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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Arts and Architecture OJIBWE ARTS RELATIONSHIPS: TRAVERSING CULTURAL EMPLACEMENTS A Dissertation in Art Education by Kevin R. Slivka © 2013 Kevin R. Slivka Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2013 ii The dissertation of Kevin R. Slivka was reviewed and approved* by the following: Patricia Amburgy Associate Professor Emerita of Art Education Dissertation Co-Advisor Co-chair of Committee Kimberly Powell Associate Professor of Education and Art Education Dissertation Co-Advisor Co-chair of Committee Booker Stephen Carpenter, II Professor of Art Education Gail L. Boldt Associate Professor of Education and Women Studies Bruce Martin Adjunct Instructor Special Member Graeme Sullivan Department Director, Art Education *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii Abstract The purpose of my dissertation research study is to explore how Ojibwe participants’ relationships within localized contexts construct, imply, and convey meaning through cultural arts production. Through this study, I seek to understand how relationships with the local contexts inform various Ojibwe art practices and processes. The central concerns of my study are to expand and shift art education disciplinary framings and value sets that behold American Indian cultural art forms as artifacts. I investigate situated meaning making processes (e.g. cultural influences) embedded in Ojibwe cultural arts practices as a means to expand upon arts-focused ontology, that I define as an embodied and emplaced way of being within a particular ecology, while generating particular art forms. Ojibwe artists’ processes of cultural production are of extreme importance, which includes the harvesting, collecting, and cleaning of intended cultural art materials within northern Minnesota woodland ecology. My interests to investigate Ojibwe artists who produce works within local Ojibwe contexts are a means to move beyond static representations of American Indian art as cultural artifacts relegated to the past. Rather, I aim to rupture this static understanding in order to attend to the lived complexity of ecological thinking, learning and communicating relationships within particular place-based contexts. Shifting focus in arts production-processes to an interconnected exploration of lived experience within interwoven ecologies constitutes differing requirements contingent upon a slower and expansive inquiry that attends to the complexity of lived experience. I draw from multi-sited ethnography methodology as a means to broach the complexity of Ojibwe lived experience, meaning making processes, and arts practices. Multi-sited ethnography affords a dynamic and flexible approach to investigate the ensembles of iv relationships that intertwine and influence Ojibwe artist-participants arts ontology. Multi-sited ethnography also views Ojibwe artist-participants as co-constructors, or para-ethnographers of the research, which decenters my role of the researcher in addition the focus of the study. Decentering my role as researcher influenced my postionality among Ojibwe artist-participants; shifting among positions of laborer, house sitter, animal care-taker, learning-artist, and friend among others. In addition to phenomenological data accrued from my decentered positionalities, I utilized field notation, photographic and video documentation, as well as informal conversations as an open concept of interview as methods of amassing data The multi- positionalities generated research ethics of care (Noddings, 1988, 2002; Slote, 2007). Ethics of care corresponded with formulating trusting relationships with Ojibwe artist-participants over a span of three-months time. I posit ethics of care and respectful representation in research writing broaches critical proximity of lived experience through descriptive narratives that are comprised of participants’ arts processes, personal histories, and voices. Throughout my research I aim to draw comparisons and relationships among Indigenous knowledge frameworks expressed by Ojibwe artist-participants, academics (Barnhardt & Kawagley 2005; Cajete, 2000, 2005; Vizenor, 2008), and Western conceptual theories of emplacement (Foucault, 1986; Pink, 2011) and relational-materialism (Anderson & Harrison, 2008). In doing so I aim to demonstrate positive differences and correspondences while also examining the shortcomings of Western conceptual theories when discussing Indigenous worldviews, creative processes and products. I believe that the Western education paradigm has much to learn from American Indian ways of thinking, being, teaching and learning in general and from the Ojibwe specifically. I explore how Ojibwe participants’ processes and works, which are formulated upon v interspecies relationships within localized ecological contexts, and expand upon Foucault’s conception of emplacements. I posit that reframing artworks, as places comprised of body, mind and ecological relationships, otherwise noted as emplacements, foregrounds artists relationships that are integral and interdependent within the web of relational-experience. Furthermore, my exploration of relational materialism does not fully explain Ojibwe participants’ relationships within particular contexts nor do I intend it to do so through a singular perspective. Rather, I set forth to broach connections between Ojibwe artist-participants’ explanations and non-Native theoretical considerations as a means to generate relationships between and among peoples rather than attempt to derive a reductive representation of Ojibwe artist-participants’ meaning making processes and relationships within localized communities and interconnected ecologies. My intention and hope is that Ojibwe artists’ creative works may serve as access points for readers and future students within art education settings to Indigenous knowledge and life- ways, which can enhance, expand, and generate opportunities to learn from and with/in local ecologies to inform an ontology of interspecies interdependence; a way of living, being, and thinking through reciprocal relationships. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ..................................................................................................................................... viii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................. xi Chapter I: Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 Indigenous Knowledge .................................................................................................................................. 4 Emplacements, Arts-Ontology & Relational Materialism .............................................................................. 8 Formative Experiences ............................................................................................................................... 12 Inside/Outside Researcher Relationships ........................................................................................... 20 Explanation of Field Research .................................................................................................................. 22 Engaging Potential Participants .............................................................................................................. 24 Research Questions & Chapter Summaries .......................................................................................... 31 Chapter II: Historical Foundations .............................................................................................. 34 Chippewa, Ojibwe, or Anishinaabe ......................................................................................................... 34 Blood Quantum .............................................................................................................................................. 37 Ojibwe Reservations in Minnesota ......................................................................................................... 41 Leech Lake Reservation and the city of Bemidji ............................................................................................. 42 Paul Bunyan, Logging, and Indian Simulations ................................................................................... 44 Paul Bunyan Communications Services ............................................................................................................. 55 The Bemidji Smudge .................................................................................................................................... 55 Insider/Outsider Relationships: Smudging Identity Preconceptions with Tobacco ............. 58 Teasing Out the Complexity of Forming Relationships as Research ........................................... 62 Chapter III: Methodology ................................................................................................................ 68 Methodological Considerations ............................................................................................................... 68 Writing the Experiential Body: Generating Critical Proximity ...................................................... 72 Research Methods ........................................................................................................................................