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• Fritz Scholder(Luiseño, 1937-2005)
• Santa Fe, New Mexico and Scottsdale, Arizona
• c. 1976
• Oil paint on canvas
• Gift of Polly and Mark Addison, 2009.361

Fritz Scholder, a Luiseño artist, has created works that challenge the romantic image and stereotypes of Indigenous peoples, presenting alternative realities. Non-Indigenous painters, such as George Catlin and Frederic Remington, and photographer Edward S. Curtis perpetuated a myth of Indigenous peoples that dominated their visual representations, such as the “noble savage” with stoic expressions or a war-like people. In reality, most Indigenous peoples at the time were being forcibly removed from their land and living on reservations. The seated Indigenous man in this painting appropriates a solitary figure from a Western-genre painting scene but recasts him in the role of a protector.