Eskimos,
or Inuit, are also included in this article.
To
achieve an understanding of the art of aboriginal
Americans requires at the outset a willingness to
discard many long-standing preconceptions and judgments
based upon an evaluation of Western art. Above all, it
is important to recognize that the basic aesthetic
tenets and artistic goals of Indian art are different
from those of European-derived Western art; and any art
critic employing the usual Western criteria in an
attempt to comprehend Indian art is bound to be
unsuccessful.
At
best, it is difficult for non-Indian peoples to evaluate
Indian art. Although it is not necessarily true that one
must be a Native American to appreciate Indian art--or
even, for example, a Navajo to understand the value of
that people's earthenware and weaving--it is true that
the finer subtleties and depths of significance that are
so obvious to the Indian are often lost to the
non-Indian observer.
Finally,
the cultural interaction of the past five centuries
between Europeans and their descendents and the
aboriginal peoples of the Western Hemisphere by and
large has been one of extreme hostility, fraught with a
considerable degree of cultural bias. Most, if not all,
of the major commentaries on Indian cultures have been
recorded by those who were natural enemies; the best
eyewitness accounts of the Aztec, for example, were
written by Spanish conquistadores and Roman Catholic
missionaries. Even modern white ethnographers and
historians, however sympathetic they might be, simply
cannot ignore the fact that they are, after all,
evaluating the product of cultures that their forebears
successfully suppressed and of peoples who in many cases
whites exterminated or drove to near extinction. This
inevitably introduces emotional and psychological
elements into the act of judgment that result in
tremendous distortions. Not until the 20th century did
Indian art begin
to enjoy serious, balanced consideration, and even this
has been in meagre terms.
One
of the major obstacles to a realistic evaluation and
appreciation of Native American art by whites and other
non-Indians is the belief held by many that the creators
of Indian art are in some way "primitive"
artists who occupy a place so close to nature that they
somehow are endowed with a privileged status insofar as
"natural artistic expression" is concerned. To
regard an object or a ceremonial activity as a work of
art simply because it was Indian-crafted defies reason.
While it is reasonable to state that none of the Native
American and Arctic tribes and peoples failed to develop
some degree of art--and many were responsible for
aesthetic masterworks--it would be misleading to declare
that all of these expressions are equally impressive.
The quality, beauty, and workmanship of these arts vary
widely; for, just as in the Western world, there have
been good and bad artists, and the fact that a native
craftworker turned his or her hand to a given task in no
way guaranteed success.
Another
obstacle to a full appreciation of the arts of Native
American peoples is a belief held by many sympathetic
viewers of aboriginal art: that there are eternal
aesthetic truths, expressions of which can be found in
all cultures, and that to the truly sensitive eye these
aesthetic verities are manifest wholly independent of
the particular cultural milieu, the purpose of the
artistic expression, or the relative level of cultural
development. The position taken in this discussion,
therefore, is that, since the literature, music, dance,
and visual arts of Native American and Arctic peoples
did not evolve in isolation from the sociological,
religious, and political milieus of those peoples, an
understanding of the latter cannot be divorced from an
appreciation of the former.
(F.J.D.)
(Ed.)
This
article addresses the arts of Native American and North
American Arctic peoples, in relation to the culture and
subcultures of each of these peoples and in relation to
the predominantly European-based Western world.
Introduction