Tetrapod Bowl with Lid

Techniques of mapping reflect the ways in which different cultures understand and visualize the world around them. Geographical maps of the sort most commonly used today are a European import, having arrived with the colonization of the Americas beginning in the 1500s. However, visualizations of the natural world by Indigenous cultures across the hemisphere reveal a more expansive idea of place, one that unifies the natural, spiritual, and ancestral worlds.

The vessel on display here encapsulates the Maya worldview. The ancient Maya people of southern Mexico and northern Central America understood the world as existing on three levels: the celestial overworld of ancestors and supernatural beings, the earthly middleworld of human and animal life, and the watery underworld of the dead. The tetrapod (four-legged) vessel depicts these realms by way of a bird that has the ability to both float on the earth’s waters and fly in the sky, while the quatrefoil design incised on its beak represents a portal to the underworld.

This object also illustrates one of the core predicaments of the present exhibition: the use of modern-day borders to identify the origins of works from the Indigenous Americas. The division of land into a series of nations with political boundaries contradicts Indigenous worldviews and disregards the spread of myriad cultures across the hemisphere for millennia. And yet, by grouping art by country, the exhibition underscores the geopolitical nature of any attempt to combat today’s climate crisis. The nearby map combines approximate areas inhabited by Indigenous cultures with contemporary borders, enabling a discussion of the impact of national climate policies on Indigenous peoples.