Girls at the Teepee Display, Outdoor Fête, 1950s

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Girls at the Teepee Display, Outdoor Fête, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Girls at the Teepee Display, Outdoor Fête, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-20F04C

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Two girls stand in front of a painted canvas teepee at what is plainly a summer fête or school fair, the teepee decorated with Ojibwe-style number words — 'Ni-win,' 'Nish-was-wi' — and imagery of a dove, clouds, and bear tracks, the whole thing a well-intentioned 1950s educational exhibit on Native American culture produced by people who had never questioned whether they were the right people to produce it. The older girl wears a calf-length plaid dress with white flat shoes, the younger one a buttoned coat and a yellow party hat with flowers, both dressed as though church attendance was also on the schedule. A small crowd mills in the background near bunting and display boards, the kind of crowd that materialises wherever there is a tombola and a raffle for a fruitcake. The teepee's Anishinaabe vocabulary lesson, painted with considerable care onto canvas by someone who genuinely believed this constituted cross-cultural education, would not survive a second look from any decade that followed.

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