Monkman created this work as a response to George Catlin’s Dance to the Berdash (1830). A Berdash is also known as a two-spirited person, or someone who takes on the roles and dress of male and female genders and was something that Catlin (along with the majority of Europeans) viewed as disgusting and wrong . In The Triumph of Mischief Miss Chief is the Berdash and is being danced to by the other figures. Here, Monkman reframes the Berdash as being celebrated (as they often were in indigenous cultures) rather than vilified (as imposed by Europeans). Monkman not only reinserts indigenous people into the landscape that they were previously erased from, but also brings two-spirited/gender nonconforming people into the master narrative of art history. These people have always existed, but as they were seen as “the other” and existed outside of the periphery, those within the master narrative could shape the ways that they were seen or simply erase them all together, as they too often
Monkman created this work as a response to George Catlin’s Dance to the Berdash (1830). A Berdash is also known as a two-spirited person, or someone who takes on the roles and dress of male and female genders and was something that Catlin (along with the majority of Europeans) viewed as disgusting and wrong . In The Triumph of Mischief Miss Chief is the Berdash and is being danced to by the other figures. Here, Monkman reframes the Berdash as being celebrated (as they often were in indigenous cultures) rather than vilified (as imposed by Europeans). Monkman not only reinserts indigenous people into the landscape that they were previously erased from, but also brings two-spirited/gender nonconforming people into the master narrative of art history. These people have always existed, but as they were seen as “the other” and existed outside of the periphery, those within the master narrative could shape the ways that they were seen or simply erase them all together, as they too often