Bunky Echo-Hawk: Activist, Artist, Modern Warrior
After walking through the dimly lit Native American galleries at The Field Museum in Chicago, it’s easy to be shocked by the bright, colorful, solo gallery exhibition “Modern Warrior” by Yakama-Pawnee artist and activist Bunky Echo-Hawk. “Modern Warrior” is a refreshing mix of the old and the new—Echo-Hawk worked with the Field Museum and shed some much needed light on a select amount of traditional Indian pieces collecting dust in the archives—pieces that otherwise would have been left unused and misunderstood. Fusing his hip-hop style with painting, design, a deep understanding of his tribe’s history, and the museum’s artifacts, Echo-Hawk tells the story of life as a modern Indian, breaking down long-standing stereotypes, and calling for social change along the way.
“Modern Warrior” is located in the Webber Gallery, where Echo-Hawk’s self-made hip-hop music plays. The paintings come alive against grey walls with the occasional turquoise or hot pink stripe, tying in with the color scheme for the exhibit’s main advertisement. There is an interactive screen where you can tap on the Indian artifacts Echo-Hawk found in the museum’s archives, and a short film where he paints a piece in front of an audience. He often chooses to paint with groups of people as a means of keeping a tradition of community alive, taking suggestions from the audience on what direction the painting should take. Alaka Wali, an anthropologist, first met Echo-Hawk in 2012, when they started talking about a collaboration for The Field Museum. And now, the gallery has successfully been transformed into a living art space.
First and foremost, Echo-Hawk wants his audiences to know what modern Indians are like. Too many people have the misconception that they are not very involved in the western world. In the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, many young tribal children were forcibly sent to boarding schools where they learned English and were taught to disregard their own cultures as a way of assimilating them into western society. Many traditions were lost during this period. However there are still many tribes with different cultures across the United States, all constantly working to preserve their own understanding of their peoples’ history. Art and activism are Echo-Hawk’s ways of preserving his.
Echo-Hawk does not want to lose his culture, but he also doesn’t want it to plateau. In one of the exhibit’s displays there is a Buffalo Dance whistle, made of horse hair, chicken skin, and cane. It was collected by the museum in 1902 with little context, condemned to an archival grave. Echo-Hawk explains, “The musician who owned this whistle probably composed brand new Pawnee songs. Today we don’t really write new music—we’re in preservation mode. A single Pawnee elder might know a song that predates Christianity. If he dies, that song is lost. I learned the traditional songs but also compose new music. The Pawnee need to thrive, not simply survive.” He wants people to know Indians are no longer what we’ve seen in storybooks or old cowboys versus Indians films—they are as modern as anyone else. By naming the gallery “Modern Warrior,” Echo-Hawk hopes to re-define what it means to be a warrior, on his own terms, and encourages other tribal members to do the same. His trademark look for the gallery, a pair of well worn pants with paint splattered on them, is a physical representation of a “modern warrior,” using the paintbrush as a weapon; using art as a means to enact change.
The only video piece in “Modern Warrior” shows Echo-Hawk’s process for creating the powerful painting called, “Is 1491 on my GPS?” in which he asks the audience questions about their perceptions of Native Americans, as well as evoking responses about racism from minorities in the crowd. He begins by painting an oversized iPhone plugged into a socket. The audience tells him one of the most recognizable images of a Native American is a warrior slumped over his horse. Echo-Hawk paints this warrior riding the phone, as a symbol of the modern Indian remaining “plugged in.” Someone from the crowd suggests writing “#1491” on the phone’s display—the year before Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas. This is a powerful statement, suggesting the Indian warrior is holding on to what is left of his culture, or life before occupation from the western world.
As an activist, Echo-Hawk successfully uses his artwork to fuel important conversations. He wants to destroy harmful stereotypes about Indians. Pop culture has a bad habit of wrongly appropriating Native American clothing, patterns, designs, and other culturally significant items. Popular stores such as Urban Outfitters have used tribal headdresses in advertisements. These headdresses belong to the tribes; they are not a costume or a fashion statement. In his painting called “Pow-wow Ready,” Echo-Hawk painfully illustrates what it means to appropriate—to boil down Indian cultures until they are nothing but a cheap, gimmicky product that can be sold to white consumers. The piece depicts a faux box of traditional Pawnee buffalo horn spoons as plastic. The container is bright green with a vague Indian pattern he found when looking at clip art online. He says, “[The buffalo horn] spoons are sacred to us, but here I painted them cheaply… There’s a Hopi fertility deity, a fake tepee pattern, and Pawnee spoons. Together it means nothing. But that’s exactly what some brands do; they cut and paste Native symbols without caring about what they mean… Native culture is living and vibrant—it’s more than just a trend or design motif.”
