For this year’s exhibit for Native American Heritage Month, I took inspiration from the new initiative on campus to bring awareness to the land on which San Diego State University sits, the Kumeyaay Living Land Acknowledgement. This project includes sculptural pieces placed on SDSU and the Imperial Valley campus. Each piece has a QR code that reveals an extended-reality lesson tied to Kumeyaay culture and history. The completed three pieces, “Stargazer’s,” People of the Sun," and “Return of the Kumeyaay Creator,” on the SDSU campus are created by Johnny Bear Contreras.
Combining my observations from this project and my recent experiences discovering Native American public art in Phoenix, I choose to focus this year’s exhibit on Native American artists and their use of public art. This research took me on a journey of destructive historical actions to outsider-valued views of scholarship and art to the only recent uprising of Indigenous-created art publicly placed on THEIR land as a place marker reminder that the rest of us live on their stolen land.
Jenny Wong-Welch
Librarian
Rosenthal, N. G. (2018). Painting native america in public: American indian artists and the new deal. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 42(3). https://doi.org/10.17953/aicrj.42.3.rosenthal
Daehnke, J. D., & Robinson, G. A. (2023). “Once the fire starts, then there is no stopping it”: The revitalization of Chinookan art in the 21st century, conversations with Greg A. Robinson. Arts, 12(5), 185. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050185
Fox, M. (2024, September 29). SDSU sculpture series seeks to bring Kumeyaay presence to life - Art installation by Johnny Bear Contreras aims to share the story of Indigenous group. San Diego Union-Tribune, The (CA), p. B1. Available from NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current: https://infoweb-newsbank-com.libproxy.sdsu.edu/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/19BF4944CE2448F8.
Stewart, J. (2023, December 31). 5 breakthrough artists who are making contemporary native american and indigenous public art. My Modern Met. https://mymodernmet.com/contemporary-native-public-art/
Outside the walls: Indigenous public art. (n.d.). NMAI Magazine. Retrieved November 4, 2024, from https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/story/outside-walls-indigenous-public-art
White, T. (2023, November 16). These indigenous artists are using public art to make their voices heard. Thrillist. https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/indigenous-public-art-projects
Healey, G. A. (2016). American indian graffiti muralism: Survivance and geosemiotic signposts in the american cityscape (Order No. 10110992). Available from Ethnic NewsWatch; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection; ProQuest One Academic. (1797593373). Retrieved from http://libproxy.sdsu.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/american-indian-graffiti-muralism-survivance/docview/1797593373/se-2
Bunn-Marcuse, K. (2020). [Review of the book Visible on Ancestral Lands: Coast Salish Public Art Works in King County, by Crisca Bierwert]. Native American and Indigenous Studies 7(2), 177-178. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/765031.
Schaffer, P. (n.d.). Portland native art. Portland Native Art. Retrieved November 4, 2024, from https://www.portlandnativeart.org