Native American Racism in the Age of Donald Trump: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives [1 ed.] 9783030587178, 9783030587185

Table of contents :
A Note on Naming
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
History and Memory
Chapter 2: Trump Versus Indian Country
Winner Takes It All
Idle No More
‘Who we are as Americans’
Chapter 3: Memory and White Victimhood
Memories of Violence
Anti-Indian Radicalism
Memorialisation
Problematic Legacies
Chapter 4: Race and Identity
Red Blood
Colonialist Portraits of Aspirational Indians
Indigenous Fetishes and Fake Indians
Where the Buffalo Roam
Chapter 5: Epilogue
Index

Citation preview

Native American Racism in the Age of Donald Trump Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Darren R. Reid

Native American Racism in the Age of Donald Trump

Darren R. Reid

Native American Racism in the Age of Donald Trump Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Darren R. Reid School of Humanities Coventry University Coventry, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-58717-8    ISBN 978-3-030-58718-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58718-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Connor, Eva, and Kim In Loving Memory of Isobel, Ray, and George

A Note on Naming

The words ‘Indian’, ‘Native American’, and ‘Indigenous’ will be used interchangeably in this book. Each of those words is problematic and none will be especially privileged in this text. Wherever possible, the specific names of individual peoples will be used instead. As this work discusses colonialist ideas about Indigenous peoples, however, it will frequently need to revert to one of these meta-labels

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Trump Versus Indian Country 17 3 Memory and White Victimhood 49 4 Race and Identity 91 5 Epilogue137 Index145

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1

Fig. 1.2

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2

Fig. 2.3

This portrait of Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States, by Ralph E. W. Earl (c. 1835) was hung in the Oval Office within days of Trump becoming president. When the Navajo code talkers were honoured in the White House, this image (which measures 30 by 25 inches) was a prominent feature of the occasion, hanging prominent behind the president’s lectern 3 The design for the Harriet Tubman $20 was completed by the summer of 2019. It will not now be minted before 2026. (Alan Rappeport, ‘See a Design of the Harriet Tubman $20 that Mnuchin Delayed’, The New York Times, June 14, 2019: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/us/politics/ harriet-tubman-bill.html)4 This detail from Custer’s Last Stand by Edgar Samuel Paxson (1899) captures the spirit of the ‘last stand’ myth. There is no evidence to suggest any such stand took place. Native American sources suggest that most were unaware that Custer was even present until weeks after the battle 22 Idle No More Banner from the San Francisco Pride Day (2013): ‘Protect Grandmother Earth’. Photograph by Quinn Dombrowski, via Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license 29 San Francisco protest over the Keystone XL pipeline. Note the ‘Water is Sacred’ banners. Photograph by Pax Ahimsa Gethen via Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license 30

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Fig. 3.1 Depiction of the Battle of Tippecanoe (1811), the first test of Tenskwatawa’s and Tecumseh’s pan-Indian confederacy. This image dates from 1889, one year prior to the Wounded Knee Massacre61 Fig. 3.2 ‘Perfection itself—Adjectives unnecessary’: following Attack on Fort Boonesborough (1906), which lasted less than a minute, 1907’s Daniel Boone, Or Pioneer Days in America, presented the first true filmic biography of its titular character. It was heavily promoted by the Edison Company throughout the year of its release69 Fig. 3.3 The front cover to the first issue of Fighting Daniel Boone (left) and the poster for Daniel Boone, Trailblazer (right), were part of a wave of Boone-related media that appeared throughout the 1950s and 1960s 70 Fig. 4.1 Tweeted out by Trump on January 3rd, 2019, this banner mocked Warren’s claims to a Native American identity by drawing upon popular ideas about the vanishing Indian 93 Fig. 4.2 Detail from Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbour (1846) shows white Americans, dressed as Indians, throwing crates of tea overboard 95 Fig. 4.3 This enrolment for the Cherokee Census card details the application of Mary E. Wicket, who possessed ‘1/2 [Indian] blood’. National Archives and Records Administration, NAID 25174998 Fig. 4.4 The Native American cast (1890) of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show102 Fig. 4.5 White Fawn’s Devotion: A Play Acted by a Tribe of Red Indians in America (1910) was directed by James Young Deer and is likely the oldest surviving silent film directed by a Native American filmmaker 103 Fig. 4.6 This advertisement for Goodrich Sports Shoes (1929) featured the likeness and words of Long, then still presenting himself as Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance shortly before his discovery and suicide 112 Fig. 4.7 Even as reports about possible changes to the names of the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians garnered Trump’s ire, he still found an opportunity to use the politics of Warren’s problematic identity to attack her 120

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  From the time Trump announced his intention to run for president, racism directed towards Native Americans has become an increasingly visible part of cultural and political life in the United States. Like many, Trump’s relationship with Indian Country is shaped by the tension which exists between perceptions of the past, such as his apparent interest in Andrew Jackson, and the actual historic processes such memories so often obscure. This introductory chapter provides a brief overview of the nature of those tensions, as well as providing an outline of this volume, its scope, and its purpose. Keywords  Navajo • Code talkers • Andrew Jackson • Second World War memory Those that deny their history are doomed to repeat it! —Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump ‘THOSE THAT DENY THEIR HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT!’ Twitter, June 11th, 2020: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/ status/1271082251791499267)

On November 27, 2017, President Donald Trump hosted a ceremony at the White House to honour a group of Navajo code talkers who served in the Second World War. The veterans chatted comfortably with the © The Author(s) 2020 D. R. Reid, Native American Racism in the Age of Donald Trump, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58718-5_1

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president, who, for his part, was convivial, earnest, and, in his own way, charming. Speaking for the veterans, Peter MacDonald delivered an eloquent account of the code talkers’ role in the Pacific theatre. Hundreds of Navajo had provided the United States with a code that the Japanese could not break—their language. From Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima, American marines relied upon the power of Navajo, to keep their secrets and coordinate complex manoeuvres in the notorious deadly theatre.1 It was a power the US military had learned to value since the advent of complex communication technology and the industrialisation of warfare. The Choctaw and other Indians had served as code talkers in the First World War, using their language to foil their German adversary during an era in which US domestic policy sought to eradicate Indigenous languages.2 During the Second World War, the Cree, the Comanche, Mestaki, and other Native American peoples likewise lent their languages to aid the allies in the war effort.3 Contrary to the contemporary racist caricatures, Indian Country sat at the heart of the US's ascendancy to the status of global superpower.4 After MacDonald’s speech, Trump took to the podium to heap praise on the code talkers, calling their exploits ‘fantastic’ and ‘beautiful’. The code talkers were, Trump acknowledged, ‘amazing’. General John F. Kelly, Trump’s then Chief of Staff, praised the ways in which Indigenous languages had allowed the Marine Corp to ‘outwit the Japanese’, echoed the president’s message: [W]hat these men did, the advantage they gave our Marines when they invaded Iwo Jima was really, and I think it was pointed out, was one of the very few factors that allowed us to be successful on [Iwo Jima] island…We lost 6,000 Marines and 25,000 wounded on that island in 28 days of battle. It would have been a lot worse had we not had the Navajo Code Talkers.

Kelly emphasised the community and common cause that bound the code talkers, not only to each other, but to the wider military complex and, through that, to the nation itself: ‘being associated with United States Marines, it’s as much a cult as it is a service. And we never forget.’ He signed off with the motto of the corps—semper fidelis: always faithful.5 According to Kelly, the code talkers were indisputably a part of the larger American experience, integral actors in a shared national drama, and active participants in the construction of the United States as a global superpower. Symbolically, it was an important moment.6

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Fig. 1.1  This portrait of Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States, by Ralph E. W. Earl (c. 1835) was hung in the Oval Office within days of Trump becoming president. When the Navajo code talkers were honoured in the White House, this image (which measures 30 by 25 inches) was a prominent feature of the occasion, hanging prominent behind the president’s lectern

It was also a problematic one. Hanging directly behind the president’s podium was a portrait of the seventh president, Andrew Jackson, the man who had championed Indian Removal and, through it, the ethnic cleansing of the eastern United States (Fig. 1.1). Before Jackson had left office, the Choctaw and the Creek had both been removed from their lands. About 2,500 Choctaws died on the march west, compared to the 9,000 who reached their ultimate destination.7 This mortality rate does not include the deaths suffered by the survivors in the immediate aftermath of their arrival. It is comparable to the impact of the Plague on medieval and early modern Europe.8 It was an act of genocide—negligence, indifference, and the deployment of specific policies designed to attack Indian lives, bodies, and cultures en masse.9 And it was recognised as such by many of its contemporaneous critics.10 From the second half of the twentieth century, it has been more emphatically (though certainly not universally) identified as an act of genocide.11

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Fig. 1.2  The design for the Harriet Tubman $20 was completed by the summer of 2019. It will not now be minted before 2026. (Alan Rappeport, ‘See a Design of the Harriet Tubman $20 that Mnuchin Delayed’, The New York Times, June 14, 2019: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/us/politics/harriet-tubmanbill.html)

Andrew Jackson, Trump declared the year before he met with the Navajo code talkers, ‘had a great history’. As a candidate for the Republican nomination, he responded indignantly when the Department of the Treasury announced a plan to redesign the $20 bill and replace the image of Jackson with that Harriet Tubman, the Black activist, and abolitionist who helped to smuggle dozens of people out of slavery  (Fig. 1.2). Responding almost immediately to the announcement, Trump called it an act of ‘pure political correctness’.12 Once in office, Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart editor-turned-political adviser, championed the hanging of Andrew Jackson’s portrait in a prominent place of honour in the Oval Office.13 Shortly after the portrait was given its place of honour in the White House, Trump visited Hermitage, Jackson’s Tennessee plantation, where he celebrated his ‘glory and greatness’, declaring Jackson to be ‘one of our great presidents’. He went on to draw an explicit connection between his and Jackson’s administrations: ‘It was during the Revolution that Jackson first confronted, and defied, an arrogant elite. Does that sound familiar to you?’14 Months later, he was honouring Navajo code talkers in the White House, seemingly unaware of the contradictory symbolism of the event. Indeed, he appears to have developed a genuine and lingering respect for the Navajo code talkers at this meeting.15 If Trump was unaware of the problematic imagery of the event, the same cannot be said of Bannon. When an op-ed appeared in the New York Times in 2018, purporting to reveal the existence of an internal ‘resistance’ within the

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White House, the (now) former advisor would appear on Fox News with a message for the president: ‘do what Andrew Jackson did’.16 Trump’s engagement with the historic processes he celebrates (and perpetuates) is limited and inconsistent and, when it suits his needs, cruel. Little more than a year after the code talker ceremony, Elizabeth Warren announced her intention to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. After repeatedly referring to Warren as ‘Pocahontas’, he vowed to see her ‘on the campaign TRAIL’, an apparent reference to the genocidal product of Jackson’s Indian Removal policies.17 Three months after Warren’s announcement, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that the Tubman bill would be delayed a staggering six-to-eight years (2026–2028), meaning that Jackson’s portrait would remain on the front of the $20 bill until at least two years after Trump leaves office. When questioned about the delay, Mnuchin implied that the Tubman bill might never make it into circulation, only that he had ‘made no [final] decision’. Nor would one be ‘made until 2026’.18 Honoured Navajo on the one hand and jokes about genocide on the other, Trump’s relationship with Indian Country requires much contextualisation.

History and Memory Decades before Trump celebrated the Navajo code talkers at the Whitehouse, he faced a very different type of Native American. As he assumed the heirship of his father’s business empire, Trump found himself frequently surrounded by the many Indian busts and statues his father had collected. In Fred Senior’s basement, statues were, as Trump’s niece would later put it, ‘lined up against the far wall like sarcophagi’. In the family patriarch’s private office, busts of ‘Indian chiefs in full headdress [were] scattered about’, a silent celebration of empire and colonialism.19 Fred senior’s reason for collecting these objects is not clear but, if they conformed to typical European American depictions of Native Americans, they almost certainly celebrated, using western artistic traditions, the plains cultures most closely associated with the invasion and conquest of the far west.20 Their headdresses and silent gazes likely spoke not of the complex, ongoing histories of Native Americans but the imagined and fantastical exploits of their pop-culture counterparts. The tension between perceived historic memory and the socio-historic realities such fantasies disguise was evident throughout Trump’s presidency. Trump is a historian of convenience, interpreting the past and drawing upon historic memory when it suits his policy and agenda, but discarding

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it when the complexities of a given historic narrative threaten to undermine his position.21 He has repeatedly demonstrated that he possess only a tenuous grasp of history, American or global. When he visited Pearl Harbour, he reportedly had to ask John Kelly what had occurred there. In France, his attendance at a Bastille Day military parade prompted him to comment to his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, that he had not previously realised that the country had ‘won a lot of battles’.22 According to John Bolton, his onetime National Security Advisor, Trump believed the Tiananmen Square massacre (1989) had occurred sometime around 2003.23 According to Trump himself, no one in his administration had heard of Juneteenth, the holiday that celebrates emancipation, until one of his (Black) Secret Service agents explained it to them.24 The administration’s ideological engagement with the past largely comes not from the president himself, but advisors such as Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Steven Mnuchin, whom he trusts to interpret it on his behalf. Trump, for his part, appears broadly disinterested in history—until an interpretation emerges which justifies his policies or personal belief system. When that occurs, history (or Trump’s preferred interpretation of it) finds itself at the centre of the administration’s decision-making processes and rhetorical mechanisms. Problematic interpretations are treated like established facts and loaded assumptions espoused as if they are self-­ evident truths. For many in Trump’s audience, his presidency represents a potent vector to the past in an era of perceived ‘fake news’ and rampant post-truth interpretations of humanist fields.25 Like it or not, Trump’s historic pronouncements carry weight, reliable scholarship be damned.26 In the context Native American or colonialist issues, that collision is particularly problematic: Elizabeth Warren is mocked with war whoops, and protesters are mocked with tomahawk chops.27 Native Americans are particularly vulnerable to inconsistent, incomplete, or inadequate readings of the past. The American frontier has been widely mythologised, used to tell stories of grand adventure, endeavour, and enterprise. The frontier mythology is a  place where larger than life heroes have dwelt for centuries, from Daniel Boone to Davey Crockett to George Armstrong Custer. These characters are folkloric, exemplifying larger themes connected to the evolution of American identities. They, and many others besides, are the protagonists in a great drama, told in countless books and media artefacts. Explicitly and implicitly, Native American peoples are the adversaries in so many of these narratives, standing between a pantheon of seemingly relatable heroes and the emergence of the modern United States.  The colonising process has  cast them as freedom's antagonists.28

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Tension exists between the multifaceted realities of American history and the ways in which it is remembered, memorialised, or forgotten. Having been marginalised politically and culturally from the founding of the Republic, Native Americans have frequently been subjected to colonialist re-imaginings of their histories, lives, intent, and participation in (and resistance to) the national project. Their role in the United States has been interpreted and consequently shaped by men like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, the breadth of their experiences limited by colonialist constructs such as ‘Manifest Destiny’ or myths such as the ‘vanishing Indian’.29 Theodore Roosevelt was fully invested in the myth of the ‘savage’ who could be killed without remorse. Decades later, John F. Kennedy seemed to lament the apparent mysteries that surrounded a set of peoples who, in reality, had been active agents throughout the nation’s history.30 Imagined Indians frequently adorn the iconography of the country’s history; real Native Americans helped to shape it. In the modern era, Native Americans are frequently marginalised, often to the point of invisibility.31 Their identities are contested and presumed characteristics are frequently projected onto them. New stereotypes have emerged to compliment the old: drunkenness, pan-Indian spirituality, and a non-specific connection to the natural world. Trans-national construction projects, such as the Keystone XL pipeline, are prioritised whilst Indigenous concerns are, by default, laid aside. Stereotypical Native American iconography is celebrated whilst Indigenous cultures are appropriated and misused.32 For many,  the distance between a meaningful understanding of the relevant historic processes and the resultant historic memory is substantial; and historic narratives related to Native Americans abound in the White House, now as they have done throughout the presidency’s history. This book aims to provide context, as well as a corrective perspective to the Trump administration’s reading of the past as it relates to Native Americans. Donald Trump and his advisors are not historians, but they nonetheless look to the past, drawing from it lessons which perpetuate longstanding (and very destructive) processes rooted in centuries of colonisation, forced cultural changes, exploitation, and exclusion. Likewise, the administration’s supporters similarly draw upon historic memory to frame their understanding of modern issues related to Native Americans. This book will analyse the contours of that shared memory as well as the tension that exists between it and evidence-based readings of the past. To that end, the scope of this work will be narrow. It has been written to provide context on Trump’s and his supporter’s interactions with (and

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perceptions of) Native Americans during a period where deeper understanding of those issues is essential. Ideally, this work would have been written following the conclusion of the Trump presidency, a retrospective investigation into the changing nature of his engagement with Indian Country over the course of his career, from businessperson to the White House. With a thorough understanding of Trump rooted in a complete one or two term stay in Washington, his intentions could be judged more fully and his administration’s engagement with Native American and colonialist history understood more completely. The nature of his presidency, however, requires something of an intervention. Journalists, students, professors, researchers, and other commentators must confront language, actions, and policies that are immersed in much broader historic processes than might appear evident at first glance. Much of the media was outraged by Trump’s use of ‘Pocahontas’ as a slur for Elizabeth Warren but few seemed to be able to place this episode into the appropriate context. There are many reasons why ‘Pocahontas’ is a problematic label, but only some of these were addressed in the popular discourse.33 Whether or not Trump wins his bid for re-election in 2020, the consequences of his presidency will continue to affect Indian Country for years to come. This book will not provide a complete survey of Trump’s relationship with Native America. Instead, it will examine three key themes that have emerged over the course of his first three years in office, contextualising some of the most prominent contact points between his administration and Indian Country. Chapter 2 will analyse how Trump’s gambling businesses brought him into conflict with a series of Native American peoples in the 1980s and 1990s. As well as analysing the business dealings and conflicts which fuelled his early animosity towards (and jealousy of) Indian Country, this chapter will consider the role played by the myth of the ‘vanishing Indian’ in shaping Trump’s dealings with Native Americans before and, ultimately, throughout his presidency. Chapter 3 will consider the broader historic context which frames the anti-Indian colonialist attitudes demonstrated by a portion of Trump’s supporters and, in particular, the way in which historic memory has shaped anti-Indian perceptions whilst marginalising sympathetic readings of Indigenous histories. Chapter 4 will problematise questions of identity and colonialist representation of Indian peoples and cultures which inform Trump’s approach to indigenous identity politics. It will analyse Trump’s attacks on Elizabeth Warren, as well as issues related to Warren’s own problematic identity.

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This volume aims to examine Trump’s presidency as part of a much larger process of anti-Indian colonisation. In the emerging literature on Trump and Trumpism, discussions about policy, labour relations, race, gender, and ideology are already to be found.34 This volume aims to add to that discussion. It is a study of the traditions and narratives that have informed aspects of his wider worldview, a rebuttal to many of the historic truths which he holds to be self-evident and a reflection upon which memories and narratives have shaped his perception of Native Americans. This book accepts that Trump’s supporters are not homogenous, that their worldviews, politics, and beliefs vary significantly. Trump supporters will be discussed in this book, but on the understanding that what applies to some of his supporters does not necessarily apply to all of his supporters. This work cannot and does not propose to explain Trumpism. But it does aim to explain and contextualise some important aspects of this phenomenon as they relate to America’s Indigenous peoples. This is a book about colonisation. As a result, it must necessarily be problematic from the outset, a study of the oppressor rather than those who stand up to one of the starkest power imbalances in the developed world. To understand this subject in-depth, a study much more focused on Native American resistance in the context of Trumpism is required. That is beyond the scope of this book, but its author looks the emergence of such works in the future whilst acknowledging their need in the present. This work owes a significant debt to the following. First, my children, Connor and Eva, and my partner, Kim, for their endless patience, love, and support. I would also like to extend my sincerest thanks to my colleagues, Brett Sanders, Christopher Smith, John Grima, Kristopher Lovell, Sonja Astley, Peter Finkenbusch, Marcus Maloney, Charlotte Butler, and Frank Magee. Special thanks also go to my friend and mentor, Matthew C. Ward, without whom I would not be in a position to write this text. I would also like to thank my colleagues in South America who have helped me broaden my perspective in some key areas: Leonel Piovesana, Claudia Battestin, Jorge Alejandro Santos, Alexander Englemann, and Vitória Scandolara. Thanks are due also  to my parents, grandparents, sibblings, and wider family, as well as the many scholars on Twitter who discussed themes in this book with me on that forum.

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Notes 1. For a personal account of a Navajo Code Talker see Chester Nez with Judith Schiess Avila Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII (New York: Berkley Caliber, 2012). 2. For a contemporaneous account of this see Ben H. Chastaine Story of the 36th: The Experiences of the 36th Division in the World War (Oklahoma City: Harlow Publishing Company, 1920), p. 232. For the findings of the US government on the role played by the Choctaw in beginning the code talker tradition, see Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2008, Public Law 110–420 (2008), p. 2. 3. William C. Meadows ‘“They Had a Chance to Talk to One Another…”: the Role of Incidence in Native American Code Talking’ Ethnohistory, Vol. 56 (2009): 269–284; William C. Meadows The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), pp. 1–72; ‘Last Mestaki Code Talker Remembers’ USA Today, July 4th, 2002: https:// usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/07/06/codetalkers.htm; Jessica Deer ‘Louis Levi Oakes, last WWII Mohawk Code Talker, Dies at 94’ CBC, May 29th, 2019: https://www.cbc.ca/news/Indigenous/ louis-levi-oakes-code-talker-obituary-1.5153816; ‘Meskwaki “Code Talkers” Receive Congressional Gold Medal’ The Gazette, November 20th, 2013: https://www.thegazette.com/2013/11/20/meskwaki-codetalkers-receive-congressional-gold-medal. 4. Broad recognition of the Code Talkers occurred piecemeal after the Second World War. The 2002 film Windtalkers brought the narrative of the code talkers to a broad, mainstream audience whilst the Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2008 led to broader, federal efforts to recognise the role played by Indigenous communications in prior conflicts. For a discussion about the process leading to the twenty-first century recognition of the code talkers, see William C. Meadows ‘An Honor Long Overdue: The 2013 Congressional Gold and Silver Medal Ceremonies in Honor of Native American Code Talkers’ American Indian Research and Culture Journal, Vol. 40 (2016): 91–121. See also Windtalkers. Directed by John Woo. Beverly Hills: MGM, 2002. 5. ‘Remarks by President Trump at an Event Honoring the Native American Code Talkers’ White House Briefing Statements, November 27th, 2017: https://www.White House.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-presidenttrump-event-honoring-native-american-code-talkers/. 6. ‘President Trump meets World War II Navajo code talkers at White House’. PBS News Hour Online Video, 17:26, ‘YouTube’, November 27th, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuXc3IenURc&t=19s.

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7. For number of Choctaw who died on the trail, see Sandra Faiman-Silva Choctaws and the Crossroads: The Political Economy of Class and Culture in the Oklahoma Timber Region (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), p. 19. For the number of Choctaw who completed the journey see Anthony F.C. Wallace The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), p. 81. 8. For mortality rates associated with the Plague, see Stephen Porter Great Plague (Cirencester: Amberley, 2009), pp. 24–28. For the socially and culturally transformative power of such a mortality rate, see Samuel K. Cohen, Jr. ‘The Black Death: End of a Paradigm’ The American Historical Review, Vol. 107 (2002): 703–738. 9. The Indian Removal Act also went beyond, as Alfred Cave has shown, the strict legal mandate acquired through the passage of the act. See Alfred F. Cave ‘Abuse of Power: Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act of 1830’ The Historian, Vol. 65 (2003): 1330–1353. 10. For discussions on the anti-Removal movement, see Alisse Portnoy Their Right to Speak: Women’s Activism in the Indian and Slave Debates (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp.  16–51; Mary Hershberger ‘Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle Against Indian Removal in the 1830s’ The Journal of American History, Vol. 86 (1999): 15–40; for a discussion about the ways in which this debate impacted the larger political landscape of the time, see Fred S. Rolater ‘The American Indian and the Origin of the Second American Party System’ The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 76 (1993): 180–203. For the number of Choctaw who died on the trail, see Sandra Faiman-­ Silva Choctaws and the Crossroads: The Political Economy of Class and Culture in the Oklahoma Timber Region (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), p. 19. For the number of Choctaw who completed the journey see Wallace The Long, Bitter Trail, p. 81. 11. Robert Remini’s biography highlights the difficulty Indian Removal presents some scholars. According to Remini, it was a ‘tragic’ event forced upon a ‘realistic president’ who could only respond to the circumstances of his time, though he does note ‘horror’ that ‘beggars the imagination’. The distinction here is one of culpability, acknowledging the scale of the ‘horror’ without allowing blame to be assigned to Jackson who, in some respects, is presented as a victim of circumstances rather than an active agent who rejected opposition to Indian Removal as some kind of cosmopolitan conspiracy. See Robert V. Remini Andrew Jackson, Volume Two: The Course of American Freedom (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 181), pp. 148–150. For other criticisms of the use of the genocide label see Sean Wilentz Andrew Jackson (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005), p. 68; F.P. Prucha ‘Andrew Jackson’s Indian Policy:

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A Reassessment’ The Journal of American History, Vol. 56 (1969): 527–539; and H.W.  Brands Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (New York: Anchor Books, 2005), pp. 490–491. 12. David Wright ‘Trump: Tubman on the $20 Bill is “Pure Political Correctness”’ CNN, April 21st, 2016: https://edition.cnn. com/2016/04/21/politics/donald-trump-tubman-bill-political-correctness/index.html. 13. Susan B.  Glasser ‘The Man Who Put Andrew Jackson in Trump’s Oval Office’ Politic, January 22nd, 2018: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/22/andrew-jackson-donald-trump-216493; Emily Crockett ‘Trump on Tubman: “Pure Political Correctness.” Trump on Jackson: “tremendous success”’ Vox, April 21st, 2016: https://www.vox. com/2016/4/21/11477600/donald-trump-harriet-tubman-andrew-jacksonpolitical-correctness. 14. ‘Tump Expresses his Admiration for Andrew Jackson at Hermitage’. The Washington Post Online Video, 1:56, May 1, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/trump-expresses-admiration-forandrew-jackson-at-hermitage/2017/05/01/3b0f1de2-2e8a-11e7a335-fa0ae1940305_video.html. 15. For the long-term impact of the Navajo Code Talkers in shaping Trump’s perspective on Indian Country see ‘Presidential Proclamation on National Native American Heritage Month, 2019’ White House, October 31st, 2019: https://www.White House.gov/presidential-actions/presidentialproclamation-national-native-american-heritage-month-2019/. 16. ‘Steve Bannon on the “coup” in Washington against Trump’. Fox New Online Video, 8:09, ‘YouTube’, September 10th, 2018. https://youtu. be/ThJTRGiXzHc. 17. @realDonalTrump ‘Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!’ Twitter, February 9th, 2019, 10:54pm: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1094368870415110145. 18. ‘Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Says $20 Bill Redesign has been Postponed’. CNBC Online Video, 5:17, ‘CNBC’, May 22, 2019. https://www.cnbc. com/video/2019/05/22/treasury-secretary-mnuchin-says-20-bill-redesign-has-been-postponed.html. 19. Mary L. Trump Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020), pp. 96–100. 20. Evan M.  Maurer ‘Presenting the American Indian: From Europe to America’ in The Changing Presentation of the American Indian: Museums

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and Native Cultures (Washington and New York: Washington University Press, 2000), pp. 15–28. 21. Steven Sarson’s Barack Obama: American Historian examines its subject’s understanding of, and relationship to, America’s past. It is a provocative way to think about American presidents. As Sarson put it, ‘[f]or Barack Obama, then, the past isn’t something simply to mine for a few crowd-­ pleasing soundbites. It’s something that informs and inspires him.’ Trump’s relationship to the past is different to that of Obama’s, but it remains important to understanding his worldview and the policy decisions of his administration. See Steven Sarson Barack Obama: American Historian (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 3–4. 22. Carol D.  Leonning and Philip Rucker A Very Stable Genius: Donald J.  Trump’s Testing of America (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2020), pp. 169–170. 23. Julian Borger ‘Trump was Willing to Halt Criminal Investigations as “favor” to Dictators, Bolton Book Says’ The Guardian, June 18th, 2020: h t t p s : / / w w w. t h e g u a r d i a n . c o m / u s - n e w s / 2 0 2 0 / j u n / 1 7 / john-bolton-book-trump-china-accusations-dictators. 24. Michael C. Bender ‘Trump Talks Juneteenth, John Bolton, Economy in WSJ Interview’ The Wall Street Journal, June 19th, 2020: https://www. wsj.com/articles/trump-talks-juneteenth-john-bolton-economy-inwsj-interview-11592493771. 25. For post-truth and fake news discussions see Jeff Brand ‘Politics, Projection, and Fake News’ Group, Vol. 41 (2017): 213–227; Susan B.  Glasser Covering Politics in a “Post-Truth” America (Washington: Brookings Institute Press, 2016); Patricia A.  Turner ‘Respecting the Smears: AntiObama Folklore Anticipates Fake News’ The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 131 (2018): 431–424; Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow ‘Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election’ The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 31 (2017): 211–235; Norman Vasu, Benjamin Ang, Terri-­Anne Teo, Shashi Jayakumar, Muhammad Faizal, Juhi Ahuja Fake News: National Security in the Post-Truth Era (Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, 2018). 26. For example, historians have frequently emphasised Native American agency, voices, and intersectionality in recent decades. The ‘discovery’ of the Americas is increasingly recognised as an ‘invasion’ and the genocide that occurred in its wake is often recognised as such within the academe. For examples, see Daniel K. Richter Facing East from Indian Country: A Narrative History of Early America (Coventry: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp.  1–10; Andrea Smith ‘American Studies without America: Native Feminisms and the Nation-State’ American Quarterly, Vol. 60 (2008): 309–315; Lisa Kahaleole Hall ‘Strategies of Erasure:

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U.S.  Colonialism and Native Hawaiian Feminism’, American Quarterly, Vol. 60 (2008): 273–280; Sabby Sagall Final Solutions: Human Nature, Capitalism and Genocide (London: Pluto Press, 2013), pp.  111–157; Enrique Dussell ‘1492: The Discovery of an Invasion’ CrossCurrents, Vol. 41 (1991–1992): 437–452; Theda Perdue The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), pp.  34–49; Jacki Thompson Rand Kiowa Humanity and the Invasion of the State (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), pp. 1–10. 27. Elizabeth Warren “Mocked with Native American Gestures”’ BBC News, September 25th, 2012: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19723601; Nick Gass ‘Boston Radio Host at Trump Event Mocks Warren with War Whoops’ Politico, June 29th, 2016: https://www.politico.com/stor y/2016/06/donald-trump-warren-carr-war-whoops224948. 28. For a full discussion on this, see Chap. 3 of this work. 29. Thomas Jefferson Notes on the State of Virginia: Illustrated with a Map, Including the States of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania. A New Edition, Prepared by the Author (J.W. Randolph: Richmond, 1853), pp. 68–69, 241–269; Andrew Jackson ‘Statement on Indian Removal to Congress’ (speech, Washington DC, December 6th, 1830); handwritten transcript of the speech located in Records of the United State Senate, 1789–1990, Record Group 46, National Archives. 30. Kennedy quoted in Hearings Before the United States Senate Committee on the Interior and Insular Affairs: 90th Congress (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968), p. 321; Theodore Roosevelt The Winning of the West, Volume III: The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784–1890 (New York and London: The Knickerbocker Press, 1894), p. 45. 31. Glen Sean Coulthard Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), pp. 1–17. 32. Casey R.  Schmitt ‘Asserting Tradition: Rhetoric of Tradition and the Defence of Chief Illiniwek’ in Trevor J. Blank and Robert Glenn Howard Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Locating the Role of the Past in the Present (Boulder: University of Colorado Press), pp. 100–122; Matthew Krystal Indigenous Dance and the Dancing Indian: Contested Representations in the Global Era (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2012), pp. 209–230. 33. This subject will be analysed in detail in Chap. 3 of this book. For examples of how the media has interpreted Trump’s ‘Pocahontas’ slur see Josh Hafner ‘Is “Pocahontas” a Racial Slur? Eric Trump Defends his Dad, but

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Native Americans say Otherwise’ USA Today, December 15th, 2017: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/11/28/pocahontas-racist-eric-trump-defends-his-dad-but-native-americans-say-otherwise/902837001; Honor Sachs ‘How Pocahontas—the Myth and the Slur- Props Up White Supremacy’ The Washington Post, October 16th, 2018: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/16/howpocahontas-myth-slur-props-up-white-supremacy. For discussions related to the problematic nature of Warren’s identity see Rebecca Nagle ‘I Won’t Support An Elizabeth Warren While She Appropriates My Identity’ Huffpost, October 3rd, 2018: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-elizabeth-warren-native-american-identity_n_5bb4e922e4b0876eda9 a72e1; For examples indicative of how it was generally reported, see Rachel Frazin ‘Trump Calls Warren “Pocahontas,” Knocks Wealth Tax’ The Hill, July 12th, 2019: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/473543trump-calls-warren-pocahontas-knocks-wealth-tax; Maya Oppenheim ‘Trump Repeats Racial Slur Against Elizabeth Warren, Calling Senator “Pocahontas”’ The Independent, September 30th, 2018: https://www. independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-elizabeth-warrenpocahontas-racial-slur-repeats-presidential-run-a8562136.html; Jordyn Phelps ‘What’s Behind Trump’s “Pocahontas” Taunt of Warren’ ABC News, October 16th, 2018: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumpspocahontas-taunt-warren/story?id=58530657. 34. Jasmine Kerrissey Labor in the Time of Trump (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019); Christian Fuchs Digital Demagogue: Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter (London: Pluto Press, 2018); Brett Colassacco ‘Before Trump: On Comparing Fascism and Trumpism’ The Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Vol. 12 (2018): 27–53; Robert Jervis, Francis J. Gavin, Joshua Rovner, Diane N. Labrosse with George Fuji Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); Rebecca Martinez ‘Fomenting Fear and Calling on our Courage: Being Latinx on the Tenure Track in the Time of Trumpism’ Women, Gender, and Families of Color, Vol. 6 (2018): 110–117.

CHAPTER 2

Trump Versus Indian Country

Abstract  Trump has a long personal history with Indian Country. As he attempted to build a gaming empire, he frequently found his business interests floundering whilst Native American casinos appeared to flourish. Anger and jealousy were the result, and Trump went on the offensive, attacking tribal sovereignty as well as the legitimacy of Native American identities in the eastern United States. Having failed in his mission to fatally undermine Native American gaming, Trump instead sought to capitalise upon it, funding attempts by Indian groups to gain federal recognition and open up lucrative management contracts to his company. This approach also failed. By the time he won the presidency, Trump had a long, antagonistic personal history with Indian Country. His second-ever executive order sought to reverse gains made by Native American protesters who had struggled for years against the Keystone XL Pipeline. In the years that followed, however, Trump evolved his position, coming to court Native American voters in western states, even as he marginalised those who sought to problematise his administration. As he sought to create a narrative of respect for tribal sovereignty, Trump continued to attack his old Indian adversaries in the east. For Trump, only western Native Americans who supported his administration were worthy of respect. Keywords  Casinos • Gambling • Idle no more • Keystone XL • Tribal gaming

© The Author(s) 2020 D. R. Reid, Native American Racism in the Age of Donald Trump, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58718-5_2

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Americans are the people who pursued our Manifest Destiny across the ocean, into the uncharted wilderness, over the tallest mountains, and then into the skies and even into the stars. —Donald J. Trump (‘Remarks by President Trump at South Dakota’s 2020 Mount Rushmore Fireworks Celebration | Keystone, South Dakota’ White House, July 4th, 2020: https://www. whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trumpsouth-dakotas-2020-mount-rushmore-fireworks-celebrationkeystone-south-dakota. This quote was also tweeted out by the official White House twitter account on July 7th. See @WhiteHouse ‘Americans are the people who pursued our Manifest Destiny across the ocean, into the uncharted wilderness, over the tallest mountains, and then into the skies and even into the stars’ Twitter, July 7th, 2020: https://twitter.com/whitehouse/ status/1280321140326633472)

By the time Trump ascended to the presidency, he had a long, confrontational history with Indian Country. Through his gambling interests, he had found himself repeatedly in conflict with a plurality of Native American peoples whose very existence seemed to offend the businessman. As his gambling interests struggled in the face of more effective and profitable Native American organisations in the 1990s, Trump launched a public relations campaign designed to target the very legitimacy of his adversaries’ identities. In Trump’s eyes, the Native Americans against whom he was competing were nothing of the sort. As he put it in 1993, ‘they don’t look like Indians to me, and they don’t look like Indians to Indians’.1 Despite his best efforts, however, Trump was unable to affect federal policy to his advantage, a failure that would continue to haunt him well into his presidency. Understanding the challenges faced by Native Americans under the Trump administration requires, first and foremost, an understanding of the president’s personal history with different Indian peoples and how his interactions with them shaped his perception of tribal sovereignty. Broadly speaking, Trump’s relationship with Indian Country has gone through three distinct stages. The first (c. 1993–2003) was defined by his experiences in the gaming industry, a belief in the ‘vanishing Indian’ myth, as well as opposition to the idea of tribal sovereignty. The second (c. 2004–2017) saw Trump demonstrate almost complete indifference towards Native American issues and, whilst his core beliefs likely did not change in this period, he seldom expressed them.2 The third phase (c.

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2017–2020) saw the greatest evolution in Trump’s relationship with Indian Country. Now president, he began to profess respect for western Native American peoples who outwardly supported his administration. He increasingly used rhetoric that accepted the legitimacy of his supporters’ tribal sovereignty whilst the White House sought to depict Trump as a protector of Native American rights. At the same time, however, he remained committed to the idea of the ‘vanishing Indian’. For Trump, eastern tribes remained largely illegitimate because they lacked, in the president’s eyes, the required level of racial purity. In contrast, the western tribes, among whom he appears to have found at least some allies, seemed to satisfy Trump’s ill-defined criteria for Indigenous legitimacy. Trump has demonstrated that he is at least willing to accept the Indigeneity of western Native Americans; but his response to restive Indian voices or movements in that region demonstrates that he has little meaningful respect for true tribal autonomy. Trump is prepared to support Native Americans who fit his narrow, racially pure construct of what, he believes, an Indian should be—if they support, or at least fail to problematise, his presidency. Sovereignty and racial purity are closely associated in Trump’s mind, but the relationship was not fixed. At different points, those concepts have exerted differing degrees of pressure on his attitude towards Native Americans. From 2017, the Trump administration began to preach the gospel of tribal autonomy, indicating that he was perhaps developing an appreciation for Indian sovereignty. Supportive rhetoric and actions from his administration in 2019 appeared to underline this possibility, but the crisis brought about by renewed Black Lives Matter protests, and the associated destruction of anti-Indian colonialist statues that accompanied them, demonstrated that, fundamentally, Trump’s respect for Indian Country is only as deep as he perceives its loyalty to the (Trump-aligned) federal government.

Winner Takes It All In 1982, Donald Trump received his first license to own and operate a casino in New Jersey, developing a gambling resort for Holiday Inn—it was the start of a long but challenging career in the gambling industry. By 1986, he had bought out the Holiday Inn and, from the middle of that decade, Trump would significantly increase his holdings in the gambling industry by opening a series of casinos.3 This rapid expansion was made

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possible by cash injections Trump received from his father. Though he would later claim that this monetary support was ‘very small’, amounting to around $1 million, a special investigation by The New York Times suggests this number was closer to $60 million, with a further $293 million (adjusted) coming from his father’s business interests. By 1992, however, his casino business was forced to declare Chap. 11 bankruptcy.4 As his gambling interests failed, the relative success of Native American casinos became an increasing source of frustration for the future president. From at least the early 1990s, Trump became deeply suspicious of Indigenous autonomy and tribal sovereignty. In particular, Trump railed against the tax exemptions that were available to Native American casinos. Seeing this as a ‘discriminatory’ practice, Trump took to the airwaves and to the courts in a remarkable campaign clearly designed to create legislative and popular support for his assault on Indian Country.5 On 18th of June 1993, Trump appeared on the radio show Imus on the Air to talk about his problems with Native American gaming. Host, Don Imus, started the discussion on a deeply problematic footing: ‘So what is this now? A bunch of these drunken Injuns want to open a casino down there in New Jersey?’ Trump, not questioning the form or content of the question, responded by talking about organised crime: ‘A lot of the reservations are being, in some people’s opinion, at least to a certain extent run by organized crime and organized crime elements, as you can imagine. There’s no protection…And the politicians around 1987 passed a law where the Indians can have virtually unsupervised casino gaming.’6 A generous reading of Trump’s response might suggest that he was attempting to address some of the complex social and economic problems that have historically affected certain Indian Reservations.7 He was quick to demonstrate that that was not the case, however. When Imus told his guest that he did not ‘think it makes sense to anybody to have Indians operate casinos in New Jersey’, Trump offered a flippant reply: ‘General George Custer was against it also and look what happened to him.’ Custer, who had incompetently led the Seventh Cavalry to almost complete destruction Battle at the Little Big Horn in 1876, was immortalised in American popular culture in the aftermath of that encounter. In the years and decades that followed his ignominious defeat, he came to be depicted as the leader of a tragic but ultimately noble (and fictitious) ‘last stand’ against the Lakota and Cheyenne.8 Right into the twenty-first century, Custer remains a symbol of righteous violence against Native Americans. When Susana Martinez, governor of New Mexico, met with a group of

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Native Americans in 2012, Pat Rogers, a Republican National Committee member, wrote to her staff to complain that ‘[t]he state is going to hell. Col. Weh [Martinez’s Republican opponent] would not have dishonoured Col. Custer in this manner.’9 Trump was, and is, deeply invested in the idea of the ‘vanishing’ Indian and, in one form or another, has relied upon it to shape his interactions with parts of Indian Country for decades, particularly the eastern peoples with whom his businesses were in competition.10 The myth of the vanishing Indian is particularly powerful in the eastern states where Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal policy was responsible for the forced relocation of thousands of Indigenous persons to the west. For all of its effectiveness, however, the Indian Removal Act achieved only an imperfect version of its aims. Pockets of Native Americans remained in the eastern United States and even among those communities that were no longer recognised by the state (and thus their identities delegitimised), a continuity of identity persisted even as the comparative invisibility of these groups compounded perceptions that, in the east, the Indians had indeed vanished. A complex reality thus stood at odds with an over-simplified, and prejudicial, set of historic memories (Fig. 2.1).11 Since the nineteenth century, consistent attempts to measure the quantity of Native American ‘blood’ in those who possess Indigenous identities, as well as educational reforms and other acts of colonial cultural violence, have sought to relegate Native Americans to the country’s past. Unlike other racial groups, Native American identities are frequently measured in fractions.12 One half, one third, one quarter, one eighth: all are common labels appended to Indigenous identities that are, in turn, moderated and controlled by the state.13 This close monitoring of ‘blood quantums’ assumes that Native American identities are biologically determined rather than cultural entities and, as a result, this approach to measuring identity undermines the basis upon which most Indigenous groups have historically constructed their sense of self.14 Among no other ethnic group are such rigorous measurements taken. To be a Native American of mixed-racial descent frequently carries with it socio-cultural penalties meted out by the colonising society, not the least of which is the de-legitimisation of one’s Indigenous identity.15 Mixed race Native Americans are, by the way their identity is measured, diminished in the eyes of the state and many other non-Indigenous people. With each succeeding generation, these arbitrary percentages, which take no account of the identity or lived experience of the individual in question, are prone

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Fig. 2.1  This detail from Custer’s Last Stand by Edgar Samuel Paxson (1899) captures the spirit of the ‘last stand’ myth. There is no evidence to suggest any such stand took place. Native American sources suggest that most were unaware that Custer was even present until weeks after the battle

to decrease whenever a Native American has children with a non-Native American person.16 The implications of this system are deeply problematic, not least because they assume that one’s identity as an Indigenous person is dictated not by the culture, family, or the spaces in which they live, but by raw biology alone.17 It is a colonialist tradition inherited from nineteenth century politicians who were actively seeking to create systems that would dismantle Native American identities and destroy tribal continuity.18 Following his appearance on Imus on the Air, Trump escalated his campaign against Indian casinos and the Indigenous identities of their owners. Appearing in front of the Native American Affairs Committee, he re-­ asserted his belief that ‘organized crime’ sat at the heart of many Indian gaming establishments. He attacked Native American tax exemptions and the unfair advantage they gave to his Indigenous competitors, as well as the very concept of an Indian Reservation itself. ‘If your case is

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non-­ discriminatory,’ he told the committee, ‘why don’t you approve [them] for everybody…You’re saying only Indians can have reservations…why are you being discriminatory?’19 By the early 1990s, Trump’s understanding of Indian Country was intimately tied to the gaming industry and, in particular, his belief that his Native American competitors were able to compete on an uneven playing field, that the tax exemptions granted to Reservations were chronically distorting the market and creating unfair disadvantages for non-Indigenous businesspersons like himself. The privileges of tribal sovereignty, in other words, distorted the free market upon which Trump believed the country was built. Two years prior to his appearance in front of the committee (1991), Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino Resort had entered chapter eleven bankruptcy.20 The following year the Trump Castle Hotel and Casino as well as the Trump Plaza Casino had likewise filed for bankruptcy (1992).21 In the two decades that followed his appearance in front of the Native American Affairs Committee, Trump’s gaming business would declare bankruptcy on a further three occasions.22 At the heart of Trump’s argument against Indian gaming interests sat the same fundamental belief-system that informed Andrew Jackson’s approach to Indian Country—a dismissal of tribal sovereignty and the obligations it imposed upon the federal government. In 1817, Jackson wrote that ‘[t]he policy of the government [towards the Indians] is in open violation of the constitution’. According to Jackson, ‘the right of possession, granted to the Indians granted for the purpose of hunting ceases’ as soon as the land is depleted of sufficient game. Going on, Jackson arrived at the fundamental basis of his argument: ‘I have long viewed treaties with the Indians as an absurdity not to be reconciled to the principles of our Government. The Indians are subjects of the United States, inhabiting its territory and acknowledging its sovereignty, then is it not absurd for the sovereign to negotiate by treaty with the subject[?]’23 For Jackson, Indian peoples were not sovereign and, as such, they needed to be treated not as nations but as individual subjects who had been granted exceptional, but temporary rights that were to be nullified as the ecological and economic situation changed around them. Jackson expected the Indians to assimilate and to increasingly support the national project. Trump mirrored this mode of thinking. Speaking to Imus, he complained: ‘all of a sudden…[t]hey call it a nation. This great sovereign nation, the Indian tribes. All of a sudden, it’s nations.’24 To the Native American Affairs Committee, he suggested direct federal intervention was

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required: ‘You have got to check every supplier going into that Indian reservation. The checking is a joke. The checking is a joke, and you have got to do something because this will be the biggest crime problem in this country’s history, in my opinion.’25 Building on this idea, Trump asked the committee ‘[w]hy is it that the Indians don’t pay tax but everybody else does? I do. Why is it that I pay tax?’ For Trump, the recognition of tribal sovereignty distorted opportunities, providing a very small number of individuals with, as he saw it, unfair opportunities to collect vast sums of money. He told the committee ‘I think, there is a reservation in Connecticut [Mashantucket Pequot] that is making, I believe, perhaps in excess of $500 million. There are a total of 400 people or 300 people, or a very small amount of people in that particular tribe. To make $500 million for 300 people…why do you allow 300 people to make $500 million?’26 Jackson thought along similar lines. To him, the Indians were a small group who illegitimately claimed ownership of vast quantities of land. At best, the Indians could claim lands as hunting grounds, but those claims were limited; as game disappeared, so too did tribal claims.27 As he put it in his 1830 address to Congress, ‘[w]hat good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic’?28 There is not any direct evidence to suggest that Trump had a meaningful awareness of Jackson by the early 1990s, let alone a detailed understanding of the seventh president’s views on Native American sovereignty. Rather, Trump’s views probably started to parallel many of Jackson’s as a result of Native American successes in an industry in which his own businesses were struggling to remain viable. Still, those parallels are worthy of note. With Jackson’s portrait now hanging prominently in Trump’s oval office, common ground between the two is worth highlighting. As more records from this presidency become available in the coming decades, it will be interesting to see to what, if any extent Trump later became aware of his antecedent’s approach to similar issues surrounding tribal sovereignty. Trump had few public interactions with Indian Country between his 1993 anti-sovereignty campaign and the commencement of his presidential run in 2015, but his interest in the intersection of Indian Country, casino operations, and Indigenous sovereignty did not wane in the intervening years. In 2019, and seemingly out of nowhere, Trump tweeted against H.R. 312, a ‘special interest casino bill’ which would reaffirm that the reservation lands awarded to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (it was federally recognised in 2007) were indeed ‘trust lands’, spaces in which

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tribal sovereignty could be expressed.29 This would allow the Mashpee Wampanoag to establish a casino, enjoying similar tax exemptions against which Trump had rallied in the early 1990s. According to Trump, the bill was ‘unfair and doesn’t treat Native Americans equally’, not because it denied them rights or equality, but because it would, in Trump’s eyes, give them an unfair advantage against non-Indigenous casino operators.30 In 2020, Trump succeeded in rescinding the reservation status of 300 acres of Mashpee Wampanoag land. The group had been planning to construct a $1 billion casino.31 Trump’s views in 1993 and 2019 were remarkably consistent, even if he had little to say publicly about Indian Country throughout most of that period. In the many books he is credited as co-authoring, he mentions Native Americans scantly, if at all. From the 1980s to the 1990s, he made no mention of Native Americans (or Indian gaming) in any of his books, only briefly breaking the trend in 2004’s How to Get Rich which acknowledged that his company had secured a deal to manage the west coast casino of a small Indian nation.32 In 2006, in a book he was credited as having co-authored with Robert T. Kiyosaki, Native Americans were used to illustrate the power of leverage: ‘Ever since human beings lived in caves, humans have sought leverage…When gunpowder was developed, the ruler who had canons conquered rulers who did not. Indigenous peoples such as the American Indians, Hawaiians, Maoris of New Zealand, the Aborigines of Australia and many other cultures were conquered by gunpowder.’33 This was the last substantive mention of Native Americans in his pre-presidential canon.34 Despite Indian Country featuring little in Trump’s writings, he remained deeply interested in tribal gaming. In 2002, he attempted to take advantage of that sovereignty when his company inked a management agreement with the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians which would allow him to take over the running of the Spotlight 29 Casino (renamed the Trump 29 Casino).35 The relationship between Trump and his new partners was short lived, however. In 2004, two years into the management agreement, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts filed for chapter eleven bankruptcy. Within two years of the filing, the Twenty-Nine Palms Band had terminated their deal with his company, pointedly leaving the future president, for at least the second time in his career, having been spurned by the Indian casino industry.36 The first occasion had occurred 29 years prior (1993) when he had approached Auga Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians about taking over the management of their planned

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casino, but had been turned down. That first, failed attempt to take over the management of a tribal casino prefaced his appearance in front of the Native American Affairs Committee.37 By the time that Trump took up hosting duties on The Apprentice (2004), he already had a long, antagonistic personal history with Indian Country. Having seen so many of his casinos fail whilst so many Native American casinos had not, Trump had turned to politics in the hope of bringing about the industrial changes he so desperately desired. Those attempts failed but, by the time he ascended to the presidency, Trump found himself with a new opportunity to face down Native American activism. Native Americans were at the vanguard of the movement to halt construction on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, a protest movement to which Barack Obama appeared to have acquiesced. Just days after arriving the White House, Trump set himself to work reversing the gains made by those opposed to the project.

Idle No More A little under a decade after Trump’s brief partnership with the Twenty-­ Nine Band, the Idle No More movement brought tribal sovereignty back to the centre of the socio-political discourse. According to a press release from January 2013, the movement ‘revolves around Indigenous Ways of Knowing rooted in Indigenous Sovereignty to protect water, air, land and all creation for future generations…The movement promotes environmental protection and Indigenous sovereignty.’38 One of the key impact points for Idle No More was its opposition to the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Indigenous opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline would haunt Barrack Obama throughout most of his second term, and, beginning in 2017, would force Trump to publicly tackle the issue of tribal sovereignty for the first time since the early 1990s.39 The Keystone XL pipeline began construction in 2010, connecting oil fields in Canada to refineries as far south as Texas.40 The first three phases of the pipeline were completed by 2014, but from 2011, an early stage in the construction process, it became a matter of concern in Indian Country. In particular, the pipeline’s potential to contaminate important water supplies as well as the danger it posed to Indigenous spiritual and religious sites, were the cause of significant concern.41 Because the pipeline itself did not travel through tribal land, there was, according to TransCanada’s liaison with Indigenous communities, ‘no legal obligation to work with the

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tribes’. Whilst TransCanada, the owners of the pipeline, reached out to Indigenous communities because it was ‘a good, neighbourly thing to do’, construction plans were not materially affected by Indigenous concerns. In response, an increasing number of Native Americans began to agitate against the pipeline. On February 18, 2012, the Black Hills Sioux directed ‘President Barack Obama and the United States Congress to honour the promises of the United States made through the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties by prohibiting the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline’.42 Native Americans were at the vanguard of a movement that would eventually come to involve hundreds of thousands of other Americans. As environmental activists began to take action in Washington, Indigenous peoples began protesting on and around the lands through which the XL pipeline was to pass.43 In 2013, Native American leaders began formulating a ‘cowboys and Indians’ alliance which would find expression the following year when Indian activists, together with modern ‘cowboys’, rode horses through the nation’s capital.44 By 2014, the anti-XL movement had grown to encompass hundreds of thousands of activists, with Indian Country taking an important part in the resultant media narrative.45 In 2015, the Obama administration revoked its support for the XL pipeline and, the following year, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe launched legal action against the US Army Corp of Engineers in an attempt to block further work on the project.46 On November 14th, less than a week after Trump’s victory over Hilary Clinton, the Corp of Engineers issued a statement that reflected the central place Indian Country now had in the Keystone XL discourse: The Army has determined that additional discussion and analysis are warranted in light of the history of the Great Sioux Nation’s dispossessions of lands, the importance of Lake Oahe to the Tribe, our government-to-­ government relationship, and the statute governing easements through government property.47

The ‘government-to-government relationship’ to which this statement referred was precisely the type that Jackson had decried in 1817. Trump inherited this situation when he won the White House. He was not slow to respond. Just four days after his inauguration on January 24, 2017, Trump signed his second-ever executive order. Designed to restart work on the Keystone XL Pipeline, it followed only his order to dismantle the

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Affordable Care Act (Obama Care).48 Whilst this executive action was largely symbolic, it was an important rebuke not just to the anti-XL movement (and the Obama administration), but the concept of tribal sovereignty.49 On the same day that he signed this order, Andrew Jackson’s portrait was hung in the oval office.50 Four months later, on June 28th, Trump attempted to re-set the agenda surrounding the Keystone XL controversy by hosting a roundtable at the White House which involved state-­ level leaders meeting with select tribal representatives. As Trump put it in his opening remarks to the meeting, ‘we’re here to talk about how we can create new prosperity for our citizens by unlocking vast treasures of energy reserves, which we have a great deal—far more than anyone understood’. With the roundtable, Trump aimed to jumpstart an ‘America First’ energy policy that could boast Indigenous support whilst marginalising the dissent that had helped to define the anti-XL movement (Fig. 2.2).51 Rather than outwardly attacking tribal sovereignty, Trump (like Jackson before him) co-opted the concept for his own ends.52 At the roundtable, he told the gathered delegates that ‘I’m proud to have such a large gathering of tribal leaders here at the White House. I look forward to more government-to-government consultations with tribal leaders about the issues important to Indian Country. We love Indian Country, right?’ He went on: ‘For too long the federal government has put up restrictions and regulations that put this energy wealth out of reach…These infringements on tribal sovereignty are deeply unfair to Native Americans and Native American communities who are being denied access to the energy and wealth that they have on their own lands.’ This was, of course, misdirection. In 1993 and 2002, Trump had shown a similar level of interest in tribal sovereignty because it directly advanced his own interests. The year 2017 was no different. When addressing the roundtable, he completely ignored the role played by Native Americans in energising the anti-XL movement. Trump’s priority was ‘American energy dominance’ and paying lip service to tribal sovereignty would, he hoped, allow him to sidestep significant Indigenous opposition.53 As Jackson had before him, when the idea of tribal sovereignty allowed him to satisfy his own agenda, Trump used rhetoric that appeared to support it.54 The Trump administration did this on numerous occasions from 2017 to 2020. The first of its Native American Heritage Month proclamations (2017) touted a president committed to ‘tribal sovereignty and self-­ determination’.55 Despite this Trump would, the following year, again attack tribal exceptionalism, this time by targeting Native American access

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Fig. 2.2  Idle No More Banner from the San Francisco Pride Day (2013): ‘Protect Grandmother Earth’. Photograph by Quinn Dombrowski, via Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license

to health services.56 Later that year, he was again proclaimed a protector of tribal sovereignty by the White House, despite having pursued few, if any, policies designed to have a positive impact on Indian Country.57 In 2019, the situation shifted noticeably. Likely anticipating the following year’s presidential election, the White House announced the formation of a task force charged with ‘protecting Native American children in the Indian Health Service’.58 The White House continued to pay attention to select Native American issues throughout the year, with ‘Missing and Murdered

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American Indians and Alaska Natives Awareness Day’ proclaimed on May 5th ahead of the creation of a task force to investigate this issue in November.59 Compared to the first two years of the administration, the scale, if not the effectiveness, of Native American-related activities conducted by the White House in 2019 was remarkable (Fig. 2.3). By May of 2020, as the impact of the coronavirus upon Native American communities was starting to become apparent, the administration continued to depict Trump as a protector of Indian Country who valued self-­ determination. Trump hosted another roundtable with tribal leaders, an event that seemed to be designed to create a positive narrative regarding his administration’s approach to the containment of the virus. Trump was thanked and validated by many of those present and whilst significant concerns were raised about the trajectory of infections in Indian Country, by

Fig. 2.3  San Francisco protest over the Keystone XL pipeline. Note the ‘Water is Sacred’ banners. Photograph by Pax Ahimsa Gethen via Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license

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the end of the roundtable, he had received some significant endorsements from those in attendance.60 In a factsheet released alongside a coronavirus tribal roundtable, Trump was quoted as saying: ‘we will leverage every resource we have to bring safety to our tribal communities, and we will not waver in that mission.’61 It was a powerful statement of intent. One month later, however, the head of a Christopher Columbus statue was removed in Boston, Massachusetts, and Trump once again had to confront Native American protesters and Indigenous peoples who rejected his administration’s leadership and worldview.62 Following the outbreak of renewed Black Lives Matters protests, Trump, historically a defender of Confederate statues, found himself on the defensive.63 As more and more statues were destroyed, Trump sought to depict himself as an uncompromising supporter of ‘law and order’.64 With the coronavirus pandemic accelerating across much of the country, Trump’s decision to attend an Independence Day celebration at Mount Rushmore drew ire, particularly from Native American activists concerned about the ability of this event to accelerate the spread of a virus which had already hit Indigenous communities hard.65 Just one month prior, Trump had presented himself as a legitimate defender of Indian Country and of tribal sovereignty. When faced with Native American protests, however, they were broken-up, participants arrested, and their criticisms largely ignored.66 Having defied Indian protestors at Mount Rushmore, Trump went on to announce the creation of a ‘National Garden’ that would celebrate ‘American heroes’. No Native Americans were included in the original list of honourees; Christopher Columbus was.67 Trump has proven that he is willing to recognise tribal sovereignty, and listen Indigenous voices: but only when they support, rather than problematise, his goals. That is not to suggest that Trump is an anti-sovereignty ideologue with a well-developed or nuanced position. Indeed, if his books are any indication, Indian Country occupies little of his everyday thinking. When circumstances force him to confront Native American interests, however, he defaults to a position that is ultimately hostile towards the notion of tribal sovereignty, unless sovereign Indian entities fully, and outwardly, support his existing worldview or policies. When that occurs Trump, like Jackson before him, is prepared to express support for Indigenous sovereignty and to treat tribal leaders and representatives with respect. Crises and irreconcilable disagreements, however, tend to reveal his anti-sovereignty, colonialist default. America first, Indian Country second—if at all. As Trump put it at his Mount Rushmore address, ‘Americans

