Return to Article Details Humor in Contemporary Native American Art

Humor has long been a part and a parcel of Native American cultures; but this facet of the tribal character has only recently received scholarly recognition. Even so, this long-awaited interest in Native humor was limited to literature (for example the works of Sherman Alexie, Gerald Vizenor, Louise Erdrich) and stage performances (as in the case of Charlie Hill), but not to visual arts mostly because these media are the dominant modes for expressing humorous content. This paper sets out to explore how contemporary Native American visual artists have contributed to bringing humor out from under the shadow of literature and performance. Their role is twofold: first, to show that visual arts are excellent platforms for humorous expression, and second, to manipulate humor as a tool (a) for subverting Western historiography; (b) for breaking down stereotypes and re-inventing the American Indian identity; as well as © for addressing gender issues.

This research will, accordingly, unfold in two steps. First, this essay demonstrates the significance of both humor and art in Native American cultural practices, because both elements intersect on various levels. This part of the study is carried out against the backdrop of ethnic humor studies. Here, I contend that the Native American character and their traumatic experience reverberate in their humorous artistic expressions. The ensuing part underscores the major thematic and functional focal points of humor in art through an analysis of six works by contemporary Native American artists, namely, Wendy Red Star, Jim Denomie, Jason Garcia, Harry Fonseca and Tom Farris. I examine humor at work and how the comic strategies of irony, parody, caricature and the motif of the Trickster figure are implemented to address the aforementioned issues.

I. Indigenous Humor and Art in North America: Focusing on Pertinence

According to Margaret Atwood, White settlers’ conceptualization of Indigenous people relied on a derogatory discourse. Among the adjectives used to describe Indigenous people, “[l]acking among them was funny. . . Natives were treated . . . with utmost gravity, as if they were too awe-inspiring as blood-curdling savages or too sacrosanct in their status of holy victim to allow any comic reactions either to them or by them” (Atwood qtd. in Taylor 190). Eva Gruber concurs with Atwood as she notes that the “almost” oxymoronic expression “Native humor” (7) is a persistent yet misleading notion in mainstream culture precisely because the relevance of humor to the experience of American Indian peoples in North America is incontestable for various reasons. Chief among them is the fact that humor is an integral part of American Indian culture. Many Native American tribes place humor at the center of their traditions and even elevate it to a sacred level. Sacred clowns, Pueblo Koshare, Heyoka, Cherokee Booger dancing and potlatch ceremonies are all examples of comedic performances during ceremonials. While they are outwardly entertaining, however, they are never just that. Furthemore, these customs serve a cultural function by ridiculing behavior that does not comply with community standards.

Generally, Native American humor is usually glossed over by Jewish or African American humor, both extolled as the epitome of ethnic humor in the USA. “Indi’n humor,” as Kenneth Lincoln brackets in his eponymous work published in 1993, is the playful release of sorrow (55) that constitutes “the tribal cement of the pan-Indian movement” (22). The laughter that results from Native humor further reinforces relationships and enriches affective engagements. In this respect, the artists I selected for this essay are affiliated with different Nations or tribes. Nevertheless, their humor targets Native American issues that do not necessarily concern or relate to one specific tribe. “Indi’n humor” tends to be pan-Indigenous, drawing upon a variety of tribal traditions rather than focusing solely on a single heritage. It is a way of being connected to each other in the mainstream world. “It is a tie that binds tribe to tribe. . ..  Humor is a mainstay of Indian Life,” declared Salish artist and curator Jaune Quick-to-See Smith in Women of Sweetgrass, Cedar and Sage (qtd. in Lincoln 142). In this vein, even if Jim Denomie is Ojibwe but he bewails the bitter events of the Dakota War of 1862 (also the Sioux Uprising) in his painting Fort Snelling: Bar and Grill (see fig. 1), despite the uneasy coexistence of both tribes throughout history in the geographical space that later became Minnesota. By the same token, regardless of his Cherokee heritage, Tom Farris uses layers of Native American traditions in his Tools of the Trade (see fig. 2). The ironic slogan that ornaments his artwork “Subjugate 7 generations of Indigenous people” draws on the Seventh Generation Principle that is inherent to a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) philosophy, consisting in thinking seven generations ahead: what one thinks or does in the present bears consequences on future generations. Entrusting the fate of “seven generations of Indigenous people” to the luck of the draw by a gambling White settler is where the irony operates in this artwork, regardless of the artist’s tribal affiliation.

