Beginnings of contemporary Native American art Pinpointing the exact time of emergence of "modern" and contemporary Native art is problematic. In the past, Western art historians have considered use of Western art media or exhibiting in international art arena as criteria for "modern" Native American art history. Native American art history is a new and highly contested academic discipline, and these Eurocentric benchmarks are followed less and less today. Many media considered appropriate for easel art were employed by Native artists for centuries, such as stone and wood sculpture and mural painting.
Ancestral Pueblo artists painted with tempera on woven cotton fabric, at least 800 years ago. Certain Native artists used non-Indian art materials as soon as they became available. For example,
Texcocan artist
Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl painted with ink and watercolor on paper in the late 16th century. Bound together in the
Codex Ixtlilxóchitl, these portraits of historical Texcocan leaders are rendered with shading, modeling and anatomic accuracy. The
Cuzco School of Peru featured
Quechua easel painters in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first
cabinets of curiosities in the 16th century, precursors to modern museums, featured Native American art. The notion that fine art cannot be functional has not gained widespread acceptance in the Native American art world, as evidenced by the high esteem and value placed upon rugs, blankets, basketry, weapons, and other utilitarian items in Native American art shows. A dichotomy between fine art and
craft is not commonly found in contemporary Native art. For example, the
Cherokee Nation honors its greatest artists as Living Treasures, including frog- and
fish-gig makers,
flint knappers, and
basket weavers, alongside sculptors, painters, and textile artists. Art historian Dawn Ades writes, "Far from being inferior, or purely decorative, crafts like textiles or ceramics, have always had the possibility of being the bearers of vital knowledge, beliefs and myths." Recognizable art markets between Natives and non-Natives emerged upon contact, but the 1820–1840s were a highly prolific time. In the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes region, tribes dependent upon the rapidly diminishing fur trade adopted art production a means of financial support. A painting movement known as the
Iroquois Realist School emerged among the Haudenosaunee in New York in the 1820s, spearheaded by the brothers
David and
Dennis Cusick. African-Ojibwe sculptor,
Edmonia Lewis maintained a studio in Rome, Italy and carved
Neoclassicist marble sculptors from the 1860s–1880s. Her mother belonged to the
Mississauga band of the
Credit River Indian Reserve. Lewis exhibited widely, and a testament to her popularity during her own time was that President
Ulysses S. Grant commissioned her to carve his portrait in 1877.
Ho-Chunk artist,
Angel De Cora was the best known Native American artist before World War I. She was taken from her reservation and family to the
Hampton Institute, where she began her lengthy formal art training. Active in the
Arts and Crafts movement, De Cora exhibited her paintings and design widely and illustrated books by Native authors. She strove to be tribally specific in her work and was revolutionary for portraying Indians in contemporary clothing of the early 20th century. She taught art to young Native students at
Carlisle Indian Industrial School and was an outspoken advocate of art as a means for Native Americans to maintain cultural pride, while finding a place in mainstream society. The
Kiowa Six, a group of Kiowa painters from Oklahoma, met with international success when their mentor,
Oscar Jacobson, showed their paintings in First International Art Exposition in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1928. They also participated in the 1932
Venice Biennale, where their art display, according to
Dorothy Dunn, "was acclaimed the most popular exhibit among all the rich and varied displays assembled." The
Santa Fe Indian Market began in 1922.
John Collier became Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1933 and temporarily reversed the BIA's assimilationist policies by encouraging Native American arts and culture. By this time, Native American art exhibits and the art market increased, gaining wider audiences. In the 1920s and 1930s,
Indigenist art movements flourished in
Peru,
Ecuador,
Bolivia, and Mexico, most famously with the
Mexican Muralist movements.
Basketry basket, woven by Abuela
Cristina Calderón, Chile, photo by Jim Cadwell
Basket weaving is one of the ancient and most-widespread art forms in the Americas. From coiled
sea lyme grass baskets in Nunavut to bark baskets in Tierra del Fuego, Native artists weave baskets from a wide range of materials. Typically baskets are made of vegetable fibers, but Tohono O'odham are known for their horsehair baskets and
Inupiaq artists weave baskets from
baleen, filtering plates of certain whales.
Grand Traverse Band Kelly Church,
Wasco-Wishram Pat Gold, and
Eastern Band Cherokee Joel Queen all weave baskets from copper sheets or wire, and
Mi'kmaq-
Onondaga conceptual artist
Gail Tremblay weaves baskets in the traditional fancywork patterns of her tribes from exposed film. Basketry can take many forms.
Haida artist
Lisa Telford uses cedar bark to weave both traditional functional baskets and impractical but beautiful cedar evening gowns and high-heeled shoes. A range of native grasses provides material for Arctic baskets, as does baleen, which is a 20th-century development. Baleen baskets are typically embellished with walrus ivory carvings. known for her biography,
Weaving the Dream.
Louisa Keyser was a highly influential
Washoe basket weaver. A complex technique called "doubleweave," which involves continuously weaving both an inside and outside surface is shared by the
Choctaw, Cherokee, Chitimacha,
Tarahumara, and Venezuelan tribes.
Mike Dart,
Cherokee Nation, is a contemporary practitioner of this technique. The Tarahumara, or Raramuri, of
Copper Canyon, Mexico typically weave with pine needles and
sotol. In
Panama,
Embera-Wounaan peoples are renowned for their pictorial
chunga palm baskets, known as
hösig di, colored in vivid full-spectrum of
natural dyes. woman selling coiled baskets,
Panama Yanomamo basket weavers of the Venezuelan Amazon paint their woven tray and burden baskets with geometric designs in charcoal and
onto, a red berry. While in most tribes the basket weavers are often women, among the
Waura tribe in Brazil, men weave baskets. They weave a wide range of styles, but the largest are called
mayaku, which can be two feet wide and feature tight weaves with an impressive array of designs. Today basket weaving often leads to environmental activism. Indiscriminate pesticide spraying endangers basket weavers' health. The
black ash tree, used by basket weavers from Michigan to Maine, is threatened by the
emerald ash borer. Basket weaver Kelly Church has organized two conferences about the threat and teaches children how to harvest black ash seeds. Many native plants that basket weavers use are endangered. Rivercane only grows in 2% of its original territory. Cherokee basket weaver and ethnobotanist, Shawna Cain is working with her tribe to form the Cherokee Nation Native Plant Society.
Tohono O'odham basket weaver
Terrol Dew Johnson, known for his experimental use of gourds, beargrass, and other desert plants, took his interest in native plants and founded Tohono O'odham Community Action, which provides traditional wild desert foods for his tribe.
Beadwork Beadwork is a quintessentially Native American art form, but ironically uses beads imported from Europe and Asia. Glass beads have been in use for almost five centuries in the Americas. Today a wide range of beading styles flourish. In the Great Lakes, Ursuline nuns introduced floral patterns to tribes, who quickly applied them to beadwork. Great Lakes tribes are known for their bandolier bags, that might take an entire year to complete. During the 20th century the Plateau tribes, such as the
Nez Perce perfected contour-style beadwork, in which the lines of beads are stitch to emphasize the pictorial imagery. Plains tribes are master beaders, and today dance regalia for man and women feature a variety of beadwork styles. While Plains and Plateau tribes are renowned for their beaded horse trappings, Subarctic tribes such as the
Dene bead lavish floral dog blankets. Eastern tribes have a completely different beadwork aesthetic, and
Innu,
Mi'kmaq,
Penobscot, and Haudenosaunee tribes are known for symmetrical scroll motifs in white beads, called the "double curve." Iroquois are also known for "embossed" beading in which strings pulled taut force beads to pop up from the surface, creating a bas-relief.
Tammy Rahr (Cayuga) is a contemporary practitioner of this style.
Zuni artists have developed a tradition of three-dimensional beaded sculptures.
Huichol Indians of
Jalisco and
Nayarit, Mexico have a unique approach to beadwork. They adhere beads, one by one, to a surface, such as wood or a gourd, with a mixture of resin and beeswax. Most Native beadwork is created for tribal use but beadworkers also create conceptual work for the art world.
Richard Aitson (
Kiowa-
Apache) has both an Indian and non-Indian audience for his work and is known for his fully beaded
cradleboards. Another Kiowa beadworker,
Teri Greeves has won top honors for her beadwork, which consciously integrates both traditional and contemporary motifs, such as beaded dancers on Converse high-tops. Greeves also beads on buckskin and explores such issues as warfare or Native American voting rights.
