Lynda Xepoleas, PhD ’23, was looking at a collection of photographs on fashion design in the American Museum of Natural History when she noticed something intriguing: the images dating from 1916 showed a group of non-Indigenous women wearing traditional Native American garments from the museum's collection. 

What Xepoleas saw as one example of cultural appropriation inspired her to begin researching how Indigenous women themselves contributed to the design and production of North American fashion in the early 20th century. "That's what led me to become interested in how Indigenous cultures were being represented in the American fashion industry at that particular moment in time," she said.

Three years after encountering the photographs, Xepoleas extended her research last summer by delving into the archives in the Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections to learn how and why Indigenous women chose to receive an education in home economics at Cornell during the first half of the 20th century.

Read the full story on the College of Human Ecology website.