#indigenous art

[memories-of-ancients]

Gold frog, Quimbaya culture, Colombia, 400-700 AD

from the Dallas Museum of Art

[c-rberus]

formline headshot commission for @/sp-ace-cryptid, thank you! 🦁✨

[piizunn]

hand quilting a red breasted merganser for a show in a local public park with my FNMI art collective and a local organization dedicated to reconciliation, the show is called ᐱᔦᓰᐢᑳᐤ piyêsîskâw, there is an abundance of birds. the piece is still in progress, i haven’t covered up the blood and grape jelly stains.

i’ve doing a lot of bird watching in the past few years, my city has some of the best bird watching in the world, apparently people come from all over the world to spot species that can only be found in this specific area.

i have also been thinking a lot about the words of palestinian poet marwan mahkoul

“in order for me to write poetry that isn’t political,

i must listen to the birds

and in order to listen to the birds

the warplanes must be silent”

i’m extremely grateful to live where i do, where there are no warplanes overheard and that birds live in sanctuaries, and it makes me sick to know that the government that systemically removed my people from our homelands and now force to live in the streets, are one of the many governments aiding in the systemic removal and genocide of palestinians.

as i have been quilting this i have been talking with members of my collective about how the struggles of FNMI and palestinians are linked both in our histories of genocide and in how the settler-colonial that benefits from the removal of Indigenous land rights, the deaths of our people, and extraction of our resource is the same one aiding the settler-colonial state of israel in their efforts to do the very same thing to palestinians.

to marwan makhoul and every other palestinian: i hope that you can return homes and hear your birds again soon.

[arthistoryanimalia]

For #InternationalBatAppreciationDay 🦇:

Art Inspiring Science: The Moche Bat

“The CMA’s bat vessel has traits of the species Dr. Velazco studied. Made on Peru’s north coast by an artist of the ancient Moche or Mochica culture (moe-chay, moe-cheek-ah) (AD 200–850), the vessel inspired him to name the species Histiotus mochica or, colloquially, the Moche leaf-eared bat. He did so to recognize the knowledge of Indigenous peoples and to honor the Moche and their connection to the natural world. Indeed, as he notes in a publication about the species, the bat vessel is so accurately depicted that it allowed precise identification of an animal previously unknown to science and thus stands as a testament to the Moche’s observational skills and profound interest in nature.”

[thoughtportal]

Indigenous Horror Films

[maplewozapi]

Mlp native au animal au plains au? I love them. I never got around to cadence but she was gonna carry Wohpe. If you never seen my old TikTok’s basically twilight was sent to earth from the sky world to escape nightmare moon.

[pvrrhadve]

reminder that women helping women beadwork (a non-profit ig page selling beadwork made by incarcerated indigenous women) is putting out new pride pieces pretty much everyday so if you'd like some beautiful rainbow jewelry that directly supports these women please check them out ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🩷🤍🩵🤎🖤

[reasonsforhope]

Article Link

"Minnetonka first started selling its “Thunderbird” moccasins in 1965. Now, for the first time, they’ve been redesigned by a Native American designer.

It’s one step in the company’s larger work to deal with its history of cultural appropriation. The Minneapolis-based company launched in the 1940s as a small business making souvenirs for roadside gift shops in the region—including Native American-inspired moccasins, though the business wasn’t started or run by Native Americans. The moccasins soon became its biggest seller.

[Photo: Minnetonka]

Adrienne Benjamin, an Anishanaabe artist and community activist who became the company’s “reconciliation advisor,” was initially reluctant when a tribal elder approached her about meeting with the company. Other activists had dismissed the idea that the company would do the work to truly transform. But Benjamin agreed to the meeting, and the conversation convinced her to move forward.

“I sensed a genuine commitment to positive change,” she says. “They had really done their homework as far as understanding and acknowledging the wrong and the appropriation. I think they knew for a long time that things needed to get better, and they just weren’t sure what a first step was.”

