Making History : : The Role of History in Contemporary Native American Art

This dissertation investigates the ways in which traditional Native American and Canadian First Nations ideas and concepts of history influence contemporary art made by artists with these backgrounds. It further takes into account an understanding of historicity as an approach to the philosophies that underlie concepts of history. The methodologies used in this analysis include investigations of mythology and ritual practice, ideas about landscape, and the roles of personal lives and biographies as forms of historical documentation. It also includes an examination of specific government laws and treaties, which are forms of more standard historical sources. Throughout the text, there is a concern with the ways in which artists use their practice to reclaim historical agency lost in the process of colonization. This agency is manifest in myriad ways, including the reference of traditional myths and ritual practices described in academic texts and artistic critiques of the laws enacted by settler governments. This dissertation also considers the manner in which this agency is transferred from artist to art object, allowing the artwork to manifest and display the agency of the artist herself or himself. Through the use of traditional concepts of history and historicity, Native American and Canadian First Nations artists reassert their rights of agency within the historical record. They do so through reference to traditional ideas and as full participants in the contemporary art world. In so doing they reclaim a degree of control over their own histories, producing works and discourses that present, or intentionally refuse to present, a continuity with the historical past that has otherwise often been denied to modern indigenous American