Locating Sioux Aesthetics through The Sioux Project—Tatanka Oyate: Conversations with Dana Claxton

From September 30, 2017 to January 8, 2018, the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan presented “Dana Claxton: The Sioux Project—Tatanka Oyate,” an exploration of the Sioux aesthetics and visual culture in contemporary Sioux life in southwest Saskatchewan. Curated for the MacKenzie by Carmen Robinson, this multi-platform project was initiated by Vancouver-based Hunkpapa Lakota, Sioux artist Dana Claxton, and developed through a research-creation grant alongside collaborators Lynne Bell, Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Saskatchewan, Blackfoot filmmaker and actor Cowboy Smithx, and Gwenda Yuxicuappi, a cultural liaison from Standing Buffalo Dakota Nation. “The Sioux Project” will unfold in stages, beginning with an introduction to the project by Claxton and her team in three Sioux communities, and a series of filmmaking workshops or ‘boot camps’ for Sioux youth that connect contemporary media art practices with Sioux communities and cultural traditions. The exhibition itself is dominated by an installation of four curved screens with projected video and arranged to form a circle. The video incorporates the project research and footage produced during the boot camps. Subsequent components will include a website (currently in development) featuring an online archive of the research, youth boot camps, the Sioux Symposium also held at the Gallery, project documentation, related activities, and a publication.

As in her earlier exhibition “Sitting Bull and the Moose Jaw Sioux,” Claxton frequently draws influence from home. Raised in Moose Jaw, ‘home’ for Claxton continues to be Saskatchewan, where she grew up, rather than Vancouver, where she resides. As a descendent of Lakota women who walked to Canada with Sitting Bull, Claxton explored the history from which she descends in “Sitting Bull and the Moose Jaw Sioux.” The exhibition was first presented at the Moose Jaw Art Museum and Gallery in 2004 and later toured throughout Saskatchewan with stops in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. During our phone conversation and email correspondence in September, Claxton explained, “with so little public acknowledgement of Sitting Bull’s history in Moose Jaw […] I wanted to acknowledge that history, the place-based agency in Moose Jaw.”[i] The video installation work of “Sitting Bull and the Moose Jaw Sioux” celebrated that history and integrated multiple perspectives through interviews combined with her own footage and archival images of the late 19^th and early 20^th century Sioux encampment established by Sitting Bull near Moose Jaw.

Home as inspiration and place-based research creation continue to play a significant role in “The Sioux Project—Tatanka Oyate” as it did in “Sitting Bull and the Moose Jaw Sioux,” and the two bodies of work are further linked through the centralization of Sioux history, and contemporary Sioux life. The later exhibition, however, marks the importance of the transfer of knowledge through the presence of youth in the project, alongside Sioux elders and community participation and support. Working across a number of communities throughout the province, Claxton navigated contemporary realities and described the fact that “cultural distancing [. . .] still happens with reservation life. Sometimes people just stick to their own communities [. . .] and it’s still kind of that way on the Plains.”[ii] “The Sioux Project—Tatanka Oyate” exhibition and accompanying project components in turn provide a platform for Sioux voice and community.

—

Toby Lawrence: When we worked together in 2014 to bring a selection from your “Indian Candy” series to Victoria, BC, it was the first exhibition of your work at the principal public art gallery in the provincial capital and, subsequently, the first purchase of your work for the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s permanent collection, which was supported by a Canada Council matching funds grant. I recall discussing the significance of this, particularly in reference to the impact your work continues to have on the history and trajectory of Indigenous performance, media arts, and film in BC where you have been living since the 1980s, as well as across Canada and internationally. With “The Sioux Project—Tatanka Oyate” at the MacKenzie Art Gallery, your work is once again marking a shift in the narrative as “the first art exhibition to explore contemporary Sioux aesthetics in Saskatchewan.”[iii] Can you talk about your intentions for this work, and the significance of presenting this work in Regina?

Dana Claxton: In many ways, I think it’s the companion work to “Sitting Bull and the Moose Jaw Sioux,” this time also thinking about place-based agency. This time my inquiries are about how Sioux aesthetics circulate and how they have informed ways of being in the world. From spirit to politics, to land territories, to the next generation—Sioux visual culture is very apparent on the reserve, danced at pow wows, on the body, and generations of practitioners see this through. The next generation is imperative to keeping culture going.

You’ve identified the primary question driving the “Sioux Project” as ‘where is the Sioux aesthetic in Southwest Saskatchewan?’

It’s on the body. It’s on people’s moccasins, their regalia, their leg ends, their dances roaches, all of the incredible beadwork, or the parflèche, the paintings, and winter counts on hides. It is very much that’s where it is; and then of course the star quilts and the repeated conversation about the Sioux—the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota relationship with the Star Nation and the Tatanka and the Buffalo Nation.

Can you also talk more about the star quilts?

Star quilts represent the Star Nation and the Sioux relationship to them. Originally stars were painted on buffalo hides, but after the extermination and imported European cloth, star quilts or blankets were made. At one point they were also worn, like the tatanka robe, but now they are for warmth with bedding, made for honouring newborns and other celebrations. It is an honour to receive a star blanket. They are also use for burial, and I have even seen them used for weddings—people standing on one. They have spiritual and cultural significance.

The discourse around the visibility of visual culture from one location, for example the Northwest coast where you reside, versus the invisibility in another area is often folded into questions of decolonizing and Indigenizing mainstream art spaces, and while this is entirely necessary, it also necessitates many other layers of conversation, including the question of visibility and invisibility for whom?

In terms of material culture: it’s for the community. It’s for culture. It sustains culture. The pow wow is tied to a whole bunch of ways of being in the world. Those things are for the people, not for the market. . . . Invisibility as a mechanism of power, if we think of it that way, and whatever layers of oppression that Sioux people in Saskatchewan have, or had, or the fragments of it, and those kinds of difficulties. In terms of the invisibility of that cultural production, it’s not meant to be visible. I really had to wrap my head around that idea. . . . How come I don’t see any Sioux stuff? But it’s not for connoisseurship. . . . [The Sioux aesthetic] is embellished, but on the Sioux body.

If I found the answer to the research question it is that those aesthetic properties are in communities and they are not for connoisseurship.

If we think of the geometrics, they are very much a part of Sioux aesthetics, as well as florals. Tetuwan, from my community, use geometrics, and the Santee Sioux use more floral banners, but people are using more of the geometrics now. It also depends on who keeps making it. So, it’s in those aesthetic forms, but also how much those have been borrowed. I’m thinking of Navajo imagery that you see on socks, underwear, tea towels, and on all this stuff—which is ongoing with all the native prints that are out there. It goes in cycles. They’re in and then they’re out of style; back in and then out of style. Whereas for us, the Sioux, it’s never going out of style. We’re never going to stop making. We would hope we would never stop making these things. And they’re making so much stuff! If you don’t go to that place where people are gathering, then you wouldn’t know. . . .Those are the stereotypes of the dying, salvage paradigms, but pow wow culture is massive!

You have done a considerable amount of work interrogating archival images—whether it is images of Indigenous bodies in popular culture or throughout history, stereotypes, or symbols. These recurrences speak to artistic practice as a form of research and knowledge creation. This methodology is present again in “The Sioux Project,” however, in this instance, it is coupled with footage from workshops and interviews with Sioux youth (age 16-23) in communities across Saskatchewan. Can you speak to the results of this coupling and the impact of working with youth for this piece, both inside and outside the gallery space?

I was wanting to demystify the process, as well as deconstruct it and place production at the centre of the actual creation. Although we also added layers of visual treatments in post-production, the work certainly shows everything. In addition, the premise of our project, which involved myself, Lynne Bell from the University of Saskatchewan and Gwenda Yuxicuappi from Standing Buffalo, was how do I, as a Vancouver-based contemporary Lakota artist, transfer my knowledge of video and art to the next generation? I did artist talks in three communities to youth and elders and community members so they could see what I have been up to for the last 25 years, then held workshops, and then came back to Vancouver to edit. Blackfoot filmmaker and actor Cowboy Smithx was very instrumental in conducting the video boot camps! As well as Rio Mitchell.

The video boot camps offered space for the youth to learn technical skills and also to learn about filmmaking as a tool to tell their own stories—and the opportunity to work directly with established Indigenous filmmakers. Through these workshops the young folks were able to participate in the production as the crew, and some cases shooting the footage. Can you elaborate on the role they had in shaping the decisions that led to the final installation?

