Tag Archive

Indigenous Peoples’ Day has inspired me to look up art and music by indigenous people around the world. I don’t post photos of people’s work here because it makes it too easy for people to pick them up and disseminate them without credit, so please click the links to see them.

I knew nothing of Australian indigenous artists until I saw a museum show several years ago. Aboriginal art was having a moment (with that disturbing mix of overplaying and belated appreciation that we’ve seen so many times) and we were in Seattle during this exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. They were so, so beautiful, and taught me a lot as an artist: about assymmetry, for example. You can see a lot of the art via that link, though seeing them on a screen doesn’t do them justice. Until you get a chance to see an exhibit, here are a couple others I’ve found on the great gallery of the internet that I really love.

Untitled, Lily Kngwarrey Sandover

My Country, Raelene Stevens

As a ceramic artist, I’m always blown away by the sheer technical brilliance of the pottery of Pueblo peoples. But of course it’s not just impressive in a “how do they DO that?” way, but expressively. From an exhibit this summer at the Metropolitan Museum, Grounded in Clay:

Jar, Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo

I was lucky to go to a college that had a strong ethnomusicology specialization, so I went to a lot of West African dance and music performances then, but I haven’t sought them out. Why haven’t I? Check out this gorgeous music from Beninois, Yoruba musician Taofique:

I’ve heard a lot of Lila Downs, who is one of Oaxaca’s most famous musicians, but I’ve never heard her specifically Zapotec music. She’s released other versions of this song under its Spanish name, “Flor Menudito,” but she has been recognizing how she was once ashamed of being Zapotec, and is now reclaiming that heritage and giving it its due. This is stunning:

Coming across the Gond people and their art was one of those many, many moments of realizing how limited my education has been. Not that we can learn about every indigenous group on the planet, or even come across their names–there are so many. But just to know that there is a whole world out there that I don’t know is a big shift. Like when I learned that we have probably only identified 10% of the world’s animal species. Except in this case, I was so unaware of the vast variety of indigenous peoples because those outside the U.S. were so seldom mentioned in any of my schooling (and those inside the U.S. were mostly written about in the past tense. They’re still here!).

My fall-in-love moment with Gond art was seeing the fish-shaped eye on the painting about prayers to Dharti Mata (Mother Earth) on this site. An eye! But it’s a fish! A fish! But it’s a person’s eye!