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  • Hopi Doll Look-Alikes:An Extended Definition of Inauthenticity
  • Zena Pearlstone (bio)

This essay is a short history of imitation tithu, dolls representing katsinam, the Hopi supernaturals. It is a study of "authenticity" in the marketplace and its perceived relation to "magic," "spirituality," and "antiquity," as the article follows early changes at Hopi through the contemporary fabrications perpetuated through eBay. As it takes up issues of the complexities of fake, reproduced, restored, misattributed, recarved, authentic, traditional, and imitation Hopi tithu, the essay could be seen as a poster scenario for "commodity fetishism" as designated in 1867 by Karl Marx, who defined a fetish as a human-made object that is believed to hold power.1

Tithu are Hopi-made representations of the Hopi supernaturals, cottonwood root carvings that were and are given at certain rituals by the katsinam, the supernaturals who visit the Hopi mesas for six months of the year, to infants, young girls, brides, and adult women. Hopis refer to these carvings as tithu, or dolls, never as katsinam or katsina carvings.2 Hopi Alph Secakuku describes them as "personifications of the katsina spirits, originally created by the katsinam in their physical embodiment."3 The "relationship of reciprocity between the Hopi and the Katsinam is the very cornerstone of Hopi culture . . . [and] tithu are encoded with Hopi culture."4 Until the middle of the nineteenth century, tithu were made exclusively by men to be given to their female relatives during ceremonies. Uninitiated Hopi children believe that these carvings are gifts from the supernaturals and cannot know that they are products of humans.

Since 2001, when I published an edited volume on the numerous commodified and appropriated images of katsinam titled Katsina: Commodified [End Page 579] and Appropriated Images of Hopi Supernaturals, I have been more closely studying imitation tithu, three-dimensional images fashioned primarily from wood and cottonwood root. The previous study looked at the likenesses of the supernaturals as represented by both Hopis and non-Hopis in an assortment of media, including paintings, jewelry, textiles, and gourds, as well as on a wide range of tourist objects. Unlike these items, tithu are ritual objects, and, thus, when non-Hopis mimic the figures, the imitations can be easily, if always incorrectly, associated with the presumed functions of the originals. These impersonations are then marketed as "the real thing"—"authentic" Hopi dolls.5

Fake and reproduced tithu increasingly damage the credibility of the market and the reliability of museum documentation; they confound basic tenets of Hopi culture as aspects of "Hopiness" become commodities. Michael F. Brown describes how such commodification can lead to alienation, which appears when people are "no longer masters of their own traditions, their own identities":

Growing disquiet about the unauthorized use of elements of native cultures implicitly challenges influential academic work that celebrates . . . "hybridity" [because] . . . many of the peoples whose hybridity has been enthusiastically documented become upset when it is their own culture that begins to flow elsewhere. . . . [A]nger [can be] fueled by fear that elemental understandings are coming under the control of others. . . . [Beyond the academy] ethics codes and community-controlled research protocols can do little to shelter native peoples from the curiosity of individuals unburdened by a professional identity.6

There is little doubt that the type of disquiet and anger that Brown describes is apparent at Hopi, and it has been documented by the Hopi themselves as well as by scholars.7 But the aura of the carvings is exploited by some Hopis as well as by outsiders.

When I wrote this article in 2010, the number and ethnic diversity of "doll" carvers was overwhelming, and their productions had pushed the possible definitions of authenticity and "katsina" to extremes. I begin with two examples. First, any doll sculpted by a Hopi woman. Until the 1930s all dolls were fashioned by men; carving was inappropriate behavior for women. Most Hopis define an authentic doll as one made by an initiated Hopi man. Within this specification, the woman-made doll [End Page 580] would not be authentic. Although today many women carve, their output is considered different from that of men.8 When asked about figures made by women, a group of male...

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