The vision of Indians in the 20th century

In the early 20th century, many expeditions were launched in 'hostile' unchartered territories of the US. Ethnologists, scientists, painters and photographers took part in these expeditions and observed local native tribes and their customs. But their depiction of Indians was still guided by a fantasised imagery. Even though native Americans had long quit wearing traditional clothes on a day-to-day basis, the images produced at the period depicted them as peoples still sticking to their customs. The same imagery was taken up by 1960s civil rights activists who considered that native Americans lived a pure life as they remained close to their environment. Hippies and political activists took part in what they called "fish-ins", in order to protest against the fishing restrictions imposed on Indian tribes by the federal state.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952) devoted his life to the redaction and composition of a collection of 20 volumes entitled The North American Indian. He partook in an expedition led by ethnologist George Grinnell in 1899 during which he encountered native Americans from various tribes. From then on, he became devoted to the publicisation of the plight of the 'vanishing race' and felt invested with a mission: compile information about native Americans before their complete « contamination » by the settlers. He sought to write a “ personal study of a people who are rapidly losing the traces of their aboriginal character and who are destined ultimately to become assimilated with the 'superior race' ". That sense of emergency and idealised vision of the "good Indian" led him to modify photographs in order to recreate a 'pre-lapsarian' era, which is why his work is considered quite controversial by most people.

Sitting Bear (1908)

Chief Sitting Bear is here wearing a traditional Indian costume - feathers, a fringed leather vest, necklace. Edward Curtis often created the costumes or found them in museums and then asked the Indians to wear them. As he tried to show them unstained by modern life, he even happened to delete a clock in one of the tipis he had photographed.

He also shot short motion pictures showing folk dances, hunting sessions - he even directed works of fiction. This video was shot during the Sun dance (click on the image to watch the video):  

FILMS

Films produced during the 1960s and the flowering of the hippie counterculture also contributed to the diffusion of the 'good Indian' myth, as they were deemed to be the last human beings to live close to nature and the wildlife. However, the encounters between settlers and natives are often very manichean and some of the films produced during the last fifty decades show American Indians as simpletons who have no idea of what the modern life is. Here are some examples of the films produced from the 1970s to the present day:

- Little Big man, 1970. Western by Arthur Penn, starring Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway. The film tells the story of a young child adopted by the Cheyennes, who will take part in the Little Big Horn battle in 1876.

 

Watch the trailer:

http://www.cinemovies.fr/fiche_multimedia.php?IDfilm=8249

 

- Dance with wolves, 1990, by and with Kevin Costner. The film features the encounter between a Sioux tribe and an American officer during the Civil War. It won seven Oscar awards in 1991.

 

Watch the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMOQORiWn80

- The Last of the Mohicans, 1992, by Michael Mann, with Daniel Day-Lewis. This love story takes place during the Anglo-French war (Seven Year's War) for the possession of Indian territories in the state of New-York. Its is a free adaptation from James Fenimore Cooper’s novel.

 

Watch the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn7UHJLcPp4

 

 

- Pocahontas (French title : Pocahontas, une légende indienne) 1995, is an animation movie by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg. This is the Disney version of the mythic love story between Pocahontas and settler John Smith, at the beginning of the 17th century.

 

Watch the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q1QF8G47oU

 

 

- The New World, 2006, is an adventure movie by Terrence Malick, with Collin Farrel and O'Orianka Kilcher. It features the story of the struggle between the settlers who came to establish Jamestown in 1607 and Chief Powhatan's tribe, and the famous encounter between Pocahontas and John Smith.

 

Watch the trailer:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-zMIgxbmnA)

 

 

SONGS

 

Cherokee, Europe (1986)

 

They lived in peace, not long ago
A mighty Indian tribe
But the winds of change,
Made them realize, that the promises were lies.

The white man's greed, in search of gold
Made the nation bleed
They lost their faith
And now they hade to learn
There was no place to return
Nowhere they could turn.

Cherokee - marching on the trail of tears.

They were driven hard, across the plains
And walked for many moons
Cause the winds of change,
Had made them realize, that the promises were lies.

So much to bear, all that pain
Left them in despair
They lost their faith
And now they hade to learn
There was no place to return
Nowhere they could turn.

 

Europe is a swedish group who is most famous for its successful The Final Countdown. This songs takes up the hackneyed clichés of the Indian imagery as it develops in the late 20th century The lyrics go back on the opposition between the greedy ruthless white man as violent and savage and the Indians as they had been taken in and betrayed.

 

 

 

 

Indians, Anthrax (1987)

 

We all see black and white
When it comes to someone else's fight
No one ever gets involved
Apathy can never solve

FORCED OUT - Brave and mighty
STOLEN LAND - They can't fight it
HOLD ON - To pride and tradition
Even though they know how much their lives are really missin'
WE'RE DISSIN' THEM ...

