America "not a good country for gods"?

Why Adapting Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for TV Is a Bad Idea

By Abraham Riesman[P]erhaps most offensive, we'll get the book's Big Statement About America, which is bizarrely insulting to Native Americans. Near the end of the novel, a Native American with magical powers named Whiskey Jack tells Shadow he's not a god, but rather a "culture hero," because the land we call America "is not a good country for gods."

"There are creator spirits who found the earth or made it or shit it out, but you think about it: who's going to worship Coyote?" Whiskey Jack tells Shadow. "[W]e never built churches. We didn't need to."

Really? No houses of prayer? How, then, do you account for the Longhouses the Iroquois built for their prayer ceremonies? And no true gods that anyone bothered worshipping? That's an insane generalization about more than ten thousand years' worth of spiritual culture across an entire continent.American Gods by Neil Gaiman

By BrontëI wasn’t completely satisfied with the scope of the religions and cultures he represented. Of course, it would’ve been impossible for him to meaningfully represent every culture of the world in a 600-page novel, but most of the big characters from mythology were the easy choices, coming from popular European myth. It would’ve been nice to see a few more less popular, less Anglo-centric gods be given fleshed out stories or characters. There was almost nothing from South America. Does that count as part of the barren America?

Which brings me to the subject of Native American representation. Gaiman justifies his plot-integral proposition that gods don’t thrive well in the Americas by stating that Native religions were truly more about land-worship and idols than the creation of gods. I know little about most Native religions, but 1) that’s a broad statement and 2) that just doesn’t seem fair. Can we truly say that or is this a case of misrepresentation and the molding of a culture to the author’s needs? I’m inclined to say the latter.Mark Reads ‘American Gods’: Chapter 18

By Mark Oshiro“What I’m trying to say is that America is like that. It’s not good growing country for gods. They don’t grow well here. They’re like avocados trying to grow in wild rice country.”

And it proves to be a shockingly astute observation about the history of this place. There were plenty of indigenous people who lived in America long before white men came to bring disease and genocide, and I think that’s what he’s referring to. We are a nation built on imperialism and immigration, and what gods we did have that were grown here were lost in the genocide against the Native peoples. (Obviously not entirely, because there are still Native Americans living all over this country, many who still believe in the same gods, some who believe in new ones, and some who don’t believe in any at all. I’m not a fan of language about Native peoples that paints them as if they just up and ~disappeared~.)Comment:  "Not entirely" is putting it mildly. Thousands of Native cultures still exist in North, Central, and South America. Their gods probably have more true believers than Thoth, Anubis, Ēostre, the Queen of Sheba, and kobolds do.

So how does Gaiman figure that America failed to produce gods while the "Old World" succeeded? The only significant religions left in Europe and the Middle East are the worldwide ones: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism. The indigenous or "pagan" religions are mostly gone.

For more on American Gods, see Whiskey Jack in American Gods.

Tulare Redskins "keep memory alive"?!

With California banning the "Redskins" nickname in schools, mascot lovers are crying all over the state. Here's a prime example:

Departure from 'Redskins' stirs up 100 years of emotions

By Luis Hernandez and Calley Cedelof“We’ve been fighting this ‘Redskin’ deal for years,” he said. “It has been a nationwide battle.”

The California law reflects the “Not Your Mascot” movement, which calls for banning all Native American names for schools and professional teams.

Celaya said he is displeased with the way in which rival schools have treated the mascot. He said he still remembers chants from opposing teams at games when he attended the school.

“Teams chant ‘burn the Redskin,’ ‘kill the Redskin’. It is uncomfortable to be a Native American sitting in the crowd and hearing that,” he added.Comment:  Then there's this:A member of the California Indian Basketweavers Association, Malone said she doesn’t mind professional sports franchises and public schools use of Native American names.

“To me, it helps keep the memory alive,” she said. “If they don’t mention the names, they are going to forget them.”I'll never understand idiocy like this--especially from an Indian.

This led to a brief discussion on Facebook:Uncle Tom assimilated idiot.Something like that. Why does a living Indian need a mascot to keep the memory alive? She is the keeper of the memory--her, her family, and her tribe. And everyone like her. Not some cardboard cutout from a comic book.

It would be like my saying, "We need to memorialize the town of Schmidt in Germany. Otherwise, people will forget Rob Schmidt ever existed."

Hello? I'm creating my own legacy by writing, posting, and so forth. I don't need someone else in a far-off place to do it for me.

The whole idea is ridiculous.

Rob's rant takes off

What, you think Redskins, Warriors, Braves, and Chiefs are your names? Instead of the actual words you use for yourself, perhaps in your own language? The only choice for naming yourself is the white man's stereotypical labels?

Indians are part of literally millions of place names, history books, monuments, museums, movies, TV shows, comic books, paintings, coins, stamps, etc. Not to mention millions of businesses and products with Indian names and logos. Jeep Cherokees, Indian Motorcycles, Apache helicopters, Tomahawk missiles, and on and on.

And those are just the references. We also have 567 federally recognized tribes with their own cultures, ceremonies, powwows, casinos, etc. And many more of all these things in Canada and Central and South America. Throughout the Americas, the Native population is growing; Natives are reinvigorating their cultures, gaining political power, and so forth.

But somehow Native people are teetering on the edge of extinction--of being wiped permanently from our collective memory? And saving them is up to the Tulare Redskins, represented by a stereotypical Plains chief in central California? Either we save the racist mascot or the race dies forever?

Asinine. Stupid beyond belief. It's like a kindergartner's understanding of reality. "If I close my eyes and can't see the mascot anymore, all the Indians will vanish from reality."

Elders cling to mascots?I've heard similar things around mascots in the Wisconsin Dells, and what it boils down to is that for a lot of the older generation, the mascot was the only public representation of Natives out there. I think there's a fear that once the mascot goes, there will be nothing, and for many folks, "the Indian" or whatever mascot was the one place where you could express actual Native pride--the one time the school/district/town acknowledged there were actual Indians. I think it's vital to show folks that the mascot is being replaced by better representation--a gain, not a loss.

(Yes, clearly a *huge* part of this is a lack of conscious awareness of the psychological consequences of mascots, but I do think that's where it comes from. It's part of the undervaluing of Native self-image that mascots produce.)I'm sure that's a big part of it. But it's silly. Worse, it's ignorant--and horribly so. It's buying into the white man's assertion that Indians are dead and gone, or nearly so. All we can do is remember them as we kill off the last ones, sell their land, and take their resources.

Get a clue, lady. Read Indian Country Today, Indianz.com, and Pechanga.net with their hundreds of Native stories every day. Join Facebook and Twitter and see thousands of Native activists working to preserve and share their cultures and worldviews. Join #IdleNoMore, #MMIW, #NoKXL, #NotYourMascot, or any other movement so powerful it's known by a hashtag.

The Tulare Redskins aren't your legacy. The entire hemisphere of Native history and culture beyond the Tulare Redskins are your legacy. Embrace your real legacy, not the white man's fiction of a legacy.

For more on the subject, see Tulare Union's Stereotypical Redskins Mascot.

Vanishing Indians in As an Oak Tree Grows

Rewriting History: American Indians, Europeans, and an Oak Tree (Loudness in the Library Year Three, Part 3)

By Bank Street College Center for Children's LiteratureI did a double-take when I cracked open As An Oak Tree Grows*, a 2014 book that inaccurately reflects the history of European and Native American interactions. In the story, which traces the life of an oak tree (planted as an acorn by a young Native boy), the Native character simply disappears as the Europeans move in. Bank Street students, who participate in extensive curricula on unlearning Native stereotypes, immediately recognized this as problematic, because it erases the conflicts and violence that arose when Native people fought to defend their homes and land from colonial invasion. As one student noted,

“Because it’s a children’s book, they wanted to make it ‘nicer.’ ”

Working together, teachers and kids identified three primary areas of concern with As An Oak Tree Grows:

The pictures show a lot of empty land, as if it was uninhabited; one wigwam appears in the first two pages, alongside a vast wilderness.Where is the Native child’s community? The pictures send the message that the land was largely empty and there for the taking. Students said:

“If you don’t give kids the right images, they get the wrong ideas.”

“If kids don’t see other stories, they might think this is the truth.”

“These books shape a child’s mind.”

“The illustrations should show more of the truth.”

Then, there’s this text:

“The boy grew up and moved away.”

Kids were puzzled because they knew that the larger story of Native/European interaction is one in which Europeans forcibly removed and/or killed huge portions of Native populations.

“‘The boy grew up and moved away’? That didn’t happen.”

“They were there first. It is very unlikely that the boy just moved away.”Vanishing Indian = "detail"?

This posting led to a lively exchange of views in the comments section. First, a defense of the book:I am all for diversity and truth in literature but not every single story has to contain all the details about every situation. I’ve read this wonderful book–about a tree–and if you’re concentrating on how many wigwams are in the picture or whether the boy moved away or his throat was slit and he was buried in a mud bog, you’re missing the point. The story is about a tree. A tree that is manages to live long enough to witness a lot of things, good and bad. A child, reading about this tree does not need to know the details of what went on while the tree was alive. It’s inappropriate and distracting to include so much extraneous detail when the story is meant to be so simple and beautiful. I agree that children can and should be included in the true story of what goes on in life….in the appropriate venue. G. Brian Karas is a wonderful author and a gifted artist and I hate to see his work held hostage by people who wish he’d made their choices. It’s part of the trend of censorship in the guise of political correctness. His book, his choices. Mr. Karas, you’ve created an amazing book. Don’t bend over backwards to please everyone else. You’ll only end just bending over.Followed by a rebuttal:The fact that you dismiss the history of violence that Europeans enacted against Native populations as “details” that cause me to “miss the point” of the book sends the message that you, in fact, are missing the point of this post. The point is, with simple adjustments to the pictures and the text (adjustments which the kids suggested themselves), the book could have been more respectful towards Native populations, not to mention more historically accurate–an important factor for a Non-Fiction book. Including the truth about Native/European interactions would not have subsumed the rest of the book, it would have made for a better book.

