Native Americans, Art and the American Experience

The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is perhaps the most innovative space in Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian collection of museums. Set in an urban landscape the building stands out for its rounded edges, earth tones and flowing stonework. Even the plants and traditional housing structures outside the entrance mark this space as unique as they juxtapose against the buildings, cars and buses of the modern city.  Because of these characteristics, the building tends to draw the visitor in to the space in a spirit of comfort, peace and centeredness.  

At the risk of getting too romantic, it seems the designer wanted to make the visitor feel as though she were entering into the womb of Mother Earth.  Walking into the cave-like entrance symbolized a journey into another world. According to Mircea Eliade, the eternal return begins with a journey to the source (and the center) for most indigenous cultures of the world. This return to the source is necessary to recreate the origin story and thereby perpetuate creation. Indeed, Eliade claims that the center is “the zone of the sacred, the zone of absolute reality” (17) and that “whatever is founded has its foundation at the center of the world” (18). Whether this return to Mother Earth effect at NMAI was deliberate or merely my projection onto this museum, my visit here was enormously moving and subtly profound. Walking from the profane urban street of Washington, D.C. through the cave-like entrance into the cool interior felt like a sacred act. And that was only the beginning.

The Potomac River, with headwaters in both Virginia and West Virginia, has served as an important geographic landmark for hundreds (possibly thousands) of years. The word appears to be the Europeanized form of an originally indigenous term, possibly meaning “the place where people trade.” This suggests its historic role as a meeting place for people, products and ideas going back to the pre-contact era. Since the 17th century the term has evolved from Patawomeke to the Potomac that we know today. Whatever its etymology, the river and its placement below the dome at NMAI is symbolic of several Native American concepts. The dome serves as a reminder of the layers of heaven, not in the European conception of heaven, but in the indigenous notion of the celestial bodies. The celestial archetype is part of the indigenous hierophany, whereby objects become sacred through their part in the act of creation. If creation is happening up there in the heavens with the gods -- and humans imitate it down here on earth -- then human lives have meaning and become real. Or, as Eliade suggests, “reality is a function of the imitation of the celestial architype” (5). Furthermore, the oculus at the dome’s peak leads to the light outside which allows for light, volume, space and atmosphere to permeate the center. The dome – as representation of the center -- placed into context with the flowing river, gives a good visual representation of the indigenous world view. We are just visitors passing this way. We, too, can participate in the eternal return by acknowledging the ascent, flowing through the river of existence, rising above, coiling up to heaven, into the sacred celestial.

The river’s water below the dome also represents something to the indigenous mind. Typically water represents life, but it also suggests the chaos of the primordial. Life comes from it, but order must be imposed on it. Life rises from the depths of the primordial waters, just as the dome rises about the river. The dome, then, represents human construction in an act of recreating the origin story, and it suggests an imposed order on the chaos of the river below. Order triumphs over chaos. This is the ultimate force of the myth of eternal return, and it appears that the design of NMAI seeks to recreate drama. The journey to sacred begins and ends at the center.

Because the architecture and the symbolism of space at NMAI resonated so much for me, I decided to focus on the ways in which architecture is art, particularly in relation to the natural environment or the use of natural elements. The idea here was to explore the ways in which architecture, generalized to be understood as space, was used to present and define content. 

In the newly constructed children’s exhibit on the second floor there is an activity room with lots of tables and chairs set up for children to work on projects. Against one wall of this space appeared a sculpture by Melanie Yazzie entitled Two Minds Meeting (Sharing Thoughts). The sculpture, red painted metal, depicts two humans with their hands outstretched towards each other. They are smiling, and their happy essence coils down into the center of each figure’s being. Overall there is positive energy and movement in their stance. A bar sits across the top of the sculpture, binding the two figures together. Four coyote appear in various poses on the bar, some standing on four legs, others sitting on their hunches. The number four in many indigenous societies generally is known as an acknowledgement of the four cardinal directions and the four seasons. For Native Americans in the Southwest, the number four also associates with the types of corn grown in the region. Coyote is typically known as the trickster, but also the force of energy which gives life. Coyote keeps humans humble while simultaneously leading humans to greater wisdom. The four coyotes, with all their numerical and spiritual symbolism, sit on top of the humans’ heads. They are above humans, just as the sun, moon and stars are above humans. Yet the bar connects the coyotes to the humans, and thereby connecting the humans to each other. Finally, the sculpture’s use of space and light conveys color in a symbolic way. The sculpture is red. The wall behind it is white. The shadow projected onto the wall is blue. Thus, although Yazzie has produced a work of art with traditional Native American elements such as coyote and the number four, she has also integrated the red, white and blue colors of the American flag into the work through the use of space and shadow. Space determines content and renders meaning in this art.

