Women and Ledger Art: Four Contemporary Native American Artists

About the Author

102 | indEx a B o u t t H E a u t H o r Richard Pearce, professor emeritus of English at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, has published six books on modernist narrative, the last two with a feminist approach. Now, he has applied his experience in close reading of literary narratives and extended his commitment to cross-cultural feminism to the study of Plains Indian ledger art. Noting that ledger art, traditionally a male art form, has elided women’s lives, heroic deeds, and equally important contributions to the life of their tribes, Pearce’s Women and Ledger Art foregrounds these contributions and focuses on four contemporary women ledger artists. To ensure that his information and analysis were not limited to a white male’s perspective, he has spent six years in continual communication with Sharron Ahtone Harjo (Kiowa), Colleen Cutschall (Oglala Lakota), Linda Haukaas (Sicangu Lakota), and Dolores Purdy Corcoran (Caddo), developing a collaborative method to preserve, as much as possible, their individual voices and words. Women and Ledger Art begins with a discussion of Lois Smoky, one of the original Kiowa Five, based on material never published before. Pearce then goes on to analyze the ledger drawings, making use of the firsthand information he gathered to closely read the Kiowa, Lakota, and Caddo picture stories against the ground of the material records of western expansion. Richard Pearce has lectured on “Women and Ledger Art” at the Native American Literature Symposium, the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Conference, and the Plains Indian Seminar at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. His book is the first published study focusing on women and ledger art and the work of four contemporary women ledger artists who appropriated the traditionally male art form to focus on women’s lifestyles and achievements. ...