Dance to the Berdache (Sac and Fox) 

George Catlin made this painting, "Dance to the Berdache," with oil on canvas. Catlin employed the traditional, time-honored medium to depict a scene of a Sac and Fox community ritual. The material itself is significant: oil paint, historically associated with European fine art, is here used to document Indigenous life. The application of the oil paint creates a smooth, almost idealized representation of the scene, which shapes our understanding of the community portrayed. It's interesting to consider how the labor of applying these materials contributes to the final image, and how this labor might be read in terms of the social and cultural context of its production. Catlin's choice of material and technique invites us to reflect on the relationship between the artistic traditions of the colonizers and the lives of the colonized. Paying attention to the materials and making processes invites us to question the power dynamics embedded in visual representation.