ABSTRACT
Today, generations after the adoption of European styles, Amerindian people’s everyday clothing is almost indistinguishable from that of other residents of North America. Until recently their culturally distinct clothing has been mainly reserved for ceremonial occasions such as powwows and religious rituals. This bifurcation of clothing styles and contexts parallels the dichotomy between ‘traditional’ and ‘assimilated’ Native identity that has been imposed by the dominant society. The dichotomy is a double bind: adopting ‘traditional’ identities, Native peoples are cast into a static ahistorical frame, while appearing ‘assimilated’ erases cultural distinctiveness.2 In both cases, Native peoples cannot effectively stake claims to a place in contemporary society. Whereas Jennifer Kramer and Rosemary Coombe advocate ‘double-voiced rhetoric’, that is, ‘oscillation between opposing cultures and systems’,3 I suggest that First Nations contemporary fashion designers have integrated the opposing identity poles in new clothing styles for everyday
wear that simultaneously combine ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’ elements. The strategies they use to create this new integrated Aboriginal identity subvert colonial oppression through nation-building initiatives that contribute significantly to fluid and multi-levelled constructions of intertribal Native nationhood. To demonstrate this thesis, I will survey nation-building projects among established nation-states, and show how these historical processes are strikingly similar to the social movement among urban North American Native peoples from the 1960s to the 1970s. I will then demonstrate how contemporary Native Canadian fashion designers use strategies that both materialize and enact intertribal nationhood in the realms of design, production and cultural performance.
