This book attempts an impressionistic history of Native American art. It is not a Native American art history. This may not seem like an important distinction, but it is. A Native American art history would be a history from a Native point of view, eschewing the imposed structures of the academy in favour of local ways of knowing and telling. Several writers of Native descent are currently exploring what kind of thing such a history might be.

Mica cut-outs, fringed tunics,carved kachina dolls and shamans' mansks stand here ofr two millennia of native american art.The artistic traditions of the north american indian are indispensable to our understanding of the hundreds of tribes and cultures that constitute yhe naiive menrican hetitge.Form the tlingits of the north-west coast to the ipoqois of the eastern forests,from the Cheyennes of the Great Plains to the navajos of arizona,the powerful symbolism of Indian artefcts testifies to the transmission of ancestral knowledge and the vigour of ancestral myth.

Introduction

1, mound BuiideRs of the Midwest

 The Hopewell culture

 Interactions and influences

2. ARt of he mississippi Chiefdoms

 An architecture of earth

 Symbols and rites

3. From the Easterm Wood,ands to the Great Plains

 Dress-making: the domain of women

 Sculpture: the domain of men

 Pictographs and paintings: the memory of the tribes

 Pottery: a thousand years of history

 Kachinas of the Hopi and Zuni

 Navajo weaving and metalwork

5. Basketmakers of California

 Pomo baskets

 Makers and merchants

6. Making Magic on the North-West Coast

 Ritual objects of the Tlingit shaman

 The Winter Ceremonial

 American Indian Art in the Twentieth Century

Map

Bibliography