Review of \u3ci\u3eEarth Songs, Moon Dreams: Paintings by American Indian Women\u3c/i\u3e By Patricia Janis Broder

With the first book devoted exclusively to women\u27s painting, Patricia Janis Broder addresses a deficiency in Native American art history. Women\u27s arts-painting, or any of their myriad art forms-became an area of serious inquiry after 1960 that has yet to be sufficiently served by scholars. Broder\u27s introduction explains the importance of the role of women, their arts, styles, and subjects. Mentioned are individuals and schools that form the context and modes of contemporary women\u27s art. The author has selected artists\u27 paintings that she determined have cultural, historical, and aesthetic merit. There are ninety featured artists representing fifty-seven communities. Each artist\u27s biography offers useful background material, including information about her images, as well as illustrations of her work. Most biographies are clearly written, although a few lack dates and current data. Several painters from the Northern and Southern Plains are featured in this seminal work. Historic Plains women painted stylized geometric patterns on hide containers and robes. This non-figurative traditional style was dropped by Plains women early in the twentieth century. Among the artists who helped establish the new trend was Anne Little Warrior, whose dance scene is created in the Plains pictographic style. Southern Plains artist Lois Smoky, who attended art classes under Oscar Jacobson and was one of the original Kiowa artists in the 1920s, is featured as a symbol of a new era in women\u27s painting. Sharron Ahtone Harjo paints today in a style reminiscent of the Kiowa Ledger artists. One of the Northern Plains women included is Crow artist Connie Red Star. Her painting Crow Parfleche creates a sense of irony by recalling the geometric style of earlier women. Other Plains women include Roberta A. Whiteshield, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Rosebud Tahcawin De Cinq Mars, and Nadema Agard. Themes involve ceremonials, the spiritual world, and traditional and everyday life activities. Broder suggests that further scholarship is needed and that her book, which is neither an encyclopedia nor a directory, has some limitations. For example, work by Linda Haukaas and Jean LaMarr is not included. Broder compensates by a regional approach with artists from a broad geographical range. With color plates of excellent quality illustrating a wide variety of painting, this book helps fill the void of serious studies of Native women\u27s art history