Dovima wearing a Balenciaga gown in a photo by Michael Avedon, 1949
Richard Avedon (1923 – 2004) was an American fashion and portrait photographer. He worked for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and dance.
“Most of what you think you know about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is wrong.
This is the model that we all learned in psych 101 is wrong [image of Maslow’s pyramid is shown] where our basic physiological needs are at the bottom of the pyramid and achieving one’s full individual potential is at the apex.
What you may not have known is that Maslow spent 6 weeks with the Blackfoot First Nation in the summer of 1938. He learned about their worldview and the Blackfoot Tipi, appropriated and misrepresented their perspective to establish his own Maslow’s hierarchy, and then didn’t give them credit.
[Image of Maslow’s pyramid and Blackfoot tipi shown, described below]
According to the Blackfoot Tipi, self-actualization is at the bottom of the pyramid. In the middle we have belonging and community actualization, where people take care of each other and help each other with their basic needs. And at the top, we have cultural perpetuity, which is teaching each other how to live in harmony with the land and achieve community actualization through generations.
It makes so much sense, right? Taking care of oneself is not enough. We need to take care of each other and our community.
This is why we need to decolonize psychology.”
If anyone wants to learn more about this I suggest watching the late Narcisse Blood’s interviews on Maslow and the influence of Blackfoot worldviews on his work thru the Blackfoot Digital Library, they’re very in-depth
Eldon Yellowhorn also discusses Maslow and Blackfoot ways of knowing but I forget which interview it’s in
Also this is good if you’re interested in a very short introduction to tipi construction and their use as homes and visual records of important knowledge:
I much prefer the Siksika model to Maslow’s. It places the individual at the base of the tipi, and the existential objective in that model is literally cosmic in scale. A self-actualized individual can better contribute to the community, and a self-actualized community and culture can perpetuate itself through time. The goal is so much larger than the realization of your own self, it’s about being a part of a greater whole and ensuring it lasts into perpetuity.
Tori