This resource was developed by myself, Luke Meeken, a white settler scholar/artist/teacher, in consultation with scholars at the Myaamia Center (primarily Myaamia educator Kristina Fox and settler historian Andrew Sawyer). This resource was developed as part of the Indigenizing Curriculum Workshop series at Miami University, headed by Sandra Garner and Andrew Sawyer.
This resource includes several thematic modules designed for use by educators of preservice art teachers, which can be adapted for use in graduate and undergraduate level courses (and parts of which will be deployed in my own elementary and secondary methods courses). These could be used in whole or in part, and are designed to be usable in a variety of contexts.
This resource also includes a database of Indigenous artists working with digital materials, tagged and sortable by material processes, themes addressed, and tribal/community affiliation. This is intended to be useful for art educators in higher ed and K-12 contexts who may already be working within a curricular structure (e.g. an introduction to game design course, an animation course) who are interested in including contemporary Indigenous artists in their teaching. However, while Indigenous curricular inclusion is obviously preferable to Indigenous curricular absence, I advise against simply including Indigenous artists in an otherwise unchanged art curriculum to meet a diversity quota. Approaches to multicultural art education which focus on representation rather than systemic (e.g. decolonial; antiracist) change often still center whiteness (and settler identity) as default (Eldridge, 2018; Sions & Wolfgang, 2021).
As a settler educator (and not a white savior), one of my primary roles is educating majority-settler student populations in a way that advances decolonial goals (and, in my context, the cultural revitalization goals of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and Myaamia Center), rather than educating Indigenous learners about their own cultures or which Indigenous artists they should consider important. Because of this (and because of limits in perspective stemming from my settler positionality), this resource may be written in a way that assumes a settler audience. This authorial choice is not intended to exclude Indigenous students and teachers – if you find this resource useful, that is wonderful! But I don’t want to assume that I have anything to teach you.
I am fortunate to have, and grateful for, the feedback of my Myaamia Center collaborators, especially Miami Tribe of Oklahoma members Kristina Fox (who was a core consultant on this project) and George Ironstrack (who provided valuable curatorial advice). This would not be possible without them. However, I take full responsibility for any factual or ethical errors present in this resource.
Eldridge, L. (2018). An indigenous reframing of art education historical research: Acknowledging Native American spiritual values. Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, 35(1). https://doi.org/10.2458/jcrae.4861
Sions, H. K., & Wolfgang, C. N. (2021). Looking back, looking forward: Resisting the white gaze in historical narratives and future possibilities of art education. The Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (Online), 41, 82-104. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jstae/vol41/iss1/7/