Author: FAAM Staff

We Were. We Are. An exhibit featuring the work of six artists from the Northern Arapaho Artists Society and the Creative Indigenous Collective is currently on display at the Wyoming State Museum. The exhibit features the works of Bruce Cook and Robert Martinez from Riverton, Wyoming; Lauren Monroe, Ben Pease, and John I Pepion from Montana; and Louis Still Smoking from South Dakota. Born out of a lack of exhibition opportunities for Native artists in Wyoming, the Northern Arapaho Artists Society has arranged three to four exhibitions of Native artwork per year since 2012. A group of friends formed the…

Issue No. 14, Spring 2017 Click here to purchase a digital copy for $7 from Issuu. To purchase a print copy, select your location: Locations US, New Mexico $9.74 USD US, other than NM $8.99 USD Canada $9.99 USD International $15.92 USD Features Blanketing the Plains: Hanoolchaadi in Indian Country, Roshii Montano (Diné) and Jill Ahlberg Yohe, PhD, 20–25 Intersections of Indigeneity, Feminism, and Art, Jean Merz-Edwards, 26–31 German Silver Jewelry of the Southern Plains Indians, Denise Neil (Delaware Tribe/Cherokee Nation), 32–37 In Search of Hózhó: Notes on Performance and Performance Art, Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD, 38–43 Artist Profiles Elizabeth James-Perry…

Issue No. 13, Winter 2016/17 Click here to purchase a digital copy for $7 from Issuu. To purchase a print copy, select your location: Locations US, New Mexico $9.74 USD US, other than NM $8.99 USD Canada $9.99 USD International $15.92 USD Features Zapotec Weaving: The Resurgence of a Cultural Artform, by Kevin Simpson, 22–29 Marked for Life: An Indigenous Tattoo Reawakening, by Lars Krutak, PhD, 30–37 The Tom and Mary James/Raymond James Financial Art Collection, by Michole Eldred (Catawba/Eastern Cherokee descent), 38–43 Neoglyphix Travels North: Anchorage Museum’s Urban Interventions, by Martina Dawley, PhD (Hualapi/Diné), and Dawn Biddison, 44–48 Artist Profiles…

In light of the renewed attempts by art writers to position Jimmie Durham as a Cherokee, an American Indian, and a Person of Color in connection to the traveling retrospective exhibit Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World, Nancy Marie Mithlo, PhD (Chiricahua Apache), granted FAAM permission to republish her 1993 letter to the editor in Art in America. While Art in America recently posted Lucy R. Lippard’s article, “Jimmie Durham—Post-Modern ‘Savage’ ” online, they did not publish the letters written in response to this article. To the Editors: In reference to Lucy Lippard’s article on Jimmie Durham, I would like to point out the qualifiers…

“I am not Cherokee. I am not an American Indian.”  —Jimmie Durham, “Letters: Identities Clarified?,” Art in America 81, no. 7 (July 1993), 23. In June 2017, FAAM posted a list of links and information about Durham’s false claims of being of Cherokee descent because almost nothing was available online on the subject. Since then, a substantial amount of material has been published, listed below. Since June 2017, no one has provided a single fact to contradict the statement that Jimmie Durham is not Native American, is not Cherokee, and has no Cherokee ancestry. Writings Nancy Marie Mithlo, ed., “Decentering Durham,” American Indian…

Best of Show Winner Don Johnston (Qagan Tayagungin) for his baleen basket, Quagaxtag (Love), featuring a walrus ivory finial of two entwined whale tails. Classifications Pottery Best of Classification: Al Qöyawayma (Hopi) Division A: Painted, native clay, hand built, fired out-of-doors First Place: Rainy Naha (Hopi-Tewa) Second Place: Erik Fender (San Ildefonso Pueblo) Division B: Unpainted, including ribbed, native clay, hand built, fired out-of-doors First Place: Russell Sanchez (San Ildefonso Pueblo) Second Place: Samuel Manymules (Navajo) Division C: Carved, native clay, hand built, fired out-of-doors First Place: Daniel T. Begay (Navajo) Second Place: Toni Roller (Santa Clara Pueblo) Division D:…

The 59th Annual Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market takes place in Phoenix on March 4 and 5, 2017. Check out the official program, produced by First American Art Magazine in partnership with the Heard Museum Guild. For more information, please visit the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market website. If you can’t attend the fair but would like to order a hard copy of the program, they are available online. Locations United States $4.00 USD Canda $5.00 USD International $6.00 USD

First American Art Magazine’s Top 10 Native Art Events of 2016 This last year brought us daring art projects, extraordinary exhibits, illuminating publications, new institutions, and challenging discussion of art by Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Selecting only ten events from so many was challenging, but our writers and advisory board ranked the following ten as the highlights of the last year. 1. The Art and Activism at Standing Rock, SD Since April 2016, Water Protectors gathered in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Members of hundreds of different Indigenous groups…

Museum of the Great Plains, Lawton, Oklahoma IT ALL BEGAN on the Southern Plains landscape at Salt Fork where 72 Arapaho, Comanche, Cheyenne, Caddo, and Kiowa were transported by train to Fort Marion (earlier known as Castillo de San Marcos), in St. Augustine, Florida. The imprisonment of warriors also began a history of government-led boarding schools to assimilate children, remove their tribal identities, and convert them to Christianity. Generations were impacted by historical trauma that continues to the present day. Re-Riding History: From the Southern Plains to the Matanzas Bay, exhibits 72 echoed responses of contemporary artists sharing personal histories of these…

Labor Day weekend in Northern New Mexico means the Annual Santo Domingo Pueblo Pueblo Arts and Crafts Market on the Santo Domingo Pueblo square, also know as Kewa Pueblo, south of the 1890 Santo Domingo Mission Church. With approximately 350 artists, this quiet art fair is one of the largest Native art events in the country. Santo Domingo Pueblo Market hosts more artists than the Eiteljorg, Autry, Cherokee, and Indigenous Fine Art Markets and is only smaller than the Santa Fe Indian Market and Heard Fair. It might be the largest tribally-run art market in the US. Yet, this market…