Author: Lo

I made it back to my adopted hometown Chicago, but no blatant Indian-ness imagery was to be seen in the areas in which I spent time—the downtown area, Hyde Park, and northern suburbs. However, the word “Chicago” comes from the Miami-Illinois word “Shikwaakwa,” which means “striped skunk” or “smelly onion.”

The explorer Robert de la Salle is credited with the first precursor to Chicago, “Checagou.”

Anglo-Americans “gringo” traditional names and places in their mispronunciations and spellings, which endure because their white tongues are the ones empowered. “Chicago” is the mispronunciation and writing down of “shikawkwaa,” an eraser obliterating the traditional history of Indigenous Americans and redefining the word.

In the same way that La Salle whitewashed a word from a Native language, Anglo-Americans in power appropriate sacred symbols of Indigenous peoples for kitsch and commercial uses. Favored characteristics of a myriad Native identities are blended and synthesized into one, sole “Indian” identity.

The road trip I will be taking over the next week will display the ways this synthesized caricature is manifested.

(These bottom three photos were taken in Tokyo, Japan, and though not taken en route on my Route 66 trip, show how universal the American Indian aesthetic is.)

Waiting for my flight to depart from Denver International Airport, I stumbled upon a store in Terminal A called “Spirit of the Red Horse.” Inside were bourgeois, Native-esque tchotchkes that paint all of Colorado as a western, high-class society, despite that the expensive kitsch only characterizes the aesthetics of places like the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs and parts of Denver—the wild west but fancy.

 

The items inside mix cold beads and feathers with warm leather in the colors of the earth, and the store’s name hints at the belief that horses are an integral part of Indians’ life and culture—which would be a true assumption for many Plains Indians years ago, but the same cannot be said for tribes of other regions.

The imagery of the kitsch in this store, as well as the name of the store itself, promotes various stereotypes about Indians, and although not on Route 66, this store was still a part of my journey getting to Route 66 and is an example of Indian kitsch close to my home in Colorado Springs—a pre-game of the kitsch I hope to see along Route 66 if you must.