|
|
|
Crossing Cultural Fences:
The Intersecting Material World of American Indians and Euro-Americans
Cindy Ott
This article focuses on the author's exhibition at the Museum of the Rockies entitled "Crossing Cultural Fences," which examined the shared histories and material worlds of Indians and non-Indians in order to complicate popular concepts of racial and ethnic distinctions.
|
|
|
|
At first glance, the grass-dance bustle in the exhibit seems typical of many worn by Plains Indians at pow-wows in the early-twentieth century. A broad ring of eagle feathers and puffy, small chicken feathers sewn to a hide backing is attached to three tails of blue wool fabric, from which more feathers and colorful ribbons fluttered during a dance performance. Yet a closer examination of the bustle's central rosette startled most people. Surrounded by a halo of tinsel is a photograph of a Euro-American couple in a passionate embrace, perhaps clipped from a magazine from the 1930s or 1940s. The bustle's central image: a classic Hollywood kiss. |
1
|
|
While an iconic Hollywood image might seem like anathema to Plains Indian cultures, a movie house opened on the Crow reservation in 1918, quite early for any American community, suggesting that many there reveled in the new movie industry, like the rest of American society. What are we to make of this intertwining of American Indian and seemingly non-Indian cultural icons and material objects? How can it help us re-interpret and better understand cross-cultural exchanges and perceptions of cultural distinctions between American Indians and Euro-Americans?1 |
2
|
|
Or what about the exhibit's "reservation hat" as it is commonly known? The hat is identifiably a cowboy hat with its wide brim and rounded top, yet it is also undeniably an American Indian hat because, as its name suggests, it was popular among Plains Indians in the first half of the twentieth century. Some men adapted the store-bought hat by remolding the crown into a tall point and adding beadwork or feathers to create a distinctly Indian style. Eventually, hat makers, like the Miller Hat Company of Denver, revised their patterns to fit the Indians' design preferences. This particular hat's probable owner was Plenty Hawk, who was a Crow Indian rancher near Lodge Grass, Montana, around the turn of the century.2 A special section of the annual Crow Fair parade is now devoted to wearers of the reservation hat and a recent Crow high school graduate requested the hat from his family as a graduation present, suggesting its deep connections to Plains Indian cultural heritage and identity.3 Because it is difficult to delineate or separate the American Indian and Euro-American components of this hat, how can the hat help us re-think ideas of cultural difference? |
. . . |
There are about 2896 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