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are the people who pursued our Manifest Destiny across the ocean, into the uncharted wilderness, over the tallest mountains, and then into the skies and even into the stars.’68 Native Americans, the victims of ‘Manifest Destiny’ and the peoples who not only charted, but shaped the ‘wilderness’, were clearly excluded.69

‘Who we are as Americans’ Just before the commencement of the ceremony to honour the Navajo code talkers, one of the veterans was introduced to Trump as ‘the co-­ chairman for Trump for President’.70 Trump was, it appeared, among supporters, something that was rarely reflected in the media coverage that surrounded the event.71 Despite the racially problematic language that had been used by Trump, or his ambivalent approach to Native American political power (‘what have you got to lose?’), he nonetheless had support in Indian Country.72 It can be difficult to reconcile the diversity and inclusiveness of some of Trump’s supporters with his professed ideas, policies, or modes of expression but Peter MacDonald, the code talker who spoke for the group at the White House event, was instructive in his speech. As he put it, ‘America, we know, is composed of diverse community. We have different languages, different skills, different talents, and different religion. But when our way of life is threatened, like the freedom and liberty that we all cherish, we come together as one. And when we come together as one, we are invincible. We cannot be defeated.’ Underlining the point, he told those listening that ‘what we did [during the war] truly represents who we are as Americans.’73 Support for the United States, the entity that would cause so much damage to so many Indigenous communities, has a long history in Indian Country. During the Revolutionary War, the Iroquois Confederacy splintered as the Oneidas and Tuscaroras stood with the Americans against not only the British but their fellow Iroquoians, the Mohawk, Cayugas, Senecas, and Onondagas. Within individual tribes, the decision to fight for, or against, the United States could lead to fundamental splits. The Shawnee, one of the most active resistors of American expansion into the Ohio Valley, were torn between anti-American leaders, such as Blackfish, and dedicated agents of peace like Cornstalk. After the Treaty of Fallen Timbers in 1795, Shawnee military resistance in the Ohio Valley came to an end. When a pair of brothers from that tribe, Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh, attempted to establish a pan-Indian confederacy to resist

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further expansion by the United States in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, few among the Shawnee joined their cause. Accommodation, rather than combat, was to be their path to survival.74 Within broad alliances, individual tribes, and even within individuals themselves, complex and contradictory loyalties coexisted. Resistance and accommodation were not necessarily mutually exclusive, just as one’s Indigenous identity need not necessarily be in conflict with one’s identity as a citizen of the United States.75 The same is just as true outside of Indian Country. The US policy towards Indigenous peoples has been marked by an apparent clash of irreconcilable ideas. Andrew Jackson’s love for his adopted Creek son, Lyncoya, seems to contradict his fundamental belief that white Americans and Native Americans could not live side-by-side.76 Likewise, Trump’s apparent respect for some Indigenous peoples stands in stark contrast with his disdain for those whose casinos have proven so much more economically viable than his own. Between and beyond these are numerous other examples: Jon Chivington was censured for the Sand Creek massacre by the same government which was pursuing a genocidal policy in the far west; and supporters of the boarding school system hoped to eradicate Indigenous cultures to, as one prominent supporter put it, ‘kill the Indian…and save the man’.77 In an editorial he wrote for the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer in 1891, L. Frank Baum (the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) captured the contradictions that have so often infused anti-­ Indian extremism: The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.

Baum was writing in the immediate wake of the Wounded Knee Massacre, a botched operation by the army to disarm a peaceful group of the Lakota. Curiously, however, his genocidal editorial contained a final, contradictory coda: ‘An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that “when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre”.’78 Whilst Baum had written supportively of Indian

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extermination just a few weeks prior, he appears to have been conflicted, at least enough to note the double standard applied by large parts of the media to Indian military victories. It is a contradiction that is not easily reconciled with the tone of his prior editorial.79 Baum, like so many others before and after him, failed to see significant common ground between himself, his white peers, and the Indians. Rather than see who they were ‘as Americans’, he saw them instead as something distinct, something ‘other’. In contrast, Trump is far more interested in who his interlocutors are as Americans than who they are as Native Americans. Federal policy towards Indian Country has the capacity to create significant contradictions. It forces non-Indigenous peoples to wrestle with conflicting logics, objectives, and even emotions related to how they perceive the contemporary and historic treatment of Native Americans. Trump, too, has had to wrestle with these contradictions. On the one hand, he seems to admire the code talker veterans and those western tribal leaders who support his policies. On the other, he rejects tribal sovereignty or legitimacy when it does not support his interests. When it comes to east coast Native Americans, Trump’s anti-Indianism is defined by disbelief and jealousy. Trump’s view of Indian Country demands assimilation and surrender to the federal (or presidential) will; and it demands something very much like racial purity.80 It rewards Native American identities that contribute to the United States but do not require special treatment, privilege, or exception. To compound matters, many of Trump’s supporters likewise view Native Americans through a highly colonialist lens. Rather than seeing casinos and eastern reservations as markers on an expansive Indigenous map, they are instead seen as aberrations on a colonialist landscape. Such perspectives will be examined in detail in the following chapter.

Notes 1. U.S.  Congress, Senate, Native American Affairs of the Committee on Natural Resources, Oversight Hearing Before Subcommittee: Implementation of Public Law 100-497, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, and Related Law Enforcement Issues, 103rd Congress, First Session, 1993, p. 242. 2. Most followers of Trump would have difficulty identifying his views on Indian Country from his literary canon. In the many books ostensibly co-­ written by him, few references to Indian Country are to be found and his struggles against Native American gaming establishments have been mostly

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ignored in the emerging literature on Trumpism. This is problematic, not only because the resultant blind spot obscures important aspects about his business dealings, but because it obscures key aspects of how Trump conceptualises Native Americans, tribal legitimacy, as well as key issues surrounding Indigenous identity, ethnicity, and race. For examples of the limited engagement with Trump’s relationship with Indian Country in the secondary literature, see Anonymous A Warning (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2019); Michael Wolff Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (New York: Hatchette Book Group, 2018); Leonning and Philips A Very Stable Genius; Christian Fuchs Digital Demagogue: Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter (London: Pluto Press, 2018); Robert Jervis, Francis Gavin, Joshua Rovner, and Diane N. Labrosse (eds.) Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); Jeffrey C.  Isaac #AgainstTrump: Notes from Year One (New York: OR Books, 2018); Angel Denker Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters Who Elected Donald Trump (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019), Daniel Martinez Hosang and Joseph E.  Lowndes Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2019). 3. Gwenda Blair The Trumps: Three Generations that Built an Empire (New York and London: Simon and Schuster, 2000), pp. 330–361; Al Delugach ‘Hilton Negotiating to Sell its Atlantic City Hotel-Casino to Trump’ Los Angeles Times, April 19th, 1985: https://www.latimes.com/archives/laxpm-1985-04-19-fi-15078-story.html; For Trump’s interest in growing his casino business through acquisition and expansion, see Trump with Schwartz The Art of the Deal, pp. 10–62. 4. ‘Trump returns with new junk bond offer: dollars 375m launch a year after bankruptcy’ The Independent, June 15th, 1993: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/trump-returns-with-new-junk-bond-offerdollars-375m-launch-a-year-after-bankruptcy-1491802.html. 5. Wayne King ‘Trump, in a Federal Lawsuit, Seeks to Block Indian Casinos’ The New  York Times, May 4th, 1993: https://www.nytimes. com/1993/05/04/nyregion/trump-in-a-federal-lawsuit-seeks-to-blockindian-casinos.html. 6. ‘Broadcast Transcript, Imus on the Air, June 18th, 1993’ in U.S. Congress, Senate, Native American Affairs of the Committee on Natural Resources, Oversight Hearing Before Subcommittee: Implementation of Public Law 100-497, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, and Related Law Enforcement Issues, 103rd Congress, First Session, 1993, pp. 243–244. 7. For analysis of some of the social problems which affected certain reservations see Ronald R.  Trosper ‘American Indian Poverty on Reservations,

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1969–1989’, Robert G. Gregory, Annie C. Abello and Jamie Johnson ‘The Individual Economic Well-Being of Native American Men and Women During the 1980s: A Decade of Moving Backwards’ in G.D.  Sandefur, R.R.  Rindfuss, B.  Cohen (eds.) Changing Numbers, Changing Needs: American Indian Demography and Public Health (Washington: National Academies Press, 1996); For an insight into some of the health issues which affect economically deprived Reservations see Sandeep C. Kulkarni, Alison Levin-Rector, Majid Ezzati, and Christopher J.L. Murray ‘Falling Behind: Life Expectancy in US Counties from 2000 to 2007  in an International Context’ Population Health Metrics, Vol. 9 (2011): https://pophealthmetrics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1478-7954-9-16; Jourdan Bennett-Begaye ‘“We Have to Do Better!” Humor and Honesty from Cecelia Firethunder’ Indian Country Today, October 24th, 2018: https:// newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/news/we-have-to-do-better-humorand-honesty-from-cecelia-firethunder-cdPU5icF30-KAw8clIHFGQ/. 8. Bruce A. Rosenberg ‘How Custer’s Last Stand Got Its Name’ The Georgia Review, Vol. 26 (1972): 279–296; Brian W.  Dippie ‘The Southern Response to Custer’s Last Stand’ Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 21 (1971): 18–31; Brian W. Dippie Custer’s Last Stand: The Anatomy of an American Myth (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). 9. ‘Uncomfortable Spotlight for GOP after Custer Email’ Satna Fe Reporter, August 28th, 2012; Ryan J.  Reilly ‘RNC Official: N.M.  Governor “Dishonoured” Gen. Custer by Meeting with American Indians’ Talking Points Memo, August 24th, 2012: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/ muckraker/rnc-official-n-m-governor-dishonored-gen-custer-by-meeting-with-american-indians; James Monteleone ‘Recalling Custer: Email Stirs Pot’ Albuquerque Journal, August 25th, 2012: https://www.abqjournal.com/126435/headline-here-32.html. 10. Aleš Hrdlička ‘The Vanishing Indian’ Science, Vol. 46 (1917): 226–227; Suzanne Crawford O’Brien Coming Full Circle: Spirituality and Wellness among Native Communities in the Pacific Northwest (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), pp. 71–99. 11. Theda Perdue Race and the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition of 1895 (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2010), pp.  53–95; Brewton Berry ‘The Myth of the Vanishing Indian’ Phylon, Vol. 21 (1969): 51–57; Shanon P. Flanagan ‘The Georgia Cherokee Who Remained: Race, Status, and Property in the Chattahochee Community’ The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 73 (1989): 584–609; Gina Caison Red States: Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and Southern Studies (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2018), pp. 109–158. 12. For a fuller discussion on this issue, please see Chap. 3 in this volume.

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13. Kathleen Ratteree and Norbert Hill The Great Vanishing Act: Blood Quantum and the Future of Native Nations (Golden: Fulcrum, 2017), pp. xiv–xvi. 14. Ellen Samuels Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race (New York and London: New York University Press, 2014), pp. 141–142. 15. Russell Thornton Studying Native America: Problems and Prospects (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), pp. 17–39. 16. Adrienne Keene ‘Love in the Time of Blood Quantum’ in Kathleen Ratteree and Norbert Hill (eds.) The Great Vanishing Act: Blood Quantum and the Future of Native Nations (Golden: Fulcrum, 2017), pp. 3–13. 17. The myth of the vanishing Indian is particularly powerful in the eastern states where Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal policy was responsible for the forced relocation of thousands of Indigenous persons to the west. For all of its effectiveness, however, the Indian Removal Act achieved only an imperfect version of its aims. Pockets of Native Americans remained in the eastern United States and even among those communities that were no longer recognised by the state (and thus their identities delegitimised), a continuity of identity persisted even as the comparative invisibility of these groups compounded the perception that, in the east, the Indians had indeed vanished. A complex reality thus stood at odds with an over-simplified, and prejudicial, set of historic memories. See Perdue Race and the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition of 1895, pp. 53–95; Brewton Berry ‘The Myth of the Vanishing Indian’ Phylon, Vol. 21 (1969): 51–57; Shanon P.  Flanagan ‘The Georgia Cherokee Who Remained: Race, Status, and Property in the Chattahochee Community’ The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 73 (1989): 584–609; Gina Caison Red States: Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and Southern Studies (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2018), pp. 109–158. 18. Doug Keil ‘Bleeding Out: Histories and Legacies of “Indian Blood”’ in Ratteree and Hill (eds.) The Great Vanishing Act, pp. 80–97. 19. U.S.  Congress, Senate, Native American Affairs of the Committee on Natural Resources, Oversight Hearing Before Subcommittee: Implementation of Public Law 100-497, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, and Related Law Enforcement Issues, 103rd Congress, First Session, 1993, p. 250. 20. Linette Lopez ‘The Trump Taj Mahal Casino Sold for 4 Cents on the Dollar—Here’s How Trump Bankrupted it Twice’ Business Insider, May 10th, 2017: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-trump-bankruptedthe-taj-mahal-2017-5?r=US&IR=T. 21. ‘Trump’s Castle and Plaza File for Bankruptcy’ United Press International, March 9th, 1992: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1992/03/09/ Trumps-Castle-and-Plaza-file-for-bankruptcy/3105700117200/.

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22. ‘Trump Casinos File for Bankruptcy’ Associated Press, November 22nd, 2004: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6556470/ns/business-us_business/t/ trump-casinos-file-bankruptcy/#.XbwcZUb7SUk; ‘Trump Casino Group in Bankruptcy’ CNN Money, February 17th, 2009: https://money.cnn. com/2009/02/17/news/companies/trump_entertainment/index.htm; ‘Trump Entertainment Resort Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection’ CNBC with Reuters, September 9th, 2014: https://www.cnbc. com/2014/09/09/trump-entertainment-resorts-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy.html. 23. ‘Andrew Jackson to James Monroe, March 4th, 1817’ in in Moser, Hoth, and Hoemann (eds.) The Papers of Andrew Jackson—Volume Four, 1816–1820, pp. 94–95. 24. ‘Broadcast Transcript, Imus on the Air, June 18th, 1993’, p. 244. 25. U.S.  Congress, Committee, The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, p. 188. 26. U.S. Congress, Committee, The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, pp. 250–251. 27. ‘Andrew Jackson to James Monroe, March 4th, 1817’ in Moser, Hoth, and Hoemann (eds.) The Papers of Andrew Jackson—Volume Four, 1816–1820, pp. 94–95. 28. Jackson ‘Statement on Indian Removal to Congress’. 29. For examples the media response to this ‘obscure’ bill see Aaron Blake ‘Trump’s Tweet about an Obscure ‘Casino Bill’ Raises Some Swampy Questions’ The Washington Post, May 9th, 2019: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/08/trumps-strange-tweet-about-anobscure-casino-bill/; Marc Fisher ‘A Riddle in New England: A Casino, 321 Acres of Indian Tribal Land and a Presidential Tweet’ The Washington Post, May 13th, 2019: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ariddle-in-new-england-a-casino-321-acres-of-indian-tribal-land-and-apresidential-tweet/2019/05/13/dfcc6dd8-7354-11e9-9f06-5fc2 ee80027a_story.html; Melanie Zanona ‘House Dems Delay Votes on Tribal Bills after Trump Lashes Out’ Politico, May 8th, 2019: https:// www.politico.com/story/2019/05/08/congress-tribal-bills-1311890; Christina Wilkie ‘House Democrats Shelve Casino Bills after Surprise Opposition from Trump’ CNBC, May 8th, 2019: https://www.cnbc. com/2019/05/08/house-democrats-shelve-two-casino-bills-aftertrump-tweets-opposition.html; Clark Mindock ‘Trump Lashes Out in “racist” Attack on Elizabeth Warren Bill, Benefitting White House Staffer’s Husband’ Independent, May 8th, 2019: https://www.independent. co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-elizabeth-warren-twitter-pocahontas-casino-bill-hr312-matt-schlapp-mercedes-a8905626.html; Sophia Tesfaye ‘Trump’s Mysterious Casino Tweet: He’s Using Racism to

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Cover up his Corruption’ Salon, May 13th, 2019: https://www.salon. com/2019/05/13/trumps-mysterious-casino-tweet-hes-using-racismto-cover-up-his-corruption/; for the bill see H.R. 312—Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reaffirmation Act (2019). 30. @realDonaldTrump ‘Republicans shouldn’t vote for H.R. 312, a special interest casino Bill, backed by Elizabeth (Pocahontas) Warren. It is unfair and doesn’t treat Native Americans equally!’ May 8th, 2016, 4:48 pm: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1126151799868723200. 31. ‘Trump Administration Revokes Tribe’s Reservation Status in “Power Grab”’ The Guardian, March 31st, 2020: https://www.theguardian. com/us-news/2020/mar/31/trump-administration-revokes-mashpeewampanoag-tribe-reservation-status. 32. Donald J.  Trump with Meredith McIver How to Get Rich (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 286. 33. It is worth pointing out that whoever wrote this section of the book, this statement is ahistorical. Native Americans were not victims in their own history, but active agents who often integrated gunpowder and firearms into their cultures. Donald J. Trump and Robert Kiyosaki Why We Want You to be Rich (New York: Rich Press, 2006), p. 111. 34. The next mention of Native Americans appears in Trump’s 2011 book, Time to Get Tough, an early articulation of his presidential platform. In a chapter entitled ‘It’s Called Illegal Immigration for a Reason’ (under the subheading, ‘Illegal Criminals Have got to Go’), the book says the following: ‘According to the New York Times, one out of every three federal prison inmates is a Latino, and three quarters of these are here illegally. As one Phoenix, Arizona, assistant federal defender put it, “I have Anglo and Native American clients who tell me about being the only non-Spanish speaker in their pod. Ten years ago, it just wasn’t that way…A lot of times the guards don’t speak the language. How do you safely guard people who may not understand your orders?” A better question is why we should have to guard them at all.’ Whilst this quote may well be the work of the book’s ghost writer, it at least expresses a view which is consistent with Trump’s philosophy towards Indian Country—that Native Americans can be a part of the national project (and identity) when they are subject to its laws. See Donald J.  Trump Time to Get Tough (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2011), pp. 135–152. 35. Nor was the Trump’s first attempt to make tribal sovereignty serve the interests of his own gambling business. In the early 2000s, Trump had supported the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots in their attempt to gain tribal recognition in order for the mogul to pursue the construction of a new casino in Connecticut. At the behest of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the Paucatuck band and the Eastern Pequots reconciled and unified their

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application for tribal recognition, effectively freezing Trump out of any obligation owed to him by the Paucatuck band. Trump responded in 2003, one year after inking a (temporarily) successful management agreement with the Twenty-Nine Band, and the granting of federal recognition to the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation. Underlining how complex issues of tribal identity and sovereignty are, the BIA then revoked the Eastern Pequot’s tribal recognition in 2005. See Jim Adams ‘Trump Sues Eastern Pequots’ Indian Country Today, May 30th, 2003: https://newsmaven. io/indiancountr ytoday/ar chive/tr ump-sues-easter n-pequots2Rw48tX1ekWJQtJYh04TiA/; Amy E. Den Ouden ‘Altered State? Indian Policy Narratives, Federal Recognition, and the “New” War on Native Rights in Connecticut’ in Amy E. Den Ouden and Jean M. O’Brien (eds.) Recognition, Sovereignty, Struggles and Indigenous Rights in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), pp.  169–194; Hearing Before the Committee on Indian Affairs, United States Senate One Hundred and Ninth Congress. First Session on Oversight Hearing on Federal Recognition of Indian Tribes (Washington, 2005). For the agreement Trump reached with the Twenty-­Nine Band see ‘Amended and Restated Gaming Facility Management Agreement between The Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Luiseno Mission Indians of California, Twenty-Nine Palms Enterprises Corporation and THCR Management Services, LLC’ March 28th, 2002: https://www.nigc.gov/images/ uploads/approved-management-contracts/29palmthcr.pdf. 36. Brett Kelman and Jesse Marx ‘How Donald Trump got Fired by a California Casino’ Desert Sun, March 21st, 2016: https://eu.desertsun. com/stor y/news/politics/2016/03/21/donald-tr ump-spotlight-29/81860676/; After Trump became president, a story emerged that the Twenty-Nine Band had word ‘Donald Trump, You’re Fired’ shirts when they terminated their relationship with his company. This, however, was disputed by the Twenty-Nine Band, see ‘Twenty-Nine Palms Band Disputes “Donald Trump, You’re Fired” Story’ Indianz, October 21st, 2016: https://www.indianz.com/IndianGaming/2016/10/21/twentynine-palms-band-disputes.asp. 37. U.S. Congress, Committee, The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, pp. 253–256. 38. Idle No More. ‘Idle No More’ Press Release, January 10th, 2013: http:// www.idlenomore.ca/index.php/component/k2/item/86-inm_. 39. Trump was in conflict with the eastern Pequot for failing to honour a contract, and whilst the issue of tribal sovereignty was at the heart of this interaction, it was viewed and presented through a breach-of-contract lens. See Greg Levine ‘Trump: Offers to Drop Suit Vs. Eastern Pequots for $500m’ Forbes, December 3rd, 2004: https://www.forbes.com/2004/

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12/03/1203autofacescan05.html#6f4faf01aef8; Raymond Hernandez ‘Trump Named in Inquiry on Financing Indian Groups’ The New  York Times, May 6th, 2004: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/nyregion/trump-named-in-inquiry-on-financing-indian-groups.html; for a more recent development in this case see also Mark Pazniokas ‘Trump Official Reconsiders, OK’s Casino in East Windsor’ The CT Mirror, March 21st, 2019: https://www.forbes.com/2004/12/03/1203autofacescan05. html#6f4faf01aef8. See Jim Adams ‘Trump Sues Eastern Pequots’ Indian Country Today, May 30th, 2003: https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/ trump-sues-eastern-pequots-2Rw48tX1ekWJQtJYh04TiA/ 40. Nathan Lemphers The Climate Implications of the Proposed Keystone XL Oilsands Pipeline (Toronto: Penbina Institute, 2013). 41. Janna Palliser ‘The Keystone XL Pipeline’ Science Scope, Vol. 35 (2012): 8–13. 42. Steven Mufson ‘Keystone XL Pipeline Raises Tribal Concerns’ The Washington Post, September 17th, 2012: https://www.washingtonpost. com/business/economy/keystone-xl-pipeline-raises-tribal-concerns/201 2/09/17/3d1ada3a-f097-11e1-adc6-87dfa8eff430_story.html. 43. Elliot D.  Woods ‘Line in the Sand: Nebraskans Fight the Keystone XL Pipeline’ The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 89 (2013): 140–155. 44. Ben Adler ‘The Inside Story of the Campaign that Killed Keystone XL’ Vox, November 7th, 2015: https://www.vox.com/2015/11/7/9684012/ keystone-pipeline-won. 45. For examples, see Alexander Zaitchik ‘On Native Grounds: Standing Rock’s New Spirit of Protest’ The Baffler, Vol. 34 (2017): 102–116; Ionut Nicolescu ‘Case of Equality: Idle No More and the Protests at Standing Rock’ Canadian Journal of Urban Research, Vol. 27 (2018): 1–13; Robert Boos ‘Native American Tribes Unite to Fight the Keystone Pipeline and Government “Disrespect”’ PRI, February 19th, 2015: https://www.pri. org/stories/2015-02-19/native-american-tribes-unite-fight-keystonepipeline-and-government-disrespect; ‘Native American Protesters Disrupt Work on Oil Pipeline’ BBC News, August 16th, 2016: https://www.bbc. co.uk/news/world-us-canada-37099094; Sam Levin ‘Dakota Access Pipeline: The Who, What, and Why of the Standing Rock Protests’ The Guardian, November 3rd, 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/usnews/2016/nov/03/north-dakota-access-oil-pipeline-protests-explainer; Nancy S.  Love ‘From Settler Colonialism to Standing Rock: Hearing Native Voices for Peace’ College Music Symposium, Vol. 58 (2018): 1–16. 46. For an excellent insight into the Standing Rock protests see Nick Estes and Jaskiran Dhillon (eds.) Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019).

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See also Kyle Powys Whyte ‘The Dakota Access Pipeline, Environmental Injustice, and US Settler Colonialism’ in Char Miller and Jeff Crane (eds.) The Nature of Hope: Grassroots, Organising, Environmental Justice, and Political Change (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2018), pp. 320–238; Nick Estes ‘Fighting for Our Lives: #NoDAPL in Historical Context’ Wicazo Sa Review, Vol. 32 (2017): 115–122. 47. U.S.  Army and Department of the Interior ‘Statement Regarding the Dakota Access Pipeline’, November 14th, 2016: https://www.army.mil/ article/178278/statement_regarding_the_dakota_access_pipeline. 48. For Trump’s Executive Actions from 2017 see ‘2017 Donald Trump Executive Orders’ Federal Registry: https://www.federalregister.gov/ presidential-documents/executive-orders/donald-trump/2017. For the action itself see ‘Expediting Environmental Reviews and Approvals for High Priority Infrastructure Projects—Executive Order 13766’ Federal Register, January 24th, 2017: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/01/30/2017-02029/expediting-environmental-reviewsand-approvals-for-high-priority-infrastructure-projects. 49. For a discussion on how the Keystone XL project intersected with tribal sovereignty see Ted Hamilton ‘The Virtues of Uncertainty: Lessons Learned from the Legal Battles Over the Keystone XL Pipeline’ Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, Vol. 18 (2016): 222–285. 50. Olivia B. Waxman ‘5 Things to Know About the President Whose Portrait Donald Trump Chose for the Oval Office’ Time, January 25th, 2017: https://time.com/4649081/andrew-jackson-donald-trump-portrait/; ‘Trump Hangs Portrait of Andrew Jackson in Oval Office’ The Hill, January 25th, 2017: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/ 316115-trump-hangs-portrait-of-andrew-jackson-in-oval-office. 51. ‘Remarks by President Trump and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry at Tribal, State, and Local Energy Roundtable’ White House, June 28th, 2017: https://www.WhiteHouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarkspresident-trump-secretary-energy-rick-perry-tribal-state-local-energyroundtable/. 52. Whilst Jackson rejected the notion of meaningful tribal sovereignty, he nonetheless used it to legitimise his position, or as a mechanism to press for further concessions from Indian Country. Between 1816 and 1820, he negotiated numerous treaties that saw the southern tribes secede millions of acres to the United States. Whilst Jackson may have rejected the notion of Indian sovereignty, his treaty-making spate nonetheless implied its existence. As president, Jackson likewise paid lip service to tribal sovereignty, professing the right of Indian peoples to choose their own destiny until their actions confounded his own goals. The battle to the remove the Cherokee was a case-in-point, a legal battle preceded by language that

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implied respect for Native American sovereignty followed by a series of events that attacked it. They were sovereign, but only in so far as it allowed them to fulfil the president’s wishes. In that respect, Trump’s approach to Indian Country is remarkably similar, if unintentionally so, to Jackson’s. See Wilentz Andrew Jackson, p.  26 and Wallace The Long, Bitter Trail, pp. 74–81. 53. This would be repeated in the declaration for Native American Heritage Month, published by the White House in 2017, ostensibly the work of the president, which states: ‘My Administration is committed to tribal sovereignty and self-determination. A great Nation keeps its word, and this Administration will continue to uphold and defend its responsibilities to American Indians and Alaska Natives. The United States is stronger when Indian Country is healthy and prosperous. As part of our efforts to strengthen American Indian and Alaska Native communities, my Administration is reviewing regulations that may impose unnecessary costs and burdens. This aggressive regulatory reform, and a focus on government-­ to-­government consultation, will help revitalize our Nation’s commitment to Indian Country.’ This sentiment was echoed in 2018 in the proclamation for that year’s Native American Heritage Month: ‘My Administration is committed to the sovereignty of Indian nations—including the rights of self-determination and self-governance…By engaging with tribal leaders as representatives of sovereign nations, my Administration is working to find effective solutions to pernicious challenges, such as generational poverty.’ See ‘President Donald J.  Trump Proclaims November 2017 as National Native American Heritage Month’ White House, October 31st, 2017: https://www.WhiteHouse.gov/presidential-actions/president-donald-jtrump-proclaims-november-2017-national-native-american-heritagemonth/; ‘Presidential Proclamation on National Native American Heritage Month, 2018’ White House, October 31st, 2018: https://www.White House.gov/presidential-actions/presidential-proclamation-nationalnative-american-heritage-month-2018/. 54. Trump’s was focused on an ‘America first’ energy policy and had gathered Indigenous leaders who were sympathetic to his goals, creating optics for the occasion which reflect the breadth of the political spectrum within Indian Country. As with any other group, Native Americans are a diverse set of peoples with a wide range of political expectations and the goals of Trump and his Indian supporters were far from mutually exclusive. Indeed, Trump’s energy vision would, he argued, positively impact ‘not only the Native Americans but [people] all over the country’. Just as anti-XL politics in Indian Country were emphasised by large parts of the media during the protests, so too was Trump emphasising those Indigenous views which were sympathetic towards (or at least accepting of) restarting the initiative.