It was a very hands-on boot camp. We incorporated some of the footage they shot, and as for the shorts they made, they get to have them for their archives. Also, each community will get a copy of the entire installation on a DVD and all the full-length interviews. Their role was that I made sure they were seen in the final production and that we incorporated some of their footage.

 How did the production decisions and the questions the youth posed for themselves through this process deviate from your initial research questions for them (‘Who are you? Who are your family members? Who are your mentors and role models? How do Sioux people communicate in the visual language? How does Sioux visual culture impact your everyday lives?’)?

We were not so formal in asking them these questions. I did presentations on my work and the project, and let them decide what they wanted to do. One group made a few skits, and the other group were crew members on the production and didn’t make their own shorts.

 Starting in Standing Buffalo, you introduced the project to Sioux communities with a feast, following protocols, and presented your artist talk to let people know what the project was all about and to see who would want to participate. If at all, how did the project shift through the process of presenting this work in these communities?

Not at all. We had a feast and a wopila (giveaway), did an artist talk, and then started to have a video boot camp with 8-12 year olds: game playing, team building, then hands on filming, sound, and lighting. We set up the green screen in the gym and it was our studio at Standing Buffalo, and in Saskatoon we worked at PAVED Arts in Saskatoon, which was already a studio, and bussed in kids and elders from Whitecap Dakota First Nation.

For a number of years, your practice has centralized beauty as a platform to mobilize dialogue. With “The Sioux Project” you are intentionally centralizing Sioux aesthetic; to what extent does the framework of aesthetics and beauty mobilize contemporary Sioux voice?

I have to ponder this—we saw some amazing designs, dresses, paintings, beadwork of all kinds, quill work, star quilts, parflèche, fully beaded cradle boards, singers, shawls, corn even! These cultural belongings and practices are all embellished with great beauty and in some cases spiritual significance, that come with teachings of how to live a good life.

So, to answer the questions: I do believe I am making the declaration that aesthetics and beauty do mobilize contemporary Sioux voices through the teachings and meanings of those cultural belongings. One has to live a certain way, when you are a dancer, one has to have positive thoughts when they bead or sew, one needs to work on a good path essentially. For some it’s a spiritual path, or others it’s a good way of being in the world with a good heart—chante waste—heart good in Lakota.

—

Throughout her recent work, Claxton has repurposed the Duchampian art historical terminology of the “ready-made” to disrupt the notion of the cultural object, as cultural belongings, or as “made to be ready.” The moccasins, warrior shields, water baskets, regalia, star quilts, and so on are made to be ready for action, and for doing.[iv] During her panel presentation at the Sioux Symposium held in conjunction with the opening of The Sioux Project—Tatanka Oyate at the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Claxton reiterated that Sioux aesthetics are “so integral to culture and a believe system, and that they are not separate…in terms of art making,” just as “cultural belongings all [have] a deep purpose in the maintenance of culture.”[v] Claxton further explained that there will always be variations, even in ceremony. She was reminded “we have to be fluid,” and continued, “but there is still, though, a way of being.”[vi] Moreover, Claxton identified a “continuous linkage” throughout The Sioux Project research, stating: “what you could start to see was a Sioux methodology, in terms of the approach to making the work, and it was really related to spirit and community and family, and then also having a good heart and a clear mind whenever you are touching any of these things. Hearing that again and again, you could really see a Sioux way of being in the world—you could call that a Sioux methodology…how one walks in the world.”[vii]

Toby Katrine Lawrence is a curator, writer, and researcher based between Kelowna and Gabriola Island, in British Columbia, on the traditional lands of the Syilx and Snuneymuxw peoples. She has held curatorial and programming positions with the Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and Nanaimo Art Gallery, and is currently completing a PhD focused on feminist curatorial practice at the University of British Columbia Okanagan.

[i] Toby Lawrence in conversation with Dana Claxton, September 20, 2017.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Carmen Robinson, “Dana Claxton: The Sioux Project—Tatanka Oyate,” MacKenzie Art Gallery, accessed August 31, 2017, http://mackenzieartgallery.ca/engage/exhibitions/dana-claxton-the-sioux-project.

[iv] Dana Claxton, “Panel 1: Sioux Aesthetics, Methods, and Pedagogy” at Sioux Symposium, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan, September 30, 2017.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid.