Luzene Hill, Spearfinger’s Deception, 2007

Dustin Illetewah Mater, Dreaming Perched upon the Mounds, 2013

From L to R: Spearfinger’s Deception, Luzene Hill; Dreaming Perched upon the Mounds, Dustin Illetewahke Mater; Out of the Ashes, Ronald Mitchell

Communication & Expression

The “Communication & Expression” section explores how, among Native American societies, Indigenous cultures of the Southeast have particularly rich traditions as creative communicators and storytellers. Although this visual and linguistic heritage has been passed down for generations and has evolved in this region for millennia, it remains practically unseen and unheard in popular and mainstream venues.

The art forms in this category suggest that this discrepancy has only existed in recent centuries. Even though the Mississippian-era mound builder ancestors of Southeastern tribal nations did not have a written language, the heritage of their language and visual art forms seem very compatible with the modern styles in the works of art represented here.

Some of the works here illustrate how Muskogean languages spoken by the mound builders have been kept alive by descendant Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee Creek and other tribal groups. Despite their legacies in recent centuries as orators, poets, writers and even popularly known entertainers, they are still recovering from historical efforts to eradicate their interrelated language and culture.

While Cherokee peoples share many of the same cultural and ancestral origins in the Southeast, their Tsalagi language reflects part of their history in the Northeast Woodlands region. A few artists in this category tell how their unique written language or syllabary and print media was developed in the early 1800s. Although their language became endangered, it has not only survived but driven Cherokee innovation in multimedia and information technologies.

While today only threads of Indigenous narrative traditions remain part of the collective storytelling heritage of the American South, the folklore and mythology of Southeastern Native Americans has also been kept alive by Indigenous people. Through many works of art in this section, legends are retold and mythic figures returned to their context and regional landscape. Be it past, present or future, Native peoples play a part in the South’s creative communications legacies.

Highlights

Luzene Hill, Starting Harvest Bonfires, 2007

Starting Harvest BonfiresLuzene Hill

Highlights

Luzene Hill

Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Starting Harvest Bonfires, 2007

A native of Georgia, Luzene Hill started her art career in Atlanta at mid-life. When she moved to Western North Carolina in 2006, she began a project with Cherokee (Tsalagi) speakers to create a book for a Cherokee studies course. The language was not passed down to her from her father’s parents since it was forbidden at their Indian boarding school. Hill says, “Indigenous languages reflect a distinct worldview, including what people value: their culture, cosmology, healing practices imagination and humor.” She was also commissioned to illustrate the story of Spearfinger, a mythical creature in Cherokee lore from the Smoky Mountains region. By changing into a familiar old woman, Spearfinger would lull village children to sleep only to unveil her pointed index finger. The illustration shows fires being set in autumn to clear brush and harvest fallen chestnuts. The rising smoke that provided a way for Spearfinger to find nearby villages led to its demise as the local townspeople set the fire to draw the creature into a trap.

Dustin Illetewahke Mater

Chickasaw Nation, Choctaw and Creek

Dreaming Perched upon the Mounds, 2013

A vision of the three-tiered cosmos of Dustin Illetewah Mater’s ancient Mississippian-era ancestors rises from a dreaming Tushka (warrior) fallen asleep while praying on a shintok, a Chickasaw term for ceremonial platform or mound. The lower inner panel shows the middle or earthly realm of the warrior and his people. On the raised outer panel, blue and gold basket-weave patterns at the bottom represent the foundations of their underworld. An upper outer panel portrays the world above with color bands that radiate from the sun. It is carved from shell, a symbol of the maritime origins of their necklace pendants. On these gorgets were carved images such as the eye-in-hand motif based on an artifact from Mounville, Alabama. These ancestors did not have a written language, but their oral and visual culture was adopted by descendant tribes of the Southeast region.

Dreaming Perched upon the MoundsDustin Illetewah Mater

Out of the AshesRonald Mitchell

Ronald Mitchell

Cherokee

Out of the Ashes, 1990

Ron Mitchell, a Georgia native, depicts a mythic Phoenix rising from its ashes to represent the resurgence of both the Cherokee Nation and the newspaper Cherokee Phoenix after the “Trail of Tears” relocation. In 1828, the Cherokee Nation, deemed by Georgia as an impediment to its expansion, began printing a bilingual newspaper, Cherokee Phoenix. It gained national support but posed a threat to the state’s “Indian removal” plans. The newspaper had to cease publication in 1835 after President Andrew Jackson’s administration withdrew federal funds and the Georgia Guard militia destroyed the print shop and press at New Echota, the Cherokee capital. Cherokee Phoenix has been revived as the primary news source of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. In Georgia, original editions are occasionally reprinted by hand at a replica of the original print shop at New Echota.

Exhibition Themes

UpliftedMadison Hye Long