ABSTRACT
Native American or First Nations peoples1 seem to have maintained an unusually high regard for human physical difference from the statistical norm. The indigenous American cultural and artistic traditions serve as important exceptions to the widespread “rule” that those with unusual bodies are somehow “less than” others in some fundamental way. This chapter will explore an example of art as evidence of a positive, elevated view of anomalous-bodied individuals, using terms such as “different,” “unusual,” and “anomalous” interchangeably. I will discuss one ancient South American ceramic effigy as an image of the ‘dis’abled, a category found throughout the Americas.
