Tribalpedia

Powwow  Pop Art’ and Perseverance

Roger Sosakete Perkins, left, and his cousin Jack Martin sit in front of Sosakete Perkins’ Faith Keeper. (Photo courtesy of Sosakete Perkins)

By Nanette Deetz, ICT

“Roger Sosakete Perkins, Mohawk, opens about his unique style, plus struggles he and other artists are facing during the pandemic.

Out of the hundreds of paintings Roger Sosakete Perkins has created, “Faith Keeper” is among his favorites. In the Mohawk tradition, the faith keeper’s job is to ensure the tribe’s young people learn its songs, dances and culture, and to find and encourage their hidden gifts…The pandemic has been hard for artists, especially those like Sosakete Perkins in the highly competitive and expensive San Francisco Bay Area.

-Bear Greeting- digital collage printed on canvas (Courtesy of R. Sosakete Perkins)

The artist best-known for his vivid “Powwow Pop Art” style — in which he “reclaims” old images of Native Americans that were once used in advertising — has kept working, creating new pieces that reflect his concern. But it hasn’t been easy.

Contemporary Sitting Bull digital collage painting printed on canvas. (Courtesy of Roger Sosakete Perkins)

He recently hung 20 paintings for an exhibit at a downtown Oakland, California, property management company.

‘It is a beautiful space, but no one will show up,’ he said…’So many of our families are now suffering terribly from unemployment, lack of food for elders, lack of computers for kids in school who need them in order to study from home,’ he said. ‘This area is one of the most expensive areas in the U.S. in which to live, so many of us are in survival mode. We need our community centers, health centers, and powwows to help us all survive and thrive.’

-Indn Star Wars- digital collage printed on canvas (Courtesy of R. Sosakete Perkins)

Sosakete Perkins graduated from the American Indian Institute of Arts, and relocated to Northern California in 2006. 

In 2013, he graduated from Berkeley City College after studying digital arts with an instructor who challenged students to literally create their own art movements.

That’s where he achieved his unique Powwow Pop Art style, which incorporates painting with vintage photos.

‘I use lots of imagery from companies and corporations who have used Native American images in order to sell their products,’ he said. ‘Basically, I am reclaiming our images that they expropriated without our permission, and reframing them in my own way.’

Sosakete Perkins’ artwork can be viewed on his Facebook page

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Cree Artist Kent Monkman Takes Over The Met’s Great Hall

Starting Thursday (December 19) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Great Hall, two monumental paintings by Toronto’s Fisher River Cree Nation artist Kent Monkman will be on display, The Met announced. The inaugural Great Hall Commission, titled “mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People),” joins the New York City cultural institution’s new series of contemporary art commissions. 

“mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People)” will be on display through April 9, 2020.

Mr. Monkman’s “Resurgence of the People,” from 2019, references art history, from “Washington Crossing the Delaware” to Delacroix’s “The Natchez.”

Closeup- Mr. Monkman’s “Resurgence of the People,” from 2019, references art history, from “Washington Crossing the Delaware” to Delacroix’s “The Natchez.”

“I became very interested in European painting when I realized that there was an opportunity to paint Indigenous histories and experiences and authorize them into this art history that had pretty much neglected our perspectives.” Kent Monkman

Monkman, whose paintings, films and performances reimagine Western European and American art history, explores themes of colonization, loss, resilience and sexuality through Indigenous experiences. Both paintings, “Welcoming the Newcomers” and “Resurgence of the People,” feature Monkman’s gender-fluid alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, whom The Met wrote appeared in his work “as a time-traveling, shape-shifting, supernatural being who reverses the colonial gaze to challenge received notions of history and Indigenous peoples.”

Kent Monkman’s painting “Welcoming the Newcomers” in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Credit: Kent Monkman

To learn more about how Monkman uses art to tell indigenous stories, listen to the interview below, courtesy of The Met:

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Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting

National Museum of the American Indian

November 16, 2019–Fall 2021

New York, NY

“Since 1940, many Native artists have pushed, pressed, and expanded beyond narrow, market-driven definitions of American Indian art. Drawing from the National Museum of the American Indian’s rich permanent collection, Stretching the Canvas presents nearly 40 paintings that transcend, represent, or subvert conventional ideas of authenticity.”

Tony Abeyta (navajo, b. 1965) Three Chanters, oil and mixed media on canvas

Jeffrey Gibson- In Such Times.

Acee Blue Eagle, Shield Dancer.

Artist- Judith Lowery

Dick West (1912–1996, Southern Cheyenne), Spatial Whorl, 1949–1950. Oil on canvas. Gift of Dwight D. Saunders, 2004. (26:5102)

G Peter Jemison Artist

Some Featured Artists:

Tony Abeyta (Navajo, b. 1965)

Rick Bartow (Mad River Wiyot, 1946–2016)

Acee Blue Eagle (Muscogee [Creek]/Pawnee, 1909–1959)

Julie Buffalohead (Ponca, b. 1972)

Woody Crumbo (Potawatomi, 1912–1989)

Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee, b. 1972)*

Joe Hilario Herrera (Cochiti Pueblo, 1920–2001)

G. Peter Jemison (Seneca, b. 1945)*

Fred Kabotie (Hopi Pueblo, 1900–1986)

Dick West (Southern Cheyenne, 1912–1996)

*Works by these artists will be featured in later phases of the exhibition.

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‘Urban Indian: Native New York Now’

A new exhibit is raising the volume on New York City’s Native American voices.

September 27, 2019-February 15,  2020

To help bring the city’s indigenous Americans to the forefront,the Museum of the City of New York presents “Urban Indian: Native New York Now.” On display from Friday through Feb. 15, 2020 the exhibit offers a compilation of contemporary art, documentaries and community memorabilia meant to provide insight on what it means to be part of indigenous tradition in a fast-moving metropolis.

