Convenors:
Greta Jennings Murphy (Department of Art and Art History, University of Wisconsin at Eau-Claire, Eau-Claire, WI 54701 szabo@unm.edu)  

This session begins with the premise that contemporary Native American art suffers from a lack of rigorous criticism. The work of many of today\'s Native artists can be rather insular, and this insularity often acts as a barrier to sustained critical inquiry from those who view the art as racial products rather than artistic ones. The result is that even artists as universally recognised and respected as Jimmie Durham tend to have their work discussed in vague cultural or colonial terms rather than from diffuse art-historical and critical perspectives. The purpose of this session is to challenge these monologic readings and to propose ways by which contemporary Indian art can be brought into the fold without being denuded of its cultural specificity.

Spurious Issues: Self-Representation and Other Subversive Acts in Jimmie Durham\'s Portraits
Greta Jennings Murphy

Legitimized by the rhetoric of authenticity applied without regard to any criteria outside that of Indian blood-quantum, the contemporary Native American art world revealed a disturbing side with the passing of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990. This federal law, initiated and sponsored by a coalition of Native American artists and members of the United States Congress, requires anyone representing his or her self as an American Indian artist to provide legal proof of tribal membership. Fair enough, on the surface, but tribal memberships, the criteria of which are established by the tribes themselves, are based almost exclusively on degree of Indian blood; a vestige of nineteenth-century eugenics that thrives unabashedly as a preoccupation with phenotype and "Indian blood-quantum". The law leaves so-called "mixed-blood" Indian artists who either cannot document their genetic history, or simply refuse to do so, suspect and quintessentially other. Jimmie Durham was the first significant casualty of this law. Unwilling to engage in what he believed was a racist enrollment system, Durham refused to document his blood-quantum or to publicly enter the debate. However, I will argue, Durham does address his liminal position as a mixed-blood outsider through his sculpted portraits. These include, among others, the historical figures La Malinche and Pocahontas, Shakespeare\'s not-so-noble Caliban, and Durham\'s own Self-Portrait.

Negotiating Ethnic and National Identity: Patriotic Signifiers in Native American Art
Adrianne A. Santina (University of North Texas, USA)

As the primary signifier of the United States, the American flag appears unexpectedly in art works made by Native North Americans. The continued use of the flag and other signifiers of the US in Native art from the nineteenth century onwards indicates an ongoing artistic examination of the implications of being an ethnic minority in America. From works by artists such as Fritz Scholder, Bob Haozous, and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, to Lakota beadwork and Navajo weaving by unknown artists, the flag and other signifiers of the US are indexical signs of the ambivalence Native Americans may feel regarding their plural identity as Natives and Americans. Using a semiological approach, this essay examines the means by which nationalistic signifiers assume polyvalency and accommodate political and national contradictions. Curiously, a canonical artist like Jasper Johns claims that his use of the American flag is simply a formal exercise unrelated to the concept of the United States. However, could a Native artist make a similar claim when using the same icon? Do the contingencies of identity prohibit Natives from using icons of nationality in a manner that undercuts their accepted meanings? Is the image of the flag itself so laden with intertextual significance that it always already signifies the United States? Despite the paucity of critical approaches to Native American art, interpretation of nationalistic signs by Native artists necessitates a semiological methodology.

Luiseno Performance Artist James Luna: Language, the Dialogic, and Performance
Lara M. Evans (University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA)

Bakhtin\'s identification of language as dialogic might be useful in discussing the work of Luiseño performance artist James Luna. Discussion of his performances as liminal zones might also be productive. I can use theory to identify the space Luna is occupying/engaging as a liminal space, a border zone and to characterize his communication as dialogical or multi-vocal, rather than monological. I can say his work is postmodern and post-colonial and that helps to categorize his work, and indeed, would tell some people all they think they need to know about his work. Other approaches I could take might focus on identity issues, specifically, the formation and representation of "Indian" identity. While all these approaches might produce interesting observations regarding Luna\'s performance art, there is something unsatisfactory about them. In my efforts to analyze his work, I find that the application of existing theory, even pulling from multiple disciplines, tends to obscure the things I find most interesting in his work. Somehow, the theories make certain aspects of his work invisible. These theories turn my attention to the issues of interest to non-Native theorists. What are the issues of interest to Luna\'s Native audiences? How can I go beyond categorizing Luna\'s performance according to the existing theory? Luna attracts diverse audiences for his performances. Luna\'s dialogic approach results in multiple, simultaneous interpretations for his audiences. What are the varied interpretations of a performance for his audiences? I will examine these issues using two performances: Petroglyphs in Motion and Take a Picture with a Real Indian.