Tobacco Industry Misappropriation of American Indian Culture and Traditional Tobacco Joanne D’Silva,1,2 Erin O’Gara,1 Nicole T Villaluz3,4
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TC Online First, published on February 19, 2018 as 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-053950 Tob Control: first published as 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-053950 on 19 February 2018. Downloaded from Research paper Tobacco industry misappropriation of American Indian culture and traditional tobacco Joanne D’Silva,1,2 Erin O’Gara,1 Nicole T Villaluz3,4 ► Additional material is ABStract guided by protocols and teachings that honour the published online only. To view Objective Describe the extent to which tobacco Creator.6 This relationship with traditional tobacco please visit the journal online industry marketing tactics incorporated American Indian dates back to the beginning of time and is embedded (http:// dx. doi. org/ 10. 1136/ 7 tobaccocontrol- 2017- 053950). culture and traditional tobacco. within many creation stories. Traditional tobacco Methods A keyword search of industry documents currently and historically has been used to honour 1 Research Department, was conducted using document archives from the Truth and welcome guests, to communicate with the ClearWay Minnesota, Tobacco Documents Library. Tobacco industry documents Creator, as a prayer offering or to share wisdom.7 Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA 2Department of Behavioral and (n=76) were analysed for themes. Traditional tobacco can be placed on the ground in Community Health, University Results Tobacco industry marketing tactics have offerings, burned for cleansing purposes or smoked of Maryland School of Public incorporated American Indian culture and traditional in a pipe during rituals.8 Health, College Park, Maryland, tobacco since at least the 1930s, with these tactics For centuries, strict protocols have guided USA 3 prominently highlighted during the 1990s with Natural practices for cultivating and harvesting tobacco Community Development 9 Department, ClearWay American Spirit cigarettes. Documents revealed the plants. Following colonisation, tobacco seeds were Minnesota, Minneapolis, use of American Indian imagery such as traditional exported to Europe and tobacco use was popula- Minnesota, USA 4 headdresses and other cultural symbols in product rised among non-Native peoples. Cultivation of a Hidatsa/Assiniboine/Chamorro, branding and the portrayal of harmful stereotypes of commercialised tobacco crop paved the way for USA Native people in advertising. The historical and cultural the proliferation of manufactured tobacco.10 At the Correspondence to significance of traditional tobacco was used to validate same time, the extermination and assimilation poli- Joanne D’Silva, Research commercially available tobacco. cies of the US federal government during the 19th Department, Clear Way Conclusions The tobacco industry has misappropriated and 20th centuries further marginalised cultural Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN culture and traditional tobacco by misrepresenting practices for Native people.11 12 Using traditional 55425, USA; American Indian traditions, values and beliefs to market tobacco was forbidden by the US government until jdsilva@ clearwaymn.org copyright. and sell their products for profit. Findings underscore 1978 when the American Indian Religious Freedom All authors contributed equally the need for ongoing monitoring of tobacco industry Act extended protections to “preserve for American to this paper. marketing tactics directed at exploiting Native culture Indians their inherent right to freedom to believe, and counter-marketing tactics that raise awareness express, and exercise the traditional religions”.13 Received 14 July 2017 Revised 18 December 2017 about the distinction between commercial and traditional Despite these challenges and the high prevalence of Accepted 3 January 2018 tobacco use. Such efforts should be embedded within a commercial tobacco use among American Indians culturally sensitive framework to reduce the burden of relative to the general population,14 traditional commercial tobacco use. tobacco continues to play a central role in the http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/ life of many Native people, and efforts to address commercial tobacco’s harms should acknowledge the history and value of traditional tobacco.8 INTRODUCTION The tobacco industry’s influence in shaping The first national company to draw on the ‘mystique tobacco disparities among racial and ethnic minority of Indianness’ was Red Man chewing tobacco populations is well documented.15 Marketing stra- in 1904.1 Since then, American Indian imagery tegically targets consumers’ values, attitudes and has appeared on other tobacco products, such as beliefs,16 17 and tobacco advertising and promotions Geronimo cigarettes, with colourful and attrac- are directly linked to increased tobacco initiation 2 18 tive packaging designed to appeal to ethnic pride. and consumption. Prior research has also docu- Recent studies have examined how Natural Amer- mented the use of cultural attributes and ethnic on September 24, 2021 by guest. Protected ican Spirit (NAS) cigarettes, which feature Native identities to market tobacco products and create imagery alongside ‘natural’ and ‘additive-free’ brand identity.19 For example, tobacco industry text descriptors, may suggest a ‘safer’ product to documents detail how R.J. Reynolds (RJR) incor- consumers.3 4 Unger et al5 suggest that the use of porated Spanish language, cultural values and spon- Native imagery is used to portray commercial sorship of musical and other community festivals tobacco as natural and convey a spiritual experience as a culturally relevant marketing strategy to target to consumers by blurring the distinction between Hispanics.16 Co-opting culture, including images, commercial and traditional tobacco. ethnic symbols and traditional objects, has been Traditional tobacco, used for spiritual, ceremo- employed to target population subgroups and to nial and cultural purposes, plays a central role in increase the appeal of products to a broad range of To cite: D’Silva J, O’Gara E, the life of many, but not all, Native people. It is consumers.19 Villaluz NT. Tob Control Epub ahead of print: [please important to distinguish between commercial Despite evidence of the industry’s marketing include Day Month Year]. and traditional tobacco use in American Indian tactics to associate tobacco products with valued doi:10.1136/ communities: commercial tobacco causes death and cultural attributes20 as well as the long history of tobaccocontrol-2017-053950 disease, whereas traditional or sacred tobacco use is using Native imagery on packaging, we are unaware D’Silva J, et al. Tob Control 2018;0:1–8. doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-053950 1 Copyright Article author (or their employer) 2018. Produced by BMJ Publishing Group Ltd under licence. Research paper Tob Control: first published as 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-053950 on 19 February 2018. Downloaded from of any studies to date that have specifically explored the use of Tobacco (5%) and other collections (2%). Documents in tobacco Native cultural attributes in industry document archives. This company collections did not always reference their own prod- study sought to answer the following research question: To what ucts. For example, documents obtained from PM contained extent have tobacco industry marketing tactics incorporated marketing materials for Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company American Indian culture and traditional tobacco? Our find- (SFNTC) and their product, NAS cigarettes. ings have the potential to fill an existing gap in the literature During the period covered, a general pattern emerged: the and inform counter-marketing strategies to reduce commercial earliest documents (1930s–1970s) included the use of Native tobacco use. cultural symbols and imagery. Later documents (1980s–1990s) made explicit connections to the historical context of traditional METHODS tobacco use, whereas the most recent documents (1980s–2001) A textual analysis was conducted on documents from the Truth promoted tobacco as natural. Tobacco Industry Documents Library (https:// industrydocu- ments. library.ucsf. edu/ tobacco/) between 1 September 2016 and 1 July 2017. No date or collection restrictions were imposed. We Use of American Indian cultural symbols and imagery used widely accepted iterative ‘snowball’ sampling techniques, Forty-nine tobacco industry documents indicated use of Amer- which have been detailed in previous tobacco industry document ican Indian cultural symbols and imagery as a marketing tactic. research.21 22 Searches began with broad terms such as ‘Amer- The earliest documents focused primarily on using Native ican Indian’, ‘Native American’ and ‘traditional tobacco’. Subse- imagery to sell products. One of the most commonly refer- quent searches included more specific terms around imagery, enced images before the 1950s was the traditional Native cultural terms for ‘tobacco’ and both formal and stereotypical headdress. As evidenced in a 1939 ad for Velvet cigarettes, the descriptors for Native people, including ‘red willow’, ‘peace tagline ‘Heap fine flavor’ featured an image of a man wearing 24 pipe’, ‘headdress’, ‘Indian Country’, ‘Indian chief’ and ‘Indian a traditional headdress (figure 1). A 1949 Lorillard collec- squaw’. Search terms were entered independently and, in the tion ad for Old Gold cigarettes featured a wooden statue of an case of ‘traditional tobacco’ and ‘sacred tobacco’, in combina- Indigenous man in headdress with text “No heap big medicine 25 tion with ‘American Indian’. A full list of search terms is available talk”. Promotional materials for Coupon cigarettes similarly