On every road trip, there’s a point where you get a bit bored. The scenery outside looks identical for hundreds of miles. The playlist you’ve made? You’ve already listened to it twice. You’ve spent so much time with the people you’re driving with that there’s nothing left to talk about. Well, when my family and I reach this point in the trip, it can only mean one thing: the alphabet game.
When playing, we look at billboards we pass to find words that start with each letter of the alphabet — A, then B, then C and so on — you get the picture. You have to yell out the word before anyone else for it to count, and that word can’t be reused by another player. I can’t help but brag that I won most of the times my mom and I played on this roadtrip.
The beauty of the game is that it makes you pay attention to some pretty interesting billboards. During one stretch in New Mexico, there were 30 miles’ worth of billboards all for the same “Indian store.” We passed one billboard after another advertising what it called ‘authentic Indian fare’: moccasins, turquoise jewelry, feathers — and my personal favorite, ‘guy stuff.’
My mom and I chose to drive by instead of exploring this store, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. There’s something deeply uncomfortable about selling ‘authenticity’ when talking about Indigenous craft. On one hand, it is extremely important to buy Indigenous goods from Indigenous artisans. However, the language of authenticity also reeks of colonial ideas about blood quantum.
Under colonialism, Indigenous tribes were considered separate political entities. They ran their own affairs and entered into treaties with the United States. However, these treaties were not respected by the federal government, and were often broken so the government could seize land that did not belong to it. In order to get out of treaty obligations, the U.S. government began using how much “Indian blood” a person had to determine whether they counted as Indigenous. The more diluted that blood became, the more assimilated Indigenous people were deemed to be — and the less money the government had to spend to uphold treaties. Today, that same system still dictates who is considered an ‘authentic’ Indigenous person. Blood quantum remains a measure for tribal enrollment, deciding who can and can’t receive benefits from the U.S. government. Indigenous art — and the selling of it — is entangled in this system of authenticity.
When Indigenous people sell their cultural artistry, whether that be through beadwork, basketry or, as that sign said, “guy stuff,” they are partially selling their ethnicity as Indigenous artisans. While I feel conflicted about the language of authenticity, I believe supporting Indigenous artists is vital. Buying from Indigenous-owned brands and individual Indigenous artists — whether or not they sell traditional ‘Native’ goods — helps bring money to communities that have been historically marginalized. It also supports Indigenous people as they strengthen and preserve cultural art in all its forms. I encourage everyone to buy Indigenous, whether or not the seller uses the label “authentic.” Don’t do what I did and just drive by — make the choice to stop, go inside and truly see what’s there.
