Making History, a collaboration between the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), the only tribal college in the US dedicated to promoting Indigenous art and creativity, and the University of New Mexico, summarizes some of the most positive recent viewpoints on the presentation, interpretation, and criticism of contemporary Native American works of art. The founding of the IAIA in 1962 and its appended museum, the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), initiated a movement of indigenization for both the creative process as well as its evaluation, taking into account such dimensions as terminology, epistemology, curatorial practices, and other variables, and the reframing of both art history and art criticism.

Focusing mostly on the achievements of IAIA students and faculty, the Native scholars assembled by the editor, Nancy Marie Mithlow (Chiricahua Apache), variously examine the work of several Indigenous artists, many of whom have established credentials in the academic and museum world, and most of whom exhibit a profound connection to their cultural heritage. The contributors remind us that the context of aesthetics and provenance have, for the most part, been derived from false assumptions created by outsiders imbedded in mainstream conventional paradigms. What emerges from the five sections, the four historical essays and artists’ statements (section 5), is not only a strong sense of Indigenous consciousness in the epistemological and pedagogical framework but a self-realization and pride about resilience, adaptability or “reconceptualization,” and continuity of traditional modes of expression in spite of the devastation brought on since 1492.

To define oneself in a cosmological and nature-centered world, to disregard aesthetic dichotomies and linear history, to highlight “the relationship between the physical and the spiritual worlds“ (77), has given strength to Indigenous artists and their expressive modes. Interspersed within the major themes of the book are mentions of important historical markers, such as the Indian Reorganization Act (1934), the foundation of the IAIA (1962), the Santa Fe Indian Market, and the Indian Arts and Crafts Law (1990).

The book is generously illustrated with almost two-hundred stunning figures and plates associated with the work’s Indigenous analysis, and archival photographs from the IAIA; it also includes original poetry and some well-organized pedagogical lesson plans. Making History is a welcome addition to the growing number of contributions by Indigenous writers—and other scholars—with a lens focusing on cultural differences, in this case, particularly those of artists, mentors, and scholars associated with the IAIA. It is highly recommended to anyone interested in—or teaching—the contemporary Indigenous arts of Turtle Island.

--------

[Review length: 413 words • Review posted on April 8, 2022]