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Alberta Natives ignore museum retailer

Author

Leslie Crossingham

Volume

5

Issue

5

Year

1987

Page 3

No feedback from Native people for planned store

"I envy the Indian philosophy very much, but when it comes to business, it is a nightmare. Indian time and out time are not the same thing," said Carol Smith, a Glenbow official who is organizing an Indian arts and crafts store for the Calgary Winter Olympic Games.

Smith, a retail coordinator with the museum says she has had absolutely no feed back from Alberta's Native people regarding "the planned store" selling Native arts and crafts.

The new store will be located on the second floor of the museum of the duration of the "Spirit Sings" exhibition, which will highlight Indian culture, and will have a cultural section for Indian arts and crafts.

Smith has already contacted various bands and retail outlets across the country. She has placed orders with Bands from the east and Saskatchewan, but she says, she is continued to be ignored by Native people from Alberta.

"I have been trying for six years (to get orders from Alberta's craft people) but I am not having much luck. It is very discouraging," says Smith.

The Alberta arts and crafts section will be a vital component of the store and is an essential element of Plains Indian culture, Smith explained.

"It is very different from other parts of the country and even from the other parts of the Plains Indian territory."

Asked if the boycott of the Glenbow exhibition by the Lubicon Indian Band, in northern Alberta, and in support of their outstanding land-claim has to do with lack of interest from Native Albertans, Smith denied that it has anything to do with it.

"I have been very open with what I am doing. I have passed my business card around and I don't get any reading that the Lubicon issue is affecting this (lack of response) at all."

Smith adds that her door is still open and that she would more than welcome any Indian craft maker contacting her.

"I want to buy. I really want to buy, but I want a business approach," Smith says while explaining that she recently spent more than an hour with one young Native man regarding the purchase of his craft work.

"However, he did not know prices and inventory," she said.

Smith also would like to impress upon people that arts and crafts are not just "homey little items but genuine art work." She says that the upcoming exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to show the true art work of Native people.