INSIDE NMAI
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THE WAY BACK HOME A
THE JOURNEYS OF SENECA “CULTURE WORKER” PETER JEMISON BY JAMES RING ADAMS
steel car bridge once crossed the Cattaraugus Creek that separates the Seneca Nation’s Cattaraugus Reservation from the largely non-Native border
hamlet of Irving in western New York state. As a youth, G. Peter Jemison (Seneca, Heron clan) walked across it many times. Then, 15 years ago, the bridge came down. Viewing the gap between the two worlds, Jemison recalls thinking, “Now I am the bridge.” During his long career as an artist, edu- curator and self-described “culture
cator,
worker,” as well as a trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian, Jemison has conveyed Seneca tradition and history to a broad audience. In fact, this summer, one of his paintings is scheduled to join those of other prestigious 20th-century Native art- ists in the exhibition “Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting” on display at the NMAI in New York through the fall of 2021 (see the Fall 2019 issue of American In- dian magazine). But before building a bridge between the Seneca people and the dominant culture, Jemison had to reconnect with his own ancestry. “I had to find my way back to traditional beliefs,” he says.
THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
Although Jemison grew up just outside the Cattaraugus Reservation, his family faced more to the outside world. His surname is that of Mary Jemison, a famous 18th-century Scots-Irish captive who chose to stay with the Seneca eight generations ago. He enrolled in Buffalo State College in New
York state in 1963, spending a semester at the University of Siena in Italy in 1964 to study for a career in art education. The Buffalo cam- pus was across the street from the beaux-arts edifice of the city’s noted Albright-Knox Art Gallery, where he spent many afternoons.
40 AMERICAN INDIAN SUMMER 2020
Riderless Horse. Peter Jemison painted “Riderless Horse” in 1978, when he was living on the Allegany Reservation and heading the Seneca Nation Organization for the Visual Arts. By the late summer, he had moved to New York City to become the director of the American Indian Community House Gallery. He says, “It opened a whole new chapter in my life.”
“Riderless Horse,” G. Peter Jemison (Seneca), 1978, framed, mixed media on canvas board, 24" x 20".
PHOTO BY ANDY OLENICK
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