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Summary
In this insightful talk hosted by Bioneers, the speaker delves into the world of Native American fashion and the critical issue of cultural appropriation. It begins with the genesis of the blog 'Beyond Buckskin,' which was created to highlight Native designers and their innovative works. The discussion touches on the legal battles against brands like Urban Outfitters that misappropriate Native symbols and stresses the importance of supporting authentic Native artistry. Through initiatives like the 'Beyond Buckskin Boutique,' the speaker advocates amplifying Native voices and preserving cultural heritage by promoting traditional and contemporary designs. The presentation educates viewers on the difference between appreciation and appropriation, emphasizing ethical consumerism. It also recounts positive collaboration stories, showing how respect and acknowledgment can lead to meaningful partnerships with major fashion brands.
Highlights
The blog 'Beyond Buckskin' showcases Native American fashion to a global audience. 🌍
Misappropriation in fashion harms Native cultures and violates trademark laws, exemplified by Urban Outfitters. ⚠️
Fashion collaborations with Native artists, like the one with Valentino, show a positive shift in recognition. 🤝
Cultural appropriation involves unauthorized use of cultural symbols by dominant cultures. 🔄
Consumers are encouraged to consider the source, significance, and similarity of cultural items. 🔗
Key Takeaways
Support authentic Native American designers to preserve cultural heritage and boost their visibility. 🧡
Understand the difference between cultural appreciation and appropriation to be a conscious consumer. 🔍
Cultural misappropriation often involves power imbalances and can perpetuate harmful stereotypes. 🚫
Brands like Urban Outfitters have been called out for misusing Native names and designs without permission. 😠
Working directly with Native artists ensures fair representation and recognition of their cultural contributions. 🌟
Overview
Native fashion is a vibrant and rich field that deserves recognition beyond stereotypes. The speaker started a blog called 'Beyond Buckskin' in 2009, highlighting stories and creations of Native designers. With its success, it became clear that the world needs informed perspectives on Native artistry, one that respects and cherishes cultural heritage.
The issue of cultural misappropriation in fashion is notorious, with brands like Urban Outfitters unduly using Navajo names and motifs without proper authorization. The talk underscores the legal and ethical implications of such actions, advocating for a fair and just representation.
The speaker shares inspiring stories of successful collaborations with big brands like Valentino who engaged positively with Native artists. These partnerships highlight the power of respectful collaboration and the recognition of Native contributions to the global fashion scene.
00:30 - 01:00 I started beyond buckskin back in 2009 as a blog okay this is a space where I could share you know artist profiles
01:00 - 01:30 showcase different designers just to really good information out there because people I think don't know that Native American fashion exists and I was researching this topic for my doctoral dissertation when I was a student at the University of Arizona in Tucson and I was interviewing these fashion designers and they were sharing these really cool stories with me you know their struggles their successes and I wanted to share
01:30 - 02:00 that with more people so and you know the you know fastest quickest cheapest way to get your words out to a broader audience is by launching a blog so that's what I did and I showcase various designers you know very high-end couture dresses but also street wear such as this by Ilana Woods thirds a with the bold graphic leggings and then this is a photo shoot that we did in Los Angeles featuring a t-shirt by Jared Yazzie of
02:00 - 02:30 his brand o X DX and the t-shirt says Native Americans discovered Columbus but also I love this this is by Jamie Akuma and she's doing really cool stuff Jamie is a beadwork artist he fired by traditional beadwork of her people and now what she's doing is she's taking that traditional beadwork creating her own contemporary spin on it but then transferring that pattern to fabric and then turning it into awesome dresses so she's making this direct line between
02:30 - 03:00 the traditions of her people and then putting that into contemporary wearable clothing because you know in the society that we live in we can't really wear our buckskin dresses without you know standing out quite significantly so she's finding a way of taking those traditional decorative elements and making it into something we can we can wear right now I also highlight the traditional stuff because the traditional stuff is amazing and it really highlights how we continue these
03:00 - 03:30 artistic practices your hand if you've ever seen and are know of a Native American headdress raise your hand if you vaguely know something okay so like the majority of you guys are vaguely familiar with the native headdress it's one of our most iconic symbols but it's also culturally relevant and and there's a value system behind it and I hope to share some of that with you guys today and I would love to talk about just you know they're really cool contemporary designers and they're really cool traditional stuff
03:30 - 04:00 but I can't because stuff like this keeps popping up and this is you know misappropriations of Native American icon iconography and symbols and names in the fashion industry and one example would be on the left this is Jeremy Scotts collection for adidas in which he essentially ripped off a well-known totem pole by a well respected totem pole carver and gave him no credit at all so this stuff keeps happening and this is kind of our you know big this
