The 93rd annual Santa Fe Indian Market is only a month away. It's the biggest and best-known destination for Native artists and Native art collectors on the planet, and this year, it's got competition — a new event called the Indigenous Fine Arts Market.
Native American art and culture is big business. If you don't believe that, look no further than the controversial or illegal sides of the market. If you've been paying attention over the last year, you've seen some lurid and fascinating headlines:
Last year, a Paris auction house put a number of Hopi religious items on the block — much to the dismay of Hopi tribal members — and was estimated to bring in about $1 million. Eventually the Annenberg Foundation stepped in and purchased 24 of the items for sale, returning them to the tribe.
Then there was the Native child's leather tunic, complete with bullet hole and bloodstain on the back of the shirt. Waddingtons of Canada guessed they could net up to $3,000 for the item at auction, but the tunic was later removed after public outcry.
There's the occasional FBI press release highlighting the rescue of Native items from the hands of the black market, or theft alert lists like the one maintained by the Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association webpage.
Then there's Santa Fe Indian Market.
For one weekend each August, around 175,000 people journey to New Mexico to see and buy real Indian art. Indian Market serves as one the crown jewels of the state's tourism industry. According to Market officials, the event rakes in around $120 million in economic impact to the city every year and has had quite a few years working with Native Americans, starting in the 1920s.
"All of this, really, is intended to promote tourism in New Mexico with Natives as the focal point," said Stephen Fadden, a professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts. "There's kind of an irony in earlier time because you have things like the Bursum Bill or the Dance Order which was looking at obliterating land and ceremony in New Mexico."
The 1922 Bursum Bill aimed to hand over Indian land in New Mexico to non-Indians while the 1921 Dance Order, otherwise known as the Leavitt Bill, would have prevented Native Americans in the state from practicing traditional dances.