ABSTRACT
Translation involves bridging not only linguistic differences but also the differences of “cultural and inter-and intrasemiotic systems”, the bodies of knowledge and their cultural contexts in which words, concepts, and modes of expression are embedded. This chapter offers, translation centers on the meaning and value of Hopi pots as cultural heritage and American Indian art to both Hopi and American audiences, the ways in which value and meaning are translated, or not, across cultural borders, and practices that have interfered with translation. Few non-Hopis have known the aesthetic principles that ground the social interactions engendered in both the production and circulation of pottery, nor the way in which pottery itself is a “metaphorical reiteration of cosmological ideas”. Nor have we acknowledged how historically and contemporaneously our actions are entangled with their concerns as much as our own. As we move from entangled objects to engaged subjects we will no longer be uncritically overwriting colonial values upon indigenous heritage.
