What We Wear

        The “What We Wear” exhibit features many different artists whose unique creative works span several hundred years. Looking at each artist’s background details may help reveal the various motivations behind the exhibit’s different pieces.

        Biographical information about the artists in the “Traditional Clothing” section of the exhibit cannot be provided, apart from general historical details about the tribes and regions from which the section’s clothing originated. Museums have, in most cases, only recently begun listing the identities of individual Native artists, and have not maintained very specific biographical information for any of the artists featured in the “Traditional Clothing” section. In some cases, the museums that house different works featured in this section cannot even say with certainty that the works actually originated from their attributed Native group. For example, the National Museum of the American Indian labels the man’s coat as “possibly,” not certainly, from the Otoe Natives. Nevertheless, the information provided by museums should still lead to conclusions about each artist.

        Four of the five pieces in the “Traditional Clothing” section originated in the Great Plains region, which extends from the Eastern Woodlands to the Rocky Mountains in the west. Many tribes within the Great Plains region maintained a nomadic lifestyle, moving frequently in pursuit of buffalo and other large animals, in order to find maintain their sources of food and other resources. The Sioux Natives—divided into the Yankton and Yanktonai, Santee, and Lakota groups—placed a great emphasis on the buffalo in all their rituals. They also valued social hierarchy and individual achievement in battle. Beginning in the 1860s, different Sioux groups battled with white settlers in an attempt to maintain control of their land. Lakota and Cheyenne Natives cooperated in 1876 during the Great Sioux War to defend against a US attack, led by General Custer. In 1891, however, US troops killed hundreds of Lakota Natives in the Wounded Knee Massacre. Today, approximately 160,000 people of Sioux descent remain, with about 30,000 Sioux Natives still in South Dakota. Just south of the three Sioux groups, the Otoe tribe lived in the southern part of present-day Nebraska. In 1830, 1833, 1836, and 1854, Otoe Natives signed a series of treaties with the US government to cede their lands in Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. Otoe Natives began living on the Otoe Reservation near the Kansas-Nebraska border. Approximately 2500 people of Otoe descent remain today.

        A Tsimshian Native created the Eagle Dance headdress, which is the last piece in the “Traditional Clothing” section. The Tsimshian people lived in the Northwest Coast region near present-day Alaska and British Columbia. They heavily fished for food, and did not live nomadically like many of the Great Plains people. However, in winter, they did hunt game. As most Northwest Coast Natives did, the Tsimshian constructed totem poles and held spiritual ceremonies, including potlatches and the Eagle Dance, in order to celebrate animals.

        The “Contemporary Fashion” and “Clothing of Protest” sections of the exhibit feature individually identifiable artists with interesting, compelling backgrounds. Betty David, creator of all three jackets in the “Contemporary Fashion” section, was a member of the Spokane Tribe of Indians who died in 2007 at the age of 69. During the last 15 years of her life, David created art that she both displayed in Native art markets and privately sold. While the “What We Wear” exhibit features a few of her high quality jackets and coats, David also made custom handbags and rugs, using traditional Northwest Native styles across her art. The National Museum of the American Indian, the Heard Museum, and several other institutions have displayed David’s work, and she received numerous awards for her art during her lifetime.

        Wendy Red Star, maker of the “Beaded Native Muscle Man Hat,” has devoted a substantial portion of her life—and her time in higher education—to art. Red Star grew up on the Crow Indian reservation with a full Crow father and a mother of Irish-descent, but left to attend Montana State at age 18. There, she got her Bachelor’s of Fine Art in Sculpture in 2004. In 2006, she earned her Master’s of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of California at Los Angeles. Red Star works as an adjunct art professor at Portland State University, but also creates elaborate sculptures and art through many other mediums, including photography. Recently, she curated an exhibit of 10 other Native artists, opened a solo show at the Portland Art Museum, and has several portraits currently showing in an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

        Navajo artist Dustin Martin, designer of the “Ceci N’est Pas Un Conciliateur” t-shirt, is the program director for Wings of America and the co-founder of Sovereign Original Land Owners (S.O.L.O.). Martin grew up in New Mexico, and graduated from Columbia University in 2011 with a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. He then worked temporarily in a t-shirt shop in New York, all while building S.O.L.O., his t-shirt design company. In addition to S.O.L.O., he now works for Wings of America, a non-profit that uses running as a way of enhancing the lives of Native American youth, showing his commitment to Native causes both inside and outside the art world. While Martin has only been producing t-shirts for a few years, he apparently has intentions of continuing S.O.L.O. for the foreseeable future.

        Nicholas Galanin, the maker of the “Hipsters in Headdresses” necktie, has both Tlingit and Aleut descent and comes from a long line of Northwest Coast artists, including his father and great-grandfather. He graduated from London Guildhall University with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts with honors in Jewelry Design and Silversmithing. In 2004, he began pursuing a Master’s in Indigenous Visual Arts through a graduate arts program at Massey University in New Zealand. Galanin’s artwork is highly varied in tone and medium. Magazine covers have used his photo compilations, art galleries and museums have featured his sculpture art, and Alaskan Governor Walker has even given a speech while wearing Galanin’s “Hipsters in Headdresses” necktie.

        Finally, Navajo artist Jared Yazzie, who designed the “Mis-Rep Tee,” is the creative force behind OXDX, a Native-owned and operated clothing company. Yazzie began OXDX at the University of Arizona, where he studied until moving both himself and his company to Phoenix in 2010. Since then, he learned the screen-printing process from a friend and now does the entire illustration and printing processes in-house at his company. Yazzie appears fully focused on t-shirt production, at least for the time being.

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