LAWRENCE ABBOTT INTERVIEW WITH ALFRED YOUNG MAN

(co-authored by Alfred Young Man 1996)

LA; I'd like to start with some biographical background. You were among the first group of students to studyat IAIA.

AYM: Wow! I'm going to have to dredge up some ancient personal history here. I became sidetracked when I was fifteen or sixteen years old when I was on my way to Flandreau Indian School in South Dakota with my older brother and some other Montana Indian kids to learn a trade, auto mechanics or something like that. This was all a part of that disastrous 1950s government Relocation policy. Well, Flan- dreau didn't have any space for us so we were sent to Concho Indian School in Oklahoma to await transfer, placement, in another BIA school whenevera space became available. After a month or so at Concho it was announced that there was a new kind of school opening in Santa Fe called the Institute of American Indian Arts. The BIA promptly bussed some of us more promising "art" students to Santa Fe, all without bothering to ask us if we even wanted to go. I spent the next five years there, from 1963-68, and as things turned out was fortunate enough to have been among the original crop of students. In the beginning I didn't know anything at all about art. I was just a young reservation kid and didn't even know what an artist was, never heard of Picasso, or even that I was considered by the powers that be to have potential as an artist. Like all Native children I was told that I had some kind of a special talent, some kind of "aboriginal artistic chromosome," as Rennard Strickland would say today. There were students at IAIA from all over the U.S. and even some from Canada, some my age and some older, up to about 21 years of age, who were chosen to start up this new art school. The

The Canadian Journal ofNative Studies XVI, 2(1996):315-362. 316 Lawrence Abbott campus was housed on the site of the old Santa Fe Indian School which was also once the home of Dorothy Dunn's famous Studio School of Indian Painting which she established in 1932, something about which I wouldn't have the faintest clue until much later in my career as an artist. I thought that the campus was very nice, as far as BIA schools go, but it was still a BIA boarding school and we all had to conformto the ideology of the government regime of the day. Most of the thinking students were at odds with what the bureaucrats thought Indian art was all about so from the very beginning we were in for a fight with some very entrenched ethnocentric attitudes. In spite of all that, we were given some freedom, as far as was possible, to explore who we were as artists, and most importantly, the idea of Indian art. Even then people were asking, what is Indian art? How do you do it? Are we Indians? Are we not Indians? And so on. These questions among others, seem to be as perennial as thegrass. I used much of my time at IAIA to play around with the ideas undergirding those questions. Ironically, towards the end of the 60s, the hippie movement began to rapidly come into its own and all sorts of lower, middle, and upper- classWhite kids were self-occupied with trying to redefine the rules and customs of an outdated political system and social etiquette laid down by their grandparents' parents and their own parents, what with being urged to "tune in, turn on, and drop out" by Harvard professor Timothy Leary. Hippies, in general, used the political antics of de- bunking and then redefining the conservative ethics and social affinities of their own society with regards to marriage, common law, drugs, music, sexual morality, war, and so forth. There was supposed to have been some kind of social revolution going on. With hindsight and from the Native perspective nothing seems to have fundamen- tally changed. In the ultimate paradox, their parents were simultane- ously trying to hammer home to my generation, the rules, manners, and customs of their civilization as they had done to previous generations of Indians. They were doing this by way of eulogizing their own ethnocentric government policies, theories basedin scien- tific racism, and by stressing all those things that were supposed to make the savage Indian child "civilized." This obviously profound irony was lost, of course, on the administrators and teachers at IAIA for many years. It was not lost on the students, however. Interview with Alfred Young Man 317 LA: Where did you live beforegoingto the Institute?

AYM: I grew up in East Glacier Park, Montana, a small village located on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. It's more commonly known as the gateway to Glacier National Park and is situated on the eastern slopes;the foothills, of the RockyMountains. We were one of several Indian families living on the periphery of this, predominantly White, town which numbered less than one hundred people nine months of the year. (Back in the 70s we would'vecalled this town a "hamlet," aka Cold War Vietnam jargon. I wonder whatever happened to that term?) We alwaysseemedto be at the lowerend of the social pecking orderand I pretty much grew up an outsider. We lived in what I can only describe as a shack and we had to use an outhouse year round. We were situated across a deep ravine through which ran a glacial mountain stream named Midvale Creek that swelled to a sizeable torrent during spring runoff. I hauled many buckets of drinking water day in and day out from that creek. So we were pretty much set apart from the rest of the population, culturally and geographically. We were connected only by a narrow two-lanecar bridge. The rest of the town who had the "civilized" benefits of indoor plumbing and central heating could look across the river at "those poor Indians living over there" and feel superior. My earliest memories of East Glacier are those of experiencing the pangs of racism and having to beg for left-overs from the restaurant of the rustic multimillion dollar Glacier Park Lodge which was then owned by the Great Northern Railroad which delivered tourists to the Park each summer for recreation, adventure, and pleasure from all points east and west. The Blackfeet, who would come to East Glacier from Browning or elsewhere on the Reservation, would set up their tipis in the pines where a space was especially cleared for this purpose, get dressed in their best traditional beaded outfits, and welcome the tourists for a few dollars. I got to know many of the old people and their children in this way and they treated me more like one of their own, in contrast to the negative White attitude. I didn't know it at the time but these Elders and their children were one of the primary attractions to the Park,in addition to the beautifulscenery of course, for the hundreds of thousands of tourist dollars every summer. And they got virtually nothing in return. Nevertheless, my family, as Cree, were almostalways considered to be outsiders on the Reservation. This was normally very subtly insinuated. Today we'restill considered by some Whitesand Black- 318 Lawrence Abbott

feet to be "foreigners" in spite of the fact that back in the 1930s my grandfathers and grandmothers had arrived on the Reservation through an historical deal made with the Blackfeet and the US. government for Reservation land in exchange for commodities. That is a story by itself. We still own large tracts of land, legally, around the St. Mary area and the details of that transaction are on file with the BIA somewhere. Crees have few rights on the Reservation and we constantly run into jurisdictional problems with the Feds and the Tribe who don't really know whatto do with us. Most of us are enrolled at Rocky Boy, mid-way across stale, but we don't really benefit from that association in any fundamental way although we do visit our relatives from time to time for summer pow-wows and sun dances. For instance, I've been trying to get eithertribal council to put running water and an indoor toilet in my mother's house in East Glacier but neither of them wants to take the responsibility. They shove the problem off on each other. That's fairly typical Reservation politics around there. In the meantime my 85 year old mother has to use the outhouse all winterlong and haul her drinking water. My childhood sentiments were initially formed by my grandfathers and grand-uncles who periodically held sweatbaths back in the hills of East Glacier, away from the prying and curious eyes of the locals and tourists who no doubtthought they were practicing some kind of superstitious primitive savage religion. Looking back over the litera- ture of that era therewere some very fanciful theories, indeed, written about who Indians supposedly were. Anyway, I spent my formative years speaking a childhood kind of Cree.My father was what is today commonly termed "shaman" or "medicine man" (we prefer to call these special kind of people Indian doctors) but he died when I was only two years old so I neverreally got to know him. I basically grew up fatherless. At the age of six I was taken away to attend the Cut Bank Boarding School north of BrowningwhereI had to get my long hair cut off, like all Indian kids of the time, get dosed in insecticide powder, was issued a pair of blue coveralls with a little trap-door at the back and quickly learned that we were to speak English only or face the dire prospect of corporal punishment if we refused. The director of the school was a Mormon who seemed to harbour a real hatred of Indian children. He would physically beat the hell out of any child who showed any kind of individuality at all. I can remember more than a few children being brutally beaten and bodily slammed against dorm railings by this man. Hewould order the entire dorm population to use their belts to beat and strap any unfortunate Interview with AlfredYoung Man 319

child who broke his rules, which happened quite frequently. As the child would crawl on his hands and knees through the legs of a line of boys standing back to front, sometimes numbering as many as thirty individuals, they would beat and strap him until he was black and blue, sometimes bleeding from the beatings. I had to crawl through that gauntlet once, for committing the "egregious" crime of refusing to eat some rotten spinach at supper. Needlessto say I still hate spinach. I wonder what ever happened to George Bush to make him hate broccoli? Another way this man's corporal punishment was made manifest was to make the entire dormitory of young boys sit for hours on end, sometimes for days at a time, on hard benches in the basement, usually to pay for the "transgression" of someonewho decided to express his individuality. On school days any missedtime was "made up" during the evening hours and on consecutive week- ends. The children had to sit perfectly still. This punishment would begin right afterschool and lasted, normally, until midnight. Children would actually topple over onto theirfaces on the hard cement floor suffering from exhaustion. I suppose when you get right down to it, none of us really knew why we were being punished. We simply accepted it. After all, what choice had we? This was all a common form of BIA "education" during those years on the res. And if that wasn't bad enough, the Catholic priest preyed upon the boys and girls, sexually molesting them. The entire system was operated on a military style time schedule whereour daily lives were basically run by a long series of bells. Our dorm, which was for boys only, was awakened by a loud bell at 6:00 a.m. We dressed and ran down to the washrooms to wash our faces and brush our teeth, scrambled to get to mass assembly in the basement and then marched to breakfastsingle file, which was servedin anotherbuilding a block away. Once we arrived there we stood at attention at the dining tables until another bell was rung which allowed us to sit down, then we waited for another bell to servethe food, another bell to eat, another to clean the tables, another to take the dirty dishes to the student dish washers, another to leave the dining hall, another to go to class (and later to board the school bus when the classes were moved to the town of Browning some seven miles away) and so on, all day long until the final bell of the day was rung announcing that it was bedtime, at 6:00 p.m.! We endured this for seven days a week, all school year long. I went through that for at least five years. These early experiences would act to shape my psycheand later inform my art. 320 Lawrence Abbott In my adolescent years I was able to once again join my family and we became part of the migrant work force from the Reservation who went southto Idaho Falls each summerand autumn looking for work, to fry to earn a meagre wage and make a living as labourers hoeing Mormon farmers' potatoes and sugar beets. Working out in the hot blazing sun was pure hell. I used to suffer such intense migraines that I couldn't see. I suppose the ultimate injustice to us was thal the farmers would regularly cheat us out of our earnings. Typically, five or six of us would have to live in a small one room shack with no running water, a wood stove for heat, and an outhouse. The farmers who built themselves palatial homes on our labour would normally charge us outrageous rent on fop of all that. I found out the real meaning of economic slavery at an early age. That sort of thing still happens today, in Idaho and here in Southern Alberta. Racism was a constant factor in Idaho as well. I had many fights and acrimonious verbal exchanges with the White boys in the local school at Rigby whereI lasted for less than four months since the kids couldn't stand me and I certainly couldn't stomach them. My beatings in boarding school must have given me quite an attitude. My mother just knew that I had to go somewhere else. Unfortunately, even today, my son is experiencing the same kind of racial thing at the local junior high school here in Lethbridge. Things never seem to change from generation to generation. White people continue to perpetuate the same old negative stereotypes and bring forth their staid racist viewsto the next generation who are largely defenceless against understanding the forces shaping their own youngpsychesuntil it is too late. In that respect I look upon Western society as behaving very much like the beggars ofMerryOld England who used to cripple their otherwise healthy children so they would be better suited to live the kind of life they were expected to live. By breaking the limbs of their offspring, making them helpless, beggars were preparing them for a life of beggary, which they believed was the only right and proper thing to do. Not too long ago I was quite seriously asked by the local junior high school principal whetherI wanted the school system to treat my son like a White boy or an Indian? In 1996! I was astounded! This same principal even told me that it was okay for White kids to address my son using racial slurs."Theyall do it!" was his response. "Why should Indians be any different?" And once, not too long ago, I was told by a very earnest Dean of Education at the University of Victoda in British Columbia that Australian Aborigines were our closest living Interview with Alfred Young Man 321

