Tribe and Community (from Survival Suite)

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Tribe and Community is a lithograph with chine collé on Arches paper by Jaune Quick-to-see-Smith. 
 
Quick-to-see-Smith is an artist and self-described cultural arts worker, born at the St. Ignatius Indian Mission on her reservation, and is an enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Montana.1
 
Quick-to-see-Smith, in her own words, “uses humor and satire to examine myths, stereotypes, and the paradox of Native American life in contrast to the consumerism of American society.”2

Tribe and Community embodies this sentiment and is part of a larger series of prints called Survival Suite that collectively highlights the four pillars of survival which Quick-to-see-Smith believes have helped her tribe through challenging times.3 
 
One of those pillars is tribe and community, as evidenced by the title of this piece. 
 
Without reading on, where do you see motifs and symbols of tribes and communities reflected in this work? What do those words mean to you? 
 
When thinking specifically of tribes and communities, I’m drawn into the smaller drawings and phrases that exist on the edges of this work. Some of the drawings appear to have more token symbols associated with Indigenous cultures, but they are interspersed with smaller images of rabbits and words that I associate with infrastructure, like “plaster mold” and “wax walls.” These words remind me of endurance and long-standing strength, perhaps alluding to the literal foundation a community can create for an individual. 
 
However, it is impossible to ignore the blazing and fierce rabbit that sits in the middle of this composition on top of a floorplan for the basilica. These two images are steeped in symbolism: the rabbit, for its abundant and fast propagation, and the basilica floor, for its ties to the Catholic Church. 
 
Quick-to-see-Smith herself speaks to this combination of symbols commenting that “the Catholic Church helped [our tribe] to increase our numbers. So I used the worldwide fecundity figure --the rabbit standing over the top of the Basilica Floor in Rome. There are other symbols around the rabbit that represent togetherness and community as the old mother goose saying goes, ‘Birds of a feather flock together.’”4
 
This marriage of these symbols perhaps points to growing numbers and strengthened ties within this community, where members are immediately brought in and indoctrinated into the culture of the tribe. 
 
But the work points subtly to another truth: the lack of agency Indigenous people have in choosing their community, where tribe members must identify with one tribe and have to carry government issued identification and their enrollment numbers.5

In your life, what does it look like to change your surrounding community; is it as simple as moving into another neighborhood or getting a salary raise, or are there barriers in your life to doing this? 
 
Quick-to-see-Smith encourages viewers to ponder this relative ease or unease, and how their race and cultural background might play into not only how they define their tribes and communities, but how they acquire them. 
 

 - Mallory Schultz, Art Collections & Exhibitions Fellow 2019 - 2020

[1] Mandeville Gallery, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, (Schenectady, NY: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith Exhibition Brochure). 
[2] Ibid.
[3] Jaune Quick-to-see-Smith, e-mail message to Julie Lohnes, Director & Curator of the Mandeville Gallery, 2014.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Label text for Tribe and Community, Mandeville Gallery, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Schenectady, NY.

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