Pop culture and design is an ongoing offender in many wrongful and stereotypical demonstrations of culture and ethics, particularly, in this case, Native American beliefs, values and philosophies. The way Native Americans are perceived, directly correlates with the way they are portrayed through mainstream media, art, literature and even in some of today’s most modern museums. If one were to ask a first grader to illustrate what they think and believe a Native American looks like, odds are they would draw a dark-skinned male, wearing a beaded headdress, sporting a mohawk with red streaks across their face. What that child is imitating is the Halloween costume his or her parents bought last season from the clearance section, the clichéd Thanksgiving depiction, lined with cornucopias, or even the racist history of Disney’s, Peter Pan and his Indian tribe. There is a very important history that classrooms and lecture halls neglectfully and casually forget to teach. It is one that needs to be clarified and that Native American artists themselves have taken the opportunity to display in their own works of art.
In order to truly understand this topic, it is important to recant a brief history of how all of this racial and cultural discrimination started. First and foremost, there is archaeological evidence of Natives being present in North America since the Ice Age. They were here first. There were 700 plus tribes all unique in their own way, religiously, culturally and spiritually. Regardless of their differences, they all believed the same myth, that all living things derived from the center of the earth, that “the earth resembled the womb of a mother in which she nurtured life. This shared belief in the birth of their existence is what connected them and their way of life with the landscape” (Martin, 2001; Erodes and Ortiz 1984). Their identity and way of life was threatened when the Europeans arrived seeking to colonize the Americas. At first, the relationship between the two was mutually beneficial, both learned new skills. Native people were improved their politics and practices of such, farming techniques and hunting abilities. However, this did not last for long, and the lives of the Natives changed dramatically. After many years of contact and trade, problems began to arise. Slowly the Native lands were deprecated, and they became dependent on the European’s goods which could only be purchased using credit. Because they could not always afford to pay off their debt, sometimes this resulted in giving up bits and pieces of their land.
As more Europeans arrived, they required more land, slowly forcing the Natives out. Europeans attempted to convert the Natives to Christianity, some were interested, while others were not. This was an attempt to completely eradicate Native American culture, and when the conversion did not work, it led to large massacres of the Natives to reduce resistance. There was also an intentional introduction of disease to the Native peoples, such as smallpox and the plague, as they knew they had a resistance to these diseases while the Natives did not. Children were taken away from their families, so their parents would not have an influence on them, and because of this, a majority of the Native American peoples gave up in order to stop this genocide in order to save what they had left. Natives were forced to lives as peasants and laborers. Today, the decedents of these Native American peoples are fighting back, sometimes by using the power of art. Their populations are on the rise. Native American leaders are achieving greater political success that ever before and fighting back for their rights and their land and their culture. Respect for Natives from non-natives is finally on the rise. Just this past November, the first Native American women ever were elected into Congress, but the fight is not over yet. It’s conquering these blasé racist comments and slurs, these cultural inaccuracies and wrongful depictions, which thankfully was a very important topic touched in class.
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The first artwork chosen to represent this ongoing struggle and wrongful depiction of the Native peoples, was made by artist, Nicholas Galanin, titled Operation Geronimo, made via silkscreen, in 2013. This particular piece was part of the exhibit ‘When the Land Forgets You, How Will You Carry On?’ at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation gallery in downtown Anchorage, Alaska, where Galanin is originally from. The size of the piece was unable to be found. Nicholas Galanin, part of the Tlingit and Aleut tribes, was born in Sitka, Alaska in 1979. Growing up, he practiced the native tradition of metalworking with his father, David. He later studied silversmithing and received his BFA from London Guildhall University in England. Following, he received his MFA in indigenous visual arts at Massey University in New Zealand. Nothing was going to get the way of his fierce artwork, he was unstoppable. Galanin is a very concept driven artist, who works in sculpture, photography and other mixed media. Some of his artwork appears in the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art located in Indianapolis, while other pieces are also located abroad. In today’s society, Native Americans are often documented as a past-tense culture, even though they are not and are still here in America today.
