Les Sauvages Am?ricains: Representations of Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature

Book Description

Algonquian and Iroquois natives of the American Northeast were described in great detail by colonial explorers who ventured into the region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Beginning with the writings of John Smith and Samuel de Champlain, Gordon Sayre analyzes French and English accounts of Native Americans to reveal the rhetorical codes by which their cultures were represented and the influence that these images of Indians had on colonial and modern American society. By emphasizing the work of Pierre François-Xavier Charlevoix, Joseph-François Lafitau, and Baron de Lahontan, among others, Sayre highlights the important contribution that French explorers and ethnographers made to colonial literature.

Sayre's interdisciplinary approach draws on anthropology, cultural studies, and literary methodologies. He cautions against dismissing these colonial texts as purveyors of ethnocentric stereotypes, asserting that they offer insights into Native American cultures. Furthermore, early accounts of American Indians reveal Europeans' serious examination of their own customs and values: Sayre demonstrates how encounters with natives' wampum belts, tattoos, and pelt garments, for example, forced colonists to question the nature of money, writing, and clothing; and how the Indians' techniques of warfare and practice of adopting prisoners led to new concepts of cultural identity and inspired key themes in the European enlightenment and American individualism.

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Great expectations, substantial problems

A most engaging, informative, deliberative analysis

Native American Representations: First Encounters, Distorted Images, and Literary Appropriations

Manufacturer: University of Nebraska Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present

ASIN: 0803261888

Book Description

From Columbus's journal jottings about "Indios" to the image of Sacagawea on the dollar coin, from the marauding Indians portrayed in the traditional western to the appearance of Native Americans in Dances with Wolves, from cigar box caricatures to the Crazy Horse monument rising near Mt. Rushmore, Native Americans have been represented—and misrepresented—over the past five centuries. What such depictions mean—what they say, and what they do, historically, culturally, and ideologically—is the subject of this book.

In Native American Representations, leading national and international critics of Native literature and culture examine images in a wide range of media from a variety of perspectives to show how depictions and distortions have reflected and shaped cross-cultural exchanges from the arrival of Europeans to today. Focusing on issues of translation, European and American perceptions of land and landscape, teaching approaches, and transatlantic encounters, the authors explore problems of appropriation and advocacy, of cultural sovereignty and respect for the "authentic" text. Most significantly, they ask the reader to consider the question: "Who controls the representation?"

Illuminating and timely, the animated debates and insightful analyses in this book not only showcase some of the most provocative work being done in the field of Native Studies today, but they also set an agenda for its development in the twenty-first century.

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Great expectations, substantial problems.......2002-08-22

A few years back, I attended a seminar on Indigenous Nations Studies. One day, one of the students, who 'looked' much like me, and had often expressed his commitment to contemporary social theory, announced that he fantasized about the day when the 'colonizer' would sail back across the Atlantic. In response, several other students, who 'looked' Native American and expressed a commitment to particular tribes, and generally expressed no interest for social theory, asked 'I'm half white; should half of me stay here and the other half leave?'

This anecdote highlights, for me, the sort of difficulties one may encounter in Native American studies (especially as a non-Native scholar in these identity-conscious times). There are obvious tensions: between academic and more practical concerns; between tribal identities, a general 'Native American' identity, and hybrid identities. And there is the matter of just when and how any of these issues should be considered.

Such difficulties are found in Native American Representations. After reading the introduction to the book, and the introductions to several chapters, I had high hopes for the book; but after reading the work with more focus, I was disappointed with the book's shortcomings. This is not to say that it lacks successes. On the contrary, it does address a lack of theoretically informed scholarship on Native American literature; including popularly and scholarly media, film, and even Native American views of Euro-Americans. It considers as well different cultural perspectives on language, property, and landscape, attempting to work beyond the assumptions of a generally 'Western' audience, and strives to include Native American voices in the both the dominant literary and theoretical canons. Such aims, in fact, define the 'ethics' of the book.

Representation is the core concern. As the editor, puts it in her afterword, the ultimate aim is 're-presentation', rather than simple textual 'representation'. Re-presentation requires a deep understanding of self and Other. This is all for a rather simple (still complex) reason: 'For American Indian people, stories can cure or kill.' What this means, for this reader at least, is that language, what words are used by whom and in what manner, should be the focus of an ethics of criticism.

