Cultural appropriation and cultural survival are inextricably linked – assimilation undermines the maintenance of Native culture

Although its ‘‘roots’’ in an organic metaphor for culture may be unfortunate given my discussion of Clifford (1988), the concept of hybridity is useful in clarifying dynamics of appropriation under transculturation, understood here as a historically specific condition. Kraidy (2002) discusses hybridity in the context of cultural globalization, focusing on its potential for international and intercultural communication studies. Despite problems with prior uses of the concept, Kraidy sees no ‘‘credible substitute to characterize the dual forces of globalization and localization, cohesion and dispersal, disjuncture and mixture, that capture transnational and transcultural dialectics’’ (p. 332). Kraidy warns against the importation of hybridity into communication studies as a merely ‘‘descriptive device, i.e. describing the local reception of global media texts as a site of cultural mixture’’ (p. 317). Instead of understanding hybridity as the product of local–global interactions, ‘‘hybridity needs to be understood as a communicative practice constitutive of, and constituted by, sociopolitical and economic arrangements’’ (p. 317). Kraidy’s approach highlights ‘‘the mutually constitutive interplay and overlap of cultural, economic and political forces in international communication processes’’ while positing ‘‘the relationship between structure and agency as a dialectical articulation whose results are not preordained’’ (p. 333). Following Kraidy (2002), transculturation is not only distinct from cultural exchange in that multiple cultures and multiple acts of appropriation are involved but it also retains the implications of unequal power of cultural dominance and exploitation while acknowledging the radically different nature of appropriation in the global–local contexts of transnational capitalism. Transculturation highlights, in ways that cultural dominance and exploitation do not, the hybridity of cultural forms and, following Clifford (1988), the lack of ‘‘authenticity,’’ ‘‘purity,’’ and ‘‘essence’’ in the elements being appropriated and in the appropriations themselves. The point, however, is not to return to a pluralist conception of power, or to pretend that the implications discussed under cultural dominance and exploitation no longer apply. Transculturation and hybridity are as inescapable as cultural appropriation itself—an ‘‘always already’’ condition of contemporary culture. Although specific acts of transcultural appropriation vary in the degree of choice involved, for most individuals and cultures today, the condition of transculturation is an involuntary one. The case of Hopi kachina dolls produced for consumption by tourists and collectors of indigenous arts from the southwestern United States (mentioned earlier under cultural exploitation) demonstrates the international and transcultural contexts in which even seemingly ‘‘domestic’’ appropriations occur. These products are shaped by the domestic and international market in Native arts, including commodification of Western fantasies about Native Americans; by the efforts of Hopi and other Native groups to establish economic viability in the U.S. economy; and by the dialectic of cultural assimilation and cultural survival. Some kachina dolls (and numerous other Native art forms) are not only made by non-Natives but also produced outside the United States, adding an international component of both cultural and labor exploitation to the kachina doll trade. ‘‘Imitation’’ kachina dolls abound, leading to a heavy emphasis on authenticity by dealers in Native arts. However, the creation of ‘‘hybrid’’ kachina dolls (as well as potentially hybrid forms of traditional katsina figures), such as those incorporating nontraditional materials, even by‘‘traditional Native artists,’’ complicates notions of purity and authenticity. In a context in which hybridity is inescapable and in which colonized peoples necessarily appropriate aspects of other, often dominating, cultures, ‘‘cultural or artistic ‘authenticity’ has as much to do with an inventive present as with a past, its objectification, preservation, or revival’’ (Clifford, 1988, p. 222). This ‘‘inventive present’’ includes the (involuntary) condition of transculturation as well as the appropriative tactics used by subordinated cultures, few of which could be considered pure. Even if their presence originates from cultural dominance, pickup trucks, country music, rap, and rodeo are a part of tribal life in the southwestern United States along with katsinas, corn pollen, and eagle feathers—not only as cultural impositions or evidence of assimilation but also as part of the ongoing dynamics of culture, identity, survival, and resistance. Even a seemingly random teepee at a roadside Native American arts outlet—oddly placed, an object more appropriate for the Great Plains and its tribes than the Southwest, serving to cue the Western image of ‘‘the Indian’’ more than to represent any particular tribal identity or heritage—cannot be dismissed a priori as alien, inauthentic, and nothing more than a ploy to lure in ignorant tourists (though it is). Its (in)authenticity