The Tribe Called Wannabee: Playing Indian in America and Europe

ONE of the oldest and most pervasive forms of American cultural expression, indeed one of the oldest forms of affinity with American culture at the national level, is a 'performance' I call 'playing Indian.' Since the invasion of North America by those 'red hairy men' in the fifteenth century, non-Indians have found the performance of 'playing Indian' a most compelling and obviously satisfying form of traditional expression. Almost from their very arrival in the Americas, Europeans found it useful, perhaps essential, to 'play Indian' in America, to demand that tribal peoples 'play Indian,' and to export the performances back to Europe, where they thrive to date.1 This performance, or set of performances, with many stages, performers, contexts, and variants, has its deepest roots in the establishment of a distinctive American culture. I would insist that it represents one of the ways in which we can demarcate the boundaries of an American identity distinct from that which affiliates with Europe. Curiously, perhaps, 'playing Indian'-since it is so well represented historically in England and Germany, and to a lesser extent, in Russia, Poland, France and Italy-may be one of the ways in which Europeans affiliate with an America that causes them tremendous ambivalence. The performance has significant historical roots and embodiments, some aspects of which (eg: 'white' Indians and stereotypes) have been well-described by myself and other scholars.2 But we shall explore these many aspects as part of a cohesive phenomenon which renews itself yearly, takes on new versions and modes of expression, while retaining a performance core of versions from the past. This expressive complex of behaviours reiterates itself freely across boundaries of race and class, gender and age group, regional and other affiliative groups, to find its various expressions in a range of media from traditional, orally transmitted texts (songs, stories, jokes, anecdotes) to formal, literary texts, to artifacts (clothing, toys, tools, drawings, paintings), to dramatic performances (games, gestures, dramas) and ritual enactments or reenactments. Some people wed to the roles of Indian play Indian for a lifetime; others for brief, transient staged performances performed only in childhood or erratically and situationally over a lifetime. For some, it is a hobby; for others a semi-religious passion; for others still, merely one of many reference points that root them in an American identity. The performance is, for the most part, one played by persons of Anglo-American or Anglo-European background, but persons of Hispanic, Mediterranean and African/Afro-American background also play Indian in large numbers. Even Apaches, Sioux, and Cherokee 'Indians' play 'Indian.' Whether conventionally 'folk' or 'popular' in venue and form of transmission-even often conveyed through 'Classical forms'-the performance exists