Sharing Our Human Experience

The Young Generation by Jeremy Hale of Navajo Technical University

Excitement mounted in San Franciso, California, as the Golden Gate International Exposition finally came to fruition in February of 1939. Nominally, the massive spectacle was to celebrate completion of the Golden Gate and San Franciso-Oakland Bay Bridges, underscoring America’s ingenuity and industrial might. But, as one brochure proclaimed, the event also showcased “the largest most comprehensive exhibit ever installed anywhere” of Indigenous American art. The Indian Arts and Crafts Board (IACB), an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), organized the exhibit and spared no expense. There were 15 galleries and eight cultural areas, with workshops featuring resident Native artisans, along with an Indian art gift shop. The exhibit included both traditional artforms such as weaving, woodcarving, pottery, and beadwork, but also sculpture and paintings of oil on canvas and watercolors. The IACB’s goal was to educate the public, both domestic and international, that the artforms indigenous to the Americas were rich, nuanced, and of exceptional quality, deserving of their rightful place alongside artforms from any other part of the world.

The Golden Gate exposition was one of IACB’s efforts to support, showcase, and advance Native art. Established in 1935 through an act of Congress, the board’s stated purpose was “to promote in cooperation with the Indians their economic welfare through arts and crafts, without loss to the vitality of Indian art, and without damage to the integrity of Indian life.” The Indian Arts and Crafts Act was just one of many laws that compromised what historians call “the Indian New Deal,” which completely transformed federal Indian policy.

Prior to the 1930s, the government’s approach was to assimilate and acculturate American Indians and Alaska Natives as quickly as possible through industrial boarding schools, land allotment, and a whole host of oppressive laws that would “pulverize” Native language, spirituality, ceremonies, lifeways, and the overall “tribal mass.” However, it was abundantly clear to anyone who cared to look that the federal government’s efforts were a complete failure and had markedly worsened conditions on tribal lands. This opened the door for progressive reformers who believed the federal government had failed miserably in its trust responsibilities and treaty obligations. Accordingly, they took a completely different approach, seeking to expand self-government, increase tribal sovereignty, retain tribal control of landholdings, improve education and healthcare programs, and encourage and support Native culture, language, and history as part of school curriculum.

Another pillar of the Indian New Deal was supporting Native artforms both at the community level and in the Indian Service Education Program (a predecessor of the Bureau of Indian Education). Art, they believed, was a powerful means to express the human condition and communicate a people’s unique worldview. Throughout the period, the IACB supported an array of Native artists through various mural projects. One of the most famous examples is Gerald Nailor’s epic History and Progress of the Navajo People, an eight-panel mural that adorns the chambers of the Navajo Nation Council House, which itself was a New Deal Public Works Administration project that employed an architectural design based on the traditional hogan. Other IACB-sponsored mural projects include those in the Museum of the Plains Indian, the Bandelier National Monument Museum, and of course the DOI building itself, which features the painting of renowned artists Allan Houser (Apache), Woody Crumbo (Potawatomi), Velino Herrera (Zia Pueblo), and Stephen Mopope (Kiowa) among others.

Another way the IACB supported Native art was through massive public exhibits like the Golden Gate International Exhibition. Shortly after the board was created, they worked for the inclusion of an Indian art display at the 1936 World Fair in Paris. A few years later, the landmark Indian Art of the United States was unveiled at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Opening to rave reviews in the New York Times, the exhibit was one of the first to showcase Native clothing designs that fused traditional Indigenous styling with current high fashion. Indeed, part of IACB’s mission wasn’t just to preserve traditional artforms, but to support Native artists who sought to expand the boundaries of Indigenous art.

But just as this renaissance in Native American art was in full bloom, dark clouds gathered on the horizon. The impetus for what would prove to be yet another massive shift in federal Indian policy came from an article penned for the Reader’s Digest by a relatively obscure congressman from Missouri named O.K. Armstrong. The title was catching—“Set the Indian Free!”—and the rhetoric appealed to the patriotic nationalism and anticommunism that gripped the country in the wake of World War II. Armstong stated that at last American Indians should be “emancipated” and “liberated” from the shackles of federal trusteeship. America, he wrote, should be an inclusive country, rejecting the segregation of Native peoples on reservations, which, after all, were “collectivist,” soviet-like enclaves supported by the American taxpayer. Armstrong’s manifesto resonated with many across the political spectrum and soon Congress held a hearing where they pressed acting secretary of Indian Affairs, William Zimmerman, to create a list of tribes that no longer needed “expensive” federal services.

Zimmerman’s list eventually evolved into the Termination policy and was codified into law with the passage of House Concurrent Resolution 108. Termination was predicated largely on the idea of cutting costs, maximizing efficiency, and rolling back what many increasingly extreme lawmakers viewed as the “socialistic” and “Marxist” policies of the Indian New Deal. The Indian Arts and Culture Board was a glaring example of all this and a prime example of a wasteful program that should be “sent to the woodchipper,” as Elon Musk would put it.

Today, as we face uncertainty and what feels like an assault on tribal sovereignty and a repudiation of treaty rights and the federal government’s trust responsibility, tribal colleges and universities are as important as ever. TCUs reach underserved students all over the country, including some of the most rural and remote communities. They offer an incredible array of job training and STEM programs that are preparing regional workforces. And they are also home to some of the most unique arts and humanities curricula found anywhere in North America.

In this issue of Tribal College Journal, we celebrate the arts and humanities at TCUs and seek to illuminate why they are so important. We are reminded that there is more to the great tapestry of human experience than test tubes and statistics. Our U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo puts it best when she shares, “Our world is in major flux right now, which means that the generation coming in needs the grounding of what the humanities have to offer. It’s in stories that we come to know ourselves.”

Bradley Shreve, PhD, is the editor of Tribal College Journal.

REFERENCES

McLerran, J. (2009). A New Deal for Native Art: Indian Arts and Federal Policy, 1933-1943. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Prucha, F.P. (1986). The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.