Dreaming of the Ghost Dance Shirts

acrylic on canvas, 1997, 60” x 48”

 

Joane Cardinal-Schubert (Blackfoot) is a multi-media, visual and installation artist, writer, lecturer, curator and director of film & video. She received her BFA from the University of Calgary , Canada . Her work has been exhibited internationally in Sweden, Great Britain, Japan, Korea, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, North and South America. She was awarded the Commemorative Medal of Canada for her contributions to the Arts. Cardinal-Schubert is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art.

 

Dreaming of the Ghost Dance Shirts with its pictograph style images and images of bullet holes shot through the hide, makes reference to the Ghost Dance Shirts of the 1890s. This work reflects on the effects that the opening of the west to white settlement would have on Native people over the next decades. In the Ghost Dance ceremony indigenous people danced for the return of their dead relatives and the buffalo. The shirts they wore were painted with power symbols and were supposed to protect the dancers from being shot.

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