04:00 - 04:30 was a big turning point in 2011 when Urban Outfitters got caught they had labeled over two dozen of their products as Navajo and there's a lot of problems with this but the big one is from a legal perspective and that is that the Navajo Nation has actually trademarked their name and any unauthorized use and any unauthorized use of the word Navajo is just violation of trademark law
04:30 - 05:00 that's it do these major companies have any kind of ethical obligations to the original peoples of this continent do do they have any do they have to run their business ethically when it comes to representing other people's cultures so I started asking my readers for my blog right it was just a blog at the beginning and I was saying hey instead of buying the native knock-offs why not buy the real thing Native
05:00 - 05:30 artists exist Native designers exist they're out there they're producing really cool stuff let's support them and my readers were saying okay that's a cool idea but where how how do I want to support these artists but how can I do it and at that time in 2011 there was a space for you to easily ask access Native American made fashion he kind of had to know somebody or go to event or go to Santa Fe there was only the stuff in certain places so I decided to launch the beyond buckskin boutique and through
05:30 - 06:00 this space I work with you know 40 to 50 Native American artists from the US and Canada to get their work out to a broader international audience so we have customers in the US Canada but also abroad Australia the UK Sweden Switzerland and so forth and we've been covered by CNN ABC NBC CTV most recently Martha Stewart so people are really
06:00 - 06:30 interested in what we're doing and and they like that it is something that is a solution based and then just providing an alternative path you know a different opportunity and I really like this image this is Martin sands Meyer who's wearing porcupine quill work so he's got the porcupine coal work medallion necklace and hair ties but we also sell porcupine quill work earrings and bracelets so stuff that anybody from any back background can wear wear this stuff and
06:30 - 07:00 support this movement was cool about quill work is it is an artistic practice that predates contact it predates the introduction of glass seed beads and it continues to this day that's really powerful we have a large collective of artists who who continue these ancient practices and when you buy a pair of markup iron coil earrings you are actively supporting the continuance of ancient traditional practices which i think is really cool and that's what we try to push forward with with the beyond
07:00 - 07:30 buckskin boutique and blog it's about education right because we have a huge problem with education and lack of education native cultures histories perspectives aren't represented in mainstream culture not in the educational setting not in the legal world not in the business world and so we depend greatly on forums such as this to have these opportunities to educate and to learn can we just take a step back and talk about why you think that cultural
07:30 - 08:00 misappropriation in fashion is harmful and dangerous even on a smaller scale rate and I think we kind of have to get into a definition of you know what is appropriation right what is cultural appropriation I think there's a distinct difference between cultural appreciation and cultural sharing and then there's cultural appropriation the important difference between cultural appreciation
08:00 - 08:30 and sharing and then cultural appropriation has to do with you know is it is it an authorized or unauthorized taking right when we were talking about appropriation it's it's in general and unauthorized taking of another cultures practices symbols even names like when I one that comes to like the word Navajo the unauthorized taking of those things and and it's typically also having to do with Dinah power dynamics right the the
08:30 - 09:00 extraction is coming from a more dominant culture to a from a minority group or a group that has been oppressed in the past and so we have to talk about those those dynamics as well when we're talking about appropriation now as for you know what is so harmful about you know somebody else taking these cultural you know valuable things like our names our symbols our belief systems and then
09:00 - 09:30 taking them and then misusing them and misrepresenting so those are kind of the key examples of what we're talking about when it comes down to like I showed you guys the Urban Outfitters things that was the Navajo flask the Navajo panty the Navajo sock the thing about Navajo people is that they were at that time a dry reservation they did not sell alcohol so to have a flask tied to their name is like a huge
09:30 - 10:00 misrepresentation of their people they also have beliefs connected to modesty and humility so to call something that Navajo pantie it was also in direct contradiction to to their cultural value systems so there's all these things going on where there there's this major company misrepresenting those people but what they were really doing is you know turning them into a pattern right they're saying this is we're calling it the Navajo sock because it's got a
10:00 - 10:30 pattern that references Navajo rugs but there's a lot of missing that goes on and and they're perpetuating those misrepresentations Jessica can you give a few examples of where major designers have stolen designs from native designers Oh lots of examples of course the the urban outfitters was such a you know key critical turning point because it was you know trademark violation we actually
10:30 - 11:00 had some teeth on it that we could we could talk about that but it Endon was kind of a launch pad to talk about you know like what are these ethical obligations that companies have do they have any so you know after that there was also the Paul Frank is anybody here familiar with Paul Frank industries raise your hand Julius the monkey you've seen Julius the monkey i-i've never heard of Paul Frank industries either until they had their what I called their racist powwow so
