This object is a product of change over time for indigenous Mexican women. In the classic Mayan period (CE 250-900), Mayan women showed their importance by presenting elite men with cloth to be used in ritual performances. While spinning and weaving tools were reserved for the households of high-ranking people, seven centuries later, the status of this activity was diminished by its expansion of common women to support themselves and their families before the Spanish Conquest (1521). Spindle whorls and needles were buried with infant girls and adult women to highlight their identities.

Fiber art being a knowledge that is passed down, and one attributed to females, one could assume that the artist of this piece might be a woman. When the conquistadors arrived in the “New World,” they were impressed by the achievements of cloth producers with such “primitive tools.” The Church was then commissioned to teach needlework to women by making religious garments. The appliqué technique of this work originated in Egypt, and the Spanish colonizers adopted it to teach women to patchwork different symbols and patterns together in one piece. This skill was shown to girls of all statuses to prepare them for marriage, where they would be expected to organize their households and manage clothing. Women are the key to this story, and the amount of change over time is notable. From elite membership, to commercial production, to being instilled with the values of being the matriarch of the family, women are vital to the story of Mesoamerica.

Evidence suggests that when the Spanish arrived, the indigenous people who had not seen horses before described them as deer. These figures in the boat appear to have antlers on their heads. The snake, with its fluid movements, is often represented in ceremonies of the earth, sky, and water. Signaling rebirth or fertility, it is an important symbol in Aztec art (and in many indigenous cultures of the Southwest today). This may be a commemorative piece, painting a picture of the arrival of the Spanish to the shores of Mexico. If the snake means fertility, and the three figures represent the Spanish, then the undertones of this work could be a symbol of female oppression with the snake being held down by the patriarchy (under the Spanish in the boat). 

"Women's Appliqué" is a dance category at some Native North American Powwows, so named because of the beautiful handmade designs on their regalia. Look for the designs as the dancers compete.

Works Cited

Berlo, Janet Catherine. “Beyond Bricolage: Women and Aesthetic Strategies in Latin American Textiles.” Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 22, Autumn 1992, pp. 115-134. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.stable/20166857.

Brumfield, Elizabeth M. “Cloth, Gender, Continuity, and Change: Fabricating Unity in Anthropology.” American Anthropologist, vol. 108, no. 4, 2006, pp. 862-77. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4496525.

Fitch, Nancy. “The Conquest of Mexico: An Overview.” The Conquest of Mexico, May 1, 2004. https://www.historians.org/resource/the-conquest-of-mexico.

“Mexican Embroidery.” Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up. Victoria and Albert Museum, 2018. https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/frida-kahlo-making-her-self-up.

Most people dance to express and experience joy, while most also believe that dancing is little more than a choreography of body movements. But for some indigenous people, dancing is what Barre Toelken has described as a language where the body communicates through movements - similar to words. And while Native cultures focus on the wellbeing of the tribal nation, dance also offers a personal focus on self, to the dancer. 

Edward C. Curtis, a Euro-American photographer, captured a ceremonial procession of the Hopi Nation as they prayed for rain in the American Southwest. Snake Dancers Entering the Plaza recorded the men who served as a link between the secular world and the spiritual world as they danced before a cloud of witnesses - so that the earth’s inhabitants could become the benefactors of life-giving rain.

However, dances (like the Snake Dance) have become a spectacle for tourists. And although not all dances are now closed off to non-Native people, the invasion of the ceremony by tourists unfairly reduced these events to what writer D.H. Lawrence called a “circus” in 1924. Because of reasons like this, Toelken informs us that “the Hopi ban [ned] photographs and recordings” of dances like the Snake Dance, and yet “many visitors have ignored the Hopi ban.” 

Some events are so personal or sacred to us that we only wish to share them with those closest to us, such as the birth of a child or a wedding day. Others are more open to outsiders’ participation - like a book club or a graduation party. To include perfect strangers to view the birth of a child or attend a wedding may not interrupt the procession of the event, but it might just damage the experience of it. Similarly, the invasion (and viewing spectacle) of Native Dances should not be easily disregarded. Instead, the tribal nation should dictate if, and how, people can participate - recognizing that the meaning of the event is for those who designed it. Some may claim that there is a need to preserve these dances through public display, however, is that truly the best way?

One of the first films ever made, by Thomas Edison in 1898, was of the Hopi Snake Dance. 

Works Cited

Lawrence, D. H. “The Hopi Snake Dance.” Salmagundi, no. 33/34, 1976, pp. 133–48. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40546928. Accessed December 2024.

Toelken, Barre. “Kinetic Patterns of Performance: Dance.” Anguish Of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West, University Press of Colorado, 2003, pp. 80–109. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nqrg.9. Accessed December 2024.

Who are we, if not ourselves?

Duane Wilcox poses this question to the indigenous and non-native alike through his drawing Keep Them Dancing.

Like many of us, Wilcox knows what it feels like to be told that he (or should be) someone else. However, unlike many of us, Wilcox’s identity is not easily accepted because of his Lakota culture and indigenous heritage. Wilcox grew up during the Indian Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and ‘70s and gained inspiration from other Native American artists, beginning his own career as an artist in 1987 - asserting his own autonomy and identity. Then, in 1999, Wilcox created his piece Keep Them Dancing on ledger paper. 

Ledger Art arose in the late 19th century as a protest against colonial oppression This art was created using materials that were secured by (or through) colonizers who kept Native people imprisoned, while Native people were forced into white society through assimilation. Like his ancestors, Wilcox takes up ledger art to tell his story about who he is, and who indigenous people are today.