You say, “A child, reading about this tree does not need to know the details of what went on while the tree was alive.” But, a Native child might pick up this book and immediately recognize it as an erasure of his/her history.

For that matter, a Native child browsing the internet might also stumble across your comment above, in which you so blithely characterize “whether… his throat was slit and he was buried in a mud bog” as a “detail” that doesn’t matter, and is, in fact, “inappropriate and distracting.” How do you imagine a Native child would feel, upon reading that? Debbie rightly points out that this language and the sentiment behind it are extremely offensive. It sends a message that white people have the right to cling to a false, Romanticized version of history. Ultimately, it sends a message that non-Native people matter more than Native people.

Finally, your accusation of censorship is both false and hypocritical. My post makes no suggestion that any libraries or bookstores should remove AS AN OAK TREE GROWS from their shelves, nor do I suggest that anybody should not have the right to write or publish anything they desire. In fact, my first post of this series (https://bankstreetcollegeccl.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/kids-thoughts-on-censorship-loudness-in-the-library-year-three-part-1/) is all about censorship. You are confusing free speech with consequence-free speech. Just as the creators of AS AN OAK TREE GROWS had every right to publish this book, I also have every right to criticize it, and so do the children I teach.Comment:  Forget the slit throat--if you can. How would Native children feel after reading that their ancestors gave up their land voluntarily? Welcomed their own destruction? Vanished willingly into the mists of time?

I dunno. How would white children feel if the Europeans sprouted horns? Laid eggs? Turned into cockroaches that swarmed across the land? If Native children have to accept lies and omissions in "nonfiction" books, why shouldn't everyone have to do it? What makes the Native-oriented falsehoods more acceptable than the European-oriented ones?

For more on vanishing Indians, see Native Artifacts Aren't Antiquities and America Constructed to Erase Indians.

Native artifacts aren't antiquities?

Rep. Ron Bishop and The Real 'Bull Crap'

By Dina Gilio-WhitakerOne of the opponents of the Basin and Range proclamation was Representative Rob Bishop (R-Utah), Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, who blatantly referred to it as “bull crap.” Specifically, when asked about the antiquity of the Native artifacts there such as the cave paintings, he said “Ah bull crap. That’s not antiquity.”

If a historical site with artifacts that date back at least 13,000 years can’t be considered “antiquity,” what can?

The statement was so asinine that even Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Az.), bless his heart, wrote a commentary in ICTMN to express his concern about congress’ growing hostility toward Indian country in general, reflected in part by Bishop’s absurd claim.

Rep. Grijalva wrote that congress doesn’t take tribal sovereignty seriously, and that it “is based not on legitimate political differences but on a prevailing attitude that Native American history is important only when it is convenient, Native American economic interests are secondary and Native American land is held by tribes only through the grace and favor of the federal government.”

True enough. If we break it down even more, the workings of the U.S. as a settler society is revealed. Since the goal of the settler society is the elimination of Native populations in order to gain access to Native lands, there is no reason to recognize indigenous sovereignty as a legitimate form of sovereignty, equal to that of state sovereignty. It does, however, pay lip service to Native sovereignty in order to uphold the charade of democracy and implicitly or explicitly deny the genocidal impulse of the state.

Let’s be real. However magnanimous the creation of a national monument at Basin and Range appears to be (in the interest, at least partly in this case, of preserving an ancient Native site), the land is not in Native hands. It is held by the state. By publicly owning a Native site, the state possesses Native history as its own. It says “this is OUR history, OUR heritage.” In this way the settler state erases the Native and stakes its own claim to indigeneity. But I digress.Comment:  Given his ignorance of the English language, poor Bishop must be a Republican. Let's help him out:antiquity
[an-tik-wi-tee]

noun, plural antiquities.

5. Usually, antiquities. something belonging to or remaining from ancient times, as monuments, relics, or customs.Bishop gets a Stereotype of the Month nomination for treating Indians as a vanished or never-present people. In reality, their artifacts are about the only antiquities native to the Americas.

America constructed to erase Indians

Dichotomy of Declaration of Independence Highlights the Bi-polar Character of USA

By Mark CharlesAs a Native man one of the excuses I often hear for people’s ignorance regarding Native issues is “there are no Native Americans in my context.” I tell them, “Yes. That was by design. Your nation was intentionally constructed so you would never have to be faced with the reality that there were people here prior to Europe’s colonization.”

This is why our schools teach that America was “discovered.” It is why American Indian reservations were created. It is why the apology to Native peoples in 2009 was buried in an appropriations bill and never publicly mentioned by the White House or Congress. And it is why the professional football team located in our nation’s capitol continues to utilize the mascot “Redsk*ns.”

The United States of American has gone through incredible lengths to keep the public narrative regarding the indigenous peoples of this land in mythical terms. Because, the moment we stop being caricatures and become human, our nation must face the uncomfortable reality that the only reason it ever stated “All men are created equal” is because it has an incredibly narrow definition of who is actually human.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Tarantino: "Indians Have More or Less Disappeared and How Euro-Americans "Vanished" Indians.

Stereotypical Deadskins video game

Is This Fun? 'Deadskins' Game Promises Scalp-Taking Zombie IndiansA video game designer is seeking funds for "Deadskins," a proposed console game that many Natives will no doubt find troubling.

The story begins with the mysterious massacre of a tribe by a supernatural being or beings. Then, as described at the game's Kickstarter page:

Using the powers and secrets of your elders, you must journey on a vision quest to repair the Spirit World and heal Mother Earth. Quickly become a warrior and fight a psychedelic battle against a man who has forgotten that he has died. He is a man known as the Dead Skin walker. And his power over the dead, was strong enough to punch a hole through to the land of the living, sending many lost spirits in search of revenge.

Ancestral spirits begin to rise from the earth and mount war parties of the Undead. This ravenous group of zombies attack everything they see and they quickly become many like the stars. They are DEADSKINS; a crazed and bloodthirsty tribe of the undead. Mounted on zombie beasts, the demonic warriors begin to cross over to the land of the living and curse all creatures they encounter.

Writer Dani Miller explains why the Deadskins game is a bad idea:

“Deadskins”--Genocide as Entertainment

By Danielle MillerDominant white culture will never seem to get over its unhealthy obsession with depicting Native Americans as dead and extinct. Cultural objects are whitewashed by acts of appropriation, celebrities and even the general public continues to wear imagery of dead Natives. This perpetual pattern to insult to Native American culture has become so intrinsic that I’m beginning to believe it is an unspoken element of capitalist identity and policy.

What does this say about American culture that it is so inundated with imagery which symbolically subjugates populations who have been oppressed and survived through attempted genocide? It speaks to the success colonization has had on indoctrinating our “color blind” “post racial” society into ongoing imperialism in such a matter that celebration of genocide is normalized. It speaks to the continued genocide that many are complicit in; from perpetuation of stereotypes through erasure, the pillaging of cultural identity through cultural appropriation to blatant exploitation of native resources. Ultimately these seemingly shallow “issues” of stereotypes have causation with statistics and realities of colonial violence.

Many mitigate dead Native depictions by saying well “they just look cool.” But the effects of erasure through Dead Native stereotype are explicit every time someone rejects a real living Native American’s identity by saying: “You don’t “look” like an Indian” or, “I thought all the Indians were dead.”Comment:  For more on the message of dead Indians, see "Dreamcatcher and Skull" Clothing Line and Kanye's T-Shirts Feature Indian Skulls.

For more on Indians as zombies and vice versa, see "Zombies Are the New Indians" and What the Zombie Trend Means.

Kanye's thunderbird jackets

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West Wear Thunderbird Jackets After WeddingIn photos released to E! Entertainment Television, power couple Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are seen wearing leather jackets that feature a thunderbird design and the words "Just" (on Kanye) and "Married" (on Kim). The two were wed in a ceremony in Italy on Saturday.

The thunderbird is a character in stories told by Native Americans for centuries, and artistically speaking it's one of the most widespread symbols in Native culture, a component of the iconography of numerous Indian tribes. According to Complex.com, the jackets were made by Schott and the thunderbird design was created by Wes Lang, an artist whose work mashes up images from a familiar set of sources, including tattoo culture, pinup art, and Grateful Dead aesthetics. And yes, American Indians are among Lang's obsessions--merchandise he designed for Kanye's "Yeezus" tour included t-shirts featuring a skeleton wearing a feather headdress.

Lang's works on paper are typically a mixture of painting and drawing, and sometimes have elements of collage. Here's a typical example, "The Pagent" (from weslang.blogspot.com), which features tipis, a tomahawk, and the lightning bolt (also a feature of the thunderbird design) in addition to portraits of Indians and an Indian skeleton.

The jackets seem like innocent examples of appropriation until you look at designer Lang's artwork (below). Dani Miller spells out the problems here:

Kimye Appropriation Representative of U.S. Pop Culture’s Obsession with Native American Extinction

By Danielle Miller“The only good Indian is a dead one”… Although Native Americans are alive and thriving celebrities and fashion companies would rather depict Natives as extinct while continuing to commit appropriation of various tribal cultural items and symbols.

“Kill the Indian save the man” along with the previous quotation were both sentiments upheld by Richard Pratt, the man who opened Carlisle boarding school in 1879 and implemented assimilation of Native Americans.

I questioned how aware of this history Kanye was with the Yeezus shirt picture which included the caption “God Wants you” under a Native corpse. I fail to see how anyone can interpret this depiction or any other works by Wes Lang of as acts of “good intentions.” Pratt was good intentioned in his relations with Natives so that proves just how lethal “good intentioned” romanticism can be.

While many claim our nation has come far from this horrible period in history the obsession to erase Native people continues.And:The most recent escapade of Kim and Kanye was the appropriation of the thunderbird symbol on their jackets depicted in one of their wedding photos. The hypocrisy of the situation was reinforced when Kanye went on his usual tirade to criticize the way the media depicted him through tabloids and SNL skits. If he wants people to empathize with his family being misrepresented why can’t he do the same for the Native communities he appropriates from?

And what is up with Kanye’s choice to uphold racism by Wes Lang, who has not only created artwork offensive to Natives, but has also used blackface?

In one interview Lang revealed his reasoning behind the images along with his privileged sense of entitlement:

“I like to take American history and then completely ignore it. I come at it visually, taking images and telling my own story. I did a bunch of blackface stuff a couple of years ago. That was a little touchy. I wasn’t doing it to piss people off. I was doing a work about Abraham Lincoln, and I came across these images of little mammies. The images were striking and simple, and I was attracted to them.” DC: So you’re attracted to loaded imagery? WL: I’m covered in it, personally. [indicates his tattoos of women, skulls, crosses, and Indians] I’ve always been a collector of weird imagery, even when I was little.” DC: Do you think you’re challenging the audience when you draw a figure in blackface? Do you trust that they’ll know where you’re coming from? WL: I’m taking it out of its context and putting it into my context and hoping that people can understand that I’m not glorifying this stuff.”

While Lang recognizes that he is placing it in his “own context” he is completely disregarding the fact that it is not his place to appropriate racist images or to “reframe” them; by doing so he trivializing racism and white washing history. Just the concept of reframing racism from colonial white lens is problematic in itself.

The way Lang describes “Indians” as part of the imagery he listed as “weird” shows his complete disconnect with Native people. Categorizing Natives with skulls crosses and weird imagery is just as bad as the way people categorize Natives with other fictional groups to justify their stereotypes.Comment:  Saying you're "taking things out of context" and using them in art doesn't absolve you of responsibility. Lang's appropriations aren't much different from a racist's view of Indians as dead and gone. They're the umpteenth example of the vanishing Indian stereotype.

Even if Lang is commenting on the mainstream view of Indians, he's doing it poorly. His headdresses and teepees reinforce the ignorant beliefs held by most people. They're akin to posting pics of Indians mascots and saying, "Look!" As if that alone would tell us something.

I'm not seeing much difference between the work of Lang and any ignorant stereotyper. As I always say, if you can't tell the difference, there is no difference. Lang's depictions of dead Indians, "little mammies," or whatever are problematical at best and racist at worst.

That Kanye continues to use this problematical artist's work suggests what he thinks about Indians. If you endorse someone with an ignorant view of Indians, what does that make you? An ignoramus also?

For more on the subject, see Kanye's T-Shirts Feature Indian Skulls.

Cry, Trojans! in redface

A play here in Los Angeles stirred up a protest soon after it premiered:The Wooster Group: CRY, TROJANS! (Troilus & Cressida)
February 27 to March 9

The Wooster Group’s newest production, Cry, Trojans!, tackles the Trojan side of Shakespeare’s dark and scabrous Trojan War play about sincere love corrupted and the downfall of a noble hero. The piece originated as a co-production between The Wooster Group and the Royal Shakespeare Company for the World Shakespeare Festival, presented in conjunction with the 2012 London Olympics. In that version, the RSC played the Greeks and the Group played the Trojans. Director Elizabeth LeCompte and the Wooster Group have converted the collaboration into an independent piece, reimagining the Trojans as a pastiche fictional tribe of early Americans struggling to assert its dignity in the face of doom.

For more information and tickets:
http://www.redcat.org/event/wooster-group-4

Funded in part by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Facebook event generated a lot of comments from Natives and others:The commodification that your show makes from ‪#‎redface‬ is immoral and an ethical violation towards ALL indigenous peoples who occupied this land from time immemorial. Cancel the show!

Do you actually have a show using redface makeup in 2014 or did I just have a bad dream? Please respond to community criticism. Can you not cast Native or minority actors? Who thought this was a good idea? Trying to be "edgy"? Can we contact the NEA about this?

Your description states -->"....fictional tribe of early Americans struggling to assert its dignity in the face of doom"<-- Guess what folks, there are REAL native tribes in this country RIGHT_NOW struggling to assert our dignity in the face of as*hats that seem to think it is okay to parade around in REDFACE and continue the harm of stereotyping of native Americans for others entertainment. Shame on you people, shame.... I deeply admire TWG's work. But no longer. I walked out of tonight's show because I felt like I was attending the avant-garde theater's equivalent of a red face frat theme party. While I've studied and written about the long traditions of racism in the experimental as well as mainstream arts, I was ill-prepared for this barefaced reversion to red face as an attempt to revise Shakespeare's revision of Greek tragedy. Yes, I "got" the attempts at postmodern, postracial irony and farce, e.g. the repetition of the line "John Wayne's teeth" from Chris Eyre's movie Smoke Signals, the use of what looked like anthropological footage of Natives, etc. But in the end TWG's message is that white people think they can do anything. Especially to Native peoples. This kind of racism should be unthinkable. What does it take to see Native peoples as human beings? Cancel the show. Please cancel this show. This is a mockery of the lives and struggles of actual Native people and it is frankly disgusting.So I would like an explanation to how you believe this display of red face would ever be acceptable? If you are really all that ignorant that is pitiful. I hope you didn't do this to bait for attention. If negative press is what you intended then prepare to get plenty of it. It's in everyone's best interest to cancel this atrocity.

Really? Redface? That's not "edgy" and "innovative," it's tired old tripe. Oh, and racist; let's not forget about that.

Stop this, and donate any money you may have already made to Native peoples who continue to experience the crushing effects of the genocide this play reproduces along with ongoing commodification of their cultures for the benefit of other people.

The National Endowment for the Arts sponsorship only spreads the blame for this vile racism. Cancel this show immediately. It is not ok for settlers to mock indigenous targets of settler colonial genocide. Why use a "pastiche fictional tribe" of natives (<-- what you mean when you use the colonizer's term "Americans")? Natives today, throughout Turtle Island, are engaged in struggles to assert dignity in the face of settler genocide. Amongst these populations are playwrights. If the topic interests you then you should have supported indigenous artists rather than dressing settlers up in redface. It's appalling. Now you only create another horror for Natives "to assert their dignity in the face of."

One commenter tried to reason with the Wooster Group:I know it can be hard to admit that you've made a mistake in public, especially when that mistake involves perpetuating racist stereotypes about indigenous peoples. And I also realize that it's going to be uncomfortable for you to cancel the event that you've put so much time and energy into.

But you need to not just think about your own discomfort, and start thinking about the discomfort that your racist redface act is going to cause for Native peoples. You need to think about the violent oppression that they experience on a daily basis as a result of these types of racist stereotypes leading people to see them as less than human. Yours is the discomfort of admitting a mistake and cancelling a show. Theirs is the discomfort of genocide and racist abuse.

Please listen to the voices of all of the Native folks that have posted here, and have enough respect for them to cancel the show. Make an apology, take this as a hard lesson and a chance for self-reflection and educating yourself about racism and Native struggles, and learn how you can act in solidarity to stop the genocide of Native peoples in the future.I'm not sure anyone protesting the show has actually seen it. Most went by the description (above) and the photos:





A few caveats:

Since the play is an adaptation of Shakespeare, I doubt there was much room for a Native writer to come in and rewrite it.

Since the play is funded "in part by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts," I doubt the Wooster Group would cancel the play and give back the grant. It's much more likely to ride out the controversy.

Since the play is showing only for 11 days, there's no point to a boycott. The run will be over before anyone can organize anything.

I gather the Wooster Group originated this show with the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. The Wooster Group did the Trojan half of Trolius and Cressida. It then brought this subset of the play to New York and Los Angeles on its own.

I also gather that people have contacted the Wooster Group and complained about the show at each stage--to no avail. The Wooster Group is ignoring the controversy, or perhaps stoking it to increase ticket sales.

The short run works against activists who would protest the play. But I wouldn't waste too much time trying to reason with the Wooster Group. If the play appears again, I'd set up protests outside the theater, start a social media campaign, and contact the group's nonprofit and corporate sponsors.

Critics are right

Other than the futility of some of the responses, the critics are right on. To reiterate the arguments:

A "pastiche fictional tribe" means a clichéd Plains tribe of teepees and half-naked warriors. This serves to homogenize the Americas' hundreds of cultures into one, to erase their wide-ranging diversity. That's stereotypical.

Using a "tribe of early Americans struggling to assert its dignity in the face of doom" places Native people in the past and assumes they were fated to die and disappear. That's stereotypical.

