Knowing Native Arts by
Knowing Native Arts brings Nancy Marie Mithlo’s Native insider perspective to understanding the significance of Indigenous arts in national and global milieus. These musings, written from the perspective of a senior academic and curator traversing a dynamic and at turns fraught era of Native self-determination, are a critical appraisal of a system that is often broken for Native peoples seeking equity in the arts.
Mithlo addresses crucial issues, such as the professionalization of Native arts scholarship, disparities in philanthropy and training, ethnic fraud, and the receptive scope of Native arts in new global and digital realms. This contribution to the field of fine arts broadens the scope of discussions and offers insights that are often excluded from contemporary appraisals.
The Early Years of Native American Art History by
Introduction : the formative years of Native American art history / Janet Catherine Berlo -- Franz Boas, John Swanton, and the new Haida sculpture at the American Museum of Natural History / Aldona Jonaitis -- New questions for "old things" : the Brooklyn Museum's Zuni collection / Diana Fane -- Louisa Keyser and the Cohns : mythmaking and basket making in the American West / Marvin Cohodas -- "The artist himself" : the Salish basketry monograph and the beginnings of a Boasian paradigm / Ira Jacknis -- Lila Morris O'Neale : ethnoaesthetics and the Yurok-Karok basket weavers of northwestern California / Margot Blum Schevill -- Marketing the affinity of the primitive and the modern : René d'Harnoncourt and "Indian art of the United States" / W. Jackson Rushing.
The Arts of the North American Indian by
Looks at traditional Indian baskets, pottery, carvings, textiles, jewelry, and pictographs, discusses the meaning, traditions, and individuality of Indian art
North American Indian Art by
Examines Indian art, including weapons, wood and stone carvings, pottery, masks, and jewelry
Art of the North American Indians by
Eugene V. Thaw and his wife, Clare, became enamoured of Native American art in the 1960s after indulging in a little collection of Native pieces featuring representations of American flags. They went on to build a beautiful and well-rounded collection of pieces from all areas of Native America, viewing them purely as art objects. They did not build their collection by traveling in the field and chatting with the artists but bought from traders, dealers, Sotheby's, and individuals, sometimes driving hard bargains. Eventually, they found a home for their purchases at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY. This catalog of the collection's nearly 800 pieces is divided geographically, and experts (Janet Catherine Berlo, coauthor of Oxford's Native North American Art, and 14 others) have written good summaries of the culture of each area. Each object is represented by a simple, very classic photo (260 in color) with detailed catalog information and excellent background on the color prints. While a bit top-heavy on Northwest Coast and Arctic art and devoid of information on how these objects were actually made, this is a very good introductory overview for general library use.
The Spirit of Native America by
Art and religion are two words that have no equivalents in languages spoken by Native Americans. Yet these intensely spiritual people created objects for everyday use that are unsurpassed for sheer beauty, originality, and craftsmanship. The Spirit of Native America explains this apparent contradiction in language as rich in symbolism as the art itself. Stunning full-color photography augments the text, yielding a new perspective on this often misunderstood facet of Native American culture.
American Indian Chronology by
The rich history of the Native American brims with agriculture, hunting, crafts, music, culinary arts, storytelling, religious culture, battle prowess, medicine, and mythology. It is also a history marked by bloodshed and battle, conquest, violence, religious conflict, disease, and starvation. American Indian Chronology guides the reader through the most significant events in Native North American history, from prehistory to the present. From early Spanish and Portuguese exploration to the surrender of Geronimo, from the decline of the fur trade to the Wounded Knee massacre, from smallpox epidemics and broken treaties to the invention of the Cherokee alphabet, from Tecumseh's rebellion to the Native American Church, from the first journey across the Bering land bridge to the occupation of Alcatraz Island, the Chronology presents a fascinating look into the sweeping changes of history, wars and conflicts, government policies, social progress, and cultural changes affecting peoples on all sides in the New World. American Indian Chronology guides the reader through the most significant events in Native North American history, from prehistory to the present. Entries are organized by dates and subdivided into over 35 categories, including: agriculture and farming; death and burial; exploration; legislation; arts, crafts, and musi; treaties; wars and conflicts; legends and storytelling; education; and civil rights and protests This concise format makes a clear and accessible student research tool, supplemented with primary source sidebars, useful illustrations, a glossary, bibliography—including print and electronic sources—and index. With updates through 2005, this chronology is the most current in its field, bringing the modern struggles of American Indians into the 21st century.
The Gift of the Face by
Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian is the most ambitious photographic and ethnographic record of Native American cultures ever produced. Published between 1907 and 1930 as a series of twenty volumes and portfolios, the work contains more than two thousand photographs intended to document the traditional culture of every Native American tribe west of the Mississippi. Many critics have claimed that Curtis's images present Native peoples as a "vanishing race," hiding both their engagement with modernity and the history of colonial violence. But in this major reappraisal of Curtis's work, Shamoon Zamir argues instead that Curtis's photography engages meaningfully with the crisis of culture and selfhood brought on by the dramatic transformations of Native societies. This crisis is captured profoundly, and with remarkable empathy, in Curtis's images of the human face. Zamir also contends that we can fully understand this achievement only if we think of Curtis's Native subjects as coauthors of his project. This radical reassessment is presented as a series of close readings that explore the relationship of aesthetics and ethics in photography. Zamir's richly illustrated study resituates Curtis's work in Native American studies and in the histories of photography and visual anthropology.
