I have been touring a number of US museums in the last two weeks in order to prepare exhibits in Saxony, for networking, and for pleasure.

The first tour stop was Oklahoma. I returned to the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at Oklahoma University  in Norman. From my earlier visit, I remembered their vast collection of art on the American West. This section, based on the Eugene B. Adkins collection, combines non-Native American, Native American, and European representations of the West to explain its role in American history as an idea, a symbol, a story, and a sacred place. The collection contains paintings, basketry, pottery, and jewelry. Among the featured artists are Americans and Europeans from the Taos artist tradition, as well as Native American artists such as Fritz Scholder and Harry Fonseca.

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I was also excited to learn about the tradition of brightly colored wood carvings of fantastic animals from Oaxaca, Mexico, the so-called ‘alebrijes,’ especially since our museum in Leipzig currently works on a special exhibition about mythical and fantastic animals throughout the world:

Particularly fascinating was the temporary exhibit “Misunderstood! Indigenous Art and Poetry as Political Resistance”. It featured political cartoons, poetry, drawings, and paintings. Topics ranged from the Red Power movement, representation and racist stereotypes, to contemporary politics.

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I also took the chance to visit the 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma City. The 45th was a National Guard unit in the Southwest, formed in the 1920s. During World War II, it consisted of c. one third Native American soldiers. They landed in Italy in 1943, and again in southern France in August 1944, before moving through southwest Germany and liberating Dachau concentration camp and Munich in April 1945. The division then served in the Korean War and the early phases of Vietnam.

Notably, the unit at first used shoulder patches showing a yellow swastika on red to represent a pan-tribal spiritual symbol, abandoning its use to dissociate from Nazi symbolism in 1939, in favor of the Thunderbird, another pan-tribal symbol.

Two Native American soldiers, Ernest Childers (Muskogee/Creek) and Jack C. Montgomery (Cherokee), were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor during the Italy campaign 1943. The 45th Infantry Division, or “Thunderbirds”, is a vivid example of the role of modern military service for self-determined and renewed military traditions and group identity among Native American communities.