Construction of the Mythic Indian in Mainstream Media and the Demystification of the
Stereotype by American Indian Artists
Author(s): Gülriz Büken
Source: American Studies International, Vol. 40, No. 3 (OCTOBER 2002), pp. 46-56
Published by: Mid-America American Studies Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41279925
Accessed: 30-01-2019 16:55 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms
Mid-America American Studies Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Studies International
Construction of the Mythic
Indian in Mainstream Media
and the Demystification of the
Stereotype by American
Indian Artists
Giilriz Biiken
The representations of American Indians from the perspective of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) and within the context of historical discourse, convey native peoples as ary beings rather than flesh and blood ordinary humans with vices
and virtues, sufferings and joys, failures and accomplishments.
American natives have been branded as the "Bad Injun" or its terpart the "Good Indian," or identified with the "Ignoble Savage," "the marauding, hellish savage," or its alter ego, the romantic
reotype of the "Noble Savage," "the peaceful, mystical, spiritual
guardian of the land," in vogue again in 1990s. They are labeled as nomadic, monolithic, undifferentiated, idealized communities rather
than being acknowledged as individuals whose actual existence
deserves to be defined not only by their ethnic but also by their tural identity. Whether they were perceived as "traditionals," zen in the past, or as "celluloid Indians" who should be
Gtilriz Biiken is Associate Professor in the Department of History, Bilkent
versity, Ankara, Turkey. Currently as a Fulbright research scholar, she is affiliated
with the American Indian Studies Center, UCLA, California, U.S.A. Among her recent publications are the articles "Ironies of Fate: Contemporary Native can Art and Mainstream American Culture,' and "Backlash: An Argument against the Spread of American Popular Culture in Turkey."
phosed into "imitation Whites," they have always been conceived
as the "other" and categorized by the color of their skin. All these mythic fabrications "perpetuate outmoded stereotypes rather than the purported 'positive and heroic' stature of American Indians."1
Since the days of the first contact, but especially since 1840 when popular culture became "the defining medium for the image of the
Indian,"2 the fabrication of biased images, both the positive and
negative, of the American Indian have been detrimental to the tural heritage, cultural pride, cultural identity, and self-esteem of the native peoples. Popular culture, which "reflects the concerns of the White people but marginalizes and trivializes those of the ans," is instrumental in the fabrication of stereotypes that fit the needs of the mainstream society and its public memory. The "stereotypes
of the Indian" that are disseminated through popular culture, as
James Nottage notes, help on the one hand "to erase the individual and cultural identities of the Indian ... to assure everyone that all Indians are the same," and on the other to "condition the behavior
of the broader culture, even subconsciously"3 shaping people's
perceptions of "the other." Finally "the depiction of the Indian came a sustaining industry in popular culture."4 Joanna Bedard asks, "What then happens to a culture whose symbols are chosen by siders, by those who do not understand its deepest beliefs, tures and ways of life? What kind of interpretation of a society can come from symbols designed not to elevate conscious ing to the highest of that society's ideas but to reduce that standing to categories which debase or ridicule?" She contends, "the
opposite of empowering occurs. Feelings of rage, impotence and powerlessness are evoked"5 when symbols are reduced to
tures" rather than representing the dominant cultural values ished by the stereotyped society. Cultural symbols and icons are the mainstay of cultural survival and serve a vital function in senting cultural heritage and defining and asserting cultural tity. Unfortunately, in the case of American Indians the symbols and icons that typify them, were chosen by the mainstream culture, posed on them inadvertently and fully exploited in the colonization process as well as in post-colonial contemporary world.
What do the war bonnets, eagle feathers, tomahawks, teepees, totem poles, fringed buckskins, moccasins stand for in terms of
thentic Native American cultural heritage? What do they reveal about Indianness? To what extent does one become an Indian by playing
Indian? Are the roles reversed in the contemporary world? Is it
American Indians' turn to play the Indian to counter these rooted, adverse, offensive, made-to-order images using the same techniques and methods to turn them against the mainstream conceptions and misjudgments? Is it possible to efface these lete images, stereotyped concepts, and engendered preconceptions from the collective memory of the mainstream culture? How can American Indians, who have not had much impact on the creation of mass cultural images, counter the centuries old stereotypical
agery produced and promoted by mass culture? Can the typical images of native peoples be bleached out or carved out of
the mainstream cultural consciousness forever?
