The Indigenous Observer: Europeans in Native North American Plains’ Visual Cultures

The Brazilian journal Cadernos de Arte e Antropologia (2025:14) has finally published my article on representations of European in Native art from the Great Plains! I aim to continue on this vein with more studies about this subject because they have the potential to unlock previously unexplored facets of visual culture. Published studies about Native North American representations of Europeans have mostly concentrated on exogenous influences on Indigenous visual expressions through art historical theories and methods. Here historical Native American imagery of colonists is contextualised in local visual cultures based on principles and cultural logics that challenge received knowledge about portraiture, naturalism, likeness, and individualization. The article argues that formalist interpretations of Indigenous portraits of Europeans made by Plains Native peoples fall short of understanding the motivations, functions, and reasoning applied by Indigenous observers to different types of representations. Based on what is currently known of Native North American Plains Native peoples, this account of three different typologies of portraits made between the 18^th and mid-19^th c. presents an unprecedented interpretation of non-Western visual cultures that combine art history and visual anthropology.