However, being misunderstood can be painfully frustrating. Many of us find comfort through online groups, but many Native people also find the same support and empowerment through Powwows - where the people gathering is celebrated by sharing and communicating cultural identities. Powwows have helped indigenous people find their tribal identity - and through dancing, their own identities as individuals, as researcher Barre Toelken points out. It is hard for people to be themselves today; this is especially true of Native people, whose cultures are not always recognized. This is exactly why Wilcox chose the Powwow to highlight how people’s identities can change.

Keep Them Dancing also showcases the importance of ceremonial dance at Powwows because of its individual and cultural expression. Photographer Edward S. Curtis captured the Hopi Snake Dance in his Snake Dancers Entering the Plaza in 1912. Curtis believed that indigenous people and cultures were dying off, but (like the people in Curtis’s photo) Wilcox shows that Native people continue to celebrate who they are - regardless of cultural oppression. Together, Curtis and Wilcox’s art communicate a powerful message to all people: who are we, if not ourselves?

See more of Wilcox's art here. 

Works Cited 

“Dwayne ‘Chuck’ Wilcox.” Aktá Lakota Museum. https://aktalakota.stjo.org/artists-authors/wilcox-dwayne/. Accessed December 2024.

“Dwayne Wilcox, Native American Ledger Artist.” https://dwaynewilcox.com/. Accessed December 2024.

Harris, Susan. “Fort Marion and Beyond: Native American Ledger Drawings, 1865-1900.” The Brooklyn Rail,  February 21, 2024, pp. 1-7.

Toelken, Barre. “Kinetic Patterns of Performance: Dance.” Anguish Of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West, University Press of Colorado, 2003, pp. 80–109. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nqrg.9. Accessed December 2024.

Edward S. Curtis felt that he needed to document the “vanishing” American Indians. In 1898 he met several men who were influential in encouraging his life’s work, which was “capturing” Native people in their natural lives.Throughout his travels in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries he documented different Native people but it was seeing a Sun Dance in Montana in 1900 that truly sparked Curtis’s passion to “capture” these Native people.

Curtis’ main focus in the 12th volume of his work was the Hopi people, whom he visited over the decades. In Curtis’s eyes, the Hopi people were “amongst the most interesting of our surviving American Indians, and one of the very few groups recently living in a state similar to that of a hundred years ago.” 

Between visits in 1906 and 1912, he noticed a sign of change in women’s hairstyles. He noted that women’s “whorls” had become too much work to put together, especially “for women with a school education.” According to Julianne Medel and Sherry C. Maurer, this change only sparked Curtis to document everything he could of this “Vanishing” American culture. While his photographs are beautiful, Curtis wanted his photographs to document a disappearing way of life that he presumed was going extinct. Curtis says, “the passing of every old man or woman means the passing of some tradition, some knowledge of sacred rites possessed by no other and must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost.”

They note that the women in the photograph are placed in a “classic triangular form which creates a solid compositional structure in contrast to the open landscape on the left” and that the white shawls of the women form a pattern. Curtis often staged his photographs; for example, having Hopi women wear ceremonial clothing in photos of tasks like grinding corn or getting water, and removed any signs of modern culture. Schools often banned students from wearing traditional clothing. Elizabeth Hawley notes that this clothing could be “active self-fashioning that affirmed Native tradition as a part of–rather than a negation of–Native modernity.”

Indigenous people today have very different perspectives on Edward Curtis's photographs. For views of his work as valuable to indigenous people today, see this site. For a critique of his work by photographer Matika Wilbur, see this post.

Works Cited

Hawley, Elizabeth. “James Luna and the Paradoxically Present Vanishing Indian, Contemporanity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture, vol. 5, no. 1 (2016), pp. 5-26. DOI 10.5195/contemp.2016.170

Medel, Julianne and Sherry C. Maurer, The Olson-Brandelle North American Art Collection, ed. Sherry Maurer, Augustana College, 2010, pp. 265- 66.

Nora Naranjo Morse is a member of the Hopi-Tewa nation from Santa Clara Pueblo. Naranjo Morse incorporates organic materials in her clay, which holds special significance not only because the materials come from Santa Clara but because of the traditional processing it requires. As a young girl, Naranjo Morse embraced Native American lore; the released clay is a living and breathing organism, a part of mother earth. 

Naranjo Morse began her artistic career by creating bowls which was expected of her because it is a family tradition, plus all of her siblings were producing these pots. At an early age Naranjo Morse learned that art wasn’t separated from anything else; art is inspired by all things you do on a daily basis which is incorporated into your process of creating art. Art is supposed to have full engagement; nothing is guaranteed so no matter the outcome a voice has spoken, a piece is born and her thoughts are expressed.

Naranjo Morse emphasizes that creating helps define the way she looks at herself and who she really is, where she comes from and what she wants out of life. A lot of Naranjo Morse’s works reflect on the tensions of producing art for a western art market that at times glorifies Native innovative styles while having an undertone that marginalizes it as “Native Art.” Naranjo-Morse’s works may be non-traditional at times; however, its content is always rooted in issues that concern her. 

In sum, Naranjo-Morse obviously bases her work on adventuring and showcasing Native American life as well as Native American issues that occur every day. Her works speak in great volumes, with the power to bring together the past and the present. Naranjo Morse’s mission is to find harmony between the tradition of Santa Clara Pueblo and American culture.

Think about how Naranjo-Morse’s Flock could be arranged to form different patterns. Would different arrangements affect the meaning or “authenticity” of the work?

Works Cited

“Nora Naranjo Morse,” Nora Naranjo Morse, 2022, https://noranaranjomorse.squarespace.com/about

Richmond, Michelle. The Olsen-Brandelle North American Indian Art Collection, edited by Sherry C. Maurer (Augustana College, 2010), 216-217.

Strom, Karen and Nora Naranjo Morse, “Nora Naranjo-Morse,” Storytellers: Native American Authors Online, 2016 http://hanksville.org/storytellers/nora/, 2016.