American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The stone hammer illustrated in plate 1 represents a bird with a whale in its mouth. If an Italian artist had carved this piece in a Florentine shop during the sixteenth century, a contemporary scholar could analyze its formal and iconographic significance with relative ease. Both the modern scholar and the Italian sculptor are part of a common Western tradition which facilitates the former's understanding of the latter's creations. However the individual who made this hammer was not part of this Western tradition, since he was a Haida Indian living on the Queen Charlotte Islands during the nineteenth century. Because of this, it is exceedingly difficult for the White scholar to analyze it with any real objectivity. The difficulty lies in the nature of White scholarship: since the interpreter of Indian art cannot shed all of his or her own Western cultural values (and at present, most such interpreters are heirs to the Western tradition), much of what he or she ultimately writes on Native American art actually reflects those values. Thus, the scholar who attempts to discover the underlying esthetic, philosophical, social or religious meanings of Northwest Coast art is actually going to concentrate on those elements in the art that appear to coincide most closely with elements in White society.

Navaho Indians created the first native United States tapestries. Their rugs, originally called blankets, are a unique American art form in a land so often considered an extension of Western "old world" culture. Through three centuries, the Navaho weaving has progressed from a rudimentary and utilitarian blanket to a visual art form and a highly developed technical craft. In the early stages of development the Navahos' weaving resembled that of their teachers, the Pueblo Indians, but in later stages the weavers' skill improved and their designs became more original. Today, Navaho rugs are of a high technical and design quality and bring a fine price and prestige to the weaving artist. Traders played an important role in promoting the sales and development of the Navaho rug. During the period 1880 to 1920, the weavers (Navaho women) no longer sold directly to their buyers; instead, the rug was merchandised by the trader who helped the weaver by interpreting the type of rug the buyers wanted. Traders interjected their own ideas into that interpretation of the buyers' wants, and they also taught the buyers to understand and appreciate the Navaho aesthetic. An especially important trader was J. L. Hubbell, the most successful of the nine major traders on the Navaho reservation in the late 19th and early 20th century, the era known as the trader period of the Navaho rug business. According to George Wharton James, omitting the name of Hubbell when talking about the development of the Navaho weaving a rt would be similar to leaving out the name of Edison when talking about the phonograph. Hubbell greatly increased the visibility of the Navaho rug through both verbal and visual communication. His letters and spoken comments were augmented by paintings known as rug studies. Hubbell commissioned rug studies, or paintings of especially fine rugs and hung them in the trading post as ever present examples of good design.

In our exploration of the nature of Native American literature, we have customarily drawn the distinction between the major oral forms such as oral narratives, song-poetry, and oratory, and the written forms of the novel, the short story, and poetry. In doing so, we have not meant to imply that the oral forms are examples of tribal heritages that have vanished, and that the written forms have supplanted them in the same soil, only quite assimilated, only 20th Century. On the contrary, the oral tradition continues with considerable vigor, albeit less central to the fabric of Native American life, and with some shifting from the oral to the written. One specific written form of Native American literary expression, which will be termed "bi-autobiography," blends both the features of the oral and written modes. To be sure, other written works by 20th Century Native American authors in some way reflect oral tribal traditions, sometimes confirming them, sometimes fleeing to them, sometimes transcending them. Yet, Native American bi-autobiography stands apart from these other Native American written forms in its greater adherence to the stance and the flavor of oral narrative while, at the same time, permitting necessary adjustments to the literary market and our literary conventions. The understanding and appreciation of bi-autobiography, I contend, hinges upon an awareness of the collaborative venture which has brought it forth. Moreover, even the familiarity with only a limited number of bi-autobiographies should impress us with the significant and unique role the introductions play in elucidating the nature of the specific collaboration involved in the life stories which follow them.

In the last decade, scholars have increasingly focused their attention on media portrayals of North American Indians. Much of the interest has centered on the stereotyping of Indians and Indian cultures in the popular and fine arts. While scholars have noted a shift, in recent years, toward more favorable and realistic Indian images in the mass media, some are not as optimistic about achieving significant social gains in the near future. Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., for example, maintains that some of the recent favorable images are a by-product of increased social awareness, but even the more sympathetic contemporary artists primarily view Indians "according to their own artistic needs and moral values rather than in terms of the outlook and desires of the people they profess to know and depict." With regard to historical broadcast portrayals, this line of reasoning supports two main theses. First, that radio and television portrayals of Native Americans, with some exceptions, have paralleled earlier treatments in film and print. Second, that images and portrayals were also strongly affected by radio and television economics and program packaging requirements. An investigation of Indians and broadcast seems warranted for two primary reasons. The majority of work on Indian images and stereotypes has concentrated on film, giving only passing mention to radio and television, which reach proportionately more individuals with the same content. Native Americans are becoming more involved in the broadcast media via participation in station ownership and program production, beginning to use the broadcast media to forward their own goals and present their perspectives, rather than being systematically used by the media to forward the cause of mass entertainment. In order to effectively position Indian broadcast images, with respect to other media, it would be fruitful to examine several key points regarding the development of broadcast programming.

Eskimo Art: A Review Essay Cecelia F. Klein Eskimo Art: Tradition and Innovation in North Alaska. By Dorothy Jean Ray. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977. 298 pp, $29.95. PitseoIak: Pictures Out of My Life. Edited by Dorothy Eber. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979. 96 pp. pap. $5.95. Since its first, tentative, appearance in the shops and galleries of southern Canada and the U.S. in the 1940s, "Eskimo art" has become big business. In parts of the eastern Arctic and Alaska, its sale is now the major source of income for the otherwise impoverished natives. White enthusiasm for Eskimo carvings and prints, the two most popular Eskimo art forms, has derived, in part, from an awareness that purchase of Eskimo goods helps these Eskimos to survive. At the same time some whites believe that, by purchasing art that is distinctly "Eskimo," they help preserve a dying culture, Euro-American guilt over the destruction of traditional Eskimo life and well-being is thus mitigated by the purchase of durable symbols of the vanishing Eskimo way of life. When any new or newly "discovered" body of artworks makes a major impact on the art market, numerous books on the subject inevitably follow. Such has been the case for Eskimo art. Most of these books-and articles - have played, understandably, to the leading motives for "appreciating" Eskimo products by either emphasizing the improved economic circumstances of the producers or discussing their imagery in terms of old lifestyles and beliefs. For the more mercenary art collector, dealer and museum concerned for their investments, the literature affirms the high "aesthetic quality" of the style. Seldom have the books dealt openly with the historic events that brought the art into being, however, and seldom have they been sensitive to the full effects of these on that art and its creators. The intent clearly has been instead to enhance the value and desirability of Eskimo art by focusing on its noncontroversial features, thus avoiding data that could leave the reader with unexpiated doubts and guilt.