"Sovereign Bones, published by Nation Books and distributed in Canada by Publisher Group Canada, is a collection of writings by contemporary Native American artists about what it's like to be an artist when your culture hasn't been yours for more than a century. It can't be "Indian" if it doesn't have braids, feathers, and buckskins riding a horse with mournful dignity into the sunset because today is a good day to die.
Anyone who does any creative work at all knows just how difficult it can be without any additional demands being made upon your already taxed brain. Can you imagine what it would be like to put your heart and soul into a painting, and be told that there is no such thing as contemporary art from your people? Artistically you only exist in the past as artefacts picked over by those who know that modern Indians have nothing to say; nothing to say that matches everybody's conception of what an Indian is anyway. Why doesn't your stuff look like other great Indian artists, like you know, Edward Curtis?
Actors, writers, poets, painters, sculptors, photographers, film makers, fashion designers, and musicians alike have run into the "it's not Indian enough to be Indian" wall, no matter how Indian they are. Indian men are noble stoic warriors or drunks who talk in short clipped sentences that are filled with meaning. Indian women are either meek and docile, exploited by their lazy husbands over the centuries, or beautiful Princesses waiting for the just the right European they can fall in love with for a little bit of that star-crossed lover stuff that can end tragically for all parties involved, leaving everybody older and wiser. (The moral of that story being: It's okay to have your bit of fun with the pretty Indian girl, but don't bring her home to mother.)
Yet in spite of this, or maybe if they're contrary enough, (it's no coincidence that in many traditions the creator is also a trickster who works in opposition to what makes sense), because of this, it hasn't stopped people from all nations from doing just what they are meant to do: Creating works of art that are about them and people in the world around them, just like the rest of the world's artists."
Get the Story:Book Review: Sovereign Bones (BlogCritics 12/5)