Engraving the Savage by
In this innovative analysis, Michael Gaudio explains how popular engravings of Native American Indians defined the nature of Western civilization by producing an image of its “savage other.” Going beyond the notion of the “savage” as an intellectual and ideological construct, Gaudio examines how the tools, materials, and techniques of copperplate engraving shaped Western responses to indigenous peoples.
Indians Playing Indian by
Contemporary indigenous peoples in North America confront a unique predicament. While they are reclaiming their historic status as sovereign nations, mainstream popular culture continues to depict them as cultural minorities similar to other ethnic Americans. These depictions of indigenous peoples as "Native Americans" complete the broader narrative of America as a refuge to the world's immigrants and a home to contemporary multicultural democracies, such as the United States and Canada. But they fundamentally misrepresent indigenous peoples, whose American history has been not of immigration but of colonization. Monika Siebert's Indians Playing Indian first identifies this phenomenon as multicultural misrecognition, explains its sources in North American colonial history and in the political mandates of multiculturalism, and describes its consequences for contemporary indigenous cultural production. It then explores the responses of indigenous artists who take advantage of the ongoing popular interest in Native American culture and art while offering narratives of the political histories of their nations in order to resist multicultural incorporation. Each chapter of Indians Playing Indian showcases a different medium of contemporary indigenous art--museum exhibition, cinema, digital fine art, sculpture, multimedia installation, and literary fiction--and explores specific rhetorical strategies artists deploy to forestall multicultural misrecognition and recover political meanings of indigeneity. The sites and artists discussed include the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC; filmmakers at Inuit Isuma Productions; digital artists/photographers Dugan Aguilar, Pamela Shields, and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie; sculptor Jimmie Durham; and novelist LeAnne Howe.
Northwest Coast Indian Art : An Analysis of Form, 50th Anniversary Edition by
The 50th anniversary edition of this classic work on the art of Northwest Coast Indians now offers color illustrations for a new generation of readers along with reflections from contemporary Northwest Coast artists about the impact of this book. The masterworks of Northwest Coast Native artists are admired today as among the great achievements of the world s artists. The painted and carved wooden screens, chests and boxes, rattles, crest hats, and other artworks display the complex and sophisticated northern Northwest Coast style of art that is the visual language used to illustrate inherited crests and tell family stories. In the 1950s Bill Holm, a graduate student of Dr. Erna Gunther, former Director of the Burke Museum, began a systematic study of northern Northwest Coast art. In 1965, after studying hundreds of bentwood boxes and chests, he published Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form. This book is a foundational reference on northern Northwest Coast Native art. Through his careful studies, Bill Holm described this visual language using new terminology that has become part of the established vocabulary that allows us to talk about works like these and understand changes in style both through time and between individual artists styles. Holm examines how these pieces, although varied in origin, material, size, and purpose, are related to a surprising degree in the organization and form of their two-dimensional surface decoration. The author presents an incisive analysis of the use of color, line, and texture; the organization of space; and such typical forms as ovoids, eyelids, U forms, and hands and feet. The evidence upon which he bases his conclusions constitutes a repository of valuable information for all succeeding researchers in the field
Visualities by
In recent years, works by American Indian artists and filmmakers such as Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Edgar Heap of Birds, Sherman Alexie, Shelley Niro, and Chris Eyre have illustrated the importance of visual culture as a means to mediate identity in contemporary Native America. This insightful collection of essays explores how identity is created and communicated through Native film-, video-, and art-making; what role these practices play in contemporary cultural revitalization; and how indigenous creators revisit media pasts and resignify dominant discourses through their work. Taking an interdisciplinary approach,Visualities: Perspectives on Contemporary American Indian Film and Artdraws on American Indian Studies, American Studies, Film Studies, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies, and Postcolonial Studies. Among the artists examined are Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, Eric Gansworth, Melanie Printup Hope, Jolene Rickard, and George Longfish. Films analyzed include Imprint, It Starts with a Whisper, Mohawk Girls, Skins, The Business of Fancydancing, and a selection of Native Latin films.
Making Pictures in Stone by
The Indians of northeastern North America are known to us primarily through reports and descriptions written by European explorers, clergy, and settlers, and through archaeological evidence. An additional invaluable source of information is the interpretation of rock art images and their relationship to native peoples for recording practical matters or information, as expressions of their legends and spiritual traditions, or as simple doodling or graffiti. The images in this book connect us directly to the Indian peoples of the Northeast, mainly Algonkian tribes inhabiting eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland and the lower Potomac River Valley, New York, New Jersey, the six New England States, and Atlantic Canada. Lenik provides a full range of rock art appearances in the study area, including some dendroglyphs, pictographs, and a selection of portable rock objects. By providing a full analysis and synthesis of the data, including the types and distribution of the glyphs, and interpretations of their meaning to the native peoples, Lenik reveals a wealth of new information on the culture and lifeways of the Indians of the Northeast.
Indian Country by
"In Indian Country: Essays on Contemporary Native Culture, Gail Guthrie Valaskakis offers a unique perspective on Native political struggle and cultural conflict in both Canada and the United States. She reflects on treaty rights and traditionalism, media warriors, Indian princesses, pow wow, museums, art, and nationhood, untangling the past - personal, political, and cultural - to make sense of current struggles over power and identity that define the Native experience today