From a 1,000-year-old Pueblo black-on-white painted pot to a 2017 digital photograph, the range of pieces in the new exhibition “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists” reveals the true breadth and depth of these women’s talents—something that has been long overlooked. Women have created the majority of Native art, but their individual creativity and influence has been ignored by the art world. This exhibition could help change that.
Power: Jamie Okuma (Luiseño/Shoshone–Bannock) layers traditional Native decor like porcupine quills and sterling silver cones onto a pair of high-heel shoes designed by French designer Christian Louboutin. The result makes a strong statement: cultural continuity need not be lost in contemporary flare. Photo by Minneapolis Institute of Art
Jamie Okuma (Luiseño/Shoshone–Bannock), Adaptation II, 2012; shoes designed by Christian Louboutin; leather, glass beads, porcupine quills, sterling silver cones, brass sequins, chicken feathers, cloth, deer rawhide and buckskin, 8.6" x 3.25" x 9.2"; Minneapolis Institute of Art, bequest of Virginia Doneghy, by exchange 2012.68.1A,B. ©Jamie Okuma
Legacy: Three generations of bead and quill artists—Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty, Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty and Jessa Rae Growing Thunder, a Dakota/Nakoda grandmother, daughter and granddaughter—collaborated to create “Give Away Horses,” traditional Dakota/Nakoda regalia composed of a dress, blanket, breast plate, leggings and moccasins.
Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty (Dakota/ Nakoda), Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty (Dakota/Nakoda) and Jessa Rae Growing Thunder (Dakota/Nakoda), “Give Away Horses” (dress and accessories), 2006; deer hide, glass beads, canvas, thread, leather, moose hide, German silver, porcupine quills, feathers, elk hide, brass bells, ribbon, silk ribbons and brass thimbles; National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian, 26/5818-5821. ©J Growing Thunder Photo by NMAI Staff
Power: While echoing the sexualized odalisques of Orientalizing Western art in the 19th century, “Fringe” by Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabe) evokes traditional dress while the scars cut into the woman’s bare back force the viewer to confront the lingering impacts of colonial acts of violence against Native women as both a historical fact and a present-day reality.
Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabe), “Fringe,” 2007, transparency in light box (one of three), 32.75" x 96.24" x 6.5"; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Gift of funds from Donna and Cargill MacMillan Jr., 2010.56. ©Rebecca Belmore Photo courtesy of Rebecca Belmore
Power: In “Women’s Voices at the Council,” Joan Hill (Muskogee Creek and Cherokee) depicts multiple generations of women wearing both precontact and postcontact adornment. “While male chiefs led Muscogee politics, women also held political power. As the mothers of warriors, women could decide if a town went to war or made peace," writes Hill in the “Hearts of Our People” exhibition catalog.
Joan Hill (Muskogee Creek and Cherokee), “Women’s Voices at the Council,” 1990; acrylic on canvas, 38.25" x 28.25"; gift of the artist on behalf of the Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women, 1990, Oklahoma State Art Collection, courtesy of the Oklahoma Arts Council. ©Joan Hill Photo courtesy of Joan Hill
Relationships: “The Wisdom of the Universe” by Christi Belcourt (Michif) shows our interconnected existence. “Everything is wholly dependent upon the plant world: the insects, the animals and us. Human beings are the weakest in Creation because we need everything else to survive,” Belcourt writes in the exhibition catalog.
Christi Belcourt (Michif), “The Wisdom of the Universe,” 2014; acrylic on canvas, 67.5" x 111"; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, purchased with funds donated by Greg Latremoille, 2014/6. Photo by Christi Belcourt
Relationships: For the Tlingit on the northern Northwest Coast, women formed the cultural framework upon which the public aspects of the community, often expressed by men, were based. Collaborating on “Hummingbird Copper Dress,” fashion designer Dorothy Grant (Haida) and Robert Davidson (Haida/Tlingit) show the necessity of balance and reciprocity between genders, whether in art or in other aspects of community life.
