Fighting Colonialism with Hegemonic Culture , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - Maureen Trudelle Schwarz

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143 pages

English

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How and why do American Indians appropriate images of Indianness for their own purposes? How do these representatives promote and sometimes challenge sovereignty for indigenous people locally and nationally? American Indians have recently taken on a new relationship with the hegemonic culture designed to oppress them. Rather than protesting it, they are currently earmarking images from it and using them for their own ends. This provocative book adds and interesting twist and nuance to our understanding of the five-hundred year interchange between American Indians and others. A host of examples of how American Indians use the so-called "White Man's Indian" reveal the key images and issues selected most frequently by the representatives of Native organizations or Native-owned businesses in the late twentieth century and the opening years of the twenty-first century to appropriate Indianness.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. AIM: Use of Popular Images of Indians in Identity Politics

2. Twentieth-Century Contest over Native American Spirituality

3. American Indian Express and Protests of Immorality

4. Marketing Health and Tradition

5. Marketing Spirituality and Environmental Values

6. Land, Stewardship, and Healthy Food

7. Final Thoughts

Notes
Index

Sujets

Indigenous peoples

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Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	22 janvier 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438445946
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1648€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Fighting Colonialism with Hegemonic Culture
Native American Appropriation of Indian Stereotypes
M AUREEN T RUDELLE S CHWARZ

Cover art by Torry Mendoza
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2013 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schwarz, Maureen Trudelle, 1952–
Fighting colonialism with hegemonic culture : Native American appropriation of Indian stereotypes / Maureen Trudelle Schwarz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4593-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Indians of North America—Public opinion. 2. Indians of North America—Ethnic identity. 3. Indians of North America—Psychology. 4. Stereotypes (Social psychology)—United States. 5. Indians in popular culture. 6. Public opinion—United States. I. Title.
E98.P99S38 2013
970.004'97—dc23
2012015509
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

I dedicate this book to my kid sister Marlo who recently lost a battle with a big C other than colonialism.
Illustrations Figure 1 Native American Rights Fund T-Shirt. Source: Native American Rights Fund Figure 2 Medicine Man Line of Beverages Figure 3 Natural American Spirit Cigarettes Figure 4 American Indian Express Card T-Shirt. Source: Keith DeHaas Figure 5 Little Chief Frybread Mix Figure 6 Little Chief Family Photo. Source: State Archives of the South Dakota State Historical Society Figure 7 Native American Herbal Teas Figure 8 Honest Tea's First Nation Organic Peppermint Figure 9 Lakota Water, The Original Cherokee Great Smoky Mountains Drinking Water, Big Bear Mountain Premium Spring Water, Indian Wells, Spirit Water, and Iroquois Water. Figure 10 Tanka Bars
Acknowledgments
I owe countless people thanks for many gifts of time and effort, large and small. These range from sending me Native-manufactured products found across the country to dropping me emails with information about a rising controversy. It would be impossible to name each of you individually here so please accept a hearty collective “Thank you!” A few individuals must be singled out for special thanks, however, because their efforts bordered sometimes on the heroic. They are Susan Applegate-Krouse, formerly of Michigan State University, Torry Mendoza, of Syracuse, New York, and my family—Greg, Ragen, Adam, Ciaran, Cora, Ryan, Kim, and Joren.
Introduction
For generations, images of Indians have been commonplace in American society. So much so that over time they have taken on the form of what Jean Baudrillard termed hyperreality —a world of self-referential signs that are very much a part of everyday life, which are infinitely reproducible and said to substitute for a “real” or “original” that does not now exist and perhaps never existed. 1 As important as such banalities might be individually, in every society the meaning of such symbols ultimately depends on larger units of analysis made possible by means of languages of significance—that is, narratives or groups of images that form whole discourses, which operate across a variety of ways of seeing, texts, or areas of knowledge about a subject that has acquired widespread authority. 2 Such discourses play significant theoretical and political roles in the achievement of hegemony as well as in resistance to it. In the discursive formation of Indianness created since 1492, images meant to depict Native Americans have traditionally stood as signs or fetishes for such contradictory concepts as primitiveness, nature, spirituality, unbridled sexuality, violence, nobility, or heathenness, depending on the particular time and agenda of the presenters and the code or codes understood by the various audience members. 3
Control over the definition of Native Americans captured in the discourse of Indianness translates to power over individuals and communities, as well as justifies the paternalistic attitude that has historically informed and in many cases continues to articulate interaction between Euro-Americans and American Indians. 4 Such portrayals have historically allowed the exercise of symbolic power through depictive practices over both the oppressed and nonoppressed members of the society. Cultural hegemony is understood to support colonialism by oppressing the colonized both internally and externally. Those who are colonized classically begin to believe the stereotypes promulgated by the colonizers. As Antonio Gramsci points out when ensconced within a full range of institutionalized and governmental structures and activities , such a representational regime often results in a marked “sense of fatalism and passivity” on the part of the oppressed that come to “accept” their own exploitation. 5 In addition to noting the oppressive effect hegemonic culture can render, Gramsci articulates that hegemony has little meaning unless paired with the notion of domination, which in the case of Native Americans is governmental policies and practices. This reveals the integral relationship inherent between hegemonic culture and force.

