The Right to Define Themselves and Their Art

By Millie Hanson

Visual Arts Editor

Oregon painter James Lavadour thinks of himself only as a contemporary artist in the mainstream art world. He’s been exhibiting since the early 1980s and sees no need to label himself a Native American artist although he lives on the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

Memorable art comes out of the need to communicate individual circumstance, time, and place. Especially when the current setting is meant to reinforce that place in the social strata, holds on to outdated notions of capability and dictates what is allowed to be said. Collaborating with other artists, listening to the history of what came before, and being aware of current affairs are just a few things that artists do to make their work relevant, regardless of their ancestral affiliation.

The past and ongoing history of Native Americans can possibly predicate what kinds of things are represented, or it might not. Sure, there are some popular themes, but keep in mind where you’re seeing the art and the context.

The horse in Native American culture is vastly important for impacting every part of their lives for the last 500 years, and many are still passionate about communing with them. But lots of people love horses; say, every other girl between the ages of seven to twelve and most ranchers.

It’s important to remember history and two exhibits of Native American, rather, American, relevance that follow.

Washington DC’s National Museum of the American Indian is currently doing an exhibit called “A Song for the Horse Nation” until January of next year. The tremendous influence of the horse is shown on American Indian tribes starting with the return of horses to the Western Hemisphere by Christopher Columbus and continuing up to the present day.

Ledger art is also being shown at these days at museums around the country and the Santa Fe Indian Market in an effort to tell things from the Plains Indian’s point of view during the conflicts of the mid-1800s and early 1900s.

Their encounters with U.S. Army were recorded with pictures on any used paper that could be gottten (ledgers, accounting books, etc.) by trade from white settlers, officers, missionaries, and government agents. Native Americans told their own version of events by drawing in the margins and white spaces where they could.

This art form has been revived in recent years, expanding to sheet music, antique maps, and other “official documents” that, when combined with the new art done in the old style, makes for interesting juxtopositions of subject matter that are often quite pointed. To see a recently commissioned piece of ledger art watch at the end of this Youtube video (1:00:49) where Winona LaDuke explains the history of the art and her most recent use of it. http://tiny.cc/LaDuke

Some other artists are breaking with traditional ways and media of making art. Tammy Garcia and Preston Singletary made beautiful stained glass bowls that capture translucent dragonflies and integrate them with geometric, Native American patterns. They are recalling history but not being bound by it, or to other’s ideas of how they should depict it.

Kobena Mercer tells us that in regards to art in Britain “The only minority artists that are visible are artists who either play up white stereotypes or allude to a Western artistic tradition. Minority art is still marginalized by the preferential treatment given to white artists.” Taste still follows money, it seems.

Jim Denomie, an Ojibwe artist, said that his painting teachers “could not critique [his paintings] properly or support them.”

“I was crafting visual stories and the storytelling element was very important to me. To most of my teachers, that was not important. They were only concerned with the visual language.”

Sean Chandler is an A’ Ani nin (Gros-Ventre as the French dubbed them) tribal member whose work I first encountered on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation on the Highline in northeastern Montana a decade ago. He has a similar sentiment.

“It seems that the thought processes of those labelers are concerned a lot too much with their occupation of the label. I already know what I am – I think.”

“But in case someone was wondering, I’ll let them guess what I am.” Chandler’s father also taught him philosophies about life and art, a history without which he could not be “ An artist, or a Gros-Ventre, or A’ Ani nin or a human being (not necessarily in that order).”

Samples of James Lavadour’s art and bio are at http://qr.net/lavadour

For the Ledger story, visit http://qr.net/Ledger

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