Dorothy Grant (Haida) with Robert Davidson (Haida/ Tlingit), “Hummingbird Copper Dress,” 1989; wool, 42" x 58"; Denver Art Museum Collection, Native Arts acquisition fund, 2010.490A-C. ©Dorothy Grant Photo by Denver Art Museum
Power: Northwest Coast bentwood chests (k’awats’i in Kwak’wala) held the material and intangible wealth—the names, songs, dances and vital pieces of history—of Kwakwaka’wakw chiefs. “Bax’wana’tsi: The Container for Souls” by Marianne Nicolson (Kwakwaka’wakw/ Dzawada’enuxw First Nations) simultaneously captures the photos of Nicolson’s mother and aunt at St. Michael’s Residential School inside the glass and cedar box and the viewer, who interrupts the Northwest formline designs projected by light shining through the box and onto the walls. Nicolson writes in the exhibition catalog, “In order for my generation to move forward, we must look back. We must return to the beginning and learn our origins.”
Marianne Nicolson (Kwakwaka’wakw/Dzawada’enuxw First Nations), “Bax’wana’tsi: The Container for Souls,” 2006; glass, cedar, light fixtures, 21.5" x 20" x 40.5"; collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, purchased with funds donated by the Audain Foundation, VAG, 2007.4.1 a-c. Photo by Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery
“Hearts of Our People” is on view at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., until May 17. The Minneapolis Institute of Art organized and first exhibited this extensive collection before it traveled to the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, and then to the Renwick. It will next appear at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, beginning in June.
The exhibition features more than 80 pieces, many by today’s leading Native women artists. The varied works reflect tradition yet respond to a changing world. While many were created with traditional materials such as clay, beads and wood, others use contemporary media, including photography and video. The range expresses the artists’ complex and diverse cultures, say the exhibition’s co-curators Jill Ahlberg Yohe and Teri Greeves (Kiowa). Even the descriptions of the works in the exhibition, written in both in English and each artist’s Native language, reflect their diversity.
Frequently in the past, art collectors and museum staff assigned traditional works to cultures—a “Hopi pot” or a “Cheyenne shirt”— yet rarely acknowledged that their creators were women. “Ignoring women’s names was part of the mindset that considered crafts as shared, repetitive and tradition-bound practices rather than as individualized arts,” write art historians Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips in the exhibition’s catalog.
To highlight the artistic achievements of Native women, Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and American Art Museum are cohosting a symposium, Thoughts of Our People from “Hearts of Our People” on March 28 at NMAI in Washington, D.C. Basket maker Kelly Church (Ottawa/Pottawatomi), ceramicist and textile artist Anita Fields (Osage), textile weaver Carla Hemlock (Kanienkeháka) and multimedia artist Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora) will each talk about their own work. Then they will discuss the role of women as artists in Native communities in a conversation led by exhibition curators Greeves and Ahlberg Yohe.
“We’ll discuss the approach we took to create the exhibition and talk about Native art from the perspectives of the makers,” says Ahlberg Yohe.
The speakers are among the 21 Native women artists and scholars who formed the advisory board that defined the exhibition’s objectives and determined which artists and objects to include. “Usually exhibitions reflect the vision of a single curator who chooses the works,” says Stephanie Stebich, the Margaret and Terry Stent Director at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “But this one is unusual in that it reflects the collective vision of the artists themselves.”
The curators have organized the varied works under three headings: Legacy, Relationships and Power. “Legacy” reflects working within an extended tradition: Ways of gathering material and fashioning it into art are both culturally transmitted through time and adapted to each generation’s evolving vision. The resilience and continuity of Native peoples in the face of centuries of violence, displacement and discrimination at the hands of Europeans is yet another legacy.
“Relationships” exist not only with family and community but with all elements of the world. For example, a basket maker may harvest reeds or grasses for raw materials but also take responsibility to ensure that those plants continue to flourish for future generations.
“Power” is expressed on several planes. Physical power is needed to gather and prepare traditional materials such as clay or branches or animal hides to form into works of art. Yet both physical and spiritual power underlie a women’s ability to form life in the womb. In addition, their political power is reflected in their leadership roles within and outside their communities.
These themes are reflected in Native women’s art and beyond. “I want the art world to understand what we know and how it has influenced the rest of the art world,” says Greeves. “It may be unnoticed, but it’s there.”
Modern masters like Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol and Donald Judd were in part inspired by Indigenous art of the Americas, Africa and Oceania, often reflecting the ingenuity and innovation of master Native artists—many of them women, as the catalog notes.
With works ranging across generations of Native women artists, “Hearts of Our People” offers a powerful expression of both continuity and innovation—potentially motivating more such exhibitions to come. Stebich says, “The show represents women from the past and the present and will inspire artists of the future.”