Melanie Yazzie, Native Identity \u0026 Place

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CON T E M P 0 R A R Y

IMPRESSIONSVolume 15, #1 Spring 2007

ISSUES & INSIGHTS

2 Layer ItOn, by LiseDrost

8 KoreLo~Wildrekind-McWhirter, IntelViewby KateySchultz13 Prints"&Politics:War in Iraq

War Games, byArtHazelwoodPostcardswith a Message,by Scotland StoutWar and Global Warming, by Nancy R.Davidson

18 Melanie Yazzie, Native Identity& Place, by John-MichaelH. Warner

VIEWS&"REVIEWS

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Hydrus: Nine Heads Are Better Than One, by Sheri Fleck Rieth

Normal Editions Workshop, by Richard Finch and Veda Rives

Exhibitions, Catalogues & Books

The American Print Alliance32

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ISSN1066-9434@ 2007AmericanPrintAlliance.All rights reserved. No part of thispublication may be reproduced orutilized in any form or by anymeans, electronic or mechanical,including photocopying, recording,or an information storage andretrieval system,without writtenpermission from the publisher.*Editor & Designer: Carol PulinPrinter: Printing Images,Maryland*Cover: LiseDrost, Mildendo, 2003.Color screenprint, lithograph andrelief print, 26 x 20"..'."Back cover: Prints shown in the

Alliance's Soap Box Prints Portfolio.*Contents: Curtis Bartone, Superfund,2006. Mezzotint,S x 7". Shown inthe SoapBox Prints Portfolio.*Indexed in ARTbibliographiesModern and Art Index. Views

expressed by contributors do notnecessarily reflect those of theAmerican Print Alliance. Articles,reviews & queries welcome; theAlliance accepts no' responsibilityfor materials sent.J."Contemporary Impressionsis published twice a year by theAmerican Print Alliance, a non-profit consortium of printmakers'councils; federal tax-exempt status501 (c)(3). Subscriptions include anoriginal print: individuals $37/year,institutions $54/year; add $3 toCanada, $10 to other countries.*American Print Alliance302 Larkspur TurnPeachtree City GA30269-2210~.PrintAlliance.org*

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John-Michael H. Warner is aHistory of Art and Theorygraduate student at Arizona StateUniversity. In 2001, he graduatedwith honors from the University ofColoradoat ColoradoSprings .earning a BA in History and FineArts. His interests include 20th and21st century Native American Artand more generally 20th and 21stcentury visual culture, especiallythe intersections of feminism andgender, liminalism and bordersstudies, globalism andneo-colonia/ism. Warner hasworked extensively with Yazzie,and spoke at the Heard Museum inOctober2006 in conjunction withher solo exhibition, Traveling.

Melanie Yazzie, I Will AlwaysRemember Them, 1996. Colorphotocopy transfer, tea stains,charcoal, 22 x 18".

Melanie Yazzie, We Attempt toForget, 1996. Acetate film withmap image and color mono typebackground, 22 x 3D".

Melanie Yazzie, Native Identity & PlaceBy John-Michael H. Warner

Melanie Vazzie uses ceramics, mixed media installations, metal sculpture and printmaking; eachproduces a different object to convey similar tbematic messages about indigenous representation, critical

, insights about feminisms and a 21st century neo-colonial transnational world. Vazzie's printrnakingchallenges social constructions and popular notions of indigeneity. Often, the artist uses overtlYC1ggressiveand light-hearted tones si~ultane()usly to interweave her argyments. She objects to the perception thatthere isone Native North American population; instead, she recognizes there are many nations of diversepeoples, and that American rndians are complex people who cannot be summarized by stereotypes.

Born in 1966 in.Canado, Arizona, Vazzie isfrom the BitterWater and SaltWater clans of the NavajoNation. Both parents were educators and they strongly emphasized classroom and experiential learning.Vazzie'traveled with her family throughout the United States and Mexico, experiencing boundaries and

considering the multiplicity of cultures and the possibility for ex~hange. lcter, Vazzie was sent away to aquaker boarding school'near Philadelphia, called Westtown School. Boundaries and lines affected herday-to-day life. Just as Ci}nado and the Navajo Nation were demarcated by Interstate 40, the dormitoryrooms where she was assigned to live in high school and college constructed divisions. The boundaries ofthe United States and Mexico, and Hollywood's popular conceptions of the West and Southwest,contributed to the liminal boundaries that continue to affect her art-making.