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It was an approach that Jackson had likewise predicted. For quotes see ‘Remarks by President Trump and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry at Tribal, State, and Local Energy Roundtable’. 55. ‘President Donald J. Trump Proclaims November 2017 as National Native American Heritage Month’ White House, October 31st, 2017: https:// www.WhiteHouse.gov/presidential-actions/president-donald-j-trumpproclaims-november-2017-national-native-american-heritage-month. 56. Dan Diamond ‘Trump Challenges Native Americans’ Historical Standing’ Politico, April 22nd, 2018: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/ 22/trump-native-americans-historical-standing-492794. 57. ‘Presidential Proclamation on National Native American Heritage Month, 2018’. 58. Rather than tasking this group with investigating the underfunding suffered by the Indian Health Service, it was instead formed as a response to revelations that a rogue paediatrician working for the Indian Health Service had abused many of the Native American boys under his care. With the creation of this task force, the Trump administration was attempting to frame the Health Service as a threat to its users; the federal government (under Trump), was framed as their protector. See ‘White House Announces the Presidential Task Force on Protecting Native American Children in the Indian Health Service System’ White House, March 26th, 2019: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/ white-house-announces-presidential-task-force-protecting-native-american-children-indian-health-service-system; Christopher Weaver ‘Doctor Sentenced to Five Lifetime Terms for Sexually Abusing Boys’ The Wall Street Journal, February 10th, 2020: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ doctor-sentenced-to-five-lifetime-ter ms-for-sexually-abusingboys-11581383875; Betty Pfefferbaum, Rennard Strickland, Everett R. Rhoades and Rose L. Pfefferbaum ‘Learning How to Heal: An Analysis of the History, Policy, and Framework of Indian Health Care’ American Indian Law Review, Vol. 20 (1995/1996): 365–297; Abraham B. Bergman, David C. Grossman, Angela M. Erdrich, John G. Todd and Ralph Forquera ‘A Political History of the Indian Health Service’ The Milbank Quarterly, Vol. 77 (1999): 571–604. For a broader discussion of health-related colonialism see Jane Lawrence ‘The Indian Health Service and the Sterilization of Native American Women’ American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 24 (2000): 400–419. 59. ‘Executive Order on Establishing the Task Force on Missing and Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives’ White House, November 26th, 2019: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-orderestablishing-task-force-missing-murdered-american-indians-alaska-natives.

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60. ‘Remarks by President Trump in Roundtable Discussion on Supporting Native Americans | Phoenix, AZ’ White House, May 5th, 2020: https:// www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-presidenttrump-roundtable-discussion-supporting-native-americans-phoenix-az. 61. This quote did not come from the roundtable on the coronavirus. It instead came from statements the president made the prior November when announcing the creation of a task force to investigate missing and murdered Indigenous peoples. ‘President Donald J. Trump is Protecting the Native American Community as We Combat the Coronavirus’ White House, May 5th, 2020: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-protecting-native-american-community-combat-coronavirus; for origins of the quote see ‘Trump Order Creates Task Force on Missing and Murdered Native Americans’ CBC, November 26th, 2019: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/usmmiwg-task-force-1.5374129. 62. Alan Taylor ‘The Statues Brought Down Since the George Floyd Protests Began’ The Atlantic, July 2nd, 2020: https://www.theatlantic.com/ photo/2020/07/photos-statues-removed-george-floyd-protestsbegan/613774. 63. Julia Zorthian ‘President Trump Says it’s “Sad” to see U.S.  Culture “Ripper Apart” by Removing Confederate Statues’ Time, August 17th, 2017: https://time.com/4904510/donald-trump-twitter-confederate-/. 64. @realDonaldTrump ‘LAW AND ORDER!’ Twitter, June 13th, 2020: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1271780302151696384. 65. Joshua Cheetham ‘Navajo Nation: The People Battling America’s Worst Coronavirus Outbreak’ BBC News, June 16th, 2020: https://www.bbc. co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52941984; Lindsey Schneider, Joshua Sbicca, and Stephanie Malin ‘Native American Tribes’ Pandemic Response is Hamstrung by Many Inequities’ The Conversation, June 1st, 2020: https://theconversation.com/native-american-tribes-pandemicresponse-is-hamstrung-by-many-inequities-136225. 66. Ashley Collman ‘Native American Protestors Blocked the Road Leading up to Mount Rushmore and Face Off with the National Guard in the Hours Before Trump’s Fiery Speech’ Business Insider, July 4th, 2020: https://www.businessinsider.com/native-americans-blocked-road-tomount-rushmore-before-trump-speech-2020-7?r=US&IR=T; Levi Rickert ‘American Indian Protestors Told to “Go Home” by Trump Supporters at Mount Rushmore’ Native News Online, July 4th, 2020: https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/american-indian-protesters-told-to-go-homeby-trump-supporters-at-mount-rushmore/; Mackenzie Huber and Erin Bormett ‘Protestors in Keystone Arrested After Blocking Road to Mount Rushmore for Hours’ USA Today, July 4th, 2020: https://eu.usatoday.

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com/story/news/politics/2020/07/03/keystone-south-dakota-protestersanti- tr ump - d e m o n s t r a t i o n - m o u n t - r u shmor e-ra l l y-fi r eworks/ 5374418002. 67. ‘Executive Order on Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes’ White House, July 3rd, 2020: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-building-rebuilding-monuments-americanheroes. 68. ‘Remarks by President Trump at South Dakota’s 2020 Mount Rushmore Fireworks Celebration | Keystone, South Dakota’ White House, July 4th, 2020: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-south-dakotas-2020-mount-rushmore-fireworks-celebrationkeystone-south-dakota. This quote was also tweeted out by the official White House twitter account on July 7th. See @WhiteHouse ‘“Americans are the people who pursued our Manifest Destiny across the ocean, into the uncharted wilderness, over the tallest mountains, and then into the skies and even into the stars’ Twitter, July 7th, 2020: https://twitter. com/whitehouse/status/1280321140326633472. 69. For ways in which Native Americans shaped the environment, see C.  Margaret Scarry and John F.  Scarry ‘Native American “Garden Agriculture” in Southeastern North America’ World Archaeology, Vol. 37 (2005): 259–274. 70. This exchange is not a part of the official transcript of this event (which begins with the commencement of Trump’s address), but is audible on the video of the event. See ‘President Trump meets World War II Navajo code talkers at White House’. PBS NewsHour Online Video, 17:26, ‘YouTube’, November 27th, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuXc3Ien URc&t=19s. 71. Rather, the media narrative was instead focused on Trump’s attack on Elizabeth Warren. See Julie Hirschfeld Davis ‘Trump Mocks Warren as “Pocahontas” at Navajo Event’ The New  York Times, November 27th, 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/us/politics/trump-elizabeth-warren-pocahontas-navajo.html; Jennifer Epstein and Jennifer Jacobs ‘Trump Calls Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” at Event to Honor Navajo Veterans’ Bloomberg, November 27th, 2017: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-27/trump-jabs-at-pocahontas-warren-in-meeting-with-navajo-vets; John Patrick Pullen ‘Trump Makes “Pocahontas” Joke About Warren to Navajo WWII Veterans’ Fortune, November 27th, 2017: https://fortune.com/2017/11/27/trumppocahontas-elizabeth-warren-navajo-wwii-veterans-code-talker/. 72. ‘What have you got to lose’ see ‘Trump asks Native Americans what they have to lose’. AP Archive Online Video, 3:14, ‘YouTube’, September 12th, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4-yxZd19o0.

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73. For a discussion of the opposition and racism faced by the Navajo code talkers see Noah Jed Riseman ‘“Regardless of History”?: Re-Assessing the Navajo Codetalkers of World War II’ Australian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 26 (2007): 48–73. For quotes see ‘Remarks by President Trump at an Event Honoring the Native American Code Talkers’. 74. Colin G. Calloway The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp.  26–64; for Tenswatawa and Tecumseh see R. David Edmunds The Shawnee Prophet (Lincoln and London University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 28–116. 75. For examples of such divisions see Richard White The Middle Ground: Indians, Europeans, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 315–412. 76. Like Thomas Jefferson, Jackson believed that Native Americans, through education and a non-Indigenous upbringing, could be integrated into white American society. The nature of Jackson’s relationship with Lyncoya is poorly documented, but he appears to have paid significant mind to the boy’s education, hoping to have him educated at West Point until the ascent of his political rivals made such a move an impossibility. Like Jackson (at a similar point in his own young life, no less) Lyncoya was then apprenticed to a saddler before dying at the age of sixteen, leaving his mother, Rachel, distraught. Jackson’s West Point hopes for Lyncoya underlines the depth of his belief that, through the ‘influence of good counsels’ the Indians would cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and ‘Christian community’. Two important episodes from the Lyncoya’s youth add additional context to his later dedication to Indian Removal. First, Lyncoya, who had had little contact with his birth culture, nevertheless seemed to develop Indian traits, crafting a bow and arrow for himself around the age of five and then developing a taste for painting his face ‘and then jumping out from behind bushes to frighten other children’. Second, he would run away from the Jackson household, hoping, it would appear, to return to the Creeks. Whilst Jackson’s anti-Indian prejudices were not rooted in ideas of biological predetermination, he nonetheless had reason to suspect that Lyncoya was somehow compelled to recreate the life he might have lived had not Jackson and the United States changed its course so radically. Among some later historians, Lyncoya’s ‘racial tendencies’ became an (inappropriate) subject of interest used to explain some of his actions. If Jackson’s own views never became this extreme, his first address to Congress on Indian Removal suggests that his Jeffersonian belief in Native American ­ biological neutrality had shifted somewhat. Hope, rather than certainty, is the subtext of this reflection on the assimilation process, with Jackson noting that change was likely to occur only

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‘gradually’, if at all. For quotes by Andrew Jackson see  Andrew Jackson ‘Statement on Indian Removal to Congress’ (speech, Washington DC, December 6th, 1830); handwritten transcript of the speech located in Records of the United State Senate, 1789–1990, Record Group 46, National Archives.  Bertram Wyatt-Brown ‘Andrew Jackson’s Honour’ Journal of the Early American Republic, Vol. 17 (1997): 1–36, p.  32; Remini Andrew Jackson, p.  144, 395–396; ‘Andrew Jackson to Rachel Jackson, September 18th, 1816’ in Harold D. Moser, David R. Hoth, and George H. Hoemann (eds.) The Papers of Andrew Jackson—Volume Four, 1816–1820 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), p.  62; for Jackson’s rejection of co-habitation of the same lands see ‘Andrew Jackson to James Monroe, March 4th, 1817’ in in Moser, Hoth, and Hoemann (eds.) The Papers of Andrew Jackson—Volume Four, 1816–1820, pp. 93–99. For ‘influence of good councils’ see Jackson ‘Statement on Indian Removal to Congress’. For Jefferson’s views on the Indians see Anthony F.C. Wallace Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans (Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 108–129, 206–240. For ‘jumping out from behind bushes’ see Remini Andrew Jackson, Volume Two, p. 4. For ‘racial tendencies’ see Linda Bennett Galloway ‘Andrew Jackson, Junior’ Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Vol. 9 (1950): 195–216. For another example, see also Remini Andrew Jackson, Volume One, p. 194. 77. For attempts by the US government to understand and mitigate what was happening to Indian tribes in the far west, see Report of the Joint Committee of the Conduct of the War at the Second Session Thirty-Eighth Congress (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1865), pp.  121–126; Conditions of the Indian Tribes. Report of the Joint Special Committee, Appointed Under Joint Resolution of March 3, 1865 with an Appendix (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867); for ‘kill the Indian…and save the man’ see David Wallace Adams Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1877–1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995) p. 52. 78. ‘Editorial’ Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, January 3rd, 1891. 79. ‘Editorial’ Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, December 20th, 1890. 80. Responding to Trump’s claim that eastern Native Americans ‘don’t look like an Indian’, George Miller responded: Thank God that’s not the test of whether or not people have rights in this country or not—whether or not they pass your “look” test… Mr. Trump, do you know, do you know in the history of this country where we’ve heard this discussion before? “They don’t look Jewish to me?”’ see U.S.  Congress, Senate, Native American Affairs of the Committee on Natural Resources, Oversight Hearing Before Subcommittee: Implementation of Public Law 100-497, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, and Related Law Enforcement Issues, 103rd Congress, First Session, 1993, p. 242.

CHAPTER 3

Memory and White Victimhood

Abstract  Following a confrontation between Nathan Phillips, a member of the Omaha people, and a group of teenagers wearing MAGA (Make America Great Again) hats, competing media narratives quickly emerged. Despite their seeming invisibility in so many national discussions, perceptions of Native Americans remained at the fractious heart of many different American identities. Despite this, awareness of the ways in which past violence and forced displacement have created modern forms of anti-­ Native Americanism were largely absent from the discourse around this episode. This chapter examines the roots of modern anti-Indianism and how it evolved, from the period of the Revolution to modern era. This chapter pays particular attention to the colonisation of Kentucky, where the students in the Phillips-clash were educated, tracing the emergence of victim narratives in that region, from eighteenth-century oral histories through to the canonisation of Daniel Boone as an American folk hero. This chapter will illustrate the continuity of ideas which links historic colonisation of Native American lands to modern forms of colonialist thinking and action. Keywords  MAGA • Memory • Media • Covington • Mid-West • Violence • Radicalised • Oral histories

© The Author(s) 2020 D. R. Reid, Native American Racism in the Age of Donald Trump, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58718-5_3

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[T]he gradual extension of our Settlements will as certainly cause the Savage as the Wolf to retire; both being beasts of prey tho’ they differ in shape. —George Washington (‘Letter from George Washington to James Duane, September 7th, 1783’ Paper of George Washington, U.S. Library of Congress via Founders Online, National Archives: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-0 2-11798#document_page)

In early 2019, a group of teenagers wearing ‘Make America Great Again’  (MAGA) hats were filmed crowded around Nathan Phillips, a member of the Omaha Nation. The footage quickly spread across various social media platforms, causing widespread controversy in the process. Some (including the students themselves) claimed that they had been unfairly demonised. Subsequent footage provided additional and complex context—a third group of ‘Black Hebrew Israelites’ was also involved. Criticism of the teenagers for their role in the face-off was vociferous. The backlash against their critics (and Phillips) was equally intense. In the short time since this event, numerous lawsuits have been filed, settlements agreed, and the primary protagonists widely profiled.1 Few modern events have better served to demonstrate that Indian Country (or perceptions of it), despite its seeming invisibility in so many national or political discussions, remains at the fractious heart of different American identities. The competing media narratives which emerged around this event raise important questions about the historic legacy which modern Americans inherit; how they reconcile its many ideological contradictions; and how they are contributing to, or challenging, dominant themes in that narrative.2 Modern Americans have been shaped not just by historic processes but their memorialisation. The history of violence between European Americans and Native Americans is a particularly important example of this, with the historic action (the violence) and the societal reaction (memorialisation) both playing critical roles in shaping later colonialist attitudes. The teenagers who took part in the confrontation with Phillips were schooled in Northern Kentucky, a state rooted in a remarkable amount of interracial violence. During the period of the Revolutionary War, Kentucky lost approximately 7% of its white population in combat with Native

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Americans. To put that number into context, the thirteen rebelling colonies lost just 1% of theirs.3 Lasting more than two decades (1774–1795), the conflict became a chronic condition and copious oral and literary traditions emerged as a result.4 It was from this tradition that Daniel Boone became the archetypal pioneer-hero, a figure so often defined by his opposition to Indian caricatures. Despite a nuanced and complex relationship with his Native American peers, the lived experiences of Boone and his fellow colonisers has frequently been appropriated and over-simplified. Conquest is typically depicted as inevitable, and colonisation as morally righteous. To understand modern forms of anti-Indianism it is necessary to understand the legacies and traditions of which they are apart.5 In the case of much of the mid-west, these legacies are rooted in storytelling traditions which celebrate and canonise colonialist perspectives of anti-Indian violence.6 Regions such as Kentucky are conceptualised within  white-centric world views and mental geographies—as frontiers rather than Indigenous landscapes. For the Shawnee and Cherokee, the Kentucky country was a type of buffer zone, separating the long-time adversaries. It was the gateway to the Cherokeean north and, broadly defined, the southern limit of Shawnee hard power. In the 1770s, a radical transformation in Shawnee/Cherokee relations drove an equally radical shift in the region.7 As a new period of cooperation emerged out of the long-­standing rivalry between these peoples, Kentucky was transformed into a unifying space, a region in which former enemies built new relationships and fostered a new array of shared experiences. Facing north from the heart of Cherokee country, Kentucky looks very different to the way it was (and is) understood by so many settler-colonisers.8,9 Such nuance is frequently found to be wanting in the anti-Indian narratives that emerged in the wake of the Phillips clash.10 Responding to the idea that this incident could be viewed as part of a longer historic process,  one internet poster suggested that people should ‘[c]onsider the Beaver Wars…The efforts to gain control of hunting grounds [by the Iroquois] was brutal.’11 Another argued that ‘Natives had a robust industry of rape murder slavery theft and genocide [and that] there was never that fantasy of [a] hollywood utopia.’12 Yet another drew upon their own family history: ‘my 4th great grandfather was one of a group of Overmountain men that routed a party of Chickamauga Cherokee…and rescued a kidnapped woman. Unfortunately, they were too late to save a 12 year old boy who had been burned at the stake by the Cherokees.’13

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Another commentator suggested that whilst ‘America is not innocent…even the Native-American Indian Tribes, one against the other, committed terrible violence’, a perspective mirrored by comments which sought to draw readers’ attention to ‘“Native” Americans [who] fought, raped, killed, and murdered colonists for hundreds of years’.14 Narratives of white victimhood have a rich history that predates the eighteenth century. Puritan New England served as fertile ground from which an important array of anti-Indian literature would emerge.15 As the military and political threat posed by Native Americans receded in the northeast, however, empathy for Indigenous peoples was able to emerge.16 Anti-Indian memories produced in and around the Kentucky country built upon these earlier traditions, but they did so during the formative, myth-making period that surrounded the founding of the republic. Unlike Mary Rowlandson or Cotton Mather, the narratives produced during the colonisation of the Kentucky country and its neighbouring regions were built around figures who could be transformed into secular, independent, republican archetypes. The oral histories produced in regions did not tell stories about the providence of a God who despised idolatry; they were stories that could be made to fit comfortably into the founding mythology of the country. As such, they became popular fodder for contemporary storytellers and, ultimately, served as the basis for decades of elaborate retellings and trans-media adaptations.

