First American Art Magazine No. 10, Spring 2016

Editor’s Greetings A FRIEND OF MINE, A. F. McILROY, once said, “If it’s written, it’s wrong.” I take his statement as a note of caution. With storytelling, oral history, conversation, or public speaking, the discussion is alive and fluid and can take new directions based on response. Writing is a commitment; the words cannot be taken back. On the other hand, writing spans years and even centuries and can cross the planet. The corpus of writing about Native art is growing at a brisk pace with multiple perspectives represented, but we know that much of Native art history has never been written down, and much that has been recorded should be questioned for accuracy and bias. In academia, a reader is expected to read critically and question the material and the sources. When writers are hurried and copy whatever has been previously written without fact checking, mistakes are repeated and amplified. A writer incorrectly said that T. C. Cannon was Choctaw as well as Kiowa and Caddo, and this mistake entered the literature. James Luna was erroneously described as a drug and alcohol counselor, and that gaffe snowballed. “I have to say there is fear on our part as artists as how we are seen,” writes Luna.1 Allowing yourself to be interviewed, reviewed, or otherwise discussed in print takes a leap of faith. The writers and editors at First American Art Magazine strive to be worthy of that faith. Journalists don’t always regard arts journalism as the most serious genre, but for us—the artists, collectors, scholars, curators, and other art professionals—this is our lifeblood, and we take it extremely seriously. We strive to follow the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics and cite our sources, fact check, admit errors (hence, the “Errata” section, a necessary component of all serious periodicals), and keep advertising and editorial content separate. Avoiding conflicts of interest is a greater challenge, since the Indigenous American art world is an intimate community, and many of us wear many hats: writer, artist, curator, collector, and much more. We created “reports” as an alternative to reviews, for when the author is involved in the event being discussed in some manner. The Seven Directions column reflects the authors’ personal opinions, so we encourage them to share projects in which they are involved. No one can be truly objective, but we try and remember to keep at the bigger picture in mind. At First American Art Magazine, we take our commitments to truth seriously and strive to provide you, our reader, with an independent source for polyvalent perspectives of the Native art world guided by honesty, equity, and respect. —America Meredith 1. James Luna, email correspondence with the author, January 12, 2015. 1 0 | WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM Errata In “March of the Land Writers: Unsanctioned Indigenous Street Art Interventions” in FAAM Issue No. 9, the image of the blue, Northwest Coast bear on page 22 was misattributed to Baker and was actually painted by Larissa Healey aka gurltwentythree. In the same issue on page 80 in footnote number 2, Northwestern University was incorrectly listed as Northwest University. Clarification Rachelle Dickenson, curator of Reading the Talk, identifies as British-Irish-Cree. In Matthew Ryan Smith’s review of the show on pages 78 and 79 of FAAM Issue No. 9, we identified her simply as “Cree.” While our writers are encouraged to share any of their ethnic backgrounds they deem appropriate in their biographies, in our articles and reviews we focus on the Indigenous tribal affiliations from the Americas. Exceptions we make are listing nationalities from the Americas and Chicano, Mestizo, and Métis heritage. We list tribal affiliations because these are paramount to this publication’s mission. For the reader who requested “more cowbell,” we’ll do you one better. Unknown Tairona artist, Bell with Feline Deity, ca. 900–1500 CE, gold, Colombia, 2.1 × 1.1 × 1.3 in. Collection of the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, 57.2288 (CC0).

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