Pictured: Lucie Skjefte and son Animikii [Photo: Minnetonka]

In 2020, Minnetonka publicly apologized “for having benefited from selling Native-inspired designs without directly honoring Native culture or communities.” It also said that it was actively recruiting Native Americans to work at the company, reexamining its branding, looking for Native-owned businesses to partner with, continuing to support Native American nonprofits, and that it planned to collaborate with Native American artists and designers.

Benjamin partnered with the company on the first collaboration, a collection of hand-beaded hats, and then recruited the Minneapolis-based designer Lucie Skjefte, a citizen of the Red Lake Nation, who designed the beadwork for another moccasin style and a pair of slippers for the brand. Skjefte says that she felt comfortable working with the company knowing that it had already done work with Benjamin on reconciliation. And she wasn’t a stranger to the brand. “Our grandmothers and our mothers would always look for moccasins in a clutch kind of situation where they didn’t have a pair ready and available to make on their own—then they would buy Minnetonka mocs and walk into a traditional pow wow and wear them,” she says. Her mother, she says, who passed away in 2019, would have been “immensely proud” that Skjefte’s design work was part of the moccasins—and on the new version of the Thunderbird moccasin, one of the company’s top-selling styles.

[Photo: Minnetonka]

“I started thinking about all of those stories, and what resonated with me visually,” Skjefte says. The redesign, she says, is much more detailed and authentic than the previous version. “Through the redesign and beading process, we are actively reclaiming and reconnecting our Animikii or Thunderbird motif with its Indigenous roots,” she says. Skjefte will earn royalties for the design, and Minnetonka will also separately donate a portion of the sale of each shoe to Mni Sota Fund, a nonprofit that helps Native Americans in Minnesota get training and capital for home ownership and entrepreneurship.

Some companies go a step farther—Manitobah Mukluks, based in Canada, has an Indigenous founder and more than half Indigenous staff. (While Minnetonka is actively recruiting more Native American workers, the company says that employees self-report race and it can’t share any data about its current number of Indigenous employees.) Beyond its own line of products, Manitobah also has an online Indigenous Market that features artists who earn 100% of the profit for their work.

White Bear Moccasins, a Native-owned-and-made brand in Montana, makes moccasins from bison hide. Each custom pair can take six to eight hours to make; the shoes cost hundreds of dollars, though they can also be repaired and last as long as a lifetime, says owner Shauna White Bear. In interviews, White Bear has said that she wants “to take our craft back,” from companies like Minnetonka. But she also told Fast Company that she doesn’t think that Minnetonka, as a family-owned business, should have to lose its livelihood now and stop making moccasins.

The situation is arguably different for other fashion brands that might use a Native American symbol—or rip off a Native American design completely—on a single product that could easily be taken off the market. Benjamin says that she has also worked with other companies that have discontinued products.

She sees five steps in the process of reconciliation. First, the person or company who did wrong has to acknowledge the wrong. Then they need to publicly apologize, begin to change behavior, start to rebuild trust, and then, eventually, the wronged party might take the step of forgiveness. Right now, she says, Minnetonka is in the third phase of behavior change. The brand plans to continue to collaborate with Native American designers.

The company can be an example to others on how to listen and build true relationships, Benjamin says. “I think that’s the only way that these relationships are going to get any better—people have to sit down and talk about it,” she says. “People have to be real. People have to apologize. They have to want to reconcile with people.”

The leadership at Minnetonka can also be allies in pushing other companies to do better. “My voice is important at the table as an Indigenous woman,” Benjamin says. “Lucie’s voice is important. But at tables where there’s a majority of people that aren’t Indigenous, sometimes those allies’ voices are more powerful in those spaces, because that means that they’ve signed on to what we’re saying. The power has signed on to moving forward and we agree with ‘Yes, this was wrong.’ That’s the stuff that’s going to change [things] right there.”"

