Dr. McMaster at the podium

A few weeks ago I made my way down to the National Museum of the American Indian where First Nations scholar and art curator Gerald McMaster reenacted the multi media presentation originally commission by the trailblazing imagineNATIVE film and media arts festival out of Ontario Canada. I missed it back in Toronto so I was pleased to see he was re-presenting here in New York City.

A still from Nanook of the North

A still from a Zacharias Kunuk film

<
The presentation was an historical overview that spoke to the performative, and quite perverse, nature of reenacting indigenous history for commercial entertainment. McMaster took us through the careerist strategies of painter George Caitlin, who recreated his many Indian paintings with a live show he took on the road to Europe, and William F 'Buffalo Bill' Cody, who product the long lasting 'Wild West' frontier show and wisely employed the likes of real live 'wild Indians of the Plains' such as Sitting Bull and many others who actually participated in Custer's demise. To be sure Buffalo Bill made heap big bucks off his all-Indian cast. The most pressing point McMaster's made, however, was that this reenacting of Indian history began in earnest at a time when the native people of North America were suffering under relocation and education policies that would see them further dispossessed of their tribal identities, and he pondered as to why the Native people would want to participate in what amounted to a parody at all.It was a point well made by his use of archival film footage of two seminal works that have echoed throughout the years: Edward S Curtis' In the Land of the Headhunters and Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. He then juxtaposed the way in which contemporary indigenous artists have mined reenactments to humorous, and sometimes histrionic effect, with non-Native contemporary artists who seem merely to (un)ironically, certainly not humorously, recreate genre portraits and landscape made famous by Caitlin and Curtis. To do so he used Native artists such as Kent Monkman, Dustinn Craig, Terrance Houle, and James Luna contrasted with Andrea Robbins and Max Bescher, Orlan, and Edie Winogrand. If you can tell I am no fan of the non-Native artists listed, except Orlan’s plastic surgery series - please do Google her and see why for yourself!

Though the auditorium was far from packed it was certainly a decent turn out. I was there not only to report for NAICA’s Longviews blog, but also to write for Current - the New York Foundation for the Art’s online magazine. You can check that essay out here: NYFA Current

If you are an artist living in New York state it is a seminal resource for grants, job and exhibition opportunities. You should become a member, which is free, by registering online.