When she arrived at Westtown, Vazzie immediately recognized the differences betWeen herchildhood and other young women. She,had experienced a rich diversityof lifeand lifestyles,with multiplecultural practices. Here, she was immersed in East coast culture and an extremely homogenous environ-ment which presented and portrayed a prideful, exclusive history based on the colonization of theAmericas through religion and economics, and the dominance and legacy of prominent families. Vazziegrappled with stereotypes of the American Indian, the Southwest, and what it meant to be a native woman.Certainly her time at Westtown was formative: it was there she began her career as an artist.

18 CON T EM PO R A ~Y 2MPRESSIONS

I Will Always Remember Them explores a complex identity through formal properties. The earth-toned hues resemble colors of the Painted Desert around Ganado. Portraits of her grandparents aresuperimposed onto a map of Pennsylvania where Westtown was founded in 1799 - overlapping their

heritage with this quest for a geographical place. Moreover, the composition is stained with tea thatappears like blood red lines. We Attempt to Forget also addresses these issues.of geographical homes,familial heritage and tradition, and the formation of a multivalent, fluid identity. The map underscoresArizona and New Mexico's border: a modern, government-created liminal space that forms anotherboundary bisecting the Navajo Nation. We Attempt to Forget contains a smattering of nationalisticicqnography including the patriotic colors of red, white and blue. Both of these prints illustrate Vazzie'sexplorations of identity combining an ancestral and indigenous layer.

After graduating from Westtown, Vazzie moved to Irapuato in central Mexico. She crossed thenational border again a year later to study fine arts at Arizona State University. To accompany her portfolio,she wrote an honors thesis, "Images Inspired by the Navajo Creation Myth," in which she explained heruse of screen printing as a nontraditional medium for an indige-nous female artist. She selected anaccessible, inexpensive and easy to teach technique for an art practice that required little space and couldeasily go wherever she lived and traveled.

She queried what indigeneity meant nationally and globally, and what it meant to be a Navajofemale artist. This study of Indianness and native identity was partly self-reflexive, but also about being anindividual within the larger national and international indigenous community. For example, when Vazziere-presented the Navajo Creation Myth for the piJbnc, she chose to illustrate that history in her visual art,not to articulate it orally or through performance. .

WhenI was in undergraduate school ...I wish that there might have been anativeperson there. Or somebody whoknew more about my.experience.Someone who could say, what doyoumeqn? Or someone who might be able

to know why the Navajo ~reationmythwas so important to me. I might havebeen able to express myself differently.... I/ook back and see that I was beingsafe. At the time, I thought I was beingreally daring making images of thedogs ... But'as native people we useanimals, weput that in our work. Iwanted to really use it. ... As opposedto going really literal and realistic, Iwent in an abstract direction. I was

working with a lot of colors andplayingwith screenprinting with monotypes.

SPRING 2007

Through her earliest art-making,Yazzie deconstructed the

socially-accepted notions of Indian,TheArtist, family heritage andtradition, the economics of beingnative, and the social constructions

of identity. .

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IIIQuotations from the artist's BA-honors tnesis,"Images Inspired bythe NavajoCreationMyth," ArizonaState University, 7990 and MFAthesis and exhibition "RitesofPassage," University of Colorado,7993, and the author's interviewsof the artist in 2006.

Melanie Yazzie, Freedom ofChoice, 7999. Colorphotopolymerplate intaglio, 73.75 x 70.5".

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Lucy Lippard, The Lure of theLocal: Sense of Place in aMulticultural Society,New York:Ne""Press, 1997. In Part.!, ChapterTwo, Lippard speaks about thebroader context of Hmulti-centerednessHand this theory'srelalionships with place, identityand even individuality. This bookalso challenged the art world andits institutions by encouraging adecentralized authority/expert andbringing the center to the margins.

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Melanie Yazzie,Winter Place withSombra, 2005. Color mono type,30 x 22H.

Opposite page:

Melanie Yazzie, She Teaches Me,1994. Color monotype, 24 x 12".Collection of IAIA (Institute ofAmerican Indian Arts).

Melanie Yazzie, IndianSymbols,1993. Cyanotype, 42 x 18".

Melanie Yazzie, Land Not For Sale,2003. Color polyester platelithograph, 15 x 11".