Unfortunately, I think, the reason the book fails in several important respects owes much to this explicit ethical concern. Basically, the ethical demands made by the contributors (generally upon others; less often upon themselves) can't be met within the text. It is a significant question whether any written text can capture the nuances of cultural traditions that are largely oral and performative, that draw so heavily on place-based experiences. Such a question, however, does not often come up in this book. What I perceive, then, as failures and shortcomings in the book are really instances in which theory (as ethics) and practice do not match.

A few examples should suffice to indicate the sources of my discontent. The book opens with two chapters by 'Native American authors', both of whom note the breach between concerns of academics and Indians living on reservations (where the pressing issues are not representation and hegemony, but health care, education, drug abuse). Yet for that these chapters are concerned principally with academic interests. One of these contributors, further, begins by highlighting the lack of Native American voices in contemporary theory (both in its production and within key texts, e.g., Bhabha's The Location of Culture), and yet rarely gets beyond such theory himself. He even criticizes N. Scott Momaday, saying that 'an aboriginal writer has finally learned to write like the colonial center that determines legitimate discourse', but without turning such a critical eye on his own position in that very same center (and within that same legitimizing discourse).

Another contributor displays a remarkable lack of historical-geographical sensitivity in his elision of historically, geographically, and culturally specific practices (the Ghost Dance) and symbols (the buffalo) into a generalized 'Native American' identity. While, he claims, that within the American e pluribus unum, there is no 'space' for Native Americans, one can easily draw on his own arguments to suggest that within such a general signifier as 'Native American', as it is used in this text, there is no 'space' for Dine, Cherokee, Lakota. In fact, in several of the essays, there seems to be an implicit assumption that 'Native American' and 'Euro-American' can be neatly distinguished. This is not necessarily a bad thing; one of the familiar ethical commitments in the text is to maintaining a distinct and viable Native American identity. To insist, however, on an 'innate Indian consciousness' or 'inherent difference between Indians and Europeans' is (as William Apess, an important figure in Native American letters noted) 'a crucial step in denying Indians' political status'. And, even more simply, to operationalize such general categories as 'American' undermines the early invocation of Said and his warning against seeing the 'other' as only a creation of 'our own culture'.

But this is not, to reiterate, to suggest that the entire book is flawed (although some of these flaws I noted seem pretty significant, considering the explicit aims of the text). There are good and interesting chapters on Native American views of whites, filmic (movie and television) representations of Native Americans, and the structure (and demands) made by Native American oral narratives. This latter chapter I found especially interesting. In addition to highlighting the profound difficulty of capturing in a written text all that transpires in an oral narrative, the author pays close attention to the role of place and landscape in Native American cultural traditions, and recognizes that in 'opting to see Native American personal narrators as powerless victims...we simply perpetuate the colonial process' (an insight that seems lost on several other contributors).

A most engaging, informative, deliberative analysis.......2002-01-13

Native American Representations: First Encounters, Distorted Images, And Literary Appropriations is an impressive compilation of eleven scholarly essays providing students of Native American studies with a thorough examination of a wide range of representations and misrepresentations of Native Americans throughout history. From Columbus' journal entries referring to "Indios" to cigar box caricatures, to the image of Sacagawea on the dollar coin, five centuries worth of depictions and their meanings are scrutinized. ... Native American Representations is a most engaging, informative, deliberative analysis, and strongly recommended for anyone with an interest studying changing perspectives and representations of Native Americans in the dominate American & European cultures.

New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories, and Representations

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New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories, and Representations

Manufacturer: University of Nebraska Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0803278306

Book Description

In this volume some of the leading scholars working in Native North America explore contemporary perspectives on Native culture, history, and representation. Written in honor of the anthropologist Raymond D. Fogelson, the volume charts the currents of contemporary scholarship while offering an invigorating challenge to researchers in the field. The essays employ a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches and range widely across time and space. The introduction and first section consider the origins and legacies of various strands of interpretation, while the second part examines the relationship among culture, power, and creativity. The third part focuses on the cultural construction and experience of history, and the volume closes with essays on identity, difference, and appropriation in several historical and cultural contexts. Aimed at a broad interdisciplinary audience, the volume offers an excellent overview of contemporary perspectives on Native peoples. Sergei A. Kan is a professor of anthropology and Native American studies at Dartmouth College. He is the editor of Strangers to Relatives: The Adoption and Naming of Anthropologists in Native North America (Nebraska 2001), co-editor of Coming to Shore: Northwest Coast Ethnology, Traditions, and Visions (Nebraska 2004), and the author of Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity. Pauline Turner Strong is an associate professor of anthropology and gender studies at the University of Texas-Austin. Her publications include Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics of Colonial American Captivity Narratives and a series of influential articles on the representation of indigenous peoples. The contributors include: Jeffrey D. Anderson, Mary Druke Becker, Margaret Bender, Robert Brightman, Jennifer S.H. Brown, Thomas Buckley, Raymond A. Bucko, S.J., Regna Darnell, Raymond DeMallie, David W. Dinwoodie, Frederick W. Gleach, Michael E. Harkin, Joseph C. Jastrzembski, Sergei A. Kan, Robert E. Moore, Peter Nabokov, Larry Nesper, Jean M. O'Brien, Pauline Turner Strong, Greg Urban, and Barrik Van Winkle.

