VIS 126HN: Native American Arts of California and the Pacific Northwest: Finding Background Information

This comprehensive reference text covers the often misunderstood area of aesthetics, anthropology and mythology within tribal or indigenous non-Western art. Including hundreds of entries and illustrations, it includes art from the cultures and tribal kingdoms of: Nigeria, Australia, Indonesia and Polynesia, Western and Central Africa, Canada and Alaska, and the continental United States.

An innovative survey of Native North American art history which fully incorporates substantive new research and scholarship, and examines such issues as gender, representation, the colonial encounter, and contemporary arts. By encompassing both the sacred and secular, political and domestic,the ceremonial and commercial, it shows the importance of the visual arts in maintaining the integrity of spiritual, social , political, and economic systems within Native North American societies.This exciting new investigation explores the indigenous arts of the US and Canada from the early pre-contact period to the present day, stressing the conceptual and iconographic continuities over five centuries and across an immensely diverse range of regions.