First American Art Magazine No. 0, Spring 2013 | Page 9

W Editor’s Greetings elcome to the pilot issue of First American Art Magazine! This is a labor of love and necessity. Many pockets within the Native American art world have amazing dialogue about Indigenous art, but I don’t see the much needed cross-cultural platform for these different conversations. Hopefully, this magazine will hopefully draw more people into the conversation, about Indigenous art, Indigenous cultures, and the issues we all face today through the lens of art. What makes Indigenous art so challenging to write about is exactly what makes it so important. Why the Americas? Too often Native peoples of the Americas are divided by language barriers established by the people that colonized us. For millennia, we interacted and exchanged ideas and practices that span both continents— North and South America—from cultivating maize and tobacco to creating Indigenous language websites. We have a lot to learn from each other. Our histories haven’t stopped. Recently, Native and non-Native people from innumerable countries have acted in solidarity with the Idle No More movement, resisting attempts by the Canadian government to strip Aboriginal peoples of Canada of their sovereign rights. I grew up in the Oklahoman Indian art world; my parents Native art is holistic. It is not were curators and activists. At age separate from daily or ceremonial six, I remember sorting art show life; it’s not on a pedestal— invitations by zip code at the it’s interwoven into our lives, Center of the American Indian. from the dance regalia made by When I was seven, my family relatives to an exhibition space in lived on Bacone College campus a tribal health clinic. While this in Muskogee. I visited Dick makes the art difficult to define, West, Cheyenne artist and art it also keeps art relevant and director, at the Ataloa Lodge. In meaningful in the real world. high school I rebelled against art and actually flunked an art class. Native art is diverse. There Later on, as a bike messenger in are thousands of Indigenous San Francisco, I was starved for tribes, nations, and villages Native cultures, and, while doing in the Americas, who speak deliveries, discovered first the thousands of different languages. Zuni Pueblo’s cooperative gallery To respect Native peoples is on Union Street and then the to respect cultural sovereignty American Indian Contemporary and people’s inherent right to Arts gallery. AICA’s traveling express their own culture, exhibit, Indian Humor, America Meredith, Bringing Harmony into the religion, and worldview. Each convinced me to go to college. I World, 2008, gouache on paper, 21 x 16 in. group has individuals with was considering the Institute of their own perspectives. This American Indian Arts and saw diversity is our strength. It’s a in the show catalog that most of the participating artists had challenge to come to grips with such a dizzying range of attended IAIA. Art can change the course of people’s lives. viewpoints, but too many people have tried to lump us into an undifferentiated stereotypes. We have a right to be ourselves, and, as art writers, the challenge is to allow artists and curators to express their viewpoints. We don’t all agree, and we don’t need to. The world of Indigenous art is richer because of the wide variety of perspectives. Different writers reach different communities. My goal with First American Art Magazine is to put these different communities in touch with each other—sharing information about artists, exhibition