is more complex than an organic or primitivist view of culture can accommodate, and its dismissal as inauthentic obscures the cultural dynamics of a living people as much as its alien presence. Stereotypes perpetuated about Native Americans via Hollywood (including teepees as a Native American universal) are complicit in the subordination and exploitation of Native peoples, but they also constitute part of the lived experiences of those peoples, experiences that are never determined in advance by the political economy of their representation by the dominant culture and that can serve to provide forms of agency (e.g., possibilities for reappropriation) not otherwise available. Appropriations in such transcultural contexts—involving multiple Southwestern tribes with varying degrees of traditional and assimilated practices as well as the descendants of Spanish, Anglo, and Mormon colonizers, using a means of habitation employed by tribes of the Great Plains to attract tourists off a highway paved with rock taken from a Hopi sacred site, buzzing with cars (some with indigenous names such as Cherokee, Pontiac, and Touareg) carrying tourists not only from Phoenix and Los Angeles but also from Sao Paolo, Berlin, and Tokyo, who are reading guidebooks to the region distributed by transnational media conglomerates and who just might purchase a Kokopelli t-shirt or kachina doll—articulates not only a dizzying array of factors, none determinant, but also possibilities for a variety of potentially effective agencies. These appropriations and agencies are inauthentic but perhaps thrive precisely because of such inauthenticity. This is not a world of autonomy, equality, and genuine pluralism but of domination, struggle, survival, and resistance; one which can be better understood via hybridity and indigenization and in which concepts such as purity, authenticity, and continuity can do as much to perpetuate (neo)- colonial relations as to overcome them (Clifford, 1988). At the same time, however, concepts like transculturation and hybridity can be deployed to delegitimize (legitimate) claims of cultural ownership by subordinated groups, potentially perpetuating (illegitimate) acts of cultural exploitation and thereby questioning whether transculturation should supplant cultural domination and exploitation as valid types of cultural appropriation. The bind here is that although cultural essence and its attendant traits (singular, bounded, static, and proprietary) perpetuate primitivist, organic, and static conceptions of culture (especially with regards to indigenous cultures) and enable exploitative commodifications, many of the same assumptions inhere in arguments for the rights of colonized cultures to oppose exploitation and to practice, perpetuate, and (re)claim control over their culture (e.g., Whitt, 1995). Hence, as mentioned above, many cultural critics draw parallels between the theft of indigenous lands and the theft of indigenous culture—a rhetorically useful but nevertheless conceptually problematic analog. Transculturation as an ‘‘always already’’ of cultural existence Whereas many of the conceptualizations of transculturation and related concepts (hybridity, indigenization) are grounded in the particular conditions of transnational capitalism, the critique of the very concepts of culture and appropriation that undergird the first three types of appropriation can be extended beyond the contemporary condition to previous eras. That is, transculturation questions whether the conception of culture as singular, bounded essence has ever had empirical validity or conceptual coherence. Transculturation, as conceived here, calls not only for an updating of the understanding of contemporary cultural dynamics but also for a radical reconceptualization of culture itself: as conjunctural, relational, or dialogic; as constituted by, not merely engaged in, appropriative relations; and as an ongoing process of absorption and transformation rather than static configurations of practices. Transculturation is not, however, a neoliberal licensing of cultural imperialism or an embracing of the radical indeterminacy and antimaterialism of some postmodern theories of culture. Transculturation questions many of the assumptions undergirding cultural dominance and exploitation, but it remains oriented toward the material dimensions and implications of cultural practices and sensitive to the complex dynamics of disproportionate power. Transculturation identifies forces of cultural homogenization and highlights the influential role of economic, political, military, and other forms of power while also recognizing how cultural appropriation can be constitutive of cultural particularity and agency. The ongoing imposition of the essentialist view of culture embedded in the first three types of appropriation onto various others (marginalized and/or colonized peoples) may constitute the kind of ‘‘epistemic violence’’ critiqued by Spivak (1988). The history of Navajo weaving demonstrates the validity of transculturation’s conception of culture and appropriation in situations prior to the current globalized era. Weaving has long been a central part of Navajo (Dine´) culture, and this continues today as Navajo weavers