[CPProt.net] Can culture be stolen? Native artists feel powerless against white society's control of historic imagery

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Can culture be stolen? 
Native artists feel powerless against white society's control of historic
imagery 

By MARK BAECHTEL and DAWNELL SMITH
Anchorage Daily News 

Published: August 14th, 2005 
Last Modified: August 14th, 2005 at 05:50 AM 


Use the phrase "Alaska art" in mixed company, and odds are your audience
will think first of masks, Tlingit clan carvings, totem poles, ivory
animals, Chilkat weavings, skin and bead work. The art of Alaska's Native
groups dominates the public imagination, and for good reason: It is bold,
mysterious and innovative in line and design, rich in artistry and evocative
in materials and range of reference. 


Given this power, it seems ironic that those creating the state's Native art
should so often feel powerless -- their work subverted, commodified and even
outright stolen from them; their creative choices limited to a small range
of media, methods and themes; their development as modern artists stunted by
struggles of economics and identity that their non-Native contemporaries
never face.

Today and for the next three Sundays, the Daily News will explore these
challenges, problems and conundrums in a series examining the complex
ecology of Alaska's Native art scene and the industry that benefits from it
-- the way it runs, how artists are expressing themselves and who those
artists are -- and through it, look at the underlying issue of cultural
appropriation.


CONFLICT AT THE CRAFT SHOP

One high-profile conflict, in which multiple lines of connection and
divergence have met and snarled over the past dozen years, has taken place
between certain members of the Native arts community and the white women who
run the Alaska Native Medical Center craft shop. It's difficult to get a
handle on where the truth lies in this quarrel; the parties involved have
fought it out by letter, meeting, legal communication, allegation, threat
and news story, even at one point pulling Sen. Ted Stevens into the fray. 

If nothing else comes clear in sifting the fight's he-said-she-said details,
one thing certainly does: The struggle over proper payment for Alaska's art
provides a living metaphor for the state of relations between American
culture and Alaska's Native cultures, and the value of this art is measured
in respect as well as in dollars. Whatever line each side would like to
maintain in public, as least as far as race relations are concerned, it
seems things in the Great Land are not so great. 

As you walk into the craft shop, it's hard to believe such a modest space
has been one of the most hotly contested battlegrounds in Alaska's culture
wars. The floor area looks to be little more than 200 square feet, and most
of that is taken up by display cases packed with the wares of village
artisans: ivory figures, baleen baskets, jewelry and more. Nearly every
square inch of wall space is filled with hanging masks or shelves that hold
tightly woven grass baskets, mukluks, beaded slippers and ceremonial
carvings. On the day we visited, there were 10 or so customers from varying
cultures, some wearing billed cruise ship caps, all talking to the
volunteers staffing the counters. 

The craft shop opened in 1975, when Lovie Cunningham, a switchboard operator
with the medical center, retired. Since the '60s, Cunningham had been
selling items for various artists and artisans who came into the hospital
from the Bush, often strapped for cash and with no way of getting it.
Cunningham would return the money from the sale to the artist, and if the
items she was given to sell didn't move right way, she would hang them at
her workstation at the hospital's switchboard until they did. 

When she left her post, Agnes Coyle, Jeanne Dougherty and Karin Vogeler, all
members of the hospital's auxiliary, decided to carry on. No one wanted the
work hanging in the switchboard area anymore, so they set up shop on a table
in the hospital lobby, keeping their inventory in a closet.

"At first we just added 5 percent to the artist's asking price to pay for
postage and packaging to and from the villages," Coyle says. "We started out
as a consignment shop, and we still prefer to call it that. 

"We answer the need of the people, and I'm here to tell you that the need is
great. (Artists) come in who need gas money or need a meal or need to buy
diapers, and we take what they have so they can answer their immediate need.
We often end up buying things outright because we never turn anyone away. We
like to say we help a lot of people a little bit." 

The ensuing years have brought a lot of change to both the hospital and the
craft shop. Under the pressure of economics and the commercial retailers of
Native art (who felt -- and in many cases still feel -- that the craft
shop's pricing practices made it impossible for them to compete), the shop's
managers have raised their markup twice, first to 10 percent and then to 20
percent. 

These days, the "little bit" of help the shop offers adds up to quite a lot
in sales. During the first half of this year alone, according to Dougherty,
more than 1,000 artists have had artwork sold through the shop. According to
a copy of the auxiliary's 2003 federal tax return obtained by the Daily
News, the craft shop showed gross receipts in excess of $1.35 million, with
a gross profit of more than $200,000. The return further showed the
auxiliary had more than $500,000 in savings and temporary cash investments,
$174,000 in inventory and another $500,000-plus in investments, for total
assets of $1.25 million. Its liabilities for the same period were under
$4,500. 