They are the only people living in America today in what are essentially “internment camps,” otherwise known as reservations. Native American, or “Indian” reservations are legally designated areas of land managed by Native American tribes under the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. Some of these reservations are fragmented due to selling off bits here and there. These reservations are full of poverty, unemployment and crime, like small third world countries but located in a first world country. There is a stereotype not only of the Native American people, but also of “Indian art,” the art that is always assumed to only be made of beads, clay or leather. This particular image by Galanin, shows a silkscreen picture of a Native American with a magazine cut out of a happy, white, stereotypical, American family. This piece speaks loud and clear about the displacement of his people as a whole. His artwork is a direct response to the Native American displacement and the way we view their culture today, as being non-existent. We forget that they are here, and that they were here before us. Galanin’s works are a reminder of what his people have become. His work is a reminder that you do not have to go to a museum to see Native American people in their headdresses, that they live here in America.
The second piece chosen was made by artist, Wendy Red Star, a Native American artist of the Apsaalooke or Crow tribe. Wendy was born in Billings, Montana in 1981. Wendy is best known for her striking self-portrait photographs that make fun of white American culture and their tendency to misconstrue Native American history. She uses props and materials such as Target brand Halloween costumes and inflatable animals to joke around and display the forever misconstrued concept that Native Americans are “one with nature.” One of her pieces in particular is titled, The Last Thanks, a photographic pigment print, made in 2006, measuring 40 by 50 inches, pokes fun at just that. In this particular piece, Red Star is surrounded by Native American skeletons at a Thanksgiving meal of Oatmeal Crème Pies, bologna, canned green beans, Kraft Singles, Wonder Bread and American Spirit cigarettes. She explains that the food displayed on the table was everything she ate when she went to her grandma’s house as a child.
Native Americans still exist in today’s society and eat the same food and live the same lives that we live, they aren’t always out living on the land, killing turkey and growing their own vegetables for Thanksgiving dinner. This is also, another misconception of Native Americans portrayed through art. Today, we picture the Native American people today growing crops and living off the land, hunting and foraging for their food. Unfortunately, due to living in such isolated geographical locations, a nutritional diet of fruits and vegetables and proteins is not the case for them. Insufficient access to good and healthy food is a common problem on reservations and causes long term health effects on the Native American peoples today. There is an increase in diabetes on reservations as well as heart disease, some of the highest numbers of people suffer here in comparison to the entire country.
The last piece chosen, is Jaune Quick-To-See Smith’s acrylic and mixed media painting titled, Spam. This piece is 61 ½ by 51 inches, located at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Jaune Quick-to-See Smieht, who we briefly studied in class, was born in St. Ignatius, Montana and raised on Flathead Reservation. She started working at the young age of eight and even had to experience living in foster homes as a child, going to public schools where she faced constant discrimination due to being Native American. Smith, with all of the odds against her, received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Education, followed by a Master of Art degree. She is an activist, a successful artist and consistently works to develop scholarships for children growing up on reservations. Spam is a series of clippings from newspapers, photographs and textbooks laid down and covered in paint. Her art depicts her concerns about the land and the government and the general misinterpretation of Native American cultures. She created Spam to raise awareness to the almost complete elimination of bison, a very important element to the lives of Native Americans. The purpose of her piece is to commemorate the near extinction of the bison and the Natives having to transition from eating off of the land to eating normal food, or the poor people’s food such as, Spam. This is the sad reality of the Natives Americans today.
All of these works share one thing in common, they are crucial to Native American people in their fight to make the modern-day American society aware that they are still here, always have been, before us and will probably never leave. They are fighting to be heard and to inform the world that they are just as much American as everyone else, if not more, and that it’s only right, as they were here first, to have a voice and access to all the resources that we have access to today. What I have learned from doing this in-depth research, is that it is wrong the way we portray Native Americans and it is also wrong the way we treat them. We treat them as if they are some extinct creatures, on display with the fossils in the Smithsonian. We should provide more resources and a better way of life for our Native people. They are part of our culture, past, present and future. Of course, I have many unanswered questions, such as, what can we do as students and Americans do to help? And what shouldn’t we do?
Bibliography
- Rushing, W. Jackson. ‘Critical Issues in Recent Native American Art.’ Art Journal 51, no. 3 (1992): 6-14. doi:10.2307/777342.
- Traugott, Joseph. ‘Native American Artists and the Postmodern Cultural Divide.’ Art Journal 51, no. 3 (1992): 36-43. doi:10.2307/777346.
- William S. Walker. ‘“We Don’t Live Like That Anymore”: Native Peoples at the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife, 1970––1976.’ American Indian Quarterly 35, no. 4 (2011): 479-514. doi:10.5250/amerindiquar.35.4.0479.
