"There’s also this piece that I can’t quite put my finger on, and don’t know if I can adequately express. The photos are all men in (mostly) western clothing, with “tribal” accents here and there. I feel like there is a subtext here of “civilizing”— even the “wild Indians” can look dignified in these clothes...Finally, there is the economic piece at play here. Look at the prices. A $265 T-shirt featuring a sacred headdress, a $1,300 plaid coat, $400 sweaters — and all of this money is going straight to building Lauren’s personal wealth and empire, none of it is going to the communities he is directly exploiting to sell his product. How American of him: seeing Natives as inherently disposable and exploitable, and using Native resources to build his personal wealth, while simultaneously yearning for the romanticized past when Natives roamed the plains, and ignoring his own complicity in the ongoing settler colonial project. Pretty much the story of the United States."
https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/12/18/keene-dear-ralph-lauren-our-ancestors-are-not-your-props-158363
I'm really starting to see the US as having a fundamental cultural devotion to the appropriation of Native American... Everything. I was going to say just like images, but it's so much more physical and emotional than that.
:(
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