Tactile Epistemologies: Knowing Through Making in the Work of Native American Women Artists

Abstraction is often celebrated as a hallmark of modern Western art, but its origins and expressions reach far deeper and wider. As Sičaŋǧu Lakota artist Dyani White Hawk reminds us, abstraction is a global practice with ancient roots—one that has existed across time, cultures, and continents, and whose full history cannot be understood without looking beyond conventional art histories and centering Indigenous perspectives. Native American art and craft traditions have long engaged with abstraction as a meaningful, complex visual language, woven into ancestral knowledge, ceremonial practice, and material culture. Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa), Natalie Ball (Klamath/Modoc), Kiana Bell (Seminole), Elisa Harkins (Cherokee/Muscogee [Creek]), Erica Lord (Iñupiaq/Athabascan), Sarah Sense (Chitimacha/Choctaw), Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos), Marie Watt (Seneca/German-Scot) and Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) are all artists whose practices span diverse tactile media, including photo-weavings, astroturf collages, beadwork, and basket weaving. Their works reference land, ceremony, kinship, and sovereignty; they honor ancestors and tell stories of resilience, identity, and transformation. Ancestral Edge celebrates the richness of Indigenous artistic traditions and affirms the central role that Native American art and craft play in shaping a more expansive, inclusive understanding of tactile abstraction today.