Wendy Red Star Takes Columbus Museum Of Art Visitors To The Apsáalooke Reservation

Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke (Crow), b. 1981) wanted to be a horse trainer. Becoming her generation’s most prominent Native American artist wasn’t a consideration.

She loved horses and couldn’t draw.

When Red Star left the Apsáalooke Reservation in southern Montana where she was born and raised to go to college–Montana State University in Bozeman–she selected the school based on its proximity to home. She wanted to take classes close enough where she could trailer her horses. A portfolio did not accompany Red Star as she set out to make her mark on the world, but her horses did.

“I had a horrible time in my high school art class because it focused on realistic drawing and I really had a hard time,” Red Star told Forbes.com. “I thought, ‘if this is what art is, then I certainly can’t do it.’”

She credits her MSU professors with encouraging her to believe she could do it.

“I enrolled in graphic design and as part of graphic design, you had to take some core art classes,” Red Star remembers. “I had taken a 3-D art class and that’s when I was exposed to all these new mediums, not just bronze sculptures of elk, but actual conceptual works and that’s when I was like, ‘oh, there’s something here for me. There’s something that I can work with here.’”

Work with it she has.

Red Star has gone on to produce a stunning archive of photography, textiles and mixed media installations exploring themes of Apsáalooke history, the indigenous roots of feminism and contemporary life on the reservation. Her work has become a fixture inside America’s most prestigious art museums, rarified space for any artist, let alone a female Native American artist.

The latest example, “Wendy Red Star: A Scratch on the Earth,” a retrospective on view at the Columbus Museum of Art through September 3, 2023. The most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date, the show features more than 40 items highlighting 15 years of her studio practice.

Included are her now-iconic Four Seasons photographic self-portraits from 2006 which planted Red Star’s flag firmly among the vanguard of American contemporary art while she was still in her mid-20s, and 2017’s Diplomats of the Crow Nation photo-text pieces offering most audiences a completely new way of seeing historic photographs of Indigenous people.

“A Scratch on the Earth” features a new project as well, and what can’t be seen in Monsters may be as interesting as what can be.

The Little People

Co-directed by Red Star and Amelia Winger Bearskin (Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma), Monsters is a five-minute video screened in a simulated sweat lodge documenting the Montana landscape near the Apsáalooke Reservation. Utilizing a cutting edge 360-degree camera which can produce “surround video,” viewers become immersed in aspects of Crow mythology related to the land.

Bearskin provided the technical know-how, Red Star the concept. Red Star sought a return to the reservation to investigate a legend.

“I always grew up hearing about the Little People, and the Little People have a sacred rock there–a bolder–it’s called Prayer Rock,” Red Star said.

This specific area is near Pryor, MT where Red Star lived.

“They’re protectors of the Apsáalooke, but also, you don’t mess with them,” Red Star explained of the little people, also referred to as Nirumbee or Awwakkulé, which translates into “keepers of the land.” “Sometimes, people don’t even like to talk about them. It’s a fearful respect, and part of showing them respect is going to that rock and leaving offerings. We leave money and beads and all sorts of things, but they’ve always been our protectors and they actually show up in some of the oral stories of our enemy tribes who won’t go near that place because they ended up getting in trouble.”

Enemy tribes weren’t the only ones to find trouble near Prayer Rock.

Developers blew a hole through it in the early 1900s so they could run a train from Billings through the mountain to Cody, WY increasing access to nearby Yellowstone National Park. Buffalo Bill Cody, that town’s namesake, was a backer.

The venture went bankrupt not long after opening; the train kept having mechanical trouble passing through the reservation, particularly that tunnel.

Red Star and Bearskin decided to visit the area with their 360-degree camera.

“We captured all this amazing footage, and it’s deeply personal footage,” Red Star said. “We actually got close to where they say the Little People live, we were on the railroad tracks.”

Being that the camera films in 360-degrees, the filmmakers must vacate the surroundings where the device is placed to avoid being in the shot.

“We would walk off in the distance and hide behind rocks or trees or whatever, so we went and hid and then let it shoot for a few minutes,” Red Star remembers. “Then we came walking back and one of the dogs (along with them) started barking uncontrollably. We were looking where it was looking and we could see nothing, but it was one of those moments where your hair stands on end and it was right by the cave and there was nothing, so we quickly gathered that stuff up and left and we walked as fast as we could.”

The state-of-the-art camera requires footage being uploaded to the cloud for storage and processing.

“Amelia did that when she got back and the only footage that didn’t come back from the cloud was that specific footage,” Red Star said. “We decided we need to respect the Little People.”

Instead of trying to expose the them, the film’s focus turned toward respecting the land, in honor of the Little People and how they protect the land.

Sweat Lodge

Visitors view Monsters by entering a faux sweat lodge.

“Sweat lodges are very important to Crow; they have a few different reasons why they use it, and one is a recreational use where sometimes people use it daily and go in and take a sweat,” Red Star said. “Then there are more special, ceremonial uses. Even in recreational use, they still say prayers and there’s a protocol in there, but for me, it’s emerging into that landscape, so when you crawl in, you close the door, and then you’re in these different scenes of this very important landscape.”

While firmly rooted in the past, all of Red Star’s work makes clear that the Apsáalooke and other Indigenous people are contemporary. In addition to incorporating more Native artists in broad-based group shows of contemporary art like she has been, Red Star sees reinforcing contemporaneity as the next step museums must take in improving their representation of Native people.

“Referring to Native people as in the present–contemporary Native artists–I think it’s really important,” she said. “There’s something that always happens within the writing of Native artists’ work that attaches us to the past, instead of letting us be in the present as we are.”

The best opportunity to see the Apsáalooke in the present comes the third week of August during the annual Crow Fair celebration at Crow Agency, MT. The week-long, public event draws tens of thousands of visitors to the largest teepee encampment in the world and numerous other events and activities.

Visit. Learn. Enjoy. Just steer clear of the Little People.