This last weekend (July 12th to be exact) I had my palm read in Chinatown by a small, elderly Chinese lady. Her chain-smoking friend provided editorial assistance, while translation was the province of the palm reader's granddaughter who was paid for her services with an icy beverage that looked to be mostly made of sugar syrup. The little girl translated only every tenth or eleventh sentence, and I’m certain that some of the sentences she did translate were a little off. I mean, how do you translate a complicated, tonal language like Chinese into English?

I know from reading “local color” stories in advance of the Beijing Olympics that General Tao’s Chicken in Chinese is something like “a meal cooked by a pock-marked woman,” which seems on its face to have nothing to do with chicken, let alone with an army officer called Tao. The take away lesson here is that the Chinese speak colorfully, with lots of metaphor and euphemism, so perhaps the woman’s warning that I will burn down my house in 2010 meant something other than what I took it to mean (i.e. that I will be able to afford to buy a house).

It was with the idea of problems inherent to translation stewing in my brain that I went into a store called Western Spirit. It resides on the corner of Broadway and White - one block off of Canal Street – the home of Manhattan’s Chinatown and Little Italy. A salesman who greeted me at the door informed me that the store has done brisk business in New York City for the last thirty years. I was skeptical. Following him in my first thought was that this is what a British drawing room in the early 1900s would have looked like had they direct imperial control over North America rather than India: Instead of exotic animal skins, silver tea sets decorated with Hindu deities and bejeweled turbans decked from floor to ceiling, you’d have the longhorn-horn chairs, quivers made of muskrats, moccasins, cowboy boots, feather headdresses and all manner of tiny carved “fetishes” that packed this joint. Replace one blotto British army colonel with one blotto John Wayne in your head and blam! – history becomes much more fun.

Trying to make sense of all the stuff filling the large, high-rent space, I was struck by the seemingly unembarrassed conflation of two entirely different images of the west – that of the Indian and that of the Settler/Cowboy. One was the independent, hard-driving explorer, eager to carve a new path, trailblazing off into the wild, godless countryside to eke out a new life, the other idealized as proud, nature-loving and harmonious, spiritual and centered, calm and knowledgeable. The tableau was completely unproblematized, united by commerce – oppressor and oppressed, if you will, side-by-side and for sale.

No guns on offer and certainly no smallpox blankets, most of the items were associated with simple, declarative stories and explanatory tidbits, many of which were spelled out on the various hangtags dangling from the items, with many more to be found on the website or teased out of the sales staff. Bears, apparently, represent medicine, and frogs were for fertility, useful items to have, perhaps, as New Yorkers do get sick and some even have difficulty knocking up their wives. Some things, though, like arrowheads, guaranteed to be genuine and no longer useful as arrowheads, do what, exactly? Go with the dream catcher dangling above your bed in an effort to ward off angry dream buffalo?

The arrowheads – which looked just like a set that I had pounded out in an archaeology class once – gave me an idea, and I began checking the insides of the boots for source data. I began by checking eleven pairs of various styles and found that nine were made in the United States, and two were made in India. A check of several more pairs gave me India 3, USA 12. Later, when I discovered that the Indian themed clothes patches were made unabashedly in China, I began to picture sweatshop workers in Shanghai finishing up work in the Che Guevara t-shirt mill only to have to trudge across the street to toil away in the Geronimo patch factory. Images will be begged, borrowed, co-opted and stolen, I suppose, but what is it about these particular images and this particular store with its particular brand of commercial conflation that is so darn icky? One street away on Canal you can buy material representations of Chinese myths hawked by actual Chinese people, while effigies of Christ on the cross are available in large numbers almost anywhere, as can many items and artifacts of hundreds of world cultures, so why bother being bothered about this particular commercial venture above the others?

A mannequin in an absurd window display dressed as a rockabilly Indian maiden in a war bonnet was overseen by a salesman wearing a shirt that proclaimed he was "666% Hellbilly" (he had the side burns and 50's greaser pompadour to prove it) drove the point home about fashion commodities and the ick factor: Where were all the Indians? We know what happened to the cowboys - they won the West and became Bible salesman. The Chinese are up the street selling their cultural wares, the Catholics with their saints are a block over in Little Italy, at least deriving some benefit from the commodification of their cultures, but what do American Indians get out of it aside from a woefully simplistic reification of the Indian as stoic spiritualist? One of the salesmen helpfully suggested that the artists were local indigenous and well paid for their work, but again, I’m skeptical. The website claims that the store owners travel the country looking for interesting items to sell, but there is no mention of India, nor do I know of any American Indian diasporas in China. Like the mannequin in the window, New Yorkers get to dress up for a bit and never have to be confronted with the people whose culture has been refashioned into pat narratives, and sold, mostly to European tourists, but also to the likes of Anthony Kiedis and Mel Gibson - photographs on a wall by the entrance showed these celebrities mugging with the random Western Spirit sales associate (Note: Anthony Kiedis is said to be an Indian - Mohegan or as we here at NAICA call it "Mo-hedis").

The passing residents of Chinatown made it clear to me as I had my palm read that they found me and my little venture into Chinese mysticism hilarious, but I doubt people ever have to think beyond the information on the hangtag that accompanied their newest piece of "Indian" fashion. Unless...unless a public intervention, by actual Indians, was staged to confront the oblivious sales staff, and even more oblivious tourists, with their real life concerns regarding the mis-representation and appropriation of their culture and history. Then some much needed re-dress can occur.

I can see it now James Luna performing his “Wet Dream Catcher” skit on the corner of White and Broadway in full view of the passers by. It’d be an incredible indictment of the crassness of cultural commerce. Meanwhile I will be inside haranguing the staff but also purchasing a really smart pair of vintage leather cowboy boots that conveniently match my brown leather belt – previously purchased elsewhere. Hey, at least I didn’t buy the Sitting Bull belt buckle to wear with it.