Textiles’ place in the world of Western art has, at times, been tenuous. Woven works that have both a functional purpose and a presence as an art form have historically been devalued in comparison to European painting and sculpture, according to Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA) Curator Casey Braun.

In one of the museum’s newest exhibitions, “Threads: Artists Weave Their Worlds,” Braun places textiles front and center, celebrating their value both as practical objects and works of art and challenging hegemonic narratives of separation between the two.

“A big part of my goal as a curator is to think about historically how and why [these distinctions] were upheld in museums, what types of assumptions were underneath them, and then again, how can we start to question them and right that balance,” Braun said.

Braun hopes that textiles’ presence in everyday life will make the exhibition more approachable for museumgoers while also allowing visitors to reframe their understanding of cloth and woven works as cultural—as well as artistic—objects.

“Textiles are inherently accessible as a medium,” Braun said. “There’s this universality to cloth or to weaving baskets, but also an incredibly rich and diverse array of sort of specific cultural expressions that are very much mediated by the places and time periods in which people were working.”

Indigenous pieces play a prominent role in “Threads,” reflecting the centrality of woven work in Native American artistic traditions as well as in global Indigenous art. Prior to her appointment as Curator of the BCMA, Braun was associate curator of global Indigenous art at the University of Kansas’ Spencer Museum of Art.

Braun said that while the exhibition was not intentionally designed to spotlight these art forms, her curatorial background as well as the breadth of the BCMA’s collection of work from Indigenous artists led to the accentuation of work from Indigenous artists in “Threads.”

“When I came [to Bowdoin] and started going through the process of discovering what was in Bowdoin’s collection … I started noticing that there was this strong thread that focused on Indigenous art,” Braun said.

Braun emphasized that “Threads” intentionally brings different artistic practices and contexts into conversation with one another.

“One of the ways that we can start pushing the boundaries between Indigenous and Western art or art and craft is by placing pieces from those different traditions into dialogue with one another,” Braun said.

“Threads” features Choctaw-Cherokee-American artist Jeffrey Gibson’s mixed media work “The Anthropophagic Effect, Garment no. 3.” Featured in last spring’s BCMA exhibition,  “Turn of Phrase,” Gibson’s work draws on a variety of modern textile materials to construct a tunic modeled after those worn by early practitioners of the Ghost Dance, a Native American ceremony that declares resistance against oppression and genocide.

The BCMA also commissioned work by Penobscot basketmaker Theresa Secord for “Threads.” Secord gave an artist’s talk on her own work and the basketmaking tradition last night. As the executive director of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Society (MIBS), Secord has dedicated much of her life to ensuring that the art form lives on.

“It’s just such an inherent part of our ancestry here in Maine as Wabanaki people,” Secord said in an interview with the Orient. “This is something that is really tangible and visible. It’s a really strong cultural expression of who we are, and that’s a good reason to pass it on.”

Secord and the MIBS have found success in their efforts to revitalize the medium. Since the society’s founding in 1993, the average member’s age has lowered from 63 to 40, and the number of basketmakers in the group has increased from 55 to around 150 today.

Secord is renowned for her own basketmaking, with her work on display at institutions like the Portland Museum of Art and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Over the course of her 35-year career, she has moved from more traditional baskets to baskets that, while still rooted in Penobscot practice, take on contemporary designs and contemporary ecological issues.

“Pasokos Basket,” Secord’s commissioned piece in “Threads,” is modeled after a sturgeon and is a testament to Secord’s balance of heritage and ecology.

“I wanted to show the ancestral presence of the Penobscots hunting this fish using birch bark torches…. So, this basket really commemorates the return of the Atlantic sturgeon to the Penobscot river,” Secord said during her lecture.

“Threads” opened last month in the Shaw Ruddock Gallery on the BCMA’s upper level alongside “Currents: Art Since 1875,”which adjoins it in the Boyd Gallery. Both exhibitions highlight modern and contemporary art: Braun said that “Currents” is intended as a semi-permanent installation of the BCMA’s collection of contemporary art, whereas exhibitions in the adjoining gallery—the first of which is “Threads”—will focus on specific aspects of contemporary art in conversation with the art and themes explored in “Currents.”

“This is the first iteration of that new configuration and rethinking of the upstairs museum galleries where [the Boyd and Shaw Ruddock galleries] really are dedicated to late-19th, 20th and 21st century works of art,” Braun said.

While “Threads” is scheduled to run until October 2024, Braun said that some pieces in the exhibition will be swapped with other works in the spring to give less durable works a reprieve.

“You can look forward to works of art that will be on view for the second half of the exhibition’s run,” she said. “I hope that those will spark new conversations.”

Owensboro native and award-winning saxophonist Chuck Johnson, who is now based in Los Angeles, will perform in Evansville on November 5.

