The Power of Funny: Indigenous High Art as Quiescence and Rebellion

In 2006 ApsáalookeApsáalooke artistQuiescence Wendy RedRed Star, Wendy StarHigh Art released a print entitled The Last Thanks. Reminiscent of da Vinci’s The Last Supper, the piece features Red Star (in a traditional elk tooth dress) seated amid plastic skeletons wearing stereotypical Native headdresses at a table littered with unhealthy, prepackaged food. The piece calls to mind popular, celebratory images of the first Thanksgiving, confronting its audience with the genocidal legacy of the arrival of non-Native peopleNative people on the North American continent. The Last Thanks uses funny imagery to address this history with a message of looking toward the future with resilience while realistically confronting the horrors of the past. This research analyzes the rhetoric of Red Star’s work and explores the precedent for Native artists using humor to cultivate resilience in the face of aggressionAggression. We explore the humorous rhetorical tropes within the image and the implications of the choice to express the message in a high artHigh Art format, lending itself to an extra-cultural audience for a jarring and subversive effect. Ultimately, we address the effect of Native humor on non-Native audiences and the ability of humor to celebrate—and indeed flaunt—strength in the face of oppression.