Catlin and Huey: “When the lights go out for good, my people will still be here. We have our ancient ways. We will remain” (Olowan Thunder Hawk Martinez)

Like Michelle, I want to use this blog as a way to think about some of the images provided by both Catlin and Huey and in light of our secondary readings.

In “Cultural Nationalism, Westward Expansion and the Production of Imperial Landscape,” Gareth John studies George Catlin’s paintings in relationship to 19^th century American ideas of the “vanishing” Native American (Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy). John argues that as much as Catlin sought to provide an accurate depiction of what he saw, his “quest for realism…inadvertently naturalized conventional, romantic, cultural nationalistic ways of seeing the Native American West as rapidly vanishing in the wake of ‘progress’” (186). Here, John discusses the “ambivalence of Catlin’s imperial vision of the West” (186), and his paintings reiteration of a disappearing Native American race. John frames his argument about Catlin’s “naturalization” through his analysis of two of Catlin’s oil canvas paintings, Big bend on the Upper Missouri (1832) and River Buffs (1832), and explains how both of the landscapes not only captured the vast extension of Western land, but also the vision of “unattained ‘progress’” and vast amounts of water. He also looks at how Catlin’s light effects offer inviting and natural scenes, in which only one Native American man appears to be present (John 186-190). Thus, hinting at the Native American disappearance and a westward gaze, which possibly focused on “unclaimed” lands—not recognizing Native claims to the land.

A Comanche family outside their teepee, 1841       

While Catlin’s 1841 Comanche Family (image to the left) primarily focuses on portraying the Native American family, the painting depicts many of the imperial complexities that John exposes about Catlin’s paintings. Catlin paints a family of five, in which there appears to be no older male figure. And while the family is the center of the image, the landscape which surrounds them becomes unavoidable to the eye. The clear skies and far mountains appear inviting as they reinforce notions of an aesthetic and unharmed nature.  In addition, the family’s clothes or children’s nudity seem to reassert colonial notions of the “uncivilized.” The portrayal of the family without a male figure, a Tepee in its direct background, the ragged native clothing, and the inert body language of the older female—perhaps the mother—create a sense of a passive and fading beauty. Moreover, the image without a father figure points to vanishing generations.

 In contrast with Catlin’s paintings are Aaron Huey’s photographs of the Buffalo in the reservation, and Theo White Plume and his horse (shown below). 

Theo White Plume and his horse, 2011

These two images not only reassert the endurance and perseverance of indigenous peoples, but also mark their close relationship with nature, as both the Buffalo and the horses remain present. It also shows how the Lakota nation and their animals have adapted to the imposed land and confinement in the reservation. They show how despite multiple forms of violence, genocides, exclusions, and confinements, indigenous peoples cultural knowledge and ways with nature remain vital to human existence. 

Buffalo in the Reservation, 2011

At the same time, the Buffalo in the reservation picture also shows the deeply rooted “colonial wounds” or “scars” of imperialism and “modernity” (Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera; Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America), in which, the reservation appears as an abandoned field, where even the grass fails to grow. This image speaks of the complexities about Native American reservations and their peoples in our present time. Its grayish light and cloudy skies demonstrate how “progress” continues to affect the ancestors of “our” American land, but that does not mean that they are asking to be saved—as Olowan Thunder Hawk Martinez eloquently points out in “The Shadow of Wounded Knee,” it just means that despite all they will continue to persevere, because they always have. Lastly, and as a comment more than an analysis, I really like Huey’s act of "rhetorical listening" (Krista Ratcliffe) and going back to the Lakota people to present other images about Native lives, but I also think that his earlier images are sometimes necessary in the eyes of those who have never even considered the effects of the “American history” he discusses in his Ted Talk. His earlier images provide a depiction of marginalized poverty on reservations, or the “modernization” of misery, as the nation’s outsiders and perhaps few elites in the reservations promote economic progress—despite social segregation and economic disparity.