Humor is also instrumentalized by Native American artists as a repository for voicing past traumatic experiences. According to Paula Gunn Allen, humor “makes tolerable what is otherwise unthinkable” (218), with this postulation deeply rooted in post-colonial trauma theory. Unlike the Freudian trauma theory that relegates the locus of trauma to the fact of remembering only, post-colonial trauma theory emphasizes the significance of verbalizing the “unspeakable” to help to overcome the ravaging effects of intergenerational trauma. In Native American practices, healing is communal. Consequently, resorting to humor is conducive to maintaining a sense of community among the same tribe or across tribes as it “[g]ives a solid feeling of unity and purpose” (Deloria 147). Since humor rests on the notion of shared assessment, this helps generate strong bonds. Indeed, the ability of Native Americans to laugh at themselves and others is illustrative of how humor “begins with two people, configurates around families, composes itself in extended kin and clan, and ends up defining a culture” (Lincoln 63). A potent instrument as humor can help process centuries of land, identity, language, and cultural dispossession. This strategy of coping with the past is echoed by Sherman Alexie in his short story “The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor,” where he writes that humor “was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds” (138). Similarly, humor does not only help with past trauma but also serves as a repository for railing against the hardships related to extant living conditions on reservations and in cities. 

Humor can also be used as a “trojan horse” given its mediational nature. Native American artists deploy fun to inveigle the audience into laughter. When the humor wears off, the only thing that remains in the audience’s mind is the intended message. In a statement for the Portland Art Museum, Wendy Red Star (Crow/Apsa’alooke) expounds by saing that “I’m dealing with really heavy topics pertaining to . . . Native culture. . ..  You can be very heavy-handed about it, but people don’t want to be around that. You can find an in by using humor. . .. [B]y getting viewers to crack a smile or laugh I can get them in, that way they can investigate my work further” (Red Star 2006 ). This quotation illustrates the “Trojan horse” metaphor; humor facilitates the creation of communication channels between the commentator and their audience since it is mediational in essence.

At the turn of the 21st century, Native American artists have become more disposed to open towards the world. This has been reflected in their art on different levels: aesthetic choices, the targeted audience, and the motivations of their artistic endeavors. In this context, it is argued that “[c]ontemporary art created by Native Americans . . . reaches into the past for some of its influences, is very much the product of its own times, and is also visionary, reaching towards the future” (Farris 255-56). From this perspective, humor in Native American visual art is as much an aesthetic act as a political one, so much so that Indigenous artists “never get to occupy the title of artist; they are instead always a Native artist, an Indigenous artist” (Thompson 3) (original emphasis). What is implied here is that every stroke of the paintbrush and every artistic choice is meant as a political statement. Native American artists’ use of humor defies the general stereotype of the stoic Indian, which proves a powerful stance against their misrepresentation by the dominant culture. Besides, the very fact that Indigenous artists are influenced by their cultural practices through humor allows them to establish art as a valid mode of expression among other forms of ethnic and racial humor in the U.S.A. Various forms of humor provoke laughter, most of which are conspicuous in either literary works or stage performances but its can be imaginatively reworked in art to fulfill the same goal. This is the second assumption in this paper: by seeing that a formal analysis should go hand in hand with a thematic one, I delineate the various forms that humor can be shaped into and how they are implemented in visual arts to tackle vital issues, be they Native or universal ones.

