Painting Culture: Art and Ethnography at a School for Native Americans

Abstract

During the mid-twentieth century in Oklahoma, young artists at a school for American Indians selectively used e accounts of Native American cultures written by anthropologists to enhance their artistic representations. While became an important means of preserving knowledge of tribal cultures, cultural preservation took on a larger sig school's goal to train professional Indian artists whose livelihoods depended on the patronage of private collecto Art students utilized anthropological accounts of Indian cultures to help them succeed, but they and their teache rejected anthropologists as final authorities on their cultures. Through their participation in art corn petitions th specific representations of Indianness, their use of ethnography, and their rejection of anthropologists, young In new indigenous identities.

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“…For Indigenous people, art is a way of sharing traditional crafts, dance, and storytelling (Neuman, 2006). Beyond the visual arts, from an Indigenous perspective, literature encompasses the oral tradition of storytelling, singing, dancing, symbols, handcrafted artwork and ceremonies (Snively & Williams, 2008).…”

Anthropology with a Paintbrush: Naturalist–Realist Painting as “Thick Description”

“…There are many other examples of this kind of “ethnographic” painting, often to be found hanging in natural history and ethnology museums. They are ethnographic to the extent that they aimed to “record” (Neuman :188), document, and portray “other peoples and cultures,” and we can give these painters credit for having produced their artwork from being “out there” with their subjects and from their exhaustive research in preparation for the final picture. However, as we know, the definition and philosophy of ethnography have undergone a serious critical and self‐reflexive hammering, and what we understand it to be today is quite different from what it was in the time of Catlin and Sorolla, when colonialism and a certain Western‐centric and racist positivism was still openly in force.…”

Using Art-Based Ways of Knowing to Explore Leadership and Identity With Native American Deaf Women

“…For Indigenous people, art is a way of sharing traditional crafts, dance, and storytelling (Neuman, 2006). Beyond the visual arts, from an Indigenous perspective, literature encompasses the oral tradition of storytelling, singing, dancing, symbols, handcrafted artwork and ceremonies (Snively & Williams, 2008).…”