Indianz.Com > News > Fashion designer Bethany Yellowtail denies ‘false allegation’ of artistic theft
Fashion designer Bethany Yellowtail denies ‘false allegation’ of artistic theft
Friday, April 29, 2022
Indianz.Com
One of Indian Country’s most well-known fashion designers is under fire after unveiling a collection that bears striking similarities to another Native artist’s work.
With a new series of products, Bethany Yellowtail sought to draw attention to “inspiring” Indigenous women from around the world. But controversy quickly arose on Thursday after Wakeah Jhane pointed out that the commercial designs closely follows the work that she developed two years ago to support Native women and Native families impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“White owned corporations stealing indigenous designs is offensive but an indigenous company stealing from a native artist is a whole new level of disrespect and does not uplift me as an indigenous artist in the slightest,” Jhane, an award-winning artist who is Comanche, Kiowa and Blackfeet, wrote in a widely-read post on social media.
Jhane’s 2020 work depicts Native women in culturally identifiable appearances. One figure, for example, represents a Pueblo person in a traditional dress while another shows a Native Hawaiian woman with a floral headpiece. A third features an individual with a facial tattoo, a cultural tradition seen among indigenous peoples from California to New Zealand to Alaska. The female-presenting figures otherwise lack defined facial features, a stylistic detail that runs throughout Jhane’s ledger art pieces, which she has been creating for more than a decade. The pieces were part of a collaboration that was gifted to Native birthing families by the Daybreak Star Doulas program at the Daybreak Star Cultural Center in Washington state. Images and posters of Jhane’s work were also free to download during a time when many people were separated from their loved ones due to social distancing protocols and other COVID-19 measures. “Decolonizing means inclusivity, not learning the white mans way of business and in turn using it against your own people and community,” Jhane wrote in her social media post on Thursday.
“From Our Founder”: Statement by Bethany Yellowtail


Later in the year, the Department of Justice announced federal charges against two people who were misrepresenting works being sold on the commercial market. The criminal cases against Lewis Anthony Rath and Jerry Chris Van Dyke, also known as Jerry Witten, are ongoing in federal court in western Washington. In 2020, Jawad Khalaf and Nashat Khalaf were sentenced for violating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act in a criminal case prosecuted in New Mexico. They admitted they sold items that they falsely marketed as being Native produced. As part of their punishment, the defendants agreed to pay $300,000 to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board at the Interior Department to “promote the economic development of Native Americans and Alaska Natives through the expansion of the Indian arts and crafts market.” They also forfeited more than $288,000 that had been seized from their businesses. Another defendant, Taha Shawar, remains a fugitive. He was operating a business in Colorado as part of the fraudulent Indian art scheme, according to federal prosecutors.

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