Argillite,faux-argillite and black plastic: The political economy of simulating a quintessential Haida substance

Introduction

The monetary and symbolic values of certain materials work in tandem to prompt a variety of attitudes towards their use: from the desire to employ them or the aspiration to reference them through imitation, to the decision to refrain from their use and the desire to place restrictions on their imitation. Taking as its case in point the example of hlgas7agaa, a black shale commonly known as argillite, this article examines the relationship between imitation and simulation, or semblance and simulacrum – in other words, between a representation that affirms the value of the model and one that undermines it.

Hlgas7agaa or argillite is a type of carbonaceous shale that is relatively scarce, rather fragile, difficult to access, locally circumscribed, and culturally valued. It is a stone that is found on Slatechuck Mountain, in the basin of Tllgaduu randlaay (Slatechuck Creek), on Graham Island, Haida Gwaii – the traditional and unceded territory of the Haida people. The Haida are one of the better-known Indigenous people of the North American Pacific Northwest, in part thanks to the wide circulation and great praise of the works created by its artists. These artists’ collective reputation is such that the label ‘Haida’ is sometimes mistakenly applied to all forms of Northwest Coast art by people who are familiar with the region’s design aesthetics but are unaware of the many great differences (historical, cultural, social, political, artistic) that exist between the Haida and their neighbouring nations on the coast. Represented politically by the Council of the Haida Nation, today the Haida represent approximately half of the 5,000 inhabitants of Haida Gwaii, located 48 km south of Alaska and a 93 nautical mile ferry ride away from the nearest city, Prince Rupert, where many Haida people also live.

Although argillite exists in other parts of the world, the specificity of Haida Gwaii argillite comes from the lack of quartz or feldspar, and a high carbon content that gives it its particular black colour. In this text, the word ‘argillite’ is used as a short-hand for the argillite that is found in Haida Gwaii. One of this argillite’s distinctive material characteristics is that, even when polished, its particular shade of dark grey continues to absorb much of the light around it. Although this visual effect is extremely difficult to reproduce using other materials than argillite itself, there have been many attempts to do so, in particular by several companies that make Northwest Coast ‘artware’ (i.e. wares adorned with artistic designs) and are located in British Columbia, where most Haida artists live, work, and market their art. During my 16 months of fieldwork between 2009 and 2010 in the city of Vancouver (one of the Native Northwest Coast art market’s major hubs), many of those I spoke to discussed argillite imitations and their potential impact on buyers’ reception of argillite as a material and of argillite carvings as an art form.

Imitations of argillite are received differently depending on how convincingly they ‘pass’ for argillite: when they are not convincing at all, they tend to be regarded either as amusing ersatzes or as trivial nuisances; when these imitations are much more convincing, they are regarded both as an impressive achievement and as a troubling and even treacherous feat. In this article, I argue that it is when imitations of argillite are believed to threaten the threshold between resemblance and simulacrum that they receive most attention – both awe and infuriation. However, all imitations of argillite, including those that are nowhere near achieving simulation, draw their appeal from evoking a symbolically, socially, economically, and culturally valued material. As I will show, this arguably makes all producers and distributors of argillite-like items indebted to those who hold argillite as an ‘inalienable possession’ (Weiner, 1992) and have carefully guarded it from outside circulation in raw form, namely the Haida.

