Amerindian Arts Native American News & Information: American Indian Mural Painting, Note on Zuni Substance, Crackdown on Fake Art

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Headlines, exhibits, powwows listed below: (access past headline archives for 2004-2006 here)

American Indian Mural Painting in Oklahoma and the Southwest

National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, through May 3rd, 2009. This exhibit features mural studies and full-size murals by Archie Blackowl (Cheyenne), Acee Blue Eagle (Creek/Pawnee), Woody Crumbo (Potawatomi), Tonita Pena (San Ildefonso Pueblo) and others.

The exhibit draws on the museum’s extensive Silberman Collection of American Indian art.

Arthur Silberman also authored "100 years of Native American Painting" with the Oklahoma Museum of Art in 1978. The book provides many examples from museum collections as well as brief biographies of well known Native American artists.

For more information

"White Fawn's Devotion"

Library of Congress has added "White Fawn's Devotion," a 1910 film by James Young Deer, the first known Native American movie director, to its National archives.

"White Fawn's Devotion" (1910), is an 11-minute silent drama concerning a misunderstanding between a white settler and his Native American wife has been considered a "film of significance". Director James Young Deer, a member of the Winnebago Indian tribe, was believed to have written and directed more than 100 films between 1910 and 1913. (Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY and Southern Indiana)

To Honor and Comfort, Native American Quilting Traditions

Through Jan. 30, Comanche National Museum, 701 N.W. Ferris, Lawton. Showcasing the works of Native American quilters. Free admission. (940) 353-0404.

Comanche National Museum

See related article on Romelia Kassavanoid, Comanche quilt maker

Navajo flutist Vince Redhouse to Give Free Concert

FORT COLLINS — As part of an all-day American Indian festival hosted by the First United Methodist Church, Navajo flutist and double Grammy nominee Vince Redhouse will present a free concert in Fort Collins on Sunday, Jan 11. He will perform traditional Native American flute at 2:30 p.m. at the church, 1005 Stover St. He will also present worship music at the 8, 9:15 and 10:45 a.m. services. An offering will be collected to support American Indian youth leadership development scholarships.
See full article here

Harold Whitewolf Memorial Dance

Lawton, OK — Saturday, January 10th, 2009, Comanche Nation Complex, 2 pm.
See full notice here

celebration of local American Indian artists

Trinidad, CO — Through January and February, 2009. Hosted by the Westhaven Center for the Arts. An opening reception will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday, January 4th, at the Westhaven Center for the Arts, 501 S. Westhaven Drive.
See full schedule of events here

Eiteljorg Lands 800 Piece Southwest Art Collection

(INDIANAPOLIS) December 12, 2008, The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art is proud to announce the gift of the Helen Cox Kersting Collection of Southwestern Cultural Arts, a multi-million-dollar collection of nearly 800 objects, including the best of Southwestern pottery, jewelry and other objects. The collection will be the basis of a forthcoming book and an exhibition in 2010.

Inside Indiana Business

Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, A Native Treasure

(INDIANAPOLIS) Luring over 100,000 visitors a year, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center is one of the largest Native American educational institutions, telling the story of 18,000 years of natural and Indian history, recounting the story of Native Americans in the area including a half-acre centerpiece of a Pequot village.

Pequot Museum and Research Center

Native American Indian Policy: Removal or Genocide?

"If this happened today, it would likely be considered genocide." "To a detached, objective outsider, America’s Indian Policy and Removal Acts were nothing short of racial genocide. Broken treaty after broken treaty. One lie after another."

See full article by Jack Wellman - OVI Magazine

Art: Review: Vanishing Frontier, Cincinnati Art Museum

An article examining the construction of the visual mythology of the American Indian

Exploring American Indian imagery

Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK

"Between the Lines: Cheyenne and Arapaho Ledger Art from Fort Reno" is an exhibit drawn from Gilcrease's own archives, featuring examples of artwork by Indians who served as scouts for the soldiers of Fort Reno. The drawings these "warrior artists" created give an intriguing and intimate look at Cheyenne and Arapaho life in the 19th century. Closes March 22.

