Haida Modern: The Art & Activism of Robert Davidson. Directed by Charles Wilkinson. Bullfrog Films, 2019. 80 minutes.

Meddle. Directed by Gillian Darling. Bullfrog Films, 2020. 7 minutes.

Native Art Now! Directed by Viki Anderson. Public Broadcasting System, 2017. 57 minutes.

Midway through the short film, Meddle, Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas asks, “Where is the voice of Indigeneity?” (1:16). The three films under review here make a compelling case that the answer to Yahgulanaas’s question can be found in contemporary Native American and First Nations art. Taken together, Haida Modern, Native Art Now!, and Meddle paint a vibrant picture of a rich, living tradition of art that carries the sovereign voice of Indigeneity into a contemporary moment plagued by environmental and cultural disasters of every kind. These are urgent voices; as Yahgulanaas puts it, it is “time for all hands on deck” (6:15).

The beauty of Meddle is that it covers a lot of ground in very short order. The film focuses on Yahgulanaas’s installation of a repurposed and transformed automobile hood in the entranceway of the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology. The hood is sheathed with copper, a material that conveys wealth and status in traditional Northwest Coast cultures. Inserted between two carved inscriptions that broadcast the settler government’s claims to this building and the land on which it was built, Yahgulanaas’s sculpture not only “meddles” in the museum, but effectively combats the erasure of Indigenous peoples, their art, and their cultures. The film tells this story in the artist’s own words, providing valuable insight into Yahgulanaas’s creative process, the material and aesthetic choices he makes, and the artistic and cultural traditions that inspire him. In Yahgulanaas’s view, the flow of forces that alternately compress and expand across the calligraphic lines of traditional Haida art, along with the capacity of the design to hold the tension between abstraction and the natural world, are emblematic of the human experience. Thus, Haida art is understood to be both traditional and contemporary, and always attentive to and expressive of the world around us.

These same themes are explored in Haida Modern, a much more expansive treatment of the life and artistic practices of a Haida artist, Robert Davidson. Born in 1946 and raised in the Haida village of Masset on Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands), Davidson is an iconic figure, one of a small, multigenerational group of carvers credited with reviving and revitalizing Northwest Coast visual culture in the middle of the twentieth century. Today, Davidson’s art is found in private and public collections across North America, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, and the National Museum of the American Indian. One focus of this film, told through interviews with the artist and members of his family, concerns the raising of Davidson’s Mother Bear totem pole in Masset in 1969, when the artist was only twenty-two years old. Returning to Masset after attending art school in Vancouver, Canada, Davidson was dismayed to find that there was only one heirloom carving remaining in his community; following decades of the suppression of Indigenous art, culture, and identity by missionaries and the provincial government, all the “old works” were gone. With the help of his father, brother, and members of their extended community, Davidson carved and raised the first monumental crest pole erected at Masset in over half a century.

Like the story of the Mother Bear pole, the story told by Haida Modern is one of hope and renewal. Nevertheless, the filmmakers are not shy about chronicling the pain and loss suffered by Indigenous people and communities across North America—the film relates the devastating effects of population decline and displacement; the suppression of Indigenous languages, religious practices and social structures; the steady degradation of the environment; and the harmful legacies of Canada’s Indian residential schools program. Throughout the interviews in the film, Davidson himself is unflinchingly honest about the struggles he has faced in coming to terms with his own identity as an Indigenous person, father, husband, musician, and activist. Art has been central to Davidson’s journey: “Since the almost complete destruction of our spirit, our disconnection from our values and beliefs, it is the art that is bringing us back to our roots” (n.d.).

Robert Davidson’s life, art, and worldview will no doubt resonate with and prove inspirational to students in classes in a range of disciplines. Viewed together, Meddle and Haida Modern could not fail to spark meaningful classroom conversations about creative processes, traditions and innovations, and the role of the artist as activist. Whether or not a class is specifically focused on Indigenous art practices, these two films have much to contribute to courses in the disciplines of art history, studio art, film studies, counseling and psychology, environmental studies, and Canadian and American history.

Departing somewhat from these first two films that center on Haida artists, the third film reviewed here functions more as a survey text on contemporary Indigenous art in North America. Native Art Now! was produced to accompany a large-scale exhibition of contemporary Native American art held at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 2017. For more than thirty years, the Eiteljorg Museum has hosted a prestigious fellowship in Native American art, providing critical support to emerging artists and scholars of the field. The film pieces together excerpts of interviews with dozens of artists, curators, historians, and collectors as they seek to elucidate the major themes that have emerged in contemporary Native American art since the “Columbian Quincentennial” of 1992. Not surprisingly, many of the themes that are traced in the documentaries on Robert Davidson and Michael Yahgulanaas are echoed here: reflections on creativity and inspiration, materials and process, Indigenous sovereignty, and the legacies of colonialism surface again and again in Native Art Now! Unlike the two films discussed previously, however, this one not only includes but foregrounds the voices, perspectives, and experiences of women artists.

Given that Native Art Now! is constructed entirely from short excerpts of interviews with many people, it lacks the narrative coherence of either Meddle or Haida Modern. Without a through-line, and with only an occasional title card to suggest transitions from one topic to another, Native Art Now! functions best as an introduction to key issues. The exhibition’s companion publication, Native Art Now!, can provide some of the contextual framework that the film does not, along with more information on the artists and works shown in the film. The strength of this film lies in the number and variety of creative practices that it illuminates for its audience. Viewing the works and listening to the words of so many gifted artists, it is easy to understand just what Robert Davidson meant when he said in Haida Modern, “Whatever we can imagine, we can create” (76:45).

Kate Morris is Executive Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at University of Oregon, after holding a position as professor of art history at Santa Clara University. She is past president of the Native American Arts Studies Association and the author of a number of works on contemporary Indigenous arts in the United States and Canada including Shifting Grounds: Landscape in Contemporary Native American Art (University of Washington Press, 2019).