Research Guides: Indigenous Appalachia: Art and artists

Readings for context and history

Indigenous Appalachian art and artists: context and history

Indigenous people do not have a word for art, but what colonial language labels art has always been part of Indigenous cultures.

Art is a broadly descriptive term for any creative expression including visual forms of all media, craftwork, writing, tool-making, clothing, expressing and practicing culture and ancestry and religion. Indigenous art is a widely studied, revered, and celebrated field in global society. Scholars spend significant time analyzing layered meaning, context, and purposes of the Indigenous American art and the role it has and continues to play in its respective culture.

Readings to learn more

American cathedrals: why we should protect (and visit) Native American mounds ‘sacred centers of their communities, like Notre Dame for the french.’ It was the promise, and miracle, of a Native American burial mound in Appalachia that pulled me off I-70 in 2013 while I was reporting a story in West Virginia for The Wall Street Journal. Grave Creek Mound, is 69 feet high and 2,200 years old, located in Moundsville, WV, on the left bank of the Ohio river as it snakes from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati.
Artist listing by state. Indian Arts and Crafts Board [U.S. Department of the Interior] example: Virginia The IACB provides promotional opportunities, general business advice, and information on the Indian Arts and Crafts Act (Act) to Indian artists, craftspeople, and cultural organizations of federally recognized tribes.
Beyond Tradition: Culture, Symbolism, and Practicality in American Indian Art Barbara Ellen Sorensen. Tribal college: Journal of American Indian higher education. Volume 25, No. 1 - Fall 2013
The Grave Creek Archaeological Complex The mission of the complex is to preserve the site of the Grave Creek Mound, interpret the archaeological record of West Virginia for the public, and manage the state’s archaeological collections. The museum exhibits begin with fossils and ice age animals, a tour through archaeological sites in West Virginia, and then culminates with displays about the prehistoric Adena people and the construction of the Grave Creek Mound.
Manifest Destiny and the West In what ways was the US settled and unsettled in the 19th century? What role did artists play in shaping public understandings of the US West? When you think about the US West, what images and stories come to mind? Across the Continent: “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way” shows a vision of settling the United States that in many ways still resonates today.
National Museum of the American Indian search results for "Appalachia"
National Museum of the American Indian search results for "West Virginia"
Reversing the Erasure of Native Contributions to Muralism By Davida Fernandez-Barkan. October 9th, 2020. Smithsonian Office of Fellowships. An oft-overlooked aspect of twentieth-century American art: the essential contributions of Native Americans to the mural movement that overtook the United States in the years between World War I and World War II

A New Deal for Native Art by Jennifer McLerran As the Great Depression touched every corner of America, the New Deal promoted indigenous arts and crafts as a means of bootstrapping Native American peoples. But New Deal administrators' romanticization of indigenous artists predisposed them to favor pre-industrial forms rather than art that responded to contemporary markets. In A New Deal for Native Art, Jennifer McLerran reveals how positioning the native artist as a pre-modern Other served the goals of New Deal programs--and how this sometimes worked at cross-purposes with promoting native self-sufficiency. She describes federal policies of the 1930s and early 1940s that sought to generate an upscale market for Native American arts and crafts. And by unraveling the complex ways in which commodification was negotiated and the roles that producers, consumers, and New Deal administrators played in that process, she sheds new light on native art's commodity status and the artist's position as colonial subject. In this first book to address the ways in which New Deal Indian policy specifically advanced commodification and colonization, McLerran reviews its multi-pronged effort to improve the market for Indian art through the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, arts and crafts cooperatives, murals, museum exhibits, and Civilian Conservation Corps projects. Presenting nationwide case studies that demonstrate transcultural dynamics of production and reception, she argues for viewing Indian art as a commodity, as part of the national economy, and as part of national political trends and reform efforts. McLerran marks the contributions of key individuals, from John Collier and Rene d'Harnoncourt to Navajo artist Gerald Nailor, whose mural in the Navajo Nation Council House conveyed distinctly different messages to outsiders and tribal members. Featuring dozens of illustrations, A New Deal for Native Art offers a new look at the complexities of folk art "revivals" as it opens a new window on the Indian New Deal.
ISBN: 9780816519521
Publication Date: 2012

Podcast

Native American Art Fraud at Native American Calling

Fake Native American art is typically made with inferior materials and stolen designs. It can be hard for the untrained eye to detect, but it undercuts the livelihoods and legitimacy of true Native American artists. [discussion of the harms caused by fraudulent "Native" art, featuring perspectives from former WVU Native American Studies instructor Dr. Joe Candillo (Pascua Yaqui)]