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Arthur Amiotte

Arthur Amiotte, Wounded Knee III. 2001, acrylic and collage on canvas. Gift of Miranda and Robert Donnelley, Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, 2013.30.

The Ghost Dance is a Lakota ritual that involves a ring of dancers hypnotically turning and singing, hands joined. As they gained speed, participants would succumb to joyful visions of ancestral reunion and land restored to its verdant precolonial state. The dance symbolized Indigenous hope and resistance to forced assimilation and precipitated the Wounded Knee Massacre at Pine Ridge Reservation on December 29, 1890. The Ghost Dancers at the top of the composition set the stage for a journey through the land’s history. Framed by newspaper clippings that relate the settler’s narrative of manifest destiny, the landscape is divided by scenes of colonial violence and Native resistance. At its center, portraits memorialize Native American leaders connected to the massacre, including Arthur Amiotte’s great-grandfather, Standing Bear. Using images gathered from a range of historical and contemporary sources, Amiotte tells a story of familial ties, resilience, and resurrection in the face of dispossession and loss.

— Isabella Diefendorf