Two kinds of contribution
Apache people have contributed to American culture through both visual art and the written word, often in ways that are different from what readers expect. This article looks at a few well-documented examples and at what each kind of work gives readers and viewers. It avoids long lists, because tribal affiliation and authorship are easy to get wrong, and it does not claim that any person speaks for all Apache communities.
Allan Houser
Allan Houser, born Allan Haozous in Oklahoma in 1914, is among the best-known Apache artists. He was Chiricahua Apache, and his parents were part of the Chiricahua group that had been held as prisoners of war. He trained in painting at the Santa Fe Indian School in the 1930s, where the studio there encouraged a particular flat, stylized approach to Native painting, and he later became better known as a sculptor. His works in stone, bronze and other media were exhibited widely and are held in museums, and he also taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, helping to shape a generation of younger Native artists. He died in 1994.
What his career contributes is largely a demonstration that Native art could be modern, formal and ambitious without being tied to the expected “traditional” look. Critics and curators often describe his work as combining Native subjects with modern sculptural ideas. His career also runs through the history of the Chiricahua after 1913, which is a reminder that individual artists carry the history of their communities with them.
Bob Haozous and the next generation
Bob Haozous, Allan Houser’s son, is a sculptor, and his work is often described by museums and critics as direct and socially engaged. He is a good example of how Apache artists are not limited to one approach: where one generation explored form, another uses the same medium for pointed commentary. Beyond the Haozous family, many Apache painters, printmakers, photographers and installation artists are working today, and their own websites and the nations’ cultural programs are the best places to find current work.
Writing shaped by many hands
The written record of Apache history is complicated because many of the best-known books were not written alone by Apache authors. Geronimo’s Story of His Life, published in 1906, was recorded and edited by S. M. Barrett, with Asa Daklugie, a Chiricahua man, interpreting. It is a valuable source and it also shows that translation, editing and an editor’s aims shaped the text. Similarly, Indeh: An Apache Odyssey, published in 1980, was compiled by Eve Ball, a non-Apache writer, from conversations with Apache elders. It has been widely read, and its value comes from the voices recorded, though readers should remember it was assembled and framed by an outsider.
These books are part of what makes oral history as evidence a topic worth thinking about: spoken memory can be preserved by writing, but the path from speaker to page affects the result. They contribute something real to American literature, namely a set of firsthand accounts from people whose perspectives were left out of most official records, and they are best read with that framing in mind.
Apache authors today
More recent writing by Apache authors includes histories, memoirs, essays, poetry, children’s books and language materials. Some of this work is published by university presses and regional presses, some by tribal programs, and some appears in anthologies of Native writing. Books by Apache authors are available on a range of topics, and a careful reading list is best built from the nations’ own cultural offices, libraries and bookstores that specialize in Native titles. Apache writing and literature in the Apache languages themselves is a separate subject, tied closely to language programs and to Apache storytelling traditions, and it is a growing field.
This article names few current writers on purpose. Biographical details change, and a mistake about someone’s nation or work would be a real disservice. Readers can search library catalogs by subject headings such as the names of specific Apache nations, and then check the author’s own statements about their affiliation.
What this work adds
Taken together, Apache contributions to literature and art do several things. They counter the idea that Apache people appear only in nineteenth-century history, they provide firsthand perspectives where the record is dominated by army reports and outsider ethnography, and they show wide stylistic range, from carved stone to protest sculpture to published poetry. They also remind readers that Apache communities are plural. A Western Apache writer, a Mescalero painter and a Chiricahua sculptor have different histories, even where they share a language family and certain experiences.