Argillite: A quintessential Haida substance

Drawing on Annette Weiner’s (1992) frame of analysis, anthropologist Elizabeth Ferry describes how, in Mexico, the local Guanajuato population thinks of its mining resources as inalienable possessions, and considers its products, including silver, as things that can be sent into the world in the form of commodities but can still remain a ‘quintessential Guanajuatan substance’ (Ferry, 2002: 332). Similarly, in the Pacific Northwest, Aboriginal peoples have long been making the case that the natural resources of their traditional territories are inalienable, tied as they are to unexhausted Aboriginal property and use rights. To take a different example of material, anthropologist Marie Mauzé once remarked that cedar forests are increasingly treated as ‘synecdoche or metonymy for the whole of Northwest Coast Indian culture’ (Mauzé, 1998: 234). Haida artist Bill Reid’s emphatic foreword to Hilary Stewart’s Cedar, in which he expresses the heartfelt hope that cedar ‘will always be with us’ (Reid, 1995: 9) is one example of this kind of discourse, as is Stewart’s (1995: 13) own contention that ‘So thoroughly did the cedar permeate the cultures of the Northwest Coast peoples that it is hard to envision their life without it.’ Such statements provide the basis for considering cedar as a form of wealth that, wherever it goes once it is removed from the land to be sold or carved, becomes the alienable, circulating, embodiment of a patrimony considered inalienable (Ferry, 2002). From this point of view, materials such as cedar and, as we will see, argillite, can be considered ‘quintessential substances’, to use Ferry’s expression, for the peoples of the Northwest Coast. This status associates them with the cultural value of being ‘Indigenous’ and the symbolic value of being ‘local’; in turn, both can give products made out of these materials an added economic value in the artware market. Indeed, from a marketing standpoint, the use of materials with a strong association to people and place can be crucial to the image of a company, in particular when the value of its products is measured against criteria like locality and cultural specificity, as tends to be the case for Indigenous art. Being able to say that products are ‘from here’ in a material, symbolic, and cultural sense helps brand them as different from goods that are seen as having an indistinct relationship to place and identity, which earns them the label of ‘global’ consumer products (see, for instance, Esperanza, 2008). It also associates these products’ purchase to the movement of ‘ethical consumption’ in its articulation with the now taken for granted notion that purchasing locally-made products is a virtue (Pratt, 2008). For all these reasons and others, in the Northwest Coast art market (artware industry included), the use of materials considered to have local and cultural attributes continues to play an important role in the production of value, both figurative and monetary. That said, an important difference between cedar and argillite is that only the latter has a specific referential quality to a single territory and Indigenous nation. Furthermore, while cedar is strongly associated with Pacific Northwest Indigenous cultures, it is also very much exploited by non-Indigenous peoples and companies, whereas argillite access and use, for all intents and purposes, are exclusive to the Haida. In this respect, argillite is quite exceptional, not only on the Northwest Coast, but arguably in the world as well. Many materials are strongly associated with a particular region and cultural group, sometimes bound to specific families or clans by traditional laws and/or regulated by the state to prevent non-Indigenous access and use. However, unlike argillite, it seems most if not all of these materials can nonetheless relatively easily be found circulating on the market in raw form (such is the case for pipestone, baleen, and pounamu, to name a few). This suggests that, in addition to what is dictated by law, the cultural and ethical norms forbidding the sale of raw argillite to non-Haida are particularly strong.

Fascinating plastic, suspicious plastic

If some materials are considered culturally valuable, plastic (and by extension, what looks like plastic) is nowadays often regarded as the least ‘noble’ materials of all. As historian Jeffrey L Meikle has shown, although the invention of plastic was initially received as a ‘high-tech miracle’, it now tends to be associated with ‘cheap substitutes or imitations’ (Meikle, 1995: xiii). Promoters of plastic were constantly ‘caught between a sense of wonder at plastic’s utopian potential as a democratization agent, and a recurring suspicion that plastic exemplified the cheap, the shoddy, and the meretricious’ (p. xiv). However, if as Meikle also argues, plastic has been naturalized in our everyday lives, it has yet to be naturalized into the material repertoire of Northwest Coast cultural production. Contrary to Roland Barthes’ (1990: 111) prediction that, in what advertisers of the late 1920s already called the ‘Plastic Age’, ‘the hierarchy of substances is abolished: a single one replaces them all’, plastic has not managed to dethrone all other materials. ‘Plastic’s freedom to become anything’ (due to its inherent formlessness before it is moulded) is what makes plastic such a fascinating material (Meikle, 1995: 4). However, this plasticity is also what makes it be perceived as a suspicious material that needs to be detected and its imitative quality denounced. As early as the post-World War II period, ‘plastic became an adjective meaning fake or insincere’ (p. 6), a connotation it continues to bear in a number of contexts. During my fieldwork, the adjective ‘plastic-y’ was constantly used as a qualifier for what my interlocutors considered to be ‘junk’, and the expression ‘plastic totem poles’ was relentlessly used as short-hand for everything that is evil and should therefore be taken off the market.

