Native Acts

Few peoples suffer under the weight of a single concept as much as Native Americans do under the notion of “authenticity.” Non-Indians want to know who the “real Indians” are or whether certain traditions and activities are indeed authentic. We have various ideas of what it is to play Indian or even to “go native,” but all of these notions raise the specter of Indianness as something performed. Phrases such as “honest injun” and “Indian giver” are reminders of the polarities between truthfulness and duplicity ascribed in times past to the Indian character. Both phrases homogenize Native American cultural diversity even as they assert essentialist notions about a monolithic Indian. With the trope of honesty comes the implication of guileless naïveté, and with “Indian giving” comes the assertion that Indians cannot be trusted to keep their word—an even more bitter irony given the failure of settler colonial powers to live up to their treaty obligations. Performing is often seen to be in opposition to being—just as acting seems opposed to sincerity

Art · Assertion · Complicity · Honesty · Irony · Literature · Opposition (politics · Political science · Sincerity · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

• The Roles of Settler Canadians within Decolonization

  Open Access•Deanne Aline Marie Leblanc•Canadian Journal of Political…•2021

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