Mary E. J. Colter and Cultural Appropriation
When Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958) first worked in an architect’s office in the late 1880s, architects routinely studied and drew on Renaissance, Neoclassical, and other architectural styles. Once Colter began creating her own designs several decades later, she also drew from the past. Instead of relying on European precedents, however, Colter was inspired by the architecture of the Ancestral Puebloan peoples in what became known as the United States.
In researching her design for the Desert View Watchtower at Grand Canyon, Colter spent six months traveling to heritage sites in the Southwest studying ancient structures, masonry patterns, and other architectural elements from the Ancestral Puebloans. She integrated some of these into her design for the Watchtower. She also commissioned Hopi artist Fred Kabotie to paint murals on the walls and ceiling of the Watchtower’s second floor. In this way, she reminded visitors of the continuity of Puebloan culture in the Grand Canyon region.
L: The Round Tower at Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park (NPS/ Ansel Adams, c. 1933). R: Desert View Watchtower (NPS/ Michael Quinn, 2008.)
Colter was committed to educating the Watchtower’s visitors about the Ancestral Puebloan buildings and elements in the Watchtower’s design. She created four annotated albums of photos of the prehistoric elements that informed the design. These were displayed in the Watchtower’s lounge for visitors to study. Colter also wrote an eighty-three page manual for Fred Harvey tour leaders explaining the relationship between the original buildings and the Watchtower’s design. The manual also provided information on the wall paintings’ significance to the Hopi people for the guides to share with travelers.
Appropriation and adaptation in architecture is and always has been commonplace. In the case of the Watchtower, since Colter was a member of the majority culture borrowing from a less powerful minority culture, concern about cultural appropriation might arise. The question should not be whether cultural appropriation occurs in the Watchtower’s design—it does—but whether that appropriation is or was harmful.
Philosopher James O. Young has extensively studied cultural appropriation in creative fields. Young writes, “Artists from almost every culture are constantly borrowing styles, stories, motifs, and other content from cultures other than their own but this borrowing is only rarely wrongfully harmful.” Young concludes that, to avoid harm, this borrowing or appropriation must be respectful; it must be done well, so as not to cause its audience to form a poor impression of the culture from which it is derived; and it must be made known that the work is made by outsiders and have its source fully acknowledged.
By these measures, cultural appropriation in the Watchtower’s design would not be considered harmful. Colter approached the Ancestral Puebloan designs with respect; she enforced high standards for workmanship in the Watchtower; and she documented and credited the sources of her design influences.
Colter lived and worked in an era when government policies actively sought to eliminate or assimilate Indigenous peoples and their cultures. Young also suggests that “when outsiders refrain from representing insiders and their cultures, the result can be a misrepresentation of reality. Insiders can be harmed by omission as much as by inclusion.” Throughout her life, Colter demonstrated an interest in teaching Euro-Americans about Indigenous art and cultures.
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Sources:
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, Manual for Drivers and Guides: Descriptive of The Indian Watchtower at Desert View and its Relation, Architecturally, to the Prehistoric Ruins of the Southwest (Grand Canyon National Park: Fred Harvey, 1933)
James O. Young, Cultural Appropriation and the Arts (Malden, Massachussetts, Oxford, and Victoria: Blackwell Publishing, 2008)