The New Deal represents a critical period in the development of American Indian art. Shifts in policy created opportunities for American Indians to study art, and New Deal commissions for murals in post offices and other public spaces enabled artists to develop skills, establish their reputations, and make a living. American Indian artists also faced challenges in the form of dominant expectations for Native art and paternalism from officials and administrators. The benefits of New Deal commissions and the struggles with their limitations nonetheless formed a foundation for subsequent generations of Native artists who claimed more control over their art.

Together, the articles in this special issue of the American Indian Culture and Research Journal offer a discussion of how Indigenous peoples have represented themselves and their communities in different periods and contexts, as well as through various media. Ranging across anthropology, art history, cartography, film studies, history, and literature, the authors examine how Native people negotiate with prominent images and ideas that represented Indians in the dominant culture and society in the United States and the Americas. These essays go beyond the problems of cultural appropriation by non-Indians to probe the myriad ways Native Americans and Indigenous people have challenged, reinforced, shifted, and overturned those representations.