Certainly, as stated before, humor can be conveyed in a variety of forms. However, not all comic strategies pertinent to literary productions can be transferred to art. In this essay, I primarily focus on parody, caricature, irony, and the major trope of the Trickster character. Caricature functions as a magnifying tool of an objectionable feature and putting it in the limelight, whereas parody works by exaggeratingly imitating the object of mockery. Other salient forms of humor are puns or wordplay that are conspicuous in the titles of pieces of art. In an attempt to pinpoint the recurrent themes dealt with in Native American art, an analysis of Indigenous artwork is conducive to demonstrating the power of these comic strategies to address these issues.

II. Indigenous Humor in the Subvertion of Western Historiography

Western historiography achieved supremacy by relegating any other accounts that operate outside the dominant discourse to the realm of myth. In Michel Certeau’s view, “[t]his is writing that conquers. It will use the New World as if it were a blank, ‘savage’ page on which Western desires will be written” (qtd. in Brookes 228). By extrapolation, in trying to reclaim their past and use it as a springboard for re-righting/rewriting history, Native American artists subvert Western historiography by means of humorous gestures. 

Re-righting the Indigenous history enables tribes to regain agency over their past, thus subverting the self-proclaimed White supremacy over history. Native American artists employ comic strategies to regain their past and relocate the agency from the colonizers to Indigenous peoples. Humoroa presentations of historical accounts of events are frequent approachs adopted by Native American artists to undermine the supremacy of Western historiography. For exampl, Otoe-Missouria/Cherokee artist Tom Farris’ criticism is humorously cast in Tools of the Trade (see fig. 2). The irony of the slogans, “Subjugate 7 generations of Indigenous people and WIN BIG” and “settle the country by any means necessary,” is Farris’ attempt to “challeng[e] one of the most basic tenets of the theory of the manifest destiny – inherent moral superiority,” to use Kim Blaeser’s words (qtd. in Velie 43). Indeed, the dispossession of Indigenous lands by white settlers was motivated by the self-proclaimed superiority of the newcomers and the supposed fact of being chosen by Providence to civilize the savage peoples. This ironic rhetoric used by Farris belied the traditional Manifest Destiny, which is often challenged and mocked by Native American scholars and artists. The ironic grain of the slogans in Farris’ artwork reflects this sentiment as well, with the irony behind these slogans unmasking atrocities settlers committed in the name of their civilizing mission. The superiority of the Manifest Destiny granted them the right to achieve goals at any cost—even if that entailed the wiping out of cultures deemed inferior. The slot machine here denotes the predominant cliché of Indigenous peoples and their “casinos” on the reservations. Further, fake money represents derisory money in the ‘trade” for land along other symbols used for the reels (the Bible, the blanket, the trailer, whiskey, and treaties) that denote the unequal barter between the two parties: the non-indigenous have land, and Indigenous peoples receive decimation in exchange.

While Farris’ blatant ironic tone touches upon the early settler history, Jim Denomie (Ojibwe) revisits an equally significant episode of the history of this encounter. Denomie’s rendition of the Dakota Uprising in 1862 thwarts the official records in one of his seminal paintings entitled Attack on Fort Snelling: Grill and Bar (see fig. 1). This artwork exemplifies a certain visual storytelling, whereby Denomie re-tells history with a comic twist and relies heavily on iconography. To a keen eye, Nanabozho – the Ojibwe trickster figure that usually comes in the form of a rabbit in indigenous oral stories – is camouflaged in the painting (in the bottom right corner) signifying the playful spirit of this artwork. Apart from the subtle presence of the Trickster figure, humor in this painting is conveyed through parody and caricature through the incongruous placing of symbols and images related to different periods in the history of the tribes involved in this event. Denomie builds his visual narrative by cross-referencing other paintings from the dominant culture, which constitutes parody by its mere recontextualization. Fort Snelling is evidently a reference to the Dakota Uprising and Wars of 1862; but, by attaching the words “Bar and Grill” to the Fort, the artist sarcastically invokes this site which historically was a concentration and internment camp of displaced Dakota women and children following the Dakota Wars of 1862.  

Fort Snelling, strategically positioned in the center of the painting, draws on two iconic American symbols: the 1942 painting by Edward Hopper Nighthawks (see fig. 3), and the depiction of a saloon, a typical symbol of the West. By caricaturing Fort Snelling, Denomie seeks to revisit the history of the Sioux Uprising. Moreover, the position of the Fort in the middle of the painting reinforces the idea of ‘attack,” with the position of the perpetrators, who are obviously Native Americans emulating the movement of characters in ledger art. Indeed, the characters seem to be moving from the right to the left, which is suggestive of the artist’s yet another tribute to his cultural heritage.

This painting abounds in historical references, some of which are synchronous (for example, the Dakota Uprising, Bishop Whipple, Andrew Myrick with his mouthful of grass, Little Crow), whereas others are incongruous (this is, for example a Chinese worker on the right, a Minneapolis Police car on the left, a power plant in the top right). The depiction of this traumatic historical event that resulted in the displacement of the tribe and the hanging of 38 Dakota men is made cartoonish in its painting. In particular Andrew Myrick with his mouthful of grass – a reference to his scornful comment “eat grass” that allegedly sparked the war – is chased by an Indigenous person on a lawnmower, who clearly trying to cut the grass off Myrick’s mouth. In the top left corner of the painting, a horse-riding Native American appears mooning at a White farmer with a dollar engraved on the rising sun in the background – which is a parody of the seal of the Minnesota state. This cartoonish strategy infuses the painting with the trickster dynamic as it “collaps[es] the temporal and spatial distinctions between events that are thematically related but separate in time,” as Alan Velie puts this in a different context (33). The anachronous placing of these elements in the paintingaims to foreshadow events that would follow the Sioux Uprising inlcuding the figures forming a file at the top right of the painting represent the Cherokee Trail of Tears in the 1830s and 1840s after their relocation from Georgia to the West of the Mississippi River. The Police car, however, is a more recent occurrence, denoting the perpetual struggle of Native Americans against various forms of dominant culture and institutions. Mixing Native mythology, mainstream American icons, and actual historical persons and events fulfills the effect of blurring the boundaries between history and visual storytelling and, by extension, between the settlers’ ‘truth’ and the ‘truths’ of ‘others.’

Akin to the work of Denomie, The Last Thanks (see fig.4) by multimedia artist Wendy Red Star (Crow/Apsa’alooke) is another playful, subversive parody of the historical portraits of Indigenous warriors who posed for Edward Curtis (see fig.5). The title of the piece is suggestive of the derisive outlook of the artist because it is a visual parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper as an American origin story of Thanksgiving, a critique of religion and colonialism. By connecting these two Euro-American cultural markers, Red Star suggests that both discourses helped set the stage for settler colonialism that would ultimately decimate Indigenous tribes.  In addition, by creating a biblical parallel reinforces the act of betrayal. Red Star places herself as the protagonist, with arms stretching out, reinterpreting Da Vinci’s Jesus in The Last Supper as the Indian which was betrayed by its fellow humans. In the original painting, the apostle placed third to the right of Jesus represents Judas. In Red Star’s piece, Judas is replaced by an inflatable turkey, symbolizing Puritan Thanksgiving, accentuating the act of betrayal. The most comical aspect of this photograph resorts to artificial accessories, such as the inflated turkey in the left corner of the photograph with an assemblage of processed food, boxes of American Spirit and a few dollar bills. Will Roscoe claims that “whoever controls the artifacts of history controls history” (qtd. in Velie 40) and, for this reason, substituting packaged and processed food for the traditionally home-made dishes to garnish the Thanksgiving table is an ironic gesture meant to turn the table on the official record of history and to point to how one of the most celebrated national holidays in the U.S.A. was established through the oppression of Indigenous people.