Needless to say, most tribes survived and are thriving today. This play reinforces a commonly held but false impression of Native history.

Using white actors dressed in redface implies that being Indian is all about how you look and dress. Like any Halloween costumes, it makes a mockery of real tribal customs and practices. That's stereotypical.

These "Indians" look so phony that they're laughable. Anyone who knows Native cultures would think this was a burlesque show out of the vaudeville era, not a serious play.

Below:  Looks like "Indians" fighting and dying tragicially.

Hill Valley in Back to the Future III

In an early scene in Back to the Future III, Marty McFly drives the DeLorean through a mural of savage Indians beneath a drive-in movie screen. He materializes in the past in Monument Valley where an actual band of savage Indians (seemingly) pursues him.

Marty hides from them in a cave. Then he sees an army troop riding after them. The implication is that the Indians weren't pursuing Marty. They just happened to be fleeing in Marty's direction.

I don't quite buy this. The Indians are whooping and waving their weapons as if they're attacking. You don't waste that kind of energy when you're fleeing someone.



What impression would most viewers have of this bit? There's no way to know, but I'd guess most would think, "Savage Indians on the attack!" Few would think, "Innocent Indians fleeing from an unjust pursuit." No one would think, "These Indians could put on suits, take a train to Boston, enroll at Harvard, and get an advanced degree." Which was theoretically possible at the time.

Where is Hill Valley?

I think I made these points once before, long ago. But I recently watched the movie and noticed something else. Its problems go beyond the Indian chase scene.

Here's my running commentary on the movie:

Watching Back to the Future III. Plains Indians on the warpath in Monument Valley? That's racist!

So the McFly "farm" is a short distance from where Marty emerged in the past? That would put it square in the middle of the Navajo reservation.

I don't think much farming takes place in that arid region. And the McFlys wouldn't have had title to the land. Awkward!

Don't you hate it when your great-grandfather pees on you? Yep.

So Hill Valley is supposed to be in Northern California? But Marty walked to it from the McFly farm in what seems to be a few hours.

Either Hill Valley is in northern Arizona on the Navajo rez, or this is a huge continuity error. The town should be roughly where Kayenta is, and mostly populated by Navajos.

Are there any significant hills or valleys within walking distance of Monument Valley? I don't think so. The whole concept of this town is flawed.

Marty and Doc retrieve the DeLorean, which confirms that they're still near Monument Valley...on the Navajo rez.

Still haven't seen a single Navajo. Odd considering the town is in the heart of Navajo country.

Conclusion

What this movie does is whitewash US history. White folks have "settled" the land and treat it as if it's theirs. There are no conflicts over land rights or other treaty rights in this phony version of the West.

Indeed, white persons, places, and things are the only ones that exist. Not only are the Indians vanishing, they've vanished (except for a few stragglers on horseback).

In short, the white filmmakers assure the white viewers that America belongs to them. Whoever owned it before, they're gone.

Alive video stirs controversy

This music video titled Alive has generated controversy in Indian country.



An article provides some background:

'Alive' Director: Blackfeet Thought Rez Drug Abuse Story 'Needed to Be Told'

By Vincent SchillingThe music video for Chase & Status' dance track "Alive," directed by Welsh filmmaker Josh Cole, has inspired a tremendous reaction from Indian country. Just read through the comments on the ICTMN Facebook page and you'll get the picture--some viewers have praised the clip for its tale of drug abuse on the rez and spiritual redemption, while others feel it's exploitative and disrespectful of the ceremonies it depicts. The video, which shows dramatized drug use, crime and ceremony, was shot on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Cole has received considerable attention in Indian Country.

Cole filmed the video on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, Montana, and worked with Blackfeet tribal members during the course of its creation.Dueling responses

Chase Iron Eyes waxing self-righteously on FILMING THE SUNDANCE CEREMONY, WTF?!Now the Blackfeet music video is a bit more complex because it involves legitimate “Indian subjects.” I hope the video goes global because of its raw power in portraying the struggles we face coming up in an imposed poverty culture. The protagonist of the video succumbs to the ills that are a symptom of this imposed poverty (substances and violence) only to find salvation through the sober, clear life of ceremony that his ancestors sacrificed their own lives for. Yet, we cannot fail to pass criticism on the filmed portrayal of the sundance ceremony if we are to be morally upright in our ability to hold that position with respect to the sanctity of ceremonial practice world-wide or at least with respect to the ceremonies that the Creator trusted us with.

We should not film sacred ceremonies. What is sacred? You know; your spirit knows. You know when you are stepping over the line. Filming an actual sundance is clearly stepping over the line. If you want to spectate at the act of piercing or sun dancing you should not be able to do it on a god damned computer or any digital media for that matter. Haul your ass to an actual sundance; and when you're there don’t spectate, participate even if you consider yourself in the “audience” (support circle). Although we cannot fully incriminate the creators of this video because it’s not patently offensive as is the film of the actual ceremony, we still must state publicly, for the purpose of guiding the future of Indigenous country that filming or even dramatizing (in human form for the purpose of filming) the conducting of sacred acts and ceremonies such as the offering of a connected pipe and the sundance should never be taken lightly and altogether avoided. We only do these things to connect to the universe, not to make objects of them.Other than that, though:[T]o see those images (even in dramatized form) is unsettling but I love your video--it’s pure badass.When You Look in the Mirror, What Do You See? Are You Free to See an Individual Who is Free? A Response to Chase Iron Eyes Sundance Ceremony Column

By Sophia MarjanovicThe take away message of the “Alive” video is that it is ok to view just another dead Indian girl and boy. I know death at an early age happens on our reservations more often than anyone is comfortable. While the artists who filmed the video want to help, just like the case of the Mastodon attempt to help us, don’t help. As an outsider, you are not aware enough of the dynamics through which we are dealing in our struggles. You have come along lately and see some disturbing things, but you are not raising awareness among us. If you think you are helping us by merely sharing the narratives of despair to show what colonization has done to some individuals in our communities, you are not helping. By turning addicts into rock stars, you are not helping our communities heal. Instead, you are showing people that it is ok to be an addict because we will eventually get our 15 minutes of fame to cry a river over our plight. You are exploiting the poverty and the altered state of mind among some vulnerable members of our community for your personal gain, usually as a sympathy ploy to get others who sympathize for us to give you something in return. This is not ok. Our vulnerable individuals in their struggles deserve better than that. Indian Country does not need a Sally Struthers crying for us and asking for donations to charities that too often do not get back to the communities who need them.Filmmakers defend video

The people involved in making the video have defended it. First, Vincent Schilling interviewed Josh Cole, the Welsh director:How did you first come up with this concept of using a Native Reservation story for this video?

As a reformed drug addict I follow stories around the world where the worst drug abuse is common. It’s my mission with my career to try to steer people into recovery as a thanks to those that helped me with my own addiction. As such I was shooting a story about a reformed Hispanic gangster turned graffiti artist in LA and I met a Native American rapper who grew up on a reservation.

I was shocked to hear stories about the reservations--in Europe there is no concept generally about contemporary Native Americans. I then started researching and put together a story based on the stuff I was told about. I decided I would really like to tell Europe how difficult it is for Native Americans in modern America because most people have no idea who they are. All my work is about the beauty that comes from hardship and I wanted to tell the story of the spiritual awakening of a drug addict in a Native American community.

What were the reactions about this young man turning toward good then becoming a “martyr” as you put it?

I felt that the film needed an emotional finish. When people are moved they remember what they have seen. Plus it actually is somewhat of a happy ending because he is reunited with his girlfriend in the afterlife. There's also a message in there about the way your past follows you--that no matter how much you reform you can't always avoid who you were before. I have lost many many friends to the illness of addiction and this is often my experience.

Many Native people are concerned about using Native Americans in a romantic way as a form of poverty porn or sensationalism, what is your response?

I strive against this type of imagery myself and I don't think my work inspires pity at all. Everywhere I shoot I work very closely with the actual community to tell their story in the most authentic and meaningful way possible. Everywhere I've ever shot I can go back to and work again.Cole also posted this interview in his blog:

Alive VideoThere has been some controversy surrounding the video and one of our collaborators, Sterling HolyWhiteMountain wanted to have his say...

1. What did you do for the Alive video? How should we describe you?

I was the casting director, a production assistant, one of the primary in-community contacts, occasional truck driver, and loudest laugher on the set.

2. Why did you get involved in its production?

I got involved because I wanted to be part of this video that was going to be shot in my homeland, in the place that made me and is always with me no matter where I go or what I do. But also because I thought I might be able to offer advice / provide ideas regarding authenticity–and I mean that in the broadest sense. I'm fully aware of the difficulties American Indians face when it comes to issues of misrepresentation, and so if I can do something to alleviate that I will. Also, because this is a world where people need work to survive, I needed a temporary job to get me through the end of the fall semester.

3. What did you think of the storyline when you saw it? How do you think it portrays your community?

The storyline brings up a difficult question for me, and that is–how would I like our community to be seen? From an internal, on-rez perspective (namely mine), I think the story is eminently familiar, in part because various types of addiction are a serious problem in many reservation communities. Ours is no exception. And the juxtaposition of the healing power of traditional ceremony with these difficulties is also familiar–it's relatively easy to find people on the Blackfeet Reservation whose lives have been turned around in a good way through ceremony. I think this is a really important aspect of the narrative–that this young man, lost in drugs and violence, turns his life around through involvement in ceremony. People might say, Well, yeah, but he dies in the end–but everyone dies in the end, the question for me is how you lived the time you had. One of the difficulties, I think, comes in that this issue of addiction and poverty and violence on reservations is, in a way, a common story in Indian Country. Some Indian people are going comment that they want to see another aspect of our various communities represented–because reservation communities are in fact very diverse, and very complex, and there are many things, some quite beautiful and some quite banal, that get very little attention when it comes to national or global media. And I agree–these things do need to be shown. I want them shown as much or more than others. I’m a writer–my head is full of stories I think need to be told, and all of them are stories from Indian Country, and all of them are stories I want told as truthfully as possible. And sometimes truth hurts, but also in my experience healing usually begins with the pain of recognition.

