FAKE INDIAN: Jimmie Durham and his Tangled Libretto
Paul R. Abramson, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at UCLA and the lead singer of the band Crying 4 Kafka.
By Paul R. Abramson
Bruno Dössekker, aka Binjamin Wilkomirski, was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. He was also the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood. Years later it was discovered that Bruno was neither Jewish, nor a concentration camp survivor.
Rachel Dolezal, aka Nkechi Amare Diallo, was a well-known teacher (Intro to African Studies, The Black Woman’s Struggle), artist, and a civil rights leader (NAACP Branch President) of African American descent. Or, so it seemed, until her parents produced Rachel’s birth certificate. She was of German and Czech ancestry.
What about Jimmie Durham? I am a Cherokee artist, Durham stated in the 1984 Bulletin of the Alternative Museum, who strives to make Cherokee art. Lucy Lippard (1993), the eminent art critic, added substance to that affirmation in an article she wrote for Art in America.
Jimmie Durham offers a dialogue for which neither the Native nor the non-Native world is ready. As a Cherokee artist, writer, poet, performer and treaty activist, he sees the world through the eyes of Coyote––the trickster, the Native American embodiment of all that is base and godlike in humans. His art peels away the decorative wrappings that disguise the American Indian in the United States colonial present.
Fact-checking, evidently, wasn’t Lucy Lippard’s strong suit. Even before the ink was fully dried on her love letter to a post-modern impostor, the shit hit the fan. Nancy Marie Mithlo, a Native American scholar, and now a UCLA professor, wrote a devastating rejoinder to Ms. Lippard that was also published in Art in America.
This is not “Cherokee art” intervening into a mainstream, as Lippard suggests. It is the mainstream awkwardly grasping for a new commodity which is outside their worldview. Durham evidently knows that the complexity of Indian art and Indian artists’ status can successfully mask his performance (which the publication of this article proves.) However, your readers should be aware that this artist’s fame stems from your ignorance. He knows your language, which boxes you need to check, which names to drop, and which injustices to cry.
Mithlo added further explanation to her Art in America statement, and the ultimate fallout from it, in her recent 2020 book Knowing Native Arts.
[My] argument was really less of an indictment of the ethnic fraud aspect of Durham’s work and more a critique of the art writing style that was employed to describe the work, which I found to be superficial and trite. As a result of my letter and Lippard’s retort, Durham publicly responded. “I am not Cherokee. I am not an American Indian. This is in concurrence with recent US legislation, because I am not enrolled on any reservation or in any Indian community”.
On January 29th 2017 the Hammer Museum in Los Angles unveiled Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World. It was assembled by the Hammer’s senior curator Anne Ellegood, who was also the author of the definitive Catalogue that accompanied the show (Ellegood, 2017). Despite the aforementioned disavowal of Cherokee authenticity, which came to light more than a decade prior to the exhibition at the Hammer Museum, Durham’s pseudo-Native American fingerprints were still evident throughout. Ann Philbin, for example, the Director of the Hammer Museum, enthused in the Forward to the Catalogue: The Hammer Museum is thrilled to present Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World. A visual artist, performer, writer, and activist of Cherokee descent. Anne Ellegood, in turn, played the sympathy card. Those meddling Native American scholars are driving poor Jimmie to distraction. He is now, according to Ellegood’s Catalogue essay titled Jimmie Durham: Post-American, incredulous about the problematic notions of authenticity levelled at him and other American Indians (Ellegood, 2017).
The data, however, suggests that Jimmie Bob Durham was born on July 10, 1940 in Harris, Texas, to Jerry Loren Durham (April 21, 1906-1985) and Ethel Pauline Simmons (August 10, 1915-January 23, 1990), neither of whom had a trace of Cherokee ancestors (Faazine, 2017; Mithlo, 2020). Yet, despite vehement Native American protests (e.g. Meredith, 2017, 2019; Mithlo, 2020) to the contrary, Durham is still considered, at least among some important players in the Art World, to be the most eminent Native American artist working today. Christopher Knight, the Los Angeles Times art critic, who won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for art criticism, said as much in his February 2nd, 2017 Times article. Durham is, and I quote, a stone-cold Cherokee Indian.
