Unsettling America

The Uses of Indianness in the 21st Century

By (author) C. Richard King

Publication date:

11 April 2013

Length of book:

164 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442216679

Unsettling America explores the cultural politics of Indianness in the 21st century. It concerns itself with representations of Native Americans in popular culture, the news media, and political debate and the ways in which American Indians have interpreted, challenged, and reworked key ideas about them. It examines the means and meanings of competing uses and understandings of Indianness, unraveling their significance for broader understandings of race and racism, sovereignty and self-determination, and the possibilities of decolonization. To this end, it takes up four themes:

false claims about or on Indianness, that is, distortions, or ongoing stereotyping;
claiming Indianness to advance the culture wars, or how indigenous peoples have figured in post-9/11 political debates;
making claims through metaphors and juxtaposition, or the use of analogy to advance political movements or enhance social visibility; and
reclamations, or exertion of cultural sovereignty.

How Indianness Matters Now: An Introduction

I. Old Battles
1. George Bush May Not Like Black People, But No One Gives a Damn About
Indigenous Peoples: Visibility and Indianness after the Hurricanes
2. Embattled Images in the Marketplace: Commodity Racism, Media Literacy, and Struggles over Indianness

II. Ongoing Wars
3. On Being a Warrior: Race, Gender, and American Indian Imagery in Sport
4. Defending Civilization from the Hostiles: Notes on the Ward Churchill Affair
5. Always Enemy Combatants? The Killing of Osama bin Laden and the Native American Struggle for Humanity

III. New Fronts
6. Borrowing Power: Racial Metaphors and the Struggle Against American Indian Mascots
7. Alter/native Heroes: Native American Books, and the Struggle for Self-Definition
8. De/Scribing Squ*w: Indigenous Women and Imperial Idioms in the United States

Reclaiming Indianness: Notes Toward a Conclusions

This short book explores the persistence of pernicious stereotypes and racial depictions of Native Americans in the twenty-first century in popular culture, advertising, and sports mascots. The author devotes one chapter to the absence of media coverage of Native suffering after Hurricane Katrina and the simultaneous promotion of Mardi Gras 'Indian' tribes of masked African Americans playing Indian. King (ethnic studies, Washington State Univ.) explores marketing campaigns that portray Native Americans as subhuman and savage, and considers the trope of the Indian warrior as a mascot that neoconservatives have appropriated after 9/11 in the war on terror. He examines the peculiar association of enemy combatants—the killing of Osama bin Laden, code named Geronimo EKIA (enemy killed in action), and nineteenth-century Apache resistance. Contemporary Native American intellectuals and activists employ social media, the Internet, and their own media to contest anti-Indianism, debunk stereotypes, and redefine their collective identity and history. King considers these topics in chapters devoted to Native American comic books, the struggle against mascots and place-names, and the use of the pejorative 'squaw' to characterize Indian women. An important consideration of the enduring cultural legacy of white supremacy and settler colonialism, and the strategies of Native resistance. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.