Gilcrease Museum

Philbrook Museum, Tulsa, OK

"The Eugene B. Adkins Collection" is a glimpse at the museum's recently acquired collection of American Indian art and crafts, assembled by Tulsan Eugene Adkins. The bulk of the collection is being reserved for Philbrook's new satellite location, which is to be constructed in the Brady Village area north of downtown. Ongoing.

The Eugene B. Adkins Collection

Philbrook Museum, Tulsa, OK

"Dancing Across the Page". Drawn from Philbrook’s acclaimed collection of Native American paintings, this exhibition explores traditional ceremonies and social activities in which dance plays an important role. Ends March 15th, 2009

Dancing Across the Page

American Indian Ballerinas

Rosella Hightower, Yvonne Chouteau, Maria Tallchief, Marjorie Tallchief and Moscelyne Larkin, known as the "American Indian ballerinas," five Oklahoma natives of American Indian descent who rose to prominence in the ballet world from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Recalling the 'American Indian Ballerinas'

In 1991, artist Mike Larsen was commissioned to paint a permanent mural for the Oklahoma State Capitol that was a tribute to the American Indian Ballerinas. It is entitled "Flight of Spirit"

The lives of the Native American Ballerinas is chronicled in "American Indian Ballerinas", a book by Lili Cockerille Livingston

Art by Woody Crumbo

Limited edition, silk-screen prints by the late artist Woodrow "Woody" Crumbo, a member of the Potawatomi Native American tribe of Oklahoma, are on display in the "On the Plains: The Art of Potawatomi Artist Woody Crumbo" exhibit. Crumbo was a man of all trades - he was not only an artist of Native American subjects, he was a dancer, a flute player and a mineral prospector.

Through Sunday, Jan. 4, at the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, 3001 Central St., Evanston. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays and noon to 4 p.m. Sundays. Closed Mondays. Suggested donation $2.50-$5; family $10. (847)-475-1030,

Mitchell Museum of the American Indian

Native American Art- Fritz Scholder

More than 130 of Scholder's paintings, sculptures and prints have been assembled for Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian at the the National Museum of the American Indian. In 1980, Scholder proclaimed he would paint no more Indians and took it as a compliment when one dealer said that in the traditional sense "Scholder has single-handedly destroyed Indian painting". Scholder remains a controversial figure and has changed the way Native Americans are portrayed.

Fritz Scholder

Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor

Bar Harbor, ME. “Twisted Path,” a collection of Native American art now showing at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor. Finely crafted walrus tusk sculptures to crisp digital prints. Marie Watt’s Blanket Stories, Cheryl Savageau, and George Longfish.

Twisted Path

McCain pushes for crackdown on fake Native American art

Tuesday, Jan. 6th, 2009, McCain introduced a bill for expanding federal powers to investigate knock-off Native American crafts and art. That bill, co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., would increase federal penalties for fraudulent sales of the counterfeit items.

(Through Feb 3, 2009) BEYOND TRADITION Beyond Tradition: The Pueblo Pottery of Tammy Garcia is on display at the National Museum of Women in the Arts through February. One of the most recognizable figures in Southwestern ceramics, Garcia is known for infusing a two-thousand year old tradition with modernity. Examples of her most important pots are featured, with intricate designs, and bold shapes delicately carved into the clay.

"Zuni Ontology and the Concept of Substance"

The term "substance" in Western metaphysics is commonly used to indicate the permanence of a substratum, whether extended or non-extended, which underlies and constitutes reality. Its extension is manifest in the appearances of the physical world, and its non-extension may refer to its coming to be and passing out of existence, i.e. the concept of change. Other terms which may be intimated in a discussion of substance may include but not be limited to "matter", "time", "space", "being", "cause and effect", etc. This synopsis of substance may seem to be overly generalized (actually, it is), but is intended here simply to illustrate a dichotomy in Western thought which is not intrinsically appropriate to the study of the Native Americans, except perhaps by contrast, and more particularly to the study of Native American languages, which have no means of expressing the distinction between, for lack of better terms, "spiritual" and "non-spiritual" matter