The Evansville Jazz Society and the University of Evansville will present Johnson on their Jazz Guest Artist Concert Series in the newly renovated Wheeler Concert Hall on November 5 at 4 p.m. Tickets for the performance are $15 for adults, $5 for students, and $10 for members of the Evansville Jazz Society. They can be purchased by calling 812-488-2754.

Johnson has been a band leader and performer for 37+ years. 

“His distinctive saxophone voice was established by fusing the hard bop East Coast aesthetic with his unique West Coast musical experiences,” according to a release about the performance. “He is recognized for bringing back the soul that is missing in much of today’s modern mainstream material.  Johnson’s vast breadth of knowledge derives from a diversity of experiences throughout the length of his career as a saxophonist and band leader. He strives to introduce, share, and uplift listeners with his joy through a rich and vast repertoire that is a melting pot of straight-ahead jazz, Afro-Cuban, bebop, Latin, swing, bossa nova, blues, and funk.” 

Fluent in performing on all the saxophones (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone) and flute, Johnson’s inspiration came from saxophonists in possession of a sonorous sound such as Dexter Gordon, Stanley Turrentine, Grover Washington, Jr., and Cannonball Adderley.

“I love introducing and sharing our great American art form with others,” Johnson said. “That is at the core of what keeps me motivated to put this great music in front of a listening audience.”

Johnson is a 1980 alum of the University of Evansville, saying that is where he was first introduced to the saxophone. He was instrumental in reinstituting the jazz format at radio station WUEV-FM, where he had the objective of introducing both popular and obscure jazz to the audience.

After his UE education, Johnson was brought on board by the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, where he initiated their first student chapter of The International Association of Jazz Educators. He has since furthered his horizons by completing the Professional Instrumental Program at the Grove School of Music in Los Angeles. He has also been active with the International Association of Jazz Appreciation, served on the board of the Jazz Heritage Foundation, and served on the national alumni board for Interlochen Center for the Arts.

Johnson has appeared in concert with such artists as The Temptations, Four Tops, Buddy Collette, Gerryck King, Bobby Womack, Carl Burnett, James Leary, and Oakdale Saxophone Quartet.

Tonight is First Friday in Wichita and it is the first of two First Fridays for the holiday season. Now is the chance to buy art as gifts for the holidays, add to your collection, or begin a new collection all together.

Art House 310 features the works of Alexandria Olthoff and Josh Johnico. Olthoff’s work involves mixed media pet portraits and various other animals, while Johnico, of Choctaw and Hopi heritage, paints native art to keep Native American history alive.

Mulberry Art Gallery features “The Color Walls: Peeling Back the Layers”, an “exhibit of vulnerable unique moments of expression”, with paintings by Brittany Stewart and photographs by Alan Garrett.

Harvester Arts will host Trish Higgins Fine Art and the exhibit “Mostly Small Works”. The exhibit features work by Aaron Brown, Bob Burdette, Sid Garrison, Ann Resnick, and Debra Smith. But be aware—this is a daytime show that runs from 1-5pm today and again 1-5pm this Saturday.

And Reuben Saunders Gallery opens tonight with “Big Ideas, Small Wonders” a group show with 32 artists participating. The artists have created “small and affordable masterpieces.” Some of the artists included are: James Borger, Bruce VanOsdel, Marc Bosworth, Dallas Dodge, Marko Fields, Rebecca Hoyer, Jim Simpson, Mike Miller, Kathleen Shanahan, Michael Jilg, Katrina Swanson, and many more.

Get out and get with it as works from each of these shows is sure to go quickly.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you tonight.

Details

By Native News Online Staff

November 02, 2023

This week in Indian Country, there are plenty of events for everyone to enjoy. From powwows to Indigenous People’s Day celebrations to California’s Indigenous Film Festival, here is Native News Online’s weekly round-up of arts, culture, and entertainment offerings around Indian Country.

Native American Festival and Powwow
Stone Mountain, GA
November 2, 2023

Featuring dance, music, authentic craft demonstrations, cooking traditions, storytelling, wildlife presentations and more. Ongoing activities include: a living history tipi village, primitive life skills, interactive demonstrations of local and regional native cultures, dance and drum exhibitions, live music, wildlife, native foods, weaponry, various arts and crafts demonstrated by renowned native artists and much more.

American Indigenous Arts Celebration
Clewiston, FL
November 3, 2023

The American Indigenous Arts Celebration in Big Cypress, a culture extravaganza in the Everglades, will feature Native American arts, crafts, food and live entertainment for everyone. 

Culture Queen Kids Hour: Native American Heritage Month
Washington, DC
November 4, 2023

Grammy-nominated teaching artist Culture Queen cordially invites your royal children to create cultural holidays celebrating the people, milestones, and things that matter most to them through fun, interactive, and engaging music, movement, storytelling, and craft activities.

