(MIS)APPROPRIATION - KOKOPELLI:

Flute player, Mesa Prieta,

Rio Arriba county, New Mexico

Photo Peter Faris, 1997

The concept of (mis)appropriation is basically the adoption of one aspect of a particular group or culture by another group or culture and using it in ways that the first group or culture never intended, or finds offensive. On March 3rd, 2012, I posted a column titled Kokopelli, in which I wrote: "Our culture has enthusiastically adopted Kokopelli with the predictable results. We have multiplied sillier and sillier Kokopellis, riding bicycles, skiing, playing trombones, etc. I own a few myself given to me as gifts by friends. This may be an inevitable part of our society’s attempt to accommodate, understand, and appreciate another culture, but we should not allow this aspect of the modern Kokopelli to make us forget the powerful attributes of fertility and blood which he presented to the people who first conceived of him, and that he represents a sacred image to many of our fellow citizens." (Faris 2012) To this list of misuses  I would now add puerile Kokopelli pornography.

Flute player, Mesa Prieta,

Rio Arriba county, New Mexico,

Photo Peter Faris, 1997

As to the origins of the figure that we call Kokopelli - "Exactly when they first appear is uncertain, but nonphallic fluteplayers without humps are present in Basketmaker III rock art dating back to around A.D. 500. After A.D. 1000 they are present with hump and flute in Anasazi rock art, pottery, and wall paintings. They also appear on ceramics of the Mimbres in southern New Mexico around A.D. 1000  to A.D. 1150 and on Hohokam pottery by A.D. 750 to A.D.850" (Slifer and Duffield 1994: 4)

Kneeling flute player, Mancos canyon,

Montezuma county, New Mexico,

Photo Peter Faris, 1983

I suspect that our use of the Kokopelli image may be as offensive to many Native Americans of the southwest as the image of Andres Serrano's 1987 photograph of a crucifix in a bottle of urine which he titled "Piss Christ" is to many devout Christians. That one raised an uproar. We understand, and share to some extent, the horror that this object presented to devout Christian evangelicals, but that empathy seems to not translate well to the beliefs of other cultures, perhaps because we are so sure that our beliefs are correct and therefore the beliefs of other cultures are wrong. Remember the handful of occasions in recent years involving cartoonists who drew images of the prophet Muhammad in a terrorism context, and received death sentences in fatwas from Muslim clerics who deemed their cartoons disrespectful to Islam. We take a political cartoon as free speech guaranteed by our constitution, those Muslim clerics did not necessarily see that as a right.

"A fatwa is any religious decision made by a mufti (Islamic scholar who is an interpreter or expounder of Islamic law). The most infamous fatwa is the one by Ruhollah Khomeini sentencing Salman Rushdie (Muslim Essayist) to death - that's why most Western people see fatwa just as a death sentence, although it's more than that." (Shuravi 2006)

My particular favorite

flute player, Long House,

Bandelier National Monument,

Los Alamos County, New Mexico,

Photo Peter Faris, Sept. 1985

In his 2018 book Petroglyphs, Pictographs, and Projections: Native American Rock Art in the Contemporary Cultural Landscape, Richard A. Rogers addressed the question of misrepresenting and misappropriating one culture's idea/image/icon by another culture. One point that Rogers makes repeatedly, if I understand his position, is that flute-players and Kokopelli are not at all the same thing, but a conflation which we, the outsiders, have made of characters in the Hopi pantheon. "The conflation of flute player images with Kookopölö, creating a situation where all variations of the former are widely referred to as "kokopelli," is of concern to many Hopis, especially members of the flute clan. The possibility remains, however, that some flute player images in rock art could be related to Kookopölö. Church also quotes Clay Hamilton of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office as saying that flute player-like images without a flute but carrying a walking stick or staff may indeed be Kookopölö." (Rogers 2018:180)

Kokopolo, p. 18, Alph H. Secakuku,

Hopi Kachina Tradition, 1995,

Northland Publishing,

Flagstaff, Arizona.

According to Slifer and Duffield "There are rock art depictions of fluteplayers without the hump or phallus, and there are hump-backed, phallic figures with no flute. They may all be variations on the same theme, but the flute seems to be the most common diagnostic element." (Slifer and Duffield 1994:19) Indeed, as I wrote in The Day I Met Kokopelli, the Kookopölö of the Hopi is the Assassin-fly kachina and the long proboscis is not actually a flute at all (Faris 2012)

Crouching flute player, Mancos canyon,

Montezuma county, New Mexico,

Photo Peter Faris, 1983.

In this column I am limiting my discussion to the figure that we call Kokopelli, although there are certainly many other symbols that we have (mis)appropriated in the same way. What drives out fascination with this figure, accurate or not, whether authentic or a figment of our own imaginations? "Why are non-Native peoples drawn to indigenous rock art and/or rock art imagery?What is its appeal? In what contexts (environmental, social, political, economic) is rock art imagery reproduced, consumed, and discussed? What structures of meaning inform, mediate, constrain, and enable the interpretation and valuation of rock art? What are the ethical and ideological issues involved in the appropriation of rock art imagery? What structures of meaning inform the preservation or rock art sites? In all these activities, what/whose interests are being served?" (Rogers 2018:8)

I cannot yet answer all of these questions for myself, but, in general, to answer Rogers I guess I have to say that it is my interests that are being served by my fascination with this remarkable area of art history.

"The interpretation of ancient, indigenous rock art by contemporary Westerners provides a clear case to demonstrate the contrast. From a transmissional view, the meaning of much rock art is lost due to the lack of a shared cultural context for assigning meaning to the symbols. Possibilities for communication failure loom large: without contextual (cultural) information, we are left, at best, with guesses as to the literal referents of some images and almost entirely acontextual (outsider) efforts to "crack the code" of the meaning of the images." (Rogers 2018:21)

I have long maintained that there is no single meaning to any image. Yes, there was the idea that its creator intended to portray, but there was also probably a spectrum of imperfect understandings of that particular idea among his or her contemporaries. Then, there are all of the imperfect interpretations of the image by people who came after (usually from different cultures). Finally, we come to whatever the result of our analysis is as to its meaning, and don't forget as our culture evolves our descendents will probably change that interpretation as well. Our interpretation in many instances says more about ourselves and our culture as it does about the rock art itself.

"The interaction with rock art may in many cases do little to truly understand the intentions of their ancient creators, but that does not mean those contemporary meanings should be dismissed as insignificant - instead, they offer insights into the interpreting culture and their relationships with cultural others, be they ancient or living. The question becomes not "are these interpretations correct (the same as the originating culture)?" but instead "how did these interpretations come to be (what are their conditions of possibility)?" and "what kinds of identities, relationships, and social systems are being created through these interpretations." (Rogers 2018:22) 

A few of the Kokopellis

gifted to the Faris household

over the years.

Given all of this, as I confessed in my opening, I have a number of these examples of Kokopelli in my possession. A sheet metal cutout mounted on our front door and another on the garden fence, a couple of wall switch-plates, a candle stick, and even a Christmas tree ornament, that were given to me as gifts over the years (and believe me I do see the irony in having a Kokopelli hanging on our Christmas tree). According to Rogers "indeed Kokopelli - not the flute player and not Kookopölö, but the contemporary commercial figure - is a hybrid creation, a piece of postmodern pastiche, not in itself a 'real' or 'genuine' figure from any ancient culture."(Rogers 2018:326)

Perhaps this all represents an example of most of our culture misunderstanding, and therefore not respecting, this belief of the Puebloan peoples, and of the rest of us blindly trying to evaluate the meaning of rock art scientifically, and forgetting its emotional content.

NOTE: It has not been my intention in this particular posting to join in the controversy about assigning Kookopölö/Kokopelli/Flute-player identities and definitions. Those interested in trying to pin that question down should refer to Slifer and Duffield's book listed below.

Those interested in questions of cultural appropriation and misuse should consult Richard Roger's excellent book listed below.

And finally, some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Faris, Peter

2012 Kokopelli, March 3, 2012,

https://rockartblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/kokopelli.html

2012 The Day I Met Kokopelli, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/day-i-met-kokopelli.html

Rogers, Richard A.

2018 Petroglyphs, Pictographs, and Projections: Native American Rock Art in the Contemporary Cultural Landscape, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Shuravi,

2006 Fatwa, December 19, 2006, Urban Dictionary, https://www.urbandictionary.com/defing.php?term=fatwa

Slifer, Dennis and James Duffield

1994 Kokopelli: Flute Player Images In Rock Art, Ancient City Press, Santa Fe.