Commodities of Authenticity: When Native People Consume Their Own "Tourist Art" by Alexis Bunten

Bunten talks about the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska and, in particular, the role of a blanket named Yaakoosqé X’oow, or Blanket of Knowledge. This blanket was originally made for tourist markets to raise money for their heritage language programming. Bunten argues that “commercial Native art objects, often deemed as ‘inauthentic’ or regarded by collectors, curators, and academics simply as a by-product of cultural commodification, can become a tangible part of the contemporary Native cultural experience (pg.319).” Among the Southeast Alaskan natives, the circulation of objects through gift exchange, and the use of traditional objects in ceremonial contexts is common. By circulating commercial art objects, these objects can become part of the local socio-cultural system bounded by Native ideas that concern the function of their own art. Although commercial art has been integrated into Native communities, noncommercial objects are still produced for Native use.
The Yaakoosqé X’oow blanket is made for both Native and nonnative buyers. Because no one clan owns the main design on the blanket, a large raven and an eagle, the entire Tlingit social system can give, buy, and use it. Although this blanket was made for tourist buyers, it has become socially meaningful to Native consumers. In order to get this way, it had to undergo a process of symbolic transformation from a commodity of exchange to an owned object for exchange and/or display amongst Natives.
This process of “decommodification” was very foreign to me. Reading this article once again, (first time was in Silverman’s High Art as Tourist Art, Tourist Art as High Art), proved to me the fluidity of art categories.