Many of Jane Ash Poitras’ paintings are detailed homages to traditional First Nations leaders: Poundmaker, Short Bull Tatanka Ptecila, Isapo Mukito Crowfoot. For Poitras history is not static but vital. She takes the power away from forces of destruction by focusing on the genealogies and contemporary lives of her own people. In Generations Late (all works 1994), for example, Black Elk and his descendants share the frame with “Chris” Columbus as though the latter were a casual afterthought, just another relative. Yet the 1930 picture of Black Elk and his son has a much more colonial inflection: