American Indian Arts and Crafts
American Indian art is one of the most popular categories of art produced and sold in the United States, and it represents one of the most successful forms of entrepreneurship and economic development on Indian reservations, not to mention the cultural and often religious significance Indian art has to those who create it. While the U.S. has tried to regulate the Indian arts and crafts industry with laws that prohibit the sale or display of any product that falsely implies that it was made by an American Indian or Indian tribe, substantial weaknesses in the laws make enforcement hard to achieve. The market has been flooded with imitation products imported from the Philippines, Mexico, Thailand, Pakistan, China and other countries, as well as a large volume of fakes made here in the U.S. American Indian artisans are believed to lose $400 million to $500 million from these imitation products.
In a survey of 300 American Indian artists conducted by the U.S. Department of the Interior Office of Inspector General, half said they had seen or heard about a counterfeit copy of their own work and more than half said they had seen or heard about a counterfeit copy of another artist’s products. The American Indian artists must cut the prices of their own work by as much as 50 percent to compete against the fraudulent items. Some have even had to resort to selling imitations of their own work in order to make an income. “For Indian artisans, the playing field will never be level as long as imitation Indian-style arts and crafts can be manufactured overseas or mass-produced domestically at significantly reduced prices,” the OIG concluded in a report on this issue.
