Queen Isabella

Native American artist Julie Buffalohead presents her take on revisionist history in this dreamlike tableau where animal characters silently reveal that Christopher Columbus had it all wrong. The scene features a crow holding a plastic bag similar to those used for transporting pet fish. But instead of a fish, the crow, a trickster, holds a miniaturized version of Columbus’s ship Santa Maria, now capsized. The rabbit plays the role of Columbus’s patron, Queen Isabella, holding up a Native medicine wheel, a symbol representing the four directions. Native people believe that the world is cyclical and that everything is alive. The Queen playfully shows the pet ship that the world is not flat or linear as the maps from Columbus’s time suggest.