“Spring” (Four Seasons). Image by Wendy Red Star, 2006.
The first work I saw by Wendy Red Star was a photograph at the Portland Art Museum.
Part of a series, the photo featured her as the central figure, dressed in regalia against backdrops of nature, a serious expression on her face. The setting feels familiar because she is mimicking the well-known caricatures of Native Americans as Indian Princesses, of and one with nature, the stereotype of the “Ecological Indian,”[1] the Indigenous woman stuck forever in the diorama next to the dinosaurs at a history museum in Los Angeles.[2] It isn’t until a closer examination that the viewer begins to notice that Red Star is sitting on astro-turf, that the animals around her are cardboard cut outs, that the flowers are plastic. One has to laugh.
Red Star says: “when talking about Indigenous history you can just devastate yourself. And so, humor has been a way for me to cope with that.” Adding, “I find that if you have ever gone to a funeral; it’s always so appreciated when someone tells a funny story, and everyone is so sad but then everyone laughs! It feels so good.”[3]
There is something inherently connecting and human about laughing during stressful times, using humor as a coping mechanism, as a way to bond with other humans, as a way to have difficult conversations. In a world such as ours, one that centers Western values apparent in our education system, our white washing of history, even in the ways we catalog libraries and databases, and how we search the internet, finding subtle ways to decolonize these spaces is vital. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, an Indigenous author from New Zealand highlights, “one of the strategies which indigenous peoples have employed effectively to bind together politically is a strategy which asks people imagine a future, that they rise above present day situations which are generally depressing, dream a new dream and set a new vision.”[4] It’s my opinion that humor can be an incredibly effective tool while imaging what a decolonized future could look like.
Red Star’s above mentioned photographs, part of her Four Seasons series, and much of her other work based in humor or nestled in pop culture references allow for her to critique museum and archival practices through irony and humor; to decolonize the narrative by placing Indigenous lives in the present; and nudges conversations towards more serious ones, paving the way for future works such as her latest installation that opened at the beginning of the year.
“Humor is healing to me,” she says. “To have that element in my work is quite Native, or Crow, and I’m glad that it comes through. It’s universal. People can connect with the work that way. Then they can be open to talking about race.”[5] Her Four Seasons series was an excellent gateway to her work for me. I remember standing at the museum and staring at the photos, longer than any of the others in the exhibit, which featured a handful of photographs taken by women in the Pacific Northwest. Red Star’s contribution was so funny, but also so bright and open and engaging. I felt like she wanted to challenge me to find all of the funny props. And I accepted that challenge with gusto. I went home and read about her and her other work, found her social media accounts and followed them all. I’m the kind of person who loves to think about and challenge societal norms that I find harmful, but sometimes, a little humor can change the narrative in my head from one of overwhelm and doom, to a realm of hopeful imagination.
Through Red Star’s social media account, I was informed that on January 30th, the installation of Indian Congress of Omaha, 1898 opened at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. Visitors to the museum walk down a short corridor and are greeted with a floor to ceiling portrait of White Swan, an Apsáalooke (Crow) artist and military scout, and then turn a corner into a small room that houses the exhibit.
The Indian Congress of 1898 was a convention of over five hundred Native Americans representing over thirty-five tribes and coincided with the Trans-Mississippi International Exposition, a large fair meant to mark the end of a Federal Indian policy and celebrate the United States’ westward expansion and Manifest Destiny.[6]
The official photographer for the expo, Frank Rinehart, ended up also photographing Native American delegates for the Congress, their lodgings, and various Congress events. Rinehart recorded each delegate’s name and tribal identity, thus creating an invaluable historic record of this monumental meeting. His series included the aforementioned photo of White Swan. Red Star’s exhibit mimics the booths seen at the expo: red, white, and blue banners and American flags hang over head, and stars and stripes drape a tiered display of hundreds of hand cut photographic reproductions of the Indian Congress members’ photos taken by Rinehart in his Omaha studio.
His entire collection is available for viewing on the Omaha Public Library’s website, but, Red Star says viewing them online, clicking on them one at time, felt disconnected; not only did she feel disconnected from the subjects, but the subjects were disconnected from each other. Instead, she “want[ed] to have an experience of what that gathering would feel like.” Adding, “It’s another way of not just pushing these images and these people off in the past, but really a way for people to feel the gravity of that extraordinary gathering.”[7] Clicking on individual photos in the digital archive can be disjointed, and Red Star thinks that viewers are likely to miss small details that she hopes to highlight through the exhibit: interpreters wearing cowboy hats with their tribe names written on the hat bands, or “one whole delegation carr[ying] identical blankets, carefully presenting a united front to the fair’s two million visitors.”[8]
Red Star’s Indian Congress of Omaha, 1898 is successful because it places the viewer within the Congress itself, while also attempts to remind that Indigenous peoples are not just a moment in history, thus critiquing the “settler gaze” so often accommodated in archives, libraries, museums, and online forums. Red Star’s work actively addresses colonialism, which often “is subtle, insidious, and nearly invisible to privileged citizens of a Settler state.”[9] This exhibit makes explicitly clear how an indigenous perspective on archival collections can create a greater understanding of not just the event, but who the delegates were, how they connected to each other, and the impact and significance of the event.
Red Star and others’[10] work is a direct response to colonization and the oppression of Indigenous peoples, and is centered on countering false stereotypes, inciting difficult conversations, and decolonizing the historical narrative. Using humor and art, she is able to contribute to the imagining of a new, decolonized future, specifically in archives and museums. This type of imagining can be difficult for professionals in the library world who were socialized to see things with a white/western perspective. Red Star shows that humor can help break down these barriers and help facilitate conversations that might overwise be made more difficult.
[1] “The Problem with the Ecological Indian Stereotype,” KCET, February 5, 2017, https://www.kcet.org/shows/tending-the-wild/the-problem-with-the-ecological-indian-stereotype.
[2] Robert Sullivan, “A New Exhibition Is Part Historical Corrective, Part Ghost Story,” Vogue, accessed February 3, 2021, https://www.vogue.com/article/wendy-red-star-art-exhibition-a-scratch-on-the-earth-newark-museum.
[3] Salma Monani and Nicole Seymour, “How Wendy Red Star Decolonizes the Museum with Humor and Play,” Edge Effects, September 30, 2020, http://edgeeffects.net/wendy-red-star/.
[4] Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London ; New York : Dunedin, N.Z. : New York: Zed Books ; University of Otago Press ; Distributed in the USA exclusively by St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 162.
[5] “Artist Spotlight: Wendy Red Star | Art Docent Program,” accessed February 1, 2021, https://www.artdocentprogram.com/artist-spotlight-wendy-red-star/.
[6] “Indian Congress - Digital Collections,” accessed February 1, 2021, https://digital.omahalibrary.org/digital/collection/p16747coll2.
[7] “The Historic Indian Congress Is Reunited in Omaha by Artist Wendy Red Star,” accessed February 3, 2021, http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/the-historic-indian-congress-is-reunited-in-omaha-by-artist-wendy-red-star.
[8] “The Historic Indian Congress Is Reunited in Omaha by Artist Wendy Red Star.”
[9] Marisa Elena Duarte and Miranda Belarde-Lewis, “Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5–6 (July 4, 2015): 682, https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2015.1018396.
[10] If you are interested in Indigenous American comedians challenging stereotypes through humor, check out the sketch comedy group The 1491s.
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