In this immaculately and abundantly illustrated monograph, Arni Brownstone imparts a detailed account of war paintings produced by Indigenous peoples of the North American Great Plains during the 1800s and early 1900s. Through these paintings, Indigenous artist-authors recorded their successes in warfare, employing precise iconographic narrative strategies. Brownstone demonstrates that these paintings are both art and text, blurring the line between symbol and writing. In addition, he achieves two main goals. First, he carefully describes this narrative and stylistic genre and discusses regional variation. He collected data on 520 works (listed in the online Appendix F) and discusses 83 of them in the book. His second goal is to “intellectually repatriate” (p. 1) those examples that have entered museum and private collections without cultural attribution or to correct any whose origins have been incorrectly assigned. By comparing features across paintings, he assigns likely cultural origins to nearly half (45%) of all examples, resulting in the vast majority now having cultural attribution.
Chapters 1 through 4 focus on stylistic attributes of war paintings in the Northwest, West-Central, Central-East, and South (chapter 5 lists examples likely painted by Europeans). Each subregion encompasses several Nations, indicating there were spheres of influence where stylistic elements were shared across cultural boundaries. Each chapter’s introduction includes a full-page illustration of prominent features in each subregion and a discussion of the Nations present in each. These introductions are incredibly helpful; differences among regional traditions are salient and clearly defined. The rest of each chapter focuses on key examples. Save for one exceptionally large example, each painting is represented on one full-page illustration, followed by one full page of discussion, usually accompanied by an additional, smaller image. Brownstone’s illustrations render the imagery more visible in the scale of a single book page. Each two-page spread focuses on a single painting—its history, narrative, and creators, when known. Enabling easy looking back and forth between image and discussion, this layout is stunning and convenient in the physical book, though the digital format does not quite do justice to this thoughtful design.
Although the book’s structure allows for catalog-like entries of each painting, this creates a problematic experience for the reader. This book attempts to draw connections between a series of paintings and to present each as a case study simultaneously. The result is that the narrative of one constantly interrupts the narrative of the other. Terms are defined sometimes well after they are first used. Context that would have been helpful in an introductory section is buried in a painting’s description. The book lacks internal references to aid readers. A different structure, following themes instead of paintings, may have resolved this issue.
My most substantive concern with this book is that it misses an opportunity to do powerful decolonial work. The creators of the paintings are not the focus; rather, it is the Europeans who commissioned and owned them. Although this information can be useful to determine provenience, it quickly overwhelms the discussion of the painting itself. For example, on pages 60–67, four Blackfoot paintings are discussed that are presumably created by the same person. It is not until the last page that the individual is briefly identified as Night Shoot. Names of individuals and groups are given without much reflection, using some ethnonyms that are not preferred by these peoples today. The impacts of colonization are discussed only very cursorily, resulting in a missed opportunity to shed light on the detrimental effects of European interference on this critically important cultural tradition.
A small detail that indicates unexamined colonial frameworks appears in the discussion of the Niitsí’powahsin (Blackfoot language) term niitsiináámaa: “they formerly applied the same word, nmaa, for both gun and bow, but would later use the term nitsinama, or Indian gun, to designate the bow (United Church Archives, Maclean box 16, file 16)” (p. 25). The Algonquian Dictionaries Project’s Blackfoot Dictionary (https://resources.atlas-ling.ca) indicates that the word niitsii means “true or original,” and náámaa means “gun, bow, or weapon.” When Europeans arrived, guns quickly became the preferred weapon over the traditional bow. The word náámaa, “weapon”—used for both instruments—came to refer more often to guns, and a new term was developed to refer to bows. The word for “bow” is not “Indian gun” but rather “original weapon.” The translation “Indian gun” is rooted in colonial thinking, and replicating this linguistic narrative misses a powerful opportunity to decolonize our research.
In the beautifully written afterword, Dana Claxton meditates on warfare and colonial impacts on Indigenous lifeways. She asks, “Will the wound always have a gape? A small gape, a slight opening, that lets history breathe, reminding us that we fought. Hard” (p. 216), reminding readers that the fight must continue—for reconciliation, for equity, for cultural and linguistic traditions to flourish. Recognizing the rightful creators of these paintings is a significant and commendable step toward reconciliation. We must endeavor to critically examine how our worldviews shape the work we put out into the world.