A stone-cold liar seems closer to the mark, or perhaps, at the very least, a guy who exploits misinformation about himself, to further his spurious Cherokee bona fides. And for that matter, what does Christopher Knight know about the criteria for citizenship in one of the three federally recognized and historically significant Cherokee tribes? As Nancy Marie Mithlo explains, only the tribes themselves have the right to name their own citizens and no Cherokee tribe has claimed Jimmie Durham as such. In an editorial published on June 26th, 2017 in Indian Country Today, 10 Cherokee artists (including America Meredith), curators, and other professionals declared:
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.
Imagine if J.R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, claimed that he was a descendant of Hobbits. Or, alternatively, that the wizard Gandalf was kin. Would anyone take such claims seriously? Might colleagues at Oxford think that Jirt (his nickname) had gone a bit daft?
Durham, like Tolkien, has also created a vast fictional world. Though not populated with creatures from the Middle Earth, Durham’s world includes assemblages, collages, drawings, writings, and performances that use Native American symbols and images. Where the two artists diverge, however, is in terms of subjectivity. Unlike Tolkien, Jimmie Durham put himself smack dab in the Center of his own fictive World.
Was that supposed to give Durham’s World more cred? Lucy Lippard and Anne Ellegood obviously thought so. Or was it the only card that Jimmie felt he could play? Having previously ridiculed artists like Lothar Baumgarten and Joseph Beuys for using Native American imagery and symbols in their artworks (I felt appropriated and cancelled (Lippard, 1993)), perhaps Jimmie felt that it was the only option he had left.
All the same, if Durham is now claiming that he is not Cherokee and not an American Indian why is the Art World still acting otherwise? One obvious possibility is Durham’s confession itself. Yes, he is not Cherokee, and yes, he is not an American Indian. But he also later said, on the sly as it were, that he is not Cherokee according to the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990. Is that the wiggle room that accounts for the persistence of his Native American claims in the Art World? If so, the Art World must also be choosing to ignore the fact that no Cherokee tribe has claimed him as member. Or is that mere technicality to them, too? Consider the way the Walker Museum in Minneapolis tried to put this dispute to rest.
While Jimmy Durham self-identifies as Cherokee, he is not recognized by any of the three Cherokee Nations, which as sovereign nations determine their own citizenship. We recognize that there are Cherokee artists and scholars who reject Durham’s claims of Cherokee ancestry.
Ok. But is self-identifying as Cherokee the same as being Cherokee? Is self-identifying as the Ambassador to Vietnam the same as being the Ambassador to Vietnam? And why would anyone take self-identities seriously in the biographical sense? Would a self-identifying Ambassador to Vietnam, for example, put in it on his or her resume?
Perhaps something else is going on, such as how Anne Ellegood of the Hammer Museum has chosen to spin it:
If Durham was raised to believe that Cherokee ancestry is part of his family history despite the lack of official registration – as he was – the question becomes whether he has any right to engage with that subject position.
Does this mean that If your family had slaves, and you were raised to believe that those slaves were happy as clams in their bondage and servitude, despite anything else you might of heard subsequently, you have the right to engage with that subject position as you learned it?
All of these nonsensical apologias notwithstanding, and the throngs of Native voices to the contrary, I am still having trouble understanding why anyone in the Art World would come to the defense – no matter how convoluted – of a feigned Cherokee artist. Haven’t we reached a place and time where all cultures and peoples can speak for themselves? And hasn’t the Cherokee Nation spoken? Why would museums and their curators become so attached to a narrative about Jimmie Durham that flies in the face of Native American facts? And why would the Hammer Museum, which is an affiliate of UCLA, and is presumably committed to UCLA’s policy on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion - ignore those facts?
Two reasons now come to mind. Capitalism thrives on the voracious desire for products. The best capitalists are those who can successfully – and repeatedly - exploit those desires. Do you really need a new car every two years? Or yet another pair of shoes, or another color jacket? If you feel that you do, corporate advertising has played a big part in that. The more compassionate the advertising – like new cars have better safety features – the more legitimate our desires appear to be. The Art World, I believe, fits into the same category. Sure, they aren’t selling a product made by a grubby industrialist who is ruining the environment, which is true, but the Art World nonetheless operates on the same basic capitalist principle: private ownership of products, and the profits that accrue from them.
