Self-Determination, Categorization, and the Unsettling of Indigenous Visual Studies

Abstract

Self-Determination, Categorization, and the Unsettling of Indigenous Visual Studies Jeremy Carnes (bio) UNSETTLING NATIVE ART HISTORIES ON THE NORTHWEST COAST. Edited by Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse and Aldona Jonaitis. University of Washington Press. 2022. VISUALITIES 2: More Perspectives on Contemporary American Indian Film and Art. Edited by Denise K. Cummings. Michigan State University Press. 2019. KNOWING NATIVE ARTS. By Nancy Marie Mithlo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2020. SHIFTING GROUNDS: Landscape in Contemporary Native American Art. By Kate Morris. University of Washington Press. 2019. PICTURING WORLDS: Visuality and Visual Sovereignty in Contemporary Anishnaabe Literature. By David Stirrup. Michigan State University Press. 2020. [End Page 25] Interest in and studies of Indigenous visualities and visual cultures are not new. From anthropological texts claiming a particular understanding of Indigenous visual cultures and representations, to photography projects documenting the “vanishing race” (the most famous being that of Edward Curtis), to contemporary representations of Indigenous people in film, there has been a continued interest in the visualities of indigeneity. Only relatively recently, however, have scholars begun to consider visuality from the perspective of Indigenous communities themselves—their experiences, ontologies, cosmologies, etc. Of course, the bulk of this work is being led by Indigenous scholars whose knowledge and lived experience is helping to open scholarly understandings of Indigenous visual cultures away from these colonial formulations toward a self-determined engagement with visuality evident in particular Indigenous and communal contexts. It is within this context that scholars are beginning to ask questions about how we approach Indigenous visual cultures, how we study Indigenous visualities, and how Indigenous visual artists are included or excluded from certain spaces like museums and galleries. How do Indigenous artists get work on display when sources of funding and curation privilege a particular approach to visual artwork that may not be immediately compatible with Indigenous approaches? How do we understand Indigenous visual cultures without the overdetermination of colonialism that so often defines parameters for understanding? How can we begin to complicate historical understandings of visuality in a way that breaks down binaries, categorizations, and distinctions, which help to support colonial institutions and approaches? Nearly all these questions, along with many others, are taken up in Nancy Mithlo’s (Chiricahua Apache) Knowing Native Arts. Through art, Mithlo considers larger questions about institutional and governmental structures that continue to ignore and oppress Indigenous communities. As Mithlo writes of her book, [End Page 26] “Knowing Native Arts identifies and debates the central frames of Native arts scholarship, including the institution of the museum and the academy, forms of Indigenous aesthetic analysis, the receptive scope of Native arts in new global and digital realms, and models of exhibition practices in light of current American Indian curatorial mandates” (4). Mithlo’s “musings,” as she calls this collection of essays, are indispensable in considering the contemporary art world that many Native artists are navigating. The breadth of topics and considerations Mithlo takes up in a relatively short book is nothing less than incredible. Her opening essay builds on the scholarship of Nancy J. Parezo, considering the complexities of Native Arts and art scholarship today through the areas of research and publication, funding, self-determination, and globalization. She argues for more individuals from disenfranchised communities in leadership roles in museums, a clearer understanding and consideration of historical arguments in art history scholarship, and an increase in Native arts research at national and international Native Studies organizational conferences like the Native American Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) annual conference. While Mithlo’s arguments continually return to and reconsider the current state of Native arts practice and scholarship, she offers some nuanced considerations of art itself as it operates in particular social, political, and communal contexts. Throughout the book, Mithlo remains demonstrably interested in what I see as three central strands in Native visual cultural studies today: self-determination, the fallible categorizations of orality/visuality/writing, and the colonized histories of art into which scholars often try to “fit” Native artwork. Throughout this review essay, I will trace these concepts throughout five new books from various disciplines in the academy to consider the current state of Indigenous visual studies. Before moving on, it is important to note the academic positionality of both...