SANTA FE — What does it mean to be a real Indian artist who makes real Indian art? And what happens when they try to sell it?
James Luna (Payómkawichum, Ipai, and Mexican) approached the former question in his 1991 installation titled “Take a Picture with a Real Indian.” The artist invited visitors to take a picture with him or with three cut-outs of his likeness: one donning war dance regalia, another in a black t-shirt and slacks, and a third in a leather loincloth and moccasins. Settler viewers may understand only one layer of irony — the absurd idea that an “authentic” Native person exists as an artifact to be put on display. As they pat themselves on the back for being in on the joke, they replicate the same mechanism the work exposes: gawking at a Native person on display.
The latter question was on our minds over the weekend of August 17 at the Southwest Association for Indian Arts’s (SWAIA) annual Indian Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico. SWAIA just completed its 102nd edition and is one of the largest and oldest marketplaces for art in North America. The juried market started as a competition in 1922 and remains one today. Former Executive Director Kim Peone (Colville Confederated Tribes/Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) told Hyperallergic in 2022 that it was originally designed by settlers from an “anthropological perspective, thinking that they were going to preserve Indian arts because we were on the brink of extinction.”
Nonetheless, SWAIA, which is primarily led by Native women, has become a significant economic force for Native artists and the state of New Mexico. Not dissimilar to other contemporary art fairs such as Art Basel Miami, the latest market featured around 1,000 participating artists from over 200 tribal nations in the US and Canada. Like New York during Armory Week in September, Santa Fe is transformed each August by a flood of out-of-towners: packed restaurants, surge pricing on hotels, cell phone failures due to network strain. Countless auxiliary and unsanctioned art events take place during the weekend, as well, hoping to capitalize on a temporary influx of art buyers. The Pathways Indigenous Arts Festival is hosted by the Poeh Cultural Center, owned by the Pueblo of Pojoaque, and the Free Indian Market operates just north of the Santa Fe Plaza in Federal Park.
Unlike mainstream fairs, though, Indian Market weekend is focused on the artists themselves. Each booth at SWAIA, Pathways, and Free Indian Market is staffed by a Native artist and their friends, family, or assistants. The intimidation sales techniques used to hawk contemporary art at blue-chip fairs — stern gallery attendants, hidden prices, secret backrooms, and expensive modern furniture — are absent in Santa Fe, replaced by a couple of folding chairs and a table in a small tent. The cultural impact of having so many Native artists and art workers together for a few days is immeasurable.
However, the staffing structure of the booth, combined with the lower price points and a primary settler buyer base, also presents the opportunity for a “Take a Picture with a Real Indian”-like interaction between the artist and buyer. Some tourists treat these interactions as chances to explore the culture of Native people, and viewing art as secondary.
Over the course of the weekend, we witnessed ridiculously racist questions asked over and over again; buyers touching art, artists, and models without asking; and artists stripped of their singular identity and set up to perform as a cultural representative to make a sale. At times, it felt like James Luna’s performance played out in real-time with no self-awareness from settler art viewers. But in this case, the “real Indian” artist (who must meet SWAIA’s standards, which require participants to be enrolled members of a federally recognized tribe or Alaska Native Corporation in the US or registered for “Indian status” in Canada) is afforded far less control than Luna as they try to make sales.
Considering the social dynamics at play, does the artwork accepted and sold at SWAIA pigeonhole Native artists? We noticed that works that did not solely depict Native people or culture were mostly absent from the main market, but were available for sale in offsite venues like galleries. The SWAIA economic system appears to be highly dependent on the settler gaze and settler definition of “Indian art.” Moreover, with SWAIA operating from a deep history of colonial entanglement, we wonder: Must artists behave in a certain way or create so-called “authentic Indian art” in order to make sales there? If so, what is “authentic” and what is not? Who is the judge?