Now, according to this analogy, the primary motive of the Art World, like that of corporate America, is to drive the value of its stock and products upwards. This is apparently true for owners and shareholders, but perhaps it’s equally true of collectors, galleries and museums. Anything that could make the “stock” tumble, such as an artist’s reputation, would, at least hypothetically, be vigorously challenged – even if it meant denying the obvious. Perhaps the Durham apologists are continuing to deflect the heat from the Native American community because, at least according to my thinking, the Durham “stock” can’t be allowed to crash along with the reputations of those who have championed him.
My second reason relates directly to the Art World, Nelson Goodman, in particular. Goodman was a professor of philosophy at Harvard and is one of the most influential figures in contemporary aesthetics. His book The Language of Art (1976) was a fundamental contribution to this field. When looking at two paintings ostensibly by Rembrandt, Goodman asked, is there an aesthetic difference in how these paintings are experienced if we know that one of the two paintings is a forgery? Most certainly, Nelson Goodman then declared. This bit of knowledge makes the consequent demands to modify and differentiate my present experience in looking at these two [purported] Rembrandt paintings (p. 105, Goodman, 1976). The take home message being that knowledge modifies how we engage with artworks (Abramson & Abramson, 2019, 2020). Widespread recognition that Mr. Jimmie is a Fake Indian could drastically influence how his artworks are perceived and experienced, and perhaps correspondingly, valued. The Art World may thus be desperately trying to put the clamps on Native American voices – and their allies – to protect the value of their stock because knowledge modifies how artworks are experienced.
None of my comments, however, are meant to critique, or pass judgement, on Durham’s oeuvre. Only the test of time can establish its true value. My goal is simply to insert something into the debate about Jimmie Durham’s ancestry, and whatever advantages might have accrued from those claims, and to suggest reasons why those claims, and their residuals, continue to persist.
The National Art Education Association Position Statement on Diversity in Visual Arts Education (March 2017) emphasizes that visual art education [is] a cultural and social intervention, in which educators and learners collaboratively explore, respond, respect and react to the values, practices and beliefs of cultures in a complex and multifaceted society. Promoting Jimmie Durham as a quintessential Cherokee artist, self-identified or not, is hardly consistent with this policy, certainly in terms of respecting the values of the Native American culture.
In 1984, Jimmie Durham wrote a poem titled Song of Myself. The last four lines of that poem are as follows:
Most good singers are named
Jimmie: Jimmie Cliff, Jimmie Reed, Jimmie Baldwin,
Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Hendrix.
Me too, I sing. Dance. Move.
I had a different poem in mind while writing this essay. It goes like this:
I went down to the Chelsea drugstore
To get your prescription filled
I was standing in line with Mr. Jimmie
And man, did he look pretty ill
We decided that we would have a soda
My favorite flavor, cherry red
I sung my song to Mr. Jimmie
Yeah, and he said one word to me, and that was "dead"
I said to him
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You get what you need*
I hope the Cherokee Nation also gets what it needs.
(* Lyrics by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards from the song You Can’t Always Get What You Want that appeared on the 1969 Rolling Stones album, Let It Bleed)
References
Abramson, Paul R. & Abramson, Tania L. (2019). David Wojnarowicz and the Surge of Nuances. Modifying Aesthetic Judgement with the Influx of Knowledge. Aesthetic Investigations, 1, 146-157.
Abramson, Paul R. & Abramson, Tania L. (2020). Visual and Narrative Comprehension of Trauma. The American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, 22(6), 535-543.
Durham, Jimmie (1984). Comments in the Bulletin of The Alternative Museum.
Ellegood, Anne (2017). Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World. New York: Prestel.
Faazine (2017). Facts and Resources: Jimmie Durham. First American Art, June 8th 2017.
Goodman, Nelson (1976). Languages of Art. Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing Company.
Lippard, Lucy (1993). Jimmie Durham – Postmodernist “savage”. Art in America, February 1, 1993.
Meredith, America (2017). Why it matters that Jimmie Durham is not a Cherokee. Artnet News, July 7th 2017.
Meredith America (2019). A Chapter Closed? American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 43(4), 37-40.
Mithlo, Nancy Marie (2020). Knowing Native Arts. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.