Protecting Cultures or Supressing Them?

Under the Palace Portal: Native American Artists in Santa Fe. By Karl A. Hoering. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2003. xvi + 261 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography and index. $29.95.

Who Owns Native Culture? By Michael F. Brown. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. xiii + 315 pp. Illustrations, notes, sources, and index. $29.95.

Dawn Biddison
Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution

Indigenous cultural property rights are a complicated issue with ramifications that continue to expand. It is not just an issue for anthropologists, museum staff, art dealers, and art collectors. The ethical and economic implications affect the work of environmental scientists, ethnobotanists, pharmaceutical companies, agribusinesses, product designers, public land managers, souvenir producers, and others. There is a clear need for literature to inform people about indigenous cultural property rights. Two recent publications on this issue use the effective case-study format but differ in degree of complexity and success. In Under the Palace Portal, anthropologist Karl Hoering presents an in-depth view of a museum program seeking to protect Native art by regulating the "authenticity" of artists' work. Another anthropologist, Michael Brown, presents a variety of indigenous cultural property conflicts in Who Owns Native Culture? from which he addresses a range of arguments and potential solutions.