Another display which employed the use of space to enhance meaning at NMAI was entitled Projectile Points. Here, the museum curator arranged over 1,000 arrow and spear points in a clear glass case. What makes this display visually interesting is the way in which the projectile points are arranged to appear to flow like water, or as schools of fish in a river. The arrangement of the objects is intentionally drawing the viewer’s mind to the river motif on the ground floor of the museum. 

On close inspection of this exhibit, one can see remains of wood embedded in the obsidian and rock. Obviously, these were tools used for hunting and fishing. Displayed in artistic swirls, the viewer entertains a rhetorical question: Can tools be art? The answer is perplexing. Perhaps not in isolation since individually the stones are dark and light, black and orange, colors of the natural world and thus not typically representative of art. Rather, they are pieces of a much larger whole. Yet when viewed 

from several steps away, the whole becomes apparent. The tools – by being placed in the display as schools of fish -- become the prey they were intended to hunt. Thus in the collective, the spear points become paths to meaning and interpretation. The implications are quite profound. Individually the objects are practical items produced for survival in a pre-contact world. Today, they are collectively placed out of context and in an arranged fashion to render new meaning – indeed, an inverted meaning to their original use. 

This kind of new meaning through the use of space is also apparent in the Horse Exhibit at NMAI. With its rounded walls, dim light, chanted sound track this gallery attempted to bring the viewer into the realm of the Great Plains. On one wall, the words of Black Elk appeared, like wind blowing across the plains. Overall this gallery contains a beautiful collection of beaded bags, wooden saddles, woven blankets, and leather bridles. The space flows with objects of Indian survival and identity. Yet the items are placed in a dimly lit museum, no longer useful as they were originally intended. The objects, like the people who used them, have been appropriated and set into contrived spaces: museums for the things and reservations for the people. Just as the spear points were placed in a contrived context to render new meaning, the objects in this gallery also become transformed into items to be viewed rather than tools to be used. Their placement in space – the way in which the architecture of space is employed – again draws the viewer’s mind to the question of tools in relation to the sacred and profane. Tools for survival (in their traditional context) are part of a sacred act. Yet the act is also profane, part of the daily habits of a pre-contact society. Furthermore, in this exhibit the objects are part of a museum exhibition, considered sacred through their display. Yet they are no longer tools, thus made profane. It’s a conundrum of the soul made manifest through objects place in this space.

The fourth exhibit I encountered was titled Wixarika: The World of Our Ancestors. Within the gallery, a small circular room contained several video monitors along the walls. Each monitor played a different video about encounters between Native Americans and whites in the post-contact era. In the center of the space was a circle, dissected into four parts corresponding to colors, cardinal directions and seasons. The symbolism of this space was profound. In short, the Center was surrounded by the story of loss and survival for indigenous people. The Center was intact with its traditional symbols of color, direction and season but it was surrounded by a storm of destructive intervention. Indeed, one of the videos was called The Storm: Guns, Bibles and Governments, which depicted the ways in which Anglos used those objects to mount a storm of genocide against Native Americans. Standing near the Center of the exhibit, I scribbled lines from the video into my notes: “the storm is an opportunity; we have learned much,” claimed the narrator. A few moments later, the narrator’s voice suggested that the storm “offers life and death, hope and despair.” From this I gathered that the space represents indigenous reality today. The Center has always been. The Center will continue to be. Surrounding the Center a storm has raged for the past 500 years, bringing with it “death” and “despair”. Yet, Indians today view the destruction as a part of their story, from which they must learn something. That is the “life” and “hope” that they see. The chaos of the storm must be endured and learned from, in order for traditional societies to once again cyclically return to the sacred by re-balancing with the Center. Indeed, “by conferring a cyclic direction upon time, annuls its irreversibility. Everything begins over again at its commencement every instant. The past is but a prefiguration of the future. No event is irreversible and no transformation is final” (Eliade 89). This is how native people find hope in the midst of despair. Yes, it’s likely that 90% of the pre-contact population was destroyed through disease and warfare. But still, “nothing new happens in the world, for everything is but the repetition of the same primordial achetypes” (90) and the “death of the individual and the death of humanity are alike necessary for their regeneration” (88). Put simply, something must die in order for something else to live. This is the eternal return. And thus my four part analysis of the National Museum of the American Indian concludes, appropriately enough, at the Center.

Works Cited
Eliade, Mircea. The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Princeton University Press, 1974 (reprint).

