When you have an exhibit of Native North American art, you'd expect to find a worshipful inclusion of the natural world. True, it's clich�d, but it's a clich� the artists embrace as they try to show us what we're missing, in our detached worlds of supermarkets and reality TV. And that's valuable. But it's also interesting and important to consider the place of the underdog in this crazy, modern world. It's na�ve to ignore how their culture - how they live - has changed.

By blending representations of old and new culture and digital technology with traditional techniques of beading and pottery, "Inside Out Haudenosaunee" seeks to express modern Native American life to its viewers. The show, named for the tribes known to pale folk as Iroquois, is curated by artist G. Peter Jemison, director of Ganondagan State Historic Site in Victor.

The artwork by Native American contemporary artists includes mixed-media, graphic-y portraits of calm, confident warriors by Alex Jacobs, and Katsitsionni Fox's digital collage prints on canvas and TV screen, which show the narrative of Skywoman with backdrops of Times Square, the woods, and the tides of space. The artists seek to convey the contrast and blending of their inner and outer worlds as they carry their pasts and cultures into continuous assimilation.

Jemison himself well understands the ambiguous, between-state position of his culture as he is a descendent of Mary Jemison, an Irish immigrant who was captured by a group of French and Shawnee and adopted by the Senecas, a group which she married into, embraced, and defended. G. Peter Jemison's giant, nostalgic photo collage portrait of "Ray Miller, Mohawk WWII Warrior and his Family" shows family portraits, Miller in uniform, medals, a lacrosse team, children, weddings, maps of France, and a drawing of a wolf. It's intriguing to contemplate a people defending the nation which oppresses them, and war is and always has been one situation where the dominant culture gladly embraces the participation of the underdog.

Tom Huff's sandstone and catlinite sculpture, "2012: Disclosure of the eReaders," shows two huge-almond-eyed alien-esque figures kneeling, facing one another, but focusing on the carved "digital books" they are holding. On each eReader screen is a title: "We talk you listen" by Vine Deloria Jr., written in 1970 and envisioning the self-destruction of American society; and "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn, which is told in the words of Americans at ground-level and does away with the American History heroic-mythology we still teach school kids. Huff's piece emphasizes the importance of the Native voice having access to audiences and reaching permanence in time, and fantasizes about a future or distant consciousness apprehending the reality of histories ignored or denied. This focus on preservation conceptually links to the Colacino Gallery's exhibit quite well.

"Nya:weh" means "thank you" in the Seneca language, and is the title of one of the children's books produced in the collaboration between Ganondagan State Historic Site, Nazareth College, and The Industry School in Rush. Cathy Sweet, director of Nazareth's Arts Center Gallery, told me that the books, which celebrate Native heritage, were written by Nazareth students, illustrated by Karine Hatch of Ganondagan, and prepared for publication by the Industry students. They were created "to show children [the Haudenosaunee] are a contemporary people," Sweet says. I was seriously inspired by this collaboration between cultures, with people from different backgrounds seeking out and valuing one another.

Also on display are the symbol-heavy paintings and sculpture of Doot Bokelman, professor of art history at Nazareth. "These are my belief systems," she told me at the opening reception on Valentine's Day. A large acrylic-on-canvas piece, entitled "As You Believe, So Shall You Behave," is split horizontally. The top imagery has us looking at Saint Michael, "a weighing figure," Bokelman says, but bereft of his scales, he's sort of a Bodhisattva figure." The androgynous saint stands at the base of tree and above him hang colorful spheres, which the artist describes as "bubble gum or gems or something - I always believed there had to be more than just an apple to tempt people." At the very top of the tree is a huge ball of coiled material, a symbol for intelligent design, says Bokelman. The lower portion of the work has us caught in the piercing stare of an owlet immersed in golden light. "I don't believe in a devil. Evil is what you perceive it to be, and it can be disguised as an everyday cute thing." Hey, Hollywood starlets, hi.

Dolls made of found wood, Sculpey, and natural objects like seed pods and acorns and feathers stand on shelves or are "planted" in bonsai pots. "Lilith" is a bit of wood prowling low and panther-like, extending a bare arm to offer an apple, face smug and hair untamable. "Rootybegga" is a tiny woman holding a staff capped with a mother-goddess figure. "Mother Earth Contemplates the Acrylic Painting ‘Rootybegga'" shows a large brown woman holding Bokelman's tiny sculpture with the goddess staff, a circular play on the ambiguity of creation, where the created creates images of the creator. "That's Mother Earth checking out my sculpture, what I've given back," she says.