In this context, plastic imitations of hlgas7agaa or argillite are a fascinating example of a kind of plastic that acquires a veneer of nobility through its association with the much-valued stone it imitates. While a certain kind of ‘plastic totem pole’ is easier to write off because it is not seen to pose as anything different from what it is, one of the complaints I have heard against argillite-like materials is that they are sometimes too successful in their imitative endeavour. Indeed, while there are products that simply look and feel like black plastic, some companies have gone to great lengths to develop a much more convincing material, which I will call from this point on ‘faux-argillite’.

Although, as explained above, plastics later became the object of scepticism and disdain, they were developed in the 19th century as substitutes for precious materials that were in high demand but limited supply. For a time, plastic was a bourgeois material that was treated as ‘a raw material for artistry and ornament’ and ‘a vehicle for spreading taste for luxury’ (Friedel, 1990: 25). Faux-argillite is a contemporary example of this early use of plastics. Like the celluloid of the 19th century, faux-argillite is caught in the tension between the value it acquires through its ability to imitate a revered material and the value it loses from being perceived as a purely imitative material. Considered artificial ‘copies’ of a natural ‘original’, imitations of argillite are bound to be the object of some criticism since, as art historian Michael Camille has argued, ‘At least since Plato the theory and practice of the visual arts have been founded, almost exclusively, upon the relationship between the real and its copy’ (Camille, 2003: 35). What some find problematic with faux-argillite is analogous to the problem Barthes (1990: 111) associates with plastic in general, contending that, in the Plastic Age, ‘the age-old function of nature is modified: it is no longer the Idea, the pure Substance to be regained or imitated: an artificial Matter, [plastic], more bountiful than all the natural deposits, is about to replace her.’ In this extreme scenario, the proliferation of faux-argillite would eventually threaten the relevance of argillite as its model, insofar as it could cease to be a representation of argillite to become a medium in and of itself, independent from artistic developments in the use of argillite. At least for the time being, this scenario seems rather unlikely. Nonetheless, imitations of argillite do raise some concerns, not least of which is the market being haunted by the spectre of the simulacrum: a representation that negates the relevance and primacy of the reality it represents.

As I will discuss in more detail below, argillite is a material that has gained attention and value in the last two centuries from being carved by the Haida into objects sold primarily to non-Haida. Today, it derives much of its value from its synechdochic relation to Haida territory, art, and culture. From a Platonist perspective, the idea of argillite and the values encapsulated in the materiality of this stone can be held as ‘a model that exists so forcefully that in its presence the sham vanity of the false copy is immediately reduced to nonexistence. With the abrupt appearance of Ulysses, the eternal husband, the false suitors disappear’ (Foucault, 1997: 217). In our example, imitations of argillite are the ‘false suitors’ courting Ulysses’ place in Penelope’s arms, with varying success. The interest for objects made out of imitative materials can vanish rather quickly in those who, seduced by the idea of argillite, realize that even though these materials produce a similar visual effect, they do not embody the values that argillite has acquired beyond what it looks like. On the other hand, the interest generated by objects made out of what I call faux-argillite does not disappear quite so easily. As argued by Meikle (1995: xiii), plastic ‘quickly recedes into relative invisibility as long as it does its job well’: the better a particular kind of plastic does its ‘job’ to imitate argillite, the more it recedes into the background, and the less the object of which it is made becomes invisible in the presence of argillite itself. Whether intended or not, when faux-argillite is mistaken for argillite, it can be said to perform as a simulacrum that ‘calls into question the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is represented’ (Camille, 2003: 35). For the Penelopes of argillite, this poses a serious problem.

Marketing imitations

As with any market where certain products are identified as ‘originals’ and others as ‘copies’, makers, sellers, and collectors of argillite carvings have a vested interest in maintaining a clear distinction between these works and imitations of these works. Several of those I spoke to were particularly concerned with the extent to which casts of faux-argillite cut into the market of argillite carvings, in particular when consumers confuse the two. For instance, one gallery manager described how an artware company making reproductions of argillite carvings had been blacklisted by several art galleries specifically once these reproductions had become too convincing. In contrast, plastic that only shares with argillite a vague resemblance of colour elicits only as much concern as the threat of postcards being mistaken for oil paintings. Producers and distributors believe that products made out of black plastic to evoke argillite are purchased by consumers instead of other objects made out of other man-made materials, but not instead of argillite carvings themselves. As one artist explained:

I don’t really have too many objections to stuff like that … I mean, it’s targeting a certain part of the market … They want a little three-dimensional sculpture, and they can’t afford a real carving, so they buy this fake thing.