On reservation
A hopeless situation

Respect is something that you earn
Our Indian brother's getting burned
Original American
Turned into, second class citizen

FORCED OUT - Brave and mighty
STOLEN LAND - They can't fight it
HOLD ON - To pride and tradition
Even though they know how much their lives are really missin'
WE'RE DISSIN' THEM ...

On reservation
A hopeless situation

Cry for the Indians
Die for the Indians
Cry for the Indians
Cry, Cry, Cry for the Indians

Love the land and fellow man
Peace is what we strive to have
Some folks have none of this
Hatred and prejudice

FORCED OUT - Brave and mighty
STOLEN LAND - They can't fight it
HOLD ON - To pride and tradition
Even though they know how much their lives are really missin'
WE'RE DISSIN' THEM ...

On reservation
A hopeless situation

Cry for the Indians
Die for the Indians
Cry for the Indians
Cry, Cry, Cry for the Indians

TERRITORY, It's just the body of the nation
The people that inhabit it make its configuration
PREJUDICE, Something we all can do without
Cause a flag of many colors is what this land's all about

[LEAD BREAK]

We all see black and white
When it comes to someone else's fight
No one ever gets involved
Apathy can never solve

FORCED OUT - Brave and mighty
STOLEN LAND - They can't fight it
HOLD ON - To pride and tradition
Even though they know how much their lives are really missin'
WE'RE DISSIN' THEM ...

On reservation
A hopeless situation

Cry for the Indians
Die for the Indians
Cry for the Indians
Cry, Cry, Cry for the Indians.

 

 

The singer, Joey Belladonna has Indian origins.This song probes deeper in the confrontation between white men and Indians. The song calls for fight and recovery of the stolen land.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Buffy Saint-Marie (1996)

 

Wounded Knee was a massacre which took place in December 1890. It was very quickly taken up as the emblem of American ruthlessness towards Indian tribes since many were killed who were unarmed. Indeed, in 1973, Indian civil rights activists re-enacted the battle and occupied the reservation and fought against American troops. Many artists took up the historical fact and fictionalised it. Dee Brown in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee narrates the various massacres perpetrated on Indians tribes by White Americans. A television film was released in 2007 and its subtitle -- The Epic Fall of the American Indian -- clearly illustrates this new point of view.

 

Trailer : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irjRMmQ1n-A

Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote a song entitled similarly. She was born in 1941 in an Indian reservation. Her work a song-writer focuses on isues related to American Indians.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRO:

Indian legislation on the desk of a do-right Congressman

Now, he don't know much about the issue

so he picks up the phone and he asks advice from the

Senator out in Indian country

A darling of the energy companies who are

ripping off what's left of the reservations. Huh.

1.

I learned a safety rule

I don't know who to thank

Don't stand between the reservation and the

corporate bank

They send in federal tanks

It isn't nice but it's reality

chorus:

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee

Deep in the Earth

Cover me with pretty lies

bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Huh.

2.

They got these energy companies that want the land

and they've got churches by the dozen who want to

guide our hands

and sign Mother Earth over to pollution, war and

greed

Get rich... get rich quick.

chorus...

3. We got the federal marshals

We got the covert spies

We got the liars by the fire

We got the FBIs

They lie in court and get nailed

and still Peltier goes off to jail

chorus...

4.

My girlfriend Annie Mae talked about uranium

Her head was filled with bullets and her body dumped

The FBI cut off her hands and told us she'd died of

exposure

Loo loo loo loo loo

chorus...

We had the Goldrush Wars

Aw, didn't we learn to crawl and still our history gets

written in a liar's scrawl

They tell 'ya "Honey, you can still be an Indian

d-d-down at the 'Y'

on Saturday nights"

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee

Deep in the Earth

Cover me with pretty lies

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Huh!

FURTHER READINGS

 Webography

    About the Wounded Knee Massacre:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre

    Site officiel de Buffy Sainte-Marie:

http://www.creative-native.com/     

    Museum and expositions:

http://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/culture/sortir/Redecouvrir_Karl_Bodmer_et_les_Indiens_dAmerique.html?cid=7226176

http://www.quaibranly.fr/fr/programmation/expositions/a-l-affiche/exhibitions.html (Pour élargir les  horizons sur la représentation de l'autre, l'exposition "L'invention du  sauvage")

    If you want to know more about films: http://www-zope.ac-strasbourg.fr/sections/enseignements/secondaire/pedagogie/les_disciplines/histoire-geographie/cinema__histoire/presentation_sur_lu/limage_de_lindien/downloadFile/attachedFile/L_IMAGE_DE_L_INDIEN_DANS_LE_CINE_AMERICAIN.pdf?nocache=1120826753.75

    

   

   Bibliography

    

Bonnet, Audrey. Pocahontas, Princesse des deux mondes – Histoire, mythe et représentations. Rennes: Les Perséides, 2006.

 

Jennings, Francis. The Invasion of America – Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest. Williamsburg: University of North Carolina Press, 1975.

 

Muchembled, Robert (dir.) Naissance de l’Amérique moderne – XVI°-XIX° siècles. Paris: Hachette supérieur Carré Histoire, 2000.