Table of Contents

Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Indigenous Arts of North America
Art History and Native art
What is 'art'? Western discourses and Native American objects
Modes of appreciation: curiosity, specimen, artefact, and art
What is an Indian? Clan, community, political structure, and art
Cosmology
The map of the cosmos
The nature of spirit
Dreams and the vision quest
Shamanism
Art and the public celebration of power
The power of personal adornment
'Creativity is our tradition': innovation and tradition in Native American art
Gender and the making of art

Chapter 2: The Southwest
The Southwest as a region
The ancient world
From the colonial era to the modern Pueblos
Navajo and Apache arts

Chapter 3: The East
The East as a region
Hunting cultures, burial practices, and Early Woodlands art forms
Mississippian art and culture
The cataclysm of contact: the Southeast
The early contact period in the Northeast
Arts of the middle ground
Arts of self-adornment

Chapter 4: The West
Introduction
The Great Plains
The Intermontaine region--an artistic crossroads
The Far West: arts of California and the Great Basin

Chapter 5: The North
Geography, environment, and language in the North
Sub-arctic clothing: art to honour and protect
The Arctic

Chapter 6: The Northwest Coast
Origins
The early contact period
Styles and techniques
Western connoisseurship and Northwest Coast art
Shamanism
Crest art
The potlatch
Art, commodity, and oral tradition
Northwest Coast art in the twentieth century

Chapter 7: The Twentieth Century: Trends in Modern Native Art
Questions of definition
Commoditization and contemporary art
Moments of beginning
The Southern Plains and the Kiowa Five
The Southwest and the 'Studio' style
The display and marketing of American Indian art: exhibitions, mural projects, and competitions
Native American modernisms, 1950-80
Institutional frameworks and modernism in Canada
Postmodernism, installation, and other post-studio art

Notes
List of Illustrations
Bibliographic Essay
Timeline
Index

Available Resources