It will surely take time for contemporary native peoples to be acknowledged as living cultural entities and hence to be represented
in mainstream culture, purged from "objects of popular culture
[which] are shaped and colored by a veil of varying density, woven with threads of bias and assumption about audiences and ers." Whether they be the "reservation Indians" or the "urbanized, so-called assimilated Indians" it is the responsibility of every tive American to be a living image of the subverted stereotype. It requires commitment and determination yet it is not such a fetched dream that can never be realized. The heavy burden falls on the shoulders of Native American craftsmen, writers, poets, tists, artists, producers, directors, educators, lawyers, and neurs to expose what it is like to be a Native American citizen in contemporary America. Moreover, "to stop Indian stereotypes from being perpetuated" or to halt " the process of stereotyping by siders, direct roles in the image industry are [to be] sought by native people. Native people need to infuse the diversity of their cultures into such image making. This will take patience, since the task is to counter generations of distortions that have been accepted in the
mainstream as truths. Playing Indian should no longer be a
sided game." 6
Playing Indian has been a game for children for generations. spired by wild-west shows and television westerns, toy turers contributed to the lack of authenticity of pretend Indians. For
example, a "Play Suit and Box" by Wornova Play Clothes, contains a feathered headdress and a beaded shirt with fringe, which creates the false impression that all Indians dress in the outfits of Plains Indians. A howling war- party attacking pioneer wagons, a popular
western icon, has been repeatedly depicted in movie posters and
even in paintings by recognized western artists such as Carl Wimar. Its depiction on toys for children, however, acculturated young minds to the negative image of native peoples. The design of the toy bank, "Buffalo Bill to the Rescue" (1910), and the "Rubber Stamp and
oring Set" (1890s) by Baumgarten & Co. both portray white men
heroically fighting against savage bloodthirsty bands of Indians. The
action-figure toy of Apache warrior Geronimo, distributed by
Hasbro, Inc, Pawtucket, R.I., (1991) presents a demeaning, fabricated
image of the Apache hero as "an outrageous terror-bull with a
Mohawk style haircut, chiseled out of the likes of the quintessential
Indian savage," who is "masked with feathers and war paint,
mal tooth necklace, bow and arrow, chopping tomahawk."7
Toys were not the only medium by which young minds were
molded into rigid casts wherein are poured the petrified images of native peoples. Children's books abound with stereotypes as is the case with The Indian in the Cupboard, a popular children's book that was made into a film. Rightfully, these stereotypes evoke a counter reaction from native people as poignantly verbalized by Theodore Jojola :
In fact, we Native peoples were never behind that board in the first place. No, because tin Indians like that were fabricated totally in the minds of ancient Europeans and their New World evangelists. It was a mind that was subconsciously molding tin into something that was their image gold.8
Spoon-fed the stereotypical image of the Indian as children, adults have taken to playing Indian. The members of the "Fraternal Order of Red Men" made use of Indian names and imagery in their ties in the late 19th century as James H. Nottage notes, commenting on the exploitative abuse of native peoples by the "wannabes":
The New Age practitioners today do not step too far away from such caricatures to promote their idealized images of
Indian as child and defender of nature and mimic him with
their preconceived ideas of what it means to be an Indian. Worse are others who have taken playing the Indian to
extremes far beyond this - those hobbyists who slavishly reproduce 19th century Indian costume, school themselves in every nuance of Indian history and culture and then dress up to become Indian. These Indian "wannabes" may be the ultimate insult to native peoples who now are told
in effect that anyone can actually be an Indian if they just
do their homework and "get it right."9
Selling the Indian via stereotypical images is another motive for resurrecting the mythic Indian over and over again. At the turn of the 19th century, when there was a vogue for decorative mementos
of the old-time "wooden Indian," the commercial exploitation of
the Indian image was too lucrative to be overlooked for
ian concerns. Hair combs in the shape of Indians, inkstands and
letter openers, mugs, vases, and an expensive line of sterling silver flatware with finials of Indian warriors and dancers, patterned after George Catlin's paintings of 1830, were sold by Hffany & Company in he 1890s. Carved ivory images of feathered Indians decorated the handles of umbrellas in 1905.10 The trend was continued in porary times primarily targeting tourists eager to carry with them memorabilia from their Arizona or New Mexico get-away. All kinds of objectionable souvenirs of Indian stereotypes and Indian icons, from expensive collectors items such as cigar store Indians, to cheap plastic kitsch which the travelers-by-car can afford, are sold at ervation prices" in the roadside curio shops, service stations, and "trading posts" built as concrete teepees or forts. The feathered net, for example, whether it is made of real feathers in actual size
and costs about a hundred dollars, or is made of cheap beads in
smaller scale and sells for three dollars, is a favorite tourist item. Manufacturers who superimpose sacred images of Hopi Katchinas on whisky decanters, Navaho Yei deities on coffee mugs, and rituals like the Hopi Snake Dance on silver jewelry, inexpensive ceramics, and postcards, secularize them. 11
The stereotype of the vanishing Indian, immortalized by James Earle Fraser's notorious bronze sculpture The End of the Trail, is
erywhere. Bags sold for ten dollars or sand paintings of various
sizes ranging from three to ten dollars portray the image with which the tourists can readily identify. Fraser's iconic image of the ing race, the dying Indian, is playfully deconstructed in the Bentley Sprangs' bronze mixed media work titled The Beginning of the End
for the End of the Trail (1994). Beaded necklaces hang from the bronze
piece under signs reading "hand out" and "trinkets." On a shelf
below there are war bonneted plastic toys with raised tomahawks and spears. At the bottom is attached a reversed image of the James
Fraser statue, under which appears the word "vanquished." The
images, which have become redundant yet represent racism and the
stereotypes and misconceptions that arise from it, are placed "in
their true context, that of a child's toy," as the artist herself ments.12 The vanishing race concept and the image stereotyped by the statue is turned inside out and used to stand for the exact site of what it was intended. Fraser 's End of the Trail is appropriated in a different way in the symbol of the United Native Americans, Inc., in San Francisco. This 1960 version portrays "the warrior, his spear pointed skyward, leaning back to restrain his pony"13 ready to dash forward, suggesting upsurge instead of the sulking, less and pitiful animal and rider of the original. David Bradley
niously counters the stereotype using black humor in his mixed
media monotype titled Engendered Species (1993) that portrays an American Indian set against a backdrop of a world map and a ety of animals categorized as endangered species. Long before these
artists, Harry Fonseca's Coyote series celebrated the survival of
Native peoples in direct rebuttal of the concept of the vanishing race.