Reclaiming Culture: Indigenous People and Self-Representation

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Reclaiming Culture: Indigenous People and Self-Representation
Joy Hendry
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

This book focuses on the renewal (or rekindling) of cultural identity, especially in populations previously considered "extinct." At the same time, Hendry sets out to explain the importance of ensuring the survival of these cultures. By drawing a fine and textured picture of these cultures, Hendry illuminates extraordinary diversity that was, at one point, seriously endangered, and explains why it should matter in today's world.

Disrupting Savagism: Intersecting Chicana/o, Mexican Immigrant, and Native American Struggles for Self-Representation (Latin America Otherwise)

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Disrupting Savagism Offers Critical Argument over Representation

Disrupting Savagism: Intersecting Chicana/o, Mexican Immigrant, and Native American Struggles for Self-Representation (Latin America Otherwise)
Arturo J. Aldama , and Arturo J. Aldama
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Colonial discourse in the United States has tended to criminalize, pathologize, and depict as savage not only Native Americans but Mexican immigrants, indigenous peoples in Mexico, and Chicanas/os as well. While postcolonial studies of the past few decades have focused on how these ethnicities have been constructed by others, Disrupting Savagism reveals how each group, in turn, has actively attempted to create for itself a social and textual space in which certain negative prevailing discourses are neutralized and rendered ineffective.
Arturo J. Aldama begins by presenting a genealogy of the term âsavage,â looking in particular at the work of American ethnologist Lewis Henry Morgan and a sixteenth-century debate between Juan GinÃ©s de SepÃºlveda and BartolomÃ© de las Casas. Aldama then turns to more contemporary narratives, examining ethnography, fiction, autobiography, and film to illuminate the historical ideologies and ethnic perspectives that contributed to identity formation over the centuries. These works include anthropologist Manuel Gamio’s The Mexican Immigrant: His Life Story, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Gloria AnzaldÃºa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, and Miguel Arteta’s film Star Maps. By using these varied genres to investigate the complex politics of racialized, subaltern, feminist, and diasporic identities, Aldama reveals the unique epistemic logic of hybrid and mestiza/o cultural productions.
The transcultural perspective of Disrupting Savagism will interest scholars of feminist postcolonial processes in the United States, as well as students of Latin American, Native American, and literary studies.

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Disrupting Savagism Offers Critical Argument over Representation.......2005-12-04

Arturo Aldama offers a truly critical and progressive analysis of various human struggles for Self-Representation including Native American, Chicana/o, Mexican Immigrant, and Feminist examples. Savagism, deviance, difference, are all ideological constructions used in the political dominance, criminalization, subjugation, and colonialism of minorities and women on the part of the hegemonic.
Aldama's approach is truly transdisciplinary and rigorous in method broaching colonial records (Juan Gines de Sepulveda and Bartolome de las Casas) with more contemporary ethnography, fiction, autobiography, and even film. His critical insight into academic orthodoxy reexamines sacred ethnographic texts including Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio's classic The Mexican Immigrant: His Life Story and American Ethnologist Lewis Henry Morgran. His readings of Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, and Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera brings a fresh and new dimension to postcolonial studies and he pioneers a decolonial direction that moves beyond theory into a more useful critical discursive investigation and literary practice. Aldama's book fills an important gap in representativeness and the ongoing arguments and debates over who speaks. Highly recommended for graduate seminars in ethnography, feminist literature, film studies, Chicana/o Studies, postcolonial/decolonial Studies, and Native American studies.

Peter J. Garcia Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Chicana/o Studies
Arizona State University

Cultural Representation in Native America (Contemporary Native American Communities)

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Cultural Representation in Native America (Contemporary Native American Communities)
Andrew Jolivette
Manufacturer: AltaMira Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0759109850

Book Description

An edited volume that tackles the contemporary issues facing Native Americans through community activism, politics, economics, and legislation.

