Shifting Grounds: Landscape in Contemporary Native American Art by Kate Morris (review)

in her 2011 oil diptych New Mexico Desert, Kay WalkingStick represented a mountainous vista with a conspicuous pattern superimposed onto the landscape. The artist carefully chose the abstract motif to accord with "the traditional arts of the Indigenous peoples of the region depicted; thus their presence marks the land as Native land," as argued by Kate Morris in chapter 2, "The Emergent Tradition of Native American Landscape Painting" (55). Walking-Stick's actions effectively injured "the hegemony of European landscape representation" and its accompanying colonialist aims by symbolically decolonizing the land and conveying "a uniquely Indigenous worldview" (29, 55). Morris's text, therefore, cogently analyzes Native landscape conventions vis-à-vis the canon of nineteenth-century European-trained American masters whose paintings implicitly "naturalized the subjugation and displacement of Indigenous peoples." While some Native works physically resemble that canon, Morris explains how contemporary Indigenous artists "adapt conventions of the genre," minus its imperialist tropes and ideologies, to express personal relationships with lands (29).

WalkingStick's work is one lens of many through which Morris examines the distinctive "logic" and place-based knowledge of Indigenous landscape representations from the last thirty years (3). Among the other artists she explores are Michael Belmore, Rebecca Belmore, Jeffrey Gibson, Bob Haozous, Zig Jackson, James Lavadour, Truman Lowe, Alan Michelson, Kent Monkman, Peter Morin, George Morrison, Nadia Myre, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Jeffrey Thomas. Their breadth of paintings, sculptures, installations, videos, and performances supports Morris's nuanced thesis, delineated in the introduction: contemporary Indigenous landscapes are complex, experiential compositions. They evoke all five senses, as opposed to the "primarily visual representations" of European American practice. This particular Native subjectivity, Morris contends, signifies "the ongoing presence—and vigilance—of Indigenous peoples on an ever-shifting ground," an environment perpetually transformed by ecological forces (5). Importantly, Native evocations of space and place are "largely anti-invitational in character": they deny viewers access into scenes, in contrast "to the 'invitational' tropes of the European landscape tradition" (4). The artists Morris discusses reclaim their connections to lands "on Indigenous terms," repositioning themselves as insiders rather than spectators (6). Morris grounds her case studies in several themes integral to Indigenous epistemology: "presence and absence, connection and dislocation, survival, survivance, memory, commemoration, vulnerability, power, and resistance" (3).

Chapter 1, "The Lay of the Land," further charts the objective of the book "to build an inclusive theory of contemporary Indigenous landscape representation" (11). Key is Morris's development of historiographical dialogue between the foundational publications of W. J. T. Mitchell, James Elkins, and Rachael Ziady DeLue in landscape studies and the pivotal writings of Native scholars Robert Warrior, Jolene Rickard, and Michelle Raheja in the growing field of Indigenous studies. Morris forms the connection critically by suggesting shortcomings in the former group that Native perceptions on land and sovereignty could enhance: "Just as the European landscape tradition has tended to depict the landscape as if it were empty of its aboriginal inhabitants, so too has landscape theory tended to ignore the degree to which the Indigenous landscape has been fully conceptually realized" (21). Morris seeks to correct such oversights. Perhaps her greatest contribution is establishing the field of art history as a fruitful meeting ground for settler and Indigenous philosophies.

Morris performs this labor throughout the subsequent four chapters. Chapter 3, "Beyond the Horizon: Postmodern Perspectives on the Native Landscape," builds upon writings by Bill Anthes and Jackson Rushing to consider how contemporary Native landscape paintings position spectators either within or outside Indigenous spaces. Chapter 4, "Centering: Site-Specific and Land-Based Art Practices," surveys large-scale works that "gesture toward the earth" while seeking to regenerate connections "severed" by land dispossession (83). These works, too, "assume the function of monuments by simultaneously marking space and claiming place" for present-day Natives (111). Morris closes with chapter 5, "The Embodied Landscape," which details incorporation of figures and bodies in contemporary Native landscape representations. The most intriguing portion follows a textual analysis of Jessica Horton and Janet...