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About this Exhibit
Augustana College is the custodian of a substantial collection of art by Indigenous North American artists. Some works are several thousand years old; some were created in the early 21st century. Many of these items have long been on display in the Thomas Tredway Library, Hanson Hall of Science, and Evald Hall: students and faculty pass by them almost every day. But who were the artists who created these works? What motivated their creation? How are these works expressions of their cultures, histories, interactions with colonizers, and contemporary concerns?
This exhibit, on display at the Tredway Library at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois from February-May, 2025, was curated by students at the East Moline Correctional Center as a project for the course History 232: American Indians and Visual Culture. Students wrote the labels that appear in the physical exhibit and the narratives that appear here. Text appearing in italics invites viewers of this site to learn more about the artists and art forms.
The exhibit attempts to foreground the artists as creative individuals whose work represents innovative responses to complex circumstances and changing conditions. The curators were inspired by the concept of "visual sovereignty" coined by Michelle Raheja to refer to indigenous self-representation in the media. Tuscarora artist Jolene Rickard defines it broadly as artistic self-determination, in which artists call upon and adapt traditions rooted in places, processes, and practices in order to resist ongoing colonization.
Rickard sees traditional knowledge and practice as a "reinvestment in a shared ancient imaginary of self and a distancing strategy from the West." Audra Simpson (Mohawk) stresses the need to see indigenous art as dynamic, as history in motion, as "the process of tradition." As you interact with this exhibit, we encourage you to see these creations as process, in motion across place and time. Where do you see older practices alive in newer work? Much older work that represents change and adaptation? Knowledge that is shared across generations? How have artists used their work both to work within and to resist colonizing cultures?
Works Cited
Michelle H. Raheja, Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film, University of Nebraska Press, 2010.
Rickard, Jolene. “Diversifying Sovereignty and the Reception of Indigenous Art.” Art Journal, vol. 76, no. 2, 2017, pp. 81–84. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/45142474.
Rickard, Jolene. "Sovereignty: A Line in the Sand." Aperture, vol. 139, 1995, pp. 50-59. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24474915.
This site was created and edited by Jane Simonsen.
Artistic creations contain processes - death and renewal, custom and innovation, tradition and futurity.
Indigenous artists keep older artistic practices alive even as they play with form, use, and meaning.
Indigenous people and groups use artistry to create and uphold relationships with their traditions, with nature, and with the spirit world.
"Ancient" and "modern" are terms often used to create hierarchies. Native artists past and present trouble these value-laden terms.
Colonizers have exerted power over the representation of indigenous people. Yet indigenous people have long used art to express agency in subtle and overt ways.
Weaving depends on balance and motion. Tullie Tsosie's rug reminds us that indigenous creation is both centered in place and dynamic.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
The curators would like to thank the Augustana Center for Visual Culture, especially Jennifer Ong, Hayan Kim, and Vickie Phipps; the Tredway Library staff, especially Garrett Traylor; Kent Olsen for the gift of the Olson-Brandelle Collection; and the Augustana Prison Education Program, especially Sharon Varallo, Bonnie Jessee, and research assistant Rachel Jocson. Jane Simonsen would like to thank the students for their enthusiasm, hard work, and boundless curiosity. Funding for this exhibit was provided by the Richard A. Swanson fund for Social Thought. This exhibit takes place on the homelands of the Sac and Fox Nation, taken from them at the conclusion of the Black Hawk War.
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