Deconstructing America: Representations of the Other

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Deconstructing America: Representations of the Other
Peter Mason
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Museums and the Representation of Native Canadians: Negotiating the Borders of Culture (Native Americans, Interdisciplinary Perspectives Series)

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Great, thought-provoking, and challenging--but enjoyable rea

Museums and the Representation of Native Canadians: Negotiating the Borders of Culture (Native Americans, Interdisciplinary Perspectives Series)
Moir McLoughlin
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Museum Studies & Museology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0815329881

Book Description

If we were to think about museums as three dimensional maps-as spaces to be divided, defended, and privileged-what would they tell us about the place of Native Canadians within the larger nation? Utilizing a combination of exhibit analysis and interviews, this book explores how Canadian history, anthropology, and art museums have situated Native Canadian history and culture within a larger narrative of nationhood. Until very recently, these museums have, with few exceptions, perpetuated the continued isolation of Native Canadians on the "Other" side of carefully demarcated boundaries of time, space, and culture. Despite a living and highly politicized presence outside their walls, inside these museums Native Canadians have remained fixed and isolated in time and space. This book discusses how this particular image of Native Canadians has been translated into the numerous dichotomies and borders of the museum; between modern and traditional, past and present, myth and science, progress and stasis, active and passive, and, ultimately, us and them.
However, in tribal museums and more recent programming at the larger museums we are able to identify alternative maps that realign these borders and give voice to alternative constructions of these histories. The past decade has seen enormous change in how museum curators, educators, and directors imagine their role in these museums and, more particularly, in the construction of a history of Native Canadians. This book considers how museums, and those who work within them, have responded to the challenge of writing a more complex and multivocal history for the nation.
(Ph.D. dissertation, the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, 1992; revised with new preface, bibliography, and index)

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Great, thought-provoking, and challenging--but enjoyable rea.......1999-05-20

I was a close friend of the author, and helped prepare the manuscript for publication after she passed away. This book will be of great relevance to anyone interested in history, museography, communication, anthropology, ethnography, and art history. It is an ambitious and scholarly attempt to review the history and practices of museum exhibitions of Native Canadians, and addresses fundamental questions: when and why are objects considered "art" vs. "artifacts"? How should non-Native museums and curators approach the challenges of exhibiting cultures they do not belong to? Building on Clifford's art/artifact, authentic/inauthentic analytical axes, Moira's study enriches our understanding of how Western culture has chosen to re-present the history and cultures of Native peoples in Canada--in settings where traditionally there has not been space allowed for Native voices themselves to be heard. Although the book is focused on Canada, the issues are relevant to Native populations anywhere in the world. Needless to say, I strongly recommend this book!

New Worlds from Fragments: Film, Ethnography, and the Representation of Northwest Coast Cultures (Studies in the Ethnographic Imagination)

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New Worlds from Fragments: Film, Ethnography, and the Representation of Northwest Coast Cultures (Studies in the Ethnographic Imagination)
Rosalind C. Morris
Manufacturer: Westview Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0813387833

Book Description

Bringing together the insights of literary criticism, film theory, history, and anthropology, this book explores the tradition of ethnographic film on the Northwest Coast and its relationship to the written ethnography of the area. Covering a body of several hundred films, the discussions are organized around a series of detailed readings and viewings that treat questions of form and content in broadly historical terms.

The Play of Mirrors: The Representation of Self Mirrored in the Other (ILAS Translations from Latin America Series)

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The Play of Mirrors: The Representation of Self Mirrored in the Other (ILAS Translations from Latin America Series)
Sylvia Caiuby Novaes
Manufacturer: University of Texas Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Developmental Psychology | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

Focusing on the Bororo people of west-central Brazil, this book addresses the construction of self-identity through interethnic interaction. By presenting the images the Bororo have of themselves as well as the images of others who have interacted with them, Brazilian anthropologist Sylvia Caiuby Novaes argues convincingly that Bororo self-images are constructed with the aid of a peculiar looking-glass--it is in the images of others that they see themselves. Incorporating contributions from psychology, psychoanalysis, linguistics, and semiotics, The Play of Mirrors focuses on symbols, images, discourse, and meanings rather than solely on the problem of acculturation. It thus reflects the thinking of a new generation of Brazilian anthropologists who have shifted their focus from native communities as isolated entities to an examination of their embeddedness within broader national and international arenas.

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