California’s American Indian & Indigenous Film Festival
Temecula, CA
November 2-4, 2023

In its fifth year, California’s American Indian & Indigenous Film Festival has grown in both size and prestige — the latter thanks to programming that includes the big-budget Western/drama “Hostiles,” a film starring Christian Bale that’s already generating awards buzz. The festival returns to Pechanga Resort & Casino, and due to increased attendance, the entire festival will take place at the resort. 

Choctaw Apache Veterans Day Powwow and Native American Art Festival
Noble, LA
November 3, 2023

This festival is held twice a year and features will include arts and crafts, an art walk, demonstrations and a wild game cook off. All Dancers and guest drums are welcome.  

Native American Heritage: Li’l Feathers and Whisperhawk
Salt Lake City, UT
November 4, 2023

Join the City Library in celebrating Native American Heritage Month with some local talent. Enjoy performances by Granite School District’s youth Powwow group Li’l Feathers, and singer-songwriter Whisperhawk, a local folk/rock performer who is also one of The City Library’s featured HUM artists. Dave John, of KRCL Living the Circle of Life, will join as emcee.

Native American Day
Millsboro, DE
November 4, 2023

The Nanticoke Indian Association, Inc presents Native American Day at the Nanticoke Indian Museum. The celebration includes free admission to the museum as well as featured speaker: Drew Shuptar-Reyvis, museum tours, traditional dance performances, traditional drumming and singing, storytelling, Native American vendors and more.

Etowah Heritage Day
Cartersville, GA
November 4, 2023

Kick-off Native American Heritage Month with a guided tour at Etowah Mounds. Dress for the weather. Tours to the mounds are about 3/8 mile long, go to the top of a six story mound, and can be up to around an hour long, depending on the guest’s questions.

Celebrate Native American Heritage
South Windsor, CT
November 4, 2023

Pull up a log or layout a fur and join Abenaki elder and national storyteller Willow Greene who will bring with her a small, beaded pouch and asks volunteer audience members to reach in and pick out a stone. Since each stone relates to a different story, every one of Willow’s storytelling events is unique. Her stories talk about a variety of subjects, and may include how Gluskabe came into the world, why the sun shines the way it does and why skunk smells so bad. Gather around Nowashe’s central fire pit for this family-friendly event.

Native American Cultural Presentation
Creswell, OR
November 4, 2023

Come join at the Creswell library in honor of Native American Heritage Month, with Deitrich Peters of the Grand Ronde Tribe. Deitrich (Deitz) has graciously agreed to share elements of his regalia and will play flute music, talk about his culture, and answer questions. Bring the whole family. 

Los Angeles Powwow
Los Angeles, CA
November 4, 2023

The United American Indian Involvement (UAII) is gathering people in Los Angeles for a one-day contest powwow. Featuring amazing vendors, artists, musicians, community orgs, and some amazing drums and dancers all highlighting the best of Southern California. All Vendors, Dancers, and Drums are welcome. 

Choctaw Powwow to Open Native American Heritage Month 
Durant, OK
November 3-5, 2023

The 18th Annual Choctaw Powwow is the first event of November’s Native American Heritage Month scheduled for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Regarded as one of the nation’s largest powwows, the event runs at the Choctaw Event Center. Admission to the powwow is free all three days.

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Native News Online is one of the most-read publications covering Indian Country and the news that matters to American Indians, Alaska Natives and other Indigenous people. Reach out to us at [email protected].

Every artist’s perspective is in some way shaped by the people who have surrounded them and the places they’re from. But for sculptor and performance artist Rose B. Simpson, painter, printmaker, sculptor, and collagist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and photographer Jeremy Dennis, the idea of home plays an especially urgent role in their work. All three are enrolled Indigenous American tribal members, and their practices don’t just honor their individual Native histories, cultures, environments, and traditions, they also seek to ignite conversations about historical oppression and the land theft their communities continue to face.

Both Simpson and Smith have had expansive exhibitions at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art this year, symbolizing what is an encouraging yet long-overdue shift in how institutions are showcasing and giving platforms to art made by Indigenous artists.

A member of New Mexico’s Kah’p’oo Owinge tribe, Simpson is best known for her mixed-media sculptures of large-scale beings, which she creates using a traditional hand-coiled method that she learned from her mother, a potter. Five such sculptures, part of a larger work called Counterculture, are on view at the Whitney through January 21. Simpson’s next show, Skeena, opening on November 9 at Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco, will debut 10 new beings alongside a hanging wall work.

More From Harper’s BAZAAR

 

Smith, a Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribal member, had her first New York retrospective, “Memory Map,” at the Whitney this spring, bringing together nearly five decades of her work. Her latest curatorial effort, “The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans,” on view through January 15 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., highlights work by a range of artists who deal with Indigenous knowledge of their natural surroundings.

