
This talk examines the dramatic transition from geometric to floral designs that occurred in the Native American Indigenous arts during the middle decades of the 19thcentury in response to assimilationist and missionary pressures and new artistic models. Ruth will discuss examples of birchbark containers made by Anishinaabe women from the Great Lakes region since pre-contact times—examples of which are to be found in the collections of the Museum Volkenkunde—. She argues that the cosmological and spiritual references of the earlier geometric designs continued in floral iconography despite the growing commercialization of the genre within souvenir markets.