Indian Comics Irregular #122

As a Washington Post analysis (9/18/04) explained, the National Museum
of the American Indian has little or nothing about Indians in the
popular arts--on the stage and screen; in books, paintings, and
illustrations; adorning sports team logos and other commercial
products. It seems to ignore the interplay between fact and
fiction--between simple stereotypes and complex reality. In other
words, how Native cultures have influenced the mainstream culture and
vice versa.

As the article put it:

When Mr. and Mrs. Air-'n'-Space and their kids walk through its
hallowed entry, they bring to the Indian Museum a few centuries'
worth of red-man baggage. (They might even be wearing Redskins
jerseys.) But the museum, in giving them a heavy dose of
authenticity, doesn't include a place to unpack all those heap-big
stereotypes--the residue of racism that has so transfixed
contemporary Indian artists, cultural historians and ironic
observers of outdated pop.

What the museum serves is an altogether new flavor of tourist
Kool-Aid, redefining concepts of history, cosmology, spirituality
and diversity. It is so broad and so complicated that visitors
almost can't be blamed for asking, in ignorance or sentimentality,
where Tonto went.

Discussing the impact of John Wayne movies or Chief Wahoo-style
mascots may seem trivial to academically-minded curators, but I'd
argue it's central to understanding the Native experience. We
decimated the Indians not because we disagreed with them
intellectually but because we feared them viscerally. Everything
about them--the way they dressed, hunted, and worshipped--was strange
and scary to us.

That was the message then and it's still the message today. Indians
are savages (sports mascots), military machines (vehicles and
weapons), enemies of law and order (buying politicians and
steamrolling governments). A museum that doesn't talk about this is
missing a big part of the story.

Pseudo-Intellectual Quoted

I'm happy to note the article quoted me on the subject:

Robert Schmidt, a writer in Los Angeles who started his own
Indian-themed comic book ("Peace Party") several years ago and has
been an ardent compiler of examples of negative stereotypes, says
he thinks it's "useful for [the NMAI] to send a positive message
and their approach implicitly contradicts stereotypes, but at some
point I'd hope [the museum] would explicitly contradict
stereotypes."

Since 1998, Schmidt has clipped and posted examples on his Web
site (www.bluecorncomics.com) of past and current Indian
stereotypes--everything from the choice moment of a "Brady Bunch"
rerun quoted earlier, to longer, more harmful instances of
politicians and otherwise gallant-seeming intellectuals partaking
in both subtle and overt digs at Indian cultures. Some of it is so
baffling, so trivializing, that you laugh more out of exasperation
than remorse.

One of my correspondents took issue with this. He wrote that while
"activists" are debating stereotypes, real issues--genocide, the theft
of Native wealth, America's mega-corporate mentality--are going
unaddressed. My response:

All these issues are related to the stereotype issue, buddy. If you
think of "other" people as less than human, you feel free to exploit
them. How we perceive them affects how we treat them.

For more on the NMAI, again see
http://www.bluecorncomics.com/nmai.htm .

Speaking of stereotypes, the 2004 Stereotype of the Month losers are
now online. Jan Golab's anti-sovereignty screed narrowly beat out the
Grammys' OutKast outrage (ICI #108) for first place. Check 'em out at
http://www.bluecorncomics.com/stype04.htm .

Rob Schmidt
Blue Corn Comics