Expand - Resources
I hope this page serves as a starting point to get to know the Ainu culture more. This page will be a living document with resources being updated. Please contact me if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.
(Last updated: December 19th, 2025)
Photo: Akan Ainu Art Week 2025
History of the Ainu
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Ainu people History and Culture (The Foundation for Ainu Culture, 2025)
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McLean, I. (2011). How Aborigines invented the idea of contemporary art. In I. McLean (Ed.), How Aborigines invented the idea of contemporary art: Writings on Aboriginal contemporary art (pp. 333–342). Power Institute/Institute of Modern Art.
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Gilchrist, S. (2016). Everywhen: The eternal present in Indigenous art from Australia. In S. Gilchrist (Ed.), Everywhen: The eternal present in Indigenous art from Australia (pp. 18–30). Yale University Press.
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Smith, T. (2009). Introduction: Contemporary art inside out. In What is contemporary art? (pp. 2–10). University of Chicago Press.
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Smith, T. (2010). “Our” contemporaneity? In M. Dumbadze & S. Hudson (Eds.), Contemporary art: 1989 to the present (pp. 17–27). Wiley-Blackwell. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/smith/reader.action?docID=1098890
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REVIEW // Ainu Stories: Contemporary Lives by the Saru River
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New Approaches to Ainu Contemporary Art (Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, 2018)
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Thinking about the form of Ainu Art through Akan Ainu Art Week (Colocal, 2025)
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『urar suye』
The short film set in Kotan, Hokkaido, offers a glimpse into the contemporary Ainu worldview.