Signal, featuring Wampum Message of Peace by G. Peter Jemison (1997) and Mel Chin. Photo- Rob Wilson. Courtesy of MCNY.

Jason Lujan of the Chiricahua Apache nation in Texas co-curated the exhibit with Rebecca Hayes Jacobs, a Mellon postdoctoral curatorial fellow at the museum.

For Lujan, the exhibit is a way to highlight the voices of Native American New Yorkers, of which more than 100,000 thousand identified in the 2010 United States Census, whom he has come to know personally and who he feels represent the life of native people in the city.

If We Could Push The Towers Back Into The Sky, by Steven Deo, is among works on display as part of Urban Indian.

Out of the collection of various designs, historical videos, activism pieces, quilts, and publications — all created by or about Native Americans of New York — one of the most prominent pieces for Lujan was created by artist Steven Deo. The framed piece is the front page of The New York Times from Sept. 12, 2001, with the headline “U.S. attacked,” seemingly being pushed up by photographed hands in the shape of the Twin Towers. At the bottom of the piece is the phrase, “If we could push the towers back into the sky” written in red.

Pena Bonita, Hanging Out on Iroquois and Algonquin Trails, 2015. Courtesy of MCNY

The exhibit is opening in coordination with the 50th anniversary of American Indian Community House, a New York City-based nonprofit that seeks to improve the well-being of Native Americans and better societal understanding of indigenous cultures.

Along with “Urban Indian,” the museum will host events with American Indian Community House throughout the fall. There will be a Native American heritage celebration on Oct. 13 and a conversation on Nov. 5 with Native American New Yorkers who were born and raised in Brooklyn.

For more information visit:

The Museum of the City of New York

mcny.org

DATES

September 27,2019 -February 15,2020

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ZIIBAASKA’ IGANAGOODAY: THE JINGLE DRESS AT 100 EXHIBIT

April 3, 2019 – October 31, 2020

MILLE LACS Indian Museum and Trading Post

Jingle Dress Exibition-2019. Photo: Larissa Nez

ABOUT

The global influenza epidemic that killed millions of people worldwide in 1918-19, including thousands of North American Indians and Alaska Natives, was the tragic inspiration behind a revolutionary new tradition of healing that emerged in Ojibwe communities of the United States and Canada, the jingle dress dance. Through photographs, oral tradition, and a display of jingle dresses from the MNHS collections, visitors will learn about the jingle dress dance and how its origin can be traced to the Mille Lacs Ojibwe. The exhibit commemorates the epidemic and the 100th anniversary of the jingle dress dance. It was developed in partnership with the University of Minnesota Department of American Studies and the Mille Lacs Ojibwe community.

Jingle Dress exhibition.

Immerse yourself in the proud and tumultuous history of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.

Journey through the story of the band, from the time of their settlement in Northern Minnesota, through a period of treaties made and broken, and up to the present. The museum illustrates the history of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and the contemporary issues that surround them. To emphasize the continuing importance of language in contemporary Ojibwe culture, exhibit text incorporates both Ojibwe and English. The displays feature arts and crafts of the Ojibwe people, as well as puzzles, loom beading activities, and an interactive Ojibwe language game for kids.  

The museum is open to the general public April through October.

For more information visit:

 MILLE LACS Indian Museum and Trading Post

DATES

April 3, 2019 – October 31, 2020

RATES

Included with $6-10 museum admission/MNHS and Mille Lacs Band members free

Jeffrey Veregge: Of Gods and Heroes

New York, NY

Jeffrey Veregge, Mysterious Planet, 2017. Courtesy of Jeffrey Veregge.

This exhibition will feature a new narrative creation by the Salish artist known for his bold blend of Northwest Coast form line and pop-culture figures. This site-specific work will include an epic battle between Marvel characters and aliens invading the streets of New York City.

Taíno Perseverance  NYC exhibit at National Museum of the American Indian

Taino Puerto Rican Indians in modern day.

“The Indigenous peoples of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean are not extinct and they never were. ‘Todavía estamos aquí (we are still here)’: this is the powerful message of the modern Taíno movement and the foundation of “Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean,” a new exhibition presented by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Smithsonian Latino Center.

“The term Taíno most directly refers to the diverse Arawak-speaking peoples of the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico) and their descendants.

Cubans reclaim their Taino Indian heritage. Smithsonian Magazine.

Though the Indigenous peoples’ numbers greatly dwindled upon contact with European colonizers, they survived disease, enslavement and brutality. Currently, a Native heritage movement involving Taíno descendants is growing throughout the Greater Antilles and in diasporic Caribbean communities in the United States, such as the region around New York City.

The Moxum family have mixed Native roots. Mr. Norman Moxum is of Arawak-descent, and his wife, Yolanda Moxum, comes from a Miskito community in Honduras. Photo Credit- John Homiak.

These diverse groups have established robust networks that continue the proud legacies of their Native ancestors, and “Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean” provides a framework for understanding the growth of this movement in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and the United States.”

The exhibition is presented in English and Spanish 

“Taíno: Native Heritage and Identity in the Caribbean” begins with an overview of Taíno cultures before European contact, where visitors encounter emblematic objects associated with aspects of Native political and spiritual life that would drastically change after European colonization. One particularly important series of objects identified in the exhibition are cemís. Considered living objects by Taíno peoples, cemís are stone, wooden or cotton artifacts used in ceremony to connect with deities, ancestors and forces of nature. In all, 31 objects from the museum’s collection serve as focal points for the exhibition, 19 of which date back to pre-contact (ca. A.D. 800–1500). The exhibition demonstrates how archaeological objects from the ancestral past inform and inspire the present-day Taíno movement.”

For more information, including associated events, visit The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian