Season 2 Episode 7: Weaving and Shaping Native Art Today: A Balance Between the Contemporary and the Traditional

 

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Gabi Senno: Hi, and welcome to ARTiculated. I'm Gabi Senno, and I am an oral history intern for the Archives of American art. This podcast receives support from the Alice L. Walton Foundation.

Since 1958, the Archives of American Art has been building the largest collection of oral histories related to the visual arts in the world. These more than 2500 long-form interviews give witness to history as it unfolded through the voices of the figures who shaped and reimagined it.

This episode is the first in a series of six, each curated by a different contemporary artist in response to, and in conversation with, past speakers from the Archive's oral history program. Our first guest is Lehuauakea, a Native Hawaiian interdisciplinary artist. In their dispatch from the Archives, they braid a narrative with the 2010 oral histories of Katherine “Lehua” Domingo and Al Qöyawayma, exploring the contours of traditional and contemporary modalities in Indigenous making. Listen to this history through Lehuauakea’s headphones:

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Lehuauakea: Aloha mai kākou, my name is Lehuauakea. I am a Native Hawaiian artist, cultural practitioner, and kapa, or bark cloth, maker. I am originally from Pāpaʻikou on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi and am now based in the Pacific Northwest. My work touches on themes of cultural revitalization and the expression of mixed-Indigenous heritage and often blurs the line between the traditional and the contemporary.

As an Indigenous artist and culture bearer, I am all too familiar with the narrative of challenges and obstacles that Native peoples face in the preservation and continuation of traditions, practices, languages, and ways of being.

Some of these challenges stem from the pressures of external consumption, appropriation, and the choice not to share certain aspects of one’s work as a means of protection against those mounting pressures. In a world of contemporary art and craft, where a Native artist wrestles with the push and pull of wanting to put their work in different spaces while also needing to protect their own cultural integrity, creatives are constantly asked to find new solutions.

As elder Native Hawaiian lauhala weaver Katherine Kalehuapuakeaula “Lehua” Domingo discussed in her 2010 interview with Mija Riedel, we learn how these challenges have come up in her own lifetime, for example, with her ideas on the effects of appropriated and stolen weaving knowledge.

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo: I think we didn't see that many different styles when I was young, and I guess because they wove for necessity. So if they got fancy, whichever, it was probably just for within the family or of that concept, not that much for selling as much as, you know, just putting them out, whereas today, oh, you have a wide variety, many weavers, many new ones that are interested and do beautiful work–beautiful work. It's grown.

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo: It's grown, yes. And I think it's a huge asset

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that it has because at one time it was felt that it was going to be lost, the art of weaving, so we've got to be thankful to Cousin Gladys, Auntie Esther, Auntie Elizabeth for reviving it, and really sitting down and making, you know, sharing the knowledge with as many as they could share it with, teaching others, having them become teachers–very, very fortunate.

Mija Riedel: I have a question about sharing the tradition with others so it wouldn't be lost. Something that you mentioned was that Auntie Gladys, at one point, was going to write a book, and then she decided not to because she didn't want the tradition to be lost in another way beyond people of Hawaii, is my understanding of it.

That seems like a difficult middle ground to navigate. How does one choose how to share that tradition and help it grow but there was, at the same time, a decision not to make a book?

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo: Well, I thought of that myself too. It's going to be hard, but I can understand why it's important.

Because it belongs to our culture. I guess it's like the Hopis and their weaving their blankets. It's a part of their culture.

 And I only wish that, you know, people throughout the world can be respectful of that. But they want–they want to take it. So I can understand the importance. We don't have very many things left. So many things were taken away from us.

Lehuauakea: As this elder shares, choosing to teach and pass on certain cultural traditions is to carry a large amount of responsibility, and with that comes the agency to decide when, where, and how this knowledge is perpetuated through one’s family line or community.

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo: We started with the halau on Molokai, first lesson in hat-making. They only got to the piko, putting it together. There were 24 of them in the class. And I just had–because it's three sets of four is the rule of thumbs for the piko, I divided all of them into groups of four so they would be working together.

So the just got through that first step of putting their piko together, but there was no time after that to continue.

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo: We had feather lei-making at that fresh flower lei-making also during the time of the class for the hat weaving on Molokai.

But other than that, we've had classes here at Kilohana's twice a year where several of us weavers will come. And then the word goes out that we're here, and whoever wants to come in here stops by to learn.

We teach them from the tree because Kilohana has trees growing here. We go out to the trees so that they could learn what leaves are good leaves. If we don't have–if Kilohana's trees are not ready for us to work with the trees, then I'll usually come with a bundle of dried lauhala so that they can learn how to tell–determine good leaves from not good leaves. And I take them through the starting process before they start to weave.

 Anyone is welcome to come, to join us. And we usually have people from within the community, But I don't really have classes for–weaving classes. I hold them, you know, monthly or whichever. I prefer a one-on-one.

I had a gentleman from Waimea, Kimo, who met me in Hilo Hattie's one day, and I was wearing Dad's hat. And he asked me who wove the hat. I said, "I did." So he asked if I could teach him. I told him I wasn't a teacher,

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you know, that I just am learning. And he said, oh, he really wants to learn.

Kimo came for three years. He made three hats. His third hat was the anoni hat. And that was his goal. He completed the hat. His wife wears the hat today proudly. And he stands on the side also proudly because he made the hat for his wife.

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Lehuauakea: And of course, the challenges that artists and practitioners like Lehua Domingo must navigate are not exclusive to those of Native Hawaiian heritage. For example, contemporary Hopi potter and ceramicist Al Qöyawayma of Prescott, Arizona shares his thoughts on the complexities of being a Native artist in a world vastly different than the environment his elders knew even just one or two generations ago.

Al Qöyawayma: Even if we see all the media going on today, we think we have an understanding, but a lot of young people really have trouble surviving in this world because it's also economic as well, and you have to balance somehow gaining a degree of freedom because you've still got to eat and have a place to live.

But that's where education–not necessarily that it always leads to a good economic situation–but it's an important part of our training for our Indian young people.

We weren't used to an economy like we have today. We were a trading economy, and suddenly we've gone, almost in one generation, from a trading economy to a money economy. I only touch on that because that's an important part of our education.

So even today we have lots of government programs to cover the mainstream population because of that. Meanwhile, we've got tribal people who have had to learn to survive. I mean, they didn't have the stores and anything in the modern economy, so we still survive on the reservation; not that we couldn't survive better. We might look like Appalachia a little bit, in terms of our buildings and housing and things, and yet that's the way we lived for thousands of years so - and we survived, and a lot of us lived a long time even without the modern medicine.

So the education comes back into it. In my case, I picked up the technical, because what it allowed me to do was to focus on something that was kind of a universal language. Take mathematics. Everybody knows that math is kind of a universal language. Almost everything outside of that depends on your culture and your upbringing and what have you.

Interviewer: What you're saying that education has really been essential– another line I'm sure that will come up for us multiple times–and has been one of the great aids in helping you bridge those worlds.

Al Qöyawayma: Yes, and "bridge" is a good thought. I'll again refer to my own–it became part of my philosophy, and that is, not to look down upon our older people who didn't have that kind of education. For us, we would learn something, but it wasn't necessarily part of our cultural education. It was part of our being able to live in the mainstream world education.

Lehuauakea: The obstacles that challenge Native artists also have a way of shaping their practices, perspectives, and approaches to working in different spaces away from their ancestral homelands. The complexities of being part of a diaspora community, or those who have, for one reason or another, left their homelands or reservations, are often painful for families and individuals to talk about, and as a result, many artists turn to creative outlets to articulate these feelings of cultural displacement and separation.

Al Qöyawayma: And so sometimes our young people tend to get a little lost. but I was going to mention the term–I think of "horizon children," neither sky nor earth. A lot of times Native American young people move away from reservations and are living in an urban area, and they lose track of not only their relatives but whatever has gone on culturally previously, and they're a little bit lost.

Mija Riedel: Al, would you describe what you mean by "horizon children"?

Al Qöyawayma: Well, I use the term "they're neither sky nor earth."

Mija Riedel: What does that mean?

Al Qöyawayma: Well, the idea basically is, as I just mentioned a moment ago, they lose track of the day-to-day things that happen in their own culture and language, what's happening in their families.

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 They're trying to reach out. Particularly if they don't have, let's say, a really good educational background, they're just trying to reach out, like everybody else, on a day-to-day basis to live and survive. They are caught at the horizon, neither of their own heritage or the culture of the mainstream world.

We all know what it's like surviving either in the inner city or even what you might call the individuals who are intermediate income levels. Even today, people are finding it hard to match all the parts of their economic life with the life they'd like to have.

Mija Riedel: Did you grow up speaking a Native language?

Al Qöyawayma: Only to the degree that I would pick it up off the reservation because one of the components of the Indian school was to really instruct the adults not to–first of all, to speak their own language, although my father spoke it. But there had to be agreement within any family as to where you were going to speak English or not, which immediately leads me to an experience that I can think of in the Salt River Indian Community, doing a lecture with high school students, college-age, just at that age.

Mija Riedel: And we should just clarify that after Litton you went to work at Salt River Project in Phoenix, Arizona. A couple of girls were in that from the Salt River Indian Community, and they started crying, and it was the same feeling I guess we all have, namely that their parents said, okay, up to the sixth grade we'll teach our traditions and the language, and then after that you're going to have to be on your own, and basically, you pick up the ways of the Western world.

And they were crying because–as I learned - because I was saying they really do have a role in the mainstream world, and that they don't have to stop being who they were, not being counter to their parents but–and I had two young Hopi boys that didn't say much, but I could tell that they were pretty moved too.

It's just one of those transitions that goes on. The language is one of those things that I wish we would spend more time–and Hopi, fortunately, we have a really incredible dictionary, and we have many Hopi speakers. And so, we've really worked to maintain that language.

I wish I would have been in, sort of, that natural environment. But then if you lived in Los Angeles, and you're in the third grade taking the streetcar down the street, there's nobody that speaks Hopi, so–[laughs]–you know, as a practical matter, you don't think about it when you're young. You just–you go with what works as a young person, you know?

Lehuauakea: There are an infinite amount of expressions that can be considered to be within the umbrella of Native art today–from those who create, for example, beadwork, woven baskets, or textiles in their family living rooms, to those who carry on intergenerational practices as their primary means of income, to others who exhibit in institutions like museums and gallery spaces, and many more who lie beyond the conventional walls and labels that try to box artists in.

However, regardless of where exactly their work is situated, these Indigenous creatives occupy a rather intricate and difficult intersection–faced with navigating and negotiating issues of their own Indigenous identity, asking questions of not being “Native enough” or perhaps “too Native” to fit into certain spaces.

Or perhaps, in other cases, one might struggle with lack of access to modes of making that would have once been passed down from generation to generation in the home, had those lines of knowledge not been broken by the violent effects of colonization. Even further, the disconnect from ancestral lands, languages, and practices is something many of us are working to understand, dismantle, and heal through our art and daily lives.

Despite the numerous obstacles that lie along the path of contemporary Native cultural reclamation and artistic expression, there are things to celebrate. We celebrate the practitioners working to keep ancestral knowledge systems and craft practices alive. We celebrate the individuals who speak their people’s Native tongue after generations of being forced into silence.

And we celebrate the artists and creatives whose innovation and determination help us forge new paths of telling our stories in a multitude of resilient expressions, each just as important as the other.

Al Qöyawayma, like so many of these Native artists today, embodies resilience through a clay- based artistic practice informed in part by a heavy family history, and his personal life on and away from Hopi territory.

Al Qöyawayma: My grandfather was born in Mexico. My grandmother was

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born in New Mexico. My father was born in the territory of Arizona, and I was born in a state. And of the first three, they were all born in exactly the same place, Old Oraibi, which describes what's happened.

What seems to be ancient history to us today was all still real in our family in everything that had happened, the original Mexican–or I should say Spanish and then the Mexicans–the military I'm speaking of.

Al Qöyawayma: And then later the U.S. military came in; the stories my father told–we were being treated by the U.S. military much like the Mexican military treated us, and we just, you know, looked at them at a distance. Even today there's expressions–I just saw one recently the other day about, you know, well, we've gone through this culture and that culture; we'll still be here, and it will be some other culture that will be around us.

Well, I don't know whether that's true or not, but there is that feeling that we're permanent, and everybody else is transient.

Interviewer: And what was it about the clay that drew you, or did it just start as a curiosity?

Al Qöyawayma: It was just because my aunt was becoming my mentor, philosophically, because she was matching up the ancient world and the real world. She had had practical experience with matching up worlds.

And I was one that needed to catch up and match up worlds. In that sense, my father hadn't really fully had that experience and neither had my mother. So she had had far more experience at that.

Interviewer: So the ceramics was an entrance to a cultural world.

Al Qöyawayma: Yes, it was. I discovered I liked it.

Lehuauakea: On the other hand, individuals like Lehua Domingo celebrate resilience in the form of innovation, seeing the younger generations create new weaving techniques and patterns, building on a tradition while passing it down within the community.

Mija Riedel: What changes have you seen in weaving over your lifetime?

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo: I'm thinking that there's maybe styles.

Mija Riedel: We were talking about the–I think a couple of young women from Kauai, yes, who did the pikos on the side of the hat. Is that right?

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo: Then the ‘anoni today. 'Anoni, as I understand it, only a few people did this type of weaving, 'anoni weaving. Some kept secret their designs, so they didn't want to share it. And today, you know, it's open.

And so, I think the change–the biggest change is that 'anoni hats have really become popular. It used to be just the one color, but today you have a variety of–some of the styles, you know, that were forgotten have been revived. So you see the different styles available.

Mija Riedel: So, let's start this morning with a conversation about your experience in the makaloa project. I looked that up–we made reference to it yesterday–and it was–it was with the USGS. It was the U.S. Geological Survey grant, and it was growing makaloa in constructed wetlands for weaving and treating wastewater at the Greenwell Gardens–Greenwell Botanical Gardens–Ethnobotanical Gardens, in conjunction with the Bishop Museum and a Hawaiian cultural institution, I think.And that–Auntie Elizabeth Lee was working on that project. And it was 1993, I believe, 1995, somewhere in the '90s.

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo:  I was one of the participants selected to be involved in reviving the weaving portion of makaloa. We were volunteers, and at the time I was working at Pu'uhonua, the national park at Honaunau. So I arranged with the park to be able to do it on park time.

I would catalog what we were doing. There's no information that's written that's available on makaloa, so it was a large asset for the park to have that type of information.

And so I logged a journal concept of what we did, where we went,

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and also tried to do a grid on the size of the makaloa.

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Lehuauakea: For Al, much of his practice in ceramics and hand-built pottery became focused on experimenting with different compositions of clay and ash, and innovating new techniques for carving intricate details of old Hopi, Tewa, and Pueblo dwellings which are then cleverly inlaid into modern vessel-like constructions.

Interviewer: The earliest work was primarily monochromatic, minimal simple lines, very much involved with the repoussé technique, and there were some figures. In 1989, 1990, there was a big changes, and the work became more architectural. What provoked that change?

Al Qöyawayma: Oh, it's just an evolution. I was looking at different styles of figures to put on pottery, and naturally, we had dwellings, and we had katsina [spirit being] figures. Of course, the carving tradition in katsinas, or "kachinas," as said in English, is well known.

So I wanted to kind of represent a little of the feeling of that on a pot, and I started to put ancient ruins on a pot, that is, a katsina head or just a little a piece of architecture. And then I put a little half-inch relief arch, but I'd use repoussé to push it out. That started to develop. It was just a little relief representing an arch. It was half an arch, a quarter of an arch, on a pot, and it was very linear.