Dennis is the founder of Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, a nonprofit and artist residency located in his childhood home and birthplace on Long Island’s Shinnecock Indian Reservation, which provides a space for marginalized artists to create and engage with one another. His cinematic fine-art photographs, which comment on the misrepresentation of Indigenous people in American media, probe subjects such as identity, cultural practice, and the history of forced Native assimilation. Dennis’s ongoing project On This Site maps out and documents ancestral lands throughout Long Island.

Simpson, Smith, and Dennis recently connected to discuss how their physical and ancestral homes inform their work, effecting change in the art world, and why community-building is inherent to what they do.

ROSE B. SIMPSON: I don’t think I really knew how impacted by home I was as an artist. I had to leave my ancestral homelands where I grew up and was born, in northern New Mexico, to realize how important it is to me—that it is not just the people but the place that is family to me. I feel like that lack of consciousness around our beings, our physical and spiritual and social existence, keeps us from identifying and having respect for home.

JEREMY DENNIS: I’m from Shinnecock, born and raised. Everyone there is related. There are about 600 of us, more or less. As an artist and a tribal member, I’m so proud of the place I get to call home, and I try to bring that with me when I leave the reservation. One way I do that as an artist is by making portraits of some of my relatives. I do interviews. Sometimes they share stories of resilience and pride or conflict and strain on the community. There’s so much of our important history that isn’t represented in photos or paintings or inscriptions. So, my work is about showing that history is always relevant and that how we’re living today is informed by the path that our community has traveled and survived.

JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH: I am a mixture of Métis-Cree and Salish and am from the northern border of the United States in Montana. I was born at the St. Ignatius Mission on the Flathead Reservation, at a time when one in 10 babies born there lived. My dad was a horse trader and moved around often; when we were down-and-out broke, we had to go to a reservation. My sister was born at Hoopa, and I lived at Muckleshoot and Nisqually. In Nisqually, we had a one-room cabin that didn’t have furniture. There were three families of us in there. We didn’t have indoor plumbing or electricity. I remember being sick all the time and always being hungry. That was a normal upbringing for someone my age. I knew early on that white people had different lives than we Indian people. It was so distinct. I’m still riffing off of that in my work and with all my Native friends. My home is with them. It is on the reservation. But I’ve been living here in New Mexico for quite a few years, and it’s like another home. I have family everywhere when I get together with all the Indian artists because they are my family too.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Indian Madonna Enthroned, 1974, Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Purchased with funds from the Director’s Discretionary Fund, Fabricated by Andy Ambrose

JD: One experience that keeps recurring for me, unfortunately—and I’m sure we all share it—is I’ll get invited to do a show during November, Native American Heritage Month, and then it’s quiet the rest of the year. I’m always trying to advocate for Indigenous inclusion. We can participate anytime. It’s so important for our art to be institutionalized. When I think about themes of joy and beauty in Indigenous art, I think they come out of approaching difficult subjects and conflicts in our history. When we talk about these things, it’s a form of healing. The arts, especially, bring together different communities, so when I see work about colonization or suffering, I think it’s a step in moving toward a better future.

JS: In all my 50 years of traveling and lecturing and sharing slides of contemporary art by Native people, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and Standing Rock have all changed the scene. All of a sudden, museums and galleries were like, “Oh, we’re not including everybody.” We’ve been saying that for 50 years now! All of a sudden, though, arts institutions have started giving out fellowships and grants to Native people, and my younger brothers and sisters are all having big, major museum exhibitions. That is so incredible. That never was there for us. Before I curated “The Land Carries Our Ancestors” for the National Gallery of Art, the museum hadn’t had a show on Native art in 30 years. When the Whitney contacted me, I think they were nervous about it. But it actually was a good exhibition; it brought people to the museum, and we got a lot of press, which was shocking to me. I don’t know how long this is going to last, it’s like manna from heaven. But I’m doing it, and I’ll keep doing it if I can get the door cracked so that I can bring my community in with me.

RS: I think often about how those artists that came before us really did wedge that door. Someone said to me recently, “The water is rising for us all.” It’s rising, and we’re all floating together. I have the privilege to question whether the institution is the source of all power. Why do we give those colonial institutions the right to say we are someone and what we say is important? The reason that I feel grateful to be included in these exhibitions and spaces is that they reach the people I’m trying to have the conversation with. My work isn’t directed at my community here at Santa Clara; I’m trying to communicate something across a line that hasn’t been open to communication for a really long time. There are all these things—exploitation, stereotyping—that we all have to combat. I’m not Shinnecock, you know what I mean? I am not Salish. I’m a Pueblo person, and I’m from a specific pueblo, and I’m from a specific family. We are so dynamic, and we come from so many different stories. It’s so important to have that full spectrum of Indigenous experience in those spaces.

