Cat.No: 300654 Cleveland's great Fall festival and pageant: First American Indian National Congress, under auspices of The Women’s National League for Justice to American Indians [printed envelope]

Cleveland's great Fall festival and pageant: First American Indian National Congress, under auspices of The Women’s National League for Justice to American Indians [printed envelope]

Cleveland, OH: Women’s National League for Justice to American Indians, [1930]. Ephemera. Standard business envelope, printed with text and graphic depicting a Native American man on horseback raising a spear. Very good.

These envelopes were prepared for mailing material promoting the Congress; however, the event never took place. In "The Greatest Powwow That Never Was: Pageantry and Politics in the Cleveland American Indian National Congress of 1930," an apparently unpublished conference paper, Andrew H. Fisher has discussed how the failure of the Congress reveals "tensions that pervaded the Indian reform movement during the waning days of the Americanization era.... Planners found it necessary to maneuver within the dominant tropes of romantic primitivism and the 'Vanishing Red Man' in order to attract donors. Competition with other reform groups complicated fundraising efforts just as the Great Depression tightened purse strings and diverted attention to other problems. Meanwhile, Indian communities asserted their own priorities, and League leaders became embroiled in identity politics and petty squabbles."

Cat.No: 300654

Price: $35.00

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