relatives to the apes! With regards to the local situation, it didn't seem to matter to my son's school teachers or principal that I very nearly had my Ph.D., and that perhaps my family deserves just a little more respect? The tragedy is that the school board hires these kinds of people. But where is the school board chosen from? The community, of course. So you see, the problem runs deep, extremely deep. We may never, as Indian educators, ever break into that closed and vicious circle. My whole family was subject to constant racism in Idaho which probably accounts for why the Aryan Nation has decided to set up digs there. One of my younger sisters, at a kindhearted young age, had a fully grown White man spit on her and call her a filthy Indian. She pretty much despises White people to this day. I guess that I can't really blame her. Indian Elders tell us to forgive the White man for such infractions, that we should not question theirracist attitudes too easily orforcefully in public. I wonder how many Elders have ever had a White man spit on them as defenceless children and then call down their race? That kind of thing leaves a long lasting, indelible impression on a person and is about as traumatic an experience as anyone could possible undergo, let alone have to experience as a child. One can't help but wonder that if the Elders had experienced this, would they be so eagerto forgive? The common Indian arche- type I'm thinking of here is that of the kindly and wise old Chief, the Chief Dan George kind of personage, the ideal we all seem to love. Not to denigrate Dan George's memory in any way but, how would he have felt if he or a member of his family had been violated in this way? Would he have ever let the public know or would he have suffered in silence? Well, I routinely let the public and my students know the depth of my discontent and for this honesty I'm looked upon by many Whites and Indians alike as being negative, controversial, even radical. But what choice have I, really? To hide the truth is just as big a lie as to deny it. To do anything less than be truthful and honest is to give society a false reading of what some Indians, at least, are capable offeeling, and the profundity ofthosefeelings. One may just as well be a wooden Indian standing by the door. Sorry, but being stoic is not one of my finer points. In this regard I'm probably closer to AIM activist John Trudell than I am to Dan George. As Native educators, our students routinely compare us to one or the other anyway, or something like that, if only unconsciously, since they are aboutthe only popularIndian personalities whichpersonifythosetwo extremes of human behaviour. As a "role moder" I am often expected 322 Lawrence Abbott to live up to the ideal of the superhuman Elder, the supreme Indian stereotype of untarnished Indian wisdom and worldly goodness and all that stereotype implies. When I come off looking a little "John Trudell-ish" I invariably suffer the consequences. Expecting an In- dian educator to fit eitherimage is, of course, completely unrealistic. So, go tell it on the mountain. All of this informs my art. Nevertheless, I do try to forgive. I really do. But it's not always easy, and now you know why. By the time I was enrolled at IAIA in 1963 I was pretty much ready to enjoythe experience, as much as possible, even though I would get terribly homesick, still being adolescent and all that. I was among Indians again, and I felt whole again. It didn't matterthat we repre- sented around 87 different nationalities, aboriginally speaking. We made fast friends. I'd already been away from home in BIA boarding schools for, what was then, most of my life and knew that society seemed to pretty much have it in for me anyway so where could I possibly go wrong? I had time off to go home to Montana each summer and more or less re-establish contact with my family. Inter- estingly enough, during all that time, no one could ever definitively describe Native art. The definition was something that everyone was searching for, and todayI find that we're still looking for a definition, as I said, but under a different aegis, of course.

LA: Who were some of your influences at the Institute?

AYM: I was initially influenced by painters such as Kevin Redstar, Tommy Cannon, Earl Eder, and David Montana who were also more or less contemporaries of mine. But they were also my heroes since they were olderand more mature intheirideas. Theirapproach to painting and creative thought had a kind offreshness,honesty, boldness, and vitality with which I could easily identify, even though our styles, our subject matter, can be seen as being worlds apart. These are the true leaders, geniuses, and inventors of that period in my opinion. They set the stage for everything thereafter. They seemed to stand out above all the otherstudents even then, including the faculty, with the exceptions of perhaps Allan Houser, Charles and Otellie Loloma. Fritz Scholder, who is erroneously credited by some Native Art historians with inventing that style of painting forwhich he has since become known wouldn't come along until much later, and by then we were allgoingstrong. Historians generally recognize Scholder as fundamentally influencing the students, but in reality it was the other Interview with Alfred Young Man 323 way around. He pretty much looked down upon our efforts to gener- ate and create the kind of art we knew best. Originally a German abstract expressionist painter Scholder would completely change his direction and exploit our ideas for his own purposes, all the while claiming that he wasn't doing Indian art, wasn't an Indian artist, hell, wasn't even an Indian, and would everyone, please, just leave him alone. In short, the American public was taken for a joy ride by this self-proclaimed White man and his agents. The obvious question everyone seems to overlook here is, how successful would Scholder be today if he had pressed on with his original ideas, which were his striped abstract expressionist paintings? What if we had not been there at IAIA? If he really had any influence at all on us, his students, wouldn't we all be abstractexpressionist painters by now, rather than the otherway around? It was at this time that I also began to play the guitar and Earl, Tommy, and Kevin formed a band which they asked me to join. Naturally I said yes, which made me the youngest member of the group. Earl graciously took me underhis wing and taught me a few more chords than I already knew and in a short while I was ready to be one of the boys, as rhythm guitarist. Cannon used to be the lead singer in our group and was already well on his way to showing a genius in music as well. He loved Bob Dylan and could do Dylan better than Dylan did Dylan, I thought. That was way back when Dylan could still sing, somewhat. I can remember "BJ" Goodluck, a Navajo girlfriend of Cannon's and a painter in her own right, being totally enamoured with Cannon's singing, and with him. But, whatever, I thinkthose four guys were the primary influences during that era. Later on in England (1968-72) I would go on to pick up the street lingo as well as a heavy Cockney accent and played many, many gigs at Bunji's Folk Club located in an old wine cellar in London's West End off Leicester Square. Dylan, Donovan, David Bowie, AI Stewart,well, virtually anybody who played folk music, all performed there at one time or other. I began to read Black activist writers like Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, George Jackson (whose book Soledad Brother really inspired me to begin writing), James Baldwin, and Frantz Fanon. I also had a deep and abiding interest in what British and American art critics such as John Russell, Suzi Gablik, Susan Sontag, and Lucy R. Lippard had to say about art. Lippard's oyster at that time was Pop Art, not Native art, so it seems rather strange to me that her relatively recent foray into the Native art scene, extolling the virtues of Jimmie Durham should somehow automat- 324 Lawrence Abbott ically conferauthority. Ofcourse, it could be that neither of them have anything at all to do with Native art. Perhaps they only have preten- sions.

LA: You mention your reading of some Black activist writers. Much of your work seems to have a political edge. AYM: I don't feel as though I'm a political artist at all but my explanations may make it seem like I am. That will primarily be your perception of reality, of course. Indians were, and are, victims of politics so we almosthave to anchor and respond to our victimization that way, but that doesn't necessarily mean we have to practice raw politics. I mean, ifwe did, then we'd be politicians wouldn't we? For anyone to say that my art is purely about politics is to miss the point. It's as if, for example, one were to ask the Jews to portraytheirexperience of the Holocaust and then turn around and accuse them of creating art with a political edge. This statement, by-the-way, should not be misconstrued to mean that I'm trying to diminish the horror of their history in any way. But, when Jewishartists paint of their experiences in that time and place, no one ever accuses them of playing politics. No one would dare. So, why should it be any different for Native artists? We are a people who have literally grown out of the earth on our ancient lands. We have lived in these homelands for thousands of years and have, essentially experienced genocide. After all, we did lose upwards of 12 million people these past 500 years (and that's a conservative figure) while other races have been multiplying faster than the proverbial rabbit. Some scholars estimate we've lost as much as 95% of our people, anywhere from 18 to 60 million people, depending on which expert is doing the calculations. In any case we were very nearly exterminated like some othernoble creatures of North America--I'm thinking here of the buffalo, elk, pronghorn, grizzly bear, wolf, mountain lion, eagle, and so on. Remember, we were the invaded. Naturally the Indian artist's reac- tion is to address that irruption as a part of our history and art, and your definition of the political issues just happens to fall within that paradigm. The popular image of the Hollywood Indian invented in Los Angeles is also part ofthat invasion. You have to understand that much of the imagery that l use in my paintings was neverpresent in our world before so I obviously feel free to use that element of our common experience. Unfortunately, when Native artists point that Interview with Alfred Young Man 325

situation out to those people who live by the words, deeds, and actions of the invaders, predictably, and typically, our art is explained away as being political art. These critics normally miss out on the experiences of how Indian artists got to that point in the first place; therefore, we are not taken seriously as being artists who do "real" art. They simply assume that we all have a common experience of life, and we don't. I suppose that's the only way that such people can try to understand what Native artists are doing since, by their very natures, invaders tend to have very limited and pointed frames-of- reference anyway. Well, I don't do my art for the invaders in any case. I do it for Native art history. That is the important thing to me. However, if non-Indians can accept Indian history the way Indians themselves would rather see it portrayed and written then that's just great. As for my chosen "style" of art, or communication... I've always been visually oriented and painting came naturally to me. See? Some people use musicwith whichto communicate their ideas to the world, some use literature, some use film, some use mime, some use sculpture, others wrap their bodies in dynamite or nitroglycerin and blow themselves up taking the lives of the innocent as well, and call that paradise, and so on. I've always regarded painting, ever sinceI learned to talk about art, as something that could be used as a language with which to communicate, both contemporaneously and over the centuries, albeit a slower visual language when used on a dayto day basis.All of the technical expertise and worldly knowledge that I can bring to bear on the expression of that language is my way of communicating, whatever it is. Outwardly, at least, that is the simple explanation. Some may think that I have no "style" as such. One can very easily recognize a Picasso or a Warhol, for instance, or in the Indian art world, a Red Star, Cannon, or Biss. But one can not very easily recognize my work by style alone unless one is familiar with it. Conceivably, any single work could have lead to a series of similar works leading to "periods" in my life as an artist but I didn't let that happen. Anyway, I have gained communication, which is my "style," with the world at large mainly through visual language for most of my life, although today my written forms are increasingly becoming more popular. The way that I see it, the people of the world will neverget to hear my voicein the same way as they hear the voice of someone like Bill Clinton every day, so that option is dead as a means of communication. Even as they read this text they can only know my 326 Lawrence Abbott

thoughts. Only an infinitesimally small number of people on the planet will ever hear what my voice sounds like forreal. For all intents and purposes we are as mute as my Blackfeet grandfather ever was. I'll talk about him later on. In reality, we are all practically silent although it might not seem like that with all the noise we hear every day. But is that really communication? It seems that my vocation, ever since I entered art school, has been to study and explore the different ways of getting that visual language and its messageacross to the largest number of people possible. I believe that I have had limited success. So, if the content of my work seems to contain information some people can only explain as political rhetoric then that's just the way it has to be. Virtually everypiece of art ever done, by whomever, is probably rhetorical in the political sense to some degree or other, to some person or other. The idea that art or artists can be truly apolitical in their own time is probably a fallacy. Artists cannot be 100% apolitical even though they would like to be, and would like everyone to believe they are. Anyone can be roped into the political arena, like it or not. It can be argued that Pop art was more about the capitalist politics of selling Coca Cola consumerism and Hollywood sex to the Communist masses across the Pacific than about art, for instance, or that the Renais- sance was more abouthawking religion and homosexuality to the underclass back in the Dark Ages than about creating art. The raison d'être forcalling this stuffart would come along much later. One could just as easily arguethat Van Gogh cut off his ear becausehe couldn't have his homosexual way, not becausehe thought that itwould make him a greatartist, or that Toulouse-Lautrec painted whores because he was a hornylittle cripple, or to be politically correct, we would have to say because he was sexually challenged. See what I mean? It's all, I suppose,in the eyes of the beholder. I don't expect unanimous consent on that score either, and I know I'll be censured for daring to voice a nineteenth century description of a physically challenged artist. So, the way we write about art is the way people will perceive the artist. Well, whateveryou may think, it wasn't me who was trying to be political here, in belated response to your last question. But I am guilty, I suppose, of responding to and documenting the politics of our time. I'll reluctantly grant you that. Perhaps I was being somewhat political, even though I'd prefer not to be categorized as such. I'd much rather be categorized as an Indian Art Realist, if cateriodes are the name of the game. I hope that I'm making sense to you. Interview with Alfred Young Man 327

