Newly Digitized Collection of Early 20th-Century Lakota Drawings Tells a Curious History

ab1630's bookmarks 2018-05-02

Summary:

"At a glance, they may look like more conventional outsider art work, but upon closer inspection you realize these drawings contain a history of a community that was actively being erased by the United States. Many show scenes of warfare and hunting, vividly depicted in watercolor and colored pencils and punctuated with splashes of red. In 1922, the Newberry Library acquired this collection of 160 drawings, attributed to “Sioux Indians” living in Fort Yates, which serves as headquarters of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The three boxes of art were sold by one Aaron McGaffey Beede, an Episcopal missionary who had provided paper and art supplies to the residents he had come to know, and paid them small sums to purchase the resulting works. This strange exchange arose from a dire situation: in the winter of 1913-14, the Lakota faced starvation from failed crops and a mysterious disappearance of cattle. These drawings, for them, carried exceptional value linked to survival; today, they represent significant records of indigenous self-representation as well as cross-cultural exchange...."

Link:

https://hyperallergic.com/438554/collection-of-early-20th-century-lakota-drawings/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » ab1630's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.images oa.usa oa.ch oa.glam oa.libraries oa.digitization oa.history oa.green oa.repositories oa.ssh oa.humanities

Date tagged:

05/02/2018, 17:41

Date published:

05/02/2018, 13:41