Over the weekend, a settler art dealer at a satellite event showed us a painting by a contemporary Diné artist and assured us that she was an “authentic Navajo artist.” (As a Diné woman, I, Sháńdíín, laughed. Who made him the judge of what an authentic Navajo artist is?) The comment, while jarring, is part of a broader trend of marketing the mythology of authentic Native art throughout the city and across venues during SWAIA, from competition categories and dealers selling million-dollar secondary market works to tourist shops selling souvenirs like dreamcatchers. In the process, Native artists’ individual autonomy and authorship are pushed aside. Despite its role as a hub for Native artists, SWAIA hasn’t entirely moved past its origins in White settler obsession with Native authenticity. We witnessed colonial nostalgia in full swing — settlers’ refusal to address the violent history and ongoing presence of colonialism, but at the same time coveting “authentic” Indian art. SWAIA received backlash from artists and community members last year after accepting a $30,000 donation from ExxonMobil, whose practices exacerbate resource extraction on tribal lands and threaten Native sovereignty. What is a Native artist to do amid this webbed dynamic, especially when they have bills to pay?
Every exhibitor who makes it to SWAIA has immense talent and many share generational knowledge alongside works for sale. Still, it can be difficult to recognize this talent when it’s overshadowed by a settler collector mentality and format that encourages the display of colonial fantasies of authentic Native culture alongside the artwork. Exhibitors who use modern technology, from a chainsaw to a digital art app, are likely to receive some variation of a snide comment from the buyers and booth visitors about how this isn’t what “authentic Indians would have done” or “your ancestors didn’t have this tool.” Some respond that their grandfather gave them the chainsaw or their dad taught them Adobe Illustrator, but others hold back the eye roll and attempt to move on with their business. Interactions like these are magnified at Indian Market, but the truth is they happen to Native people in everyday life. As with Luna’s “Take a Picture with a Real Indian” three decades ago, the diversity of Native art is continually hemmed in by settler expectations of what and who Native people should be.
But artists will be artists. They will shatter settler fantasies of authenticity and work free from identity-based tropes, fueling the radical impulses that push through the seams whenever creativity is constrained. And the artists showing work during Santa Fe Indian Market were no exception. The Institute of American Indian Arts’s Museum of Contemporary Native Art presented two shows drawing parallels between Indigenous artists, some of whom do not meet the requirements of entry into Indian Market.
At their SWAIA booths, artists Kevin Aspaas (Diné), Hollis Chitto (Mississippi Choctaw/Laguna and Isleta Pubelos), Summer Peters Yahbay (Sagniaw Ojibwe), and Kiera Pyke (Mohawk) presented invigorating weaving, beadwork, and quillwork. The official fashion programming focused on design and Indigenous futurism, rather than being organized based on categories and classifications. Experimental designs spearheaded by Adrian Standing-Elk Pinnecoose (Diné/Southern Ute), Caroline Monnet (Anishinaabe/French), and Jontay Kham (Plains Cree) were highlights at the runway show. Pathways was, refreshingly, geared toward a Native buyer base. We also enjoyed the Broken Boxes offsite performances by Raven Chacon (Diné), Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache), and rock duo Deerlady, who all played to audiences of Native artists, curators, community members, and arts workers. Nearby, gallery shows and installations of work by Chaz John (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska/Mississippi Band Choctaw), Haley Greenfeather English (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians/European/Irish), and Michael Namingha (Tewa/Hopi) were a testament to the value of artists maintaining creative control and expanding beyond the SWAIA market structure.
Notably, both Greenfeather’s late father, Sam English (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa), and Namingha’s father, Dan Namingha (Tewa/Hopi), have left a mark on SWAIA as highly regarded artists, proof of the way its structure allows future generations to break away from what may be viewed as typical “authentic” market art — and to build community year after year. The conversations between Native folks at Airbnbs, setting up booths, getting coffee, or having a drink have done more to secure an Indigenous future than any purchase by a settler collector.
So, what happens when a real Indian artist tries to sell their real Indian art? Santa Fe Indian Market, in all its strengths and contradictions, reminds us of the breadth of answers to that question. Making work entirely without settler economic pressure is practically impossible, but we hope that the obsolete metric of “authenticity” will be shedded to make room for the vast spectrum of Native creativity. We can champion Native artists without having to define Native art.
Editor’s Note: During SWAIA, Zach Feuer worked on the curatorial team of the Gochman Family Collection, which acquired work by Haley Greenfeather English at the market, commissioned one work exhibited by Marilou Schultz, and owns one edition of photos documenting James Luna’s “Take a Picture with a Real Indian.” Sháńdíín Brown served as one of four judges of the beadwork and quillwork classification and assisted the Gochman Family Collection curatorial team for two days of the market.