So, my painting The Vacation (1977) was done because tourists come to Montana in droveseverysummer by the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions, from back east, from all over the world really, and one of the things they come to see is the savage Indian. That's one oftheir favourite stereotypes. They generally make themselves a nuisance at Reservation pow-wowswith their cameras and camcorders because they want to take home, to wherever they're from, pictures of the "real Indian," a real savage or primitive. "Can't go home without a picture of one of those!" Both are negative images whichembodythe tourist's own myopic visions of themselves more so than of how Native peoples understand themselves in relation to the tourist mentality. I wanted to address this issuein The Vacation so I depicted an early Reservation Indian saluting the original thirteen stars and stripes juxtaposed with a picture of a car and a postcard of ChiefMountain, which is a sacred place still in use for vision quests.ChiefMountain is actuallysituated in the northwest- ern comer of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation bordering Glacier National Park. I painted a bumper sticker on the canvas also, which reads, "You Are Now in Indian Country" because my years of study in London taught me, if anything, that North America is, indeed, Indian country. I wanted everyone who saw that painting to know that. The painting is really a travelling Indian billboard since it was origi- nally painted for a travelling Indian art exhibition, Confluences of Tradition and Change which was curated by George Longfish out of Davis,California in 1981. I'd Love My Mother Even ifShe Was Black, Brown or White (ca 1968) was painted when I was still in high school at IAIA. (Backthen it was still a high school/post-graduate institution.) The painting was cre- ated out of that very tumultuous time when Martin Luther King and the Kennedy's were all assassinated and racism was the law of the land, even running rampant. Today it's difficult to understand how people could be so callous and cruel to Blacks and Indians alike. That era had a tremendous impact on me because the U.S. govern- ment always had this hype spewing forth from its propaganda machine, churning out disinformation over the television and other mass media about how everyone was supposedly equal and living in a free country. But by the same token Black people in the deep south and many other places couldn't even drinkat the same water fountain as a White, or ride at the front of the bus, and it was not yet against the law for a White to kill an Indian, at least not in Montana and South Dakota. If I had the space and time I could also tell more 328 Lawrence Abbott personal stories about how difficult life was in an Indian boarding school and how much like a prison it actually was. As students at IAIA we were primarily segregated on the campus, we couldn't even go down town withoutan escort. We were kept behind wire fences, although I'm sure they'll tell you, for good reasons. The local towns- people in Santa Fe, i.e. the city fathers, merchants, and art gallery operators, certainly didn't want to have anything to do with us and they didn't particularly appreciate Indian art either, at least not the style we did. That unique style has sincebecome very trendyamong the "artistic elite" in the Southwest. One can barely look at an art magazine published in the southwest today without seeing that influence. The only people anywhere who wanted anything at all to do with Indians at that time were the ones studying us, the anthro- pologists who, in Santa Fe at least, were mainly interested in the local Pueblo populations. We weren'tawareat that momentin time that a "tribe" consisted of the tribal council, the rest of the Indians on the "res" and an anthropologist, as Vine Deloria, Jr. would laterwrite in his tongue-in-cheek analysis of that profession in Custer Died for Your Sins (1969). However, I wouldn't read that book until 1971 in London. Unknownto us, anthropologists via their academic disciplines, were busy providing to the rest of the worldtheir very biased opinions and theories about who they thought Indian people were, impressions such as Indians can't think abstractly, Indians drink alcohol to find their identities, Indians have great manual dexterity, Indians are hunters-gatherers, Indians are lower on the evolutionary scale than Whites, Mohawks turn into some kind of super-Indian when they work on New York City's skyscrapers, Plains Indians worship the sun, Indians are lawless, Indians have no history, Indians do the rain danceto make it rain, Indians are a Stone Age people, Indians have incredible eyesight and don't wear glasses, Indians are cannibals, and so on. Those are just a few of the many strange racist and scientific ideas we had to contend with. I can remember actually being expected to believe that American Indians were atleast10,0O0 years behind the White kids going to school in the local college across town! I know that sounds horrendously idiotic today but back then itwas considered scientific fact, taught as credo, and ltwassaid, government policy was largely influenced by what anthropologists wrote. One anthropologist went so far as to condemnIAIA for mixing the various "pure" Indian cultures with each other. How could anthro- pology be expected to account for a Navajo doing Eskimo art, or a Interview with Alfred Young Man 329

Blackfeet doing Zuni art, or a Lakota doing Apache art, and so forth? Students were neverreally given a chance to respond to this kind of scientific determinism and racism, to tell the world what we thought.., and so on it went. All of this intentional government and scientific subterfuge generally effected my intuitive perception of reality and what it all meant. And it all had to emerge somewhere. I believe that my paintings during that period generally bear this out. I finally reached draft age and the U.S. Government Army began to draft my buddies first, but my number was fast coming up. Of those classmates who unselfishly volunteered to go to Vietnam before they were drafted, and who managed to make it home in one piece, most would stress, time and time again, that this war was bogus. Some came home in body bags. Some came home with considerably less than what they left with,mentally and physically. "It was like shooting at Indians over there," they'd tell me, or, "It's like shooting at our- selves when you shoot at the Vietnamese." They would emphasize to me that Indian people were only being used as fodder by the U.S. government, i.e. by Johnson, Nixon, and even by Kennedy when he was alive. Mostly they lamented that Indians had anything at all to do with that war. In spite of my classmate's early patriotism I felt that Vietnam was basically an undeclared war. It was, therefore, even unconstitutional, as if the US. Constitution had anything at all to do with Indians. For some strange reason this undeclared war issue had been avoided like the plague by both Black and White protestors. And oddly enough, the idea that Congress has to declare war first before it can even go to war has continued to go unnoticed today. At leastI have neverheard of that ever being discussed or commented upon. Could it be that people still don't understand how the U.S. Constitu- tion works with regards to declaring war arid then going to war?. All that anyone would own up to is that we shouldn't really be in Vietnam but that someone had to be fighting for"our"freedom. Thereseemed to be complete confusion. Although my classmates were more than willing to go and fight for what they believe was their country they also urged me not to go if I could find some other option even though I would have gone if I were called. But, I wasn't. I already had two older brothers in the Air Force and Uncle Sam doesn't like to kill off all the males of a family. They kept me on standbythe whole time I was in England anyway. I had to report by mail every six months or so. 330 Lawrence Abbott Since the idea of freedom was, and is, a relative concept I didn't always understand whose freedom Johnson and Nixon were talking about when they unconscientiously used this politically loaded rheto- ric in their obviously calculated newspeak, which in the Big Brother jargon on 1984 was meant to extol the virtues of America's freedom, the free world, the free press, freedom of religion, free speech and all that. These same ploys were frequently used as emotional hooks by Canadian politicians as well, I understand, on which to hang anti-communist sentiments and help garnersupportfor the war effort from the so-called "hawks" or war-mongers. Surely none of these guys could've been talking about my freedom, about Indian people's freedom in Canada? So, what have we been learning lately about that era? Well, we have recently heardformerSecretary of DefenseRobertMcNamara telling us that the U.S. was wrong to have been in Vietnam. Ha! He was one of the reasons we were there! Go figure. Nevertheless, even though McNamara does express misgivings about being there he doesn't really tell us why or how the U.S. got therein the first place. It now seemsthat the war wasn't really about "our" freedom afterall. Well if not, then what was it all about? I'm afraid you'll have to read a book by Australian journalist John Pilger of London to find that out. Pilger wrote a penetrating analysis called Heroes (1986) which pretty well lays the blame for that entire debacle at the feet of the CIA. Well, up to that point my life as an Indian had been largely defined and determined by someone other than myself, someone like an angry Mormon, a crafty Indian agent, a far off political bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., or an academic anthropologist, all of whom had to earn their credentials and living at my expense in one way or another. My art during that time simply reflected my relationship with that lurid situation. I don't see any politics there. I'd Love My Mother was done in response to racism, but even today I still fail to see how it is a political message one way or another since racism isn't so much about politics as it is about stupidity. At its most basic level the painting is a simple document, a statement of the times, sort of like Picasso's Guernica (1936) which was essentially a documented statement ofthose very tough times in Spain, although I am not trying to comparethe two in any way. No one has ever berated Picasso as being political. He was doing art. Well, I loved to paint and I was merely exploring new ways of painting and thinking. At the same time I didn't feel that I wanted to paintfaceson any of my figures because I felt that Indians were being treated as sacrificial war offerings to Interview with Alfred Young Man 331 Vietnam by the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon war machine. Even today we can see by the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.-- "The Black Wall on the Mall" which I've had the good fortune to visit on perhaps three different occasions--that no Native American soldiers are symbolized in its construction which has to be a major political faux pas. Nor are there Indians in any of the Vietnam war movies which have been produced in Hollywood during, or since, the war. Nevertheless, a majority of Indian males of draft age at the height of that war fought valiantly alongside the males and females of other American races.I mean, talk about being politically incorrect! (I was reminded that neither are women represented in the Vietnam War Memorial, although we see more of them in the movies. How- ever, that is another issue altogether.) Native Americans are once again being edited out of American history and I find that situation not only tragic but fairly typical of the way the U.S. treats Native Americans. Now, I don't know what you may think about that sorry state of affairs but I don't think that speaks well at all for the U.S. on the international scene, and the people of the world are not only watching, but reading.

LA: Do you develop that idea in works like 3 Creeks, a Negro, and a Ute (1968), Family of Mine (1967), Portrait of My Family (1967), and Six White Men and One Indian (1969) where the figures have no faces.

AYM: Up to that point in time I simply felt that Indian people neverreally enjoyed a recognizably positive public face, that's all. And it appears that we still don't. I just didn't have the urge to paint faces on any of my figures. Ifthere are any kind of faces painted at all they are very, very, subtly painted in. One of my students here at the University of Lethbridge recently commented that he didn't think that I knew how to paint faces when I gave a class presentation on my early work. Well, maybe. (Laughter) Actually, I had drawnfaces before that time but, again, I simply had no desireto do so. That attitude carried over until I got to London in 1968 whereI found, as a humanbeing, that I was finally being treated with a bit more respect and compassion by the British public. I didn't know that common people could treat strangers with such generosity and kind-heartedness, outside of my family, of course. It was then that I finally did begin to paint faceson my figures. Up to that time I wouldsimply paintin numbers of different coloured faces, or coloured letters, or just omit the faces altogether. I found out much later, when I came to Canada to teach in 1977, that another Indian artist, Alex Janvier, a Chipewyan artist from Cold Lake 332 Lawrence Abbott in central northeast Alberta, similarly signed his paintings with his Treaty number only, rather than his name. He was carrying on a rear-guard protest against the way the Canadian government was treating Indians here as well, which is to say that they were being dealt with in the same sordid, dispassionate, dishonest, coldhearted, detached kind of way as Indians were being handled in the States. We didn't know of each other, of course.

LA: The sense of irony and opposition in your art also comes out in your writing. Do you see Native art in opposition to mainstream Western art?

