[I just posed eight articles from the Theatre
Communications Group’s American Theatre magazine on the emergence of indigenous American theater (see “Staging
Our Native Nation,” posted from 24 March through 8 April). No sooner had I uploaded the last of the six
posts in the Rick On Theater
series than the PBS NewsHour ran a segment on 29 March 2018, reported by
Jeffrey Brown, that touched on one of the points of the articles: that there are “symbols of Native American life and culture all around,” in the words of anchor Judy
Woodruff. I think the segment dovetails
perfectly with the AT native theater series, so I’m posting the transcript of
the broadcast for ROTters.]
Native
imagery is embedded in the national subconscious, whether we're paying
attention or not. A new exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian
is titled simply "Americans" and shows how all aspects of life have
been touched by the history and symbols of native culture. Jeffrey Brown
reports.
Judy
Woodruff: Now a change of pace,
history, mythology, imagery. A museum exhibition opens our eyes to the symbols
of Native American life and culture all around.
Jeffrey
Brown has our story.
Jeffrey
Brown: A 1948 Indian brand
motorcycle, one of the sleekest machines you’re likely to see, clothing with
the logo for your local sports team. And perhaps in your refrigerator right
now, a box of Land O’Lakes butter.
Paul
Chaat Smith: She’s on her knees, and she’s holding the box
that she’s on. So it recedes into infinity. So there’s something really
profoundly weird going on.
Jeffrey
Brown: Even more profound, just how pervasive Native
imagery is embedded into the American subconscious. That’s according to Paul
Chaat Smith, a member of the Comanche Tribe and co-curator of an exhibition at
the National Museum of the American Indian.
Paul
Chaat Smith: It’s really this paradox that the country,
330 million people today, 1 percent of that population is Native American. For
most people, they don’t see or really think about Indians, yet they’re
surrounded by Indian imagery, place names, and have connections with Indians on
a kind of deep, emotional level.
Jeffrey
Brown: Whether we know it or not.
Paul
Chaat Smith: Whether you know it or not.
Jeffrey
Brown: Yes.
To that
end, the exhibition is titled, simply, “Americans,” and shows us Indians
everywhere in all aspects of life. Overhead, a prototype of the Tomahawk
missile, on loan from the nearby Air and Space Museum.
On one
large wall, clips from films and TV shows. A side room takes us through the
strange history of Pocahontas, known, but not really known, by all. Around the
gallery, headdresses everywhere, in signs and advertising.
The
image of the Native American or Indian — the museum uses the terms
interchangeably — as a symbol of ruggedness or bravery, but often with no discernible
connection to the products, as in ads over the decades for Calumet Baking
Powder.
Paul
Chaat Smith: An Indian in a feather headdress has nothing
to do with baking powder. It’s a completely artificial connection. Yet it
sometimes works, because I think it talks about a kind of Americanness and
quality that people say, OK, well that baking powder is probably pretty good
because there’s an Indian in a headdress in it.
And
note that it is a red, white and blue headdress.
Jeffrey
Brown: Yes.
A history
of extermination and appropriation of lands, and yet an embrace of American
Indians as a symbol authentically American.
Paul
Chaat Smith: There’s certainly explicitly racist imagery,
but it’s a pretty small minority of it, because the whole way that Indians have
been objectified in the United States is about a kind of noble Indian idea,
which is a different kind of caricature than one that’s explicitly vicious and
that we’re dirty and backward and unintelligent.
But,
obviously, it is — even though it’s flattering in some way, it’s still another
kind of a stereotype.
Jeffrey
Brown: It’s also, of course, about images and myths,
and not about the actual people themselves.
Smith
says this distinction began in the late 19th century after the protracted armed
conflict between Natives and settlers, and later the U.S. Army, had come to an
end.
Paul
Chaat Smith: It was like there was a big meeting of the
American collective unconscious to say, now we’re going to freeze Indians in
the past.
The
actual Indians that are on reservations in 1895 or 1910, or the actual Indians
who might [be] living in L.A., living lives like the other people in Los
Angeles, they’re not going to appear in entertainment.
Jeffrey
Brown: One area of continuing contention, sports
names and logos.
In
recent years, some schools and universities have stopped using Native American
nicknames. Earlier this year, Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians
announced they will stop using the cartoonish Chief Wahoo logo on their
uniforms. But they’re keeping the Indians name.
More
controversially, the National Football League’s Washington Redskins are keeping
their name. Smith is a fan of his local team, but not its name, though he
understands the strong feelings.
Paul
Chaat Smith: I have great empathy for fans, especially
here in D.C., but fans don’t choose the name of the team, right? A rich owner
chooses it. And in the case of these names, it usually goes back a century
sometimes.
I get
why people aren’t pleased when someone like me comes in and says, you know,
this name is a dictionary-defined slur, as it is in D.C. But if you come in and
try to take it away from somebody, I get that that’s — you know, you feel
attacked.
Jeffrey
Brown: No one would name a team the Redskins
anymore, but not long ago, Victoria’s Secret dressed model Karlie Kloss like
this, only to apologize after criticism.
[The model, who’s of northern and eastern European extraction, was
dressed in a suede-like bikini with fringe, an oversized, feathered headdress, festooned
with turquoise jewelry in Native American motifs, wearing high-heeled pumps. ~Rick]
The
museum wants people to think about the images around them and what they convey.
Visitors are encouraged to write of their own experiences.
Look at
this one. “I had a dream catcher over my bed as a kid. Why?”
Paul
Chaat Smith: I think what the show is designed to do is to
say, you’re not alone with these stories.
Jeffrey
Brown: And for the country as a whole, Smith says
there’s something more at stake.
Paul
Chaat Smith: There’s this challenge to the United States’
idea of itself to have to acknowledge that the United States national project
came about at great cost to Native people.
So,
what do we think about that? That’s what this exhibition is saying. How do we
come to terms with that? Should Americans just feel guilty? I don’t think so.
All
Americans inherit this. How do we make sense of it? And a starting point is
kind of looking at Indians in everyday life.
Jeffrey
Brown: For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown at
the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
[I’ve mentioned the
NMAI, both the New York City branch and the main museum in Washington, D.C.,
where Americans is
mounted, in several posts. See, for
example, “Fritz Scholder,” posted on 30 Mach 2011; 'Awake and Sing!, et al.,” 3 April 2017; and “Akunnittinni: A Kinngait
Family Portrait,” 15 January 2018.]
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