In the Zuni language, the noun /a means "stone" or "rock" (the "/" represents a glottal stop). As a transitive verb, /a refers to "being depressions in rocks", but as Newman noted, /a belongs to a class of verbs "which are statics referring to the existence of an entity or quality" and "English translation fails to demonstrate convincingly that a verb of this type is transitive". Thus, "being depressions in rocks" could be translated as "a depression is", or "there is a depression", or "it has a depression". This may predispose one to interpret an apparent confusion of the substantive and predicative (Cushing noted this in Zuni Fetishes). As an intransitive verb the meaning of /a is a demonstrative "be prone", or "be laying", indicating location, and belongs to the same class of verbs denoting static entities where the direct object of the verb becomes indefinitized.

The term /a has also been translated as "stone" when it appears as a prefix in the transitive verb -po/ya, a term which means "to cover". In Zuni Ceremonialism Bunzel translates /a -po/yanne as "stone cover" (meaning "sky"), a term which Newman translates as simply "sky". The suffix -nne means singularity.

This same term was translated by Cushing as a verb meaning "all covering" in reference to Apoyan Tatcu, which means "Father Sky". Cushing's intention was "all-covering Father". This later use is in accord with the presence of /a in the form of the inflectional prefix /a.w-, a verbal pronominal prefix for a plural absolutive, where .w- is dropped when appearing before a consonant. This use of inflection is also correct in referring to nominal particles indicating kinship terms, names of animals, demonstratives, numbers, and indefinites, and the presense of /a in this use is that of a word, not a syllable. /A -po/yanne would not be a particle, whereas /a -po/yan tatcu would be.

However, this use of inflection in a particle is in contrast to the translation of such particles as A pila shiwani, which means "bow priests". The correct inflection of pi/la is pi/la we/, but in the compound of the particle the inflection is denoted by the prefix /a which is a word meaning plurality of an indefinite number. As Miner notes, this is a rare use and the inflection is generally affixed to the head term, as in tehli-ya-ka /a-shiwani (night priests), or tehli-ya-ka /a-tatcu (night father, notice the convergence of plurality and singularity, i.e. there is but one night father and he exhausts a class).

One might interpret Bunzel's translation as being influenced by her considerable contact with Zuni folklore, and Cushing's translation due to his membership with the /A -pi/la shiwani and considerable knowledge of Zuni mythology. Bunzel had criticized Cushing's translations as "metaphysical glossing", but the accuracy of that claim in regard to /A pi/la shiwani remains unseen. It should be noted that Bunzel's translation of /a te-ona in Zuni Ceremonialism as "beings" is tantamount to translating it as "all (/a) those whom are (ona) terrestrial (te)", and was intended to exhaust the class, just as Cushing's translation of /A po/yan Tatcu was intended to exhaust the class (there can be only one father sky). It should also be noted that Cushing may have confounded (or compounded) his usage of the plural absolutive with the separate, derivational use of /a which pluralizes particles referring to persons (/a hoi).

In conclusion, the common usage and multi-referentiality of the word /a lends ambiquity to the interpretation of many words and may possibly represent preconceptions which semantically transcend any dichotomy of spiritual and non-spiritual matter.

Recent Books of Interest

''Canyon Gardens: The Ancient Pueblo Landscapes of the American Southwest (University of New Mexico Press: 2006). Editors V.B. Price and Baker H. Morrow have assembled 15 essays on the millennium-old Puebloan landscape.

"Being Lakota", Book by Larissa Petrillo

"American Indian Nations: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow", Book by George Horse Capture

Spokane artist George Flett, well kown for his depictions of ledger art, announcing forthcoming book "The Ledger Art of George Flett"

Po'pay, Leader of the First American Revolution, Clear Light Publishing, 2006, new book by Herman Agoyo (Ohkay Owingeh)

Zuni fetish updates from Amerindian Arts

Coming this month-Maw-sit-sit carvings by Gibbs Othole