Includes bibliographical references (pages 254-273) and index.

Chapter 1. An introduction to the indigenous arts of North America. Art history and Native art -- What is "art"? Western discourses and Native American objects -- Modes of appreciation : curiosity, specimen, artefact, and art -- What is an Indian? Clan, community, political structure, and art -- Cosmology -- The map of the cosmos -- The nature of spirit -- Dreams and the vision quest -- Shamanism -- Art and the public celebration of pwoer -- The power of personal adornment -- "Creativity is our tradition" : innovation and tradition in Native American art -- Gender and the making of art -- Chapter 2. The southwest. The southwest as a region -- The ancient world -- From the colonial era to the modern Pueblos -- Navajo and Apache arts -- Chapter 3. The east. The east as a region -- Hunting cultures, burial practices, and early Woodlands art forms -- Mississippian art and culture -- The cataclysm of contact : the southeast -- The early contact period in the northeast -- Arts of the middle ground -- Arts of self-adornment -- Chapter 4. The west. Introduction -- The Great Plains -- The intermontaine region : an artistic crossroads -- The far west : arts of California and the Great Basin -- Chapter 5. The north. Geography, environment, and language in the north -- Sub-arctic clothing : art to honour and protect -- The Arctic -- Chapter 6. The northwest coast. Origins -- The early contact period -- Styles and techniques -- Western connoisseurship and Northwest Coast art -- Shamanism -- Crest art -- The potlatch -- Art, commodity, and oral tradition -- Northwest Coast art in the twentieth century -- Chapter 7. The twentieth century : trends in modern Native art. Questions of definition -- Commoditization and contemporary art -- Moments of beginning -- The southern Plains and the Kiowa five -- The Southwest and the "Studio" style -- The display and marketing of American Indian art : exhibitions, mural projects, and competitions -- Native American modernisms, 1950-80 -- Institutional frameworks and modernisms in Canada -- Postmodernism, installation, and other post-studio art.

Explores the indigenous arts of the U.S. and Canada from the early pre-Columbian period to the present day, stressing the conceptual and iconographic continuities over five centuries and across an immensely diverse range of regions.