Reflecting, Vazzie characterized her life as "in transition" and "embodying multiplicity." Vazzie's art

practice is an excellent example of art critic and theorist Lucy Lippard's theoretical model of "multi-centered" living. Not coincidentally, V~ie's space and place is constaritly changing; it is in flux and full

~f motion. Her worldview am;! localized, physical viewpoint is 9ynamic and vibrant.In 'Freedom of Choice, Vazzie uses iconography from the Navajo Creation Myth to address her past,

, the complexities of her identity, the importance of Navajo heritage, and the choices she makes about what

to communicate. As the title indicates, by making active decisions, the artist has surpassed a sociallyassigned second class status and worked towards reclaiming her own agency. She also reclaims freedom.In an exchange between modern abstraction in art and Vazzie, the artist reclaims what early "Primitive"

studies degraded. She uses icons of Navajo creation formally to frame the Statue of Liberty, an emblem

of American patriotism, while placing an image of a native woman with child above the statue. Employingboth formal elements and iconography, the artist embraces acts of feminism and post-colonialism,reclaiming individual agency and a critical view of Americans' constructed projections of nationalism.

Vazzie often refers to animals in her art; dogs especially remain critical for her. Throughout our

interviews, Vazzie mentioned always remembering her dogs. Winter Placewith Sombra, an autobiographi-cal composition, includes a self-portrait of the artist with her dog. As a child, one of the family dogs,Chubba, always protected Vazzie to and from the schoolyard. This relationship and companionship with

dogs throughout her life constructed another layer of identity. Chubba was female; significantly then,Vazzie turned to females as symbols of strength, courage and duty. For Vazzie, the feminine becomes

synonymous with individual freedom and the ability to surpassdislodging and dismantling forces.Vazzie's newest work, such as Winter Place with Sombra, includes images of dogs as symbols of

safety, of journey, of protection and responsibility. Sombra is a literal and iconic image of Chubba that

represents this feminist multi-centered construction of home and home life on the reservation and-elsewhere. Dogs evoke associations of strength for Vazzie about being native, being an Indian and beinga woman. The act of re-presenting familiar dogs and animals in her compositions also moves towards the

specificity of reclaiming oneself. Vazzie usesthese declarations of independence as a means to challengenormative notions and social constructions about indigeneity and femininity. Although at times such works

appear light-hearted, the compositions still routinely convey efforts towards feminization.Lippard shifted the discourse of art history and art theory when she decentralized the museum and

art historical authority, and sought to challenge the art canon. She advocated art that creatively embodied

multiple centers and multivalent meanil)gs, and reacted against traditional art history. Vazzie's visual artchallenges the masculinist, privileged Western art history and presents an alternative to polarization anddichotomy. Vazzie is very interested in the histories of the Navajo Nation; through her art, she seeks tobring that history and tho~e of other marginalized peoples to a newly created centered place, foundedand still located in the margins.

In She Teaches Me and Indian Symbols, the topics of indigeneity, femaleness and "multi-centered-

ness" interact with one another. She Teaches Me is a Mother Earth figure combining Hopi and Navajo. traditions responding to two indigenous nations bordering one another. Moreover, this paradigm isexplored through the nationalfstic colors of Frapce and the United Statesof America (Yazzieis an AssociateProfessor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Visiting Pr!>fessor occasionally at Ecole de PontAven d'art contemporain in France). This representation of Mother Earth is both an image about feminine

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strength and knowledge like her portraits of dogs, and also an image about modern places that empower

yazzie to connect with the land. Through her association with these multiple places, she reversesgovernmental and popularized assignments for Native Americans. Specifically, through her art, sheillustrates a desire to publicly deconstruct and fuel the "Indianness" discourse.

yazzie uses this empowered position and aggressively begins to deconstruct nationalistic propa-ganda ~ specifically how Indians are perceived and commoditized. Imagesof American Indians areconstructed and packaged by persons who are not affiliated with the indigenous populations nor informedby related histories. Vazzie's Indian Symbols addresses how Native North American art and culture is

taught, especially to children. The image is dense with coloring book portrayals of alleged Indian life. Amap of the Southwest fills the background of the composition, helping to identify and juxtapose realpeople and real places connected to the artist. This discussion of nativeness critiques the idea thatAmerican Indians must live in a teepee on the reservation and eat corn to be "officially" native. In fact,most Native Americans now live in urban areas.

No, No Saleand Land Not For Sale repeat the image of a young native woman, with hair drawn back

and braided, rounded facial figures, one breast exposed, clothed in an Anglicized skirt, beauty- pageantstyle sash, and victory headpiece filled with flowers. The image evokes memories of conquest, a symboloriginally created for a colonial audience (allegedly addressing the "good deeds" of colonialism). At the

beginningof the seriesin 2000, each iteration positioned the young woman on a small piece of landdemarcated with map-like topographic lines. Dark wavy lines creating a confining box around the womanbecome zigzagsand rows of glyphs that look like traditional patterns. That box is significant: first, it refers

to social norms about what it means to be native in a post-colonial world; second, it shows how colonizingforces like Europe and the United Statessaw indigeneity. The contrasts in style also emphasize the schism.

The fractionalized composition recalls institutional policies and laws used to redefine cultural boundaries

SPRING 2007

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Suggestedreading:

Heather S. Lineberry and John D.Spiak. The New American City:Artists Look Forward. Cataloguefor exhibition at the ASU Nelson Art

Museum, Tempe, September 9,2006 - January 27,2007.

Griselda Pollock, Vision andDifference: Femininity, Feminismand the Histories of Art. London:

Routledge, 1988.

Allan]. Ryan and lena Pearlstone,About Face: Self-Portraits byNative American, First Nations,and Inuit Artists. Catalogue forexhibition at the WheelwrightMuseum of the American Indian,Santa Fe, New Mexico, November13, 2005 - April 23,~2006.

Vazzie has been working in Newlealand with the Maori Peoplesince 1995. The cross-culturalexchanges and collaborationscontinue with Maori, NativeAmericans including the Dine,Native Hawaiians, Siberian Peopleand others.

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Also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act, the IndianReorganizationAct was passed June18, 1934. The act was anotherfailed government attempt toadvance Native Americans livingonreservation land. It was designed torestore authority and encourageassimilation. Thiswas an activepolicy until World War IIwhenmany Native American fought forthe United States armed services.The Indian Reorganization Actremains on the books today.

Pocahontas Meets Hello Kitty, apanel discussion andportfolio

organized byMelanie yazziefo,: the2007 Southern Graphics Councilconference, use'the images andhistory of Pocahontas and HelloKitty (the Japanese icon) as a Ployto engage thepublic to be receptiveto a new way of looking at NativeAmerican women. ThePlot is to

educate thepublic about NativeAmerican women throughout historyalong with touching on contem-porary issuesfacing ma1JYNativeAmerican communities today. Theportfolio will travel to reservationsand communities throughout theUnited States and abroad.

and actual historical colonial practices. This act of remembering contributes further to the discourse by

adding an element of conscience.In the original illustration, the feminine figure is passiveand co~structed for a masculinist colonialist

society. Through the re-presentation of the figure as an appropriated image, yazzie empowers her withthe artist's signature of feminine strength and native reclamation. The figure's crossed arms, in the new'context, can be interpreted as a boundary. The texts are signifiers for space and place. yazzie forces theviewer to recognize land as one of many dimensions of native identity that was stripped from native

peoples and reconstructed for nationalistic purposes. When land was stolen from American Indians, the

Native American Diaspora resulted in creative processes about a changing identity. Moreover, colonialgovernments actively stripped identity and assigned new identifications to conquered first peoples.

Ultimately, through her prints, yazzie is reclaiming individualized identities. Associations with place and

space are nearly synonymous with regional and.cultural, identifications, and ultimately self-identification.Native agency is the ability for individual indigenous persons to construct their oWl) identity.

Historically, the Bureau of Indian Affairs used a blood quantum, or percentage of native blood, todetermine who was "Indian" enough. That is, government policy assigned an American Indian identitybased on the "purity" of one's blood. Within that system of demarcation, there is no means to.

self-describe.. The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act addressed the question of Indian identification by

,defining American Indians as "all persons of Indian descent who are members of any recognized Indiantribe now ... and all persons who are descendents of such members who were ... residing within the

present boundaries of any Indian reservation, and ... shall include all persons'1)f one-half or more Indianblood." Ladenwith inherently bigoted implications of purity, the 1934 Act misinformed the colonizers

and the colonized. Colonizers misinterpreted cultural traditions and lifestyles, and indigenous personswere stripped' of their. ability to perpetuate and sustain native life.

Melanie Yazzie, through her prints,successfully addresses external influences on

Native North American populations, specifi-cally the Navajo-Dine Nation. Through her

filtering acts of re-presentation, the audience ischallenged with art that opposes historicalnotions of colonialism, the constrained role of

women and nationalism. Moreover, by re-claiming and feminizing indigenous agencythrough the art production process, yazzie

feminizes the Native American Diaspora andportrays an indigenous history crossing throughthe polarizing center to the liminal margins. *

MelanieVazzie, B.I.A. [Bureau of Indian

Affairs!, 2000. Photocopy transfer withwatercolor washes and charcoal, 19.62x 15.25".

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