INDIGENOUS A&E: Art as survival, landscapes hold memory, weavers collaborate

Sandra Hale Schulman
ICT

The latest: a book for time-traveling survivors, complex art from landscapes, design siblings go home.

BOOKS: Field guide revamped for future ancestors

A remarkable new tome from one of the top artists working today, part graphic novel and part art book, “SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide,” out September 2, is the first major book from multimedia artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. A hybrid work from a plain 1970s field guide found in an army surplus store, Luger transforms the book through unexpected redacting, speculative fiction, and informative and artistic line drawing.

Playing with time and space and linear loopholes, Luger imagines what Indigenous life and culture might be in the aftermath of an apocalypse. The book has been called a “time machine” by Jordan Klepper of “The Daily Show.”

“I literally recontextualized a field manual from the Department of War circa 1950s to 1970s,” Luger told ICT from Switzerland, where is on a residency. “I tried to keep it as close to the original as possible. I took out 100 pages but used a thicker paper so that it stays within the same scope and scale of the original. I used some of the original illustrations and drew many new ones of a character I created surviving in the field.”

In a twisted twist, Luger blatantly redacts multiple lines of text like a top-secret document. 

“The whole book is reaction to redactions from the Department of War that was part of the methodology.  When I first looked through it, all of the stuff that’s in there, my aunties and uncles taught me, what plants are edible, plant medicines, traps, and how to field dress an animal. This is all Native knowledge.” 

He creates a character that wears regalia he made and that dances in videos that have been exhibited in museums and even on the video billboards of Times Square in New York. At his book launch, he dressed as the character and did “live redactions” on blown-up pages from the book.

“As I’m going through this survival guide,” Luger says, “I’m looking at how you survive by looking at the land differently and recognizing that there is abundance rather than scarcity. Scarcity is a mental block due to not having knowledge and not knowing what you’re looking at. The survival guide is great for surviving the individual organism, but we’re more than that. It’s a field manual, a future ancestral technology field manual. How do you sustain and maintain the culture in this future context? I created these future regalia pieces; it provides an overarching context to this imagined maker in the future space.”

Luger explores the concept that time is three-dimensional rather than linear.

“This concept of time as linear is totally a byproduct of a certain way of thinking,” he says. “Customary knowledge from my experience growing up was time radiates in all directions. It’s multi-dimensional. It was measured in seasons but also being able to communicate with your ancestors in, so you’re time traveling in reverse. You’re going back in time to share that knowledge but also recognizing that you’re only borrowing now from your future.

“Time is tethered, like the space-time continuum is, a network. They are connected and it is expanding in all directions at once. So being able to navigate that is just a shift in your mental scope. It’s our mentality that limits our capacity to move in that multi-dimensional reality.”

A great review and last word is from Sterlin Harjo (“Reservation Dogs”), filmmaker, who said, “SURVIVA feels everlasting and also like it will self-destruct after you read it.”

ART: Landscapes as vehicles for Indigenous memory

Landscapes that are both “nowhere and everywhere” create intrigue in the complex imagery of Andrea Carlson, whose new exhibit, “Shimmer on Horizons,” is on view now through February 15 at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Carlson, Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent, describes her landscapes as imagined scenes that do not depict specific places but rather consider how landscapes are composites of histories, relationships and power. Grounded in Anishinaabe understandings of space and time, the works reflect how land carries memories of colonial expansion and violence, as well as Indigenous presence and resistance.

With painting, video and sculpture, the horizon is the constant, reminiscent of her homelands on Lake Superior. It also alludes to the art historical fallacy that artists have employed to depict territories as empty, vast and vacant, ripe for the taking.

Multiple refractions reflect Ojibwe culture, and Indigenous sovereignty. Carlson creates a prism landscape that are sites of memory, where the land becomes host and witness, leading viewers toward a place that lies beyond Manifest Destiny’s grasp.

Concurrently her first museum survey at the Denver Art Museum, “Andrea Carlson: A Constant Sky,” will be on display October 5-February 16.

DESIGN: Sibling weavers create home goods

After a successful venture of woven clothing, Polo Ralph Lauren x Naiomi Glasses collection with Ralph Lauren, Naiomi joins with her brother Tyler Glasses, Diné, to debut the Fall 2025 Canyon Road Collection, with fabrics, floorcoverings, textiles and decorative accessories.

“The Canyon Road Collection speaks to my longtime love of the American West – the heroic beauty of its landscapes, its unique heritage, and the Indigenous people who have been part of preserving its lands and traditions for centuries. Bringing the most authentic expression of the West to life means working with the artisans practicing these traditions and sharing their stories with the world,” said Ralph Lauren in a statement.

The designs are inspired by the beauty of their homelands on Dinétah (Navajo Nation) and the weaving tradition they learned from their late grandmother.

A percentage of the purchase price from sales of the Ralph Lauren Home x Naiomi and Tyler Glasses collection will benefit Phoenix Children’s Foundation’s Patient & Family Assistance Funds for Native American Families & the Center for Cleft & Craniofacial Care. Naiomi had a cleft palate as a child and overcame it to become a successful weaver, designer and model as seen at many of the shows during SWAIA Native Fashion week.

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