Another subversive instance is when Red Star is depicted wearing a traditional elk-tooth dress, typical of the Crow Nation, surrounded by skeletons with fake feather headbands. This humorous choice is two-pronged: first, it is a criticism of the stereotypical representation of Native Americans in the collective imaginary of the dominant culture, immortalized by the work of Curtis; second, it foreshadows the extinction of the tribes involved in the first contact with European discoverers. Indeed, skeletons in this work of art are used to adumbrate the idea of the ‘vanishing race.’ Only, Red Star in the center nudges her parodic gesture a step further by surrounding herself with skeletons that imply not the ‘vanishing race’ but an already extinct one following their contact with Europeans. Some of the skeletons even mimic the body language of the Three Wise Monkeys, which is suggestive of how Indian Chiefs were unwittingly (due to language barriers, or trickery by first European settlers) complicit in materializing the settlers’ imperial intentions. The frames of plains in the background of the mixed-media visual work of art are filled with mocking echoes downplaying the misconception of the inherent harmony between Indigenous peoples and nature and drawing on the paintings of the so-called magisterial gaze that were popularized in the 19th century and presented the vast territory as an uninhabited, virgin space, ready for immigrants to settle in.

III. Destabilizing Stereotypes and Re-inventing the American Indian Identity (Anew)

The visual constructs implemented in contemporary Indigenous art encourage the audiences to participate in various imaginative activities because imagination is the site for new realities and, by extension, for reconstructed identities. By indulging the audience in laughter, a space for new imaginings openes, shifting the audience’s attention to other possibilities that do not exist in their familiar expectations. In the subsequent portion of this essay, I set about the task of delineating the most recurrent themes dealt with in Native American art with a humorous streak from this perspective.

Gerald Vizenor’s formulation of survivance comes as a positive counter to the various negative stereotypes of Indigenous people. He claims that “[t]he postindian ousts the inventions with humor, new stories, and the simulations of survivance” (5). What is implied by Vizenor through his act of survivance is not mere coping with hardships but survivance resides in affirming one’s “active presence” by resisting the hegemonic effects of othering by the dominant culture (Donahue 4). Choosing the medium of humor by Native American artists is, arguably, a cogent act of such survivance. Harry Fonseca (Nisenan Maidu/ Portuguese/ Hawaiian), for example, playfully concretizes this act in his portrayals of the Coyote, another Trickster character of the Native American folklore. with Coyote portrayed in a modern setting (See fig. 6). Donning the 80s fashion (blue jeans, zipper leather jacket, platform shoes for one, and Chuck Taylor tennis shoes for the other), the artist presents the audience with an alternative that is a departure from the expected image of the Native. Through this unfamiliar portrayal of the Coyote, Fonseca shifts the image of the Native from “the obscure other . . . the dead voice of racial photographs and the vanishing pose” (qtd. in Donahue 4) to a contemporary character, adapting itself to the current global developments.

The same could be said about Denomie’s work, who employs vibrant colors and shapes in his paintings to deconstruct the colonial representation of Indigenous peoples. Denomie’s use of dream-like imagery and vivid colors conveys life, active presence, and futurity, which stands in stark contrast to the sepia-toned images of I’ndians’ perpetrated in the Western imaginary. By defamiliarizing their audience with what is expected of ‘Nativeness,’ these artists (among many others) create a new space for reconsidering one’s frame of reference. In the same context, Native American artists implement humor or comic devices in their work to challenge the “simulacrum of the Indian” (Gruber 20), while the Indian Princess and the Noble Savage are illustrative of the falsely-established images of Indigenous peoples in the Western imaginary. The false image of the Native is also affecting Indigenous peoples as they are starting to act according to the prefabricated images (in large numbers quite in Hollywood). This is precisely what Red Star sought to achieve through her Four Seasons series. Her juxtaposition of the high and the low is a comic device that is an attempt to defamiliarize the audience with the “Holly-wooden” image of the ‘Indian’ (Gruber 142), especially the one that involves the Indian Princess conception.

Equally important is in Red Star’s caricatural depiction, at the center of the photograph, the pumping up her of Native accouterment as a parody of Curtis, who used to make Indigenous war chiefs pose for him in their traditional outfits, “[grafting] faux narratives over authentic props” (Deloria 93). In an attempt to destabilize the colonial imagery and point to its inauthenticity, Red Star in Indian Summer (see fig.7) uses an original Indigenous person, herself, with faux props like inflatable animals, a plastic bison skull, and a poster in the background. The juxtaposition of the mass-produced artifacts – an inflatable elk, a poster representing nature, fake fallen tree leaves, and a plastic skull of a bison – coupled with the authentic element of herself – point to the artificiality of American representations of her people. With the gaze turned away from the camera, Red Star playfully expresses the refusal to be represented through the camera eye (as most Native did with the first photographers in Noth America); and by looking at herself in the mirror, she reflects her image, thus performing self-representation and re-affirming her presence.

The function of humor in Native American artistic expressions exceeds deconstructing the stereotypes associated with American Indians. Because after all, deconstructing a fabricated image requires either the reconstruction of a new one, or the production of an alternative to be meaningful (Gruber 65). This calls to mind Taylor’s concept of “alterNatives,” which is also the title of his play (2000). The alternative images of the ‘AlterNatives” renounce “the vocabularies of manifest manners” (Vizenor 1997, 167) that the dominant culture adopted to frame American Indians as less-than-human because of their alleged impassibility. After deflating the myth of the stoic Indian, Native American artists deploy irony and parody to present the audience with a more authentic version of Nativeness, confirming that “get[ting] people laughing can create spaces in which previous assumptions lose their validity” (qtd. in Gruber 35).

Addressing Gender Stereotypes with Humor

Gender is a recurrent motif in contemporary Native American affairs, and by extension, art. The simulated image by the Western discourse establishes Indigenous women as over-sexualized bodies and subservient to Native and white males, emphasizing their ornamentical role. Red Star’s auto-portrait entitled Indian Summer (see fig. 7) grapples with the stereotypical image of Native Americans, namely, the representation of women, as it was fossilized in the American imagination partly because of visual media. The scene is a striking mockery of the dioramas on display in natural history museums where Native American figures appear frozen in the distant past. It serves as a repository for looking back at the trope of the ‘vanishing Indian’ using what bell hooks calls “the oppositional gaze” (116). According to hooks, manipulating the gaze that has long been the tool of “structures of domination” that confers agency with opposing the colonial gaze through self-representation becoming paradigmatic of the “oppositional gaze” (116). Red Star’s portrait is filled with a mocking echo of one of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpieces as she reproduces the same pose as Mona Lisa, with Red Star’s assertive, mysterious gaze is meant to upset the impact of the colonial gaze and her Native heritage epitomized in vibrant outfit filling her with the confidence to represent herself and sets her in contrast to the European model of femininity that the portrait by da Vinci depicts.

Jim Denomie also deals with the issue of gender in his paintings, though his criticism is mainly directed at historiography, as has been shown earlier. In the bevy of historical references that cram Fort Snelling: Grill and Bar, however, Denomie paints a naked woman, riding a horse among the other iconic Native warriors. This particular element can be interpreted as a criticism of the romanticized image of the ‘Indian Maiden’ who ‘lost’ herself to white settler lovers, hence the nakedness. This depiction conjures up the examples of Pocahontas and Sacagewea who entered the American mainstream imagery because of their involvement with white settlers. And portraying this woman naked is a criticism of the objectification of women by American pop culture and especially by the movie industry.