However, this artist’s serene stance is taken under the assumption that most consumers can distinguish ‘a real carving’ from a ‘fake thing’. Although consumers are not always as ignorant as they are thought to be, I did observe a number of marketing strategies that take advantage of the fact that some consumers are incapable of making such distinctions. There exist producers and distributors who subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) play with potentially deceptive wording and display techniques, all the while trying to steer clear from accusations of false advertisement. In those cases, it takes more than a quick look for consumers who are seduced by the idea of argillite to dismiss faux-argillite as only a representation of the model they are actually after. Some labels and product arrangements have been designed to create seemingly ‘honest misunderstandings’ between them and consumers who have never seen argillite up close. Faux-argillite would not be mistaken for argillite by someone who is familiar with this stone, but it does simulate its properties well enough that it may confound someone who is not. In some cases, there is no outright trickery, but in others such an ambiguity is nurtured much more purposefully. Many times, I have seen faux-argillite pieces presented without tags, letting aesthetics rather than words suggest to customers what materials they might be made from. I have seen stores in which an explanatory note about the nature of argillite was placed close enough to faux-argillite products so that the association could be made, but just far enough that the store could claim that a direct association with the stone was not deliberate. In another instance, I found a piece of faux-argillite placed atop a certificate of authenticity meant to accompany the products of an Aboriginal-owned and operated company that had nothing to do with the piece (and that does not produce faux-argillite of any kind).

There are exceptions to this trend, such as the Vancouver retailer that had taken it upon itself to make the distinction clear with the following label, placed next to its faux-argillite pieces:

What material is this? This Totem Pole/Sculpture is made out of a composite material of crushed Quartz and Resin. This combination symbolizes the look and feel of Argillite. Argillite is only found on the Queen Charlotte Islands, Haida Gwaii, BC. Argillite is a much revered, and expensive to mine, stone.

However, even in its earnest attempt to warn consumers that these pieces are not made out of argillite, this label also plays down their ‘plastic-ness’. It does so through the use of two words: ‘composite material’ (which in the 1980s became the generic and less negatively perceived word for ‘plastic’, see Meikle, 1995: 7); and ‘symbolizes’ (which is a flattering euphemism for ‘imitates’ or ‘simulates’). By lauding argillite as a rare, revered, and expensive stone, this label also gives faux-argillite a certain cachet that the imitation of a common, poorly regarded, and inexpensive stone would not have. This example provides a pointed introduction to the issue that I explore in the following section: why do artware companies go to great lengths to achieve a simulation of argillite instead of either (a) using argillite itself or (b) leaving argillite alone altogether?

Barriers to industrial and non-Haida uses of argillite

The answer to the first question – why not use argillite itself rather than an imitation – is rather straightforward. As mentioned in the above-mentioned label, access to argillite is challenging from a pragmatic perspective, since it is primarily if not exclusively available from one site, Slatechuck Mountain near the village of Skidegate. As authors Leslie Drew and Douglas Wilson once commented, ‘The seeker of raw argillite must be patient, sturdy, and sure-footed as a mountain goat’ (Drew and Wilson, 1980: 47). In addition to the physical challenge, access to argillite is also regulated by law – both Haida law, and Canadian law. As noted by anthropologist Peter Macnair (see Macnair and Hoover, 1984: 17):

The Haida have been using the Slatechuck quarry since at least the 1820s and, from their own legal view, proprietary rights extend into the past far beyond that date. However, it was only in 1941 that the quarry site of approximately 18 hectares was designated as an Indian Reserve … thus assuring access exclusively to the Haida. Control is vested in the Skidegate [Hlragilda ‘Illnagaay] Band although they presently permit members of the Masset [Rad raci7waas] Band to gather the stone.

