A Piece of the Indian Pie

"A Piece of the Indian Pie"
Reflections on Indians in Unexpected Places

Philip J. Deloria’s book was enlightening, informative, a pleasure to read, and filled with new insights and perspectives about athenticity and self-determination. I don’t recall reading a more thorough assessment of how Native Americans have contributed to the fabric of their culture and worked resiliently to function within the constraints imposed on them by white culture and expectations. I am particularly interested in the topic of Native American identity, authenticity, and cultural appropriation since I wrote my thesis on Native American art and the authenticity controversy as it relates to fine art and the Indian Arts and Crafts Act. I had many first-hand accounts of white artists “pretending” to be Indian out of a romanticized longing for cultural meaning and out of pure greed to get on the multi-cultural bandwagon that was a lucrative obsession for many in the arts during the 1970s. What I discovered is that for the most part, Native American artists who were within the museum circuit tolerated what they called “wannabes,” with expectations that “karma” would get them in the end for fear that more regulations would only further hinder their artistic goals, while the Native American craftsperson trying to eek out a living at the various Indian markets could only grumble about the unfairness of it all, unable to do anything about it.

It took a few brave, fed up artists to try to get the government to do something about it—to force them to use the very law that was originally enacted to protect the white consumer (from getting Japanese, Chinese, and Mexican-made items passed off as Indian-made which affected the value and authenticity of their collections) to protect the Indian artist from unscrupulous white artists who invented a family history or hid behind stories that they couldn’t prove their Indianness because their familys refused to submit to the census takers who tried to force a number on them. It’s one thing to have the Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican artists pretend to be Indian to make money off their artistic heritage, but it’s quite another to have white people in their own back yard pretend to be Indian—taking yet another “piece of the Indian pie,” to quote David Bradley, an Ojibwe artist who was responsible for pressuring the government to act.

It’s quite a controversial topic, and I see the racism inherent in census numbers and blood percentages, etc., but I also see the struggle that Native Americans endure to keep their art, their religion, and their culture alive without becoming a source of entertainment or spiritual/cultural tourism. As multi-culturalism slowly became replaced by globalism in the visual arts (and the art market), many of those “pseudo Indians” disappeared from the scene (and stopped selling themselves as Indians), but maybe the threat of that law also had something to do with it. Deloria mentions Jimmie Durham as a “Native” artist who “aligns himself with Indian drivers, seeing a social and political engagement beneath the white expectations of Indian backwardness,” but from my research, he is one of the artists who has no proof that he is indeed an Indian, yet has become internationally famous for his dialectic art that critiques white-imposed stereotypes, so I guess Durham’s adversarial role against white culture and their tendency to stereotype and assertions of Indianness suffices for authenticity for many.

On another note, I for one don’t feel comfortable going to an Indian dance at the pueblos any more, not because I don’t find them beautiful and fascinating, but because I’m ashamed at how many of the tourists/white audiences behave—trying to climb into the kivas when warned they are off limits and taking pictures when they have been told it is forbidden. They act like these dances are staged events for their edification, not guests who should be respectful and thankful to be allowed to witness such private events (of course how many times have any of us as travelers also witnessed Americans and Europeans alike being disrespectful of their own cultures by snapping away pictures inside a historic church or cathedral during a service as if it is a stop at Disneyland, oblivious to the worshippers who use the church for real religious practice?). Would we really tolerate it if large groups of people in shorts and t-shirts came into our churches, talked loudly and snapped pictures of us singing and worshipping? We still seem to think that everything Indian is here for our entertainment when in actuality it is them thriving in the everyday of their lives in spite of our voyeurism.

That said, I found it truly enlightening when Deloria revealed how many Native Americans went along with the Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West shows in order to get something out of it for themselves—whether it was seeing the world or receiving an education or the pay it provided for their families. How they had to play the role of savage to assuage a paying audience hungry to reinforce the stereotypes they had been fed through pulp fiction and their own ignorance. It baffles me that Americans perpetuate the idea of the Indian as spectacle even today, but it doesn’t help when films are still struggling with how to present their histories, tourist shops still sell rubber tomahawks, and galleries and museums prefer to exhibit Native American art that replicates old traditions instead of championing the new artistic strides being made by Native American artists. In the 1980s I saw how the artists who dressed up as Indians seemed to get more attention (and sales) for being Indian artists. I can see how easy it was for so many non-Indians to get away with their charades—they gave the collector (audience) what they expected—a beaded, contemplative, nostalgic image of a Hollywood Indian. We (impressionable young gallery workers and wealthy white collectors alike) ate it up when artist Fritz Scholder (who, by the way, just had a large retrospective at the Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian) came to Marshall Way in Scottsdale in his gleaming Rolls Royce in the 1980s; and I recall with particular infatuation when Charles Loloma (noted Hopi jeweler) offered me a ride in his Rolls Royce in the late 1970s—part of a long line of Indians in unexpected places—their cars reinforced the exotic personas they constructed to build the myth that was expected of them, but by playing the role, they got what they wanted from their audiences. They didn’t need to dress up as stereotypical Indians, but they did use props nevertheless to capture the attention of those needing a good story to back up their purchases (or maybe they both just loved Rolls Royce's and they had the money to buy them?).

Just last month I juried the painting and photography division of the Heard Museum’s Indian Market. While I know there to be many wonderful examples of contemporary painting and photography by Native American artists throughout the US and Canada, they were certainly not present in this selection—instead it was weak reinforcements of traditional art forms, many of which were instilled in Indian artists by white teachers from decades ago and perpetuated by white jurors who don’t seem to want Indian artists to develop artistically. To them, authentic Indian art is conceptually created in a vacuum, and preferably on the reservation so the romantic notion of the Indian can continue. Interestingly, the other white juror only wanted to select the works that most reinforced the stereotypes of Indian culture, while the Native American juror, who was also part of the process, found the more abstract works of more interest. Together we were able to out-vote the juror who was intent upon keeping the art “status quo.” The problem lies in that Native American artists for the most part are now being taught in universities and art schools like everyone else, except for the rare few who are taught by their extended artisan families. If after all their mainstream training, their art cannot be considered authentic unless it “looks Indian” simply reinforces the same stereotypes that Deloria mentions in regards to sports and music. Indian artists have the right to simply put their work out there as individuals and not have it overtly tied to their culture, spirituality, or heritage unless they want it to be. However, in art history and the art market, the artist’s biography is integral to the whole package—the artist as celebrity, Indian or not. I suppose that the best correlation to the dilemma of “authentic” Indian art in the Deloria book is the chapter on music and the musicologists and musicians who struggled to find common ground between authentic Indian music and Western ideals of meter, rhythm, and melody. It’s a difficult line to walk—when does Indian innovation get perceived as assimilation and how pure does something have to be in order to be acceptable to every audience? The main thing is honesty and transparency about the roots of the creative product and not to sell something as pure when it is a hybrid of influences and sources. Indian art has been subject to hybridity and influence for centuries as various tribes borrowed stylistically from one another. It seems to me that Indian artists have every bit as much right to borrow and become influenced by everything around them without fear of being labeled as "inauthentic."

In today’s New York Times there is an article “Seeing History through Indian’s Eyes” in which filmmaker Ric Burns is teaming up with Chris Eyre, an American Indian director who directed “Smoke Signals,” adaptations of Tony Hillerman’s “Skinwalkers” and other film projects, to direct “Tecumseh’s Vision” for PBS history series “We Shall Remain.” Eyre was initially reluctant to work on the project because the feature film scripts he receives are generally “guilt ridden, and at the end the Indians lose.” One of the biggest problems the two directors face is the idea of the re-enactments and re-creations, something we read about in Deloria’s accounts of Indians traveling in the U. S. and abroad re-enacting battles in which they ultimately lost. Trying to find a sense of authenticity, honesty, and integrity for both parties is the ultimate challenge. That is one film I plan to see, because I think as a team they can achieve it as best as anyone can, given that the past is long over and everyone’s interpretations are subject to variations of the truth.
-Julie Sasse