It looked fine, but it was something different. I hadn't seen anything like that. Then ultimately, that just began to develop, and I learned to take whole sections of what would otherwise be a–I think of it as a shouldered vessel but pushed in, and push it in like in a volleyball that was under-inflated but not have the clay crack, be at the right stage in your material.

This had a lot to do with developing the materials and finding out what our old potters had access to besides the clay and the temper. They had other certain things, the volcanic clays and things, that they could have certainly used and got a really great paste or mixture of clay.

Anyway, by having that–and by that time, in the 1990s, I was pretty sure I either had clay close to our ancestors back several hundred years ago, or if it wasn't, I had something as good as, because it really worked well.

And this allowed me to start to really make complex shapes. And then I was able to form in multiple directions–that is, I could push and pull this clay in and out on different surfaces and still be in the original clay. That is, I wasn't adding anything to it at that point because it maintained the moisture and the workability,

And as a result of that, I was able to start to actually create–for instance, usually the cliff dwellings have a very concave erosion of sandstone, so that it creates a cliff above it and cut out. So I could start to actually produce that look, and it just slowly developed one step at a time. And now I can have some really significant architectural scenes. They're not replications of an actual scene, but they carry that feel.

Lehuauakea: And worth celebrating as well is our ability to form connections with other Indigenous nations through shared experiences and solidarity, which becomes a powerful mode of learning, passing along stories, and building strong community ties that span across oceans, borders, and time.

Al Qöyawayma: So in the Americas, it was that timelessness. And I remember the next thing we said after that, and namely,   the National Museum of the American Indian held a convocation between potters in all the hemispheres.

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Jody Folwell and I represented the western portion of the United States in terms of ceramics.

And we had this exchange–a lot of translation going on. We had the Inca. We had the Central Americans and, of course, Americans in Canada. So they were speaking Quechua down there, so we had to go through. Anyway, the point was we had a feeling, was what was common to us. We shared a common spirit beyond just the clay. We certainly–there was a lot of emotion on the part of the Quechua-speaking people and the Central Americans. I can remember husbands and wives–they were all crying when we had to leave because we had shared experiences in our clay.

We had to get earthy and down to the basics. Yes, different cultural environments, different education; we did things maybe a little differently, but in the ultimate experience we experienced the same thing. I could be from a modern world and from the highest scientific standpoint, but still my experience was the same as their experience.

So in a way they knew me. They knew me through my clay, which is–we didn't make that point before. They would know–Elizabeth would be known through her clay. Anybody indigenous would know somebody else, and perhaps even a modern potter would know us through our clay; I'm not sure, but to particularly dig your own clay and process your own, I mean, it's part of the Earth, so we're earthy. We always said that. We're part of the Earth.

I actually have a time machine now, and if I could go backwards a thousand years, I'd be comfortable with the culture, my ancestors in that time. My aunt always explained that to me in different metaphors and ways, and we even discussed briefly, the other night, being able to tell the personality of a potter from examining the pot.

That's all part of the same arena of dealing with the ceramics. So even different groups that we deal with today, when we can really just sit down and talk, we find we have a commonality.

Lehuauakea: Al also discusses his personal relationship with Native Hawaiian artist Herb Kāne, who is widely known for his depictions of storied Polynesian events, whether they be mythology, lived history, or a little bit of both–again, nodding to the

often unexpected yet beautiful and potent relationships that today’s Indigenous artists build through their work as it develops into new forms.

Al Qöyawayma: Herb is kind of a historian for the Hawaiian people and recreated the hokule'a and the navigation system to go with it [the Hokule'a, Polynesian Voyaging Society, launched 1975 from Hawaii] .

So there's navigation, you know–there's star navigation systems, and just the whole idea of recreating from petroglyphs–a little bit like I tried to recreate who and what we did in our ceramics–different things, but nevertheless that whole feeling of going back into the past and pulling out what you think is right. Now, in terms of Herb, maybe he didn't get the vessel just right. He recreated the vessel, and they've sailed it.

So we stay in touch, and we have different theories about the sailing–contact between Polynesia and the Americas, definitely. It happened. The question is, what direction? And the next question is, it's the wrong time frame. The time frames we're looking for–some of the transportation, like when I talked about the Valdivia pottery of Betty Meggers. And if her ideas are right, there had to be other kinds of contact much earlier.