It is thus a commonly accepted understanding that ‘the argillite of Haida Gwaii is reserved for the sole use of Haida artists’ (Sheehan, 2008: 20). Even in the unlikely scenario that a supply of argillite was somehow to be made accessible to non-Haida companies, the material properties of the stone would make it rather difficult to use for industrial machine production – as both Haida artists and scholars report, it is brittle and can easily break or shatter (Kaufmann, 1969: 42; Sheehan, 2008: 22). With such a scarce and difficult to access material, this high breakage rate would be rather costly to anyone wishing to put argillite through industrial machines.

Beyond these material and technical barriers, argillite is protected by the more symbolic barrier that is the common understanding among the participants in the Northwest Coast art market that it is not for non-Haida to use, even once it has been quarried. Because of this – and although some individuals might disagree with this exclusionary premise and carve it nonetheless – it is extremely rare to find argillite works created by non-Haida artists. Anthropologist Carol Sheehan refers to the Haida’s successful protection of ‘exclusive proprietary interests in carving argillite’ as a ‘marketing coup’, remarking that, ‘In the art world, the world “argillite” is practically synonymous with Haida’ (Sheehan, 2008: 21). Marketing ‘coup’ or not, argillite is indeed everywhere described as inextricably tied to the Haida. For instance, Drew and Wilson (1980: 45) write that: ‘From the beginning, whenever it may have been, the Haida and argillite have enjoyed a long and happy association … the Haida have kept it to themselves, to express their own private sense of beauty.’ In her foreword to the 2002 re-edition of The Magic Leaves, Royal British Columbia Museum curator of ethnology Martha Black also wrote that ‘The beautiful black slate of Haida Gwaii continues to be a vehicle for profound expressions of Haida history and artistic innovation’ (Black, 2002: 7).

Interestingly, as strong as its association to Haida culture currently is, the importance of argillite has a strong relationship to outside demand and valuation. As discussed throughout the literature, the use of argillite was boosted through the high demand for carvings from visitors of all sorts (Gunn, 1967: 7; Kaufmann, 1969: 43–49; Macnair and Hoover, 1984: 9; Sheehan, 2008: 17–19; Wright, 1995: 131–135). In these publications, the kinds of objects (scrimshaw, pipes, etc.) and decorative subjects (floral patterns, representations of Europeans, etc.) found in argillite carvings are often put forward as a clear indication of their non-Haida audience (for a counter-argument, see Yoo, 1998). The popularity of argillite among those who are not ‘from here’ has somewhat paradoxically contributed to the association of argillite with a very specific place and the people whose place it is. Argillite carvings are seen as having been made specifically to travel, but at the same time maintain a synecdochic relationship with the place argillite comes from – Haida Gwaii – and the people who carve it – the Haida people.

In other words, while carved argillite may have been initially made for outside consumption and as such is alienable, the fact that raw argillite is sheltered from outsider access has helped maintain and reinforce its strong association – an exclusive one, even – with the Haida, who treat it like an inalienable possession. While it could be and indeed has been argued that the value of carved argillite was initially tied to an inter-culturally developed notion of Haida art, the exclusiveness of raw argillite access and use has worked towards establishing it as a ‘quintessential Haida substance’, to again use Ferry’s expression. This helps answer the second part of my question, concerning why companies strive to convincingly simulate argillite rather than, under the circumstances, simply leave argillite be.

Imitations, copies, and authorized reproductions

As the activities of tourism ceased to be the privilege of the rich, and as the symbolic value and price of argillite carvings rose with their promotion on the art market as fine art, a niche for imitations of argillite opened up. Starting in the 1960s, with more and more consumers coming through galleries and gift shops looking to buy Northwest Coast art, it was well worth it for companies to explore the development of imitative materials. Over the years, several companies did just this, including BOMA Mfg, Pearlite, AALCO, and Kootenay Collections Ltd (or KC Gifts). By 1984, the Royal British Columbia Museum’s then director Roger Y Edwards was deploring the fact that ‘Hundreds of commercial simulations of argillite carvings now clutter tourist-oriented souvenir shops across Canada’ (Edwards, 1984: 7). Edwards also noted that ‘While pieces expertly cast can be difficult for the novice to identify as replicas, mass-produced pieces usually have poor quality and fool no one with any knowledge of the subject.’ He also took issue not so much with copies as such, but with copies that did not state their name, worrying about artists receiving what he called a ‘fair return’ when their works were reproduced. He noted that, while some such copies were made under copyright arrangements, many were simply ‘approximations that are not true copies as defined by copyright protection, so may be copied quite legally’.

