Jen Osborne's portraits of Indian hobbyists

"Indians" and others in Hungary, 2013. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Mother Jones magazine has published a series of stunning portraits of Indian hobbyists in various European countries by the Berlin-based photographer Jen Osborne. I don't have copyright permission to repost the pictures -- but do follow the link!

In them, Jen shows the seriousness of the approach taken by people in the scene.

On her web site, Jen discusses her experiences.

From 2011 until 2015, I photographed the elusive "Indian Hobbyists" situated in Hungary, Poland, Russia, Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as film sets and stills from the popular Winnetou series and other Eastern European Native American films. The subjects in my series are not "ethnically" First Nations, but Europeans who use cultural mirroring, as practiced heavily in the sixties and seventies, to claim "Indianess", as well as present themselves as sympathetic to Native Americans. This hobby was once used as a form of psychological escape from gruelling dictatorships embraced behind the iron curtain.

She also photographed some of the  locations in Croatia where the Winnetou films of the 1960s were shot.

I of course have also been photographing people and places in the wild west scene -- including Indian hobbyists -- for more than a decade, and the photos on this page are mine, not Jen's.

Karl May Festival, Radebeul, Germany, 2008. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Tepees at a Tramp Potlach in Czech Republic

And my interest, too, goes well beyond Indian hobbyists and reenactors to include the wide range (pun intended) of people included in the Imaginary Wild West scene -- the fantasies, the yearnings, the music, the wild west theme parks, the saloons and all those elements that see-saw between the commercial and the sublime (or sublimated).

"Jim Bowie" and his wife, and "Indian maiden" at the Pullman City wild west theme park.

Czech Indian hobbyists at the German wild west theme park Pullman City

Czech frontier hobbyists at the private wild west town "Beaver City"

 Click here to see a photo gallery of some of my other Imaginary Wild West pictures


 

"Wild West" slack-lining in southern Poland.....

Wild West Highline Sokoliki from Pine Tree Pictures on Vimeo.

A group of European slack-liners recently held a gathering in southern Poland -- and the theme was the "wild west" -- bows and arrows, painted body art, feathers, whispery flute melodies.....

The resulting video is a mash-up of a wide range of Imaginary Wild West tropes, some of them just abstract sketches,  set to a rapping hip-hop sound track and breath-taking scenery.

Colosseum Country Festival (and more) brings imaginary wild west to Rome

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Italians seem to be succumbing to the public expression of the Imaginary Wild West.

The phenomenon isn't as widespread as in some other countries, but it's certainly now there, or beginning to be there -- as testified by the upcoming "Colosseum Country Festival" to be held near Rome at the beginning of October, whose main attraction seems to be line-dancing.

Western riding and horsemanship have long been at the heart of the trend in Italy

Already half a dozen years ago I attended the "Western Games" at a "ranch" near Lake Bracciano northwest of Rome, which was a mini-rodeo and riding competition set among displays, Indian dancing, and general wild west themed family entertainment attractions. There were even "live" American cowboys brought over from Oregon.

Western Games, Bracciano, 2005. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

The prime mover behind that festival, Andrea "Drew" Mischianti, has long been a key figure in Italy's western, horse, riding and cowboy scene for many years and long wrote a column about the cowboy life for an Italian wild west magazine. He and his wife Natalia Estrada run a "Ranch Academy" to teach and take part in "buckeroo" skills and lifestyle. They also take part in competitions and exhibitions of skills.

But country music -- unlike in other countries -- had little, if any, attraction. At festivals I've attended in France, Germany, CZ, Austria, Switzerland and PL, for example, music and line-dancing were major and something THE major, draws. But at the Western Games, this band played to an audience of ZERO. 

Western Games, Bracciano, 2005. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Line-danging, bluegrass and country music now seem to be making some inroads in popularity, particularly in northern Italy, where there have been some festivals. The Genoa-based Italian bluegrass group Red Wine is considered one of the best in Europe and tours in the U.S. The Rome-based banjoist Danilo Cartia also has been making a name for himself. This month, the American banjo great Tony Trischka will be performing with Red Wine before going on to at banjo workshop in Urbino.

Even in the little village festival in Collelungo, in Umbria, a (sort of) country duo called Western Strings was one of the acts chosen to perform in the piazza. Among the songs they played were the two all time European favorites -- Country Roads and Sweet Home Alabama.

Italy also, of course, has a thriving Cowboy Action Shooting scene -- I'm a member of the Old West Shooting Society and have attended a number of events, which I have posted about.

OWSS match, 2009. Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber

Big Exhibition on the Iroquois Opens in Germany

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A major exhibition on the Iroquois has just opened in Bonn, Germany at the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany.

"On the Trails of the Iroquois" opened March 22 and will run until August 4. Accompanying it is an outfoor installation -- "The Iroquois Longhouse and The Iroquois Garden Landscape" -- which features the reconstruction of an Iroquois longhouse.

The exhibition description notes:

Of the hundreds of Native American peoples, only a few have over the centuries engaged the European and Euro-American imagination to the extent that the Iroquois did. This fascination is in a large measure due to the outstanding role the Five (and later Six) Nations played in the arena of colonial encounters in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century North America, which gained them a reputation as fierce warriors and skilled diplomats and is also reflected in a host of fictional literature. But European interest has always far exceeded this preoccupation with political and military excellence, and Western intellectual struggle with Iroquois culture has left enduring imprints not only on the history of anthropology, but also on popular culture, the peace and women's movements, and even efforts to establish the foundation of alternative lifestyes.

Curated by Dr. Sylvia Kasprycki, it states, the exhibition, 

will attempt to trace the development of Iroquois culture from its origins up to its vibrant articulations in the present-day United States and Canada, following their varied history through colonial times characterized by war, trade, and European missionary efforts; the subsequent weakening of their power through loss of land and political autonomy and the eventual break-up of the League after the American Revolution; the cultural transformations during the Reservation period; and their strive for sovereignty in the twentieth century up to very contemporary concerns.

Moccasins, Iroquois, Ca. 1820 
Deer skin, porcupine quills
© Museum der Kulturen, Basel

Bringing together for the first time art and artifacts from major collections in Europe, the United States, and Canada and conceived in close cooperation with Iroquois artists, curators, and intellectuals, the exhibition aspires to a multi-layered representation of both Western appropriations and imaginings of Iroquois culture as well as contemporary indigenous voices on their history and present-day identities. As Tuscarora artist and writer Richard W. Hill expressed it, "it can safely be said that today, the Haudenosaunee define themselves through their diversity," as each generation "adds to that layered definition, taking the artistic expressions of the past, the oral traditions of their ancestors, and add that to their own life experiences." This large-scale exhibition aims to portray this diversity and the Iroquois people's continuous creative adaptations to ever-changing living conditions over time, presenting approximately 500 objects on about 1600 square meters of representative exhibition space (in addition to parts of the 9000 square meters roof garden) at the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn.