The Minion Conundrum

Make no mistake, Twin Rocks Trading Post is a complicated place to work. Not only is Priscilla constantly stealing our thunder, she, hoping to avoid additional sticky situations, is incessantly tutoring Barry and me on Navajo cultural issues. Don’t spin the basket, it will make you crazy, she says. Always orient the spirit line towards the morning sun, she corrects us. Don’t put the basket on your head, it will stunt your growth, she advises. Although I respect her knowledge, I am not convinced she is always correct. Using her logic, I once tried putting a basket on my stomach to relieve the ongoing expansion. The paunch continues to grow. Thinking I might assist with his dietary challenges, I also left a somewhat flat basket on Barry’s office chair. Even though he failed to notice and sat on it like an egg, it made no difference to him.

There are countless racial and cultural issues associated with our daily Twin Rocks existence. Recently I was cooking French toast for Grange when I noticed Jana walking out the door in her velveteen blouse, fluted broom skirt, bull-hide moccasins and silver and turquoise jewelry. It was apparently dress up day at school. That evening when she arrived home in a funk, I asked why. She said one of her students had accused her of cultural appropriation, since she was, “dressed as a Navajo.” I could picture the accuser standing next to her in blue jeans and cowboy boots.

All too often cultural appropriation allegations are a one-way street, with those alleging theft unaware of the “appropriated” item’s origin or their own complicity. Traditional Navajo dress, for example, is complicated. Prior to internment of tribal members at Bosque Redondo, female Navajo clothing consisted of the Pueblo-influenced two-paneled woven dress sown at the shoulder and cinched at the waist. After they were released from Fort Sumner in 1868, trading posts and railroads influenced their apparel. By the 1880s, Navajo women adopted the Victorian style of dress, with high collars, fitted sleeves and full skirts. That, as we all know, is presently considered “traditional Navajo” attire.

Despite what seems a genetic predisposition for ornamentation and jewelry, Navajo people did not master silversmithing skills until the latter part of the 19th century. Prior to that, their silver decorations were acquired through trade with Hispanic settlers and bartering with Plains tribal members. The Hispanic settlers and Plains Indians, of course, acquired the baubles from English, French, and American trappers. It is commonly agreed that Atsidi Sani, the first Navajo silversmith, learned blacksmithing from a Mexican man living in the New Mexico Territory during the 1850s. He was introduced to silversmithing about 1855. Much later, in the 1880s, J.L. Hubbell hired Mexicans to train Navajo smiths at his Ganado, Arizona, trading post. And that is how Navajo silver work began.

So, there I was, sitting behind the counter contemplating the complexities of my existence, wearing my turquoise and silver bracelets and wondering whether I had appropriated my wearable art from the Mexicans, the Hispanic, the Plains Indians, the English, the French, the Americans, or some altogether unknown source, when a tall, slightly disheveled Native American man shambled in through the Kokopelli doors. Looking him over from head to toe, I noticed he, like Jana’s would-be accuser, was clad in tight-fitting Levi’s jeans, beautifully pointy boots any rhinestone cowboy would be proud to wear, and a sweat-stained T-shirt. Emblazoned on the shirt was the image of a minion, the capsule shaped, overhauled, goggled being from the Minions Movie. Atop the minion was a feather war bonnet. So, I thought to myself, “Who appropriated what? Did the Native man appropriate the minion? Did the minion appropriate the headdress?” This, I reasoned, was a true conundrum. This, Priscilla reasoned, was the consequences of an overactive mind.