AYM: Following the Native perspective, I believe there is something valid called Native art. Although Native art might not be the best way to describe oursubject, it is, nevertheless, the only way we can describe it just now. I don'tso much see Native art as being in opposition to anything, but rather, that it just is. It's a given. I know that I once said, years ago, that it was "in opposition to," and to some degree I still believe that, but it's so much more than that and I've grown in knowledge and wisdom since then, I hope. What I would really like to do here is moderate my position somewhat, not change it in any fundamental way, but to qualify what I meant when I made that statement. Publishing space was so limited back then and we were often asked deceptively easy questions which really required vol- umes to answer. Likewise,I am often asked what the Native perspec- tive is. The question seems simple enough but the answer is really very complex. To briefly go off on a tangent, the Native perspective is something which is usually assumed by Indians, not defined. I normally respond to that question with another series of questions since the overall equation is literally and figuratively bound up with other Eurocentric notions of Western art as well as with our own personal opinions. I'll ask, what is the Western perspective? Aca- demics constantly refer to something called Western art, Western man, Western history, Western society, Western religion and so forth, but they neverreally bother to spell it out, define what it is. They simplysee no reason to. The question is merely subsumed, consid- ered by them to be academic. But, if you could legitimately ask what is Western society? What is Western man? What is Western art? What would the answer be? The controversial New York City artist Jimmie Durham and Jean Fisher, co-authors of the Art Forum International article "This Ground Has Been Covered" (1988), have some interesting responses to that Interview with Alfred Young Man 333 question. I hope that they don't mind me reiterating one of their rejoinders here and adding my own comments, but, Durham went so far as to say that there is no Western culture. And, y'know, I thinkthat he's probably right. He writes that there is only a power structure in place which pretends, or which has pretensions to being, Western culture, I assume on an ad hoc kind of basis. I would go even further and postulate that in the U.S. this power structure has all but evolved, or perhaps lapsed is a better word, into some kind of dynasty, or autocracy. It certainly has in Canada, probably always has been such. The government here has a so-called upper-class of political servants they call the Senate whose power is largely derived from a political hang-over of the British aristocracy. They are completely useless insofar as their accountability to the Canadian electorate is concerned but they continue to be treated by that same adoring public in a fashion designed to flatter only the wealthy elite. This useless class of partisan appointees get set up for the rest of their lives in cushy jobs that require no effort on their part whatsoever. They simply live off the fat of the land. The political ancestors of this group can be found in England in an old decrepit class of politicians called the House of Lords, made up of octogenarians mostly, who have so little to do with theirtime that they can usually be found idly dozing in chambers, bored out of their minds. But hey, they're maintained in fine style! This is the civilization that is the envy of the world? In the U.S. some fear that this powerstructure,which calls itself "the West," has, in fact, grown old and decadent. The Kennedy's, the Democrats, and the Republican parties are perfect examples of what I mean. The Kennedy's, in particular, bolstered by the Old World idea of Camelot, are often referred to by the status quo as being America's royal family, or as near as America will ever get to having a royal family. I find that kind of thinking personally nauseating because it's so despotic, autocratic, and undemocratic. I mean, who actually needs royalty? Well, someone appears to, and I think that it's the immigrants and the sons and daughters ofthose immigrants and their progeny who can't seem to do without some kind of royalty lording it over theirheads, even though theirancestors supposedly kicked all signs of royalty out of what was then the United States back in 1776, and it was supposed to stay that way. By contrast Canada has kept theirroyalty, of which they are actually proud. It's almost as if the European DNA found in succeeding generations of Euro-Americans craves the idea of royalty as a kind of biological imperative so that 334 Lawrence Abbott

they might have something on hand with which to fend off the neuroticism they self-generate through the continual references to their own invented mythological soliloquy of the great American/Ca- nadian "wilderness," "frontier," and all that John Wayne/Davy Crock- ett/RCMP kind ofjazz. Even StarTrekkers (Trekkies?) aren't immune to this inane concept, citing space as their final frontier. Trying to convince Euro-Americans to become independent of that feudalistic idea is comparable to trying to persuade a schizophrenic that he or she will not fly off the face of the earth if they let go of the ground. Other eccentric Euro-American feudalistic concepts include calling Elvis the "king," king-sized mattresses, Burger King, King Kong, queen-size mattresses, Dairy Queen, Queen for a Day, Queen of Country Music, drag queens,and on and on. Wherewould capitalism be if it weren't for feudalism? There seems to be a general amnesia in academia with regards to the fact that Western civilization is actually made up of the constituent elements of other cultures found all over the planet. Native Ameri- cans, for example, gave the West 80% of their staple food crops, 95% of the known inventory of pharmaceutical products, taught Europeans guerilla warfare without which everyone from Arafat to Castro to the Montana Militia to the FBI, the CIA, the KGB, the AFT, and the Green Berets could not exist. Native Americans gave the West sign language for the hearing and vocally impaired; it is sometimes argued that the Blackfeet of Montana gave the word, or a version of the word "okay," to the West without which NASA astronauts would be helpless to radio back to Earth that things were "A-okay" up there; the Chinese chipped in paper, gunpowder and, not only the word tea, but the tea itself without which British "high tea" could not be served; according to Chamber's Etymological English Dictionary the concept of zero was thought up by some enterprising Arabs and Frenchmen without which mathematicians would be out of a job; African artists along with Naive American artists, had a direct influence on Modern artists like Picasso without which Walt Disneycould not exist; the English language is composed of around forty separate ancient and modem languages itself with each distinct language contributing something of value to our way of thinking, and I could go on and on. So, what is this "Western" society Caucasian Christians seem so hell bent on claiming as their own? On a more individualisticlevel,and yet another type of hype, or power trip, is the tendency for Euro-American males to psychologically and even ideologicallycompare themselves to the fabled knight in shining Interview with AlfredYoung Man 335 armour. This royalty idea again. What in the world is this current fascination with Disney's Pocahontas all about? How could any young Indian male ever hope to live up to the incredibly feudalistic role model of being a "Captain John Smith," who here is cast as the white knight? Why should they even have to try? Yet, many White women actually expect theirideal man to embodythat very essence. The very concept drives Hollywood, and always has. Each genera- tion must have its own knight. The thirties had Tom Mix, the fifties Carey Grant, the sixties Paul Newmann, the eighties Harrison Ford, and as the years go by the knights get younger and younger. In the nineties it all seems to hinge on a band that can't sing and call themselves The Barenaked Ladies. This grouphas a lead singer who has a voice that would make Mr. Ed proud. Now there's a concept for you, a white knight who can'tsing. Well, anyway, it looks as though the purveyors of this myth now want Indian females to join in the frenzy. My response to women about the White male-dominated world of cigarette advertising is, "Well! Just how far have you come, baby?" Cigarette advertising, for the better part of a century, has been nothing but an invented power trip controlled by whom? You guessed it... none otherthan that the illusory white knight in shining armour. Most Whitewomenwho dreamof getting a white knight end up with a Don Rickles. (chuckle) Well, whatever. I don't want to get too far off the beaten path here. So anyway, can anyone actually define Western society? Of course not. Unlike Native societies, it has no centretherefore it can have no definition, whereas Native cultures can be strongly defined and influenced by the centring of the individual in spirituality, which itself is in constant flux and renewal from the centre outward. Western society can have no such definition since it is made up of a lengthy series of interlocking historical facts and facets, philosophies and counter-philosophies which go on and on, which by definition can have no definition other than that of being vaguely and broadly termed "Western civilization." It's tenets are simply taken in by whomever wishes to embrace them. Each individual becomes an isolated constituent in its totality, unable to define or even defend the whole, by definition. Even trying to talk about it here, in this limited fashion, is problematical. I see the Native perspective, Native history, therefore Native art as being holistic and integrated with the individual from the inside out, 336 Lawrence Abbott

but at the same time still having some of the same constituent elements, such as freedom of expression, found in Western society, which is useful to know if one wishes to argue the universal nature of Native art. In that sense it is no more or less universal in the expression of its dogma than is Western art. One cannot ultimately describe Native art since it has its origin in a very long and ancient history which is itself headed into an indefinite and infinite future. There's no way to describe an organic society that is still very much alive, that is still vibrant and growing, that is still viable, that is still coming into being, that is constantly referring to, and contributing on, the world stage. We can, however, make one heck of a go of it. Such rhetoric and dogmathen becomes our common written history today. Art scholars and academics should really be describing Native art's many different facets instead of denying its efficacy. For Native specialists, that's our proper calling, our vocation. And I believe that we are getting a very good handle on that. At least that's the way the sky looks now. Well, be that as it may... most professionals that I know of, Native professionals and others, still generally disagree over how best to describe Native art. And why shouldn't they? The central issue here is that we should all be accepting Native art, the Native perspective as a given, assuming its universality and identity, and go forward from there, acknowledging all of its many forms. Generally, I don't bother too much with trying to definitively describe Native art, the Native paradigm, the Native perspective, or worrytoo much about whether or not it is in opposition to this orthat. To me Native art is a sovereign idea, and so much the better. Some of it is bound to be axiomatic. It is one of those rights Native people in North America are supposed to be enjoying, y'know, those "inalienable" rights Americans are always going to war over, either here at home, or in some for flung comerof the world, but which they can never seem to let Indians live at home? The bottom line, however, is that sovereign ideas need no definition and we can argue about anything we want to under that auspices. I find real freedomin that idea.

LA: Given that, can you describe any of the elements of the Native perspective ?

AYM: Now, that's the $64,000 question. If I could answer that question conclusively you would be able to pencil in my name in right next to that of God in the Book of Genesis. But, if you must persevere. Your question comes straight out of the ethnocentrism of Western society, Interview with Alfred Young Man 337 of course, and I expected you to be that way. I'd be surprised if you behaved any otherway. However, I won't try to answer your question in any great detail since the effort could, conceivably, produce a long list of "elements." The Indian aesthetic, the Native perspective, is there and always will be At the same time, I have to say that I'm tempted to try to get around your question by just giving the short anthropological definition and leave it at that, i.e. that the aesthetic consists of elements which draw us close to the earth, that the way Indians use natural fibres, tendons, quills, furry parts and hidesis a kind of meditative formalism as Ralph T. Coe writes in Sacred Circles. But Indian aestheticism today is so much more than that, and not nearly so prosaic. One of Canada's foremost architects, Douglas Cardinal, is a mixed- blood French Canadian-Cree, or Métis. He has designed some of the world's most original and architecturally astonishing buildings. One of his best known works is the Canadian Museumof Civilization located in Hull, Quebec, across the Ottawa River from the Houses of Parliament in Ottawa. He says that his sense of design comes directly out of his acceptance of the way that Native people under- stand the idea of the aesthetic. He routinely lectures that the basis for his concepts can be found in an Indian sensitivity for the land and environment, but I don't thinkhis very personalistic definition neces- sarily needsto be explained or qualified as something that must be quantified and articulated precisely, say in the same sense that one might isolate and measure some of the many ingredients which comprise the so-called Western doctrines of metaphysics by ex- pounding on a set of pre-detennined, rigidly defined academicrules and formulas that are set within a formalistic paradigm. This doesn't mean that there aren't Indian academics out there who have done exactly that, or are planning to do just that, in the near future. The world is constantly in flux. Just the same,the Native aesthetic can also be defined as consisting of the ways in which Native artists use theirintuition and visions to create their work, or it may consist of the feelings and respect we harbour for the land and our environment which is the place where we find the birds, animals, water, fire, stars, sun, Northern Lights, fish, snow, the human spirit, the cannibal and bear spirits, and so forth. Obviously, this is not your aesthetic in the normally prescribed usage of the term. The aesthetic may also be judged according to a host of common, even academically mundane things like colour, shape, form,design, value and so on. Perhaps most significantly, the 338 Lawrence Abbott aesthetic is also composed of elements that defy easy assimilation by non-Native people in an academic setting. Much of this comes from the spiritual world as practiced by traditionalists. It always has. Nevertheless, to listen to Cardinal explain the genesis of his art is to come to the realization that the Native aesthetic is alive and well and at least as meaningful and relevant, as important to the world as are those aesthetics defined by academia using Western prescriptions and terminology, as articulated in theirculture with regards to how they use theirhistory to promote theirart, philosophy, music, religion, and so on. On a day to day basis, insofar as teaching the elements of Native art are concerned, I'm not overly concerned with discover- ing those pedagogical principles which may or may not lie behind the Native perspective or the aesthetic, although all that is important, and they do exist. My main goal for the moment is to liberate myself and my students from the isolationist parochial sentiments and attitudes of an outdated Victorian-come-Cold War ideology. This may also be considered a part of my overall pedagogical strategy. Because of that the aesthetic may also verge on the moralistic through my personal philosophy which is what traditional Native art and philosophy nomi- nallyteaches. I can only follow suit, of course. Now, I know all of that may sound confusing and rather vague, and it is not by way of trying to skirt around the question either, as politicians often do. I stress the Native perspective in all of my classes, and my students and I normally spend hours, days, weeks, monthsand even yearsdiscuss- ing its more subtle and overt meanings, ramifications, and implica- tions for the fields of politics, sociology, art, religion, history and anywhere else the question may impose itself. Unfortunately, it's far too complex a subject to give a simple linear answer to in this interview and do the question some justice, although you've only asked me to list "some"elements. One could probablywritevolumes on the subject. Come to the University of Lethbridge and take one, or better yet, take all of my courses and you'll seewhat I mean.That's why we Offer beginning, intermediate, and advance courses on the subject.