Since the hospital donates the space to the auxiliary, the shop doesn't have
to cover rent or utilities, nor does it have any labor expense, since it
operates with an all-volunteer work force. According to the managers, this
means the majority of profit is available for hospital needs, most recently
funding a $21,000 treadmill for the cardiology unit, a $42,000 anesthesia
machine, $60,000 for suicide prevention programs in six Bush communities,
nearly $22,000 for a "comfort program" for patients in the oncology ward and
a $55,000 scholarship program the auxiliary has been running for 20 years.
This year, the auxiliary's educational initiatives have included the
establishment of a $25,000 endowment at the University of Alaska Fairbanks
that is aimed directly at would-be college students from rural Alaska. 

A particular point of pride for the auxiliary has been its Heritage
Collection of art, which now numbers hundreds of pieces and includes works
from some of the biggest names in Native arts. The works are carefully
displayed and labeled in vitrines that line the medical center's halls.
During the past year, the auxiliary spent $10,500 on acquiring new art for
and maintaining the collection.

"My biggest emotion is one of satisfaction at being friends with the Native
people who are vendors, and helping these people has been its own 

reward," says volunteer Dougherty. "It's one of the reasons, too, we started
the Heritage Collection. We see someone come in with his remarkable work,
and we'll say, 'He's not going to be around much longer; we should buy one
of those for the collection.' Bringing these artists' art to their people
has been one of our accomplishments." 


TRY ME NEXT MONTH 

How, then, could these women -- who have never taken a dime in salary while
spending decades doing such obvious good in so many quarters -- have run
afoul of a group of vocal Native artists and social activists, including
some of the very artists who have work in the Heritage Collection or for
sale on the shop's walls? This is where the waters grow murkier, and what's
really at issue becomes harder to address. 

Rumors abound. Some say the craft shop is nothing more than a front
operation that has enabled a group of rich white women to take advantage of
Native people when they are at their most vulnerable. These women, the group
contends, have abused their position to advance the careers of a few favored
artists while amassing huge personal collections of the finest Alaskan
Native art at drastically reduced rates. The women of the gift shop deny
these accusations. 

In addition, there are still complaints that their prices are too low. 

A bemused and angry tone is evident as Coyle and Dougherty are asked why
Native artists would be saying such things about them.

"You'd have to ask them," Dougherty says, "because we've helped all of them
for years." 

When pressed, though, Dougherty and Coyle say that the pitiless dictates of
market forces at times keep them from giving artists what they want.

"Sometimes we can't take it all," Coyle says. "Someone will come in with 10
pairs of earrings, and we can only buy two pair. Someone will come in with a
big mask, and as you can see, we don't have a square inch of space (left on
the wall), so we just have to say no." 

Interviews with artists who have had work in the craft shop and who have
been left unhappy by the experience convey the impression that it would be
well nigh impossible for the process to feel good. Competing for wall and
counter space and hearing "no" when the thing being offered up is nothing
less than symbols, stories and methods passed down to the artist by family
-- the beadwork one learned at a grandmother's knee, for instance, or a skin
drum emblazoned with one's clan iconography -- engenders at least
disappointment and sometimes bitterness.

There are those who understand this is how things go -- that in selling
their work they are subject to the laws of supply and demand as well as the
discerning eye of an experienced buyer. Artist Alvin Amason, who has had
work in the craft shop through the years, says: "A good gallery will tell
you when they can't sell your stuff because of quality or inventory or if it
just doesn't fit. That's part of the business. (The craft shop has) insisted
on quality. They don't deal with people who bang out 50 owls." 

Still, because many people bringing wares to the craft shop lack the
sophistication of experienced artists and are in dire need to boot, fair or
not, the benevolent face the ladies of the auxiliary wear on their best days
can seem to transform, taking on the lines of the fox. 

"I think sometimes they're insensitive to the artists' needs and that they
sometimes project an air of favoritism toward some artists," says Leonard
Savage, a carver who has had work in the craft shop. 

"Mainly it's their attitudes. If they don't want to talk to you, they'll
just shrug you off. I go in there and feel like I don't belong. They want me
out as quickly as possible. It's the same sort of thing we have to deal with
when we visit so many other non-Native-owned stores. They don't understand
what it feels like to come in and need money for food or clothes and have to
give your art up."

Helen McNeil, a Tlingit weaver and beader who has also had work in the craft
shop, echoes Savage's sentiment concerning treatment she felt was
disrespectful. 

"The last time I brought some beaded jewelry into the shop, they asked me to
leave it on consignment, and I said: 'All right, if this is on consignment,
I'll sit down while you write out a receipt for me.' I don't leave work
anywhere without a receipt or unless it's bought outright," McNeil says.
"And the woman behind the counter said, 'Oh, we don't write receipts,' and I
turned around and started to walk away, and she said, 'Oh, wait, wait, I'll
give you a receipt.' 

