Artist's Statement

America has been considered a cultural melting pot for many years. What makes America unique is that it is filled with people who have different backgrounds, traditions, cultures, and stories. This is what makes America great, but it comes with a few costs. All too often, people see items, symbols, or rituals from other cultures and decide to adopt them without acknowledgment for the original meaning of these things. This is known as cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation is defined as, “the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group.” When thinking about elements of the Native American culture that we believe America has adopted, a few common pieces came to mind, such as dream-catchers, teepees, ceremonial headdresses, etc. In order to make this issue of cultural appropriation relevant to this area, we took a trip to the Arizona State Museum to further our knowledge of this culture and to take photographs of misrepresented Native American items.

For our photo-blog we decided to make an effort to draw attention to this in focusing on the Native American Culture. In doing this, we realize that we took on a broad subject, and we were looking at a culture that we were no authorities on. In order to combat cultural appropriation on our part we met with a Native American student named Damara at the office of Native American Student Affairs. She of course, did not speak for all Native Americans, but as a visual artist, a student, and a Native American, she was able to help us understand different viewpoints of cultural appropriation, which we hope we can convey through this blog.

Damara helped us in understanding the viewpoints of a Native American on these issues. We asked her which pieces from her culture are misrepresented and she educated us on why Native Americans are so passionate about the misrepresentation of their culture. The ceremonial masks worn by Native American tribes are recreated all over the world, and are even being sold at gift shops. In some cases, replicas of these masks being sold are not created by Native Americans, but by scholars who have studied and researched these masks. While some Native Americans are not bothered by this, others are enraged that scholars are profiting from their culture. This nonchalant attitude about a spiritual artifact is insulting to the Native American culture, and Damara felt as though things such as masks should not be put up on display or sold just because they “look cool.” The Native American people have a personal attachment with many of the misrepresented artifacts such as the ceremonial masks, which causes them to become resentful.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Family Ties


Photographer: Spencer Porter

The sense of family and closeness is something that is important in the Native American culture. Their artworks symbolize this and provide a story for the viewer. In the American culture, however, the deeper meanings of these artworks are ignorantly overlooked.
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