Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian Live Events

Native/American Fashion: Inspiration, Appropriation, and Cultural Identity explores fashion as a creative endeavor and an expression of cultural identity, the history of Native fashion, issues of problematic cultural appropriation in the field, and examples of creative collaborations and best practices between Native designers and fashion brands. In this segment, we hear from the first panelist to speak on the topic Problematics of Cultural Appropriation in Contemporary Fashion, Adrienne Keene of Brown University. Her talk is titled “Navajo” Underwear and Headdresses on the Runway: A Look at the Last Five Years of Cultural Appropriation in Fashion.

Adrienne Keene (Cherokee Nation) is assistant professor of American Studies at Brown University. A Native scholar, writer, blogger, and activist, she is passionate about reframing how the world sees contemporary Native cultures. She is the creator and author of Native Appropriations, an internationally recognized blog discussing cultural appropriation and stereotypes of Native peoples in fashion, film, music, and other forms of pop culture. Through her writing and activism, Keene questions and problematizes the ways indigenous peoples are represented, asking for celebrities, large corporations, and designers to consider the ways they incorporate “Native” elements into their work. She is interested in the way Native peoples are using social and new media to challenge misrepresentations and present counter-narratives that showcase true Native cultures and identities.

Native/American Fashion: Inspiration, Appropriation, and Cultural Identity explores fashion as a creative endeavor and an expression of cultural identity, the history of Native fashion, issues of problematic cultural appropriation in the field, and examples of creative collaborations and best practices between Native designers and fashion brands. In this segment, Kathleen Ash-Milby of the National Museum of the American Indian gives a short introduction to the second panel of the day, Problematics of Cultural Appropriation in Contemporary Fashion, which she is moderating.

Native/American Fashion: Inspiration, Appropriation, and Cultural Identity explores fashion as a creative endeavor and an expression of cultural identity, the history of Native fashion, issues of problematic cultural appropriation in the field, and examples of creative collaborations and best practices between Native designers and fashion brands.

In this segment, speakers from the first panel, Mobility and Cultural Identity Through Fashion, return to the stage to take questions from the audience. The panel is moderated by Amy Werbel of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FAC). Panelists include Anna Blume of FAC, Timothy Shannon of Gettysburg College, Sherry Farrell Rachette of the University of Manitoba, and Daniel James Cole of FAC.

Native/American Fashion: Inspiration, Appropriation, and Cultural Identity explores fashion as a creative endeavor and an expression of cultural identity, the history of Native fashion, issues of problematic cultural appropriation in the field, and examples of creative collaborations and best practices between Native designers and fashion brands. In this segment, we hear from the fourth panelist to speak on the topic Mobility and Cultural Identity Through Fashion, Daniel James Cole of the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. His talk is titled Everything’s Better with War Bonnet on It!

Daniel James Cole teaches in the Fashion Design program at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, and in Graduate Costume Studies at New York University. He is co-author, with Nancy Deihl, of The History of Modern Fashion (Laurence King, 2015) and has presented at academic conferences internationally. His areas of expertise include religiously motivated dress, and Malaysian and Indonesian dress and textiles. He has curated two exhibitions for OPERA America/National Opera Center: Martin Palkedinaz: A Tribute (2013) and Divas of the Gilded Age (2015). Earlier this month, Cole presented the paper “Indigenous Invention: Hide Clothing of the Plains Indians as a Sustainability Paradigm” at New York University at another symposium in conjunction with the Native Fashion Now exhibition.

Native/American Fashion: Inspiration, Appropriation, and Cultural Identity explores fashion as a creative endeavor and an expression of cultural identity, the history of Native fashion, issues of problematic cultural appropriation in the field, and examples of creative collaborations and best practices between Native designers and fashion brands. In this segment, we hear from the third panelist to speak on the topic Mobility and Cultural Identity Through Fashion, Sherry Farrell Racette of University of Manitoba. Her talk is titled Ball Gowns, Moccasins, and Black Beaver Hats: York Factory and Red River as Sites of Fashion Innovation.

Sherry Farrell Racette (Timiskaming First Nation) is an interdisciplinary scholar with an active arts practice. Recent curatorial and artistic projects include We Are Not Birds (2014) and From Here: Story Gatherings from the Qu’Appelle Valley (2015). Racette teaches at the University of Manitoba, but is currently in Toronto as the 2016–2017 Distinguished Visiting Indigenous Faculty Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute and Visiting Resident Scholar at Massey College.

