Do you want to do your own research on Indian Imagery?

Consult Books

Patricia C. Albers and William R. James. “Images and Reality: Post Cards of Minnesota’s Ojibway People, 1900-80,” Minnesota History, 49, 6, 1985. The authors provide an excellent discussion of how postcards with Indian themes reinforce stereotypes. Americans drew perceptions of Ojibwas from postcard images. Anthropologists Albers and James discuss how Native identity was distorted by photographers staging subjects, selecting certain activities to photograph and ignoring others, employing a Plains or Hiawatha theme, using mock Indian villages or scenic views as background, and using captions that disparaged Indians. The result was that tourists and others did not perceive contemporary Indians outside the stereotypic representation as “real.”

Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. The White Man’s Indian, 1978. This book is an important early discussion of Indian imagery that influenced subsequent research. Historian Berkhofer explores how the idea of the “Indian” as a general category was invented and perpetuated, and how religious doctrine and early attempts at “science” (and scientific racism) reinforced the idea of the American Indian as both ignoble and noble “savage.” He also illustrates how imagery in literature and visual art maintained this idea of the Indian in the popular imagination. Finally, Berkhofer shows how the imagery worked to rationalize policies that served the interests of White Americans and how these policies put Native Americans at a disadvantage. See also Berkhofer’s article “White Conceptions of Indians“ in History of Indian-White Relations, ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn, Handbook of North American Indians 4, 1988

S. Elizabeth Bird, ed. Dressing in Feathers,1996. This volume explores the use of “good” and “bad” Indian imagery. Good Indians help Americans and recognize the inevitability of White domination. Not a threat, they are colorful and quaint. Activist Indians are characterized as lazy, dependent, undeserving, and incompetent. The ability to depict Indians in this way derives from the power differential between majority America and the Indian minority. Jeffrey Steele’s article explores Indian imagery in 19th and 20th century advertisements, pointing out that stereotypes sell. He also argues that the portrayal of minorities in ads worked to create a middle-class unity based on consumerism. Cynthia-Lou Coleman examines a conflict over copper mining in northern Wisconsin in the early 1990s, showing how newspaper articles portrayed Indian activists who opposed the mine as irrational, unprogressive, and warlike outsiders.

Edward Buscombe, ‘Injuns!’, 2006. Film historian Buscombe writes a clear and concise history of how Indian imagery is used in American and European cinema. Prior to the 1920s, silent films made in a woodlands setting included portrayals of pure but doomed Indians, frozen in time (18th or early 19th centuries). These Hiawatha-themed films tended to be idealized views of a simple life, often love stories about a “brave” and a “maiden.” James Young Deer, a Winnebago director, and his wife actress Lillian Red Wing made several films. “White Fawn’s Devotion” (1910) was about a White settler married to an Indian woman who was his moral superior. She saves him from his mistakes. Young Deer received bad reviews for his mixed-race theme. Red Wing made several films produced by Bison Company, including “Flight of Red Wing,” about a “good Indian” princess who helps White Americans. By the 1920s, the film industry had lost interest in pastoral romance and made films about the American West that portrayed Indians as violent obstacles to progress. In “Unconquered” (1947), Indians allied with the French in the Seven Years War massacre settlers under a flag of truce. They capture Paulette Goddard, strip her, and tie her to a stake to be tortured. Gary Cooper is able to rescue her by convincing the simple-minded Indians he has magic (gunpowder and a compass).

Renée Ann Cramer. Cash, Color, and Colonialism, 2005. Political scientist Cramer uses the federal acknowledgment process to examine how Americans’ perceptions of Indian identity are based on “race” (how they look), “primitivism” (the degree to which they can function in the modern world), and “poverty” (how much money they have). These perceptions move Americans to believe that “real” Indians are poor (and powerless) and unable to function well in the modern world. Counter examples are “fake” Indians. Cramer argues that the federal government has been reluctant to recognize tribes whose identity is discredited by these stereotypes. She examines the Pequots in Massachusetts and the Poarch Band of Creeks in Alabama from this perspective.

Eve Darian-Smith. New Capitalists, 2004. This anthropologist explores the public’s identification of Native Americans as “rich Indians” who do not fit the stereotype of “real” Indians. Stereotypes prevent mainstream society from imagining real Native Americans in positions of power, authority, and social prestige. Indians with adequate income are somehow inauthentic. Darian-Smith also shows how “rich Indian” imagery has been used politically to oppose Indian gaming.

