Jimmie Durham
Jimmie Durham
“An internationally acclaimed artist, activist, and writer, Jimmie Durham draws upon his Native American
heritage to create potent works that challenge and deconstruct Western hegemony. His artistic practice—
which encompasses sculpture, installation, drawing, video, performance, and photography—can be seen as an
extension of his political activism. Through objects, images, and words, he reveals the prejudices and
assumptions of a Western-centric view of the world and gives voice to alternative, non-Western modes of
thought. For example, in many of his works he uses stones to crush cars, furniture, or articles of clothing,
subverting the historical Western paradigm of conquering nature through civilization and technological
advancement”
(from: https://www.artsy.net/artist/jimmie-durham).
Jimmie Durham (born 1940) is an American-born sculptor, essayist and poet, living and working in Europe since 1994. He was active in the United States in the civil rights movements of African Americans and Native Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, serving on the central council of the American Indian Movement (AIM). He returned to working at art while living in New York City. His work has been extensively exhibited.
He has long claimed to be Cherokee but that claim has been denied by tribal representatives: "Durham is neither enrolled nor eligible for citizenship in any of the three federally-recognized and historical Cherokee Tribes: the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma, and the Cherokee Nation."[2] He has "no known ties to any Cherokee community."[3]
Durham has claimed to be quarter-blood Cherokee and to have grown up in a Cherokee-speaking community.[1] He was raised in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, as his father traveled looking for work.[5] According to Cherokee lawyer, justice and law professor Steve Russell, Durham is among "professional posers" who masquerade as Cherokee and Native American for the purposes of career advancement. Durham is described as having "made a career of being Cherokee with no known ties to any Cherokee community, although he has claimed to be Wolf Clan and to have been raised with Cherokee as a first language."[3]
In June of 2017, ten Cherokee tribal representatives, artists and scholars published an open letter about Durham, titled, "Dear Unsuspecting Public, Jimmie Durham Is a Trickster - Jimmie Durham’s indigenous identity has always been a fabrication and remains one"
They went on to state that by claiming to exhibit his work as a Cherokee person, Durham is in violation of the Indian Arts and Crafts Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmie_Durham
Why It Matters That Jimmie Durham Is Not a Cherokee
The principle of self-representation is profoundly important.
America Meredith, July 7, 2017
Ultimately, Anne Ellegood has done Native art communities a favor by digging in and forcing this public discussion through her exhibition catalogue and her persistent framing of Durham as an American Indian. The catalogue showed that Durham still claimed to be Cherokee and still used our culture in his art and writing. Native people told Ellegood that Durham wasn’t Cherokee or Native for years, but she dismissed them and dismissed the tribes’ sovereign rights to define their own membership criteria. By doing so, she made apparent that this conversation could no longer be postponed.
No one by the surname of Durham was born in either of the two counties in Arkansas that the artist claimed as his birthplace. Kathy Griffin White (Cherokee Nation) confirmed that Jimmie Bob Durham was actually born in Harris, Texas, on July 10, 1940. From there, his family tree is easy to trace and yields no Cherokee ancestors.
Numerous non-Native people have tried to say, “Indigenous identity is complex,” as if that ends the conversation. It’s complex, but not incomprehensible. There are non-enrolled descendants of many tribal communities who still engage with and contribute to those communities. That is not Durham’s case. He is not a member of any of the three Cherokee tribes—the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the United Keetowah Band of Cherokee Indians, and the Cherokee Nation. The tribes, not the federal government, decide who is eligible to be a member. Under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, any of them can designate anyone they want as a tribal artisan. None has chosen to designate Durham to represent them in the art world.
Durham has no Cherokee ancestors, does not live in a Cherokee community, does not belong to a Cherokee ceremonial ground, and has not married into a Cherokee family. The situation could not be clearer. Yes, Jimmie Durham was part of the American Indian Movement, but so was Marlon Brando.
Thousands of non-Native people claim to be Cherokee. No one is in an uproar about Leon Polk Smith or Robert Rauschenberg claiming to be Cherokee, because neither launched their career as a Native artist. Neither positioned himself as the spokesperson for all American Indian people.
When you are less than two percent of your nation-state’s population and the public discourse about your people is dominated by stereotypes and misinformation, self-representation is profoundly important. Durham’s misrepresentation of Cherokee language, culture, and history is wildly off the mark. Curators and art historians should have reached out to the tribes, to Cherokee language programs, and to tribal museums.
Durham draws from a perplexing mishmash of various Native groups’ cultural practices. For instance, he claims that Trickster Coyote, who is significant to the Great Basin, Plateau, and California tribes, was Cherokee and played a role in our creation story. In the Southeast, however, Trickster Rabbit is a beloved cultural figure and did not create humans.
No one I know of is saying Durham does not deserve a retrospective, nor is anyone calling for censorship. His act of falsely claiming to be Cherokee is part of his narrative, as European-American artist Yeffe Kimball’s false claim of being Osage is part of her history.
Native American artists can and do speak for ourselves, and more are doing so in an international art arena. With so many powerful voices potentially to be shared, perhaps mainstream institutions could seek Native artists grounded within their communities, as opposed to those who barely touch the periphery.
https://news.artnet.com/opinion/jimmie-durham-america-meredith-1014164
Cherokee Artists and Curators Denounce Artist Jimmie Durham as a Fraud, Saying He ‘Is Not a Cherokee’
The new protest comes on the opening of Durham's touring retrospective at the Walker Art Center.
Brian Boucher, June 27, 2017
Hot on the heels of the opening of Jimmie Durham’s touring retrospective at the Walker Art Center, 10 Cherokee artists, curators, and other professionals have published a forceful editorial disputing the artist’s Native American heritage. Durham has long claimed to be Cherokee, was involved with the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, and has made issues of colonialism and Native American identity the center of his work.
Titled “Dear Unsuspecting Public, Jimmie Durham Is a Trickster” and published by Indian Country Today, based in Verona, New York, the editorial is blunt:
No matter what metric is used to determine Indigenous status, Durham does not fulfill any of them. Jimmie Durham is not a Cherokee in any legal or cultural sense. This not a small matter of paperwork but a fundamental matter of tribal self-determination and self-governance. Durham has no Cherokee relatives; he does not live in or spend time in Cherokee communities; he does not participate in dances and does not belong to a ceremonial ground.
“I am perfectly willing to be called Cherokee,” said Durham in a recent article in the New York Times, though he went on to muddy the waters by adding, “But I’m not a Cherokee artist or Indian artist, no more than Brancusi was a Romanian artist.”
The signers of the editorial say that Durham’s claims are not only untrue, but actually damaging to other Cherokee artists: “These false claims are harmful,” they write, “as they misrepresent Native people, undermine tribal sovereignty, and trivialize the important work by legitimate Native artists and cultural leaders.”
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/cherokee-curators-artists-jimmie-durham-cherokee-1007336
What I have learnt
You can stand for something to protect native rights but do not pretend to be one when you are not.
Impersonating a culture you are not part of is highly offensive to those who are
If making a cultural claim have evidence to back you up
You can’t represent/speak for a culture that you aren't part of
