myself an artist who chooses the medium that best expresses a statement.” A member of the Eastern Band of Chero-
kee Indians, Goshorn worked at her tribe’s Qualla Arts and Crafts Cooperative in Chero- kee, North Carolina, as a teenager. There, she photographed Cherokee basket makers
as
they gathered and prepared materials such as white oak, river cane and honeysuckle. Later, as a young art school graduate, she was commissioned by the Indian Arts and Crafts Board to document in pen-and-ink drawings a number of traditional Cherokee basketry designs. Through studying and drawing the designs, she gained an understanding of their geometry and rhythms and, decades later, she taught herself to weave. In the 1980s and 1990s, she earned recog-
nition for hand-tinted photographs in which she overlaid portraits of American Indians in traditional regalia with images of the forests,
mountains and fields of their homelands. She went on to work in other media, including paint, metals and glass. However, not until 2008 did she begin drawing upon her knowl- edge of Cherokee basket weaving. Goshorn concluded that a basket’s familiar
form, intricate patterns and intriguing imag- ery would be a perfect artform to draw view- ers in and open them up to think about dif- ficult subjects. So in place of traditional plant materials, Goshorn wove together strips of archival watercolor paper printed with text or with reproductions of historical photographs, maps, treaties or other documents. She used these materials to address topics such as vio- lence against Native women, repatriation of human remains and sacred objects, loss of Indigenous lands as well as the traumatic im- pacts of American Indian boarding schools. In 1879, Captain Richard Henry Pratt es- tablished the Carlisle Indian Industrial School,
a military-style boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He separated American Indian children from their homes, families and com- munities and brought them to the school with the goal of assimilating them into mainstream society. When children arrived at the school, their hair was cut short and their Native cloth- ing was replaced with military-style uniforms. Pratt commissioned photographer John N. Choate to document the children’s physi- cal transformation and what he considered Carlisle’s success in its mission to “civilize” them. The “before and after” photographs dramatically show the result. In a further effort to strip the children of their culture and their Native identity, school authorities and teachers
forbade them to speak their
tribal languages or practice their cultural traditions and harshly punished them for doing so. Carlisle, and the many Indian board- ing schools modeled after it in the late 19th
Shan Goshorn’s “Resisting the Mission; Filling the Silence” baskets show Native children who were taken from their families to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. The first basket in each pair shows the children in their traditional dress upon arrival at the school; the second shows them some time later in uniform and with their hair cut short. Each basket is 21" x 6.75" x 6.75". NMAI purchase. 27/0219
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 27
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