LA: In addition to painting, you also do photography.

AYM: I've used photography for a number of years to complement my spoken and written words and, yes, even my art. When I was in London, England going to the Slade School ofFine ArtI incorporated photography in my work in a different way than I had previously. As usual, I was exploring different ways of how I could best represent Interview with Alfred Young Man 339 the idea of Indian art. and photography became a necessary ingre- dient in my work. I will discuss that later. Well, eventually I found that I no longerneeded photography as a device because it wasn't giving me as much as I wanted, that it was limiting. I still feel that the human brain, the human body, is so much more complex than any camera, or anything that can mechanically produce an image, and this includes my computer. While I was in London though, I once at- tempted to reproduce the complexquality of life, as I experienced it, in my work using the technology of the day, and this included my understanding of photography, both my own and that of the mass media. Over the years I had taken photography courses at IAIA and the Slade, studied film history, and in the 1970s after I came home from England I worked in television production at Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell, Montana in an attempt to under- stand what this medium was all about. I was obsessed with photo- graphic image in all of its many forms. But back to London: I once drew a whole series of "photographically correct" drawing which I took to a downtown art gallery to see if I could get an exhibition. Upon examining the drawings one gallery owner said that he didn't exhibit photographs. As far as I was concerned that response simply validated my statements. I wasn't disappointed in the least. They weren't photographs, of course, but intricate drawings completed over a lengthy period of time using a number of different soft and hard-lead HB pencils which enabled me to go into great detail with my subject. I was able to maintain the realism in a "virtual photography" kind of way because, that is, after all, what black and white photography is all about at its functional chemical and microscopic level. Later, at another gallery where I finally did get an opportunity to exhibit the entire series, a Hollywood movie director came along and bought the whole show. I wasn't interested in emulating the Pop Art photo-realism statements of painters like Philip Pearlstein or Chuck Close, however. I was after something else. London, at that time, was an interesting place to study because they considered themselves to be at the centre of the universe, what with Beatlemania and all that. The mascot for the Slade School, University College, London at that time was (and still is) the Post Office Tower which is an imposing cylindrical piece of architecture sheathed in glass which boldly rises about fifty stories out of the ancient streets of London. I like to think that this Tower may lie behind the idea for Arthur C. Clark's intelligent black monolith which frightened the apes at the beginning of his 340 Lawrence Abbott

movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The top third of this building consists of microwave dishes and other electronic equipment pointed in all directions which receive information from all over the planet relayed by satellites. The raw binary information is fed into Fleet Street newsroom computers and comesout at street level as pre-processed print ortelevision images, so we would get instant visual imagery and printed information from China, or Vietnam, or South Africa, Korea, the U.S. or wherever, edited for blind consumerism. Photographs arrived at our doorstep instantaneously and anonymously which were taken only a few moments before somewhere else in the world. Today, of course, all that is commonplace with CNN, the Internet, and all that, but back then it was state of the art technology. We felt thoroughly connected to the war in Vietnam, the war in Ireland, the famine in Biafra, what was happening in South America, Argentina, and so on. That "Tower of Babble" had a tremendous impact on the city of London in terms of how language and photography as audio- visual media was transferred, translated, and understood from one personto another, one nation to another. That idea began to appear in my work.I was being furnished pure electronic information by this huge impersonal, futuristic, stationary robot, on a minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day basis from which I lived less than half-a-mile. Talk about 1984 and George Orwell! The early communication satellites, at that time, were still being developed and launched into space and still pretty much a novelty. Sociologists of the time were very much concerned with what this new kind of technology was doing to the planet. Man had not yet walked on the moon. Orwellwas more popular than ever.

LA: You received your doctorate in anthropology from Rutgers in 1997. What led you tostudy anthropology?

AYM: Anthropology has been scrutinizing the North American Indian for more than a century. The foundation for much of their theory, and dare I say European anthropology, therefore Western art, has been the American Indian. I found that I had to get into that discipline as a response to that condition. I had no choice. I don't think that any Native person in North America has much of a choice really, that is if they wish to try to understand the workings of the Western mind. I mean, it can't hurt. It won't make you the most popular personin the world but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make since I believe that we have to respond to those ideas that impact on us We have to learn to account for our intuitive perceptions which are reflected in our art. Interview with Alfred Young Man 341 That's just the human thing to do. So I went to New Brunswick, New Jersey in the Fall semester of 1989 to begin work on a doctorate at Rutgers. My real desire was to learn to write more intelligently about Native art theory thereby increasing my personal understanding and professional performance of my own art. There were no Ph.D.'s in Native art, that I knew of, in 1989. In fact there were no Ph.D's in Native American Studies. Since I have gone to Rutgers a couple of Ph.D.'s in Native art have been given to non-Native scholars else- where I understand. Sadly, doctorates in Native art are few and far between, and even fewer Native artists, Native people, do these things. Although I have encountered many non-Indian academics and students who disagree with my position it is imperative for me to look at anthropology and the impact that it has had on Native art and artists over the past century. One of the highlights of my brief stay of nine months in New Jersey was being able to visit the Heye Foundation's Museum of the American Indian Warehouse in the Bronx. It must be at least a block square and three or four stories high. I was given to believe that it is bulging at the seams with more than a million pieces of Native art neverbeforeput on display at one time, for publicviewing oranalysis. I was fortunate enough to have been guided through some of that collection by Raymond Gonyea, who was working there at the time and who had an insider's knowledge of the place. He showed me Native art that very few living people have ever laid eyes on, as difficult as that is to believe, but it's true. In fact, he related how even the people who collected, curated, and conserved the art didn't even know what was there. Apparently, all of that Native art which is published in the popular literature in academia is just the tip of the iceberg. My gosh, whole Indian "libraries" have been stashed away on dusty warehouse shelves in the Bronx for more than a century without a thought given to what this has done to Native societies. Now, given this fact, why is it that there are still some people around who must insist on inventing new theories which are primarily aimed at trying to explain why Native people have such difficulties with adapting to the modem world? I mentioned some of those theories earlier. I thinkpart of the answer to this age old question is very clear and simple, and it is staring us straight in the face. If I were asked, with your help, to write a prescription for social disaster among Native peoples, something that would be sure to bring about a near total collapse of theirsocieties and non-recovery, it would go something like this: First, I would take away their art. In this way I have 342 Lawrence Abbott emasculated them fromtheirmythology, philosophy, history, religion, and language in one stroke since those ideas are fundamentally integrated or embodied in theirsocial systems via theirart. Art is the primary means by which they actually run what is theirequivalent of Western society's libraries, churches, courthouses, theatres, and schools. I would then write some laws, enforceable at the point of a gun of course, which would allow me to replace their accumulated wealth of oral and spiritual knowledge and traditions with my own special brand of social philosophy, economics, and religion which would all be based upon a social system that heavily relies upon avarice as its most basic social tenet or function. That law would have to be enforceable for at least seventy-years, or several generations. I would then insist on using unprovable scientific theories to describe the different versions of reality these ancient peoples harbour about themselves against all others, and furthermore, I would require everyone to use the vernacular established by these theorists when- ever the subject of the Native American came up, in whatever context. Finally, I would prescribe the muzzling of the Native voice in various ways so that theirexperiences ofreality would neverbecome known as fact. And I would do all of that in the name of freedom, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, free trade, and so forth. After that prescription had been carded out faithfully by my army of willing accomplices and yourself, what do you think you and I would have created? Well, I believe that about the only thing we could produce is a seriously dysfunctional society that is faced with an almost insoluble problem of adaptation and survival. How could anybody with a rational bone left in their body still expect anyone as completely disenfranchised as this to simply go out and take care of business as usual? Well, with its limited frame-of-reference, that is what Euro-American society has done to Native people. Nevertheless, it's a testament to the true genius of Native people that we were able to survive at all. It wasn't simplythe taking away of the land and resources that acted as the final coup de grâce in all of this. The warehousing and theft of our art had to play a major, if not basic, role here as well. And of course, it's just these kinds of statements that make me an academic outcast among university professors and scholars who uphold any kind of Western doctrine.

LA: You've taught in Canada forquite some time. What do you see as the similarities and differences between First Nations art and Ameri- can Indian art? Interview with Alfred Young Man 343 AYM: Many Indian artists in Canada see themselves as Canadians first, the patriotic thing to do, but at the same time they see themselves as Native people and that dichotomy causes problems in establishing the idea of Native art at the national level. Similarly, many Native people in the U.S. see themselves as U.S. citizens first, as well as being Indians. It all depends, I suppose, on who is doing the talking. Some Indians don't claim either nationality. Personally, I see myself as a Cree Indian. I grew up within 60 miles of the 49th Parallel, or the "Medicine Line"as we say in Montana, and I now work within 60 miles on this side, to be consistent. My ancestors, including my grandmothers, grandfathers, father, and motherwere from the Cree people who historically occupied territory, along with other Indian nations in the States, as far south as what is now Wyoming, and in Canada as far North as what is now northern Alberta and Saskatch- ewan, that primarily being Cree country. Actually they were in their hunting grounds in what is now Montana long before either the U.S. or Canada even thought about drawing up the maps which now define theirborders. Like the Six Nations along the New York/Ontario border, ours was a nation cut in two by carpetbagging government agents, corrupt politicians, and greedy churches in both countries whose only aim was to steal Indian land and resources in any way that they could. Historians, of course, have written a completely different version of that history for us. My grandmother was just a young girt when Custer earned his arrow shirt, and while that may appearto be ancient history, that history is fairly recent to us. Personally, I don't recognize the U.S./Canadian border at all, except when I'm forced to do so by both governments. I thinkthat all those customs buildings which house all those people who have given themselves all that power to rule my life and steal my goods and money every time that I cross that line, whether I'm going north or south, should be pulled down and the denizens sent off to find "real" jobs instead of being allowed to live off this "legalised" form of robbery. (Ha! That'll neverhappen.) None of that money they take away from me ever goes to benefit Indian people in either country anyway. But these custom agents make sure they pay themselves big fat salaries which they skim off the top. It's really all in the perception of things. There's a treaty called The Anglo-Ameri- can Treaty (Jay's Treaty) of 1794 which custom agents violate and stomp on every time they stop an Indian for questioning. Anyway, there are Native people who live miles away from the border, on either side, who seem to get more nationalistic the further away they 344 Lawrence Abbott live thereforethe less the two groups seem to have in common. They tend to become regionalist, I think. I routinely lecture on these and other issues as part of what I call my academic philosophy. I know that Indian artists in the States are going to sue (Sioux) me forsaying this, but I thinkthat Canadian Native artists, on the whole, are better organized. We don't seem to have as much in-fighting as I have noticed in the States where Indian people, Indian artists, seem to be working against each other's best interests. And I don't know why this should be, otherthan old tribal animosities, which is really passe these days. They would be so much further ahead if they would simply work together for a common purpose, although I have been told that they have done so on some important occasions, but just as frequently they have missed out on some very important oppor- tunities. Now, I'm not saying that it's 100% cooperation up here by any means, that we're all behaving like the perfectNoble Savages or something We have a group called SCANA, the Society of Canadian Artists of Native Ancestry, who have been organized right across Canada sincebefore 1983. That organization has been evolving in its various forms for at least 30 years. It is composed primarily of Native artists and other Native professionals whose basic objective is to promote Native art and artists, to defend Native art if it needsdefending. Right now some SCANA members, in cooperation with the DIA in Ottawa, are organizing a retrospective of Native art going back at least half-a-century, complete with research and catalogue. We would prefer to have the opening at the National Gallery of Canada, whose counterpart is the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., but I don't have much hope of that happening since both galleries refuse to acknowledge Native art as a viable category in its own right, with a valid history, which is like saying that Indians don't exist. There are people out there who simply refuse to recognize Native people as a reality. As far as I'm concerned that works in our favour because it simply gives us more dogma and rhetoric to use in our oral and written critiques, and in our art. When Indians like myself, who are art critics, stop meeting an opposing force out there then I thinkthat we can probably say that our job is finished but that more than likely won't happen for several generations. I am of the opinion that Canadian Native artists are currently setting the tone for where Native art should be right now, and probably where it should be going in the future, in both countries. That could change tomorrow. Interview with Alfred Young Man 345

LA: Do you feel that the political situation in Canada is responsible for that?

