An enrolled member of Oklahoma's Ponca tribe, Julie Buffalohead makes artwork focusing on Indigenous experiences and stories. In her paintings, she creates visual narratives told by animal characters who display personhood and individuality. In Antihero, one coyote rocks backward atop a rocking horse while lifting a feather headdress and their head adorned with a costume prop arrow. A second coyote, snake, and a badger approach the playful coyote inquisitively with fallen arrows and a tomahawk on the ground. The depicted scene calls upon images from the 1940s and ‘50s Western movies in which Native Americans are portrayed as villains on horseback with headdresses and weapons.

“[The villain stereotype] is largely a construct that was invented by white Americans back in the day because they wanted to essentially take Native land, and it was a justification,” Buffalohead stated. “That stereotype of the Indian headdress is seen everywhere. You see it on motorcycles and boxes for produce. And when you look at different tribes like the Iroquois and the Seminole, they don’t look like that construct.”