A flag of deceit
The American Indian Movement's subversive use of the Stars and Stripes as a protest tool
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2961893 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M M Parker (University of Kent, corresponding author), Mark Parker (0009-0005-6243-2057) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-26 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-16 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Settler Colonial Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1838-0743 • E-ISSN: 2201-473X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/2201473x.2025.2491217 |
| OpenAlex | W4409497994 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
This article documents the American Indian Movement’s (AIM) subversive display of the American flag between 1970 and 1973. Analysing AIM’s flag deployment in Plymouth, Massachusetts; Gordon, Nebraska; Washington D.C.; and Wounded Knee; it is shown how AIM subversively appropriated the American flag in a variety of ways. AIM’s creation of spectacle; their critical engagement with the American national character; and their play with flag height, power, and territoriality are all shown to be illustrative of the organisation’s keen awareness of flag semiotics. Whilst centring aesthetics as an oft-forgotten component of Red Power protest, this article situates flag play as a common thread interweaving much of the American Indian Movement’s major activism. Although the American flag has typically been understood by Native Americans as a symbol of historical and ongoing oppression, such technologies of oppression can double as subversive, reinvented tools of protest, both harnessing and redirecting their original power
Aesthetics · Ancient history · Art · Astronomy · Flag (linear algebra · Movement (music · Physics · Political science · Stars · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |