Imagining Indians in the Southwest: Persistent Visions of a Primitive,

by DILWORTH L

In Imagining Indians in the Southwest, Leah Dilworth examines the creation and enduring potency of the early twentieth-century myth of the primitive Indian. She shows how visions of Indians - created not only by tourism but also by anthropologists, collectors of Indian crafts, and modernist writers - have reflected white anxieties about such issues as the value of labor in an industrialized society, racial assimilation, and the perceived loss of cultural authenticity.
Dilworth explores diverse expressions of mainstream society's primitivist impulse - from the Fred Harvey Company's guided tours of Indian pueblos supposedly untouched by modern life to enthnographic descriptions of the Hopi Snake dance as alien and exotic. She shows how magazines touted the preindustrial simplicity of Indian artisanal occupations and how Mary Austin's 1923 book, The American Rhythm, urged poets to emulate the cadences of Native American song and dance.
Contending that Native Americans of the Southwest still are seen primarily as living relics, Dilworth describes the ways in which they have resisted cultural colonialism. She concludes with a consideration of two contemporary artists who, by infusing their works with history and complexity, are recasting the practices and politics of primitivism.

Hardcover

First published November 1, 1996

Reviews

[Max Booher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this book. The author makes a really good point about ethnography that is becoming clearer to me as I read these kinds of books: there is a sort of Heisenberg Principle effect inherent in the act of observing cultures and acquiring even knowledge of (not to mention the artifacts of) these cultures.


“Sightseeing and collecting souvenirs might seem to satisfy the imperialist nostalgia that motivated ethnic tourism in the Southwest. But ironically, the past (or simplicity or authenticity) that the primitive represents and that is so desired always slips from one's grasp: tourism constructs authenticity in such a way that it is never attainable. Sightseeing is doomed; the very presence of the observer spells the end of the authenticity of the observed. The same is true of the collector, whether ethnographer or tourist; in the act of collecting, the collectible disappears from the world of its origin and the experience of collecting it is no longer available. Collecting brings about a literal depletion of the culture one desires so desperately which makes one desire it all the more — a process similar to the erasing and preserving powers of the train and the camera. The unfulfillable desire that drives collecting may be why it is so often referred to as a pathology. Similarly, tourism is a kind of pathology in that the touristic journey must be enacted time and time again.” -Page 121

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chapter 3 "The Spectacle of Indian Artisanal Labor"