Figure 1. Native American Rights Fund T-Shirt. Source: Native American Rights Fund
Native critique of representations of American Indians, which appeared as early as 1911 in response to Curse of the Redman (Selig Studio), clearly indicates that those portrayed have long had a wellgrounded sense of exactly how they were being depicted. 6 Native Americans have protested against hegemonic culture such as representation of American Indians in Wild West Shows and Dime Novels at least since the end of the nineteenth century. Moreover, individuals such as James Young Deer and Princess Red Wing worked in the first decade of the twentieth century to overcome stereotypical representations of Native Americans in films by inverting storylines to introduce new perspectives thereby causing audiences to see Native people as multifaceted human beings. 7 American Indian protests against depictions of Indians reached a crescendo in the 1960s and 1970s and continue to the present with special emphasis focused on misrepresentations of Native Americans in film and removal of Indian sports team mascots. 8
The marked difference between then and now is that today American Indians have taken on a new relationship with the hegemonic culture designed to oppress them. Rather than protesting it, they are currently earmarking images from it and using them for their own ends. A previously untold account derives from the stories of representations presented in this volume wherein special focus is placed on the images and issues selected most frequently by representatives of Native-owned businesses and organizations in the late twentieth century and the opening years of the twenty-first century to appropriate (i.e., in the words of James Clifford, “to make one's own”)—Indianness. 9
Landmark shifts in power, marked by passage of key legislation in the late 1980s and early 1990s, resulted in improved socioeconomic resources and self-esteem in some parts of Indian country. 10 Increased control over their own sources of revenue has allowed tribes with readily marketable natural resources such as coal or oil; well-run tribal industries such as ski resorts, casinos, or timber operations; or close proximity to large metropolitan areas, to achieve some measure of practical autonomy. But, the hard reality is that, as a direct result of forced relocation from treasured homelands, the majority of the 564 federally recognized Native Nations live on remote reservations without such amenities.
Such realities have caused leaders in the latter-mentioned communities to rethink notions of tribal sovereignty in all its various forms. No bleeding heart sentimentalist, Joe Ely, former chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiutes, points out that to make sovereignty truly meaningful Native Americans have to abandon isolationist politics and directly engage the world outside reservations. He suggests, “You've got to get off the reservation and get involved in commerce out there … and bring money back to the reservation. We need to participate in the outer world, to retain who we are, and also to pick up the best of [the white man's] world, and perhaps make our society a better one.” 11
In this politically and emotionally charged climate, Native Nations such as the Akwesasne, the Anishinaabe, the Eastern Band of Cherokee, the Hualapai, the Lakota, the Rosebud Sioux, the Santa Ana Pueblo, the Sawbridge Cree People of Canada, and others across North America find themselves in the enviable positions of having resources desired by consumers that do not require the same hard choices as those marketable resources possessed by many of their Native peers who only have extractive resources such as coal or uranium. To succeed in an increasingly competitive market, however, they have had to couple their assets with another, that of Indianness .
This volume draws on examples of such products as diverse as Native American–produced bottled waters or frybread mixes, to