Abstract
Chapter 5 charts a shifting history of Indigenous material diplomacy based on the ritual smoking of the cʿąnų́pa wakʿą́ (sacred pipe) and its revival during the Cold War. Conjoining diverse Native communities across long distances prior to colonization, this pan-Indigenous practice endured a treacherous history of colonial treaty negotiations to be reimagined by artists and activists in the era of Indian Termination. Prominent modernist painter Oscar Howe materialized a theory of Dakota ethics and aesthetics through figurative abstractions that distilled the spiritual and ecological truths he saw embodied in pipe ceremonies. The artist delivered slide lectures about his paintings and taught Dakota modernism as an “American Specialist” in nine countries in Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East in 1971, just as AIM activists were embracing the cʿąnų́pa wakʿą́ as a potent unifying symbol of Red Power.