"So later on I went back, and all the work had been sold, and I asked the
woman when the checks were going to get cut, and she said they didn't have
any record of the sale. Period. So I pulled out the receipt, and she said,
'Oh, now I remember.' "

It is behavior like this -- which has been interpreted as disorganized at
best and devious at worst -- that last year moved the artist group Authentic
Alaska Native Arts Institute to lodge protests with the medical center's
board of directors, going so far as to propose that the shop be taken over
by a co-op of Native Artists. 

"It's our hospital, so (the craft shop) should be run by Native people,"
Savage says. "I appreciate them starting it up and running it through the
years, but I think it's time for them to step aside."

The craft shop has a stack of fliers announcing, in the form of an open
letter to Native artists, the opening of Savage's own downtown store,
Taheta, in June. It's easy to imagine that the flier is pointedly aimed at
the craft shop's management, rendering its presence on the shop's counter
ironic. However, Savage stresses that the feelings the flier expresses arise
from similar experiences he's had through the years in countless Alaska
shops and galleries. It reads, in part: 

"Are you tired of having to go through middlemen who only have THEIR OWN
interests at heart? Are you tired of dealing with retailers who say 'Come
back tomorrow' or 'Come back next week' or 'No, I don't need any of those
right now. Try me next month.' Wouldn't it be great if there was an outlet
for Alaska Native artwork and handicrafts run BY Alaska Natives, for Alaska
Natives, for the purpose of promoting the status AND FINANCIAL WELL-BEING of
ALL (Alaska Native) ARTISTS?"

The implication is clear: In dealing with the shops and galleries handling
their works -- the vast majority of them not Native-owned -- many Native
artists feel they are being forced to consent to selling their heritage for
pennies on the dollar, if not to having it stolen. 


MANY TYPES OF THEFT

This perceived theft is happening in multiple ways. Some retailers are
commissioning faux-Alaskan works from workshops Outside for a fraction of
what they would have to pay artists here. Some non-Native artists are
adopting Alaska Native iconography or forms. 

There is by no means a unity of opinion among the Native artists working in
traditional forms about who ought to make what or how. But while the problem
might be complicated, it's not new. The transformation of the artifacts of
Native culture into commodities is a notion whose roots stretch as far back
as the first encounters between Natives and whites. 

In ocean-girded Alaska, it may be useful to compare the imported culture of
the white world to a tsunami that rolled into the state more than 150 years
ago, inundating cultures settled here for 10 centuries. While it may be true
that this wave lifted the subsistence-based indigenous populations of
Alaska's coasts and Interior with a level of technological and material
advancement they had never before known, it is also true that this wave
swamped them, eroding their cultural foundations and causing a crisis of
identity that has reverberated forward to this day. Nowhere is this crisis
more poignantly expressed than in the art these societies have produced and
continue to produce.

"The theft of culture is central to the story of Western development," says
Asia Freeman, an artist, art scholar and artistic director of Bunnell Street
Gallery in Homer. Freeman was guest curator for "Defiant Objects," an
exhibit of traditional and contemporary art currently at the Anchorage
Museum of History and Art. 

"Western culture has a long tradition of transforming art into commodities
based on its appearance, regardless of its creators' intent or content, and
traditional artists end up feeling that their culture is being disrespected
and devalued."

Indeed, according to Yup'ik sculptor Jack Abraham, the process of having
one's culture devalued can continue until that culture has practically
vanished.

"I had to steal (my culture) back from those who hid it from me," he says.
"There was a complete lack of information about my ancestors and culture in
primary school. I knew nothing about the incredible objects my people had
made until I was 28, in a college class. We were taught in school about
other cultures and their art but not about our own. 

"I found my identity, but there are so many Native people with no idea who
they are or where they came from. Many do not even speak their own language.
This omission of vital information was one of the government's ways of
suppressing indigenous people. Knowing about my ancestors' way of life and
art would have made a tremendous difference in my life as a child, as I'm
sure it would have for others. This theft of culture is still going on
today. 

"Tourists are always asking me what this and that means about our art and
other things; I remember someone being a little shocked when I did not know
about something. I had to say, 'Your people stole all that from us;
shouldn't you know? Maybe I should be asking you!' 

"Even our names were stolen, and we're given new ones, some right out of the
Bible. And now there are tourists who get disappointed if one does not have
a Native name on a piece of art."


