer and filmmaker Shelly Niro and Tuscarora installation artist Jolene Rickard. Niro hand-colored her photographs and decoratively framed them with simple patterns that come from traditional beadwork designs. Images such as Mohawks in Beehives (1991) and The Iroquois is a Matriarchal Society (1991) featured her sisters and mother having fun before the camera, but brought together to pose important questions about the nature of contemporary life for native women. Niro’s works in film include It Starts with a Whisper (1993) and Honey Moccasin (1997). Both combined joyous humor and serious soul-searching. Rickard incorporated photographic images into works of installation art that took their subjects from legendary history, political activism, and the relationship that Iroquoian people insist upon maintaining with their traditional land. In Corn Blue Room (1998), for example, ears of corn are suspended among photographic images that recall contemporary issues in native life.

Many other contemporary Native American artists are experimenting with challenging new media and concepts that are as familiar to them as they are to other contemporary artists in the United States and Canada. At the same time, these Native American artists strive to maintain their traditional relationships with family, land, and history.