AYM: Indians in Canada are a sovereign peoples and there are more of them per capita than in the U.S. so they seem to have better opportunities to make a greater impact in the formation of the nation's identity, historically, socially, politically, culturally, and otherwise. When the federal government attempts to make federal policy affect- ing Native people without consulting them, say like doggedly pursu- ing a party line which may have a detrimental effect on their future, they will raisetheir voices and be heard. I've seen this happen over and over again with regards to the important issues of the day. That doesn't happen as often in the States. If anything Indian peoplethere are only very rarely consulted or even recognized by Congress, and then only as extensions of the federal bureaucracy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. When budget time rolls around every four years all Congress has to do is rubber stamp any submissions made by the BIA with no real debate, or sometimes its direct opposite, deny funding without any real debate. Indians are generally put in a reactive situation in the U.S. whereas here they are more proactive. Indian issuesdon't take up a lot of time in Congress, that you notice making national headlines or see getting reported on "Prime Time Live" television at any rate, whereas up here Native people seem to have a more direct effect. Indian issues normally make national headlines in both the hard and electronic media here, perhaps because Indians still legally own three-quarters of the land base of the country. Several years back Canadians were trying to pass a new Constitution without Indian consultation. Well, because sections of the draft didn't sit well with Native people they fought against legis- lation and won. It took only one Native person, MLA Elija Harper,to bring the whole thing crashing down around their ears because he refused to give his consent to debate and vote on the bill in the Manitoba legislature, which was only fair and right. The country almostsplit apartover that stroke of political genius, although Harper will not be noted for that when Canadian historians turn to writetheir history of that era. They are already blaming another politician, Clyde Wells of Newfoundland, for that debacle.

LA: The character of Many White Horses appears in a few of your essays.

AYM: Yeah. My grandmother was Cree, and she spoke only Cree, which really made it difficult for me to communicate with her and she with 346 Lawrence Abbott

me. She was married to Don't Talk Many WhiteHorses, a Blackfeet from Browning, for the better part of a century. He was quite an old man when he died in the mid-1970s. No one knew for certain how old he was since Montana was not yet even a state when he was born and records were not kept, of course. As a child, in the 1800s, he contracted scarlet fever which rendered him mute. He and my grandmother owned over 100 head of horses at the height of their glory, amongwhichthere were many whitehorses, thus the origin of his name, translated from Blackfeet to English, of course. My older brother and I sometimes stayed with them as youngsters during the warm Rocky Mountain summers and we had to learn how to talk with both of them through the use of Indian sign language. Although he was not my biological grandfather I use his name out of respect for him and for my grandmother. My father's real name, on the other hand, was White Horse but he was raised by a Blackfeet man from Gleichen, Alberta by the name of Old Man Young Man, and he took his name as his own, therefore my name, Young Man. I also sport several other Indian names: Eagle Chief, Sau-sti-quanis, Kiu'kgima'aw, and Little Yellow Head besides the more commonly known English/Indian name of Alfred BusterYoungMan. Many White Horses is just another name, but I've chosento use that one over the others as a writer. I don't see the name as embodying any kind of persona or after ego, as some seem to think, it's just another way of saying that I'm writing about myself and that's who Many White Horses is.

LA: How do you see the evolution of your work?

AYM: It's a personal exploration into the nature of my vision, in both senses of the term, how our eyesight functions as informed by our mental faculties and how the soul lives on as validated by the spiritual, but it's also more than that. I'm also concerned with the nature of language, what language is, and how people perceive and define that complex human facility, the symbolic, the visual, the theoretical, and the spoken.The evolution has also been an exploration into what the Indian image is, both within and without myself. I've examined how language is effortlessly transferred from one place to another, electronically, without reference to moral or cultural norms, or to spiritually. I've explored the feelings of paint, something I picked up at IAIA from Eder, Red Star, Cannon, and Cliff Suathojame (Huala- pai), as I've mentioned. Their early paintings still have the capacity to move me. The electronic image, especially, enters one end of a Interview with Alfred Young Man 347

machine as a pure idea, changes its form into that of electrons and comes out the other end as another two-dimensional imageshorn of its metaphysical ability to communicate on a 3-Dimensional level. Meanwhile, the original 3-D subject has already changed form. That's like trying to capture and hold a phantom photon, a dream, a thought. That's amazing to me. I don't think anybody has ever thoroughly explored wherethat imagegoes, what happens to it, short of Albert Einstein perhaps, because the image is the quintessential illusion that only painting can arrest to some degree which is why paint, as used by Cannon, Red Star, Montana, and Eder actually has a palpable spiritual presence? The evolution of my work has to do with how we make and define images, how we then recycle these images in our brain; how best to put the answer down on canvas; how you as a viewer are going to read, or discern, all that. It's a very complex process. I still delve into all that to some degree today because I thinkthat it has to do with how we are perceived as Native people, as human beigs, by other people, as well as by ourselves. The images themselves have nothing definite to say about who we are, as spiritual beings, since spiritualism is eternal and undefinable, being infinitely created. This mysteriously created aspect of our personalities cannot be captured by mundane technology although it will use technology to investigate and express itself. There's a statement by Claude Levi-Strauss that I quote in one of my essays, "Issues and Trends in Contemporary Native Art" in Parallel- Iogramme, vol. 13, #3 (1988:26) where Georges Charbonnier asks Levi-Strauss to define the fundamental and structural differences between the societies he studies and those in which he lives, meaning Western society. Levi-Strauss responds, somewhat enig- matically: "It may well be that this question represents the absolute limit of our knowledge. It is impossible to determine, at one and the same time,the trajectory and the position of a particle, Similarly, we perhaps cannot both try to get to know a society from the inside and classify it from the outside in relation to othersocieties. This is the difficulty." In essence then, I think that it can be said that anthropologists don't really know who they're talking and wnting about when they're studying Native people because of the transcendent nature of Native societies which are so remote and so differentfromtheirown to begin with. At most they can put forth a theory, but that's about all. This is the level on which my philosophy, my art, is formed. Native people are electrons in motion, they are molecules constantly being rede- 348 Lawrence Abbott tined, they are atoms and the double-helix found in DNA, they are spirit. No one, to my knowledge, has thus far been able to capture either a particleor a spirit. Our bodies, at the microscopic and spiritual level, are in the process of creating the genetic material that will form the basis for Native societies for thousands ofyearsto come.Indians are not aboutto sit still for anyone to define them, whetherit be you, me, or an anthropologist. They're an essence, always moving. They're always creating and being created. They are Spirit Beings without form except that which they give themselves. We may never know what that form will ultimately be, and that's where my art and philosophy of art come in. And that's why Native art is being discov- ered every ten years. It was true when I was a student and it's still true today.

LA: Can a work of art be considered a glimpse or a window into this constantly moving spirit?

AYM: Yes. One of the things I learned when I was in London was that art should be made to last, so I make my art to last for at least a century, hopefully for five hundred years. That's why I paint in acrylic. I hope that my work will look contemporary five hundred years from now and still embodythat essence, that is of glimpsing a world gone by. That isn't an impossible goal since there are very old art works created by Native artists over 2,000 years ago that still have a contemporary feel aboutthem, so why not? I'mpainting forthe future, giving them a glimpse into what we are about today. When you're working with paint and canvasyou're kind of limited, but you also have to explore the future whatever you think that may be. When photography was invented in the latter half of the last century, someonesaid that painting was dead, but I don't think so. I think that painting may just be the only long-lasting communication medium homosapiens will ever invent because it's so basic, it's something people have done forever, both in North and South America, and in Europeas well, actually the world over, and it is permanent or at least as permanent as we can manage. When was the last time you checked out some rock paintings? Certainly Indians were painters for tens of thousands of years before Columbus, and I'm not neces- sarily talking about the Stone Age kind here either. The big disadvantage we face with the electronic medium is that if you lose the key or the code used to accessthe binary system,you're finished... or as the old cowboys out here say, "You ain't got nothing." And we're not at all sure that somewhere down the line all this Interview with Alfred Young Man 349

hardware and software isn't just going to end up in someone's sanitary landfill somewhere, neverto be seen again. Our mainframe computer was shut down for two days just recently becauseit needed a vital component that had to be shipped in by a supplier in Calgary who in turn had to orderit from somewhere else. The entire university population of over 5,000 individuals was held hostage to a broken VAX Cluster part. And here's another example of how computers are unreliablein the long term.., the U of L once had a computer program called Scribe which was all the rage in the early 1980s but has since been down-gradedto inefficient, even useless. We now have a new generation of professional computer programmers who don't know how to access files stored in its memory because the commands have all been rendered obsolete by newer, faster, differently coded technology, namely Macs and Windows95. Theoretically, whole cit- ies could be held hostage by someone such as Bill Gates. The computer manufacturing businessis comparable to that of the used- car business. For me its a never-ending nightmare. Last years' parts and service specs are no longer useful for this year's model. Parts depreciate at an astronomical rate and are made practically obsolete before they even come off the production line. Hardware that may have cost you $450 the day before is worth only $20 on the market today. Old parts which still have relatively low mileage are virtually worthless whilethe cost of the new parts can break Fort Knox. The market has gone absolutely berserk. We just don't know.That's why paint is so interesting. It's something that has come from a long way back. Paint is still a good and viable medium.

LA: In addition to your painting, teaching and writing, you've also curated some exhibitions.

AYM: I have curated a few showsin Canada. I look for art that is out of the ordinary, obviously done with considerable flare, talent, and obses- sion. I look for the artist who has a lot of energy, who has some street smarts you might say, an artist who is mature. I recently worked on a retrospective of the Cree artist Allen Sapp with Bob Boyer. I wrote an analytical essay for the catalogue which more than a few non-In- dians found insulting. Apparently they couldn't bear the thought of having Indians think for themselves. I'm currently planning to curate a travelling exhibition through Europe, hopefully to occurwithin the next couple of years, I'll be looking for commonalities of perspective, of wherewe'reall going as Native artists, how much we know about each other, askingwhetheror not Native artists are even up on what's 350 Lawrence Abbott

going on in the rest of the world, and how all that pans out in the mediums with which they work.I'll bring all of my experience in Native art to bear on this show, and that includes all the work I've ever looked at in the fields of anthropology and contemporary Native art, to see how it all hangs together, which is a considerable mass of informa- tion. A show which needs to be curated in the future, I think, is a major retrospective around the history of Native art, extending all the way back in time beginning with the earliest dated North and South American artifacts, which may date anywhere from 15,000 to 40,000+ years ago, and link that up with what's happening in Native art today. Such an exhibition would necessarily covertens of thou- sands of years, if not more, and involve anthropology, ethnography, archaeology, contemporary Native artists, traditional Native Elders and so on, who would all be included as equal players. The show could be done with the intent of bringing the Native history of North America back to North America. It would have to be held at a national venue, like the newly proposed Museum of the American Indian currently being planned for the last space on the Mall in Washington, D.C. I understand that something like this was done in London with African art, going back a half-million years beginning with the oldest artifact ever found at Olduvai Gorge or some such place, and culminating with contemporary African art.

