Crafts, Boys, Ernest Thompson Seton, and the Woodcraft Movement

Abstract

This article examines early influences on art education for boys (Chalmers & Dancer, 2007) in areas traditionally labeled as crafts. Under review is the work of Ernest Thompson Seton, artist, naturalist, storyteller, author, philosopher, crusader for and supporter of indigenous American Indian ways of knowing, and a co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America. Within a discussion of indigeneity and woodcraft, this article contributes to the study of masculinities and art education. Seton’s Woodcraft Indians and the Boy Scouts of America were early 20th-century responses to what Pinar (2001) has termed the “crisis of white masculinity.” As Imms (2003) has stated, “Art education does own a legacy of neglecting boys” (p. 55). Applying Addison (2005), this article considers art and design in the formation of sexual identities. A focus on the life and work of Seton, with an analysis of his semi-autobiographical writing, provides select historical insight into gendered approaches to art education as well as romantic approaches to Native American art and education.

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