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ANCESTRAL, HISTORICAL & LIVING ARTS by INDIGENOUS PEOPLES of the AMERICAS

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

NO. 48, FALL 2025

OLMEC COLOSSAL HEADS WILD WEST IN VENICE MURALS OF CAUCA, COLOMBIA BANDOLIER BAGS TODAY DISPLAY UNTIL JAN. 8, 2026

KEANU JONES BRENDA MALLORY MARTY TWO BULLS JR. NICO WILLIAMS

On view through March 28, 2026 ALSO ON VIEW

Visualizing K’é presents ﬁfteen drawings and prints by master printmaker and professor Marwin Begaye (Navajo Nation),

Memo to the Mother: Bob Haozous’s Messages to Mother Earth

which visualize the Diné philosophy and

Through January 10, 2026

practice of maintaining kinship (k’é).

Gestural in Form: Virgil Ortiz x Family Through March 14, 2026 505.982.4636 wheelwright.org

PO Box 5153, Santa Fe, NM 87502 704 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe, NM 87505

OCTOBER 5, 2025– FEBRUARY 16, 2026 Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe and European descent, b. 1979), Truthiness, 2007. Oil, acrylic, ink, color pencil, and graphite on paper; 22 x 30 in. Collection Bockley Gallery. © Andrea Carlson, courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis Andrea Carlson: A Constant Sky is organized by the Denver Art Museum. It is presented with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Christensen Fund, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS Colorado.

Water’s Edge: The Art of Truman Lowe Opening October 24 | National Mall

Plan your visit to see the first major retrospective of acclaimed artist Truman Lowe. Featuring nearly 50 sculptures and drawings, the exhibition reflects on Lowe’s Hoocąk (Ho-Chunk) cultural traditions, memory, and relationships with water and place. Leading support provided by Bank of America. Major support provided by the Henry Luce Foundation. Generous support provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art and Ameriprise Financial. Additional support provided by John and Meryl Lavine and Leslie A. Wheelock.

AmericanIndian.si.edu Truman Lowe (Hoocąk, 1944–2019), Feather Canoe (detail), ca. 1993. National Museum of the American Indian 27/607

emoceB .erutnevd The Choctaw Cultural Center is more than a museum, it’s an adventure. Become evisremmi ruo h an intrepid explorer on a scavenger hunt that takes you through our immersive ruoour hguorht stfar exhibits; learn how to prepare traditional Choctaw foods and crafts through srelletyrots ruo hands-on workshops; or just take a quiet moment to listen to our storytellers in the Luksi Activity Center. Whether you’re young or young at heart, the eht ,traeh ta g possibilities for fun and learning are endless! !yl

A unique one-day getaway for the whole family! • Interactive Exhibits • Hands-On Workshops • Living Village • Luksi Activity Center • Hvshi Gift Store • Champuli Cafe

edScan oc nacode cS .erto om n r a e l ot learn more.

1919 Hina Hanta Way | Calera, OK 74730

.tisiv ruoy n Visit ChoctawCulturalCenter.com to plan your visit.

SPECIALIZING IN THE SALE OF ESTATE AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Killer Whale Totem— Limited Edition Bronze by Preston Singletary, Tlingit Nation

Contact director@quintanagalleries.com

Q UINTANA G ALLERIES

for consignment and purchase inquiries

quintanagalleries.com 503-810-7525

issue no. 48, fall 2025

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES

Recent Developments By Staci Golar and America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

Seven Directions By Scott Manning Stevens, PhD (Akwesasne Mohawk)

Venues | Deep Memories: Art and Architecture at the Chumash Museum and Cultural Center By Reilly Clark

Art+Lit | Angela Sterritt: Gitxsan Author, Journalist, and Educator By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD Calendar

Rising to the Surface with Storywork: Edgar Heap of Birds, Erin Shaw, Arthur Amiotte, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Performers in Venice By Emily C. Burns, PhD

Olmec Colossal Heads: The Surviving Faces of Mesoamerica’s First Civilization By Florence Wanjiru

100

The Art of Resistance: How Nasa Murals Reclaim Colombia’s Wounded Lands By Clara Jaeger

109

Carrying Culture: Bandolier Bags Today By Sheila Regan

REVIEWS Exhibition Reviews

Book Review

ARTIST PROFILES 62

MEMORIALS Mary Aitson (Cherokee 104 Nation, 1931–2025) By Jay Hannah (Cherokee Nation) Patricia Deadman (Grand River 105 Tuscarora/Mohawk, 1961–2024) By Alex Jacobs-Blum (Cayuga), Heather George (Mohawk), and Jake Jamieson (Mohawk)

Ramona Lossie (Eastern 106 Band Cherokee, 1964–2025) By Monā Lossie and Precise’ Lossie (both Eastern Band Cherokee) Ted Moore (Otoe-Missouria/ Osage/Pawnee/Sac & Fox/ Potawatomi, 1953–2025) By Matt Jarvis (Osage)

107

Thompson Williams (Caddo, 1956–2025) By Robin Williams (Wichita/ Caddo/Comanche)