LA: Do you find it a problem in Canada that historians and critics put Native work into categories of "art" and "craft," or "art" and "artifact"? AYM: As far as I'm concerned it need not even be a question. It's a non-issue. If the people who do that would analyze where that behaviour comes from, where their ideas of art originate, I don't believe that they would be so eager to proceed with business as usual. Art criticism and art history, relative to the idea of arts and crafts, has its roots in anthropology as everyone should know. That all came about with the likes of such people as LewisHenry Morgan and Sir Edward B. Tylor of England who at the turn of the century, harboured some pretty fanciful evolutionary notions about how Na- tive American societies functioned. Morgan's theories were picked up by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and made a part of the Communist Manifesto. If there was any truth at all in what Morgan wrotewouldn't Communism, his stepchild, still be a viable form of government? How can art critics and art historians really expectto understand anything at all about the inner workings of Native art and Interview with Alfred Young Man 351

history if they're going to continue to extol the dubious virtues of an outdated anthropological theory and methodology over that of Native art itself?

LA: You once wrote that, "... I feel that my statements are Indian; and while they are not like those of older Indians they are as real and honesta reflection ofme as an Indian in my time as their's were of them in theirtime" (from The Sweetgrass Lives On, pp. 187-188).

AYM: Everybody is just a link in the chain of winters, that's all. Let me run this concept by you: Were those people who lived in the Caribbean before Columbus more, or less, "Indian" than those people whom Columbus "discovered" and named "Indians"? And were those Indi- ans, in turn, somehow more Indian than the Lakota generation born out on the Great Plains in the 1780s? And was this generation, in turn, somehow more "Indian" than the generation born just before mine? This idea that one generation has to be more Indian than the next is truly strange and just doesn't make any sense to me at all. We're all products of our own time and environment. If you're identified in the opening salvo as being an Indian then what more need be said? My son will be an Indian in his own time, in the world his generation creates for themselves, in the way they find themselves. I've identi- fied them as Indians so therefore they are. We're undergoing change all the time. The idea that there is some kind of "ethnographic present" Indian out there is a myth, which is where the original question has its locus. Behind that question lies more of Hollywood's Last of the Dogmen nonsense, you know, that atrocious clone of Dances With Wolves. Both movies are an embarrassment to the intellect and so is the question. The ethnographic present is simply an antiquated anthropological theory which has run its course and now belongs in the garbage. Thereneverhas been such an individual since it would take something like time-travel to realize such a person, and that is an impossibility since Indians don't operate in linear time, they work mostly in "Indian time." Ha! I mean, really. How on earth would an ethnographic present Indian ever know that he or she was the real thing in order to verify that notion? What's that you say? Take the word of anthropology? Well, then we would be right back to square one wouldn't we, that of being expected to rely on someone else's definition of us as fact? See what I mean? We've come the full crazy circle. The idea is truly weird. Specialists who are looking for an "ethnographic present" Indian are looking forpie in the 352 Lawrence Abbott

sky and I don't see why any intelligent Indian would want to follow this person around. I see Native people all of the time and they never seem to fit that stereotype at all. I don't see why I should have to somehow be the same type of person Sitting Bull was in order to be an Indian. I guess it doesn't really matter what you say that I am. You simply don't know. And I'm not interested in trying to live up to you or anybody else's idea of what an Indian should be, not in the least. I went through all that. Remember? And besides, that's not the issue anyway. As Miles Davis once said, "Hell! If you understood every- thing I say, you'd be me!" Sitting Bull was a great man in his time, and that time has becomea part of our common history. The buffalo once numbered in the tens, if not hundreds, of millions way back when, but they're not here by the millions any more. We're finding and recreating ourworld the way we want it to be. That's what we're here for now, and that's why I'm here. We are now faced with a completely new generation of young Indian people who are defining the world in ways even my generation neverthought of. What are we supposed to do, deny them their right to their history and theirworld as well? No, I refuseto make the same mistakes as those before me.

LA: Following that a bit, do youthink people tend to see art from an earlier time as "authentic" Indian art and contemporary art as "unauthentic?"

AYM: Well, people will believe what they want to believe, but as usualthey are barking up the wrong tree, even though some of them are making a lot of moneydoing it. People who use thoseadjectives as yardsticks by which to judge Native art today already have an agenda and a vested interest in keeping those classification alive, I'm sure. Many of them, mostly anthros, ethnographers, museologists, and hobby- ists collect so-called "authentic" Native art and even claim to know its provenance. Just as many do not know wherea particular piece came from. So-called "authentic" Indian art brings in big bucks to the seller when they take it to big auction houses since it accrues in monetary and historical value as time goes by, as all good art will. Well, that's their forte. That's not a big concernof mine since I'm not in the businessof finding and promoting the "genuine, authentic, real Indian," the "real" thing. We are the real thing. I assume my identity, I'm not generally in the businessofdefining it, although it might seem like I am doing so just now. I'm only doing this because you asked. All of this doesn't mean that there isn't a question of identity at stake here in the contemporary Native art world, for there assuredly is. There are a lot of people out there, including artists, actors, writers, Interview withAlfred Young Man 353

and popular musical entertainers who are claiming to be Indians who are not. I wrote a paper on this subject listing the names of some very famous and notable personalities in all of the above named fields, and I sent it around to several academic journals and Native art magazines offering it for publication. They all turned me down even though they all seemed to be concerned over the issue and generally agreed that the paper was well written. They recited a litany of excuses such as getting involved with this contentious question could bring on a lawsuit from the offended party; the paper was nothing but gossip and therefore wasn't worthy of a respected academic journal; I should somehow find a way to delete the illustri- ous names and re-submit the paper, and so on. I mean, really, what other race has this problem? Can you imagine someone claiming to be Black, White, Jewish, or Chinese suing someone else for ques- tioning their biological stake ortitle to thoseraces? Who cares? What this all means, I suppose, is that virtually anybody can claim to be an Indian and get away with it if it suits their purposes. Shania Twain, the country music singer, is only the latest example in an incredibly long list of such characters who have been doing exactly that ever since, well, the BostonTea Party. That person who is half-White/half- Indian can comfortably play both sides of the coin and get away with it. Even if you are a Whiteor Black person you can actually get away with saying you're an Indian. That's an historical fact. Most of these kinds of people claim to be Cherokee hence the jokes in Indian country. Hey, if being "Indian" is "in" this year, or claiming to be "part Indian" is good for your image then why not exploit it? On the other hand, when the image is not "in" you won't find any of thesekindsof characters within fifty miles of real Indians. Significantly, Indians who are 100% Indian blood by quantum don't have that option, one way or the other. In Canadathe situation gets even more bizarre. An individual doesn't even have to have Indian blood to be "legally" considered an Indian sinceidentity is a legislative affair. Any obvious biological connection is only of secondary importance. On those grounds Shania Twainis on safe grounds, presumably. She is biologically Caucasian, but by an Act of Parliament considered to be an Indian because her step.- father, who was a status Ojibwa himself, married her White mother and then enrolled the adopted Shania on the DIA rolls when she was still a child. It didn't matter that her mother and real father were both White. In Canadian law, under the old Indian Act, before Bill- 31:Status of Women was enacted into law in 1985, her White mother 354 Lawrence Abbott was also legally considered to be an Indian since if an Indian man married a non-Indian woman back then, that womanautomatically becamean "Indian" in law. Shania can confidently say that she is an "Indian" and get away with it. See how screwed up things can get when we allow White people to define us? Now watch some White person say that I'm promoting reverse-discrimination! Well whatever.., but, getting back to our question, I think that I can understand how such entrepreneurs and artifact brokers feel when they get their shorts in such a tangle over the "authentic vs the unauthentic." When I went to Japanin 1992 to teachfor the summer I found myselflooking for samuraiand ninjas! My favourite actor and film director in the late 1960s and early 70s was Toshiru Mitune and Akira Kurosawa, respectively, who made a number of magnificent "period films" together on these feudalistic warriors. The Throne of Blood and The Seven Samurai immediately come to mind. I suppose it was rather naive of me to expect such personages to still be living in Japan, expecting to find the "ethnographic present" samurai and all that, but that naivete didn't bestowon me the license to go around proclaiming to the people living there today that they were not the "real" Japanese, not the authentic thing because they didn't look nor live like the samurai and ninjas of the late 1800s. The Japanese had a good laugh at my ignorant questions about whereI could find these people becausethere were none. That particular era has long since passed. Like cowboys and Indians, it exists today only on celluloid. I was about one hundred yearstoo late. So it's more or less the same thing here. Since most Euro-Americans are more or less naive they let themselves get dragged hook,line, and sinker into some authori- tative anthropological text, or perhaps a romantic image of a particu- lar Indian culture, and when they come across those contemporary representatives from that culture who are existing in a different space at a different time, doing different things and behaving in contrary ways to what they would expect, then they end up feeling defensive and stupid. They get insulted and react angrily when their strange attitudes and demeanours are called into question by real Indians. They find themselves having to look for reasons to save face, especially if there is any kind of money involved. Their very credibility is at stake. They can't allow themselves to be satisfied with the explanation that things change, that time moves on, and people move on. It is simply easier for them to try to convince themselves and others that there are no "real" Indians left thereby increasing the value of their art collections. But, I think what we really need to do is Interview with Alfred Young Man 355

get on with our lives. We shouldn't have to be spending our entire waking lives looking for imaginary 1890s Indians who just aren't there. This nonsenseof trying to convince me and other Native artists that we are somehow fake, and our work is counterfeit, should end.

LA: You wrote some years ago that, "I am concerned with auto-biographi- cal expression .... My work is both Indian and non-Indian" (from Contemporary Indian Artists, 1972:78). AYM: From the point of view that it's a play on words, I'm Indian in the sense that if you want to call me an Indian, sure I'll be an Indian, even though Columbus didn't know where in hell he was. On the other hand, I don't see myself as an "Indian" per se because I'm not the Indian you or anybody else thinks I am. I'm simply me, I'm a Cree. I can't be any more or less than the personI am. I'll make being Indian what I want it to be. I've always guarded my right to be the person I am, sometimes very jealously. In other words, I'm going to define what my work is about and you will just have to leave that up to me because I'm the artist, I'm not saying that you have to like it but you simply have no choice insofar as my right to do it. You can come along for the ride and play these word games with me if you'd like, you can play with semantics until hell freezes over if you'd like, but in the final analysis you're still going to have to listen to me. I'm in the driver's seat and I'm going to stay there from now on. If you don't like the road I'm on then you're free to get out of the wagon, or car, or as the sign reads at airport security checks in a somewhat convoluted fashion, "You are free not to board the plane if you decide not to submit your person to a search."

LA: Did the piece Collage (1972) come from yourexperience in London?

