BEING AND BELONGING: The State of the Field

By Nancy Marie Mithlo, Ph.D.

Five years ago I was invited to participate in a dialogue at the School of American Research in Santa Fe to discuss how Native arts might be more meaningfully incorporated into mainstream dialogues. While a majority of the participants appeared to accept the fact that Native arts were indeed marginalized, one artist, Lonnie Vigil from Nambe, took a totally polar stance. I’m paraphrasing, but essentially he stated, ”Native arts just are, they don’t need to be legitimated by anyone, they just are.”

At the time, this sense of just being struck me as a novel approach. Trained in the tribal college cultural center movement of the 1980s I assumed that equal participation, democratization and access were the whole story. Basically, we were taught that only if we had the same credentials, the same training, then the center of focus would shift, multicultural winds would blow, and we would magically find ourselves as full global arts citizens in a new era of inclusive museology. We didn’t just want to be, we wanted to belong.

This desire to belong has been pervasive for the Native arts communities in the States over the past few decades and many would argue that the field has reached a point of arrival. Certainly, with the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in New York (1994) and Washington, DC (2004), the establishment of the Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art in 1999, and the exhibition of Native Arts at the Venice Biennale (1999 to present), it would appear that access to the mainstream has been accomplished. But on whose terms are these entries achieved, what types of belongings are enacted, and importantly, are these inclusions substantial or long-lasting?

I suggest that inclusion based on individual acceptance signals not so much a state of belonging for Native arts, as a tolerance for diversity. Tolerance, inclusion, what’s the difference? Tolerance manifests as the celebratory “We’ve got ours!” philosophy exemplified either as culturally specific arts institutions (such as the Heard Museum and the Institute of American Indian Arts) or alternately the inclusion of one Native artist in a group show setting (Rebecca Bellmore at the Brooklyn Museum’s “Global Feminisms” for example). Not only are these types of belongings restricted to pre-determined levels and types of participation, but they also do not occur consistently. In other words, this marginal inclusion occurs sporadically. Rather than witnessing a gradual increase of access and participation, I question if what we are really experiencing is a cyclical engagement with the center.

I didn’t invent this period approach of provisional acceptance. In fact, I appropriated it directly from Vine Deloria Jr. who identified a twenty year cycle of acceptance for Indian intellectualism that he termed a “ritual drama.” (To view the full interview along with a transcript see: “A Conversation with Vine Deloria Jr. ca. 1978 CLICK HERE). Deloria believed that Indians demanding recognition of indigenous values is so traumatic to white culture that in his words, “They can’t bear to have a continuous exposition of the Indian viewpoint”:

See, minority groups stand outside white culture, and every now and then the whites feel they ought to be guilty about something. So they pick a minority group, and they let them talk. Minority groups have been waiting twenty years to say, "Hey, this is what you did to us, and we'd like the damage repaired." The attitude of white society is, "all we have to do is say we did it and were sorry and then go on." Minority groups never catch on that that's all that's going to happen.

Where does this chronology leave us now in 2007? If we take Deloria’s literary timeline and apply it to the arts (Charles Alexander Eastman “Soul of an Indian” in 1911, Luther Standing Bear “My People, the Sioux” in 1928, D'Arcy McNickle “They Came Here First: The Epic of the American Indian” in 1949, Scott Momaday “The Way to Rainy Mountain” and Vine Deloria Jr. “Custer Died for Your Sins” both in 1969), we have our Indian mainstream arts institutions hitting at the twenty year mark of tolerance right at the time legislation for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was passed and the National Museum of the American Indian was established (1989 and 1990).

According to Deloria’s twenty year premise, we are due for another flowering of interest in Indian beliefs come 2009. Should we run to fill out grant applications hoping for another strong wind to arrive, or is this level of acceptance merely transitory? Deloria has an opinion on this matter too. His formula estimates that at any given time period there is a residual 15% of the American population of non-Indians who support Indian causes consistently (they’ve met an Indian or have Indian friends). Every twenty years this average might increase to 20 or 25%, but never more. If we follow this historic trajectory developed by one of our leading intellectuals, then belonging is an impossible goal, better to just be as Lonnie Vigil suggests.

Deloria’s polarizing tactics were necessary to his generation. His attacks on the fundamental premises of non-Indian culture were intended to begin a communication process across what he viewed as a vast divide in outlook. The phrase that stands out most poignantly for me in his writing is that of “absolute conflict” –differences in world views that are so inherently at odds they are irreconcilable. Sometimes when I read reactionary reviews of contemporary Native Art exhibits, I think like this too. But given the ever-growing population of Indians in America (4.3 million in 2000), the increase in economic parity for some gaming communities and the greater number of educational opportunities for Native youth, can we still describe Native arts and intellect as marginal?

I believe it is a mistake to assume that Native American arts have arrived to any level constituting a movement. The important entries we have achieved, like the exhibition of Lori Blondeau, Shelley Niro, and Edgar Heap of Birds at this year’s Venice Biennale are ground-breaking and crucially important to the vitality of indigenous arts. When viewed in an historical trajectory however, these too are marginal belongings, anomalies in the cult of individualism that still rules the art world. Our landscape of belonging in this sense is a fragile environment, dependent upon how much latitude is extended for inclusive debates. Belonging at any cost, in the sense of being tolerated, is a questionable pursuit in the competitive arena of the global arts village. By contrast, the essence of just being is available to us on any given day. As Deloria advises, “Just do whatever you feel like doing.”

by Nancy Marie Mithlo, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Art History and American Indian Studies
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Novmber 1, 2007