kachina

(64) Thus we now have "authentic Navajo jewelry" or "authentic Hopi tithu" Marketers eagerly exploit this situation and offer without guilt "authentic Navajo kachina dolls" that are indeed made by Navajos, even though a "Navajo katsina" is completely removed from any realm of verity or authenticity.

This response led us to ask: Should kachina dolls be taught as art lessons in schools?

I've always been drawn to Native American art, paintings with a Southwestern theme, native pottery, kachina dolls and anything created by hand, particularly three-dimensional works.

I continue to see projects surrounding Kachina Dolls. No matter how often Pueblo Peoples and others inform "outsiders" that these are not and never were "dolls," but rather teaching tools used to educate children of the tribe in the identity and roles of particular Spirits within their religion, people still treat them like mainstream dolls.

Likewise James, the carver of kachina dolls, embodiments of ancestral spirits in wood.

The kachina dolls of the Hopi flowered in the nineteenth century, when the Hopi tribe came into contact with Spanish and Mexican folk art and sought to meet touristic demands for dolls.

I am also interested in the carving of Kachina dolls and other kinds of native carving and wood craft.

One of my female Native American patients who suffered a brain injury makes Kachina dolls (spiritual representations carved from wood).

And then there is the Navajo production of kachina dolls when the word "kachina" and the doll are actually Hopi.

Chris Ewer and his Cal-Diego teammates--Jim Russell, Bill Palmer, Keith Rheinhardt, and Phil Santos--won Kachina dolls for their first-place finish at the Arizona PVA/ATA Trapshoot.

Additionally, last semester she oversaw Paska's workshop of a new production, a curious exploration of the prehistory of puppetry that incorporated Native American kachina dolls; this semester one of the things she plans to focus on is the development of a mobile puppet theatre capable of taking productions to schools, community centers and parks all over the L.A.

"Our people must fully understand the traditions of their people before they can legitimately make Kachina dolls (or other Hopi artifacts.) They must be initiated into the culture and often, they must go through a long training period to learn the spiritual and traditional meaning of the items."

The unique kachina dolls they created embodied these values; they were a community.

The Hopi Kachina Dolls are carved by society men out of cotton wood roots that are recovered from river washes in the Southwest, each reflecting accurately the Katsina clothing of the dancer, and are carried during the dance in which that Katsina appears.

Photographs feature their skilled craftsmanship, e.g., in historic and contemporary pottery, jewelry, basketry, and kachina dolls (representing ancestral spirits).