Marcus Amerman,
Choctaw, one of today's most celebrated bead artists, pioneered a movement of highly realistic beaded portraits. His imagery ranges from 19th century Native leaders to pop icons such as Janet Jackson and Brooke Shields. Roger Amerman, Marcus' brother, and
Martha Berry,
Cherokee, have effectively revived Southeastern beadwork, a style that had been lost because of forced removal from tribes to Indian Territory. Their beadwork commonly features white bead outlines, an echo of the shell beads or pearls Southeastern tribes used before contact. Jamie Okuma (
Luiseño-
Shoshone-
Bannock) was won top awards with her beaded dolls, which can include entire families or horses and riders, all with fully beaded regalia. The antique Venetian beads she uses can as small as size 22°, about the size of a grain of salt.
Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty, Rhonda Holy Bear, and Charlene Holy Bear are also prominent beaded dollmakers. The widespread popularity of glass beads does not mean aboriginal bead making is dead. Perhaps the most famous Native bead is
wampum, a cylindrical tube of
quahog or whelk shell. Both shells produce white beads, but only parts of the quahog produce purple. These are ceremonially and politically important to a range of
Northeastern Woodland tribes.
Elizabeth James-Perry (
Aquinnah Wampanoag-
Eastern Band Cherokee) creates wampum jewelry today, including wampum belts.
Ceramics Ceramics have been created in the Americas for the last 8000 years, as evidenced by pottery found in Caverna da Pedra Pintada in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. The Island of
Marajó in Brazil remains a major center of ceramic art today. In Mexico,
Mata Ortiz pottery continues the ancient
Casas Grandes tradition of polychrome pottery.
Juan Quezada is one of the leading potters from Mata Ortiz. In the Southeast, the
Catawba tribe is known for its tan-and-black mottled pottery.
Eastern Band Cherokees' pottery has Catawba influences. In Oklahoma, Cherokees lost their pottery traditions until revived by Anna Belle Sixkiller Mitchell. The
Caddo tribe's centuries-long pottery tradition had died out in the early 20th century, but has been effectively revived by
Jereldine Redcorn. Pueblo people are particularly known for their ceramic traditions.
Nampeyo (c. 1860 – 1942) was a
Hopi potter who collaborated with anthropologists to revive traditional pottery forms and designs, and many of her relatives are successful potters today.
Maria and
Julian Martinez, both
San Ildefonso Pueblo revived their tribe's blackware tradition in the early 20th century. Julian invented a gloss-matte blackware style for which his tribe is still known today.
Lucy Lewis (1898–1992) of
Acoma Pueblo gained recognition for her black-on-white ceramics in the mid-20th century.
Cochiti Pueblo was known for its grotesque figurines at the turn-of-the-20th century, and these have been revived by Virgil Ortiz. Cochiti potter
Helen Cordero (1915–1994) invented
storyteller figures, which feature a large, single figure of a seated
elder telling stories to groups of smaller figures. While northern potters are not as well known as their southern counterparts, ceramic arts extend as far north as the Arctic. Inuk potter,
Makituk Pingwartok of
Cape Dorset uses a pottery wheel to create her prizewinning ceramics. Today contemporary Native potters create a wide range of ceramics from functional pottery to monumental ceramic sculpture.
Roxanne Swentzell of
Santa Clara Pueblo is one of the leading ceramic artists in the Americas. She creates coil-built, emotionally charged figures that comment on contemporary society.
Nora Naranjo-Morse, also of Santa Clara Pueblo is world-renowned for her individual figures as well as conceptual installations featuring ceramics.
Diego Romero of
Cochiti Pueblo is known for his ceramic bowls, painted with satirical scenes that combine Ancestral Pueblo, Greek, and pop culture imagery. Hundreds more Native contemporary ceramic artists are taking pottery in new directions.
Jewelry File:Caeser Bruce silver comb 1984 ohs.jpg|
German silver hair comb, by Bruce Caeser (
Pawnee/
Sac & Fox), Oklahoma, 1984,
Oklahoma Historical Society File:Tommy Singer 2.jpg|Silver overlay
bolo tie by Tommy Singer (
Navajo), New Mexico, c. 1980s File:Woolaroc - Navajo Gürtelschnalle.jpg|
Navajo stamped silver belt buckle, collection of
Woolaroc File:Bennie pokemire gorget.jpg|
Shell gorget carved by Benny Pokemire (
Eastern Band Cherokee)
Performance art ),
Museum of Contemporary Native Art Performance art is a new art form, emerging in the 1960s, and so does not carry the cultural baggage of many other art genres. Performance art can draw upon storytelling traditions, as well as music and dance, and often includes elements of installation, video, film, and textile design.