So herein lies one of the great difficulties of the social demand for "realistic" representation vs. artistic/narrative demand. While there is shared space between the two, they are, I think, fundamentally different perspectives with ultimately different goals. The social demand is one of improved human rights, improved living conditions, better political and legal representation, etc.–and all of these things without ambiguity. There’s no way for me to call myself an American Indian and not be concerned with these things. On the other hand, the artistic demand is primarily a demand for successful art, and that demand falls into the realm of aesthetics–a realm that, for what it's worth, is almost always immediately thrown out when discussions like this come up. If the video weren't aesthetically successful, I'm not sure we'd be having this discussion at all, because it wouldn't be worth our attention. But because Josh Cole et al. shot a successful video, we’re having this dialogue which has nothing to do with the aesthetics of the thing. Ironic, to say the least. This is also why the goals of agents of social change are not necessarily going to line up with the aims of an artist, native or non-native. And this difference is why there is likely always going to be a degree of conflict between their disparate aims. Long story long, what I'm saying is that while the content of the video may in some ways be a relatively common story in Indian Country, to say that kind of story should not be shown simply because it's common is ridiculous. The answer to the problems of misrepresentation is not to stop representing difficult things that are still happening in Indian Country–the answer is more and more representation of the many different things that are happening.Some discussion of these issues on the Native Appropriation page in Facebook, with my comments:

I think a problem with HolyWhiteMountain's position is that it doesn't address Cole's intent. What did Cole say his intent was: to expose conditions on the rez, or to make successful art? If Cole had any desire to fulfill a "social demand," then all the criticism about "poverty porn" is on point. And HolyWhiteMountain is missing that point by suggesting we can't judge art by social or political standards.

No more dead Indians

Native filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers isn't buying the Alive defense. In her blog, she addressed Cole and his arguments:

"Alive" or Better Off Dead?You mentioned in your interview with ICT that you wanted to “tell Europe how difficult it is for Native Americans.” That’s a great idea and all but let me try and put this into context for you. Poverty, lateral violence, substance abuse and addiction are all a daily reality for Indigenous communities across this continent. These issues come as a result of a violent colonial history and a violent colonial present. But many non-Indigenous people cannot or will not put two and two together. Instead, they choose to view these issues as inherent to native people.

The problem with the story you chose to tell is that it is a narrative that has been told time and time again. It depicts a losing battle with poverty, addiction, and violence. It’s a narrative about the dying race, the vanishing Indian. And who does this narrative blame for the death of a people? The Indians themselves. This narrative ignores the complexities of colonialism and all those implicated within the colonial narrative. In telling the story this way, you ignore the reasons behind this young man’s addiction and his community’s struggles.

Again, as you mentioned, several of the CrazyDogs connected with the script because it was similar to their own story. In fact, the story is quite like my brother’s story. However, he is now acing his second year of university, he is the president of the Native American Students Association at this university, and he is actively involved in the Sundance societies. He is also expecting his first child with his beautiful Blackfoot partner who is attending university as well. You see, he didn’t end up dead and neither did those CrazyDogs you worked with. So I find it quite interesting that the song is titled “Alive” yet you leave us with a dead Indian at the foot of Chief Mountain, one of our most sacred sites. Was it really necessary to kill your main character? Wasn’t one dead Indian enough for you? You sure do make the afterlife look appealing in comparison to reality and your statement on this being a “happy ending” is a bit too simplistic. I hope you understand that your choice in ending plays into another very familiar narrative for us–that our people are better off dead. That “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Our people don’t need to see another dead warrior. What you could have shown is a story like my brother’s or all those living and breathing members of the CrazyDogs. A story that give us hope and that doesn’t leave us feeling completely defeated.

We should also discuss Indigenous representation. You see, native people have been represented and misrepresented onscreen since the time the very first moving picture was made. We’ve seen the stoic Indian, the drunk or strung-out Indian, the helpless Indian maiden, the broke Indian, and the dead Indian a thousand times before. We get it. We’ve got problems that need fixing but it’s not your job to fix them.

Wrongheaded obsession with "vanishing" tribes

The wrongheaded obsession with “vanishing” indigenous peoples

Photographer Jimmy Nelson is just the latest artist to act like indigenous groups are about to die out

By Elissa WashutaNelson’s website presents a portrayal of an explorer who “found the last tribesmen and observed them” and an artist who serves as “the last visual witness of flawless human beauty.” While these words have a romantic resonance, Nelson’s mission is built on a horrifying assumption: that these indigenous peoples are on the brink of destruction. He couldn’t be more wrong.

The Māori people, featured in Nelson’s book, make up 15 percent of New Zealand’s total population, and the 2012 census estimate of 682,100 Māori residents is part of a consistent upward trend. Seven seats of the Parliament of New Zealand are designated as Māori. Their communities have been impacted by colonization and the resulting warfare, disease, land loss and assimilation. But, although contact brought changes, far from being erased, the Māori people continue to thrive.

Nelson approached his subjects with a predefined notion of indigenous authenticity, which doesn’t align with the realities that have faced indigenous communities since time immemorial. In an interview with CNN.com, Nelson says that he grew up in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Gabon and Cameroon, and feels that Africa “has lost the majority of its ethnicity and authenticity. … [W]hat I saw in my childhood is not there anymore.” Similarly, Nelson told Time that he chose to leave out North American tribes because they haven’t retained their heritage. To critique the “authenticity” of another culture from the outside is a dangerous practice, and Nelson’s evaluation of communities during his lifetime fails to account for the flux experienced over thousands of years. Too often, onlookers expect indigenous peoples to remain static for the entirety of their existence, failing to consider their long histories of change before contact with outsiders.

The questioning and judgment of indigenous authenticity often have their roots in appearance. By treating people as art, Nelson plays into this notion. In his photos of the Kalam people of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, headdresses, necklaces and body ornamentation serve as visual representations of identity. Besides Nelson’s written descriptions of each group he photographs, visual cues are all we can use to form our understanding. He calls himself a “collector of truth,” but how much truth can fit into a work rendered in two dimensions, telling visual stories curated by an outsider? Personal strongholds of identity are often invisible.

Nelson’s publication of “Before They Pass Away” is reminiscent of Edward S. Curtis and his series “The North American Indian.” Beginning in the 1890s, Curtis took more than 40,000 photographs of North American Native peoples. While Curtis has been celebrated for his visual documentation of peoples and ways of life that are said to be gone, he is criticized for his manipulation of shots and subjects. Around 1910, he retouched a photo of Little Plume and his son Yellow Kidney, two Blackfoot men, to remove an alarm clock Curtis thought to be inconsistent with the otherwise traditional image.

In interviews, Nelson frequently cites Curtis as an inspiration for his work. Curtis’s posing of his subjects is treated as a scandal, but Nelson freely admits to the New York Times, “I directed the majority of the pictures, which Curtis also did.” While the people Curtis photographed often appear in their finest ceremonial attire, Nelson continues, “And 80 percent of the people I photographed are dressed as they do daily. About 20 percent are in their Sunday best.”

Curtis made significant contributions to the tribes he photographed by documenting points in their histories. In 1910, he photographed my great-great-grandmother’s half-sister, Virginia Miller, or Whylick Quiuck, with her canoe. He also recorded her account of the hanging of her father, Tumalth of the Cascades, by the U.S. government. Just a year earlier, the young Cascade chief added his signature to the Kalapuya Treaty of 1855. Virginia’s story of false accusations that led to her father’s death would have been lost without Curtis’s documentation. This is an important piece of the history of the Cascade people and of my family.

Although Curtis’s body of work stands as a contribution to tribal histories, he may have done just as much to further the notion of Native peoples as a vanishing race. According to Timothy Egan’s recent Curtis biography “Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher,” in 1907, Curtis wrote in a photo caption, “The thought which this picture is meant to convey is that the Indians as a race, already shorn of their tribal strength and stripped of their primitive dress, are passing into the darkness of an unknown future.” Of the Hopi, he wrote, “There won’t be anything left of them in a few generations and it’s a tragedy.” More than a hundred years later, the Hopi people continue to live in Hopituskwa, where they have retained their culture, religion and language.Comment:  For more on "vanishing Indians," see Adrienne Keene Reviews Lone Ranger and Vanishing Cultures Photography Project.

Adrienne Keene reviews Lone Ranger

Spoiler alert! Don't read this if you don't want to know what The Lone Ranger is about.

Here's Adrienne Keene's take on the movie. She's as reliable as me on the subject of Native stereotyping, so you can take her criticisms to the bank.

I saw The Lone Ranger so you don’t have toThe very first scene we are presented with an image of a Native person, in a museum–which presumably we’re supposed to critique, but there’s no questioning of Tonto’s position there. To me it reinforces the idea that all the Indians are dead, relics of the past, which is actually a theme throughout. This Indian is so silly and backward he trades a dead mouse for a bag of peanuts, doesn’t even know how to eat peanuts, and is feeding a bird, but it’s dead. Even the child knows that’s wrong. So this is the “new” Tonto? Definitely an improvement, amiright? (That was sarcasm. In case you missed it.)

