“On top of second mesa just outside of Songoopavi is a little shop called Tsakurshovi.  If you have a sense of humor and want to purchase some of the finest art available, it’s a stop on the reservation that shouldn’t be missed.  Joseph first visited Hopi in 1970 as a slack-jawed tourist out to see a ceremony.  By 1980 he and his Hopi wife, Janice, were wholesaling Indian art, and in 1988 they decided to break into retail.  In the early days, they financed the construction of the shop by selling the now-infamous “Don’t Worry, Be Hopi” T-shirts from the back of their 1966 Volvo at the Hopi Cultural Center.  Thousands of T-shirts later, they run one of the last old-time trading posts, a place where you can not only buy a great traditional-style doll but can also pick up pigments, fox pelts, macaw feathers, and gourds.  Tsakurshovi is one of the few stores where the Hope shop; probably half their business is with the locals.  Where else can you buy tuuma (white clay),  Hopi sakwatootsi (Hopi blue moccasins) and honngaapi (bear root)?”

“Joseph and Janice are major players in the revival of the traditional style among the younger carvers.  ‘I collect and sell traditional-style dolls because they say something important about Hopi culture that dolls carved for the non-Hopi market do not.  More dolls are now being carved for non-Hopi consumption, which means that the non-Hopi art market dictates the style, and as a result, that style is moving increasingly away from its Hopi cultural context.’  Though he does sell some contemporary dolls he believes traditional is really the way to go.  ‘Most contemporary dolls are about technique, craftsmanship, human anatomy, and gratuitous action, while traditional dolls are about capturing the essence of a particular spirit, and that is why traditional-style dolls are more successful as art.