WAR CLUB: Native Art & Activism

War clubs were instruments of combat, created with the stock of a gun, and used by tribes of the plains and eastern woodlands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Osage mother-son duo, Anita and Yatika Fields, have utilized this weapon as a symbol of resistance through their collaborative, Oklahoma-based project, WAR CLUB. In a series of panels that began in 2017, multi-generational Native artists, scholars, and activists were gathered to discuss issues of social justice for Indigenous communities that are visible through their artwork and practice.

WAR CLUB: Native Art & Activism is the culminating exhibition of Anita and Yatika Fields’s project delving into Native artwork and ephemera from important historical and contemporary moments of resistance. Pointing to the #NoDAPL Movement in 2016 and the Red Power Movement, which was a moment of political protest from the 1960s to the 1980s that included groups like the American Indian Movement and the National Indian Youth Council, this exhibition reveals the fight for cultural sovereignty—one that continues to this day. Experience powerful reminders of these movements, including the logbook from the Occupation of Alcatraz, and see how intergenerational Native artists use their paintings, photography, sculpture, and more as powerful tools to investigate, inform, and empower all in the fight for human rights.

Generously Supported by Tulsa Artist Fellowship