You might not know this. In fact, you probably don't: Many African Americans have a drop or two or more of Native American blood. It makes metaphorical sense (a shared history of borders imposed by whites), but the actual history is just as compelling, what with runaway slaves taking refuge with tribes and beginning the complex evolution of a mixed race. The term "sambo," in fact, is said to originally have referred to someone of black/Indian heritage.

Black Natives is dedicated to bringing this interesting bit of history to light, and to infusing it with a rather vague and woo-woo spiritual undertone, something about shared spirit and the wheel of life. But the real value of a show like this is a kind of point-blank question about the hierarchy of oppression. This isn't directly addressed by the work shown, but it certainly seems to have occurred to most of the artists. Eddie Hill's set of four minimalist panels (black, red, brown, white) says this quite simply, at the same time invoking the art history of those who would kill painting through monochrome.

Much of the art is one-note (archival images with text, Native American symbolism, re-created relics) or New Agey (an eagle whispering wisdom into the ear of a man neither black nor red but... blue). The artist to pay attention to is Angelina McQuarter, whose large-scale painted woodcarvings take into account not only the internal questions (dignity, stereotype, the usual totems of identity-based art) but the external world's gaze. She creates the nigger, the pickaninny, the African queen, and when you look at them they look straight back at you. They are particularly hard to ignore, as they should be. They are also terribly, subversively funny.

The exhibition's other strength is its arrangement as an installation, with objects grouped on pedestals and on the floor. Walking around them is like finding your way through the faithful reproductions of a natural-history museum--it's left to you to hear what they're saying, and to divine the significance. Pay attention.