108 74

Keanu Jones: Navajo Filmmaker, Photographer, and Digital Artist By RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo)

Brenda Mallory: Cherokee Nation Sculptor and Installation Artist By Mandy Yeahpau (Comanche/ Cherokee/Tarahumara descent)

Marty Two Bulls Jr.: Oglala Lakota Printmaker, Sculptor, and Mixed-Media Artist By Dan Ninham, PhD (Oneida Nation)

Nico Williams: Aamjiwnaang Ojibway Beadwork, and Installation Artist By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

cover Olmec artists once known, La Venta Monument 1, 800–400 BCE, basalt, 94 × 82 × 763/4 in., installed at Parque Museo La Venta, Villahermosa, Tabasco. Photo: John Mitchell, Alamy.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025 | 7

issue no. 48, fall 2025 ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Digital) Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Literary Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD (Euro-Canadian) Contributing Editor: Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke) Advertising Representatives: Barbara Harjo Circulation Manager: Amy D. Bergseth, PhD Copy Editors: Rosa Cays (Chicana) and Christy Hanson (Diné) Proofreaders: Travis D. Day, Staci Golar, Christy Hanson (Diné), and Angela C. Villa (Chicana) Layout and Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) and Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa) Social Media: Staci Golar, America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), and Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho)

Regional Representatives Great Basin: Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern Paiute/Modoc) Great Plains: Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho) Northeast: Kelly Church (Gun Lake Pottawatomi/Ottawa/Ojibwe) Northwest: Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq) Southeast: Michole Eldred (Catawba/Eastern Cherokee descent) Southwest: Holly Coonsis (Zuni) and RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo)

Advisory Council

Miranda Belarde-Lewis, PhD (Zuni/Tlingit) Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation) Emily Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Linda Lomahaftewa, Hon. DHum (Hopi/Choctaw) Tatiana Lomahaftewa-Singer (Hopi/Choctaw) Leah Mata Fragua (yak tityu tityu yak tiłhini Chumash) Anya Montiel, PhD (Mestiza/Tohono O'odham descent) Denise Neil, PhD (Delaware Tribe/Cherokee Nation) Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa) Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole Nation) India Rael Young, PhD

Advertising Representative

Barbara Harjo, barbara@firstamerican.art Internationally distributed by Disticor Magazine Distribution Services. First American Art Magazine, LLC, is not responsible for the content of any article or for the statements of any advertiser. First American Art Magazine welcomes queries about editorial submissions.

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Copyright © 2025 by First American Art Magazine, LLC. Cover and contents are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or part by any method without written permission, except specific images listed with Creative Commons licenses. Any errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. First American Art Magazine® is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

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EDITOR’S GREETING

HEN OUR WORLD starts to seem small and flat (as mine often does after too much doomscrolling), visual, performing, literary, and media arts can all help expand our perceptions and, most importantly, allow us glimpses into the internal thoughts and feelings of our fellow human beings. Artists and makers physically manifest their memories, beliefs, fantasies, and queries. Perspective taking is much like empathy, but instead of feeling what the other person is also feeling, one imagines seeing from the other person’s perspective. This cognitive process can be imagining what the other person literally sees in visual perspective taking or imagining the other’s perception in conceptual perspective taking. First, we become aware that we have our own perspective that colors all information we take in. Then, we understand that everyone else has their own equally unique perspectives. As American-French neuroscientist Jean Decety writes, perspective taking “involves setting aside one’s own current perspective, attributing a mental state of the other person, and then inferring the likely content of the mental state of that person.”1 This voluntary, often conscious, process can increase our mental flexibility. In our fall issue of First American Art Magazine, Emily C. Burns explores in “Rising to the Surface with Storywork” how three artists today consciously respond to both how early 20th-century Italians saw the Lakota performers in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and what the performers themselves saw in Venice.

Florence Wanjiru delves into the 17 known Olmec colossal heads from Southern Mexico. These elegant portraits pose so many questions; it’s difficult but fascinating to envision what their Olmec makers may have seen and thought in one of the earliest Mesoamerican societies from 1200 to 400 BCE. As these monumental portraits stare out through centuries, who were the models seen by the sculptors? Were they ballplayers, political rulers, or both? What were their primary concerns? In “The Art of Resistance,” Clara Jaeger takes us to Indigenous rural

ab ove A m e r i c a M e re d i t h (Cherokee Nation), ᎠᏙᎸᎯᏐᏗᏱ Adodhlvhisodiyi (To Remake Oneself), 2002, acrylic on panel, 26½ × 20⅛ in., private collection. Image courtesy of the artist.

communities in the Cauca department of Colombia that had been repeatedly rocked by political violence of the FARC rebels and paramilitary groups. When a ceasefire accord ended this violence, these Nasa communities wanted the outside world to see beyond the headlines that there was so much more to their communities. Local Nasa and international mural artists transformed their small towns through colorful, sometimes fantastical, public street art. While the Nasa still face struggles, the murals allow them and others to see their joys as well. Finally, in “Carrying Culture,” Sheila Regan visits with bandolier bag makers from Canada down to the Southern Plains. Usually we only see these prestigious art forms in books or behind museum glass; however, these artists take the form and aesthetics of bandolier bags into the present day with new stories. By sewing stitches so similar to those of their ancestors, these artists can imagine what their relatives were seeing and thinking. Like so many Native artists today, making customary artworks allows them to take on the perspectives of early generations whose voices were often silenced far too early. While so many external forces wish us to assimilate or reduce us to predictable courses of thought, we can strengthen our humanity and expand our perceptions by imagining how others see the world. The world is vast and filled with thoughtful, creative people striving for truth and beauty every day. Meet some of them in the following pages. —America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

1. Jean Decety, “Perspective Taking as the Royal Avenue to Empathy,” in Other Minds: How Humans Bridge the Divide between Self and Others, ed. Bertram F. Malle and Sara D. Hodges (New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 153.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025 | 9

KAY WALKINGSTICK / HUDSON RIVER The Heard Museum’s new Grand Gallery Exhibition, Open Jan 23, 2026

Experience the beauty of the American landscape through two powerful perspectives. Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School brings together breathtaking works by contemporary Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick and iconic 19th-century paintings from the Hudson River School. Side by side, these works invite you to see the land through different lenses, exploring both deep reverence and the complex histories it holds. Organized by the New-York Historical Society, Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School invites you to reflect on beauty, history, and the stories that landscapes hold.

Kay WalkingStick (b. 1935) Our Land Variation II, 2008. Oil stick on paper. Miller Meigs Collections. Photo by JSP Art Photography © Kay WalkingStick

h e a r d .org

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS MUSEUMS The DE YOUNG MUSEUM opened its newly renovated Native American art suite. Joseph Aguilar, PhD (San Ildefonso Pueblo), Meyo Marrufo (Robinson Rancheria/Eastern Pomo), Hillary C. Olcott, Will Riding In (Pawnee/Santa Ana Pueblo) and Sherrie Smith-Ferri, PhD (Dry Creek Pomo/Bodega Miwok) helped to reenvision the gallery space. The WO ODL AND CULTURAL CENTRE in Brantford, Ontario, transformed the Mohawk Institute Residential School into a museum. It opened on September 30, 2025, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day.

above Mohawk Institute Residential School, now a museum managed by the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario. Image courtesy of the Woodland Cultural Centre.

below Best of Show winner at the 2025 Wyandotte Native Artisan Showcase: Caleb Garcia (Wyandotte), Tweety Bird, 2025, beadwork, quillwork.

The PICURIS PUEBLO MUSEUM in Peñasco, New Mexico, reopened in August on San Lorenzo’s Feast Day. First opened in 1969, the museum had been closed since the 1990s. The City of Wichita hired Candy Taylor (Kiowa/Cherokee) as the new executive director of the MID-AMERICA ALL-INDIAN MUSEUM. Taylor most recently led the Comanche Nation Museum and Cultural Center in Lawton, Oklahoma. The SHELBURNE MUSEUM in Shelburne, Vermont, kicked off construction on the new 11,000-square-foot Perry Center for Native American Art, which will be devoted to the exhibition and care of the museum’s collection of more than 500 items from 389 tribal communities. The $14 million project is scheduled to conclude in 2027. The ABENAKI COUNCIL OF ODANAK and the ABENAKI COUNCIL OF WÔLINAK, two First Nations in Quebec, have urged the Shelburne Museum to end its collaboration with state-recognized tribes that identify as being Abenaki. The NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN is among the Smithsonian Institution museums that the Trump/Vance administration has

requested to undergo a “comprehensive internal review” to align it with the current administration’s ideologies and whitewash interpretive materials of historical events. Stephen Borys, the 17-year director and CEO of WINNIPEG ART GALLERY-QAUMAJUQ, has resigned to start a consulting firm. Borys oversaw the completion of Qaumajuq’s 40,000-square-foot building, which holds the largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art in the world. The GICHIGAMIIN INDIGENOUS NATIONS MUSEUM in Evanston, Illinois, temporarily closed after it fired muralist Jamie John (Grand Traverse Odawa-Ojibwe/Korean-American) for his pro-Palestinian messages in the underpainting of his commissioned mural on the museum’s exterior.

ART SHOWS Caleb Garcia (Wyandotte) won Best in Show at the 2025 WYANDOTTE NATION ARTISAN SHOWCASE at the Wyandotte Nation Cultural Center and Museum in Wyandotte, Oklahoma. Classification winners were Malinda Walker, basketry; Caleb Garcia, beadwork; Marie Bellefleur Gros-Louis, clothing; Caleb Garcia, diverse art forms; Caleb Garcia, jewelry and accessories; Brenda Lamb, leatherwork; Nathan McAlister, painting, drawing, and printmaking; Josh Garcia, photography; Collin Gray, pottery; Caleb Garcia, quillwork; Julia Morgan, textiles; Keith Gray, woodworking. All artists are citizens of the Wyandotte Nation. The Cherokee Nation hosted its 30th annual CHEROKEE HOMECOMING ART SHOW in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Troy Jackson (Cherokee) won Best of Show. Ron Mitchell (Cherokee) won the

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025 | 11