Harry Fonseca contends that "for me Coyote is a survivor and is
indeed the spice of life." Fonseca celebrates coyotes as symbols of contemporary Native Americans who retain their attachment to their roots and draw energy and dynamism from their cultural heritage, even when they are ironically attired in western clothes as in the painting Rose and Res Sisters .u
Imitation Indian villages have been built by native people on some reservations for tourist consumption; keeping visitors out of their private lives and sacred religious ceremonials. Popular culture phernalia such as ashtrays, cream pitchers, book ends, candlesticks, beaded cigarette lighter covers, key chains, salt and pepper shakers
bearing native icons made by native peoples are available to meet
the needs of mass tourism for economic development just like the Indian-run reservation casinos. The rationale is clear, "if we do not do it under our control, non-natives will reap the profit doing it way. At least, thus we can turn the tables against the non-natives
and play the Indian for our economic and by extension cultural,
social and political sovereignty."15
Individual artists who are committed to launching a fatal attack on stereotypes subvert not only the image but also conventional proaches to native art. Mixed media, calico or "trade cloth," collage portraits of native peoples by Alex Jacobs are ingeniously designed, tongue-in-cheek, commentaries on stereotyped Indian images. Her images of "real" American Indians are juxtaposed with mythic derings. Similarly, Charlene Teters defies the traditionally accepted native artist's image by creating playfully disturbing "complicated installations" that challenge Native American stereotypes and ches. Of her installation What Vie Know About Indians, Teters
ments:
Portraits of my family members were overlaid with ages from pop culture. The real people were in white and the cartoon caricatures were in color, forcing the viewer to have to look around all the garbage - the candy-coated commercial, garish caricatures of Indian people - to see the real people. I also made the portraits black-and-white because people even today still tell us, "You don't look Indian." What they are saying is, we don't
look like stereotypes.16
Exhibitions are important venues for Native American artists to utilize in their effort to subvert stereotypes. A national touring bition, organized by American Indian Contemporary Arts, San cisco, California, in 1995, was curated by Sara Bates. Called "Indian Humor," it is a companion piece to Ind'in Humor by Kenneth coln. The artworks in the exhibition, as well as the catalogue that accompanies it, deconstruct the stereotypical image of native peoples as "stoic and serious," lacking a sense of humor. The exhibition shows that Indians have a sense of humor which, "gives us a cosmic fix and takes us out of our center of the universe, enabling us to laugh at ourselves,"17 as Janeen Antoine and Zandra Bietz put it. A table example from the exhibition is Jaime Quick-to-See Smith's graph titled Modern Times (1993), which counters the stereotypical image of the Indian as commercial icons or mascots, delicately ing with wry humor touched by ironic reversal. Central to the part black and yellow lithograph is the image of a modern Indian who is dressed in a suit and holding a briefcase; yet he is wearing a
feathered headdress and set against an advertisement label of Hi Yu
brand apples, product of USA.18 Her work is indeed a
cheek commentary on racism in modern times. As in the majority of her works, this lithograph too
...reveals the internal contradictions in Euro- American
culture where people with widely different values struggle to define differing directions which the culture could take.
What results is a dialogue between multiple segments in American culture that helps to illuminate areas where reotypes exist, can be broken down, and real conversation
can begin.19
Apart from the more than 500 hundred nations that have been
reduced to generic "Indian," represented feathered bonnets and
beaded buckskin shirts, gendered images were also highly distorted to accommodate commercial purposes. America was often depicted
as an Indian woman, but these images too had no likeness to the women of the native population. Instead, American was a naked, robust woman bedecked with feathers, riding an armadillo, and
Fig. 1: Indian maiden figurine, Collection ofDarlene Johnson
Fig. 2: Indian squaw figurine, Collection ofDarlene Johnson
holding a cornucopia, or an Amazon woman holding in one hand
the decapitated head of a European and in the other a spear. When ignorance gave way to ulterior motives, later versions of the Indian women deteriorated into stereotypes of the "Indian princess" or the
"squaw." The stereotypical Indian woman engrained in popular
memories, is "either Land O'Lakes maiden - Sue Bee-honey types,
seductive and sensual, women of the earth - or the asexual
poly Marilyn type squaw."20 The backlash to the commercialization of the stereotyped native woman found expression in the works of
both male and female native artists. The Mazola Indian maiden and
the Land O'Lakes maiden are incorporated in the mixed media works of native artists George Longfish and Robert Freeman. Freeman's lithograph, Lady in Waiting (1987), depicts a contemporary
can Indian woman who subverts the Land-o-Lakes Indian princess stereotype. As he asserts:
Instead of painting typical "Indian maidens" I do "Indian
babes." They smoke and hang out and spit on you. . . they're
real!21
In deconstructing the mythic image of the Indian, contemporary Native artists have taken a leading role, especially those artists who
have utilized "a rich humor that plays on and subverts dominant
stereotypes,"22 juxtaposing the real Indian with the mythic. nationally known artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith has devoted her life to advocating Indian rights as well as environmental tion and the welfare of humanity at large through her community
based activities. She is an organizer of Native American artists'
groups and networking projects. Other Native American artists who have exhibited worldwide and whose works are in the permanent collections of well-known museums, include Fritz Scholder, Harry Fonseca, and George Longfish, who asserts "I believe that painting
must communicate."23 The late T.C. Cannon was among the
neer Indian artists who introduced images of contemporary Indians to correct misconceptions of what Indians really look like. Alex Jacobs and Charlene Teters are emerging native artists who have helped to
eradicate American Indian stereotypes and draw attention to the
ordeal of conflicting cultures in contemporary America. It is up to
native peoples in general, however, to counter the stereotypes as
individuals by surviving on reservations and in cities. A case in point
is Darlene Kawennano:ron Johnson, currently living in Phoenix,
Arizona. She is a contemporary Mohawk educator, writer, producer,
and photojournalist who has successfully countered all the
lems that confront an urbanized Native woman. This full-blooded
warrior woman, proud of who she is, is a living subversion of the stereotypical Indian prince or squaw.