Installation view of “Rose B. Simpson: Counterculture” (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, October 4, 2023–January 21, 2024)

JS: They stereotype us. I remember when I was going around to all of these galleries and museums, talking about contemporary art by Native people, and they said, “What is that?” And I said, “Well, we are not what you would call traditional. We are not weaving blankets, and we’re not making silver jewelry, but we are making art from our own experience.” That’s the point. We make art from our own experience just like all the white artists do. And there isn’t one style for white artists, but they expect it to be one style for us. Jeremy’s making art and creating Ma’s House and doing all those wonderful things that are community-building. I think each of us in our own way realizes that we have to do some of that, we have to do both things. We tend our work, and then at the same time we reach out to each other and make plans to do stuff together. Part of it is having each other’s backs. Part of it is being a support system. Our lives and our work are so fragile because there aren’t millions of us.

RS: The pieces at the Whitney right now are five from an original series of 12. They are set up outside on the museum’s roof, and they’re called Counterculture. The original spot for them was [supposed to be] at Plymouth Rock. What I wanted to say with the pieces was, “You’re being watched.” Most people forget that we’re being watched by things that we deem inanimate. I think one of the main reasons that colonization happened in the way that it did was that colonizers had forgotten they were being held accountable by beings beyond people. I had qualms about putting my work at Plymouth Rock. I felt like I didn’t have the right to speak on behalf of all Native people. The organizers were approached by the Wampanoag community, which said to them, “This isn’t who we want making this work there.” That was a blessing for me. Who am I, a Pueblo person from New Mexico, having this conversation about an experience that was very much not mine? The work then got installed in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in 2022, where we built some programming around it with the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican community. It felt really good to move it to where it was wanted. Now the other seven pieces are at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin. After they were moved, we took some of the clay from where the pieces were originally installed in Williamstown and made beads with the Wisconsin Stockbridge-Munsee community. We sat around and told stories and then fired the beads and made necklaces. That felt like the most important part of the whole exhibit. That piece taught me a lot about how to trust the art itself and where it needs to go.

Jeremy Dennis, untitled from “Sacredness of Hills,” 2020, Archival Inkjet Print, 30 x 40 in

JD: I do landscape photography, portraiture, and staged photography. I have a personal series from 2018 called “Rise,” and it’s all about reoccupying ancestral lands. It asks, what if Indigenous people never left? What if they’d continued to maintain their footprint and witnessed the transformation of the land, the colonization, the desecration of sacred sites? I also explore home in terms of expansion and abundance rather than being confined to the reservation. That’s just one of the unfortunate realities of growing up on a reservation; there are pluses, but at the same time, many tribal members never leave the territory. It becomes a small bubble of where we’re supposed to belong. We’re supposed to be not only invisible, but also non-existent. I think about what is owed to us and what we can still do to grant us that sense of home. Part of how I do that is through Ma’s House, which we started in 2020. It’s in an old family home on the Shinnecock reservation that was built in the 1960s by my grandfather, Peter Silva Sr. My mom and her five siblings grew up in it, and I did too, with my older sister. Probably 90 percent of my photography work gets done at residencies, so I wanted to offer that resource and space to other artists. Of course, it opened during a time of racial awakening in the nation, so it became a focus to support BIPOC artists. Since opening, we’ve had about 30 artists come through. We’ve had a couple of major exhibits. We’ve also had weekly workshops by my mother, including a leather-belt-making workshop. As we’ve been saying, new spaces are very much needed. Jaune, tell us about the show you curated this fall.

JS: The National Gallery of Art contacted me to curate a show there through my
gallery. For two years, I worked on every committee that they offered, whether it was for the catalog, installation, or design. I had a road map in my head. For one, I wanted to make it about land, because the Land Back movement is front and center right now. I wanted the show to have parity between men and women and ages. There were limitations on the size of the space, so I came up with this idea: At home in Montana, we have checkerboard land. In 1887, the government came to the Flathead Reservation and divided up our land, which had been communal, and gave us allotments, which is not our way of life. Then they took the leftover land, put ads on posters for it in New York City, and invited people to come and farm it for free. So, for the exhibition, I made a checkerboard wall. It was my way of getting almost 50 people in the exhibition instead of 25. That’s our secret.

A festival promoter told Delbert Anderson he didn’t present as Indigenous enough. The trumpeter and his group, DDAT, showed up to the State Fair of Texas in what he calls “the Native American section” — filled with dancers in traditional garb, among other signifiers. DDAT, for their part, donned suits. 

“They immediately assumed that we had some type of traditional feather show,” Anderson, who is of Diné and Navajo descent, tells GRAMMY.com. “They probably thought we were going to show up in regalia or something.”