Rebecca Belmore, a Canadian
Ojibway performance artist, has represented her country in the prestigious
Venice Biennale.
James Luna, a
Luiseño-Mexican performance artist, also participated in the Venice Biennale in 2005, representing the
National Museum of the American Indian. Performance allows artists to confront their audience directly, challenge long held stereotypes, and bring up current issues, often in an emotionally charged manner. "[P]eople just howl in their seats, and there's ranting and booing or hissing, carrying on in the audience," says Rebecca Belmore of the response to her work. She has created performances to call attention to violence against and many unsolved murders of First Nations women. Both Belmore and Luna create elaborate, often outlandish outfits and props for their performances and move through a range of characters. For instance, a repeating character of Luna's is Uncle Jimmy, a disabled veteran who criticizes greed and apathy on his reservation. On the other hand,
Marcus Amerman, a
Choctaw performance artist, maintains a consistent role of the Buffalo Man, whose irony and social commentary arise from the odd situations in which he finds himself, for instance a James Bond movie or lost in a desert labyrinth. Jeff Marley,
Cherokee, pulls from the tradition of the "
booger dance" to create subversive, yet humorous, interventions that take history and place into account.
Erica Lord,
Inupiaq-
Athabaskan, explores her mixed-race identity and conflicts about the ideas of home through her performance art. In her words, "In order to sustain a genuine self, I create a world in which I shift to become one or all of my multiple visions of self." She has suntanned phrases into her skin, donned cross-cultural and cross-gender disguises, and incorporated songs, ranging from
Inupiaq throat singing to racist children's rhymes into her work. A Bolivian
anarcha-feminist cooperative,
Mujeres Creando or "Women Creating" features many indigenous artists. They create public performances or
street theater to bring attention to issues of women's, indigenous people's, and lesbian's rights, as well as anti-poverty issues. Julieta Paredes,
María Galindo and Mónica Mendoza are founding members. Performance art has allowed Native Americans access to the international art world, and Rebecca Belmore mentions that her audiences are non-Native;
Photography (Peru), photo of a man at
Machu Picchu, published in
Inca Land. Explorations in the Highlands of Peru, 1922 (Laguna Pueblo, 1925–2021), next to his most famous photograph, "White Man's Moccasins"Native Americans embraced photography in the 19th century. Some even owned their own photography studios, such as
Benjamin Haldane (1874–1941),
Tsimshian of
Metlakatla Village on
Annette Island, Alaska,
Jennie Ross Cobb (
Cherokee Nation, 1881–1959) of
Park Hill, Oklahoma, and
Richard Throssel (
Cree, 1882–1933) of
Montana. Their early photographs stand in stark contrast to the romanticized images of Edward Curtis and other contemporaries. Scholarship by Mique’l Askren (Tsimshian/Tlingit) on the photographs of
B.A. Haldane has analyzed the functions that Haldane's photographs served for his community: as markers of success by having Anglo-style formal portraits taken, and as markers of the continuity of potlatching and traditional ceremonials by having photographs taken in ceremonial regalia. This second category is particularly significant because the use of the ceremonial regalia was against the law in Canada between 1885 and 1951.
Martín Chambi (
Quechua, 1891–1973), a photographer from Peru, was one of the pioneering Indigenous photographers of South America.
Peter Pitseolak (
Inuk, 1902–1973), from
Cape Dorset, Nunavut, documented Inuit life in the mid-20th century while dealing with challenges presented by the harsh climate and extreme light conditions of the Canadian Arctic. He developed his film himself in his igloo, and some of his photos were shot by oil lamps. Following in the footsteps of early Kiowa amateur photographers
Parker McKenzie(1897–1999) and Nettie Odlety McKenzie (1897–1978),
Horace Poolaw (
Kiowa, 1906–1984) shot over 2000 images of his neighbors and relatives in Western Oklahoma from the 1920s onward.
Jean Fredericks (
Hopi, 1906–1990) carefully negotiated Hopi cultural views toward photography and did not offer his portraits of Hopi people for sale to the public. Today innumerable Native people are professional art photographers; however, acceptance to the genre has met with challenges.
Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (
Navajo/
Muscogee/
Seminole) has not only established a successful career with her own work, she has also been an advocate for the entire field of Native American photography. She has curated shows and organized conferences at the
C.N. Gorman Museum at
UC Davis featuring Native American photographers. Tsinhnahjinnie wrote the book,
Our People, Our Land, Our Images: International Indigenous Photographers. Native photographers have taken their skills into the fields of art videography, photocollage, digital photography, and digital art.
Printmaking Although it is widely speculated that the ancient
Adena stone tablets were used for printmaking, not much is known about aboriginal American
printmaking. 20th-century Native artists have borrowed techniques from Japan and Europe, such as
woodcut,
linocut,
serigraphy,
monotyping, and other practices. Printmaking has flourished among
Inuit communities in particular. European-Canadian
James Houston created a graphic art program in
Cape Dorset, Nunavut in 1957. Houston taught local Inuit stone carvers how to create prints from stone-blocks and stencils. He asked local artists to draw pictures and the shop generated limited edition prints, based on the
ukiyo-e workshop system of Japan. Cooperative print shops were also established in nearby communities, including
Baker Lake,
Puvirnituq,
Holman, and
Pangnirtung. These shops have experimented with
etching,
engraving,
lithography, and silkscreen. Shops produced annual catalogs advertising their collections. Local birds and animals, spirit beings, and hunting scenes are the most popular subject matter, Backgrounds tend to be minimal and perspective is mixed. One of the most prominent of Cape Dorset artists is
Kenojuak Ashevak (born 1927), who has received many public commissions and two honorary doctorate degrees.
Melanie Yazzie (
Navajo),
Linda Lomahaftewa (
Hopi-
Choctaw),
Fritz Scholder and
Debora Iyall (
Cowlitz) have all built successful careers with their print and have gone on to teach the next generation of printers.
Walla Walla artist,
James Lavadour founded Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts on the
Umatilla Reservation in Oregon in 1992. Crow's Shadow features a state-of-the-art printmaking studio and offers workshops, exhibition space, and printmaking residencies for Native artists, in which they pair visiting artists with master printers.
Sculpture Native Americans have created sculpture, both monumental and small, for millennia. Stone sculptures are ubiquitous through the Americas, in the forms of
stelae,
inuksuit, and statues. Alabaster stone carving is popular among Western tribes, where
catlinite carving is traditional in the Northern Plains and
fetish-carving is traditional in the Southwest, particularly among the
Zuni. The
Taíno of
Puerto Rico and the
Dominican Republic are known for their
zemis– sacred, three-pointed stone sculptures.
Inuit artists sculpt with walrus ivory, caribou antlers, bones, soapstone, serpentinite, and argillite. They often represent local fauna and humans engaged in hunting or ceremonial activities.
Edmonia Lewis paved the way for Native American artists to sculpt in mainstream traditions using non-Native materials.
Allan Houser (
Warms Springs Chiricahua Apache) became one of the most prominent Native sculptors of the 20th century. Though he worked in wood and stone, Houser is most known for his monumental bronze sculptors, both representational and abstract. Houser influenced a generation of Native sculptors by teaching at the
Institute of American Indian Arts. His two sons, Phillip and
Bob Haozous are sculptors today.
Roxanne Swentzell (
Santa Clara Pueblo) is known for her expressive, figurative, ceramic sculptures but has also branched into bronze casting, and her work is permanently displayed at the
National Museum of the American Indian. The Northwest Coastal tribes are known for their woodcarving – most famously their monumental
totem poles that display clan crests. During the 19th century and early 20th century, this art form was threatened but was effectively revived.
Kwakwaka'wakw totem pole carvers such as Charlie James,
Mungo Martin,
Ellen Neel, and
Willie Seaweed kept the art alive and also carved masks, furniture, bentwood boxes, and jewelry. Haida carvers include
Charles Edenshaw,
Bill Reid, and
Robert Davidson. Besides working in wood, Haida also work with
argillite. Traditional formline designs translate well into glass sculpture, which is increasingly popular thanks to efforts by contemporary glass artists such as
Preston Singletary (
Tlingit),
Susan Point (
Coast Salish) and Marvin Oliver (
Quinault/
Isleta Pueblo). In the Southeast, woodcarving dominates sculpture.
Willard Stone, of Cherokee descent, exhibited internationally in the mid-20th century.