The Renwick Gallery is a delightful example of 19th century architecture. Set at an angle across from the White House, the Renwick stands out in this D.C. neighborhood known for its sleek, modern construction and contemporary designs. In many ways, the interior is even more delightful than the exterior. A grand staircase with red carpeted steps sweeps up to the graceful landing. In the main exhibition space the 15 foot, arched doorways and 40 foot high ceilings welcome the visitor. In Louvre-like fashion, the walls are arrayed with paintings, mostly from the second half of the 19th century. The collection in this gallery is comprised of lots of examples of romanticism and realism, with a fair smattering of American impressionism thrown in for variety.

Romanticism defines 19th century art and a good presentation of it can be found in J. Francis Murphy’s image entitled The Path to the Village (1882). Featuring a landscape and skyscape scene with a path leading to a quaint country village in the background, the painting employs a lighting technique reminiscent of John Constable’s clouds, yet also hints at Claude Monet’s impressionist work of late century through the dabs of green color in the foreground. Its emphasis on the beauty of the land -- rather than on the power of humans -- captures the essence of the romantic spirit and makes this image Best of Show in my opinion.

 A representative sample of realism can be found in the work of Howard Russell Butler entitled The Seaweed Gatherers (1886). As a style, realism can best be understood as attempting to depict the subject matter realistically, rather than emotionally. Details are sharp and clear. Typically the subject matter is a person of average social standing. Realism seldom focuses on royalty or other elites in society. Butler’s work is no exception. The image features French peasants on the beach with their work horses. The scene is successfully rendered with ample detail of the sand, the horses and the sunrise. It’s a delicious image conveying the simple life of French peasants at their work.

Homer Dodge Martin rounds out our survey of the Renwick’s collection. Martin, a self taught artist loosely associated with the Hudson River school, presents us with a good example of American impressionism in Evening on the Thames (1876). Ironically this image – like Butler’s Seaweed Gatherers – features a foreign subject matter, this time set in England rather than France. Stylistically, impressionism seeks to capture the essence of the subject rather than the practical details of it. The goal of impressionist art is fundamentally opposite that of realism, and this is apparent in Martin’s work. In this instance the beach scene is entirely about colors and shapes rather than people and animals.  This shift out of romanticism and into impressionism can best be explained by Martin’s exposure to plein air artists while he visited France. Regardless of the influence, the result is a delightful contrast to the romanticism and realism so typical of American artists.

After spending the afternoon at the Renwick, I headed over to the Arts and Industries Building only to find it closed for renovations. Perhaps you can imagine my disappointment since the first two museums were so meaningful to me.

Adjacent to the Arts and Industries Building is a sleek grey, low slung and very modern building. Inside, in the most eclectic museum space I have ever experienced, were four subterranean floors of art from Africa. Indeed, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art (NMAA) turned out to be a delightful Plan B. Moving through the various galleries, I was hoping for a connection to the American experience so as to tie the day together. Thankfully I think I found it in the exhibition of Ousmane Sow, a Senegalese sculptor who produced a 35 piece ensemble of the Battle of Little Big Horn. Sow, working with mud, hair, blood and stone uses sculpture to search for what he calls “emotionalist theater” in his larger-than-life size presentations. In a helpful video that ran on a loop next to the exhibition space, Sow explained his interest in portraying this historic encounter between the Plains Indians of the American West and the white soldiers of the U.S. Army. Set in 1876, the Battle of Little Big Horn (also known as Custer’s Last Stand) served as a colossal clash of civilizations. Sow captured that conflict – of men, of muscle, of mindset – by depicting men fighting, men in motion, men on horses – in graphic detail. Since I had never heard of Ousmane Sow before seeing this exhibit, I was happy to engage with his powerful artistry and reflect on the ideas he was presenting in this work.

Importantly it served as a nice juxtaposition to the genteel art I had just viewed in the Renwick. Indeed this victory for the Plains Indians over Custer took place in 1876, the same year as Martin was exploring the Thames through the “new” style known as impressionism. The art of each serves as counterpoint to the other. Sow, through his use of mud and blood, presents a gritty version of Indians fighting for survival. Martin, on the other hand, uses the standard oil on canvas to convey light and color on the well ordered Thames.  Sow’s work also subtly extends the conceptual space of the NMAI by evoking the “storm” of Indian-Anglo conflict. In this instance, the Indians won in what Sow describes as “one of their most resounding victories.” Custer was, after all, killed in this battle. Unfortunately for the Plains Indians, the Battle of Little Big Horn was not the end of the storm. After an intermission of 14 years, the U.S. Army returned to the region to inflict (according to many in the Native community) vengeance on the Sioux for killing their war hero. The event has been immortalized through the writings of Dee Brown in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, depicting the epic massacre of 1890. Ironically it takes a sculptor from Senegal to re-imagine the events and bring them back into focus for the American public three floors below ground level at the NMAA.