Native/American Fashion: Inspiration, Appropriation, and Cultural Identity explores fashion as a creative endeavor and an expression of cultural identity, the history of Native fashion, issues of problematic cultural appropriation in the field, and examples of creative collaborations and best practices between Native designers and fashion brands. In this segment, we hear from the second panelist to speak on the topic Mobility and Cultural Identity Through Fashion, Timothy Shannon of Gettysburg College. His talk is titled Clothes along the Mohawk: Fashion, Exchange, and Appropriation among the Peoples of Early New York.

Timothy J. Shannon is a professor and chair of the History Department at Gettysburg College, where he teaches early American and Native American history. His books include Iroquois Diplomacy on the Early American Frontier (Penguin, 2008) and Indians and Colonists at the Crossroads of Empire: The Albany Congress of 1754 (Cornell, 2000), which won the Dixon Ryan Fox Prize from the New York State Historical Association and the Distinguished Book Award from the Society of Colonial Wars. His book Indian Captive, Indian King: Peter Williamson in America and Britain will be published by Harvard University Press in fall 2017.

Native/American Fashion: Inspiration, Appropriation, and Cultural Identity explores fashion as a creative endeavor and an expression of cultural identity, the history of Native fashion, issues of problematic cultural appropriation in the field, and examples of creative collaborations and best practices between Native designers and fashion brands. In this segment, we hear from the first panelist to speak on the topic Mobility and Cultural Identity Through Fashion, Anna Blume of the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. Her talk is titled Fluidity of Referents: Maya Appropriations and Adornments.

Anna Blume is a professor in the History of Art Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, where she teaches courses on pre-Columbian and South Asian cultures with a particular focus on the relationship between photography and archaeology and art and ethics. She recently studied ancient monumental architecture and sculpture in the Mississippi Valley and is working on a long-term project at the American Museum of Natural History on archaic Native North American lithics. Previous studies have included Maya concepts of zero and pre-Columbian images of human animal hybridity.

The symposium Native/American Fashion: Inspiration, Appropriation, and Cultural Identity explores fashion as a creative endeavor and an expression of cultural identity, the history of Native fashion, issues of problematic cultural appropriation in the field, and examples of creative collaborations and best practices between Native designers and fashion brands. In this segment, Kevin Gover, director of the National Museum of the American Indian, and Ronald Milon, chief diversity officer of the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, welcome the audience and speakers. Kathleen Ash-Milby, associate curator of the National Museum of the American Indian, provides opening remarks. Amy Werbel is an associate professor in the History of Art Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. Her scholarship focuses on gender, sexuality, and censorship in American art. Her books include "Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia" (Yale, 2007) and "Lust on Trial: American Art, Law, and Culture during the Reign of Anthony Comstock," to be published by Columbia University Press in 2018. She served as a Fulbright Scholar in China, teaching American Studies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in Guangzhou in 2011–12, and is currently a Fulbright Alumni Ambassador. Her book, "Lessons from China: America in the Hearts and Minds of the World’s Most Important Rising Generation" (2013), reflects on these crosscultural experiences.

The symposium Native/American Fashion: Inspiration, Appropriation, and Cultural Identity explores fashion as a creative endeavor and an expression of cultural identity, the history of Native fashion, issues of problematic cultural appropriation in the field, and examples of creative collaborations and best practices between Native designers and fashion brands. In this segment, Kevin Gover, director of the National Museum of the American Indian, and Ronald Milon, chief diversity officer of the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, welcome the audience and speakers. Kathleen Ash-Milby, associate curator of the National Museum of the American Indian, provides opening remarks.

Native/American Fashion: Inspiration, Appropriation, and Cultural Identity explores fashion as a creative endeavor and an expression of cultural identity, the history of Native fashion, issues of problematic cultural appropriation in the field, and examples of creative collaborations and best practices between Native designers and fashion brands. In this Karen Kramer of Peabody Essex Museum gives some closing remarks.

Karen Kramer, curator of Native American and Oceanic Art and Culture at the Peabody Essex Museum, has helped produce ten major exhibitions on Native American art and culture at the museum. She curated Native Fashion Now, a nationally traveling, groundbreaking exhibition celebrating contemporary Native American fashion, and the paradigm-shifting Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art, which dismantled stereotypes and explored concepts of change, worldview, and politics in historical and contemporary Native art. Kramer directs the Peabody Essex Museum’s innovative Native American Fellowship program, which provides training for rising Native American leaders in the museum, cultural, and academic sectors.