Tewa/ Santa Clara Pueblo artist Jason Garcia’s take on the issue of gender is noteworthy likewise. Aside from his intentional choice of medium – clay tiles that are characteristic of his culture – the theme of his art is equally engaging. In his Feast Day Vibes (see fig. 8), Garcia paints a woman dressed in her traditional outfit. The dynamism created in the scene through the mineral pigments, the situation, as well as the visual language of comic art provides an alternative to the static poses of women prevalent in the collective imaginary. Garcia’s woman is unapologetic about her Tewa culture, which is represented through her outfit, the colorful cloud against the clear blue sky, and the symbol of corn that replaces the distinctive apple on the mobile phone — a few amusing constituents of this fun celebration of the Tewa culture. The protagonist in this piece of art busts the stereotype of the ‘Indian Maiden’ on various levels: not only is she firmly grounded in her tribal identity, but she also refuses to be subjected to representations by others; moreover, she opts for self-representation by taking a selfie. Her duck face is at the same time a mockery of the latest trends on social media and denotative of her being in the present.

While the contemporary pieces of art I selected for this topic may not provide tangible solutions to Native-related struggles, their power to humorously frame these issues and elicit emotional engagement matters. Both humor and artistic practices steeped in Indigenous traditions — discernible in the use of symbols and visual imagery — afford imaginative spaces for Native and white audiences to reassess the colonial discourse. In this essay, I highlighted the importance of humor in artworks by American Indian artists to demonstrate that humor in Native American art is of paramount importance in self-representation with Native American artists’ use of humor conveying their grappling with Native-related vital issues and commitment to the common struggle. My analysis explored how through the artful use of humor, Native American artists have become significant contributors to their ethnic as well as the national laughscape. To reach this conclusion, I proceeded by contextualizing the role of art and humor in Native American cultural practices and I investigated how both modes of expression — art and humor — are interlaced in contemporary Native-created artworks to address the major concerns such as subverting both Western historiography and the stereotypes attached to Indigenous people. The selected pieces of art reveal that humor can be aesthetically and artfully channeled through a brilliant employment of comic strategies like caricature, parody, and irony in order to achieve changes in the perception of their culture, as well as in terms of self-conceptualization through creating new images discrepant with the ‘vanishing stoic Indian.’

 

Works Cited

 

Appendix

Figure 1
Denomie, Jim.2007. Attack on Fort Snelling Bar and Grill. Available:https://weisman.emuseum.com/objects/22801/attack-on-fort-snelling-bar-and-grill;jsessionid=B1EC80ECF21E332AF76CBF39D7C4D5C9 Access: January 30, 2023.    

 

Figure 2
Farris, Tom. 2019. Tools of the Trade. Available: https://swaia.org/tom-farris/ Access: August 25, 2022.

 

Figure 3
Hopper, Edward. 1942. Nighthawks. Available: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/nighthawks-edward-hopper-american-1882-1967/6AEKkO_F-9wicw?hl=en Access: August 25, 2022.

 

Figure 4
Red Star, Wendy. 2006. The Last Thanks.  Available: https://www.wendyredstar.com/the-last-thanks Access: August 25, 2022.

 

Figure 5
Curtis, Edward S. The North American Indian. Available : www.swanngalleries.com/news/photographs-and-photobooks/2018/10/edward-curtis/ Access: November 16, 2021.

 

Figure 6
Fonseca, Harry. 1993. Wide Eyed and Bushy Tailed #1. Available: https://cvonhassett.medium.com/coyote-leaves-the-res-the-art-of-harry-fonseca-51156b2d9d38 Access: August 25, 2022.

 

Figure 7
Red Star, Wendy. 2006. Indian Summer. Available: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/wendy-red-star-fall-from-the-series-four-seasons Access: August 25, 2022.

 

Figure 8
Garcia, Jason.  Feast Day Vibes.  Available: www.canddgiftsnm.com/products/santa-clara-pueblo-indian-pottery-feast-day-vibes-tile-jason-garcia Access: 17 Nov, 2021.


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