In recent years, there has been greater awareness of the need to recast American history by including the stories of this nation’s original inhabitants. Museums have… 1,290 more words
About Barbara Crane Navarro - Rainforest Art Project
I'm a French artist living near Paris.
From 1968 to 1973 I studied at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, then at the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California, for my BFA.
My work for many decades has been informed and inspired by time spent with indigenous communities. Various study trips devoted to the exploration of techniques and natural pigments took me originally to the Dogon of Mali, West Africa, and subsequently to Yanomami communities in Venezuela and Brazil.
Over many years, during the winters, I studied the techniques of traditional Bogolan painting. Hand woven fabric is dyed with boiled bark from the Wolo tree or crushed leaves from other trees, then painted with mud from the Niger river which oxidizes in contact with the dye.
Through the Dogon and the Yanomami, my interest in the multiplicity of techniques and supports for aesthetic expression influenced my artistic practice. The voyages to the Amazon Rainforest have informed several series of paintings created while living among the Yanomami. The support used is roughly woven canvas prepared with acrylic medium then textured with a mixture of sand from the river bank and lava. This supple canvas is then rolled and transported on expeditions into the forest. They are then painted using a mixture of acrylic colors and Achiote and Genipap, the vegetal pigments used by the Yanomami for their ritual body paintings and on practical and shamanic implements.
My concern for the ongoing devastation of the Amazon Rainforest has inspired my films and installation projects. Since 2005, I've created a perfomance and film project - Fire Sculpture - to bring urgent attention to Rainforest issues. To protest against the continuing destruction, I've publicly set fire to my totemic sculptures. These burning sculptures symbolize the degradation of nature and the annihilation of indigenous cultures that depend on the forest for their survival.
The situation concerning Native American history is much more complex than Ned Blackhawk makes out. Perhaps it is because Ned comes from a tribe, which was traditionally hunter-gatherers, living in small, transient villages. I am Creek and was Architect of the Trail of Tears Memorial in Tulsa, OK. My ancestors were agriculturalists, who lived in large planned towns with large public buildings. Most people don’ t know this, but we had a writing system, capable of transmitting complex thoughts. We also knew advanced mathematics, such as trigonometry, which enabled our land surveyors to be much more accurate than 18th century British land surveyors. That being said . . . several of the larger “hunting” tribes, in particular, the Cherokees are trying to force fake history down people’s throats. In other words, there is not a single version of Native American history. Just because an indigenous American makes a statement, does not mean it is true . . . or even oral knowledge passed down by the generations. It could well be caca de toro concocted recently to support some political agenda.
I have traveled on foot and in a Jeep in Central America and southern Mexico, but not in the Amazon. The problem of whites or Africans on a political agenda can be found in several locations in the Americas. We also see white academicians creating fake Native American history, which flatters Native Americans so they will give the professors more research contracts. Within a few years, everyone in the tribe thinks that the history is factual, because a professor said so!
Barbara Crane Navarro 
The situation concerning Native American history is much more complex than Ned Blackhawk makes out. Perhaps it is because Ned comes from a tribe, which was traditionally hunter-gatherers, living in small, transient villages. I am Creek and was Architect of the Trail of Tears Memorial in Tulsa, OK. My ancestors were agriculturalists, who lived in large planned towns with large public buildings. Most people don’ t know this, but we had a writing system, capable of transmitting complex thoughts. We also knew advanced mathematics, such as trigonometry, which enabled our land surveyors to be much more accurate than 18th century British land surveyors. That being said . . . several of the larger “hunting” tribes, in particular, the Cherokees are trying to force fake history down people’s throats. In other words, there is not a single version of Native American history. Just because an indigenous American makes a statement, does not mean it is true . . . or even oral knowledge passed down by the generations. It could well be caca de toro concocted recently to support some political agenda.
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Thank you so much for sharing this fascinating information with me. I’ve only seen it in photos, but the Trail of Tears Memorial in Tulsa is extraordinary.
I know more about hunter-gatherer communities, like the Yanomami, Baniwa, Piaroa and others in Venezuela, Brazil and “French” Guiana.
On the subject you evoke of personal or political agendas, I’ve been concerned about the apparently self-interested agenda of people who have been representing the NGO Survival International (and Survival France) “on behalf of Indigenous peoples” for decades. I wrote a blog about my experience with this:
https://barbara-navarro.com/2023/02/22/21st-century-colonialism-implemented-by-corporations-and-ngos-whose-survival-is-at-stake-here-survival-the-survival-of-the-rainforests-and-indigenous-peoples-or-of-cartier-and-others-in-t-4/
I’d be interested in knowing your thoughts, if you have time to consider this issue.
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I have traveled on foot and in a Jeep in Central America and southern Mexico, but not in the Amazon. The problem of whites or Africans on a political agenda can be found in several locations in the Americas. We also see white academicians creating fake Native American history, which flatters Native Americans so they will give the professors more research contracts. Within a few years, everyone in the tribe thinks that the history is factual, because a professor said so!
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The very notion of “anthropology” and “ethnology” seems inherently colonial.
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