Artist and art historian Jolene Rickard was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native American Art Studies Association (NAASA). She is an associate professor of history of art and visual studies in the College of Arts and Sciences and associate professor in the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program (AIISP) in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

NAASA cited Rickard, a citizen of the Skarù·ręʔ / Tuscarora Nation (Hodinöhsö:ni Confederacy), for her work as “an artist, curator, scholar and cultural leader whose work over the past several decades has had a profound and lasting impact on contemporary Indigenous art and scholarship, both nationally and internationally…Her interdisciplinary approach – blending theory, community-based knowledge, and personal experience – has made her one of the most respected voices in Indigenous studies today.”  Rickard is a visual historian, artist and curator interested in the intersection of Indigenous art, cultural theory and the forces of settler colonialism. Her research focuses on the expression of multiple sovereignties within Indigenous art and culture globally.

According to Stella Nair, Associate Professor of Indigenous Arts of the Americas at the University of California, Los Angeles, Rickard is known particularly for her concept of “Indigenous visual sovereignty,” which has become a foundational idea in Indigenous studies. Nair said Rickard’s essay “Visualizing Sovereignty in the Time of Biometric Sensors” is one of the “defining texts” in Indigenous visual studies, and her writings have been transformative. 

Read the full story on the College of Arts and Sciences website.