Retail “Tribal Print” Crop-Tops

I remember looking out the window of my mother’s car as she drove me home after school. I remember seeing a bumper sticker that read, “I was Indian before it was cool,” on a curiously pristine 1982 black Datsun with the tacky neon decal scribbles on the side. I instantly imagined the driver  riding a zoomorphic horse version of his awesome truck. No saddle. Stereotypically ribbon-like Native hair blowing in the wind. The fantasy Native is easy for anyone to imagine.

And despite being a rather naive 14 years old, I had an inkling of the kind of person the sticker referred to. Having grown up closer to a reservation than a college town (i.e., hundreds of miles away from anyone who’d wear a headdress for fun), I knew it had to be an earthy variety of white person almost foreign to me. I’d occasionally see…