Playing Indian

by Philip J. Deloria

• ISBN13: 9780300080674
• ISBN10: 0300080670
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1999-09-10
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Moving from the Boston Tea Party to the present, this provocative book explores the ways non-Indian Americans have acted out their fantasies about Indians in order to experience national, modern, and personal identities. In this complicated tug-of-war between imaginings and actions, Indian people have been embraced and rejected, frequently humiliated and occasionally empowered. The historical anxieties revealed by Playing Indian continue to haunt Americans -- both Indian and non-Indian -- to this day.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Introduction: American Indians, American Identities	p. 1
Patriotic Indians and Identities of Revolution	p. 10
Fraternal Indians and Republican Identities	p. 38
Literary Indians and Ethnographic Objects	p. 71
Natural Indians and Identities of Modernity	p. 95
Hobby Indians, Authenticity, and Race in Cold War America	p. 128
Counterculture Indians and the New Age	p. 154
Conclusion: The Grateful Dead Indians	p. 181
Acknowledgments	p. 193
Notes	p. 197
Index	p. 243
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.