prepare rugs for display and sale in museums, Native arts outlets, and trading posts on or near the Navajo Nation, and other uses. However, although a particular idea of ‘‘authentic’’ Navajo weaving (in terms of materials, techniques, and patterns) affects the value attached to such weavings, the past 150 years of Navajo weaving have included a wide range of materials and patterns, born of both the conditions under which the Navajo have survived and Navajo inventiveness. A brief review of the recent Eyedazzlers Project (n.d.) and related research by Sheri Burnham (2005) concerning the Germantown period in Navajo weaving and its recent revival illustrates the complex cultural intersections, conditions, and agencies involved in acts of appropriation and the limitations of an essentialist view of culture. In 1863, the U.S. Army forced the defeated Navajo on the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico. Bereft of their sheep and unable to grow crops or otherwise support themselves, Navajo women began unraveling Army-issue blankets and reweaving the materials (Burnham, 2005). Eventually, Germantown yarn from Philadelphia was provided to the Navajo via the railroad. This finely spun and brightly colored yarn was very different from their traditional handspun and naturally dyed yarn, contributing to the development of a distinct style of weavings referred to as Germantowns or Eyedazzlers. The use of Germantown yarn and related styles of weaving continued for approximately 40 years before a return to more traditional patterns and materials. For some, Germantowns represented a loss of authenticity and tradition; a return to earlier styles was driven in part by efforts to market more traditional or authentic weavings to collectors and tourists of the exotic Indians of the Southwest. In the 1990s, some Navajo weavers and the trading posts through which many of their weavings were sold began a revival of the Germantown style. This revival, among other things, called attention to the inventiveness of Navajo weavers and to the ability of cultures to patch themselves together and survive—by literally unweaving and reweaving the text(ile)s of the colonizing culture, then using that culture’s materials to create a new but nevertheless ‘‘Navajo’’ style. Of course, resistance, like culture, is never pure. Navajo weaving is intimately linked to the marketing efforts of non-Indians and the commodification of the dominant culture’s fantasized image of Native Americans and the Southwest. Both the Germantowns and the subsequent weaving styles are not pure expressions of traditional Navajo culture but are shaped by the dynamics of (neo)colonialism. These weavings are not only ‘‘simply’’ (essentially) expressions of Navajo culture and history but are also products of European and Euro-American markets, of the railroads, of tourism, and of the trading posts (themselves cultural hybrids of Native and Western, Anglo and Navajo, Mormon and Spanish), which mediated between the weavers and those who eventually purchased their weavings. Even the pre-Bosque Redondo Navajo weaving styles were involved in interactions with other Native American tribes (the Navajo likely learned weaving from the Puebloan cultures that inhabited the region before their arrival) and a system of trade relationships (Burnham, 2005). Indeed, the sheep from which they obtained their wool were a result of Spanish colonization; hence, the pre-Germantown woolen weavings were themselves hybrid even if the yarn was handspun and naturally dyed. If the history of a cultural practices is traced far enough, its hybridity (impurity) will almost inevitably be demonstrated (cf. Rogers, 1998). A dismissal of the Germantown weavings as inauthentic is not only driven by the essentialist, organic view of culture outlined by Clifford (1988), it overlooks the important role of cross-cultural appropriations in both ongoing cultural development and cultural survival. Such dismissals perpetuate the view of indigenous cultures in particular as static and without agency, and overlooks the important role of appropriation and hybridity in the ongoing constitution of identity as well as resistance—even prior to European contact and colonization. Power dynamics are an intrinsic part of these hybrid forms, but not as simple, one-sided formulas of powerful–powerless. The concerns here are whether the categories of cultural dominance and exploitation can effectively capture these dynamics and whether they do ‘‘epistemic violence’’ to the Navajo. As this case illustrates, transculturation is not always or only degradation or homogenization; it can also be constitutive of cultural particularity, agency, identity, inventiveness, and resistance—not only for those at Bosque Redondo and those who eventually resettled Navajo lands but also for the weavers, traders, and others involved in the contemporary revival of Germantown weaving. These contemporary Germantowns are, of course, also not ‘‘pure’’ but incorporate digital designs and colors of significance to the Native American Church (another hybrid cultural entity) and call forth parallels between the history of the Long Walk and Bosque Redondo with today’s struggles for cultural survival (Eyedazzlers Project, n.d.).