AYM: The total image is simply that, a collage. There's a fragmented hand in the centreholding a pill, as you can see. The work was done while I was in London. It's made up of imagery collected out of numerous news media and other publications such as magazines, newspapers, flyers, comic books, menus, cornflake boxes and so forth, which I sought out on the streets of London over a period of a year. I then spent an entire summer combing through this pile of information out of which I conscientiously chosethe images you see. While they were still in the magazine ornewspaper, orwhateverother publication they were in, I meticulously cut out the shape of each one usinga scalpel blade and deliberately arranged and glued them in close juxtaposi- tion to each other on a single square board, shooting for an overall 356 Lawrence Abbott impression on the audience. Not all images worked well in close proximity to others so I had to be very selective in how they were arrayed in order for the overall composition to make sense to the viewer on at least some level of consciousness. It's not as hap- hazardly constructed as it at first appears. The end product was to have the likeness of a fifteenth century Flemish apocalyptic painting. All of the information therein came via our mascot, the Post Office Tower in London which I discussed earlier, coming from the far-flung comers of the world at the height of the Vietnam War and Mao Tse-Tung's Communistwar machine. That is what art is about to me, even today in the world of imaginary cyberspace. The collage seemed to define a perfect moment in time of world consciousness. The hand in the middle of the construction symbolized another kind of fragmentation. It seemed like everyone back then was popping pills of one kind or other and that the world was really running on chemistry and electrons. Science was not only altering people's brains via sociological theory and anthropological dogma but via chemistry, technology, and other popular mythology as well. We had the very way we were thinking being constantly bombarded and manipulated by this or that spin-doctor,specialist, or expert, whether it was a psychologist, sociologist, anthropologist, political engineer, CEO cult-leader, Army General, rock musician, guru, policeman, CIA operative, "shaman," preacher man, or con-man. It was all the same to me. The world had gone stark-raving mad, stock-piling nuclear weapons in a suicidal bid for world peace. We faced the end of it all, and it was as if the planet was just self-destructing. So, this piece dealt with the nature of that invented imagery and the way it was reassembled in the human brain. The question required some kind of artistic response to the way imagery was being broken down and then the way it was being reassembled again, and then what was being done with all of that information after that. Even today, reality, i.e. real matter and spiritual philosophy, is broken apart or torn to pieces in all kinds of ways, and then reinvented, redefined, and reassembled in new and peculiar ways by technocrats for mass consumption. Western science, education, and governments have been doing that to Native people for years, as you no doubt know by now. And psychology has been doingthat for years to your head, to my head, and to everybody's head. All of the proof we need is in advertising. Well, electronic information, which is another important dimension in all of this deconstructionism going on, was also a fundamental element in all of this so I took all of that isolated and Interview with Alfred Young Man 357 parochial data and reassembled it in another fashion. The overall effect seems cubistic but it's not really. It actually goes beyond Fritz Lang's futuristic concept found in his 1920s film Metropolis. The only thing left of that work is a slide, which I own, and from which this photo was taken. So the imagery has come full circle and is adding yet another dimension to its reality by being published here. I took the original photograph, that is the slide, back in 1972. All of this, by-the-way, was planned aheadof time, meaning its eventual publi- cation. The slide is the artwork. All the rest was and is the process. The original work has disintegrated with time; it was meant to decompose. The only thing that I wanted left of all that expended energy was a slide taken in another time, another place, another world. Now that's authenticity.

LA: John Anson Warner notes in "New Visions in Canadian Plains Painting" that your work "contains touches of both abstract expres- sionism and pop art" and that you wed your art "to an ideology of Indian nationalism" (p. 53). Brody says I'd Love My Mother (1968) is "pop art-influenced. "Do you feel that your work from the late 60s and early 70s reflects these sources? AYM: Well, as far as Warner goes, I've always had problems with his obviously socio-anthropological approach to Native art history and theory. I don't, as a rule, encourage my students to follow his example. I find most of his writing pretentious, condescending, paternalistic, egotistical, Protestant, rightwing, and exploitative. With regards to Brody, he gave us some good food for thought in his book Indian Painters and White Patrons but he's off the mark as far as saying I'd Love My mother is Pop influenced. I didn't even know what Pop was at that particular juncture since it was just getting off the ground in its own right. If anything, that painting has more to do with Blacks and Indians, more to do with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. than with Warhold, Rauschenberg, or British Pop artists Richard Hamilton or David Hockney. As I mentioned before, I was painting numbers and letters on anything and everything in response to Indians being generally treated like numbers. I once heard that a Mesalero Apache was simplygiven the name Z-12 because govern- ment officials couldn't be bothered to learn to pronounce his name properly in Apache. Now there's a concept for you. The first time that someone in England told me that I painted like Hockney I had never even heard of the guy nor knew of his work. I believe my response was a surprised, "Who's he?" Incidently, just to drop a name or two, 358 Lawrence Abbott Hamilton was a visiting artist at the Slade in the fall of 1968, a full nine months after I painted I'd Love My Mother and he personally visited my studio. Needless to say, he didn't have the slightest clue as to what I was doing. I didn't know at the timethat he had designed the cover for the Beatles' White Album not too long before that although I did become familiar with the work after that. David Hock- ney was also a visiting professorthe following year and I took a class from him. Unfortunately, all he seemedto be interested in doing was having his students draw nude boys. I didn't learn much of anything of value there either and promptly dropped his class.., ah, well, I guess I did learn something... I learned to give his attitude, such as it was, a Iotta space. So there you go. Wouldn't a Pop artist have recognized a fellow Pop artist if I had been one? In fact, I was the first North American Indian either one of them had ever met and they were perplexed, to say the least. And Warner? Well. he didn't even have the courtesy to interview me to get my side of the story on those works. His story would have been a lot different if he had. He once wrote and told me that he was going to write the definitive book on Native art. That was when he worked at the University of Regina along with Gerald McMasterand Bob Boyerback in the 1970s and early 80s. I'm still waiting for that book, but of course it will never happen. No one can write a definitive book on Native art. Now you can see what I mean by egotistical.

LA; Astounding Stories (1978) and Peyote Vision (1974) also came out of the 70s, afteryou returned to the States.

AYM: Astounding Stories actually had about a ten year incubation period before genesis. I originally got the idea in 1968 or 69 in London but didn't begin work on it until around 1978, after I was hired to teach here at the University of Lethbridge. The comic book cover from which part ofthe painting was painted is an English artifact. Like most Europeans, the English seem to harbour some fairly quaint notions about the Red Indian savage and all that. This is illustrated very well in the cartoon, and like all cartoons it lacks a certainsense of realism, but the iconographic message is all too real to many Europeans just the same. I decided to contrast that mythological fairytale with reality, with an old photograph takenof some of my distant relatives back in the early days of the Depression. One of the men in that old black and white photograph can be seen holding a little toy monkey, showing a soft, even gentle side, to his Indian humour. I painted the comic book cover verbatim, directly copying each and every aspect Interview with Alfred Young Man 359

in the finest detail, although at least four to six times the size of the original. I wasn't interested in parodying Lichtenstein's examination of the Ben Day dot system at all although I knew that the inevitable Pop art comparison would be made there, but that was okay. It would all make for interesting coffee table chatter. This was anthropological literature to me, my anthropology of the English mind, authentic visual language. The Depression photo is older than the English comic book cover by more than 35 years. I wanted to point out how negative images continue to linger on in the foreign mind in spite of our best efforts to eradicate them. Peyote Vision was done at a time between 1973-75 when I was learning about the Native American Church on the "res" in Montana, the Rocky Boys. It was my friend and Indian art teacher, George Longfish, who introduced me to peyote when I was a student of his at the University of Montana in 1972. I had just returned from London. LaterI would learn a lot from my mentorand friend, Paul Small,who still lives on the res and still practices this form of religion. I will not dishonour our friendship by pretending that I know more about it than I really do. Suffice itto say that I was cautioned long ago not to exploit the idea so I won't. I no longer do that kind of work. Peyote Vision remains one of my favourite works just the same. I don't, as a matter of personal preference and professional ethics, discuss spiritual matters in an academic setting anyway. What I know is my business and is really not for public or academic consumption, or for sale on the open market. There really is no such class as Sun Dance 101. The tragic thing about the Native American Church is that the damned U.S. government, through its phony political agents, keeps trying to outlaw its freedom of expression. This nonsense has been going on since the Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee in 1890 and continues today with president Bill Clinton who, one would think, would know better. In that sense Whitebaby boomers are nodifferent than their parents, not that I would ever expect them to be. Any differences they may perceive is only an illusion. What's that biblical bit about the sins of the fathers being visited upon their children? Well, there you go. The suppression of Native American spirituality is generally thought to have ceased after 1950, after more that seventy-odd years of political and genocidal blackmail and oppres- sion but, sadly it hasn't. And I find that totally hypocritical of Congress and the American people. Do we really live in a "free" country when any religion is outlawed? If the Catholic Church, Judaism, or Islam was outlawed perhaps Americans would get the message. Congress 360 Lawrence Abbott would rather allow the Neo-Nazis, devil-cults, and otherfanatics to run amok than grant Indians absolute freedom of religion, mouthing something about protecting the rights of the lunatic fringe to free speech. Well, since when has Nazi-ism and cultism been anything but trouble for anybody but Nazis and cultists? Actually, cultism has been hell on cultists as well. All of this religious oppression is just more cultural genocide clothed as "freedom" that's all. Anthropologist Weston La Barre wrote a famous book called The Peyote Cult in 1969. I underlined "cult" because I want to emphasize that it is books like these that do more to harm the religious freedoms of American Indians than anything else. The Native American Church is not a cult by any stretch of the imagination. The book is published in the name of academic freedom and expression, of course. Some say that, on the contrary La Barre is an American Indian Rights advocate. Well, I say, if La Barre really wants to help Indians then he should change the title of his book.

LA: Are there any other fairly recent works (late 80s) which you feel are representative of your art. AYM: Actually, I've takena six year hiatus from painting. I've been concen- trating exclusively on the academic and research components of my doctoral thesis as well as teaching and writing about Native art and otherartists and theirwork. There's really very little to discuss. But, now that this thesis business is finally settled and I'm officiallya Ph.D. I guess I can finally paint again.

LA: You've also traveled through Mexico. Did those travels lead you to any ideas about the interrelations of Indigenous arts? Did that come into your work at all? AYM: Yes. I did learn something about what great mathematical techni- cians, architects, and astronomers our Indian ancestors were. I became fascinated with the profound depth of knowledge exhibited by the Maya and Aztec in particular. I am still enchanted with their colossal Lego-like architecture as found in their many pyramids and buildings. Some day I would like to return for a longer visit. I saw gigantic sculpted Toltec stone heads and Mayan ball courts engi- neered with such great mathematical, architectural, astronomical skill and precision that they still astound the human mind, certainly with regards to what the Indian brain is capable of conceiving and producing when it is pushed to its absolute zenith. There is nothing primitive or savage there at all. If anything there is much there to be Interview with AlfredYoung Man 361

admired and studied. The Mayanscalculated a calendarthat is more precise and accurate than the Gregorian calendar we use today. Their calendar didn't have to make up a day every four years and call that errorin astronomical observation a Leap Year for instance. They knew that the stars, sun, and moon don't play leap-frog There is the well documented bloody side to their history of course, the humansacrifice and blood-letting and all that, but what does that have to do with their technical knowledge? Anthropologists, ethnog- raphers, and other Western academics, in describing these ancients as barbaric and savage, therefore beneath dignity, seem not to have learned much of anything at all about the nature of humancreativity. Nevertheless, British sculptor HenryMoore intuitively felt that he had something there when he studied and appropriated Mayan art forms as he own. He wasn't looking at the blood and gore only, the purely sensational. He also learned to appreciate and admirethe absolute genius found beyond the artifact, more or less in the same way that NASA historians and technicians revere the Nazis,not fortheir idiotic theories as to whether or notthereis such a thing as a superior White race, but for the technical knowledge they had in building rockets. And as we should all know by now, the U.S. government practically made those Nazis they captured in WWII into national heroes, even treated them better than Indians.

LA: Please tell us about your experience/teaching experience in Japan.

AYM: That would take a chapter in itself. But briefly, I've learned something of fundamental import in the way I now approach my curriculum, teaching philosophy, and art. I've learned to avoid, if not disregard altogether, old anthropological theories and axioms, orthat which we might call Western science's evolutionary dogma. This is with re- gards to the so-called categorical "scientific" definition of Native peoples and philosophy. Evolution is nothing more than that really, only theorems which are basedin a kind of canonized fiction to begin with. I should think that I have made that abundantly clear by now. Happily, I was finally able to get that "Indian living in two worlds" monkey off my back. I know of some professionals, Indian and non-Indian, who still insist on living in two worlds, who still practise that misguided kind of pedagogy. Afterall, the Japanese are about as different from the West as anyonecould possibly be but they don't feel boundto live by the old adagethat they "live in two worlds."That idea really needsto be abolished once and for all sincethe concept 362 Lawrence Abbott

was coined over two-hundred years ago in an age and atmosphere of politicalturmoil and religious frenzy. The unconscientious way that some people continue to use that slogan today is still intimately connected with politics. It has nothing to do with me in reality. We all live in only one world and we make of it what we must. For goodness sake...is someonetrying to tell me that we all see the moon, the sun, or the stars as something other than what they are? Some people may think so, but I don't. The whole concept is nothing more than a power trip designed to subjugate Indians to the will of the powers that be. Sadly, some Indians continue to take part in their own oppression. You could tell some people that the moon is made of cheese and the world is flat and they would probably believe you.

LA: Anything else you think should be covered.

AYM: I think I've gone on far too long already.