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Consumption as Assimilation: New York Times Reporting on Native American Art and Commodities, 1950–1970

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2018

REETTA HUMALAJOKI
REETTA HUMALAJOKI*
Affiliation:
John Morton Center for North American Studies, University of Turku. Email: reetta.humalajoki@utu.fi.
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Abstract

The appropriation of Indigenous cultures has sparked multiple controversies in the United States over the past decade. This phenomenon is not new, however. This article examines New York Times reporting on Native American art and commodities to demonstrate how trends in consuming “Indian” products contributed to the assimilationist federal Indian policy of termination, between 1950 and 1970. In this period the consumption of items perceived as “Indian” shifted from an elite art collectors’ activity to a widespread fashion trend. Nevertheless, Times reporting shows that throughout this era shopping for “Indian” items subsumed Indigenous cultures into the imagined unity of a national American identity.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , November 2019 , pp. 972 - 996
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2018 

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References

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18 Both before World War II and in 1997 the paper had some of the highest circulation rates in the country. See Emery, Michael, Emery, Edwin and Roberts, Nancy L., The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media, 9th edn (Needham Heights: Pearson, 2000), 352, 545Google Scholar.

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22 Meyn, 89.

23 “Old Pottery Shown for Modern Homes,” NYT, 12 Aug. 1952, 16.

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25 Hutchinson, 33–34.

26 Thomas B. Lesure, “Hunting for Indian Bargains,” NYT, 21 Dec. 1952, X22.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Pearlstone, Zena, “Mail-Order ‘Katsinam’ and the Issue of Authenticity,” Journal of the Southwest, 42, 4 (Winter 2000), 801–32, 804Google Scholar.

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31 “New Designs used for Navajo Rugs,” NYT, 5 Aug. 1954, 16.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Corrigan, “Young Navajos Spurning Rugs.”

35 “Prehistoric times” is referred to in “New Designs used for Navajo Rugs” (1954), while the latter statement appears in “Young Navajos Spurning Rugs” (1956).

36 Hutchinson, The Indian Craze, 32.

37 “Indians on Way to Sweden.”

38 “Jeweler Makes Much of Indian Lore,” NYT, 31 March 1954, 30.

39 Anthes, Bill, Native Moderns: American Indian Painting, 1940–1960 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 161CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Quoted in ibid., 161.

41 William Blair, “On the Warpath against Bogus Indian Art,” NYT, 28 April 1963, SM1.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 See also Lesure, “Hunting for Indian Bargains”; W. Thetford LeViness, “Arts-and-Crafts Season in New Mexico,” NYT, 4 Aug. 1968, SM18.

46 Tartsinis, Ann Marguerite, An American Style: Global Sources for New York Textile and Fashion Design, 1915–1928 (New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2014), 21Google Scholar.

47 See, for instance, “Tribes Influence Décor for Home,” NYT, 14 Jan. 1959, 23; Myron Kandel, “Surprises Are in Store at the Indian Handicrafts Center,” NYT, 20 Feb. 1962, 60; Craig Claiborne, “New Yorkers Dine on Legacies of the Indian, from Aztec to Zuni,” NYT, 16 March 1967, 56; Nan Ickeringill, “We're Stealing from the Indians, Again,” NYT, 22 July 1968, 38; Bernadine Morris, “Sant'Angelo's Fashions a Tribute to the Indians,” NYT, 15 May 1970, 41; Joan Cook, “At 65, He Turns to Hippie Fashions,” NYT, 29 May 1970, 18.

48 “Tribes Influence Décor for Home.”

49 Ibid.

50 Claiborne.

51 Quoted in Anthes, Native Moderns, 134.

52 Claiborne.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid.

56 Parezo, Nancy J., “The Indian Fashion Show,” in Phillips, Ruth B. and Steiner, Christopher B., eds., Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 243–63, 245Google Scholar.

57 “Indian Fashion Show Is Presented Here,” NYT, 18 Nov. 1949, 32; “Students to Model Costumes,” NYT, 28 Oct. 1953, 21.

58 Deloria, Playing Indian, 158.

59 For details of red power protests see, for instance, Smith, Paul Chaat and Warrior, Robert Allen, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (New York: New Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

60 Cook, “At 65, He Turns to Hippie Fashions.”

61 See, for instance, Lisa Hammel, “Fashion Goes Back to Indians,” NYT, 8 March 1968, 26; Bernadine Morris, “For Donald Brooks's Customers, It'll Be an Indian Spring,” NYT, 17 Oct. 1969, 55; Morris, “Sant'Angelo's Fashions a Tribute to the Indians.”

62 Enid Nemy, “Twiggy Says ‘Ow’ to the U.S.,” NYT, 22 Aug. 1967, 42.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 Morris, “Sant'Angelo's Fashions a Tribute to the Indians,” 41.

66 Ibid.

67 James M. Naughton, “President Urges Wider Indian Role in Aid for Tribes,” NYT, 9 July 1970, 1.

68 Ickeringill, “We're Stealing from the Indians,” 38.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid.

72 Deloria, Playing Indian, 144–45.

73 “Bethany Yellowtail ‘Gutted’.”

74 See, for instance, Adrienne Keene, “But Why Can't I Wear a Hipster Headdress,” 27 April 2010, at http://nativeappropriations.com/2010/04/but-why-cant-i-wear-a-hipster-headdress.html, accessed 21 Sept. 2017.

75 Judy Klemesrud, “The American Indian: Part of City, and Yet …,” NYT, 18 Sept. 1968, 34.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid.

78 Anthes, Native Moderns, 177–78.

79 O'Brien, Jean M., “Historical Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies,” in Anderson, Chris and O'Brien, Jean M., eds., Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies (New York: Routledge, 2017), 15–22, 17Google Scholar. For instance, the University of Illinois began its Native American studies program in 1971. see LaGrand, James B., Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945–75 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 246Google Scholar.

80 Deloria, 156–57.

81 For instance, in a June 2017 White House meeting with tribal leaders, Trump outlined his plans to remove restrictions over the “vast amounts of deposits of coal and other resources” on reservation lands. See “Remarks by President Trump and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry at Tribal, State, and Local Energy Roundtable,” 28 June 2017, at www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/06/28/remarks-president-trump-and-secretary-energy-rick-perry-tribal-state-and, accessed 22 Sept. 2017.