Native American arts and crafts are lame as hell

[Napoleon Bonerfart]

So what gets me is every other fucking hipster, who wastes money at an art show to pedal their beads and tweed and whatever else makes them smell like a pile of dirt, gets rightfully dismissed as a talentless hack.

Yet, when a native American sells some beads tied together with a leather string, it's brave and stunning. So be sure to hammer up that white man's guilt and apply double standards as you coddle native Americans by judging their artisanal skills against the bronze age.

What I'm saying is that native American quilts and beads and dream catchers are really lame and stupid. They all look like something a child made in a grade school art class after the art teacher wasted his classroom budget on LSD and desperately foraged for feathers and pine cones in the forest before class started.

 

[Spaceman Spud]

How dare you.
Those brave indigenous folx took an hour out of their busy day-drinking schedule to string some beads together and this is how you treat them?

 

[Breadbassket]

Maybe there needs to be less beads and dream catchers and more hand decorated guns.



This qualifies as arts and crafts right?

 

[Cat tit bingo]

Pipes and wood carvings are pretty cool, got a dope eagle from a native dude with cancer, but I agree on everything else. Only one person can make feather jewelry work and his name is Mr. T

 

[Troonos]

Native American everything is lame as hell, especially their ability to win wars and not become obese, diabetic drunks and drug addicts.

 

[Kiwi Yuga]

One of the tribes near me has a handful of hand made canoes cut out of old growth cedar logs. They take them out on the river every now and them and they are pretty sick. Hand carved paddles and everything. Tobacco ceremonies are pretty sweet too.

There are some serious entitlement issues and magical thinking issues among the upcoming generation of natives. Every time I hear the phrase "since time immemorial" I cringe as a reflex. Everyone knows natives have been in North America for a long time, there is no need to exaggerate it to infinity.

 

[Caesare]

Everyone knows natives have been in North America for a long time, there is no need to exaggerate it to infinity.

If they were here for so long, how come they never built even one skyscraper or shopping center? So lazy.

 

[Napoleon Bonerfart]

Maybe there needs to be less beads and dream catchers and more hand decorated guns.

View attachment 6519770

This qualifies as arts and crafts right?

If it actually works and is capable of killing the colonizer, then yes it is an exception to the rule and an example of native American ingenuity.

 

[Fishmalk Observer]

tomahawks can be cool. I'd buy a few if offered

 

[Freshly Baked Socks]

... there is no need to exaggerate it to infinity.

I hate living in a town where political leaders start every damn speech with a "stolen lands" acknowledgement. Bending the knee to chugs 10 times a day gets tiring.

 

[SofondaCox]

Your ancestors are to blame for not having the courage or tenacity to finish what they started. May your home be filled
with crude turquoise tat, moccasins, smooth rocks, and itchy blankets for nine generations TIME IMMEMORIAL!

I hate living in a town where political leaders start every damn speech with a "stolen lands" acknowledgement. Bending the knee to chugs 10 times a day gets tiring.

Land acknowledgements are a slap in the face to both us and the colonizers.

 

[Napoleon Bonerfart]

Your ancestors are to blame for not having the courage or tenacity to finish what they started. May your home be filled
with crude turquoise tat, moccasins, smooth rocks, and itchy blankets for nine generations TIME IMMEMORIAL!


Land acknowledgements are a slap in the face to both us and the colonizers.

Hey yo, I heard you people can dreamwalk so have you ever thought of becoming an assassin for hire in people's dreams?

 

[rel=alternate]

I am bit confused. Native American art is hardly what sells the most.

Most of the art world, when it comes to what sells, is market manipulation anyway. Nobody gives a shit if it's lame, you'll learn to like it because it's expensive and other people like it.

 

[Napoleon Bonerfart]

I am bit confused. Native American art is hardly what sells the most.

Most of the art world, when it comes to what sells, is market manipulation anyway. Nobody gives a shit if it's lame, you'll learn to like it because it's expensive and other people like it.

This is the kind of brainwashed thinking that big pottery wants you to believe.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Indian shit looks kinda neat but I wouldn't collect it or elevate it, it's just interesting to see simple savages' little culture. It's perfect for a museum.

 

[Caesar]

I don't mind stuff that's closer to Mayan or Aztec art and textiles

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Think on the fact that they sold their land and future with those beads, it's like having an acre of land on a necklace

 

[Napoleon Bonerfart]

Think on the fact that they sold their land and future with those beads, it's like having an acre of land on a necklace

You know if they applied a little synergy they could just string up some whiskey bottles and sell those

Maybe the Bureau of Indian Affairs should hire me as a consultant

 

[PunkinMan]

I would suggest looking at Soapstone carvings, some wood carvings are okay but most are just really awful looking because they come off as extremely tacky. One thing I wish is that american natives taught more survivability stuff and old tech for getting shit done but noooo we have do work with paper plates toothpicks and hotglue and a campfire story or two that you could give less of a fuck about

 

[Kosher Dill]

There's actually a lot of excellent Native American sculpture and pottery in the American Southwest.
BUT: it's not really "traditional crafts" per se. The top-quality pieces you see coming out of competitions and big-name artists' studios are essentially art for art's sake, intended to be sold to the white man. (And of course you have gradations downward from there all the way to tourist-trap tat.)
If you go to a museum and look at what was being produced before around the mid-20th century, it's all pretty unimpressive, because it was stuff for daily use in a premodern civilization.

Something similar obtains in the jewelry market - a very few creators are excellent, most are on the same level as the white hippies making bead necklaces and silver jewelry in suburbia, and all of it is purely for the collector or tourist market.