Is it Kitsch? Camp? or Fine Art?
Glimpses of Indian Life
Making it Local
Authenticating the Inauthentic
Secularizing the Sacred
Mixing High and Low
Yearning for the Past

Authenticating the Inauthentic
Manufactured novelties shipped to the Southwest illustrated how distant companies conceived of Indians.

Items made as far away as Japan and Taiwan fascinated inaccurate stereotypes, such as Pueblo Indians wearing Great Plains war bonnets, or southwestern Indians living in concrete tepees.

These images were intended to be humorous to visiting tourists, but southwesterners considered them derogatory. Such misrepresentations are common in New Mexico, and are part of a worldwide phenomena on the borders between cultures.

 
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