Ghost Dance (The Vision of Life)  1897

by Ralph Albert Blakelock

The Ghost Dance, or “Messiah Craze” as the press called it, fused elements of Native American religions and Christianity to express ideas about the resurrection and rejuvenation of indigenous cultures. An assertion of Native American pride and empowerment in the late 1880s, these ceremonies drew the attention of ethnographers and aroused the suspicions of United States gov...
Size: 
53.7 × 100 cm (21 1/8 × 39 3/8 in.)
Medium: 
Oil on canvas
Credit: 
Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago