A total of 151 Indigenous American craftworks, photographs and paintings, all hailing from the Denver Art Museum's collection, have been brought to the National Museum of Korea in central Seoul as part of its latest exhibition — titled "Stories of the People Whom We Once Called Indians" in Korean and "Cultures and Histories of Indigenous Peoples in North America" in English. Yonhap

The National Museum of Korea in central Seoul has chosen a strikingly forthright Korean title for its latest exhibition: “Stories of the People Whom We Once Called Indians.”

Co-organized with the Denver Art Museum (DAM) in Colorado, the show adopts a much-needed revisionary lens toward the Indigenous peoples of North America as the first event of its kind staged in the country.

Visitors are offered a glimpse into the living cultures of 43 Indigenous American tribes — out of over 570 federally recognized in the continental United States alone — through works that go well beyond the popular imagery of feathered headdresses, tipis and grossly misrepresented fragments of history.

All 151 craftworks, photographs and paintings on display hail from the DAM's encyclopedic collection. As one of the first art institutions in the U.S. to start collecting Indigenous art of the region a century ago, the museum today houses more than 18,000 objects embodying creative traditions from ancestral times to the present.

A set of eye-dazzling late 19th-century wool blankets woven by artists from the Navajo Nation in New Mexico and Arizona / Yonhap

“Our museum has collected works to show the living, breathing cultures of Native people at every moment in time. I think that's one thing that makes a difference between the works of the Denver Art Museum and perhaps the anthropological collections,” noted its assistant curator Dakota Hoska, who is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

The exhibition's first section paints a broad picture of centuries-old Indigenous tribes' crafts and customs, highlighting their deep communion with the all-giving nature — be it the open grasslands of the Great Plains or the icy Arctic.

Among the intricate everyday handiworks are a cradleboard, or a portable baby-carrier that can be attached to horseback (Kiowa); an antler-made flesher used to prepare buffalo hides (Cheyenne); an eye-dazzling wool blanket (Navajo); a ceremonial parka made from walrus intestine and crested auklet feathers (Inupiaq), a box crafted from porcupine quills (Mi'kmaq); and an eagle-feathered headdress (Nez Perce).

A pigmented tipi that is presumed to have been crafted by Standing Bear from the Minneconjou Lakota around 1880 / Yonhap

An eagle-feathered headdress from the Nez Perce Tribe stands in the center of the exhibition hall at the National Museum of Korea. Yonhap

Presented together, these objects dispel myths about a monolithic Indigenous genre of art and instead spotlight the wonderfully diverse material cultures and worldviews of each tribe throughout time.

“It really takes into account that we are not dealing with one homogenous culture here. Rather, we have, under the umbrella of Indigenous peoples, many different cultures and ways of expressing the important things in life — child-rearing, rituals and the relationship between earth and a world of transcendence,” said Christoph Heinrich, director of the DAM.

Fritz Scholder's "Indian Power" (1972) on view at the National Museum of Korea / Yonhap

But the show's strength lies in its second section — a chapter dedicated to how Native Americans were perceived through the changing gaze of European settlers, as well as how these populations came to reclaim their identities through the lens of modern and contemporary art.

The stereotypical imagery of Indigenous people, especially during the 19th century, was twofold: the noble and the ignoble.

Early oil paintings and photographs by documentarians like Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) often romanticized Indigenous communities, rendering them as stoic, noble yet primitive beings whose cultures were on the verge of dying. Such depictions overlooked the fraught political history that shaped their layered identities at the time, instead confining them to an idealized past that no longer existed.

On the other hand, the ignoble image reduced them to animalistic, menacing and perverse savages who obstructed settlers' westward expansion in America, thus contributing to seismic historical turning points like the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn and the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre.

Edward S. Curtis' "The blanket Weaver, Navaho" (1905) / Courtesy of Denver Art Museum, National Museum of Korea

Toward the end, the exhibition turns into a stage for Indigenous artists of the 20th and 21st centuries to express their multifaceted selfhoods.

James Luna's (1950-2018) “Half Indian / Half Mexican” (1991) addresses the fundamental struggles he has had with his own racial identity through black-and-white self-portraits.

James Luna's "Half Indian / Half Mexican" (1991) / Courtesy of Denver Art Museum, National Museum of Korea

“Kill the Indian, Save the Man, Save the Indian, Kill the Man” (2016) by Gregg Deal shows a father and son from the Pawnee Nation, the former in traditional garments and the latter in a suit, against the backdrop of the American flag. The painting highlights the U.S. government's attempts to forcefully acculturate the Indigenous population into mainstream American society, which have incited identity crises and generational rifts over what it means to “look Indian.”

And Fritz Scholder's (1937-2005) “Seated Indian with Rifle” (1976) appropriates the image of a Native person in a 19th-century painting depicted as an aggressor against a white settler. He intentionally removes the figure from the entire original context on his own canvas and instead places him in a vivid pink void. The result pushes viewers to reconsider the character's role beyond long-perpetuated stereotypes.

"Kill the Indian, Save the Man, Save the Indian, Kill the Man" (2016), right, by Gregg Deal depicts a father and son from the Pawnee Nation, the former in traditional garments and the latter in a suit, against the backdrop of the American flag. The painting visually encapsulates identity crises and generational rifts present among the Indigenous people over what it means to "look Indian." Newsis

Andy Warhol's "The American Indian: Russell Means" (1976), left, is displayed alongside Fritz Scholder's "Seated Indian with Rifle" (1976) at the National Museum of Korea. Yonhap

“It's incredibly exciting and meaningful to have this direct dialogue between the first and second parts [of the show], where you step from Indigenous cultures into a reflection of the Western and American painters on these cultures,” Heinrich remarked. “In our museum, this happens on two very different floors, far away from each other.”

“Stories of the People Whom We Once Called Indians,” or “Cultures and Histories of Indigenous Peoples in North America” in English, runs through Oct. 9 at the NMK. After its Seoul run, the exhibition will travel to the Busan Museum of Art.