Here’s the part you wanted to hear about, and I’m trying to think of the best way to frame it. Despite the Comanche involvement in the film, there’s still a lot of problems with conflating all Indians together. First off, we’re in “Texas,” except Texas is set in the iconic Monument Valley–Navajoland. Tonto from the start talks about being a “Wendigo hunter” and that the bad guys are “Wendigos” and that “nature is out of balance.” Wendigos are a Eastern Woodlands (Algonquian/Cree/Ojibwe) thing. Though they did get the stories kinda right, despite it being the completely wrong region/tribe. I’m not trying to argue that the movie should have been 100% “authentic”–whatever that means–but to tout your Native involvement and have a central plot point be totally wrong just felt weird to me.

Also general Tonto comments: Depp’s “accent” is hilariously inconsistent, and whenever he has more than a few words to say, it would veer into an almost stereotypical Italian-sounding thing, and for not speaking English, his vocab is great. He’s also very much the mystical-magical-Indian, an early scene shows him in jail making his bird come alive by singing and flapping his arms, he talks to the horse (and the horse talks back), he talks about LR being a “spirit walker,” etc.

After a false start where we see Rebecca (Lone Ranger’s love interest and his brother’s widow) protecting her homestead from raiding Comanches complete with war whoops and flaming arrows–but wait, they weren’t really Indians, it was Cavenish’s (the bad guy) men just playing Indian, we finally get to meet the Comanche camp after they capture the LR and Tonto. Here’s where we get to see the Native actors involved in the film, and the first glimpse of any Indians besides Tonto. Guess what they’re doing? Preparing for war, dancing around a fire, of course. Lots of yelping, lots of drumming, lots of masked, painted, and darkened Native faces.

Skipping forward, we watch the Comanche attack come over a hillside in the shadows, you know what it looks like, and there’s a moment as a viewer of “ohhh damn, watch out you silly railroad and calvary dudes, you’re about to get owned by some Comanches!” because they look so intimidating and like there are far more of them then the white guys. But no, the Cavalry mows them down with an early machine gun, and we watch as all of the Comanches are slaughtered, including a close up of Saginaw getting stabbed.

It’s very much a Guns, Germs, and Steel type moment–even though the Indians outnumber the whites, they’re not technologically advanced enough to win, and they are too dumb (or full of backward “honor”) to realize they’re headed for a death trap.

Finally we come to the end of the story. Tonto finishes telling it all to the little boy in the museum, and we see that he has put on a suit, holds a suitcase, and places a bowler hat over his crow (which he has continued to “feed” throughout the film). The boy gets momentarily distracted, turns back, and OMG again, Tonto’s gone! In return, a (live) crow flies out of the exhibit and at the screen. Then we cut to credits. Then, a few minutes later, we see Tonto wandering off into the vastness of Monument Valley, hobbling along, carrying his suitcase. He continues to walk, back to the camera, for the next 10 minutes as the credits go on, and on, and on. I guess we’re to assume his time as a “Noble Savage” has passed, and he’s returning to his unbridled wilderness, alone–but dressed as a white guy this time? This, like most of the movie, didn’t make any sense.

My theater had a bunch of kids in it. I kept thinking about what images they were leaving the theater with–and that left me upset and worried. Now an entire new generation is going to play the Lone Ranger and Tonto at recess, thinking Indians talk in incomplete and inconsistent pidgin English, think all Indians are dead, and that it’s ok to dress as an “Indian” for Halloween. While this might be a flash-in-the-pan film, it solidifies the continuing views of Native peoples as lesser, as relics of the past, as disappearing, as roadblocks to “progress.” Tonto might have been less of a sidekick and running the show, but in the end, the LR gets the girl and the glory, and Tonto ends up in a museum. How's that for a re-imagining?Comment:  Here's the beautiful Comanche territory in Texas per The Lone Ranger. Because all Indians are the same and live in the desert wilderness. In fact, I think I can see the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Apache from here.



For more on Johnny Depp, see Critics Agree: Lone Ranger Is Bad and New Tonto as Racist as Old Tonto

Vanishing Cultures photography project

Photographing Vanishing Cultures With a Huge Camera, Hoping for an Even Bigger Impact

By Alysa LandryA two-story-high photograph of Joe Yazzie towers over the viewer—every scar, wrinkle and hint of emotion on his face magnified. That face, larger than life, is the very essence of a Navajo man caught between traditional and modern worlds.

Yazzie’s portrait will greet the curious who come to see what promises to be the largest photo exhibit in history—not in terms of the number of photos, but in the size and resolution of those photographs.

Chicago-based photographer Dennis Manarchy is making photographs that dwarf most other prints: at 24 feet tall and with a resolution of 97,000 megapixels, he hopes each portrait will tell the story of one of America’s vanishing cultures.

“We’re going to start the exhibit with my portrait of Joe Yazzie, who is Navajo,” Manarchy says. “When you walk into the exhibit, you’ll see Joe. Your head will be smaller than his pupil. As you approach, you will be engulfed by him.”

That “total cultural immersion” is what Manarchy has in mind for the exhibit, which has been in the works for 12 years. “You’ll remember this for the rest of your life,” he says.

Manarchy plans to unveil his supersize, traveling exhibit, Vanishing Cultures: An American Portrait, by 2014. The exhibit space, which will be about two-thirds the size of a football field, will show America a snapshot of itself, Manarchy claims—a snapshot taken before some of the most precious and endangered cultures in the country deteriorate further.

“Portraits are powerful,” he explains, “but they are so much more powerful with stories. In America, there are essential cultures that are vanishing. The people aren’t vanishing, but the cultural identification is vanishing.”

Take Yazzie, for example. Born near Gallup, New Mexico, he attended boarding schools in which he was forbidden to use his native language. After boarding school, he relocated to Chicago, then was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War. In the process, Yazzie lost much of his Navajo culture. “When you leave your culture, when you’re very young and you move to the city, then when you go home, you don’t fit in,” Yazzie says. “You miss what you were supposed to be, what you were supposed to learn from your parents, your grandparents, the medicine men.”

Yazzie married an Italian woman after his wartime service. His two sons had little interest in the Navajo culture, and his 8-year-old grandson has no knowledge of it. “We are losing our tongue, our songs, our culture, our heritage,” he says. “It will not be brought back.

“This project is really about a face that’s going away soon,” Yazzie says. “They’re saying, You better get to know this face because you’ll never see it again. And it’s not just the face, but the story behind it.”

The portrait of Yazzie, 70, a graphic artist in Chicago, represents one of 50 cultures Manarchy hopes to capture on film during a year-long journey that will take him from the Inuit people in Alaska to the Cajun communities in the swamps of Louisiana. The project will include about a dozen American Indian tribes, many of which are experiencing loss of culture and language at alarming rates as the younger generations move to cities.

Manarchy is focusing on cultures that are intact and represent an important chunk of American history. His itinerary includes stops among the Amish of Pennsylvania, railroaders of West Virginia, cowboys of Idaho, motorcyclists of South Dakota and blues women of his hometown of Chicago. Tribes on the itinerary include the Chickasaw and Shawnee in Tennessee, the Comanche Nation in Texas, Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, Hopi in Arizona, Navajo in Utah, Northwest Indians in Washington, Blackfoot in Montana, Cheyenne in Wyoming, the Inuit in Alaska and the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Manarchy and his team plan to stay for a week or two each in 25 to 35 locations, shooting portraits of people representing 50 unique cultures that are being swallowed up or homogenized.

“The purpose of the project is to go to the home environments of different cultures,” project director Chad Tepley says. “Most of these people won’t travel 10 to 15 miles from their homes in their lifetimes, so it’s really important to get the camera to them.”

Manarchy, a commercial photographer with decades of experience, is looking to tell the stories behind every photo, and to preserve cultures with the biggest snapshots he can manage. For that, he insists he needs a big camera. His will fit snugly inside a semi-trailer and produce negatives that are six feet tall.

He also plans to produce documentary films and other educational materials about every culture he encounters. The finished exhibit will include portraits, filmed footage, the negatives and the giant camera itself, which weighs about one ton. “This will be a powerful educational tool,” Tepley says. “It will be a visual social studies class with videos of the cultures. It will be a very powerful way to show children what’s out there.”

The exhibit will be particularly poignant when it comes to teaching children about American Indians, Tepley says. The federal government recognizes 566 American Indian tribes today, though many children grow up believing tribes are the stuff of history or folklore. “They are not aware of the role these people played or the true perspective of how tribes have evolved,” Tepley adds.”

During the planning of the project, Tepley and Manarchy researched tribes to pinpoint the ones whose cultures were most intact. They enlisted help from an advisory committee, including members of several different American Indian tribes who are offering cultural advice and will introduce him and his camera to Native communities.

By its nature, the project is bringing various cultures together, says Wendy White Eagle, Ho-Chunk, a project advisor. “I think the conversation today is more important than ever about how everyone is connected,” she says.

Although the exhibit will preserve the cultures as they are being expressed now, the project is not meant to discount future generations who will continue to celebrate tradition. “The world is evolving, not [so] much vanishing,” White Eagle says. “There are people coming behind them, and the expression of the culture might be different, but the core values might not be.”

Natives respond

I quoted the article at length because it refers several times to the "vanishing" concept. This generated a lot of feedback on a Facebook thread started by Adrienne Keene of the Native Appropriations blog. She wrote:Wow, Edward Curtis 2.0? "Vanishing Cultures"? Looking for communities that have their culture most "intact"? Curtis did the same thing--he went to communities that had what he thought were "real" Indians, brought costumes, and physically manipulated photos to erase signs of modernity to fit his created image of Indianness. Glad to know we've come so far. The portraits are beautiful, but framing the project this way really bothers me.Others chimed in:Wait, I'm vanishing like Micheal J. Fox in Back to the Future?

Vanishing cultures? I don't see anything vanishing around these parts, except clean water thanks to mining. And fighting THAT would be a lot more beneficial than taking giant pictures of people's faces.

I like what the Ho-Chunk woman they interviewed said: “The world is evolving, not [so] much vanishing,” White Eagle says. “There are people coming behind them, and the expression of the culture might be different, but the core values might not be.”

I don't think we should be in the business of defining ourselves as having no future existence...

I would agree that using the word vanishing is a bit sensationalist, but I don't think his project is being used to exploit any culture such as Edward Curtis did. He might turn a profit after his 17 million dollar budget is covered, but he's attempting to use real images of real people and their stories.

"Vanishing" = unimportant...needs help... infantile...less than...failed...etc.

Agreed. Vanishing isn't accurate . . . and makes it seem less important to fight for their preservation.My thoughts on the subject:

White Eagle and the photographer himself both contradict the "vanishing" theme at points. But the article repeats the "vanishing" claim repeatedly as if it's a fact.

The writer and ICTMN should've taken a more critical look at the concept. They shouldn't have let a non-Native photographer define it for them.

As people involved in Indian country know, tribes and tribal organizations have launched many language and cultural preservation projects in recent decades. The influx of gaming money has greatly assisted these projects.

Obviously tribal cultures have evolved since Columbus arrived, Americans expanded across the continent, the Indian Wars ended, the government tried to assimilate and terminate tribes, and the modern era of pop-culture and media saturation began. Some cultures have vanished, and many are struggling with change. But some have remained strong, and some have come back with renewed vigor since the activist period of the 1960s and '70s.

So the "vanishing" concept--i.e., a straight line going downhill--is much too simplistic to capture the reality of Indian country. In graphical terms, you'd have lines going in all directions. Some trending down, some trending up, some with jagged peaks and valleys.

Giant photos = game-changer?

Also, I'm not sure how much the giant portraits will help. Edward Curtis didn't just do portraits. He photographed a lot of cultural scenes, some of which he staged. These photos arguably did more to document the changing cultures than his portraits did.

Manarchy talks about filming videos of the cultures, and those will help. But note that hundreds if not thousands of people are photographing and filming Indian country every day. Other than taking really big pictures, is Manarchy doing something they aren't?

The article makes it sound like Manarchy is riding to the rescue before the final death knell sounds. In reality, these cultures will continue with or without him. His project will be one of thousands documenting their evolution. In the grand scheme of things, I doubt it'll be a breakthrough or game-changer.

If you want to reverse cultural decline, a key factor is making kids excited about and proud of their traditional cultures. You do that by making it cool to be an Indian. By producing blockbuster movies or TV shows starring Native actors. Developing Native celebrities in music, fashion, or sports. Electing a Native president or appoint one to the Supreme Court. Things like that will have more of an impact than giant photographs in a museum, I bet.

For more on documenting Indians via photography, see Japanese Photographer Specializes in Codetalkers and Project to Photograph 562 Tribes.

100th anniversary of buffalo nickel

On Its 100th Anniversary, a Look at the History of the Indian-Head Nickel

By Rick HerediaSo why all this press for a slaughtered beast? Black Diamond was, at the time of his slaughter, one of the most famous animals in the United States. Just two years earlier, in 1913, his image was stamped onto the reverse side of the Indian head nickel. The nickel—75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel—made its debut on Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1913, 100 years ago. In the decades that followed, it became an Indian country icon.

At least one newspaper, the National Labor Tribune, believed Black Diamond had been dealt a great injustice. “The buffalo which served as a model for the nickel coin has been put to death,” it said. “Republics are notoriously ungrateful.”

The occasion for the nickel’s debut was the groundbreaking for the National American Indian Memorial, the dream/scheme (and it turns out, pipe dream) of Rodman Wanamaker, scion of the Wanamaker department store chain. Plans called for the memorial to have a colossal bronze statue of an Indian, 60 feet high on a 70-foot base, one arm raised, two fingers forming a V, greeting ships carrying immigrants and others arriving in New York. A museum and a warrior on horseback were also part of the design. The statue and all the rest were to be erected at Fort Wadsworth on New York’s Staten Island, just south of the Statue of Liberty. Staten Island, named for the Dutch parliament, the Staten-General, originally belonged to Lenape Indians, who repulsed the Dutch three times before the invaders were able to establish a settlement there.

Now, in 1913, the island was being invaded again. On a cold, bleak, wet day, just after noon, the fort’s batteries fired a 21-gun salute announcing the arrival of President William Howard Taft. Waiting to greet Taft were members of his cabinet, New York’s governor, New York City’s mayor, naval and military detachments and officers, including Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles, who had taken part in many of the U.S. Army’s campaigns against Plains Indians, had forced the surrender of Chief Joseph and spent exhausting months in the field chasing Geronimo.

On hand, too, patiently waiting in the mist, were more than 30 Plains Indian leaders and warriors, many of whom who had fought Miles and the U.S. Army. They were dressed in beaded buckskin and wore eagle feather headdresses. They included Plenty Coups, Drags The Wolf, Crane In The Sky, Little Wolf, Black Wolf, Wooden Leg, Red Arrow, Hollow Horn Bear and Two Moons.And:A few months later, in July 1913, Wanamaker sent out the last of three expeditions to Indian reservations promoting citizenship and fealty to the U.S. At the time, many Americans—even those who said they respected Indians, such as Wanamaker—thought American Indians were a vanishing race. Wanamaker believed that assimilation was their best hope for survival. (This, despite the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) findings that the Indian population was increasing. In 1890 the BIA counted 243,000 Indians. In 1900, that figure jumped to 270,000. In 1910, it stood at 305,000.)

Speaking at a press conference held when the citizenship expedition returned to New York in December 1913, Henry Roe Cloud, Winnebago, a Yale graduate known for his speaking skills, asked the question that must have been on the minds of many Indian leaders of the day. “Today, the American Indian finds himself in the midst of a great, complex civilization, and it is a national question whether this complex civilization will bear him down or be the means of his salvation,” Roe Cloud said, as quoted in The New York Times.

Once the nickel went into circulation, it was hammered. Critics complained that it lacked the grace and beauty of previous coins, including its predecessor, the Liberty nickel. But after 25 years, that coin had run its course, and treasury officials wanted to change the design. The New York Times said the new nickel was a “striking example of what a coin intended for wide circulation…should not be.” It said the coin was not pleasing to look at when shiny and new and “will be an abomination when it is old and dull.” One Times reader, H.P. Nitsua, said, “The new nickel is certainly a travesty on artistic effect,” and called the Indian’s feathers “barbaric headgear.”

The New York Sun called it an ugly coin.Fortunately, the nickel had a happy ending:The coin had a run of 25 years, from 1913 to 1938, when it was replaced by the Jefferson nickel. More than 1.2 billion Indian head nickels were minted; their total currency value was more than $60.5 million.

The National Indian Memorial never did get built at Fort Wadsworth. Wanamaker couldn’t come up with the money and soon enough, World War I grabbed the headlines. But the Indian head—or buffalo—nickel, outlived its critics to become one of the most admired coins the U.S. ever produced. Many have called it beautiful, and it has become iconic. In the early 1970s, an image of the nickel, Indian head showing, appeared on a protest poster that read the only Indian America ever cared about.

It has been incorporated into many types of jewelry, from earrings to belts. It adorns T-shirts, jackets and other clothing and is the logo for coin shops and other businesses. It has been made into guitar picks and used to decorate the bolt-action rifles and rifle slings. The image has been tattooed onto backs and shoulders. One artist, Peter Rocha, created a striking four-foot-by-four-foot image of the nickel in Fairfield, California using more than 9,500 jellybeans provided by Jelly Belly (see Rocha’s work at JellyBelly.com).

Many of the nickels are sold on eBay. The American Numismatic Association displayed Black Diamond’s mounted head at its 1985 convention, writes author David Lange in his book, The Complete Guide to Buffalo Nickels. The ANA, headquartered in Colorado Springs, will celebrate 100th anniversary of the nickel during National Coin Week, April 21 to 27. Its theme will be Buffalo Nickel Centennial: Black Diamond Shines Again.

Perhaps the greatest testament to the nickel’s popularity and endurance has come from the U.S. Mint, which resurrected the nickel in the form of the $50 American Buffalo gold bullion coin. When it was first sold in 2006, the mint’s price was $800. As of January 2013, the cost was $960.Comment:  This posting links the buffalo nickel to other bits of history: the proposed Indian statue on Staten Island, and the Wanamaker expeditions mentioned in my interview with Steven Lewis Simpson. All involved Rodman Wanamaker. It was a smaller world back then; anything involving America's Indian policy probably involved the same few people.

Let's discuss these items.