-via FastCompany, February 7, 2024

[thepeopleinpower]

Keep talking about Gaza. Keep talking about Palestine. Keep talking about Palestinian martyrs. Keep talking about Palestinian survivors. Keep talking about Palestinian children. Keep talking about war crimes. Keep talking about genocide. Keep talking about colonialism. Keep talking about forced starvation. Keep talking about forced adoption. Keep talking about Israeli occupation. Keep talking about the Nakba of 1948.

KEEP TALKING ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING TO PALESTINE

Keep boosting Palestinian history. Keep boosting Palestinian graphics. Keep boosting Palestinian poetry. Keep boosting Palestinian fashion. Keep boosting Palestinian textiles. Keep boosting Palestinian art. Keep boosting Palestinian culture. Keep boosting Palestinian values. Keep boosting Palestinian stories. Keep boosting Palestinian voices. Keep boosting Palestinian life. Keep boosting Palestinian loss. Keep boosting Palestinian love. Keep boosting Palestinian grief. Keep boosting Palestinian hope.

KEEP BOOSTING PALESTINIAN HUMANITY

[telekitnetic-art]

FORMLINE RAPTOOOOOOOOR!!!!!

this design is a birthday gift for my brother!! It's based off one of his fave basketball teams (yes the toronto raptors, no I don't know a damn thing about competitive basketball)

[snekdood]

so I found this really cool website that sells native seeds- and you might be asking me "snekdood, haven't you posted an entire list of websites that sell native wildflower seeds that you're going to add on to soon?" and yes that's true, but that's not the kind of native seed im talking about rn.

see, on my quest to find websites that sell native wildflowers, I came across this dope ass website that sells seeds that have been farmed and harvested by ntv people traditionally, i'll let the website do the talking:

so anyways this is the coolest website ever. you can find the wild relatives of chiles on here called chiltepines, you can find different colors of corn and cool squash's, and every seed from whichever farm has it's own lil origin story written about it. you can also find other veggies here that are already commercially available to help fund and support this organization. as well as there being a cool gift shop with a lot of art made by different native folk from all around as well as cookbooks, jewelry, pottery, weavings, and clearly plenty more:

as well as a pantry?? with premade soup mixes??? and i really want to try them now??????

anyways I think its worth snoopin' around bc I'm almost positive you'll see something you think is cool (oh also if you happen to have some seeds passed down from ur family too and ur also native they seem like they would gladly help produce more)

[memories-of-ancients]

Jade bead necklace, Olmec, 1200-900 BC

from The Walters Art Museum

[znxu]

🕊️freedom from settler colonialism now and forever🪶🇵🇸

[c-rberus]

ts'msyenu a ts'm g̱a̱w'iłeeyu - tsimshian in my veins.

series of illustrations completed over last month 🐟

the illustration with the raven i first did a couple years ago; i completely re-drew it, and expanded on the concept by creating the other two works. i was guided by a hope to combine the ideas of Indigenous kinship with other-than-humans, and a critique of blood quantum.

prints: wolf, raven, salmon | wolf illustration timelapse (patreon)

[taylors-a-goblin]

Here's something new to know about me. I'm a Murramarang woman from the south coast of New South Wales, and an Aboriginal Artist. I'm learning and trying to bring Dhurga (my native language) back to life after it was nearly destroyed during colonisation.

Here are a couple of my paintings.

The first is a Giriwa (goanna), the totem of my tribe, painted in our traditional x-ray style. This type of painting was used to illustrate and educate, to teach biology and anatomy.

The second is a warigal (dingo) painted in a more decorative style, with a fusion of our more narrative style of art and my own modern style.

If you've stumbled upon this post, I hope you learned something from it! I love sharing my culture ❤💛🖤

[maplewozapi]

I realize I never posted the concept art I did for my mlp redesigns, and I can’t believe it’s actually been three years since I started them, apple Jack definitely had the most drafts. Every time I see Luna’s design I miss my aunties so much 😭 the only people I know that can rock black lipstick 💄