This is an interesting push back from a non-Native/Native Community. I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with this practice but many neighborhoods in New Orleans which according to them as well as this article are descendent’s from slaves who took refuge in Native homes and villages. The founders of these neighborhoods take this very seriously and participate three times a year in the dawning of these outfits. Obviously modified from their original sources what started out as a way to represent your neighborhood, then became a footrace to see who’s outfit can be the best. Honestly when I heard this, I thought it sounded like a strange derivitive of Indigenous culture. That being said they have found themselves at an interesting crossroads of the “Commodification of Culture.”
When I was in college we had a helluva time trying to get any of our Native events done, from everything from funding to the actual building being secured. It felt like the university fought us every step of the way. And then when we finally got it accomplished the university’s photographers showed up and started taking pictures, which show up in every piece of print collateral the university has to show how “diverse” the campus is, for recruitment purposes.
That being said I felt a little uncomfortable the first time I uploaded snapshots of myself and my family preparing for Inlonshka onto my facebook and myspace accounts and to this day have a limited number of them up there. I should probably take them down because I think it only encourages new agers and other types to send friend requests, but it begs the question. Some of our candidates present themselves in their traditional clothes, and some don’t. And some do both. Are we selling ourselves out to our own people? Or are we being exactly who we are? Or does that even matter to the voters, who in a community as small as ours are vaguely familiar with the candidates already, or trying to make an impression on those who have no idea whatsoever? What do we as a community consider the commodification of our Osage culture.
—–
The photographer quoted in this article actually encourages these poor neighborhoods to sell themselves out because they have a viable product. I struggle to find a quote that more succinctly misses the point better. And surprisingly enough the community response is on point.
—-
NEW ORLEANS JOURNAL
Want to Use My Suit? Then Throw Me Something
Last Friday, at a St. Joseph’s Night parade in New Orleans, Santana Montana of the Monogram Hunters tribe went to greet his father, David Montana of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe. More Photos »
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
NEW ORLEANS — Just after dusk on Friday night, Tyrone Yancy was strutting through one of the more uncertain parts of town in a $6,000 custom-made suit.
David Montana, Second Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas, with a photo of an Indian suit from a previous year. Suits now cost upwards of $10,000; in the past the suits were sometimes burned at the end of a season. More Photos »
He was concerned about being robbed, but not by the neighborhood teenagers who trotted out in the street to join him. The real potential for theft, as Mr. Yancy sees it, came from the strangers darting around him and his well-appointed colleagues in a hectic orbit: photographers.
Mr. Yancy, 44, is a nursing assistant by profession. His calling, however, is as one of the Mardi Gras Indians — a member of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe, to be exact — the largely working-class black New Orleanians who create and wear ornate, enormous feathered costumes and come out three times a year to show them off.
He is also one of a number of Indians who have become fed up with seeing their photographs on calendars, posters and expensive prints, without getting anything in return.
Knowing that there are few legal protections for a person who is photographed in public — particularly one who stops and poses every few feet — some Mardi Gras Indians have begun filing for copyright protection for their suits, which account for thousands of dollars in glass beads, rhinestones, feathers and velvet, and hundreds of hours of late-night sewing.
Anyone could still take their pictures, but the Indians, many of whom live at the economic margins, would have some recourse if they saw the pictures being sold, or used in advertising. (News photographs, like the ones illustrating this article, are not at issue.)
“It’s not the old way of doing things, but the old way of doing things was conducive to exploitation,” said Ashlye M. Keaton, a lawyer who represents Indians in her private practice and also works with them through two pro bono legal programs, Sweet Home New Orleans legal services, and the Entertainment Law Legal Assistance Project.
The legal grounding of the strategy is debatable, the ability to enforce it even more so. But what may be most tricky of all is pushing the Indians themselves to start thinking about the legal and financial dimensions of something they have always done out of tradition.
Mardi Gras Indians have been around for more than a century — more than two, some say — and are generally thought to have originated as a way to pay homage to the American Indians who harbored runaway slaves and started families with them.
The Indians come out and parade in full dress on Mardi Gras; on St. Joseph’s Night, March 19; and on a Sunday close to St. Joseph’s — a tradition that arose out of the affinity between blacks and Sicilians in the city’s working-class precincts.
The 30 or so Indian tribes are representatives of their neighborhoods, and starting from home turf they venture out in their shimmering suits to meet other tribes on procession in the streets. Time was, these run-ins would often end with somebody in the hospital, or worse.
But over the past few decades, encouraged by the legendary Chief of Chiefs, Tootie Montana, the showdowns became primarily about the suits, and whose suit could out-prettify all the others.
Indian suits, which in the old days were occasionally burned at the end of a season, have become stunningly elaborate and stunningly expensive, costing upwards of $10,000. For many Indians, it is a matter of principle that they make a new suit from scratch each year.
The copyright idea has been floating around for a while — several of Mr. Montana’s suits were registered years ago — but Ms. Keaton began pursuing it more vigorously in 2006, when she was approached by John Ellison, a 52-year-old detailer in an auto body shop and a member of the Wild Tchoupitoulas.
Any photograph that focused on a suit protected by a copyright could arguably be considered a derivative work. The sale of such a picture (or its use in tourism ads, for example) would be on the merits of the suit rather than the photograph itself, and if the person selling it did not have permission, he could be sued.
But the idea is not so easy to put into practice. In American copyright law, clothing designs generally cannot be protected because they are more functional than aesthetic. Ms. Keaton argues that the suits, which can weigh well over 100 pounds, should be considered works of sculpture, not outfits.
The Sweet Home organization held a workshop for Indians on the topic last fall, and is pressing them to fill out copyright forms for this year’s suits. But there has not yet been a test case for the legal theory and it is unclear how one would fare.
“The Mardi Gras Indian costumes are pretty wild and not functional in the ordinary sense of the word, so that suggests that they might be copyrightable,” Kal Raustiala, a professor at the law school of the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in an e-mail message.
“That said,” he added, “lots of runway fashion is also way out there and not likely to fit anyone’s ordinary idea of usefulness, yet it doesn’t receive copyright protection.”
Mr. Ellison filled out his copyright registration form on the spot, but later lost it, a testament to the difficulties of changing a culture.
Christopher Porché West, who has been photographing Mardi Gras Indians since 1979, said he had heard these kinds of complaints for years. They are counterproductive, he said, given the relatively small amount of money he and other photographers earn from Indian portraits.
“What they really need to do is self-exploit,” he said. If they want to make money from their culture, he said, “they should find a way to commodify it and bring that to the market.”
But words like “commodify” are foreign and even a little distasteful for many in this city, rather like finding tofu sausage in a gumbo. Indians do make a few hundred dollars here and there showing up at parties and concerts, and a few have tried, with disappointing results, to sell last year’s suits on eBay.
“Indian culture was never, ever meant to make any money,” said Howard Miller, Big Chief of the Creole Wild West, the city’s oldest tribe, and president of the Mardi Gras Indian Council. But neither should the culture be exploited by others.
“We have a beef,” he said, “with anybody who takes us for granted.”
Loading ...
I think it shows respect for the culture and shows people that you understand what the culture is about and that is very important.
I remember a quote by my grandfather Joe Paw Ne No Pashe aka Governor Joe upon returning from boarding school. He got back to the reservation and quickly changed out of his white man’s clothes and immediately put on a blanket. He said “it took Father Schoenmaker’s 15 years to make a white man out of me, and it will only take 15 minutes to make an Osage out of myself.” After doing this he shed all his western clothes and put on a blanket.
When people do wear traditional clothes or whatever in taking pictures it shows that they understand how important our culture is, our elders back in the days wore leggings and blankets all day every day. This 3 system form of government we have is a western anglo saxon form of government. Native Americans are foreign to this way of government. It takes time to understand this, as you can see the problems we are having now…. See More
Back in the day we had a purer form of government, it was by bands and clans and everyone understood their place, sadly this is gone. But we can’t forget who we are and who we came from, and our culture and our tribal ways are all we have left of this past way of life that made us who we are. By wearing traditional clothes or whatever you’re showing that you understand our culture and realize that it will always have a place in our government. The transition will not be easy, but we all have to recognize it.
I’m not saying that just because someone puts on a blanket or is in their dance clothes should get voted for ahead of someone who is in western clothes though. If you were never raised around the reservation or are foreign to our culture I would not expect you to be in dance clothes. But for people that have been around here, I think it’s important that they do honor our culture.