Embedded Files
Whose Mascots Are They?
Whose Mascots Are They?
Students will study a ceramic artist who challenges the appropriation of Native American culture in the use of visual images, popular culture, mascots and sports teams names.
BIG IDEA:
BIG IDEA:
Stereotypes + Power
Essential Question(s):
Essential Question(s):
How and why does art challenge beliefs, traditions and stereotypes?
How and why is Native American culture stereotyped in popular culture, entertainment and sports?
How do people use their power to maintain and promote stereotypes? And, How do people use their power to work to end stereotypes?
Introduction: A few things we'll talk about before we dig in to the artworks.
Introduction: A few things we'll talk about before we dig in to the artworks.
We'll discuss equity and diversity (reference page)
Valuing diversity
Being culturally self-aware
Understanding the dynamics of cultural interactions
Trigger Warning
Some of this material may be sensitive, offensive, controversial and/or difficult to watch/listen to. Let me know (privately, email or chat) if you cannot watch/listen and we will figure out an alternative.
References
To get the most from this lesson, you will need to understand cultural references on which the art (and other material) is based. That means that we will spend some time on what might seem like unrelated tangents to provide background and context to understand the art. Please know that it will tie together -- just hang in there.
Stereotypes of Native American Culture in Popular Culture
Stereotypes of Native American Culture in Popular Culture
Two performances of "I'm An Indian Too" to compare and contrast.
Two performances of "I'm An Indian Too" to compare and contrast.
Essential Question(s):
Essential Question(s):
How does art challenge beliefs, traditions and stereotypes?
How is Native American culture stereotyped in popular culture and entertainment?
Context: This song is sung after the character Annie Oakley is adopted by Chief Sitting Bull into the Sioux tribe.
Why is this song considered racist?
Judy Garland, excerpt from Annie, Get Your Gun
Judy Garland, excerpt from Annie, Get Your Gun
Annie Get Your Gun is a 1950 American musical Technicolor comedy film loosely based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley. The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin and a screenplay by Sidney Sheldon based on the 1946 stage musical of the same name, was directed by George Sidney. Despite several production and casting problems (Judy Garland was fired from the lead role after a month of filming in which she clashed with the director and repeatedly showed up late or not at all), the film won the Academy Award for Best Original Score and received three other nominations. Star Betty Hutton was recognized with a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Get_Your_Gun_(film)
Reference/Side Note
Reference/Side Note
Judy Garland is best known for her role as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
The 1491s, a Native American Sketch Comedy Group perform "I'm An Indian Too"
The 1491s, a Native American Sketch Comedy Group perform "I'm An Indian Too"
The 1491s are a Native American sketch comedy group, with members based in Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Montana.
Their comedy sketches depict contemporary Native American life in the United States, using humor and satire to explore issues such as stereotypes and racism (internal and external), tribal politics, and the conflict between tradition and modernity.
The group's name is a reference to the year 1491, the last year before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and widespread European colonization of the Americas began.
In Whose Honor
In Whose Honor
Documentary movie excerpt: Stereotypes, Conflict and Power
Documentary movie excerpt: Stereotypes, Conflict and Power
Essential Question(s):
Essential Question(s):
How and why is Native American culture stereotyped in popular culture and sports?
How do people use their power to maintain and promote stereotypes?
How do people use their power to work to end stereotypes?
Watch this clip from the documentary, "In Whose Honor?" (about 10 minutes).
Excerpt from POV website:
From cartoonish Indian caricatures to the tomahawk chop, the imagery of hugely popular sports teams like the Washington Redskins, the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves have played a pivotal role in the symbolic depiction of Native American culture. In In Whose Honor?, filmmaker Jay Rosenstein focuses on the story of Charlene Teters, a Spokane Indian whose campaign against Chief Illiniwek, the University of Illinois' beloved team mascot, turned a college town upside down and made many people rethink the larger issues of culture and identity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ-zm7VO_3s
In this July 2021 story update (starts at 6:26 on this video to 18:20), Charlene Teters talks about the state of affairs with team names and mascots, as well as other Native American issues, on Indian Country Today.
