The Appropriation in the Arts series of panel discussions at the Museum of Northern Arizona and Sedona Arts Center tackles topics ranging from mass-produced costume Navajo jewelry to spiritual colonialism.
FLAGSTAFF, AZ—The thin silver bracelet encircling my pale adolescent wrist—with its intricate detailing of arrows, hatch marks, diamonds, bear claws, and bow and arrow—grabbed her attention. I didn’t exist. Only the bracelet. As the elder Native woman stared, I was uneasy. I wondered what she saw.
Decades later, after listening to “Moving from Appropriation to Authenticity,” the first in the Sedona Arts Center and the Museum of Northern Arizona’s Appropriation in the Arts series, which took place at MNA, I reflected on my childhood experience and newly wondered: what did those symbols mean to her? What did she experience of the maker? Of the maker’s maker? What of the bracelet engaged her with the sacred?
The 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act, a truth-in-advertising law, served as the framework for the panel discussion. But capitalist appropriation of Indigenous art forms—specifically jewelry—along with illegal manufacturing and sales practices (largely ignored or unpunished) and consumer behavior were at the heart of the talk on September 17, 2023. Kelley Hays-Gilpin, chair of anthropology at the Museum of Northern Arizona and professor of anthropology at Northern Arizona University, moderated a panel discussion that included Santa Fe-based Nisenan, Washo, and Navajo artist Liz Wallace; Marcus Monenkerit, director of community engagement for the Heard Museum in Phoenix; and Mark Bahti, owner of Bahti Indian Arts in Santa Fe.
The wide-ranging discussions included fake Navajo jewelry mass produced in the Philippines for sale around the world; the growing unavailability of such sacred materials as authentic turquoise, coral, and spiny oyster to Indigenous artists; and knowing when a show, market, or store follows ethical practices and includes Native art. But there were also calls for responsibility. Consider the intent of artists, buyers, and sellers when viewing Native art, urged Monenkerit.
“Knowing about the art forms, where they come from, what stories they’re telling, the challenges and successes of the people producing those art forms, along with integrity and introspection are important first steps” toward undoing repressive “de-sublimination,” which means “taking an art form that’s sacred and making it available to the masses, as consumer goods,” Monenkerit explained.
Wallace also addressed the economic and spiritual colonization that occurs with the manufacture and sale of fake Indigenous objects.
“We need to elevate the image of Native arts and crafts,” she urged. “We’re the only people in the world that can make Native jewelry and its popular all over the world, but there’s so little authenticity.”
Wallace reminded listeners of how colonization has stolen Native land, people, culture, resources, and now identities and artwork.
“It’s important for people to realize that arts and crafts is how 30 percent of Native people in the Southwest are able to live. Some artists support their whole extended families [with their work]. It’s a way for people to occupy what little land we have left… to stay in community and keep connection to community… and to retain intimacy and conversation and millennial-old history with the land, which is so critical for all of us…,” including non-Native people, Wallace said.
Humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years without technology, she continued. “But not without art. When you support an artist from a Native community, you’re giving them a way to keep up their relationship with the land and inspiration. Art matters. And meaningful, authentic art matters—for everybody.” As my bracelet now does to me.
The series, which continued with “More Than a Meal” on November 5, concludes with “Drawing Cultural Inspiration” at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff at 2 pm Sunday, January 21, 2024.
