Full Description
Unsettling America explores the cultural politics of Indianness in the 21st century. It concerns itself with representations of Native Americans in popular culture, the news media, and political debate and the ways in which American Indians have interpreted, challenged, and reworked key ideas about them. It examines the means and meanings of competing uses and understandings of Indianness, unraveling their significance for broader understandings of race and racism, sovereignty and self-determination, and the possibilities of decolonization. To this end, it takes up four themes:
false claims about or on Indianness, that is, distortions, or ongoing stereotyping; claiming Indianness to advance the culture wars, or how indigenous peoples have figured in post-9/11 political debates; making claims through metaphors and juxtaposition, or the use of analogy to advance political movements or enhance social visibility; and reclamations, or exertion of cultural sovereignty.
Contents
How Indianness Matters Now: An Introduction
I. Old Battles
1. George Bush May Not Like Black People, But No One Gives a Damn About
Indigenous Peoples: Visibility and Indianness after the Hurricanes
2. Embattled Images in the Marketplace: Commodity Racism, Media Literacy, and Struggles over Indianness
II. Ongoing Wars
3. On Being a Warrior: Race, Gender, and American Indian Imagery in Sport
4. Defending Civilization from the Hostiles: Notes on the Ward Churchill Affair
5. Always Enemy Combatants? The Killing of Osama bin Laden and the Native American Struggle for Humanity
III. New Fronts
6. Borrowing Power: Racial Metaphors and the Struggle Against American Indian Mascots
7. Alter/native Heroes: Native American Books, and the Struggle for Self-Definition
8. De/Scribing Squ*w: Indigenous Women and Imperial Idioms in the United States
Reclaiming Indianness: Notes Toward a Conclusions