1) The Indian-head or buffalo nickel is much like a modern-day mascot. Twenty-three years after Wounded Knee, it was a way to "honor" Indians after their defeat. Americans came close to exterminating both Indians and buffalo, so this was a way to salve their consciences. "Look how brave and noble the Indian (and buffalo) was," the coin seemed to say. "Think about how they symbolized the strength and majesty of America. And not how we were slaughtering them just a few years ago."

2) The Staten Island statue would've served a similar purpose. "Look at the Indian welcoming people to America," observers might say. "The Europeans weren't invaders, they were guests. White men and Indians lived in peace and harmony (see our Pocahontas and Thanksgiving myths) until something went tragically wrong."

It would've been interesting if we'd had a giant status of an Indian instead of Liberty. I'm not sure if that would've been positive or negative. On the one hand, it would've become the most iconic Indian in the world. On the other hand, it would've whitewashed the white man's responsibility for breaking the treaties and stealing the land.

3)The Wanamaker expeditions did explicitly what the coin and proposed statue did implicitly. Namely, seal off the past and make America feel good about its conquests. People like Wanamaker wanted the Indians to assimilate and vanish from our history. We could remember them as noble warriors, but we were to forget they were sovereign entities with legal rights and natural resources. Indians were to become a comforting myth (again, like Pocahontas and Thanksgiving): the friendly guides who helped us "tame the wilderness." We wouldn't have had to trouble our consciences anymore.

Most of the Native stereotypes in our culture today--and there are millions of them--serve the same purpose. Whitewashing the past...salving our consciences...erasing our crimes. In other words, maintaining the status quo in which broken treaties and stolen land are the norm. It's all about confirming the white man's power and privilege to rule according to Euro-Christian standards.

All that from one little nickel.

For more on the buffalo nickel, see Indian Head Gold Dollars and Sports Logos = US Coins?

Below:  "Chief Two Guns White Calf, nickel model."

Tarantino: "Indians have more or less disappeared"

Quentin Tarantino on ‘Django Unchained’

By Jérôme VermelinYou’re generally not thought of as being ‘political’ but…

(Interrupting) Django is a political movie. Although first and foremost, it’s a great adventure. But it’s political. My aim was to take the audience back to 1800s, in the South, before the American Civil War, and to show how life really was for black people.”

Where did this desire to denounce the violence that occurred back then come from?

I honestly don’t know why no other director has tackled the issue before. Maybe it’s a topic people would rather avoid. But it will never go away. The eradication of American Indians and the enslavement of black people are two of America’s original sins. Indians have more or less disappeared but the black community is still very much here. As is America’s unease. It’s a stain, a scar on my country’s face. The movie has done really well in the US, and the debates it has sparked are very gratifying. Between black people, white people, between black and white people. Even those who didn’t like the film are talking about it.Comment:  Wow. This explains why he and other Hollywood filmmakers don't do films about Indians. They're not racist pigs, they're just ignorant twits. They don't realize that some five million Americans identify as all or part Native.

Reactions

Some reactions to this posting on Facebook's NativeCelebs page:Um Native Americans are still around WTF?

Someone PLEASE help Tarantino get the news. Help him learn the truth. I know he's only doing the best he can with what little he has been given to know.

Blinders on, check!

Wow, even someone in Australia is aware enough to know that American Indians HAVE NOT MORE OR LESS DISAPPEARED!! Tarantino please go for drive through, oh let's say Arizona!

Disappeared really Mr Tarantino haven't you looked out your car window?

If he doesn't see us in Hollywood, we are gone huh?

Did he EVEN THINK BEFORE he started flapping his MOONLIKE jaw???? Gawd! He sounds like Jay Leno trying to make a funny joke...then FAILS!!

Hard to believe an adult could say such a thing.

Dang.....some people do not bother to think. Nor do they even look around. What does Mr. T think a Mexican is or an Eskimo? And if he will take a drive through Oklahoma he will see a state full of those Native Americans he thinks are gone. Or a rez in the Dakotas where some blonde guy got snuffed by the ancestors of the people who still live there. Then he can drive down through Central and South America to the southern end and count how many brown eyed black haired people who have blood from 40,000 years of family there. Those brown skin people who people keep complaining about overrunning the US have been here for thousands of years.

Tarantino don't know what the hell he's talking about.For more on Tarantino's take on Indians, see Scalping on Tonight Show and Tarantino's Apache Warfare Fiction.

Canadian textbooks marginalized Natives

An interesting look at how Canadian textbooks handled Native history until recently:

To take a stand you have to stand up

By sincmurrMost Canadians have been taught little or nothing about the Indian Residential Schools. But they were probably taught something, one way or another, about the history of Canada and the role of Aboriginal peoples in that history. They were probably taught, for instance, that the history of North America began “in 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” or when John Cabot and Jacques Cartier landed on a small piece of land in the East of Canada, and claimed the entire place all the away to the West for a foreign power.

Penney Clark of the University of British Columbia, writes about how Aboriginal People are portrayed in English Canadian History Textbooks in her work entitled Teaching the Violent Past: History Education and Reconciliation. Dr. Clark divides the treatment of Aboriginal peoples in textbooks prior to 1970 into six general categories:

Aboriginal people as spectator or bystander–basically irrelevant to the main narrative of the text, and to the narrative of history of this country;

Aboriginal people as savage warriors; a danger lurking in the background of the settler story.

Aboriginal people as uniquely spiritual; followers of mystical beliefs, naïve to the forces at play around them and victim to their lack of astuteness.

Aboriginal people as problem;

Aboriginal people as protestor; and

Aboriginal people as invisible.

Nation-building has been the main theme of Canada’s history curricula for a long time, and Aboriginal people, except for a few notable exceptions trotted out as if to prove the rule, have been portrayed as bystanders, if not obstacles, to the enterprise of nation-building.Comparing the textbooks' treatment of Natives and non-Natives:Dr. Ken Osborne is a (former) Professor of Education at the University of Manitoba. His specialty has been the teaching of history, and he is writing a book about the history of the teaching of history in Canada. He says:In both English language and French-language textbooks the First Nations were typically assigned the textbook equivalent of a reserve: a segregated first chapter of a quasi-ethnographic nature in which they appeared to live in a timeless past that was now outdated and best forgotten. Before the 1970s, textbooks overwhelmingly saw Canadian history as beginning with the arrival of Europeans in North America. With the arrival of Europeans, the First Nations made an occasional cameo appearance in the early history of New France, in the context of the fur trade, briefly in the War of 1812, and finally as an obstacle to European settlement of the West.

Totally lost was any sense of Aboriginal culture as a successful adaptation to the physical environment and of Aboriginal life as self-sustaining and self-sufficient in its own terms.Dr. Osborne goes on to mention that even when comment was made about the presence of Aboriginal People, it was not always done in a positive light:Europeans had religion; Aboriginal peoples had superstitions and ‘strange ideas about the things around them.’ Europeans held ceremonies; Aboriginal people indulged in orgies. Europeans had technology; Aboriginal peoples used crude inventions. Europeans had doctors; Aboriginal peoples had medicine men who worked their cures, ‘by beating drums, dancing and howling.’And why this matters:The way Aboriginal peoples were represented in textbooks prior to the 1970s is important for two reasons.

First, many of today’s leading and prominent Canadians attended school and university in that era, long before educational authorities began to take their first critical look at curricula as it relates to Aboriginal peoples. That education has influenced each and every one of us. As an Aboriginal student it denied to me any sense of pride about the role of my ancestors in the history of this part of the world. For my non-Aboriginal classmates, it taught them that we were wild and savage and uncivilized, and that given the conditions of Aboriginal people in modern society, we had not advanced very far from that state. My non-Aboriginal classmates were taught to be proud of the accomplishments of their ancestors in taming this “wild” country and wresting it from the “savages.” They have been educated throughout their lives to take pride in their ancestors’ having established this wonderful nation known as Canada and to take pride in the advanced civilizations from which their ancestors came. This so, even though the 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes observed that the life of the English commoner of his day was “…solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

My education lacked such relevance for me, and this was so despite my success at it. I was a very good student, but my success came at a price. The education that I and others received taught us that my people were irrelevant. By implication it caused me to feel that I was too. It taught us to believe in the inferiority of Aboriginal people and in the inherent superiority of white European civilization, and in order to get the grades that I did, I was compelled to repeat that mantra. The educational system of my day did not teach us to respect Aboriginal people because it never told us anything about the Aboriginal presence in this country that showed the humanity of the people. We were treated as no more significant to the evolution of this country than the rocks and rivers and trees and wildlife. We were all educated to be the same, and if we, as Aboriginal students, rebelled, we were weeded out, or we weeded ourselves out. Of the dozens of Aboriginal students I started grade school with, few graduated from high school, even though they were equal or superior in intelligence to many of my fellow grads. Even my brother and sister did not graduate from high school, and there are members of my family who will happily tell you they were, and are, smarter than me. But though I, and other Aboriginal students, succeeded in that system, it was not without cost to our own humanity.Comment:  Apparently Canadian textbooks handled Native history about the same American textbooks handled it.

Since this essay is primarily about textbooks before 1970, I presume they've changed for the better. But the final point--being taught Natives were irrelevant--applies to more than just textbooks. We're still instilling that belief throughout our culture: via Indian mascots, hipsters in headdresses, phony movie portrayals, Maya apocalypse jokes, and much more. Every false or stereotypical depiction of Indians contributes to the overwhelming impression that they're savages--i.e., primitive people of the past who no longer exist.

For more on the subject, see Columbus Day Celebrates Conquest and "6 Ridiculous Lies" About Indians.