In “Poundmaker Adopted Son of Crowfoot”, Jane Ash Poitras combines text and symbols in a way that speaks of the intermingling of influences that continue to shape her identity. She alludes to the loss of Native languages and histories but also to their reclamation. Her work often shows the influence of the collage techniques of Robert Rauschenberg and Kurt Schwitters.Poitras was born to a Cree mother and was adopted at an early age by a Catholic woman of German descent. Following a trip to her birth-mother’s family reserve in 1981, she decided to study art and to stake a claim for an alternative that confronts the experience of her ancestors.