The promoter asked Anderson whether or not DDAT played traditional music. “No, we don’t,” he responded. “But there are a lot of melodies that are inspired from that.” The promoter didn’t comprehend this — so much so that she went up to Anderson mid-set and shoved a turquoise necklace around his neck. 

Anderson was shocked. “I kind of stopped and said, ‘Excuse me,'” he recalls. “And she just sort of said, ‘You don’t look Native enough.'”

Read More: Meet Delbert Anderson, A Native American Trumpet Master Interweaving Navajo Melodies With Jazz

Ever good-humored, Anderson brushed off the harassment and tossed the necklace around his white bass player’s neck. Still, he can’t get the incident out of his head. “That’s one of the first times anything like that has happened to me,” he says. “They expect that kind of back-to-the-roots, traditional type of music from anyone who uses the words ‘Native,’ ‘Indigenous’ or ‘tribal.'”

He’s not alone: Many musicians of Indigenous ancestry in his circle — and outside of it — have felt the micro- and macroaggressions come fast and hard. And othering those who identify and market themselves as Indigenous isn’t exclusive to jazz.

Even though Indigenous peoples have been here longer than anyone, they face tension, discomfort and/or unadulterated racism in a slew of genres understood to be American — from country to blues to gospel to hip-hop.

This is despite the fact that all these genres have deep Indigenous roots. Jazz household names Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk had Native American ancestry. Same with blues musicians like Howlin’ Wolf, Charley Patton and Martha Redbone. In classic rock, you’ve got Jimi Hendrix and Robbie Robertson. The list goes on.

Renata Yazzie. Photo: Darklisted Photography​

Despite this, Diné classical pianist Renata Yazzie says moving through her world is a “scabrous” experience. “The greatest difficulty is not only teaching ignorant people, but willfully ignorant people who refuse to recognize how the elitism of classical music has affected historically underrepresented groups,” she tells GRAMMY.com.

Why do musicians who identify as Indigenous, like Anderson, Yazzie, Mali Obomsawin, Adrian Wall, JJ Otero, James Pakootas, Julia Keefe, Warren Realrider and Raven Chacon — all of whom spoke to GRAMMY.com for this story — experience such tension, both from within their communities and in the wider world?

The answers are manifold, varying wildly between artists and their tribal affiliations. Here are some of the ways that artists of Indigenous descent have experienced unease in the American music landscape — and how they overcame it.

Howlin’ Wolf. Photo: Gilles Petard/Redferns​ via Getty Images

Considering The Course Of History

Since time immemorial, Indigenous peoples have developed an impossibly broad array of musical traditions. And with the arrival — or invasion, depending on who you ask — of European settlers came trade, fighting over boundaries and the introduction of European instruments.

At mission schools, Europeans taught Native Americans to compose on European instruments. This led to students composing Indigenous usic with those tools and methods. Works like 1845’s Indian Melodies featured traditional Native tunes composed with European notation.

In the back-half of the 19th century, the primordial stew of Black American music was percolating — the one that would give the world jazz, blues and other idioms. And the pervasive invisibility felt by Indigenous peoples meant they had a point of commiseration with Black musical communities.

“Black and Indigenous people have been in community with each other since the beginning, since Black Africans were forcibly brought here for slavery,” jazz bassist Mali Obomsawin, who is affiliated with the Odanak Abenaki First Nation tribe, tells GRAMMY.com. “I think people tend to forget that many of the founding blues and jazz artists were both Black and Native.”

This confluence of heritages and traditions has been obscured by what Obomsawin calls a larger obfuscation of Indigenous identity — coupled with anti-Blackness. “If someone like Thelonious Monk, who was Tuscarora, was to be like, ‘I’m Native American,’ everyone would be like, ‘No, you’re Black,'” Obomsawin says.

“It was not desirable for Natives to be higher in numbers, whereas it was desirable for Black folks to be higher in numbers because they were considered property,” she continues. “That means that slave owners and human traffickers had more property value. Whereas the more people that were Native, the more people the government was accountable to.”

Mildred Bailey. Photo: Bettmann/Contributor via Getty Images

Julia Keefe, a jazz vocalist and enrolled member of the Nez Perce tribe, is acutely aware of the crossroads of Blackness and Indigenousness in early American music.

“There is a historical precedent for Native Americans in jazz,” she tells GRAMMY.com, citing Indigenous people who learned European music in boarding and residential schools. “Around the same time that jazz was taking off in the ’20s and ’30s, there is evidence of Native people forming their own big bands.”

One lesser-known early Indigenous jazz musician was Mildred Bailey, a singer of Native descent from the Coeur d’Alene tribe.

“She was the first one to sing in front of a big band,” Keefe notes. “You think about all the female vocalists — Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan — who got their start singing in front of big band, and it was because there was such an appetite for that sound by Mildred Bailey singing in front of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra.”

Oscar Pettiford. Photo: Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images

But Bailey is just the tip of the iceberg in this regard. Besides Parker and Monk, there’s a lengthy list of jazz artists of Indigenous descent — including saxophonist Jim Pepper, bassist Oscar Pettiford and trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist Don Cherry.

And jazz is but one piece of the puzzle: Indigenous artists can be found in all genres. But at times, proudly broadcasting their heritage in these spaces has proved difficult in the face of divisive politics.

Navigating Political Divides

While Anderson can only speak for his local scene near Farmington, New Mexico, he has a clear vantage on what it’s like to market oneself as a Native American musician.

“I think as time progressed from the ’80s until now, there were a lot of stronger Indigenous voices that came out,” he says, citing activist causes like the American Indian Movement. “The moment you try to take any stand for Native American something, people tend to take those words as ‘You’re a hardcore activist.'”

“I mean, I could go outside right now and say, ‘I stand with Standing Rock,'” he adds. “Immediately, people are going to think of me as a negative force here.”

And while that scene comprised a healthy variety of perspectives and genres, it attracted judgement from the outside. “I think a lot of the people who were involved didn’t really realize what they were creating,” Anderson says. “It really looked like they were making some type of coalition — or Indigenous organization — that’s going to fight everything that goes in their path.”

Delbert Anderson. Photo: Maurice Johnson

This atmosphere weighed heavily on Anderson’s career in 2013, when DDAT began to market themselves as “Native American jazz.” (James Pakootas, their MC, is Indigenous; bassist Michael McCluhan is white; drummer Nicholas Lucero is Hispanic.)

“We immediately got thrown into this pool of musicians that were stirring up this big group or organization,” Anderson says. “The moment we said ‘We are Native American jazz,’ they immediately assumed we’re part of this Native American music scene, and it lost us gigs because they thought we were there to lecture the audience.”

Anderson saw his more militant colleagues as refusing to compromise, acting as if rules didn’t apply to them. “There’s a lot of that showing up in musicians today,” he says. “The moment a venue says something that they can’t do, like, ‘Oh, you can’t burn cedar here before the show,’ or anything like that, they’ll throw a huge, huge fit.”

“I hate to say it,” Anderson says, “but it kind of ruined it for the rest of us who don’t participate in that ceremony.”

To avoid these associations, DDAT eventually decided to pivot away from “Native American jazz,” describing themselves as a funk/jazz group inspired by Indigenous melodies. “People started to see us as not being activists, or the rowdy ones,” Anderson says. As a result, the group immediately started getting offered more gigs.

Julia Keefe. Photo: Don Hamilton

Braving Inner Conflict

This dissonance isn’t limited to sociopolitical factions, or a conflict between musicians and promoters — although Anderson could certainly share other horror stories. Even so-called enlightened spaces, like jazz workshops, have left Indigenous musicians second-guessing themselves.

“At gigs or at workshops or what have you, people will come up and be kind of aggressive about it — almost offended,” Keefe says. “Like, [Flustered voice] ‘What does that mean? What do you mean you are a Native American jazz vocalist?’ ‘Well, I’m Native American and I sing jazz. That’s what I do.'”

“With that confrontation of my identity,” she adds, “there’s been tension within myself of, ‘If I’m going to claim my Native heritage on my business card, should my music be more influenced by my Indigenous heritage?'”

But even if an artist defines what Indigenousness means for themselves, it’s bound to create friction with others’ preconceptions or stereotypes. “That’s something that Natives come up against in any sort of art form,” Obomsawin says.

Adrian Wall. Photo: Shondinii Walters​

Adrian Wall, a flutist and guitarist with roots in the Jemez Pueblo tribe, experiences dislocation just by announcing who he is to the world.

“Once you play the Native card, you’re kind of stuck being a Native musician when you’re actually playing music that’s accepted worldwide just as American music,” he tells GRAMMY.com. “Once you call yourself a Native, all of a sudden you’re playing Native music.”

Raven Chacon, a Diné composer who works in the experimental and noise scenes, has had to push against assumptions that his work would be stereotypically Native — or adjacent to new age. 

“There was an assumption it was going to involve flutes or drums or something,” he tells GRAMMY.com with a laugh. “Even from people should know better, there have been assumptions.”

Raven Chacon. Photo: Jamie Drummond

To fellow experimental musician and sound sculpturist Warren Realrider — who is Pawnee and enrolled with the Crow Nation of Montana and makes music akin to John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros and Merzbow — the solution lies in creating a music industry framework that accurately represents Indigenous creators.

“These systems of music, distribution, performance, whatever — they are built on a world that’s not the Indigenous world,” he tells GRAMMY.com. “You’re always going to have to work against that in some way.”

Plus, as a representative of his background in the insular noise space, Realrider’s work has become bigger than him — he feels inordinate pressure to not let his tribe down.

“A lot of Indigenous artists don’t lose that aspect,” he says, considering the arc of his life and career so far. “That’s something you carry along with you, and you present yourself that way.”

Addressing Language Barriers

Sometimes, the criticism comes from within Indigenous communities themselves. JJ Otero, a Hopi and Diné singer/songwriter inspired by bands like Counting Crows and Pearl Jam, had to deal with the finer points of language — even one he knew backward and forward.

“I didn’t use the Navajo language in my music for the longest time,” he tells GRAMMY.com from his home on a Navajo reservation. “The white guys in [my first band, Saving Damsels] said, ‘You should write a song in Navajo that we can play.'”

JJ Otero. Photo: Unek Francis

Despite being a fluent Navajo speaker, Otero wanted to be careful that he said things exactly right. “I don’t want my songs to just be a lazy utterance of words in Navajo,” he says. To thread the needle, Otero enlisted his father to vet his lyrics for inexact grammar and syntax.

“I do believe that sometimes our own people can be our toughest critics,” Otero says. “We can take that criticism and be mad and upset about it, or we can dive deeper into why those criticisms exist and understand the foundation of why Navajo is sacred.”

Facing One’s Own Community

As a rapper and motivational speaker who spits bars in DDAT, James Pakootas operates by what he calls “a very deep awareness of protocol.”

“A lot of times, Native artists in contemporary music want to meld the two worlds, but it seems like sometimes they’re taking away from the culture. It’s not done with care,” Pakootas tells GRAMMY.com. “It’s like sampling a powwow song, putting it on a hip-hop beat and calling it good.”

James Pakootas. Photo: Maurice Johnson

To avoid this sort of mishandling, Pakootas works with collaborators to tell his stories as considerately as possible, preferring to bring in a drum group and analyze together how the story could be told.

“A lot of songs I know are ceremony songs,” he adds. “There’s not going to be any of those that I share because there’s a protocol in place to keep that sacred. There’s a time and a place for that song to be sung or that melody to be used.”

Reaching Harmony From Dissonance

How can music fans right these wrongs and push against the othering of Indigenous artists? Maybe the first step is realizing that Indigenous music is all music.

“Native people are very much seen as mythological creatures, as the villains in Westerns, the mascots that you love to hate, or whatever,” Keefe says. “So, I can see why [musical discrimination] would be a thing because so often we are perceived as a figment of someone’s imagination.”

Warren Realrider. Photo: Shane Brown​

For Obomsawin, this necessary shift begins with education — and by listening to the stories of her elders. In her case, that teacher is Pura Fé, a Tuscarora and Taino vocalist and activist related to Thelonious Monk.

“She is so intimately aware of those dual legacies — the Black and Native lineages of jazz,” Obomsawin says. “I just hope that more air time is given to the elders in the jazz and blues community who know those things. I think it could really help to unearth some of those stories as really important parts of American music history — as well as our history in general.”

Mali Obomsawin. Photo: Nolan Altvater​

As for Yazzie, she believes significant change won’t occur until we give sovereignty to Indigenous artists — so they can decide who their audience is, why they perform their music, what their music sounds like, where they want their music played, and how they want it to be perceived by the rest of the world.

“I always maintain that Native music is Native music because a Native person is outputting it,” Yazzie says. “But on the flipside, you don’t want to limit people to where all they do is Native music. I think you have to be really careful to not use the Native music label as a way to put people in a specific box. Because Native music is still also blues. It’s still jazz. It’s still country. It’s still hip-hop. It’s still classical music. [Indigenous] people are in those genre-specific spaces and they’re doing amazing things.”

When considering this subject, Anderson always returns to Don Cherry, who remains one of his idols. “In one of his interviews, he said, ‘Hey, it’s about meeting other people. It’s about having relationships with your friends,'” he says.

“I think everyone just needs to go back to their original state, going back to just being a human and recognizing that we’re all humans here,” Anderson adds. “Approach each other as human beings with our minds or our thoughts.”

Anderson is bringing Cherry’s openhearted philosophy to his next endeavor — collaborating with the American Pops Orchestra for a Bureau of Land Management project. This has been a laborious process, with no shortage of fine lines to navigate.

“Bringing this orchestra onto the Indigenous lands is going to be a real struggle because of all the racial division going on in the world,” he says. But in the end, Anderson believes all the work is going to be worth it.

“Having these two different identities on that land, I’m hoping the land can really heal the group that’s there,” he says. “I mean, if the land really heals, we’re going to put the land to the test.” 

Because it’s happened before on this soil: Indigenous people and those of so many other backgrounds have come together to make great American music. Sure, it’s been a rocky path to get there — sometimes a troubling and treacherous one. But Anderson and his colleagues aren’t afraid to tread it.

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