Dr. Jolene Rickard, BFA '78 is a visual historian, artist, and curator interested in the intersection of Indigenous knowledge and contemporary art with an emphasis on Haudenosaunee aesthetics. She is an associate professor in the departments of History of Art and Art, and the former director of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program 2008-2020 (AIISP) at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

Jolene is on the editorial board of American Art, a founding Board member for the Otsego Institute for Native American Art, and an advisor to GRASAC-The Great Lakes Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Culture. She was a 2020 Fulbright Research Scholar at McMaster University, ON, CA. and publishes on Indigenous visual culture. A selection of publications includes: Diversifying Sovereignty and the Reception of Indigenous Art, Art Journal 76, no. 2 (2017), Aesthetics, Violence and Indigeneity, Public 27, no. 54 (Winter 2016), Arts of Dispossession, in From Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic: Landscape Painting in the Americas, Art Gallery of Ontario (2015), The Emergence of Global Indigenous Art, Sakahán, National Gallery of Canada (2013), and Visualizing Sovereignty in the Time of Biometric Sensors, The South Atlantic Quarterly: Sovereignty, Indigeneity, and the Law, 110:2 (2011). Recent exhibitions include the Minneapolis Institute of Arts national exhibition, Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists, 2019-2021, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Art For a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950's to Now, 2018-2020. She co-curated two of the four inaugural exhibitions of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (2004-2014). Jolene worked as a graphic designer in NYC for CBS, American Express, Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, and McCaffrey & McCall Agencies (1978-1990) before the conferral of a Ph.D. at the University at Buffalo (UB '06). She is from the Tuscarora Nation (Turtle Clan), Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

Why did you choose to attend RIT?

During the admissions process, my portfolio was reviewed by the former Associate Dean Kener E. Bond, Jr. (d.2016) of the College of Art and Design. He recognized my last name and mentioned that his families' land and lake bordered the Tuscarora Nation territories. Bond's Lake was adjacent to my grandfather Clinton Rickard's land, and we determined that our families knew each other. This association made my parents feel more comfortable with RIT and encouraged me to attend once accepted. Dean Bond was very supportive during my education at RIT and remained in contact after I graduated with encouragement.

Who influenced you most during your time at RIT?

I would argue that my peers, both classmates, and friends outside of class were a source of support and encouragement.

If you attended RIT when the Native American Future Stewards Program (FSP) had already started, what was your favorite memory of FSP, and how did it help you as a Native college student? If FSP wasn't around, do you think it is important to have a program, like FSP, solely dedicated to supporting Indigenous students attending college and why?

The Native American Future Stewards Program (FSP) did not exist, but I was supported by the staff in EOP, in particular, a young woman named Chris. There were so few Native students that we were not "visible" as a distinct population on campus in the 1970s. Rochester has so many incredible resources and a deep Haudenosaunee history that it was a missed opportunity that none of this cultural knowledge was part of my undergraduate curriculum. Because I was a faculty director for the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program at Cornell University for ten years, I have direct experience that programs like FSP are essential for the recruitment and retention of Indigenous students.

How did your RIT education prepare you for what you are doing today?

The communication design program at RIT provided excellent preparation for my career as a graphic designer. I worked in NYC for over twelve years at CBS, American Express, Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, and McCaffrey & McCall Agencies before I returned to college to pursue a Ph.D. in Indigenous and Visual Culture in the field of American Studies. The rigorous design and photography education at RIT has been central to my ability to critique images.

What advice would you have for your 18–24-year-old self? Or what is something you wish you would have known when attending college student as a Native person?

Find a way to learn about your own Indigenous history because you will always be called upon to offer perspectives on the historical and contemporary experience of Indigenous Nations and peoples, no matter what profession you pursue. Approach learning as a life-long pursuit. And give generously to others based on your good fortune.

What significance does Native American Heritage Month hold for you?

I actually think it is complicated because a month dedicated to "Native Heritage" unwittingly flattens or levels our political and cultural experience as one of many American hybrid ethnic or minoritized groups. This designation which is meant to call attention to our existence, undermines a fundamental reality that Indigenous people(s) are part of Indigenous Nations that made treaties with settler states like the United States. We are not a minoritized group with an American space but should be recognized as "nations within nations."

From your perspective, how should non-Natives refer to Native Americans? Are some terms more appropriate than others?

One of my intellectual mentors, John Mohawk (Seneca, d. 2006), often commented that Indian, American Indian, and Native American are all reductive, and we should be referred to by our individual Indigenous identities. Each century or decade has a different favored term, and today, Indigenous is used in the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies.

For those who do not know much about Native Americans, what are some key things they should be aware of? How can non-Natives learn more about Native identity and culture?

This question is a good example of a prevailing notion that one can learn about 500 plus Indigenous Nations whose history spans over thousands of years in the Americas in a bulleted or “Scribes notes” approach. I argue that Indigenous cultures deserve the same depth of treatment in education as all world cultures.

What would you like everyone to know about Native American culture?

Everyone should take responsibility to know what Indigenous Nation/s land you currently live on or within. RIT is within the ancestral homelands of the Seneca Nation.

What is the best advice you have received, and from whom?

When I was a young woman, my father encouraged me to be financially independent and responsible. But he also cautioned that surrounding yourself with materials was no substitute for real friendships and a loving family.

Fun fact(s) about yourself?

I feel equally at home in a field of Tuscarora white corn as I do at the Venice Biennale.