Through film, painting and drawing, visual artist Andrea Carlson often challenges institutional authority over objects merely based on possession and display. Currently living in Chicago, she was educated in Minnesota; she received a BA in Art and American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota in 2003 and an MFA in Visual Studies at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2005. Her work has been acquired by institutions such as the British Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. Carlson was a 2008 McKnight Fellow and a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors fellowship.
This list was created with images running through my head of children in cages, refuge-seeking families being maced, a museum burning, more fires, pipeline protests, more protests, homeless Natives living in tents along a wall, new land grabs, non-stop White House perp walks, broken teens recounting classmates being gunned down, juries’ inability to hold white men accountable for the murder of Natives and people of color, and the faces of Incels, Neo-Nazis, and racists spewing desperate hatred. I am not blind to this world, but within it I’ve found a small list for 2018 that is personally revealing, and hopefully it won’t be interpreted as dismissive of these important, urgent things.
1.
THE DEATH OF JAMES LUNA
James Luna (February 9, 1950–March 4, 2018) was—how could he ever be was?—the reason why so many of us became brave, strong artists. He gave us a blueprint for kicking in the doors of institutions and encouraged us to occupy that uncomfortable space. He went to the end of the trail, came back again and reported what he had found there. He gave us something profound. If you knew his art, there is a high probability that the phrase “The Death of James Luna” brings tears to your eyes. I am sorry to lead with this phrase. May we carry him with us.
2.
EMILY JOHNSON’S CHOREOGRAPHY IN DOCTOR ATOMIC
Peter Sellars’s recent incarnation of the opera Doctor Atomic at the Santa Fe Opera got it right with the inclusion of Emily Johnson’s choreography. The extended lives lost as a result of Robert Oppenheimer’s violent quest extended to Navajo and Pueblo peoples’ bodies who suffer the effects of mining nuclear materials. The location of the Santa Fe Opera is Tewa land, approximately 30 miles from Los Alamos laboratories where “the bomb” was developed that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Japan. Extending this production past the single man’s Faustian struggle to a greater contextuality was an appropriate move.
3.
156-YEAR OVERDUE APOLOGY
In September 2018, Minnesota Public Radio reports:
The Mayo Clinic apologized for the desecration of Marpiya Okinajin, known as “Cut Nose,” who was hanged in 1862 in Mankato, Minn., one of 38 Native Americans executed under orders from President Abraham Lincoln in the largest mass execution in U.S. history[…] Cut Nose was buried in a shallow grave. But a doctor dug up the body, ‘carted the corpse to his office, dissected it, melted off the flesh and made a skeleton he studied and allowed his children to play with,’ columnist Matthew Hansen writes at the Omaha World Herald. The doctor was William Mayo, founder of the Mayo Clinic, where Cut Nose’s skull remained on display until it was returned in 1998.”
Also in 2018, Ken Burns released a PBS documentary titled The Mayo Clinic: Faith – Hope – Science. Although the film appears to depict a photo of W. W. Mayo’s office (minute mark 16:57) with the bones of Cut Nose prominently displayed, the film fails to mention the terrible actions of the clinic’s founder.
4.
MISSING AND MURDERED: FINDING CLEO
My husband and I listened to Finding Cleo—a CBC podcast—on a road trip from Grand Marais, Minnesota to Chicago, Illinois. We sat in the car in the garage unable to stop listening. Finding Cleo is a story of a Cree girl and her siblings taken away from their mother in the Sixties Scoop. This story will nest in your bones, it will hurt and reveal your prejudices. But it is essential to seek out and listen to Indigenous people and to learn Indigenous histories from Indigenous people.
5.
NINA CHANEL ABNEY: ROYAL FLUSH
This might be cheating on the idea of 2018 as a self-contained unit. Nina Chanel Abney’s Royal Flush, her first solo museum exhibition, debuted in 2017 at the Nasher Museum of Art. I wasn’t able to see the exhibition until it traveled to the Chicago Cultural Center in January 2018. Abney is making historically significant work while providing exceptions to all the generalizing theories that I could muster. As soon as I thought I knew something, she took it away like a true magician. I’m not complaining, I’m entranced.
6.
PEGGY FLANAGAN
Congratulations, Mni Sota, Dakhóta Makhóčhe (aka Minnesota, Dakota Land)! You now have a brilliant Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe woman) for Lieutenant Ogimaakwe! I first met Lt. Governor-elect Peggy Flanagan in 2000. She taught me how to remember the names of all of the Ojibwe reservations in Minnesota while she was a teacher’s assistant for the Ojibwe Culture & History course at the University of Minnesota. It was no surprise when she ran for Minneapolis School Board and won, State senate, and when Tim Waltz’s gubernatorial ticket was announced, I had no doubt that they would be serving. Peggy, we are so proud of you!
7.
HEID ERDRICH
Heid Erdrich’s Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media won a 2018 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, and they put an accolade sticker on the book’s impeccable cover (wink face). An anthology of poetry edited by Erdrich, New Poets of Native Nations, was published in 2018. She edited the June issue of the Poetry Foundation’s POETRY magazine in 2018, too. Erdrich’s genius has found footing in 2018, and I only expect her to keep climbing while pulling us up with her.
8.
CHARLES WHITE
While walking the galleries full of the original drawings and paintings of Charles White at the Art Institute of Chicago, I felt it prudent to not make a big scene over how fulfilling it was to behold such a tremendous artist’s life’s work. I returned to see the show two more times.
9.
BDE MKA SKA
In January 2018, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources recognized Bde Maka Ska as the official name of a lake formerly known as Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. In June 2018, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names approved the change at the Federal level. Although this restoration of the lake’s original name represents the accumulation of exhaustive work at great personal risk of Dakota people such as Kate Beane and Carly Bad Heart Bull, restoring Indigenous place names is building us all up.
10.
THE RETURN OF ISLE ROYAL TO THE PEOPLE OF GRAND PORTAGE
The return of Isle Royale to the Ojibwe people of Grand Portage didn’t actually happen in 2018, but now you’ve just imagined it.
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