Review: 'Native Diaspora Now' looks at Native Americans today

Wednesday, October 3, 2012  

"Why'd we let him do it, United States of America? All of a sudden (maybe this happened awhile ago), the face of "America" was no longer the face of the people who'd been there for millenia, but rather a gun-toting, karate-chopping, Christian blogging white guy (there may have been steps in between the two.)

Reminder brought to you by Gerardo de Sepulveda, the painter behind the comically-rendered "Chuck Norris and the Theft of the American Spirit" and one of the Bay Area Native Americans featured in Galeria de la Raza and the Indigenous Arts Coalition's group exhibition "Native Diaspora Now."

The show is an at-times wry look at Native American life in America today. In another corner of the gallery hangs a multimedia piece by Richard Castaneda. It's deals in American spirit, too -- the kind you smoke. Baby blue and yellow headdress-adorned cigarrette boxes, arranged in the shape of a cross, adorned with feathers hanging from Pepsi bottlecaps. It's instantly recognizable as coming from a Native tradition, but will cause cognitive woe to anyone whose concept of Native art borrows from the "ethnic print" section of Urban Outfitters."

Get the Story:
Stealing the American dream back from Chuck Norris (San Francisco Bay Guardian 10/2)