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Lehuauakea: Sometimes, or perhaps more often than not, the community that we find ourselves most connected to is the one we grew up right alongside.

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo: We love what we're doing. And I think that goes first, you know. That gives us a good showing to others. You know, these are ladies that are willing to help you whatever your question is, if we can.

And maybe it's because of our heritage. You know, that's how we grew up. In fact, you know, I say today some of our problems are because the neighbors don't know each other. They should know each other, and then we can help each other, you know, when you need help.

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You know, in growing up in a village, a fishing village, we all were family. We were different last names; we're still family.

It was a good sense, and I think it's all part of our heritage, all a part of being who we are. If we can, we go and help. 

Lehuauakea: All in all, there is much to be celebrated in spite of our collective challenges that we and our ancestors have faced with regards to the perpetuation of our artistic practices and material culture. As Native people, we have consistently found ways to not only build on our traditions, but also create new ones as our work becomes shaped and molded—much like Al’s ceramics—by outside influences, the pressures asking us to assimilate into a westernized way of life, the separation from our ancestral homelands and practices, and personal lived experiences that make each of us unique within the whole. All of these elements act as factors in not only the preservation of traditions from the past, but also in the creation and perpetuation of new practices that may become traditions for future generations.

But as the meaning of Native art evolves to include a vast expanse of varied expressions, stories, and techniques in response to an array of challenges and celebrations, a handful of questions become increasingly prevalent: What makes traditional Native art distinct from the contemporary, and is the line between the two becoming more and more blurred?

And, does the term traditional refer to a certain context of time, a learned technique, or something else altogether?

Perhaps it helps to provide clarity when we think about the fact that everything considered traditional today was once contemporary. Thus, the weaving and ceramic ‘traditions’ practiced by artists like Lehua Domingo and Al Qöyawayma, as well as many other intergenerational customs of Indigenous material culture, can be seen as contemporary expressions of practices that have histories going back hundreds and even thousands of years.

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo: In fact, when I was first weaving, it was just a pretty color that's–because I just learned how to weave, I enjoyed weaving and I just wove.

But after I completed one hat and I had it on the floor, and my husband pointed my attention to the hat it looked like there were petals on the hat. It was plain-colored hat, but there on the floor it looked like she had petals. She reminded me of the plumeria flower with all of her petals all along the brim. And we both stood in awe, looking at the hat.

Mija Riedel: Was that due to the pattern of the weave?

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo: I have no idea. Apparently, because now I have some sense of the placement of the brown and the white and the piko if I want this to happen.

I know that this will happen if I did this. And I guess it started way back then without my realizing it.

And that–I think that evening more I was inspired to learn to weave anoni from Cousin Gladys. She was the master. I think–it's said that all weavers have a signature, which means that I can look at this hat and I know that that's Suzi's hat. I can look at that hat and say that that's Margaret's hat. They can look at my hats and they'll say, "That's Lehua's hat."

Lehuauakea: Furthermore, in many Indigenous languages including ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, Native Hawaiian language, the concept of “art” didn’t exist, and there was no direct translation for the word. “Art” was just part of life, whether it be crafted objects of functional purpose, or modes of conveying stories and events through image, sound, and movement.

And the ideas of “traditional” and “contemporary” weren’t necessarily seen as polar opposites, because cultural practices were, and in many ways still are, viewed as part of a continuum passed from generation to generation.

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Mija Riedel: A final question for me–and then any final thoughts you might have are welcome–but what in particular about the weaving is important to you? What do you think is significant?

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo: Oh, you know, Auntie–Cousin Gladys–we're taught to, when we start to weave, to treat our work as you would take care of a baby: "Don't just, you know, discard her or leave her on the ground, or whichever. Take good care of it.

 like I always say, when you take care of the tree, the tree takes care of you. When you take care of your child, the child will grow up and take care of you.

And I think that holds true of weaving, again the word "respect." When you're respectful, whichever way, you know, good things come back to you. That's good. Those things happen. Just take care of it, you know.

Mija Riedel: [Laughs.] I can see, too–the people listening won't be able to see, but how you're patting the hat as you're talking. [They laugh.] this hat has been with us the entire time. I really haven’t seen you without the hat. The hat has been with us

Katherine "Lehua" Domingo: Well, now that you mention it, that's right.

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Lehuauakea: So, do these ideas of traditional versus contemporary speak more about the work being created by Native peoples now and in the past, or more to the expectations that are placed on Indigenous artists regardless of their context in time, place, and medium?

Are these labels even helpful at all, or do they serve to further divide and label Native artists and practitioners in order to keep us separate from the larger conversations happening in contemporary art today? There are many different opinions on how this might be addressed.

Al Qöyawayma: And I know Native artists who are good artists who don't want to be identified as Native artists. They're just American artists, which is grand. But they really almost deny their culture by doing that. Some are able to manage both worlds, and be Native but at the same time be a top painter or what have you. And not necessarily be looked at the genre of just American art.

But for the most part, American Indian art forms is a segment of America's art heritage.

It was looked at as a craft or what have you, and it naturally did come out of the culture that didn't really have art for art's sake. That's more a European idea. We have the whole area of what's called primitive art –whether it be in Africa or the United States or in South America, and there's a great market for primitive art. We don't even know who the artists, quote, unquote, were. It's defined as art by anthropologists. I think the human being has a spirit where, when they saw the objects and their durability, they were definitely encouraged; they had enough time. They had an agrarian kind of society, and they had permanent structures. And so by definition, they had some extra time to actually work and perfect objects.

Mija Riedel: There's a functional aspect to them in some ways.

Al Qöyawayma: Yeah, they were, yes, very definitely. And there was a big differentiation between cooking vessels and these funerary and ceremonial —

It had a functional aspect to it. And then if you made a ladle for the bowl, you decorated the ladle. So objects got decorated, and there was an appreciation aesthetically for that. But of course, there wasn't an economic base in a sense of money. Certainly objects, we can see that Sikyatki was traded long distances possibly because of its durability and, you know, for its aesthetics.

[Outro music plays]

Mija Riedel:  It's beautiful. Absolutely.

Al Qöyawayma: Others came to appreciate it, so I can't say that we didn't have our own art appreciation.

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Lehuauakea: Perhaps these terms are only relative, and are fluid according to whom they are applied to and who is doing the labeling. Perhaps it is the contemporary challenges and celebrations that Native artists experience that are the qualifiers that make ‘traditional’ arts something contemporary. And on the other hand, maybe contemporary challenges cross into the realm of the traditional because of the approaches and techniques being used to address the challenges in the first place.

Regardless of the labels that are placed on Indigenous artists and our work, we have always found a way to carry on the practices of our ancestors while finding new modalities to tell contemporary stories of our experiences today. By ensuring our customs don’t remain static within history, allowing them to move in flux with a changing environment, we can weave the past with the present, and gradually shape new futures for our communities informed by our collective experiences, obstacles overcome, and the steps forward taken together.

Gabi Senno: This podcast is produced by Ben Gillespie and Michelle Herman at the Archives of American Art. It was edited by the team at Better Lemon Creative Audio

Our music comes from Sound and Smoke composed by

Viet Cuong and performed by the Peabody Wind Ensemble with Harlan Parker conducting.

For show notes, work cited, and additional resources, visit aaa.si.edu/articulated.

The Archives is grateful to Lehuauakea for their time, insight, and inspiration.

This guest-curated episode received support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative.

Jennifer Snyder: Hi, I'm Jennifer Snyder and I work as the oral history archivist here at the Archives.

Special thanks to Gabi Senno for her contributions to this episode.

If you enjoy ARTiculated, please consider rating and sharing it.

The Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution is a nonprofit organization that relies on donations from individuals like you to sustain our ongoing operations and special programs like ARTiculated. To support our work, please visit aaa.si.edu/support. Thank you.

[Music ends]

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