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Tripping On All The Faces: The Identity Work Of Native American Women Artists, Amanda Dee

Joyce Durham Essay Contest in Women's and Gender Studies

Native American women artists are constantly tugging at a tangle of identities, all while others are pulling on them just as hard. These identities—Native American, Woman, Artist— struggle in one body to express themselves “authentically,” against and toward privacy, against and toward openness. On the outside, however, others flatten the identity of Natives as stoic, wise warriors with elaborate headdresses. Or even flatter to long braids, tan-skin. The confluence of a Cheyenne Lakota cowboy father and artist mother, Cannupa Hanska Luger produced a series in 2013 titled and expressing just that: "Stereotype: Misconceptions of the Native American" in Figure 1 …