Although copyright arrangements do incur more accountability, they can also engender additional ambiguity when it comes to distinguishing argillite from faux-argillite: the faithfulness of what Edwards calls ‘true copies’ that are ‘expertly cast’ and are thus potentially ‘difficult for the novice to identify as replicas’ are more likely to cause confusion than pieces that are only poor ‘approximations’. And indeed, several of those I interviewed pointed specifically to the high quality of reproduction achieved by certain companies as being the main source of their concern. The annoyance that artists have to compete with a great variety of ‘shoddy’ totem poles – an ubiquitous form borrowed from the Northwest Coast by producers all around the world in a variety of styles and material (Hall and Glascock, 2011; Jonaitis and Glass, 2010) – is then doubled with the worry that they also have to compete with faux-argillite casts that ‘[actually] look pretty good’ (to quote an artist) or are ‘fine reproductions’ (to quote a company who sells these casts). One gallery owner refuses to carry faux-argillite products specifically because of the high quality of some reproductions:

The reproduction argillite poles, I would never carry. Argillite is something that is really dear to me, I love the medium … There’s something about that black stone that moves me. And when I see reproductions, they are so good these days, a lot of people can’t even tell the difference. You go on eBay today, and you see about ten people trying to sell a plastic totem pole as a real argillite totem pole. Because of that, I wouldn’t carry them.

Thus, while the value of argillite can push a company to aim for as good a simulation as possible, this value can also push a gallery owner to wish such a high quality of reproduction were simply not possible. On the one hand, low quality products can be criticized for their disrespect of the value of argillite; on the other hand, high quality products can be criticized for their potentially deceptive ‘homage’ to the stone. This highlights the tension that exists between replication-as-integrity and simulation-as-deceit.

The spectre of the simulacrum

In his essay ‘The precession of simulacra’, Baudrillard (1995: 3) distinguishes between pretending and simulating, arguing that the former does not challenge the existence of the reality to which it refers, whereas the latter blurs the distinction between what is real and what is imaginary. To illustrate this distinction, he contrasts a person who fakes an illness by staying in bed with a person who simulates illness by actually producing its symptoms. In this view, a material capable of producing the ‘symptoms’ of the material it imitates – not just a vague resemblance, but indexes of the sensory experience of this material – can be seen as substituting the ‘signs’ of this material for this very material. Baudrillard predicted that images simulating the real would eventually mask the fact that the ‘profound reality’ they supposedly reference would no longer exist (p. 6). Some of the concerns raised in the artware market by faux-argillite products may not amount to, but nonetheless point to the worry that the more argillite-like these products become, the greater the danger of a simulacrum rendering argillite itself irrelevant becomes.

This helps explain why faux-argillite reproductions of museum pieces or of living artists’ works that are authorized and licensed can be celebrated by some as a step in the direction of more legitimate and controlled imitation, but be perceived by others as an even greater source of concern than unsanctioned argillite-like objects. Not only do these critics worry about plastic cheapening argillite, they also worry about the nobility plastic acquires through its association with argillite. Thus they can ridicule failed attempts to make plastic resemble argillite, and at the same time decry the more successful of these attempts. I argue that this range of critical reactions to imitations of argillite, from condescension to indignation, comes from the fact that, parallelling the difference between black plastic and faux-argillite, is the difference between resemblance and simulacrum.

In this respect, Baudrillard’s (1995: 3) argument that pretending ‘leaves the principle of reality intact’ whereas ‘simulation threatens the difference between the “true” and the “false,” the “real” and the “imaginary”’ helps delineate the distinction between black plastic and faux-argillite: when the latter effectively produces both the ‘feel’ and the ‘look’ of argillite, it can be seen as substituting the ‘signs’ of argillite for argillite, at least in certain contexts and for certain people. In settings where argillite carvings are sold and in the minds of those who know argillite, the ‘really real’ existence of argillite is not in question. But in situations where all that is offered as a referent for the idea of argillite is black plastic and faux-argillite – for instance, if someone goes from store to store down Water Street in Vancouver’s very touristic neighbourhood of Gastown and sees line-up after line-up of black items but fails to enter any of the galleries that sell carvings made out of argillite – the distance between pretending and simulating closes up. Indeed, in a place that is populated with black plastic and faux-argillite but not argillite itself, the domain of the ‘really real’ might fall onto faux-argillite, especially if it is an authorized reproduction. In those cases, even when the original intention behind faux-argillite products was not an inherently deceptive one, what was initially designed to achieve a high level of resemblance comes close to achieving simulacrum.

That said, argillite does not truly provide an example of Baudrillard’s (1995: 6) dramatic assertion that the image (here, faux-argillite) ‘masks the absence of a profound reality’ (emphasis in original) and even further, ‘has no relation to any reality whatsoever’. Currently, the reality of argillite is not in question, and its status as a quintessential Haida subststance continues to be fervently defended. This argument is supported by the work of two prominent Haida artists, Michael Nicoll Yaghulaanas and Jay Simeon, who recently created artworks that reaffirm argillite’s primacy over its representation, as well as the stone’s exclusiveness to the Haida.

Injecting the model into the representation

In 2007, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas was the artist-in-residence at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British Columbia. The intervention in the museum space that resulted from his stay, Meddling in the Museum, consisted of three site-specific installations. One of them, titled Pedal to the Meddle, was located in the museum’s Bill Reid Rotunda. The description provided by MOA curator Karen Duffek (2007) gives a general sense of the scene:

A gutted Pontiac Firefly, painted with a mixture of black autobody enamel and argillite dust, its mirrors reflective with copper leaf, appears to be careening out of the Rotunda, escaping the Museum with a 7.5-metre cedar canoe tied on its roof.

The canoe is not just any canoe, but one created by Haida artists Bill Reid and Guujaaw, as well as Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw artists Beau Dick and Simon Dick. As reported in a Galleries West profile, Yahgulanaas used the argillite dust collected over 30 years by his friend, the carver Ronnie Russ to produce three cans of dark paint (Ramsey, 2007). In a public talk at MOA on 10 July 2007, Yahgulanaas explained that his idea was to make the car look like it had been carved entirely out of argillite. He felt this could not be achieved with paint alone, and even with the use of argillite dust, it turned out to be a challenge. Still, once painted and loaded with the canoe, the car symbolized the Haida coming into the museum space to ‘steal the canoe back’ (Yahgulanaas, quoted in Ramsey, 2007: 34).

In 2009, Jay Simeon was commissioned by Tom Lee Music to design a one-of-a-kind grand piano. The design of Kuniisii – Music and Mythology was painted onto a Steinway model D by Simeon, using ground argillite mixed with acrylic paint. When it was unveiled on 23 July 2009 at the Vancouver Convention Center, the piece was presented as the ‘world’s first Haida Art Case piano’ and the custom-made paint was highlighted as ‘one of the five things that made the project so special’, second only to the prestigious 9 ft piano itself (Tom Lee Music Canada, 2009). One of the speakers at the piano’s inauguration, Graham Blank (Tom Lee Music General Manager in Vancouver), did not miss this opportunity to point out that argillite is ‘a stone that is only found [in] the Queen Charlotte Islands of B.C.’ (Tom Lee Music Canada, 2009). Himself an argillite carver of repute, Simeon had asked one of his relatives to produce 10 to 15 pounds of argillite dust to be mixed in with the paint. As with Yahgulanaas, it took several tries before they obtained a satisfactory result. As Simeon commented, a light grain in the paint attested to the fact that the argillite had ‘resisted’ through this process. Applied onto the matte ebony surface of the piano, the dark grey designs were used to give the impression that the piano was carved from a lightly polished piece of argillite.

On one level, both pieces are meant to look like objects carved out of argillite and, as such, have an imitative quality. But on another level, both pieces also do much more than imitate: first, they are indeed, if only partially, made out of argillite; second, they reaffirm the cultural value of argillite as a specifically Haida medium. The effectiveness of the latter is intimately tied to the former. Since only Haida individuals have access to argillite, only they can integrate argillite into their simulation of argillite. Also, as a material index of these two artists’ Haida identity, the argillite dust lends the pieces a cultural authority that is even harder to simulate than argillite itself. Ultimately, this makes the fact that the pieces are not made entirely out of argillite (and that it was a challenge to make them look like they were) completely secondary to their value as examples of Haida cultural expression.

Through the use of argillite dust to simulate argillite, both pieces are a détournement of imitation, taking it down a path in which the distinction between the real and its semblance is blurred. Instead of threatening the value of argillite, these pieces reinforce it: they assert that a culturally legitimate imitation of argillite is one that is made with argillite. Both pieces show that it is not the process of imitation as such that implies that a piece is seceded from the values associated with the idea of argillite. In turn, they pose the question of the relationship between the original and its copy not only in terms of argillite’s relationship to its imitations, but also in terms of argillite’s exclusive bind to the Haida. As artworks that both resemble argillite carvings and are injected with argillite itself, these pieces maintain the primacy of the real over its representation and ultimately reassert argillite’s value as a specifically Haida material.

Because Kuniisii and Pedal to the Meddle prop up a simulation of argillite by injecting it with both the materiality (dust) and the idea of argillite (tied to their Haida identity), these artworks do not fully reverse the dichotomy of truth and false appearances, but instead reaffirm the idea of argillite as a quintessential Haida substance, one that is only sent to travel around the world in the form of art. These two works therefore help make the case that those who produce imitations of argillite, no matter how bad or good a job they do to produce the symptoms of argillite, can be considered accountable to the Haida, in a both figurative and economic sense.

Conclusion

Since argillite carvings have been commodities from the very start, the ethics of their commodification is generally a non-issue. However, the market for imitations of argillite is much more contentious. Attitudes towards these objects are formulated at the junction between the ontological (e.g. ‘What is this?’), the praxeological (e.g. ‘How is it being presented?’), and the axiological (e.g. ‘What values does this represent?’). In other words, opinions about this market rarely focus on only one aspect, such as whether the items are authorized reproductions or not, who is involved in their production, how truthfully they are being marketed, what their level of quality is, or what kinds of prices they fetch. It is usually based on the answers to a combination of these questions that opinions about the ethics and legitimacy of imitations of argillite are formed. In addition, as in many other cases where commodification intersects with the thorny issue of misappropriation, the identity of those who can benefit from or be hurt by the existence of argillite-like items greatly influences the tenor of the debate. There indeed tends to be less opposition to business practices when they are perceived to profit the ‘right people’ – a category that will in many cases be hotly contested (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2009: 60–85), including by those who believe redistribution should follow strict economic laws they perceive to be free of moral considerations.

However, in the case of hlgas7agaa, the idea that the Haida should be entitled to remuneration from companies that reference argillite in their products need not be framed in moralizing terms to be a reasonable economic argument. It is in fact quite consistent with the classic capitalist logic that considers value as determined by the relationship between supply and demand. Within this framework, those who control supply are in great part responsible for creating value. Although there is, to say the least, no shortage of imitations of argillite, the supply of the argillite carvings they reference – the very carvings that make their plastic more valuable than other kinds of plastic – is in the hands of the Haida. Thus, the Haida play an important part in the creation of value, even with respect to the market of argillite imitations. In addition, even considered through a more labour-centric approach, it is the Haida artists who have transformed raw argillite into carvings over the last two centuries that have produced outside interest for this stone, a value that also makes the appeal of argillite-like products. This view supports a model of profit redistribution that would better account for the Haida’s role in the control of supply and the production of value, as well as these efforts’ effects on the commercial appeal of argillite imitations. There is currently no legal framework requiring such compensation, and it therefore technically remains up to companies to decide whether or not they want to formally acknowledge and remunerate those whose material of cultural value they reference in their products. However, there is a strong economic and moral argument that they should do so: all argillite-like products draw a good part of their appeal from referencing argillite as a culturally distinct material; this indebts their makers to, one way or another, ‘give a cut to the Haida’, as one artist put it. Even when artware items are not made by Haida artists and are not made from a pre-existing argillite model, the argument can still hold: without their association to the idea of argillite, argillite-like items would have nothing at all on the pariahs of artware that are plastic totem poles. These imitative products’ value, symbolic and monetary, are closely tied to that of argillite, which is itself in large part the result of the guardedness of the Haida towards hlgas7agaa as their inalienable possession, and their success in limiting its circulation on the market to only one alienable form: art made by Haida artists.