Earth Diplomacy – Jessica L Horton

In Earth Diplomacy, Jessica L. Horton reveals how Native American art in the mid-twentieth century mobilized Indigenous cultures of diplomacy to place the earth itself at the center of international relations. She focuses on a group of artists, including Pablita Velarde, Darryl Blackman, and Oscar Howe, who participated in exhibitions and lectures abroad as part of the United States’s Cold War cultural propaganda. Horton emphasizes how their art modeled a radical alternative to dominant forms of statecraft, a practice she calls “earth diplomacy”: a response to extractive colonial capitalism grounded in Native ideas of deep reciprocal relationships between humans and other beings that govern the world. Horton draws on extensive archival research and oral histories as well as analyses of Indigenous creative work, including paintings, textiles, tipis, adornment, and artistic demonstrations. By interweaving diplomacy, ecology, and art history, Horton advances Indigenous frameworks of reciprocity with all beings in the cosmos as a path to transforming our broken system of global politics.

Praise

“Jessica L. Horton persuasively shows how the lectures, teaching, performances, and works of Native American artists can be seen as a continuation of deep traditions of ‘earth diplomacy’ through which Indigenous peoples have long affirmed the reciprocal relationships between humans and nonhumans. Designed to maintain and restore harmony and peace, these political and spiritual practices through art constitute diplomacy in its most essential sense. Horton’s highly original intervention is particularly powerful in the present moment, as we grapple with environmental collapse.” – Ruth B. Phillips, author of Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums

“Jessica L. Horton offers a significant rupture to conventional art historical discourse in relation to the roles played by Indigenous artists during a pivotal twenty-year period during the Cold War. By shifting analysis outside of a governmental and colonially structured understanding, Horton brings much-needed attention to other methods of understanding diplomacy that respectfully and responsibly narrate Indigenous arts and artists in agential ways. With her impressive engagement with archival materials and artworks, Horton makes an important contribution to the literature of Indigenous art history.” – Carmen L. Robertson, author of Mythologizing Norval Morrisseau: Art and the Colonial Narrative in the Canadian Media