Milestone Monday: Wounded Knee Massacre

On December 29, 1890, soldiers of the United States Army killed up to 300 Lakota people at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, after a chaotic campaign to disarm the tribe. In his 2019 book, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, David Treuer (Leech Lake Ojibwe) describes the tragedy:  

One of the most poignant stories to come out of Wounded Knee involves a Lakota child named Zintkala Nuni, or Lost Bird. Her mother had been among those shot as she attempted to run with her infant daughter down the frozen creek. It wasn’t until four days later that the child was discovered – frostbitten, starving, but alive—in her dead mother’s arms. She was passed among the occupying soldiers as a kind of living souvenir of the massacre until, a few weeks after the conflict, a general named Leonard Colby adopted her. Raised partly by his wife, she suffered horribly—she was sent from one isolated boarding school to another, was later impregnated (most likely by Colby), and still later was found working in Wild West shows and in vaudeville, before she died of influenza in 1920, in abject poverty.

Today, in remembrance, we’re highlighting Truer’s book, as well as two titles from the National Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. Native Universe: Voices of American Indians, by Gerald McMaster (Siksika Cree) and Clifford E. Trafzer, was published in 2004, in association with National Geographic. Spirit Capture: Photographs from the National Museum of the American Indian, edited by Tim Johnson (Mohawk), was published in 1998.

Truer characterizes his book (published by Riverhead in New York), as an attempt to illuminate “Indian Life as more than a legacy of loss and pain” and is written out of resistance and the “fierce conviction that our cultures are not dead and our civilizations have not been destroyed.”

-Read an article by Craig Howe on the recent announcement that the Medals of Honor for U.S. Soldiers at Wounded Knee would not be rescinded.

-See more Milestone Monday posts.

--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Assistant

Gerald McMaster

Trick or Treaty, 1990

Gerald McMaster with performance by Moe Clark

Traditional Ojibwe Men drumming - 4 men sitting in a circle drumming the same drum

This exhibition featured 4 artists and was held at Forest City Gallery and curated by Dolleen Manning. "As a curator, I'm interested in the heterogeneity and entanglements of the Aboriginal traditions."

Concepts:

Trans-cultural

Cross-cultural

Interconnectivity

Translations

Crossing boundaries 

Entanglement

In the past there was always a problem between living in two worlds and trying to figure out where you belonged.

Entanglement is a connectivity of things. Research project is about otherness and how the indigenous people represents the "other." How indigenous people viewed the other, the European. 

This past year, he began doing research in collections (Canadian, American, European). Question that he had:

How important is culture in mediating the way we see each other?

It is our subjectivity that makes us who we are.

"Entanglement"

Power relations between cultures 

Northern Plains

When we think of indigenous people from the European perspective, we often think of the plains. There was an exoticism and romanticism that surrounded the idea of the plains.

Europeans were routinely represented as wearing hats. They were represented as having a white face and guns or long knives. The stereotype of the European is embodied in the motion of holding your hand above your eyes (holding your hat). The warrior or historian each year would sit down and think about the most important event that happened each year.

The warrior complex that began to characterize this person as a warrior. Ledger drawings on paper - the Aboriginal selfie. You could brag about any of your accomplishments as long as you had a witness. They were truthful stories. 

Notions of spirituality and how the "white" man is seen in the context of spirituality. There are stories of the white man and stories of the dead. Image of a pipe bag with a white man standing next to an American flag. The star of Venus is the North star. 

Woodlands

In the early 19th Century, the tribes in the United States dispersed. The Indian Removal Act basically said they would remove all indigenous people East of the Mississippi and displace them. Forcibly moved them to "Indian Country" (the states of Oklahoma and Nebraska). Those that stayed behind were classed differently (not Indians and not White). 

Far North - Arctic

Europeans were interested in trying to find the Northwest Passage. One of the materials most easily found was Ivory. 

Northwest Coast

British Columbia to Alaska. The largest collection of works that he has been able to find are from the Northwest Coast. Haida works - most detailed and interesting. The detail of the panel pipes is incredible. The Haida people chewed tobacco but did not smoke it. Europeans introduced how to smoke tobacco. When you think of Europeans and their dogs - another kind of identity. Indians never saw these dogs before. Indian women dressed as Europeans - preparing to be given over to the white man.

"The half man" is the coward. A grown man behind held up by a man. 

Contemporary Art

No longer depicting what life was like in the past. The realities of alcoholism, crime, drug abuse, rape and pornography. A different moment of entanglement in the present tense is happening in the North. The cultural coming from the South and seeing the incongruities between the two different areas. 

Gashka'oode: Tangled

How cultures participate with the modern world. A sense of tradition and how it plays with entanglement. The question of modernity and condition. 

Taken computer parts and put together in an interesting shape of a star. 

Gerald McMaster

Catherine de Zegher and Gerald McMaster have been appointed as joint artistic directors of this 18th edition of the Sydney Biennale. Both internationally acclaimed curators are well known for their thorough engagement with the artists and their works. Belgian born Catherine de Zegher has been Guest Curator at the Department of Drawings, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Director and Chief Curator of the Drawing Center in New York, Co-Founder and Director of the Kanaal Foundation in Kortrijk (Be), as well as Visiting Curator at the Fondation Tapiès, Barcelona and Director of Exhibitions and Publications at the Art Gallery of Toronto, Canada. Throughout her career, de Zegher has won several prestigious awards for her pioneering exhibitions and numerous publications, in which she often launched and consolidated the careers of extraordinary artists. Gerald McMaster has been Fredrik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art and was the Director's Special Assistant at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, and Curator at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. 

Artists invited for the Biennale and included in this catalogue are amongst others: Ann Veronica Janssens, Honoré d'O, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Monica Grzymala, Ria Verhaeghe, Cecilia Vicuna, Sarah Vanagt with Katrien Vermeire, Phil Hastings, Cristina Iglesias, Bouchra Khalili, Farideh Lashai, Li Hongbo, Erin Manning, Everlyn Nicodemus, Makinti Napanangka, Ed Pien with Tanya Tagaq, Reinier Rietveld and Craigie Horsfield, Daan Roosegarde, Khaled Sabsabi and many more. 

This wonderfully illustrated 400-pages catalogue has, amongst others, a unique middle section cut horizontally in halves, that gives the reader the possibility to view all works from different angles and perspectives, and in relation to the other works.