There's been a lot of discussion about the name of a certain Washington football team — with lawsuits arguing that it is disparaging, and media outlets choosing not to use it in their content.
But while the debates around the language are raging, the logo — also a part of the trademark lawsuit — remains emblazoned on hats, T-shirts, and picnic blankets around the capital.
The logo has been the team's brand ambassador for a long time and this team isn't the only sports team to use Native American imagery. It's also not something that is exclusive to sports teams; caricatures and motifs depicting indigenous people have long been used to sell stuff — cigars for one, but also things like chewing gum and butter.
But there is another body of artwork out there — produced by Native American artists and entrepreneurs — that asserts ownership over the images associated with their culture. Their work counters the existing "non-Native" representations, questions these portrayals and provides new context.
'Apache' In A Transcultural Fabric
Jason Lujan lives in Brooklyn, pretty far from the small town in West Texas where he grew up. Lujan, who is Chiricahua, Apache and Mexican moved to New York after graduate school in Colorado in 2001. The move changed his outlook and his work.
"My entire approach is to present Native content, but in the way I see it existing in the world today — everything exists all at once, everything all at the same time," he says.
The word "Apache", for example, really fascinates Lujan. Through his art, Lujan shows how it's changed over time.
Growing up, "it meant who we were, but it meant who we were to outsiders....that's someone else's word to describe us," he says. But the images it invoked then aren't the same as now.
In Lujan's work, "Apache" exists as the helicopter, quite well-known around the world. Lujan juxtaposes that visual against newspapers in another language, in this case Chinese — quite literally, placing it in an international context.
In another piece, a part of his "Wild Places" series, he surrounds the helicopter with materials he found in his own neighborhood in Brooklyn such as packaging from a Muji store. At the bottom, there's a native pattern.
"It's an exercise in putting, forms and words and labels together with the 'Apache' element inserted in there at some point," he says. "It all needs to work in tandem with each other because that's how I see us operating in the world with equitable circumstances."
For Lujan, language is a way to approach another world view.
"When you say to someone — 'Native American' — there's kind of an ahistorical image that appears in their mind...someone on a horse or someone living in a very traditional way and that's not the entire story," he says. "My intent is to highlight a more contemporary context where everyone is connected."
Cowgirls And Indian Princesses
Sarah Sense was born in Sacramento. Her mother is Native American — Choctaw and Chitimacha — and her father is of European descent. Sense became acquainted with her Chitimacha family in college, when she worked on the reservation as a part of her scholarship program. During that time, she became curious about her connection with this community, about her own family and their heritage.
She was also fascinated by the traditional weaving practices — which she incorporated into her art at graduate school at Parsons. She uses photo paper as a sort of fabric, weaving it into depictions of the reservation landscape.
Sense continued using the technique in her next series — the "Hollywood" series.
"It had to do with politics of how women were portrayed, and also politics of how Native Americans were portrayed," she says. "I think for me, it was the best way to portray what it felt like... to embody the characters of those two personas — the cowgirl and the Indian princess."
The series is a melange of images from a couple of different sources. She uses old Hollywood posters she got from Sunset Strip and Burbank with the cowboy v. Indian tropes, images in antique stores, photos from Native American archives and combines them with family photos.
