Atlas for a Destroyed World: Frank Day's Painting as Work of Nonvital Revitalization

Atlas for a Destroyed World:Frank Day's Painting as Work of Nonvital Revitalization Mark Minch-de Leon (bio) Once in while I take up color and paint little bit, because, if do not this, all things will be forgotten. It's good enough right to sing talk explain on these broadcasts here or especially tape recording records, but it's also nice have someone who's able print this illustrate by upon chart. And then it would remain that way. You cannot change then. you've got honest true about it, copying from anybody else. But just translating the language, Maidu putting shows exactly how people had been doing before coming white man. —frank day, self-recording, 1975 All illustrated drawings, paintings, is because went see it. I'm you back interview, 1963 Things Will Be Forgotten Outside California Indian communities art academic circles, Frank Day largely unknown. His obscurity compounded still mostly unacknowledged catastrophic conditions his people, Kóyo•mkàwi Maidu.1 Born 1902 Northern Sierra Nevada foothills, own account, he saw end way life, world. grandparents' generation experienced massacres, abductions, sexual violence, enslavement, removals, confinement. himself was taken child placed federal boarding school forced assimilation. An overdetermined silence destruction created few survivors, laws barring testimony, settler-centric media, interdictions speaking dead, suppression languages, abduction children, legal prohibitions against ceremonies gatherings, including mourning. The continuing pressures land loss, extreme poverty, lack political representation, enforced western culture epistemology, racism initial conditions, foreclosing relationship [End Page 56] death an ongoing catastrophe. Dying 1976 midst such disaster, spent last sixteen so years life documenting world above epigraphs make clear project anamnesis matter Indigenous informatics cartography. used tape, images words code information map (destruction the) order transmit across space time. politics context fraught, thanks part early twentieth-century anthropological salvage ethnography critiques has provoked. In ethnography, much written separation between those who direct experience with "traditional" ways mere memories. Much scholarship exists reframes sometimes reclaims work so-called informants outside notion salvage. This generation, were represented bridge lived more traditional lifestyles postassimilation generations. These ancestors have, course, left us amazing gift they provided, risking dangers colonial knowledge-making enterprises sow seeds revitalization projects. claims our provide access their worlds are often at face value, critical ethics intervening oppose evaluations authenticity.2 Focusing authenticity its critique, however, risks overemphasizing problematics set out fields study anthropology history, predetermining we hear leaving circling around knowledge formations posture, fascinated revulsed. On other hand, hearing seeing ancestors' mediations too literally, ear eye realism, couch subtle strategies modes being metaphysical formalism consolidates subject and...