Artworks by Steve Hansen
Artworks by Steve Hansen
Essential Question(s):
Essential Question(s):
How and why does art challenge beliefs, traditions and stereotypes?
How do people use their power to work to end stereotypes?
Red Boy, Steve Hansen
Red Boy, Steve Hansen
13 in. (33 cm) in length, handbuilt stoneware, glazes, underglazes, oxides, washes, fired to cone 8 in oxidation
13 in. (33 cm) in length, handbuilt stoneware, glazes, underglazes, oxides, washes, fired to cone 8 in oxidation
About Red Boy, Steve Hansen
About Red Boy, Steve Hansen
In Red Boy, recipient of a 2014 Niche Award, Hansen addresses the thorny topic of Native American mascots for sports teams. Protests, petitions, and lawsuits in recent years over collegiate and professional team trademarks have raised public awareness of the often degrading undertones of names and images that for many fans had previously represented only tradition. Debate continues, even among Native Americans, as to the appropriateness of some aspects of that tradition. In 2012, for example, members of the Spirit Lake Sioux filed suit in an unsuccessful bid to reinstate the University of North Dakota’s team nickname, the Fighting Sioux, after it was officially discontinued as culturally insensitive. In Red Boy, however, Hansen incorporates a logo that even ardent supporters of tradition must surely recognize as patronizing: the Cleveland Indians’ logo of the toothy, sly-eyed “Chief Wahoo.” Flanked by the word skin—a fragment of the Washington Redskins’ controversial name—and set atop the soaring, rocket-powered body of manga character Astro Boy, the head of Chief Wahoo is recontextualized to underscore its absurdity.
Native Face Jug, Steve Hansen
Native Face Jug, Steve Hansen
About Native Face Jug, Steve Hansen
About Native Face Jug, Steve Hansen
8 in. (20 cm) in height, wheel-thrown stoneware, glazes, underglazes, oxides, washes, iron oxide decal, multiple firings.
While such works as ... Red Boy incorporate familiar, relatively recent, and often garish advertising and popular-culture imagery, Hansen has also produced quieter vessels in which the less-widely recognizable imagery is presented in simulated sepia tone to reinforce its historical nature. In Native Face Jug, a stubby spouted vessel with a ring handle and prominent joining plates, Hansen connects two historical female portraits to form a single face, half Native American and half European. The haunting hybrid image is elusive as a source of narrative. Does it invoke the line between civilization and savagery in order to expose that distinction as a construct? Is it an indictment of melting pot metaphors of social integration that fail to address the uneasy, forcibly united nature of the American population? Is it an attempt to rectify a historical tradition that has been taken to task for the blind spots perpetuated by Eurocentrism? Is it more abstract in its compass, reflecting on the fragmented condition of the self, the schizophrenic nature of an identity that is construed in the postmodern sense as a constant prodt of recontextualization?
Source: https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/ceramics-monthly/ceramic-art-and-artists/ceramic-artists/steve-hansens-trojan-vessels/
Indiana Indian, Steve Hansen
Indiana Indian, Steve Hansen
About Indiana Indian, Steve Hansen
About Indiana Indian, Steve Hansen
When I began making work that appeared to be made from battered signs it raised the possibility for working conceptually to a new level. In my latest series of pieces, represented by “Indiana Indian”, “Monogram Coke Plan” and “Degenerate Art”, I have moved increasingly into working with a coded language of symbols. These works can be understood and appreciated for purely their technical merits or for the nostalgia associated with icons of advertising, but there are other levels of understanding available to those who choose to tease them out. In these works I blur the boundaries between art and commerce, between craft and art.
