Where is Mexico in Native American Art Studies?

This paper will examine the state of the field of Native American art studies, paying attention to how its emphasis on the Indigenous cultures of Canada and the United States has resulted in the under-representation of Mexico’s Indigenous arts. The siloing of Native American art and Pre-Columbian art studies have contributed to a geographic division that separates Mexico from the United States and places Mexico’s Indigenous cultures in a pre-contact context. A historiographical assessment of survey-style textbooks, museum exhibitions, and peer-reviewed publications will underscore shifts in the study of Native American art and highlight gaps in the field. By turning to recent scholarship in Mexican and Chicanx art studies, this paper seeks to identify new approaches to expanding the parameters of the Native American art field. The work of ancestral and living artists that defies borders will be illustrated to exemplify the complexity of Indigenous identities. Analysis of the artistic practices of specific communities such as the Kumeyaay, Paipai, and Tohono O’odham of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands will demonstrate how Native American art is not restricted to modern-day geopolitical borders. Drawing upon case studies from the classroom, this paper will show how the understanding of Native American art history can be viewed on Indigenous terms rather than within colonial parameters.