Picasso’s Guernica bursts forth in a jumble of body parts, animals crying out in pain and heavy layers of historical context, created to tell the story of a physical battle. The original oil painting is 11.5 feet tall by 25.5 feet long and can be seen in person at the Reina Sofía Museum, Spain’s national modern and contemporary art center in Madrid. Widely acclaimed as a stunning piece of anti-war propaganda, Picasso’s cubist masterpiece was shunned by art critics and the public when it was unveiled at the World’s Fair in Paris, in 1937. At the time, the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier noted that the painting, “saw only the backs of visitors” who were “repelled by it.” Inspired by the Fascist bombing of the Basque town Gernika during the Spanish Civil War, it was Picasso’s statement on the brutality of war and the fight against Conservative-Nationalism under Gen. Francisco Franco — a topic the public was reluctant to confront until after the war was lost.
Rabbett Before Horses Strickland is a painter from the Red Cliff Ojibwe Nation who, like Picasso, Michelangelo, Rubens and Botticelli, works on a larger-than-life scale. And, like Michelangelo and other classical painters, Strickland invites the viewer into visual stories about the dark and light sides of humanity. A self-taught artist who paints vivid dreams and visions in oil colors using an intricate underpainting of gridwork and pencil, Strickland’s work can be found worldwide, including at his fine art gallery in Bayfield, Wisconsin named Rabbitt, Bird & Bear.
We are in the Forest
Walking into the gallery is a bit like walking into an aquarium, but instead of underwater views of aquatic life, the visitor is invited to experience waterscapes and landscapes that tell old stories that feel new—as if the action is happening right in front of you. Much of his work is allegorical — using visual storytelling and symbols to convey a deeper cultural, or political context that speaks to the present moment. As Strickland explained in an interview with art curator Ken Bloom, “I do not believe in taking the present and putting it into the past or the future. The characters are current, they surround us now, and we are in the forest.”
These windows into the forest show us significant moments from the advent of Ojibwe life here on Turtle Island. We watch from just beyond the edge of the clearing when the mythological hero and trickster Nanabozho turns pebbles into butterflies, and we experience the woodland rhythms as if we are, ourselves, one of the ancient ones bearing witness to the scene. The presence of water and its many colors is honored in every painting — cool blues contrasting with the warm, brown tones of human skin. The work is vital, other-worldly and narrative on a grand scale. Strickland uses the hair on his character’s heads to show which direction the wind is blowing, and adds magnificent antlers to earthly (and unearthly) beings to represent wisdom.
One large painting titled “Right to Consciousness” takes up most of the east wall in the gallery. Strickland added a directive to the title card which reads: “Do not let the lack of film and photographs take away from the fact that there was a genocide.”
Nanabozho. (Photo courtesy of the Rabbit, Bird & Bear Gallery, 2024)
The visitor is pulled into a great tragedy unfolding in front of dark, ominous skies. Tenderly painted Ojibwe children, women and men are under attack, some trampled by a red-headed army of usurpers with swords, young and old kneeling next to the dying, in grief and agony. In the foreground a woman has been decapitated, a usurper dangling her head above her lifeless body by the hair. One of the swordsmen holds a banner which lists bounties for “warrior scalps $200; alive $250; women and children $100; alive $150.” On another banner are the phrases “kill ‘em all, big and small,” and “nits make lice,” direct quotes from a man named John Chivington, a Methodist pastor who also served as a colonel in the Civil War.
On November 29, 1864 Chivington led 700 Colorado Territory volunteers in one of the most heinous atrocities in American military history. Southern Cheyenne leader Black Kettle was camped at Sand Creek along with other Cheyenne and Arapaho allies. Black Kettle was one of the signatories of the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1851 and was an advocate for peace. On the day of the attack, Black Kettle was flying the American flag and the white flag above his lodge. An estimated 148 Cheyenne and Arapaho people — half of them women, children, and infants — were murdered and mutilated by Chivington and his troops.
Afterwards, Chivington claimed the massacre “a great battle,” a characterization that was eventually reversed after a formal investigation found that the Cheyenne did not provoke an attack. Four years later, on November 27, 1868, Black Kettle and his wife, along with 150 others, were murdered at the Washita River in “Indian Territory” by 7th Calvary troops under Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer. The Calvary also declared it a “battle,” even though Black Kettle had signed the Little Arkansas Treaty of 1865, promising “perpetual peace” between the U.S. and the Southern Cheyenne.
Intent is the Hardest to Prove
Strickland’s “Right to Consciousness” could represent the Sand Creek Massacre, or the Washita River Massacre, or perhaps the Massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which occurred on December 29, 1890, when the Lakota leader Big Foot and his band were camped at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation ahead of a winter storm.
Also called a “battle” — 150 to 300 Lakota people were murdered—mostly elders, women and children. The troops involved were given Medals of Honor. At the time, the Lakota were in the throes of assimilation and forced relocation onto reservations — losing access to traditional hunting grounds and becoming reliant on government-issued rations. One year prior to the massacre, the U.S. Congress cut the promised Lakota rations budget. That, combined with the harsh winter and drought of 1889–90, Big Foot and the Lakota were at the brink of starvation.
Detail. (Photo courtesy of the Rabbit, Bird & Bear Gallery, 2024)
According to the United Nations’ definition of genocide and related crimes, the term “genocide” was first used in 1944 by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. The word origins come from the Greek prefix “genos” (race or tribe), and the Latin suffix “cide” (killing). Lemkin developed the term in response to the Nazi’s systematic murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust. Genocide was first recognized as a crime in 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly and codified as an international crime in 1948. The Convention states that “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” fit the definition of a genocide:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
To reach a determination of genocide, “there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The International Court recognizes that intent is hard to prove. “Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group. It is this special intent, or dolus specialis, that makes the crime of genocide so unique.”
Long before the word existed, the act of genocide was used against the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Lakota, Dakota and the Ojibwe, who like most other Native American Nations faced termination and purposeful starvation at the hands of the U.S. Government, such as the Sandy Lake Tragedy, the removal of Ojibwe children to residential boarding “schools” and other acts of violence toward the original people of the Great Lakes.
It is intent that separates military action and retaliatory acts of war from the deliberate physical and spiritual destruction of a people. Clear intent is also what makes Strickland’s “Right to Consciousness” a true representation of genocide, rather than depicting a particular battle or taking sides in a political struggle. It places genocide into the public record, both here and abroad.
And Strickland digs deeper and goes much further than other artists. Amidst the attack, survivors attempt to leave or escape off the edge of the world, moving toward an army of warrior spirits who emerge amidst a bank of clouds. Among them is Nanabozho, who often appears in Strickland’s paintings with the legs and ears of a rabbit — one of Nanabozho’s magical embodiments and spiritual gifts. The arrival of the warrior spirits helps us see that the red-haired usurpers are not just soldiers, but are the intentional conquistadors who impose starvation, cultural destruction, the loss of homelands, assimilation and Christianity on the people.
Strickland’s masterpiece proves that genocide has happened — is happening, in the form of cultural and spiritual warfare. In a television interview the painter said that he created the image as a reminder that genocide exists, even though photographic evidence is often lacking. As the 134th Anniversary of Wounded Knee approaches, the battle for Indigenous people’s right to consciousness, here and across the world, continues to rage. The question remains — will we continue to turn our backs to genocide?
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Featured image: The Right to Consciousness. (Photo courtesy of the Rabbit, Bird & Bear Gallery, 2024)
