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.
This object was selected for the collection as part of an annual student-led collecting initiative undertaken by the Block Museum Student Associates (BMSA), an interdisciplinary group of Northwestern undergraduates.
Mayán Alvarado-Goldberg, Neuroscience and Global Health, 2024
Júlia S. R. Azevedo, Industrial Engineering, 2024
Solome Bezuneh, Communication Studies and Sociology, 2024
Ethan Bledsoe, Environmental Science, 2026
Gabrielle Bliss, Chemical Engineering, 2025
Zayn Elmasry, Arabic and History, 2024
Madeleine Giaconia, Radio/Television/Film and Art History, 2024
Symone Harris, Social Policy, 2026
Zeki Ülgür Hirsch, Art History, 2024
Ipsita K, Art History and Social Policy, 2024
Jaharia Knowles, Journalism, 2025
Rowan McCloskey, Computer Science and Political Science, 2025
Nozizwe Msipa, Communication Studies, 2024
Meena Sharma, Learning Sciences, 2025
Tamara Ulalisa, Journalism and Political Science, 2024
Joyce Wang, Economics and Radio/Television/Film, 2024
Bobby Yalam, Comparative Literary Studies and Economics, 2024
Roy Zhu, Environmental Science and Creative Writing, 2025
To read more about Amber Morningstar and the student-led collecting project undertaken by the Block Museum Student Associates, visit https: bit.ly/studentsromero.
