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Drawing upon recent anthropological scholarship for a general theory of production, exchange, and valuation, this essay seeks to understand cultural appropriation, in a consequential but not exclusive way, as an ambivalent process whereby the norms and practices of imperialist society may be challenged by modern writers whether of Native or non-Native heritage. The examples of Emily Cart, Marius Barbeau, and Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) here illuminate a basic set of relationships between modernism, imperialism, and nationalism.