Philip J. Deloria. Playing Indian, 1998. Historian Deloria examines the various ways Americans have appropriated Indian dress and roles to claim an identity. The Boy Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, hobbyists, New Age Movement—all are examples of how Americans used Indian imagery to cope with the anxieties of urban life. Nationalist groups used Indian imagery to shape national identity (e.g., the Boston Tea Party) and to evade the tension stemming from the simultaneous destruction of the Indian way of life. Playing Indian represents the contradiction at the heart of the American self- image: the democratic ideal of equality and the reality of social inequality.

R. David Edmunds. Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership, 1984. This is a life history of Tecumseh situated in the context of the historical events of the time. The author also includes a discussion of the mythology associated with Tecumseh.

Ruth Miller Elson. Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century, 1964. This work has a short section on the treatment of Indians in textbooks, showing how noble and ignoble imagery permeated these books and influenced children’s ideas about Native people.

Carolyn Thomas Foreman. Indians Abroad, 1943. One chapter in this book is an interesting account of the activities of the Ojibwa performers sponsored by George Catlin in England in 1844.

Stephanie A. Fryberg, Hazel Rose Markus, Daphna Oyserman and Joseph M. Stone. “Of Warrior Chiefs and Indian Princesses: The Psychological Consequences of American Indian Mascots,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 30 (2008): 208-18. In four separate studies, the authors examined the consequences of Chief Wahoo and Chief Illiniwek imagery on the self-concept of American Indian high school and college students. Research among several groups revealed consequences of a depressed sense of self-esteem and community worth, as well as decreased aspirations. The authors argue that Indians are rarely described as contemporary people with everyday roles, and the relative invisibility of American Indians in mainstream media gives inordinate power to the few representations or stereotypes of Indians. Warrior imagery (as in mascots), in-tune-with-nature imagery (as in Disney’s Pocahontas), or negative imagery of social pathology remind Indians of the limited ways in which others see them.

David Glassberg. American Historical Pageantry, 1990. This work provides a good discussion of pageant themes in American towns in the early 20th century. The author argues that Indian themes reinforced the idea that the Indians’ “disappearance” was inevitable and that it was necessary to make way for American “progress.”

Rayna Green. “The Indian in Popular American Culture,” in History of Indian-White Relations, ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn, Handbook of North American Indians 4, 1988. A good overview of the popular arts and the messages they have conveyed about Indians. Green considers songs, legends, jokes, proverbs, epithets, advertisements, household furnishings, murals and calendars, picture card graphics, dramas, and sports imagery.

Steven D. Hoelscher, Picturing Indians, 2008. This work focuses on the photographs of H. H. Bennett in the Wisconsin Dells area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Commercial photographer Bennett staged his photos to best convey the imagery of the vanishing noble Indian. These images of “primitive” life shaped tourists’ perceptions of Indians. The author also discusses the Ho-Chunk’s goals in posing for Bennett.

Frederick E. Hoxie. The Indians Versus the Textbooks: Is There Any Way Out? Occasional Papers in Curriculum Series, D’Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian, 1984. Historian Hoxie examined thirteen U. S. history textbooks published in the early 1980s and representative of college level material. He argued that they have many of the same problems as earlier textbooks: Indians are absent, disparaged, or misrepresented. He argued that textbooks have difficulty admitting that U. S. history is the story of many groups, not one, and makes suggestions for improvements.

Shari M. Huhndorf. Going Native, 2001. English professor Huhndorf explores the American obsession with “playing Indian” in such contexts as the Boston Tea Party, hobbyist activity, Indian inspired communes, and the New Age Movement. Playing Indian is an attempt to resolve ambivalence about modernity by constructing an identity that romanticizes Native life. It also is an attempt to obfuscate the violence surrounding the history of the conquest of Native people. The stereotypes and inequalities serve non-Indian interests.

Robert Jay. The Trade Card in Nineteenth-Century America, 1987. This study includes a discussion of the use of Indian imagery (as well as images of other minority groups) in advertising. The author points out that African-Americans, regarded as a threat, were portrayed very derisively, but Indians (no longer a threat) were shown as noble and exotic.

Clara Sue Kidwell. “Native American Studies Programs,” in Indians in Contemporary Society, ed. Garrick A. Bailey, Handbook of North American Indians 2, 2008. The author discusses the history of Native American Studies programs, of which there were 87 in the United States in 2006. Thirty-six granted the B.A. and 12, the graduate degree. These programs have contributed to the diversity goals of colleges and universities, and the faculty in them have had an influence on scholarship in general. Some programs have their own faculty and others have faculty with joint appointments in other departments. The field of Native American Studies has evolved with the growing number of Native Americans with scholarly credentials. The American Indian Studies department at the University of Minnesota was one of the first in 1970. A few years later it disbanded but reorganized in the early 1990s.

C. Richard King and Charles Fruehling Springwood, eds. Team Spirits, 2001. The editors are anthropologists whose volume explores what sports imagery reveals about power relations in the United States. They argue that mascots are an example of “playing Indian” in order to fashion individual and collective identities and that the conflict over mascots and Indian imagery in sports is best understood by studying the historical context of this conflict. Articles include Richard Clark Eckert’s piece on Central Michigan University’s use of the name “Chippewa”; Patrick Russell LeBeau’s essay on the men’s club “Fighting Braves of Michigamua” at the University of Michigan; and David Prochaska on Chief Illiniwek at the University of Illinois.

James W. Loewen. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, 1995. This is a very well written discussion of stereotypes and misunderstandings about American Indians that are found in twelve of the leading textbooks. There is a chapter on “The Truth about the First Thanksgiving” and another, “Red Eyes,” on the ways these textbooks portray American Indians in general.

John N. Low, “The Architecture of Simon Pokagon—In Text and On Display,” in Ogimawkwe Mitigwaki: Queen of the Woods, by Simon Pokagon, 2011. This new edition of Queen of the Woods is a reprint of the original 1899 novel. New accompanying materials add context through a cultural biography, literary historical analysis, and linguistic considerations of the text. The edition includes an introduction by Philip J. Deloria, as well as the essay by Low and two others by Margaret Noori and Kiara M. Vigil. Queen of the Woods was the second novel ever published by an American Indian. He intended it as a testimonial to the traditions, stability, and continuity of the Potawatomi in a rapidly changing world.

Elise Marienstras, “The Common Man’s Indian.” In Native Americans and the Early Republic, eds. Frederick E. Hoxie, Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, 1999. This essay, written for an academic audience, discusses how Indian imagery in popular culture (stories, songs, schoolbooks, popular magazines, almanacs, and so on) shaped Americans’ sense of national identity. The ignoble Indian image reinforced the idea that conquest was necessary and the “wilderness” that was the home of the Indian had to be cleared to make way for civilization. After the Indians were removed, the Indian as Other served as the antithesis of Americans and helped Americans to conceive of a common past and common lore, and thus to construct a national identity.

Devon A. Mihesuah. American Indians: Stereotypes and Realities, 1996. This is a clearly written book for the general public. The author evaluates several stereotypes, including the following. All Indians are alike. Indians had no civilization before Europeans. Indians were warlike and treacherous. Indians vanished. Indians are supported by the federal government.

June Namias. White Captives, 1996. Historian Namias questions why captivity narratives were so popular in American literature and art in the 19th century. She argues that Americans used these stories, especially about women captives, in their struggles with fears about the frontier experience. A study of captivity shows that fewer than 10 percent of captives died and half the remainder stayed with their captors, while the other half returned to their own people. Even so, captivity narratives exaggerated the horrors of captivity and created heroines who suffered and survived. Women were essential to building a new civilized society, a new nation in a dangerous world, so they became the central figures in these popular narratives and in the work of artists who drew on the subject of captivity.

Larry Nesper, “Simulating Culture: Being Indian for Tourists in Lac du Flambeau’s Wa-Swa-Gon Indian Bowl,” in Ethnohistory 50, 3, 2003. Anthropologist Nesper discusses the Indian Bowl, opened by the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwa in 1951. The performances consisted of a pageant that represented their history in terms of treaty relations and reciprocal gift-exchange, followed by dances. While performing in ways that reinforced stereotypes was discomforting, the Bowl facilitated the community’s efforts at cultural renaissance and reinforced their moral claim on American society. The Bowl provided income and helped perpetuate dances, songs, crafts, and a sense of identity.

Moira G. Simpson. Making Representations, 1996. The author discusses the historical development of tribal museums and the history of the repatriation movement in the context of the civil rights movement and Indian self-determination. The discussion draws on examples of museums from the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, Southeast, Oklahoma, and Canada.

Andrew Brodie Smith. Shooting Cowboys and Indians, 2003. Historian Smith discusses the silent film era of the “Western.” One chapter focuses on the work of James Young Deer and his wife Lillian Red Wing, who challenged the stereotypes in films about Indians from 1909 to 1913. They were Nebraska Winnebagos, who began working as actors in New York. Later, Young Deer became a prominent director and head of Pathe studios in Los Angeles. Red Wing was a well-known actress. Young Deer’s films depicted Native Americans as complex and sympathetic characters, and he developed themes of racism and cultural repression, conveying a message that hostility toward Indians was due to fears and prejudices of Whites, rather than the behavior of Indian “savages.”

Carol Spindel. Dancing at Halftime, 2000. This is a very readable account of the struggle over the Chief Illiniwek mascot at the University of Illinois. The author seeks to discover why non-Indians have been so attached to this character. She explains the history of Chief Illiniwek, the development of a movement to retire the character, and the resistance from non-Indians. Spindel argues that Chief Illiniwek is a romantic stereotype (Noble Indian), projecting freedom, spiritualism, and a sense of Americanism that non-Indians associate with the “real” Indians in the past. Focusing on this image allows non-Indians to ignore contemporary Indians. Spindel concludes that racism flourishes on a foundation of stereotypes and prejudices and makes the point that the story of Chief Illiniwek is a microcosmic history of White America’s attitude toward American Indians.

Pauline Turner Strong, “’To Light the Fire of Our Desire’: Primitivism in the Camp Fire Girls,” in New Perspectives on Native North America, eds. Sergei A. Kan and Pauline Turner Strong, 2006. Anthropologist Strong discusses the history and symbolism of the Camp Fire Girls. Founded in 1910, the group was a response to a national panic over industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and feminism (represented especially by women’s employment outside the home). The organizers wanted to promote a more satisfactory emotional life through Indian symbolism. They made a connection between Indian culture (at an “adolescent” stage of human development) and adolescent girls. Tapping into a generalized back-to-nature movement, the organization tried to give the domestic sphere more value. Strong describes the Camp Fire Girls organization in the 1960s: outfits designed after Woodlands and other Native clothing, outdoor activities, and Indian rituals.

Alan Trachtenberg. Shades of Hiawatha, 2004. Trachtenberg views the Hiawatha theme as a response to a national crisis of identity in the 19th century, due to a wave of immigration, urbanization, and social movements among subordinated groups. Longfellow’s poem was an early effort to imagine a nation with origins in a noble Indian past. He drew on Indian lore, but needed to find a less “primitive” past. He used romantic racism in characterizing the Indian “ancestors”: emotional, possessing a childlike simplicity, and close to nature. The original American Hiawatha was dignified, independent, and virile, and he offered himself as the originator of American identity. The Hiawatha theme underwent a florescence during the peak years of immigration through public performance and artistic expression. The Hiawatha myth helped create a new national identity: a heroic past with Anglo-Saxon domination. The Hiawatha theme used ideas and imagery of the Indian to defend the expropriation of Native land as essential to the growth of the nation. English professor Trachtenberg also argues that the use of the idea and imagery of immigrants defended the rightness of class as essential to the growth of the nation.

Lisa J. Watt and Brian L. Lawrie-Beaumont. “Native Museums and Cultural Centers,” in Indians in Contemporary Society, ed. Garrick A. Bailey, Handbook of North American Indians 2. 2008. The article discusses how Native museums and cultural centers have become part of cultural renaissance and an expression of sovereignty. There are 150 tribal museums in the United States. The development of tribal museums surged when federal funding was available in the 1960s and 1970s for construction and job training. The hope was that these museums would foster tourism and lead to economic development, but they were in areas that did not attract tourists. Since the 1990s, training programs for Native people interested in museum work have increased and the development of tribal casinos and resorts has spurred the development of museums and cultural centers. The authors discuss the goals and tasks of these centers, including collection, libraries, archives, and exhibits.

View Videos

Carl Gawboy Portrait: The Art of the Everyday. 2010. 27 mi. Produced by Lorraine Norrgard. Bois Forte Heritage Center. This beautifully done video features Ojibwa artist Gawboy’s discussion of his paintings of Ojibwa life.His focus is “Ojibwa images” largely from his childhood memories. Gawboy has been called the “Norman Rockwell” of Ojibwa art because of his realistic depictions of Native American life in northern Minnesota. Visual images from his paintings enrichGawboy’s narrative.

Images of Indians: How Hollywood Stereotyped the Native American. 2003. 25 mi. Dir. Chris O’Brien and Jason Witmer. This documentary surveys the use of Indian stereotypes in American film past and present using archive footage and interviews with Native Americans.
You can watch a clip of this documentary on the following YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/framesinmotion2007

In Whose Honor?: American Indian Mascots in Sports. 1997. 46 mi. Dir. Jay Rosenstein. New Day Films. The video considers the Chief Illiniwek issue from the perspective of those who oppose the use of the mascot.

The Indian Princess Demystified. 1997. 30 mi. Produced by Lorraine Norrgard/WDSE-TV. This video features the commentary of Dr. Gail Valiskakis (Lac du Flambeau Ojibwa), who shares her antique postcard collection of Indian princesses and offers insights on stereotypes of American Indian women. This video can be ordered from WDSE-TV, Duluth, MN: https://www.wdse.org/shows/album/collection/season-7

Oneida Language Animation Series
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWlCpw7Yh80
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5Oqke5xeCs
The series of video clips offers Oneida language instruction to children. The links listed above lead to clips that feature an animated bear, frog, and wolf offering basic instruction. Oneida Productions produced these clips, and they offer a YouTube channel that features a variety of Oneida-themed programming. The channel can be found at the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/user/OneidaProductions

Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian. 88 mi., 2009, National Film Board of Canada and Rezolution Pictures. Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond’s work is a history of Indian imagery in Hollywood movies from the silent film era to today. It shows how myths about “the Injun” have influenced the world’s understanding of Natives

Online Resources

American Indian Sports Team Mascots
http://www.aistm.org/1indexpage.htm
The AISTM is a collection of information about the sports mascot issue in popular media. The site links to recent newspaper articles, editorial cartoons, and YouTube clips.

Honor Indians Institute
http://honorindians.com
The Honor Indians Institute seeks to confront negative stereotypes of Native Americans in the media and in sports. The Institute provides educational classes, seminars, and lectures, and on the website you can find links to recent news stories that relate to Native American representation.

The Movies, Race, and Ethnicity film database
University of California-Berkeley, Media Resources Center, Moffitt Library
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/imagesnatives.html
This videography provides a broad sampling of ethnic and racial representations in film over the past century. Among the Native American entries are both mainstream Hollywood features and films made by Native Americans. Each entry offers a brief plot synopsis. The resource also provides a bibliography of books and articles on Native American representation in film.

Native American Public Telecommunications
http://www.nativetelecom.org/
NAPT creates, promotes, and distributes Native media, which includes a number of documentaries and informational programming on the use of Indian imagery in American culture. You can consult a “programming guide” that lists upcoming airings of Native American programming on public television and elsewhere. NAPT also distributes documentaries that can be purchased through their website.

National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media
http://www.aimovement.org/ncrsm/
This coalition of activists and scholars highlights the racial, cultural, and spiritual stereotyping of Native Americans via sports team identities, mascots, and logos. The acting president of NCRSM, Charlene Teters (Spokane Tribe), was instrumental in bringing national attention to the Chief Illiniwek mascot issue at the University of Illinois in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when she was a graduate student there.

National Congress of American Indians
http://www.ncai.org/Anti-Defamation-and-Mascots.74.0.html
The NCAI is an organization that attempts to inform the public and Congress on the governmental rights of American Indians and Alaskan Natives. Their website offers information on a number of policy issues, including recent information on culturally insensitive representations of American Indians in sports and popular culture.

Native Culture Links
http://www.nativeculturelinks.com/music.html
The Native Culture Links website offers links to record labels, distributors, individual artists, and other organizations that produce and promote Native American art in a variety of media.

Students and Teachers Against Racism
http://www.racismagainstindians.org/UnderstandingMascots.htm
STAR seeks to raise public awareness for other educators on a variety of Indian issues, including the use of stereotypes in Indian imagery. The STAR website offers links to articles and other materials for educators, guidance counselors, and social workers.

Tribal Museums and Cultural Centers. National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers.
tribalmuseums.org/
This site provides information on museum exhibits and programs in American Indian and Alaska Native museums and cultural centers around the country. The NATHP provides support and training for tribal museum and cultural center projects.

Wisconsin Indian Education Association
http://www.wiea.org/
http://www.indianmascots.com/index.htm
The WIEA consists of Indian educators who advocate for Indian students (in primary and secondary schools as well as in public universities) in Wisconsin. In addition to advising school boards and other educators on Indian issues, they created the Indian Mascot & Logo Taskforce, an educational group that provides information about and confronts the use of Indian imagery as mascots and logos in Wisconsin schools. Their website offers a section that discusses the commonly used Indian images and responds to the common justifications offered by non-Indians for use of Indian imagery. Also, the Taskforce offers a list of Wisconsin high schools that use Indian-themed mascots and logos.

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