Amber Morningstar, from the series First American Girl
frame: 44 5/8 × 40 13/16 × 2 in. (113.3 × 103.7 × 5.1 cm)
One Book One Northwestern, 2024–25
This artwork was selected in response to themes in Northwestern’s community-wide reading of The Night Watchman (2020) by Louise Erdrich.
In the series First American Girl, Cara Romero collaborates with the subjects of her portraits to design life-sized doll boxes that insist on the subjects’ individuality and tribal heritage. Romero activates her editorial photographic style to subvert the form of the popular American Girl® doll, thereby offering a tool for healing against popular misrepresentations of Native American women. This photograph’s namesake, Amber Morningstar, stands proudly within a box framed by a beaded Choctaw sash design that is proprietary to her family. She is surrounded by objects of personal significance. Her hat and gun in particular underscore the Choctaw tribe’s enduring roots in the southern United States despite their forced relocation from Mississippi to Oklahoma under the US government’s 1830 Indian Removal Act.
Early in The Night Watchman, Lloyd Barnes, a white man who teaches math on the reservation, fancies Patrice Paranteau, one of the novel’s main characters. He calls her "a darling Indian girl," based on representations he’s seen in advertising. Erdrich and Romero both depict Indigenous women as more than simply "darling." Rather, in their works, women exude power. Erdrich, for example, describes Patrice’s experience of being named Homecoming queen: "as she felt the weight of the crown, suddenly she wanted them, all of them, to bow to her," an effect akin to Amber Morningstar’s commanding presence in Romero’s photograph.
We are happy to provide a shareable pdf booklet and downloadable images for teaching and engagement. You can schedule a class visit to discuss these works in person in our study center by contacting Essi Rönkkö at essi.ronkko@northwestern.edu.
