Over the course of her Anne Ray internship, Emily Santhanam dove deep into the collections, approaching the objects through registration, collections management, education, and curation work. Each project taught her to navigate Native American arts stewardship in a new way. Yet what she most enjoyed was creating an online exhibition about the bolo ties cared for by the IARC.
This winter, IARC collections staff and interns, journeyed to Oklahoma to share with community members one of the most storied textiles in the IARC collection – the Chief White Antelope Blanket (CWAB). The Annual Gathering of the Sand Creek Descendants, held in Apache, Oklahoma, brought out between 200 and 300 people for dancing, food, and to pay tribute to the blanket. For some attendees, it was their first time to see this historic blanket. Learn more about this important piece and the continued collaborative collections-care approach taken by the IARC staff for this textile.
“We were honored to bring the blanket back to be a part of this important gathering,” says IARC collections manager, Lisa Barerra. “Since the mid-1990s,” she adds, “the IARC at SAR has worked closely with the Sand Creek Massacre Descendants Trust (SCMDT) regarding care and access to the blanket, including an agreement to bring the blanket for the gathering every two years. However, the last time the CWAB went back was actually in December 2014. While the CWAB is currently not on display (at the request of the SCMDT), an approved photograph of the blanket is available for viewing at IARC.” The photograph can be viewed during an IARC collections tour and requests to view the actual blanket require written permission from the SCMDT to do so. Reflecting on the trip and the collaborative efforts happening at the IARC, Harerra notes, “We look forward to continuing to work together with the SCMDT in the future!”
SAR members Russ and Diane Kyncl share the fifty-year story of how they became friends with the Edaakie family of Zuni Pueblo, how the late potter Timothy Edaakie helped them to connect with SAR, and why they decided to include SAR in their legacy plan.
In each session of his course on Navajo weaving, artist Venancio Aragon takes his students on a journey that exposes the impact of non-Indigenous institutions on Diné peoples and their making, as well as the sovereignty that Indigenous peoples, including artists, have continued to exercise through each moment.
The School for Advanced Research (SAR) is pleased to announce our new initiative, SAR Learns! Out of a desire to support intergenerational learning and creativity during the pandemic, SAR Learns! will assist with knowledge transmission specifically within the context of the ongoing pandemic. The program will distribute $50,000, utilizing re-directed grant funds, that will enable sixteen artists to launch or complete a variety of proposed projects.
SAR Announces 2021-2022 Native American Artist Fellows: Lehuauakea, Brandon Adriano Ortiz, and Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty.
Every year SAR publishes its Annual Report, which describes accomplishments and acknowledges supporters over the previous fiscal year. Our 2019–2020 report is no different, and yet so much has changed, as President Michael F. Brown explains.
The School for Advanced Research (SAR) is pleased to present a virtual program welcoming U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. Reflecting on the upcoming program with SAR, Harjo shares, “The StoryMap project was a way to widen the doorway that my poet laureateship created when I became the first Native U.S. Poet Laureate. It was important to show that there are many Native poets writing poetry alongside each other, and that we speak from a sense of place in which there are no political boundaries imposed by non-Native cultures and political entities.”
The books in this list address Indigenous identity from different perspectives and in different ways: Native artists discuss the tensions between art and life; Native anthropologists and historians describe changing forms of identity via stereotyping, genetic science, ecology, and decolonization; and Native writers in various genres tell the stories of their people surviving and thriving, past and present.
With the nation’s social and political turmoil as well as an ongoing pandemic, 2020 revealed how now more than ever the perspectives of social science scholars and Native American artists matter. In today’s post, we reflect on the last year and invite you to join us for online programs in the new year.
