PLAYING POLITICS WITH NATIVE AMERICAN ART; OKLAHOMAN JEANNE ROREX BRIDGES TALKS TO SOUTHEAST STUDENTS ABOUT ART AND INDIANS

Jeanne Rorex Bridges paints images of women on the Trail of Tears and of Native American life. She grew up on a farm in Eastern Oklahoma, niece of a famous Cherokee sculptor, Willard Stone. But Rorex Bridges' biography is careful to identify her simply as an "Oklahoma Native Artist."

Rorex was a Cherokee artist until 1990. But the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 forbade artists like Rorex Bridges from claiming their art is produced by Native Americans or Indians unless the artist is enrolled in a federally recognized tribe. The intent of the act was to protect Indian artists from imported goods.

Because Rorex Bridges' ancestors didn't sign up on the Dawes Roll, the definitive registry of Oklahoma Indian tribes, she cannot claim to be an Indian artist.

Rorex Bridges was in Cape Girardeau this week speaking to Southeast students about art and the politics of Native American art.

In one class, anthropologist Dr. Carol Morrow passed around a cheesy tom-tom her husband bought somewhere. A sticker on the drum certifies it was made by real Cherokees.

Five times, a Rorex Bridges painting has won the Trail of Tears category at the Trail of Tears Art Show held at the Cherokee National Museum in Tahlequah, Okla. One of her paintings was chosen for the cover of a book titled "Women of Oklahoma, 1890-1920."

Morrow termed the Dawes Roll "the most corrupt thing the American government did to the American Indians."

The Dawes Act, also called the Allotment Act, proposed to provide a census of Native Americans who became eligible to receive 80 acres apiece of the 7 million acres the Cherokee received in the treaty removing them from the Southeast.

But almost anyone could claim to be a Cherokee, Morrow said. Because they were illiterate, many Cherokee were taken advantage of, paid a small sum to sign the roll and sell the land to swindlers.

After the allotment to the Indians was complete, the rest of the land was sold to homesteaders. The proceeds were used by the government to administer Indian affairs.

Many Cherokee families refused to sign the Dawes Roll. Rorex Bridges' family was one. She says many full-blooded Cherokee alive today aren't on the Dawes Roll.

The penalty for violating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 is up to $250,000 for a first offense and no more than five years in jail.

Rorex Bridges didn't take a painting class until she was 27. The following year, she enrolled in fine arts at Bacone College in Muskogee. Her work is in a tradition called Oklahoma traditional flat style. It has little dimension and almost has the quality of graphics.

One series of her paintings focuses on a little-known fact of the Trail of Tears migration: That many blacks were on the trail along with the Cherokee because the Cherokee owned slaves.

Rorex Bridges and her husband, J.R. Bridges, travel to 17 states selling prints and originals of her work at arts and crafts shows. This weekend they are at a show at the Pink Palace Museum in Memphis, Tenn.