In “Indiana Indian” I used a truncated stack shape, and covered it primarily with images and words referring to Native Americans. There are visual references to Indian Motorcycles, Mohawk Carpet, The Atlanta Braves, The Cleveland Indians, Sioux Falls, and Red Man Tobacco. There is also a Tide logo, meant to represent both the tide of settlers that displaced all these groups, and the tide of uses our culture has made of these words and images. I am curious about how Americans came to be so the author Glen R. Brown is a professor of art history at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. Steve Hansen's Trojan Vessels, November 17, 2015 Somehow the starvation marches, ethnic cleansing, and refugee camps we forced on Native Americans never lessened the American love affair for using the image of an Indian to sell a product. Part of the personal story in this piece is that my Grandfather was born in what would become the Red Lake Chippewa Nation in Northern Minnesota. For the art insider, there are also two works by Robert Indiana that appear as fragments within the work. The pun Indiana Indian interested me. So the work is functioning as a commentary on advertising, the use of words and images, and also about art as product. The intricate “trick” of making it all out of clay lets the viewer in on the secret, that I probably know what I am doing, and that I function like a circus ringmaster.
All of these works are meant to be read on multiple levels, but at the same time they can be enjoyed simply as well crafted objects. If I have really done my job well, then my work will enter the world of commodity and be purchased as art, thus creating the final link in the chain of reference.
Logos and images appropriated for the artworks Red Boy and Indiana Indian
Logos and images appropriated for the artworks Red Boy and Indiana Indian
Astro Boy, manga character
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astro_Boy_(1963_TV_series)
https://www.rightstufanime.com/Astro-Boy-1963-Ultra-DVD-Box-Set-1-D-Limited-Edition
LOVE, Robert Indiana, 1967 Source: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/68726
Organization that raises money to fight AIDS, and now COVID
A Little Extra About Steve Hansen's Artwork
A Little Extra About Steve Hansen's Artwork
Comprehending the derogatory in certain imagery may require a shift in perspective, a circumvention of blind spots that only occurs when the grounds against which that imagery appears have been made strange: as fragmented and disorienting as teapots jerry-rigged from vintage advertising signs, salvaged oil cans, and rusty machinery parts. “We’re constantly encountering information that we’re processing, whether or not we’re aware of it,” Hansen asserts. “You can enjoy these pieces just for their sense of humor, or you can enjoy them because of the trompe l’oeil qualities, but they also make you reconsider images that you’ve seen so many times that you don’t really think about what they mean. That’s absolutely the purpose.”the author Glen R. Brown is a professor of art history at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. Steve Hansen's Trojan Vessels, November 17, 2015Source: https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/ceramics-monthly/ceramic-art-and-artists/ceramic-artists/steve-hansens-trojan-vessels/
... Steve Hansen takes snippets of text and bits of images we recognize from advertising, and combines them in ways that tell additional stories. Beyond evoking the nostalgia of Route 66, Hansen’s works ask that we consider a social issue such as our appropriation of Native American icons and phrases (“Indiana Indian”), or artificial stereotypes of females in society (“Rosie Hooters”).Source: http://www.functionart.com/Press0407/Context.html
About the artist Steve Hansen at Clayakar Gallery
About the artist Steve Hansen at The Artisan's Bench Gallery
Posted December 13, 2020
Announced February 2022
January 2021
May 2021
Vocabulary:
Vocabulary:
Recontextualize
Garish
Derogatory
Sepia tone
Definitions:
Definitions:
Anti-Racist: a person who opposes racism and promotes racial tolerance.
Bias: favoring or showing prejudice towards certain people or ideas.
BIPOC: Black, Indigenous and People of Color.
Cultural Appropriation: inappropriately and/or incorrectly using or taking advantage of, or claiming ownership and rights to use another culture's capital and patrimony; such as fashion, trends, iconography, traditional art, ceremonies, etc.
False Narrative: a story that you perceive as being true but has little basis in reality, this perception can be due to insufficient or inaccurate information or to insufficient or inaccurate assessment.
NBIPOC: Non-Black Indigenous People of Color
Person of color: a person who is not white or of European parentage.
Stereotype: a category or group that we put people into (thinking a certain type of person or thing acts/thinks/looks a certain way).
Source: https://www.antiracistartteachers.org/home
Standards:
Standards:
Responding:
Anchor Standard 7: Perceive and analyze artistic work.
Anchor Standard 8: Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work.
Anchor Standard 9: Apply criteria to evaluate artistic work.
Connecting:
Anchor Standard 11: Relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural, and historical context to deepen understanding.
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