11:00 - 11:30 they had they had an event and it was a neon Native American themed event and they had propped tomahawks prop bow and arrows feathered headdresses neon war paint and they encouraged their guests to stand up on this on the stage kind of like a runway and and pose with these props and the poses that people picked were really disturbing so they were kind
11:30 - 12:00 of mock scalping one another mock beheading one another pointing their bow and arrows at people and and it was shocking because it was like is this what people think you know Native people think about Native people you know it was shocking so we actually reached out to Paul Frank industries and actually built a bridge with them which was extraordinary the president of Paul
12:00 - 12:30 Frank industries read our critiques again on the blog and we had a great response from that brand where they reached out and collaborated was for Native American designers and we launched a capsule collection out of that so what started off as a really bad event and bad representation and misuse of native cultures and symbols we morphed it into a really powerful collaboration and a positive route out
12:30 - 13:00 of that so in August Valentino which is a major designer collaborated with Christine Bellport who is a maytee painter and artists from Canada and and Christie Belcourt is also not only a phenomenal artists beadwork artist painter but also she's then she was the one who put together the project for the missing murdered Native women of of Canada and for those of you who do not know we kind of refer to it as our
13:00 - 13:30 stolen sisters which there's oh geez like 600 that are documented that we know of of our Native sisters who have gone missing no trace we have no idea what happened to them and there's no investigation into looking into where these women went the police say oh those kind of women don't want to be found so there are these very deep-seated racism racist perspectives going on and Chrissy has been at the forefront of
13:30 - 14:00 bringing recognition to these women and calling for justice for them for either finding them or taking an active stance against their perpetrators and through her various projects so she collaborated with Valentino they they used one of her large-scale paintings called water song and transferred it to fabric that they put into their recent resort collection and was great is that they give her credit they don't just say oh we
14:00 - 14:30 collaborated with somebody they say who she is and they pointed out and and they let everybody know exactly what how that collaboration went to be so that's just extraordinary of of where we're seeing this turning point of designers actually looking at native people as native individuals I'm wondering you know you sell you sell a lot of your art and fashion on your website made by native designers and Jared who are your customers mostly and how do people get
14:30 - 15:00 educated or recognized when they're in a store you know what are the guidelines you know I think when the Urban Outfitters thing came out a lot of people who are sensitive and caring and and and really want to pay attention to what's going on and be respectful didn't know what to do and I know I had friends myself who were who were at the art shows and saying well I'm afraid to buy that bracelet and
15:00 - 15:30 wear it down the street I'm afraid somebody's gonna say I'm doing something wrong so do you have kind of a set of guidelines as to people who appreciate native art and fashion how they can approach purchasing items for them to wear oh yes definitely so there there's this great scholar her name is Susan Scaffidi and she writes about this topic specifically and and also from a legal perspective you know who owns culture who has a say you know and and what is
15:30 - 16:00 something that's culturally appropriate to share etc so what she does is she gives this really great guideline called the three essence I hope that this will be a key takeaway for you guys today and you can apply this to to any situation not just with Native American appropriations but those 3 s's our first source second is sacredness or significance and then the last one is similarity so the source who are you
16:00 - 16:30 buying this thing from are you buying it from urban outfitters who has nothing to do with native people I really discourage urban outfitters they're a terrible company that's my opinion or are you buying it from an actual Native American artist so think about source the next one is sacredness or significance is what you're buying or wearing is it something that has greater significance within the community such as the Native American
16:30 - 17:00 headdress or is it something that is meant to be you know worn on a daily basis like moccasins for example that gets it back to source okay are you buying these moccasins from a big company again that that are extracting native technologies for their own profit or are you giving money to a Native American moccasin maker so think about that and then the third one is similarity so is what you're buying a direct knockoff is it a knockoff of a headdress is it a knockoff of a Native
17:00 - 17:30 American designer stuff or is it something that is simply inspired by I love I love the world that we live in today we can learn so much about different cultures we can be inspired by different cultures and different people I think inspiration is great but inspiration requires some creativity of your own so please don't you know make a direct copy of somebody else's cultural property so those are the three 3 s's source significance and similarity and I
17:30 - 18:00 think those are keys that we can apply to our everyday lives I think [Music]