Archival Moment of Joy!: Finding Connection Between US Bureau of Indian Affairs and SA Bantu Authority Policies on Craft Production

I am not embarrassed to admit that I grinned widely and even joyfully gasped aloud today when I found a concrete connection between the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bantu Authority's policies on craft production.  Since early 2006 I have been collecting research on craft production as a form of economic sustainability sponsored by the Bureau of Indian Affairs with a focus on the historical and contemporary production and reception of Navajo woven textiles.  This particular focus grew out of an August 2004 visit to a Navajo Craft Fair and Workshop in Flagstaff Arizona and after meeting Alisse Portnoy when the UIUC Center for Writing Studies sponsored her talk about her book, Their Right to Speak:  Women's Activism in the Indian and Slave Debate (2005).  I have written critiques of institutional archival practices for Navajo textiles in their tendency to devalue innovation in design and other contemporary practices not deemed "traditional," and also the related archival practice of periodization that effaces influential events on Navajo groups and textile production.  For example, most large institutional collections of Navajo textiles fail to mention the 1864 internment of Navajos and Mescaleros at the Bosque Redondo military reservation, which both limited access to standard weaving materials (such as the churro sheep used for home-spun wool yarn and plants used for dyes) and inspired Navajos to depict the conditions of their internment thematically (now known as the "Fort Sumner" motifs) with the crappy commercial yarns they had access to.  Instead, these very important and disruptive designs often get lost within the broader categorization of the "transitional" period (where I suppose "transitional" is supposed to stand in for and euphemize "forced removal/internment/marginalization").  I was also recently inspired by Jane Simonsen's amazing book, Making Home Work:  Domesticity and Native American Assimilation in the American West, 1860-1919 (2006). 

As I began to read about the craft policies advocated here in South Africa both by missionaries and later by Bantu authorities in the 19th and 20th centuries, I noticed strong similarities between the governmental and institutional rhetoric surrounding the function of craft, craft production and marketing for Native American groups and "Bantu" groups.  My concern in making an argument connecting them, however, was that it may wash over the very specific, local conditions and situation of two very large indigenous groups and two very different forms of settler colonialism..  So maybe you can understand why finding a concrete connection today to support my argument was a near-cartwheel-inducing moment for me.

I was rifling through the eight files the Killie Campbell collections holds of J.W. Grossert's papers and notes - Grossert was the Organizer of Arts and Crafts (Division of Bantu Education/Department of Native Affairs) in the mid-twentieth century.  In one of the files, on delicate pieces of onionskin, I found a typed report to the Carnegie Corporation Grossert composed upon the completion of his travel grant to the United States and Canada from July 1958 to January 1959.  In the report, Grossert describes and applauds the Bureau of Indian Affairs' craft programs and advocates the establishment of similar programs in "Bantu rural communities."  In the same file, there is even a typed speech that Grossert gave to the Pietermaritzburg Rotary Club on 26 March 1959 where he compares Bantu and Indian education practices and describes the burgeoning "big business" of "various Indian tribes" craft industries.  I can use this 1959 date (which represents a known point of intersection), then, to look at Bantu Authority's policies prior and subsequent to this date to consider the development of craft programs in South Africa and how the Bureau of Indian Affairs' programs may have influenced their development.

* Terms such as "bantu" and "Indian" and their use have been thoughtfully contested - my use of them in this post accords with their use by Grossert and other US and SA governmental authorities during the particular 20th century moment to which I am referring.

Comments

[Mark]

Rock on, man! It's like being a detective and finding a vital clue that ties your whole case together - I can totally understand your excitement :) Good luck on your writing!

[mar]

Heheheh so all of that Bloodhound Gang (from 3-2-1 Contact) and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego sleuthing finally paid off eh?

[Mark]

Lol you know, I never thought of the Bloodhound Gang connection! But yeah... Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego was the shit! I always felt awesome when I solved the mystery before those little bitch ass kids on the TV show...

[Kim O'Neill]

As important as the chance to utilize skills developed from Carmen San Diego, it's inspiring to find concrete verification of a phenomenon that scholars seem always to point out but rarely to explore: yes, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bantu Authority developed policies under different sets of local circumstances, but racialization and cultural fetishism are global processes that have resonance all over the world. Even when not articulated explicitly (though luckily for you in this case it was), here's evidence that precedent can be powerful and policy can be appropriated.