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. Seattle Times, Feb-ruary 7, 2007.http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003560250_lucasobit07e0.html.Frey, Christine. Phil Lucas, 1942 2007: Native American a Teacher in His Films andClassroom. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 7, 2007.http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/302643_obitlucas07.html.Lucas, Phil. Images of Indians. Four Winds: The International Forum for Native Ameri-can Art, Literature, and History (Autumn 1980): 69 77. Phil Lucas, Award-winning Choctaw Filmmaker, Dies. Indianz.com, February 7, 2007.[Reprint of Bach, 2007].http://www.indianz.com/News/2007/000785.asp.LUNA, JAMESBORN 1950 LUISEÑOPERFORMANCE ARTISTWith a daring sense of conception and cultural irony, performance artist JamesLuna has shaken up the world of Native American art.Having been called one ofthe most dangerous Indians alive, Luna replies: At times the message can be po-tent.One of my subjects is with ethnic identity how people perceive us and howwe perceive ourselves.Not everybody can talk about that, so I guess that makesme a dangerous character (Fletcher, 2008).Luna s work confronts and challenges commonly held stereotypes about Na-tive Americans, museums, art, and life, and does it with irony, humor, sorrow, anda strong sense of story-telling in motion ( James Luna, 2004).Much of Luna swork is bicultural (tricultural, if one includes his Latino heritage), and he is com-fortable with it: I m a man of two worlds [and] I do it with ease, he has said(Durland, 1998).Early LifeLuna was born in 1950 in Orange, California.His mother was Luiseño and hisfather Mexican.Luna graduated in 1976 with a BA in art from the Universityof California Irvine at a time when that school s art faculty and students wereknown for their daring approaches to conceptual and performance art.In 1983, Luna, James | 161Luna earned a master s degree in counseling at San Diego State University.He haslong worked as a counselor at Palomar College, San Marcos.He can be critical of other artists: In college, Luna said, I didn t go to a lot ofshows and I didn t hang out with the art crowd (Durland, 1998).He took the jobas a counselor for financial security unavailable to most artists, and also to givehim a connection to people outside the world of art, which he sometimes findsrather removed from reality.In the mid-1980s, Luna went into semiseclusion.In 1986, however, David Avalos,curator at San Diego s Centro de la Raza and Philip Brookman realized the potentialof Luna s work, providing financial support and a studio.Expanding His Range of ExpressionLuna began his artistic life as a painter.With painting, however, he felt confined,unable to express emotions.Painting also limited his ability to express transition,or motion.Luna has said that he stumbled into performance art while work-ing with instructors Bas Jan Ader (from the Netherlands) and Jim Turrell at UCIrvine.Luna quickly expanded his range of expression to the design, installation,and performance of work that may include several media, including video, to chal-lenge cultural and historical assumptions about Native Americans.While painting usually involves an audience in a passive way, Luna enjoysperformance art because the audience takes part in the act of expression with him. I involve the audience, Luna said in an interview. People give you control oftheir imagination.I can have them outraged one moment and crying the next.That s the power the audience gives you.It s knowing that and knowing how touse it effectively (Fletcher, 2008).Luna resents being pigeonholed as an ethnic artist, to be called upon onlywhen his ethnicity is timely as during the Christopher Columbus anniversary in1992 (Durland, 1998).He would rather be known as James Luna, artist.Period.James Luna, artist who happens to be an Indian. To the avalanche of engagementsoffered in 1992, he replied, Call me in 93 (Durland, 1998).While Luna does not want to be rat-holed as an Indian artist, he draws freelyon Native American traditions and cultural practices as a major component of hisartistic persona.He reserves the right, however, to be sharply critical of all as-sumptions, including those expressed in Native American cultures. Authenticity, for example, to Luna, becomes a stereotype of a kind, a set of expectations beyondwhich Native people are not allowed to grow and change.Confronted with an occasional critic who accuses Luna of exploiting his owncultural background, he replies that all artists draw from their own experiences.While Luna says that his work is not political, some members of his audiencedisagree.His strikingly original design and execution cannot help but involvepolitical context, no matter how it is categorized.Some of Luna s work is auto-biographical, as when he illustrates his own battle with alcoholism as part of a cul-turewide problem.Some of the work is cathartic, perhaps reflecting his academicpreparation as a counselor. 162 | Luna, JamesMimicry and ParodyOne of Luna s favorite targets is faux (i.e., plastic ) medicine men.In Capital-ists? he combined a high technology peace pipe mounted on the chassis of adesk telephone, a portrait of himself in beads and fringe, and a poem parodying ashaman who said he was from a long line of Cherokee holy men who completeda session in a commercial sweat lodge by singing a Lakota song, who gave youa Seminole medicine pouch and a Kiowa name (Dubin, 2002, 53).Luna parodies stereotypes, as with his End of the Frail, a modern take onJames Earle Fraser s iconic turn-of-the-20th century End of the Trail, that displaysa bowed, exhausted Indian on a weary horse, his spear pointed earthward.Theoriginal was displayed on a huge scale at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition inSan Francisco.In his tableau variation on End of the Trail, Luna mimics the samelifeless pose, but the pony has been replaced by a weathered sawhorse, and thespear by a bottle of liquor.Nobility has been replaced by pathos.The exhaustion isno longer that of effort but that of despair (Durland, 1998).In one performance, Luna asks members of the audience to take photographswith him as a real live Indian. Reactions of the audience become part of the art,Luna believes.He takes risks, depending on an unscripted audience to take part,aiming to create a conversation that will leave people changed in ways that amore passive exhibition would not.Sometimes the conversation takes directions( shock and dismay, sadness, empathy, association ) that surprise even the artist(Fletcher, 2008).Once again, Luna s experience as a counselor comes into play ashe appears once in Native regalia, then in typical non-Indian street clothes:There was an Indian in a breechcloth with everybody going Oh wow,there s an Indian. Then I came out in my street clothes and they said Oh, there s a guy. But when I came out in my regalia, I knew that itwould get that response from the audience.Everybody went for it.Therewas a big ooh and aah when I stepped up on that pedestal with my wardance outfit.They forgot about all the rest and really lined up to have theirpicture taken.This is the memento that they really wanted.Even peoplethat were art savvy fell for it.(Fletcher, 2008)Artist under GlassLuna s work often parodies the display of Native artifacts in museums.Lunais an iconoclast who will introduce one to oneself.Perhaps his best-known per-formance is The Artifact Piece, introduced in 1987 at the San Diego Museum ofMan.It features a glass case in which he is the artifactual Indian, confrontingstereotypes.In this work, he is the object, the other
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