FAKE ARTIFACTS

One culture swallows another whole, and its artworks become trade goods.
Once this happens, it becomes easier to look at those artworks as so many
widgets that can packaged, repurposed, even reconfigured to fit the demands
of the marketplace. Soapstone carvings -- now a fixture in gift shops and
galleries -- are not a traditional part of Native handiwork, nor are skin
masks. Asia Freeman points to the humble billikin as an example of how
market forces can warp a culture's production of art. Though it goes home in
many a tourist's pocket as an example of the state's indigenous art,
"Alaska's good luck charm" is a fabrication.

"People collect it now as a Native icon," Freeman says. "But it has no basis
in any indigenous culture's art. It's an image that has been proliferated as
a salable commodity, originally by a white man. It's just another example of
successful marketing, and it demonstrates how commodification is tied to
theft, exploitation and lack of imagination." 

Billikins can even be found in bins in the gift shops operated by one of the
most visible bastions of the state's Native culture, the Alaska Native
Heritage Center. On a recent afternoon, Tlingit artist McNeil points this
out during a tour of the Fourth Avenue location, gesturing also to racks and
cases of other merchandise manufactured in Canada, the Lower 48 and even in
factories in Asia.


GETTING IT CHEAPER OUTSIDE

>From a rack against the wall, McNeil picks up a pair of earrings hung on a
card. They were mass-produced according to a design by Yukie Adams, a
Japanese artist who began producing Tlingit-themed art after she married
Tlingit artist Henry Adams in Anchorage in 1984. 

A label on the card specifies that Adams was "adopted Eagle Thunderbird" but
gives no notion what this means, nor does it in any way indicate that the
artist executing the Tlingit designs is not herself Tlingit and has no claim
to the iconography she executes aside from her marriage to a Tlingit -- now
dead for 15 years -- and the time she spent studying Northwest coastal
Indian design under Marvin Oliver at the University of Washington. 

These facts notwithstanding, in her biography on the Web site for the Boat
Show Gallery in Bellingham, Wash., which handles her work, Adams mentions
prominently that she was "chosen (in 1988) for a purchase award at the third
annual Southeast Alaska Native Art Exhibit in Sitka" and that "the mix of
modernism and traditionalism in her work is her unique identity." 

While the Native heritage center's shop stocks goods of questionable
provenance, McNeil points out that this merchandise is kept in a part of the
store separate from items made by Alaska Natives. It seems a subtle
distinction. 

"Seventy percent of the tourists, maybe more, will think all these things
must be Alaska Native-made," McNeil guesses.

According to Leonard Savage, it's a widespread problem, and it's only
growing worse. 

"You look up and down Fourth Avenue and everywhere else in Anchorage, and
the shops are owned by non-Natives or out-of-staters," he says. "And
increasingly our work is being pushed to the back of their stores because
they say they can get it cheaper out of workshops in Seattle or someplace,
and they're not wanting to buy it from Native people anymore."

Even in-state, it's a problem. 

"There's a guy in Juneau named Chupak," Savage says. "He's a Cambodian, and
he's carving whalebone and calling it Native artwork. I've seen 'Native'
masks made out of Sculpie and other nontraditional materials. When people
come into the shops looking to buy, they don't ask whether Natives made
these things; they just assume they did because it's in an Alaska gift shop
or the maker has a Native-sounding name." 


ONLY THING THEY CAN SELL

Such pressures can have a chilling effect on art and artists, even those who
don't identify themselves primarily as Native artists. 

"I don't try to sell my work here at all anymore," says Joe Senungetuk, one
of the most respected contemporary artists in Alaska, who has work in the
permanent collection at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. 

"When I was first (in Anchorage), I would ask galleries here to look at my
things and they'd say, gee, it was very nice but it didn't fit into their
venue and would I please consider doing some of those nice ivory or walrus
carvings or some etchings? So I've been very poor here but actually very
wealthy in staying true to myself and really laughing off the community's
expectations of my art." 

Though art and poverty are synonymous no matter what the artist's ethnicity,
it's a problem that's exacerbated for Native artists here. 

"Native people in this day and age are still in horrible economic
situations," says Aldona Jonaitis, director of the University of Alaska
Museum in Fairbanks. "Art produced from their culture is one commodity that
they have which is extremely precious." 

When artists from non-Native backgrounds adopt or appropriate Native
imagery, Jonaitis says, they're stealing this precious commodity. 

"White artists have other options," she says. "They don't have to
appropriate it. The only thing a lot of Native people have to sell is their
culture."


Daily News arts editor Mark Baechtel can be reached at 257-4323 or
mbaechtel@ adn.com. Arts writer Dawnell Smith can be reached at 257-4587 or
dsmith at adn.com.


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Next week

PART 2: Art and craft -- should we draw a distinction? 

Artists, academics, collectors and curators talk about how the terms "art"
and "craft" reflect cultural and gender-related biases, particularly in the
Alaska arts community. 

Aug. 21 in Life & Arts