Amanda Crowe (
Eastern Band Cherokee) studied sculpture at the
Art Institute of Chicago and returned to her reservation to teach over 2000 students woodcarving over a period of 40 years, ensuring that sculpture thrives as an art form on the Qualla Boundary. File:RSLife.jpg|
For Life in all Directions,
Roxanne Swentzell (
Santa Clara Pueblo), bronze,
NMAI File:Pai Tavytera indian traditional wood carving.JPG|
Pai Tavytera traditional woodcarving,
Amambay Department,
Paraguay, 2008 File:Each-Other - Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger - exhibit, 2021.jpg|Each/Other by Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger, 2021
Textiles (
Mapuche) with two of her weavings at the Bienal de Arte Indígena,
Santiago, Chile , Guatemala, c. 2006–07Fiberwork dating back 10,000 years has been unearthed from
Guitarrero Cave in Peru. Cotton and wool from alpaca, llamas, and vicuñas have been woven into elaborate textiles for thousands of years in the Andes and are still important parts of Quechua and
Aymara culture today. Coroma in
Antonio Quijarro Province,
Bolivia is a major center for ceremonial textile production. An Aymara elder from Coroma said, "In our sacred weavings are expressions of our philosophy, and the basis for our social organization... The sacred weavings are also important in differentiating one community, or ethnic group, from a neighboring group..." ,
Panama Guna tribal members of
Panama and
Colombia are famous for their
molas, cotton panels with elaborate geometric designs created by a reverse
appliqué technique. Designs originated from traditional skin painting designs but today exhibit a wide range of influences, including
pop culture. Two mola panels form a blouse, but when a Guna woman is tired of a blouse, she can disassemble it and sell the molas to art collectors. Mayan women have woven cotton with backstrap looms for centuries, creating items such as
huipils or traditional blouses. Elaborate
Maya textiles featured representations of animals, plants, and figures from oral history. Organizing into weaving collectives have helped Mayan women earn better money for their work and greatly expand the reach of Mayan textiles in the world.
Seminole seamstresses, upon gaining access to sewing machines in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, invented an elaborate appliqué patchwork tradition. Seminole patchwork, for which the tribe is known today, came into full flower in the 1920s. Great Lakes and Prairie tribes are known for their
ribbonwork, found on clothing and blankets. Strips of silk ribbons are cut and appliquéd in layers, creating designs defined by negative space. The colors and designs might reflect the clan or gender of the wearer.
Powwow and other dance regalia from these tribes often feature ribbonwork. These tribes are also known for their
fingerwoven sashes.
Pueblo men weave with cotton on upright looms. Their mantas and sashes are typically made for ceremonial use for the community, not for outside collectors. shawl made by Susie Cypress from
Big Cypress Indian Reservation, c. 1980s
Navajo rugs are woven by Navajo women today from
Navajo-Churro sheep or commercial wool. Designs can be pictorial or abstract, based on traditional Navajo, Spanish, Oriental, or Persian designs. 20th-century Navajo weavers include
Clara Sherman and
Hosteen Klah, who co-founded the
Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. In 1973, the Navajo Studies Department of the
Diné College in
Many Farms, Arizona, wanted to determine how long it took a
Navajo weaver to create a rug or blanket from
sheep shearing to market. The study determined the total amount of time was 345 hours. Out of these 345 hours, the expert Navajo weaver needed: 45 hours to shear the sheep and process the wool; 24 hours to
spin the
wool; 60 hours to prepare the
dye and to dye the wool; 215 hours to
weave the piece; and only one hour to sell the item in their shop. Customary textiles of Northwest Coast peoples using non-Western materials and techniques are enjoying a dramatic revival.
Chilkat weaving and
Ravenstail weaving are regarded as some of the most difficult weaving techniques in the world. A single Chilkat blanket can take an entire year to weave. In both techniques, dog, mountain goat, or sheep wool and shredded cedar bark are combined to create textiles featuring curvilinear
formline designs.
Tlingit weaver
Jennie Thlunaut (1982–1986) was instrumental in this revival. Experimental 21st-century textile artists include
Lorena Lemunguier Quezada, a
Mapuche weaver from Chile, and Martha Gradolf (
Winnebago), whose work is overtly political in nature. Valencia, Joseph and Ramona Sakiestewa (
Hopi) and Melissa Cody (
Navajo) explore non-representational abstraction and use experimental materials in their weaving. ==Cultural sensitivity and repatriation==