Native American Art Today in the Great Plains: An Overview of the Exhibition Contemporary Indigeneity: Spiritual Borderlands

Inaugurated in 2012, Contemporary Indigeneity is a biennial exhibition that highlights artistic contributions by American Indian artists who reside in or make art about the Great Plains. In 2016, the third iteration of the exhibition emphasized artworks that explored the concept of spiritual borderlands.¹ Broad interpretations of each artist’s spiritual connection to borders were expressed in various media ranging from jewelry to quilts to abstract paintings. Rather than focusing on traditional modes of representation typically associated with work by American Indians, the exhibition incorporated work comparable to any artist working today regardless of ethnicity.²

The term “borderland” often conjures images of physical spaces. However, connections to specific places can be difficult to ascertain, particularly in a global economy with continually shifting geopolitical borders coinciding with virtual discursive spaces created via technological advancements. Corporeal location no longer solely defines space, thus complicating the ways in which one associates with community and defines personal identity. For American Indians, political and societal circumstances have created “unimagined discursive spaces,” and according to artist and curator Gerald McMaster, their contemporary space is a “negotiated space.”³ These circumstances are most often rooted in a historical narrative dictated long before the current generation of artists began creating. Aboriginal ancestral homelands were redefined by US government policy that established reservation and territorial lands. According to McMaster, “the urban and rural now make up two discursive places or communities that form the reservation narrative.”⁴ The discourse from these two spaces affects how artists interpret the liminal spaces where they create and live. Such conditions also contribute to the difficulty in defining what exactly constitutes art as Native American.

For the context of the Contemporary Indigeneity: Spiritual Borderlands, artists were identified as Native, based on their tribal affiliation, although the criteria was not as strict as those set forth by the 1990 Native American Arts and Crafts law regarding the sale of indigenous art forms. The Great Plains Art Museum recognizes the importance of featuring only artists of American Indian or First Peoples descent for reasons that include but are not limited to the marginalization of indigenous peoples that often results in a lack of adequate representation in mainstream museum collections and fine art exhibition venues. In selecting artworks for Contemporary Indigeneity 2016, how each artist and their community culturally identified them(selves) as Native bore more weight than genetic distinction or federal designation. Many of the participating artists are enrolled tribal members. However, some artists included do not have federally recognized tribal affiliation despite their familiar connections and knowledge of ancestral traditions.

Even before the passing of laws to protect indigenous artists in the 1990s, scholars and artists have struggled to determine what defines American Indian art. In the late 1970s, American literary scholar Geary Hobson addressed the issue when compiling an anthology of Native American texts. Drawing from political and societal positions of the time, Hobson mapped out four ways of defining how an individual can be identified as Native American: “1) the Indian’s tribe’s or community’s judgement, 2) the neighboring non-Indian communities’ judgement, 3) the federal government’s judgement, and 4) the individual’s judgement.”⁵ In order to understand how this need for “racial authenticity” and “Indianness” has emerged, one must first consider the history regarding Native American art in a postcolonial America.

Art historian Marvin Cahodas has explained, “Indian artists have been subject to varying social conditions over the last four hundred years or so, and hence their art has changed accordingly.”⁶ While many American Indian artists still draw from traditional imagery and art-making practices, they, unlike their non-Native counterparts, are expected to exhibit their “Indianness” regardless of the media in which they work. Moreover, as contemporary artist Edgar Heaps of Birds points out, Native artists are the only members of the art community who must prove who they are.⁷ Native American artist and scholar Rick Hill questioned the validity tests for “Indianness” that artists are subjected to, which ask: “Does he live on the reservation? Did he grow...