1 Theodore Jojola, "Moo Mesa: Some Thoughts on Stereotypes and Image Appropriation/' in
Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture , ed. Elizabeth S.
Bird (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1998) 263.
2 Robert F. Berkhofer, The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian From bus to the Present (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978) 96.
3 James H. Nottage, "Illusions and Deceptions: The Indian in Popular Culture/' Powerful
Images: Portrayals of Native America (Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1998) 75.
4 Jojola, 264.
5 Joanne Bedard, "Foreword/' Fluffs and Feathers: An Exhibit on the Symbols of Indianness, Deborrah Doxtator (Brantwood, Ontario: Woodland Cultural Center, 1992) 5. The guide is a rich source for images of the products, advertisements, and posters based on the cal Indian in the collection of the Woodland Cultural Center as well as an extensive phy on the subject.
6 Jojola, 279. 7 Jojola, 266. 8 Jojola, 3.
9 "Illusions and Deceptions: The Indian in Popular Culture," Powerful Images: Portrayals of Native America, 81.
10 Most of these items are among the collection of Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Los Angeles, California.
11 See the web site http://www.miaclab.org/exhibits/icons/index.html for images from the exhibition called Tourist Icons: Native Kitsch, Camp, and Fine Art Along Route 66.
12 Indian Humor, Exhibition Catalogue (San Francisco: American Indian Contemporary Arts, 1995) 85.
13 Brian W. Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1982) 353.
14 Contemporary Native American Art, October 1-28, 1983 Exhibition Catalogue (Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma: 1983) n.p.
15 Interview held with Darlene Kawennano:ron Johnson, August 27, 2002.
16 Jennifer Lowe, "An Interview with Charlene Teters: A is for Artists and Activist," Santa Fe Reporter: Weekly News and Culture, August 14-20, 2002, 33. For further information on the ist see her web page: www.chareleneteters.com
17 Indian Humor, 3.
18 The 1993 lithograph is the cover for the exhibition catalogue of the artist's solo exhibit from January 17-February 23, 1997 in the University Art Gallery, University of New Mexico, Las Cruces, New Mexico. See the catalogue for further information about the artist and other works in the exhibition. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Modern Times (El Paso, Texas: Guynes
ing Co., 1977) 3-11. See also other exhibition pamphlets and exhibition catalogues: Jaune
Quick-to-See-Smith: Poet in Paint, January 21-Mav 20, 2001, Neubereer Museum of Art. 19 Gail Tremblay, "Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Paintings," Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Modern
Times, 5-6.
20 Deborah L. Merskin in Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular
Culture (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1998) 282. [Editor's note: "Marilyn" refers to a Native American character in the television series Northern Exposure.]
21 Indian Humor, 44. 22 Bird, 5-6.
23 See Contemporary Native American Art , October 1-28, 1983 Exhibition Catalogue (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: 1983) n.p.