Echo-Hawk focuses a lot on Native youth culture in his paintings, delving into deeper, more unsettling truths. Native youths are always going to face the same struggles as their peers, but with the added effects of severe discrimination. His painting “Triple Threat” shows a young Indian man holding a basketball in front of his face—you can only see the intensity of his eyes peering over the ball, his hands tightly gripping it. Echo-Hawk explains: “When basketball players face an opponent in the triple threat position—feet apart, knees flexed, hands on the ball—they have three choices: do a jump shot, dribble, or pass. This painting is about having that choice. Sometimes Native youth feel stuck… I want our young people to see their future from the triple threat position, to see a self-directed future containing choice.”
“Triple Threat” was featured in a collaboration between Echo-Hawk and Nike. He designed a pair of teal sneakers and a t-shirt with “Triple Threat” as an emblem. Echo-Hawk was wary about working with Nike at first saying, “I was skeptical when Nike approached me about their N7 line. I’d heard bad stuff about past labor practices and I didn’t want my integrity questioned. But I was impressed by the N7 philosophy—it’s about considering how your actions impact future generations… N7 funds youth sports programs and supports Native athletes and designers.”
“If Yoda Was An Indian…” is a piece Echo-Hawk has created regarding representation. It depicts Yoda from the Star Wars series wearing a headdress. He describes the painting as empowering, “It might seem kind of cheeky, but deep down there’s another level. In the vast majority of western movies, Natives are the ‘bad guys.’ We always lose! But here’s Yoda—the ultimate good guy—as an Indian. Yoda is a spiritual person, and there’s not many of his kind around. For Native people, it’s an empowering image.”
Echo-Hawk also found a traditional Pawnee drum in the archives made of deer hide and wood. In Pawnee culture, drums are treated as living things. They are considered to be on the same level as elders—respected and revered. He claims, “[These drums] are played at all our ceremonies. I want to acknowledge its spirit and pay my respects. I want to let him speak and hear his own voice. In the museum, this drum is safe… but silent.” When you place an item, whether it be a piece of ancient pottery, jewelry, a drum, or even human remains into a museum, the item is then described forever from the perspective of a rigid, scientific, and anthropologic modern community. It will always be educational and important to preserve these artifacts in institutions such as The Field Museum, but the context has been lost over countless generations.
The idea that the Pawnee drum is now “safe but silent” is mirrored in a story from NPR’s Radiolab about the discovery of a seed jar in Utah. In the episode entitled “Things,” a trio of hikers stumble upon an ancient jar in the middle of the desert. While it is not uncommon to find such artifacts, sell them, or give them to a museum, the hikers decided to leave the seed jar where it was. After arguing for over an hour, they came to the conclusion that if they removed the seed jar from its spot, they would be responsible for its destruction.
We do not know what the seed jar meant to the person who created it. Perhaps it was ceremonial. Perhaps it was for someone’s grave. Perhaps it was just for storing seeds. Removing it from the desert, in Echo-Hawk’s words, is the equivalent of making sure it is “safe but silent.” The idea that something may be “safe but silent” is how we’ve come to know Indian culture in our society. Native American people have become like a pandora’s box of emotion—no one wants to talk about the poverty on reservations, or the government allowing radiation leakage into Navajo territory, or the reality behind the mass genocide of millions of people to create the United States of America.
Since the colonization of North America, native peoples’ histories have been re-written from the hand of the white man. As one of the hikers said about the jar, “The moment we touch that jar, it no longer is part of that story, it’s part of our story.” Echo-Hawk’s activism empowers those whose voices have been silenced. “Modern Warrior” is extremely unique to the Field because it takes the forgotten objects and breathes life into them. Unlike the other dated Native American galleries of headdresses, animal headdresses, animal skins, and instruments that have served their educational purposes in the museum for years, Echo-Hawk’s work paints stories of the past, present, and future.
Through his paintings Echo-Hawk is communicating the importance of change and growth in his own community, the culture of museums, and society at large. Native Americans still need to be heard; their entire history needs to be heard. We need to respect their voices over the sound of institutions talking over them. Bunky Echo-Hawk is determined to make this happen, and it’s one of many reasons why he truly is a modern warrior of his people.
“Modern Warrior” will be on display at The Field Museum in Chicago until June 14th, 2015.
For more information visit www.fieldmuseum.org and www.bunkyechohawk.com