Memories of Violence Oral histories are primarily concerned with perspective, emotion, and feeling. Individually, they are problematic sources that often see their subjects retroactively reinterpreting the past.17 Collectively, however, they describe what Elizabeth Perkins called ‘mental maps’, an interior geography marked by common landmarks, perspectives, and experiences.18 In the case of the large trove of oral histories collected by John Shane, a Presbyterian minister who travelled across Kentucky in the 1830s and 1840s to record the reminisces of its aging-colonisers, so many of those accounts described moments of emotional vulnerability, sadness, and fury. They document a broad spectrum of peoples, unable or unwilling to reflect upon their role in usurping Indigenous lands. The trauma of war is a common landmark in these mental maps, a touchstone that seemed to drive colonialist reaction and, in so many cases, anti-Indian atrocities. In the era of Indian

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Removals, aged-colonisers seemed to dwell not upon their own culpability but the negative consequences they suffered when their victims fought back. Hugh McGary was no stranger to these oral histories. Stories about him were told to Shane by several sources but his problematic actions were frequently contextualised by anecdotes that sought to excuse his violent anti-Indianism. In 1777, for instance, he killed an Indian, butchered the body, and fed the remains to his dogs. According to Shane’s source, however, McGary was acting in response to the recent death of his stepson; the Indian he butchered was apparently wearing the dead adolescent’s hunting shirt and, thus, the act was portrayed as a type of retribution.19 Another of Shane’s sources elaborated on this incident further,  describing how Mary, Hugh McGary’s wife,  went into a deep depression  following the death of her son. According to this interviewee, Mary confined herself to bed and, a year later, having moved little in the intervening twelve months, she too died.20,21 Others, too, reminisced about McGary, connecting his past losses to later acts of anti-­Indian violence. Under the command of Benjamin Logan, McGary had taken part in a widely remembered invasion of the midnorthwest in 1786.22 By this point in the battle for Kentucky, thousands of colonisers had been killed, injured, or taken into captivity.23 Like other such campaigns, Logan’s had been designed to push the war’s centre of gravity into the Indians’ heartland. In this regard, however, it was largely a failure.24 A few minor skirmishes and casualties aside, the Indians had simply evacuated their towns ahead of the advancing colonisers, denying them the chance to inflict the defeat they so desperately sought. Instead, Logan and his followers had to settle for a paltry number of prisoners, mostly women, children, and the elderly, who had been discovered in the otherwise deserted townships upon which they had marched.25 According to Isaac Clinkenbeard, McGary attempted to interrogate an elderly captive named Moluntha, demanding to know whether the chief had been involved in the Blue Licks defeat.26 Apparently, Moluntha (who was able to communicate only by patting his chest and saying the word ‘Keeing’, probably a mispronunciation of King) had nodded passively in response to McGary’s questions. McGary, interpreting this as an admission of guilt, shouted ‘d[am]n you, I will show you Blue Lick-play’, and smashed in the old man’s skull with a tomahawk. ‘Blue Lick-play’ was a reference to a disastrous battle McGary had helped to instigate against the Indians four years prior.27

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Coloniser memories frequently emphasised the emotional consequences of the war they had precipitated. John Wilson would tell John Shane of the time he witnessed a tomahawked and scalped body being delivered to his widow. According to Wilson, the widow ‘examine[d] all the wounds of her husband…very carefully, fondly, at first without a tear [and] the[n] suddenly gave way to her grief’.28 The wife of John Smith acted in a similar manner when she was delivered the news that her husband had been killed. According to Doctor Louis Marshall, who was present with Smith when she received the news, ‘she gave the most piercing shriek that I ever heard.’ Marshall would also recall the emotive reaction of Michael Mitchell’s wife following the death of her husband at Indian hands: ‘she was very thankful [the Indians] had not shot him in the eye’, and ‘she would rather they killed her cow, “Pretty”’.29 Later, she was seen to express her anguish physically, by ‘lamenting and wringing her hands’.30 Such emotional turmoil was not necessarily a short term or fleeting concern; following William Christian’s death in 1786, his newly widowed wife abandoned the west with the pair’s children, but future happiness proved elusive. Mrs Christian’s health deteriorated rapidly in the east, leading one contemporary, Judge Campbell, to remark that ‘her grieving for her husband’, was so intense that it was beginning to ‘injure her health’. Whether a reasonable medical explanation or not, Campbell essentially attributed her death shortly afterwards to a broken heart.31 In colonialist reminisces, grief frequently intermingled with stories about revenge, the former seeming to justify the latter. William Niblick would tell Shane about a memorable childhood experience, the day John Wymore’s body, sans scalp, was brought back to the settlement where he lived. According to Niblick: ‘[I was] hanging on to my mother’s apron, and heard the women crying…I saw them bring Wymore in a sheet that was all bloody; he [had been left by the Indians] hanging on a pole.’ Shortly after this, Wymore’s former compatriots struck out into the wilderness to avenge their fallen comrade. Wymore’s killers had been able to escape except for one straggler, who was captured, killed, and decapitated. The lifeless head was then hung from a tree, whilst his body, according to another contemporary, was ‘cut up…for the dogs [to eat]’.32 Stories of horror, distress, and atrocity were an important part of western colonialist culture in the early republic. George Fearis would remember the day he and a friend ‘saw the hog at something’, a feast which turned out to be the dead and scalped body of his companion’s child. According to Fearis, the child’s father ‘gathered what…he could’ of the

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body, ‘and took it along and buried it’.33 Such memories implicitly justified the violence of the colonising process by focusing upon the actions taken by Native Americans whilst frequently contextualising, explaining, or forgiving those of the coloniser. Conflict, the oral record shows, broke hearts and families. Colonialist violence was thus justified. That is not to suggest that the oral records collected by Shane and other oral historians told a simple tale of Native American violence and justifiable white retribution—a degree of nuance was present, particularly when women told the stories. Mrs Arnold, who had been present in the Kentucky country from the early 1780s, told Shane about the time a group of men returned to their settlement with the body of an Indian aged around ‘17 or 18’. According to Arnold, the women of the settlement were moved by the sight of this body, with many commenting upon its ‘fine [and] tender hands and feet’. Apparently recognising something akin to youthful innocence, ‘[t]he women…begged that he might be buried’. In response, the men of the settlement told them that ‘if they didn’t hush they would hang him up for [a] carri[on] [bird]’. In the end, they did not resort to that. Instead, Arnold recalled, the men laid the body ‘in a hollow’ where he ‘made a greater smell than a hundred horses’. Carrion birds may not have feasted upon the young man’s flesh, but the town’s animals, which would in turn be consumed by the townsfolk, certainly did. Years later Arnold would recall that, ‘I saw my sow in his belly more than a dozen times.’34 The men who laid out the body of a young Indian to be consumed by their animals stand in contrast to the women who tried to stop this gruesome display. Still, memories recorded by Shane show that moderate or empathetic voices were frequently marginalised, both contemporaneously and in retrospect. Mass invasions of Indian Country launched from the Kentucky country could involve up to 80% of the adultmale population whilst those who remained behind would later be characterised as a type of support network for the invasion, ‘scrap[ing] up corn…and mak[ing] bread’.35 In the oral record, violence against Native Americans was overwhelming contextualised by white suffering and losses, only rarely being characterised, as it was by Arnold, as needlessly cruel or macabre. If the victory of the colonisers was sealed in the Kentucky country by 1795 (Treaty of Greenville), the fate of the colonising process in many neighbouring regions remained far from certain—modern Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana were still thoroughly a part of an Indigenous landscape.36 As a result, colonialist violence continued, both in physical terms and in the

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realm of storytelling and narrative construction. A trickle of captives continued to seep back to the societies of their birth, living artefacts who seemed to verify the anti-Indian thesis that was such an important part of the region’s colonialist culture.37 Looking back, Shane’s interviewees frequently explained and excused colonialist violence, only rarely engaging with their own culpability in the fighting that engulfed the region. Nuanced experiences were papered over by a shared narrative in which white Americans were depicted as the principle victims of the colonising process.

Anti-Indian Radicalism The oral traditions that emerged in and around the Kentucky country provide a detailed insight into the types of colonialist memories which were canonised by the community. Handled with care, however, they can provide other important insights about the mentalités that emerged in the region.38 The ‘mental maps’ evidenced in Shane’s oral record indicates that violence was an important aspect of the lived experience in the region. For some, violence was a regular occurrence, particularly those who experienced the siege-like warfare that was so frequent in the 1770s. For others, violence was a semi-regular occurrence whilst its threat was ever-present. There is no doubt much that much is missing from these oral histories, but  that which is included is telling. These sources describe attacks upon bodies, kin, and community that were fundamentally caused by the uninvited presence of white colonisers  on Indigenous lands. These oral histories show a community prioritising particular types of memories, to be sure, but they also evidence one that was increasingly radicalised by the violence they experienced, a culture in which revenge against Indigenous bodies became normalised. The prolonged success and effectiveness of Native American resistance  provided them with a large volume of experience which appeared to justify the deepening of their anti-Indianism. Native Americans engaged in an effective campaign of psychological warfare. This allowed them to drive hundreds of colonisers out of Indian Country—often without resorting to actual violence. On one occasion the ‘Indians came along and stole all of John Smith’s bed clothes’ whilst, on another, ‘threw a couple of frogs’ into an unattended pot of boiling sugar water’.39 Such actions did much to unnerve the colonisers, reminding

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them that their lives were in danger. This message was not lost upon its intended recipients and more than one coloniser lost sleep as a result of the Indians’ apparent ability to appear and disappear at will. Mrs Gough, one of John Shane’s interviewees, would describe how her mother, upon hearing the cow bells jangling or seeing the cane shake, would lie awake all night in fear.40 Aberrant noises or perceived changes in one’s local surroundings could lead to colonisers ‘hid[ing] in the[ir] blankets’.41 Outside of Louisville, Indian bands apparently appeared ‘and danced freely to provoke notice’.42 Indigenous defences of their lands forced settler-colonisers to confront the dangers that accompanied their participation in an invasion. As a result, many fled the region. When a group of colonisers found a series of letters ominously inviting them to cross the Ohio River (and hence cross into the heartland of numerous Indian tribes), they understood the dangers well and ‘all the members of the party were mutually sworn not to divulge the secret of [the letters’] contents, for the next six months.’43 By appearing and disappearing, around settlements, targeting isolated persons in the wilderness, displaying or drawing attention to dead colonisers, or engaging in focused psychological warfare, the Indians were able to supress migration onto their lands. But their success in that field created a significant long-­term problem. Whilst many colonisers did leave the Kentucky country, many remained and, among them, resentment of these psychological attacks grew, particularly when they were paired with physical expressions of violence. When the son of General Scott was attacked and mortally wounded, his dying body was moved to the shore opposite his would-be rescuers and a show made of his scalping. When his father arrived, he had to be warned not to make any attempt to rescue his (still living) son. The Indians, he was told, ‘were waiting for him’.44 Prior to being scalped, dead bodies might be mutilated with tomahawks; in addition to scalping, brains could be dashed out, additional slashes added to bodies, or body parts removed. This practice created images that stayed with colonisers throughout their lives.45 The dead were made to speak to the living, with the voices of those who had taken their lives; but the precise meaning of their message was open to colonialist reinterpretation. The ritualistic mutilation and display of dead bodies allowed the Indians to drive many of the invaders off their lands, but among many of those who remained, anti-Indian sentiment deepened.46

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Colonisers found occasion to develop deep and enduring resentment of their Indigenous enemies, with many expressing this through frequent attempts to destroy Indian bodies. When George Clark called upon his fellow colonisers to unite and attack Indian heartlands to north, he was able boast that he ‘Had my little army recruited in half the time I expected. Elevated with the thoughts of the great service we should do our Country in some measure; putting an end to the Indian War on our Frontiers.’47 Such was the success of the Indians’ psychological approach to war, and the depth of fear and resentment that it inspired, that Patriots and Tories alike found common cause. As one coloniser put it after being ordered to guard a Tory settlement, ‘They were afraid, and we were as afraid as they.’48 Colonisers were fundamentally altered by the fighting that occurred in and around Kentucky. Lives had been lost, bodies reshaped, and, through story and narrative, the horrors of one generation bequeathed to the next. The war in the Kentucky country became a trans-generational trauma.49 Violence in the region was the basis for deeper forms of anti-Indianism.50 For Simon Kenton, the past was not an easy thing to lay to rest. Following a miserable period spent as a captive, a time that included physical torture and a near-execution by fire, Kenton began a decade-spanning quest for retribution. Reflecting upon the impact such violence had upon him, Kenton summed up the desire for revenge succinctly: ‘I felt determined to avenge myself of the wrongs that had been inflicted on me. I joined myself to the garrison and went with almost every expedition that was sent out… whenever there was a party going out, I was ready to go with them and so [I] continued till the close of the war.’51 Indeed, by the late 1780s and early 1790s the US government found that it was unable to restrain its own citizens or reign in their desire to fight the Indians, a situation that exasperated and elongated the war for the Kentucky country by at least half a decade.52 The potential for antiIndian activism hinted at by the actions of the Paxton Boys, a vigilante group responsible for the murder of around twenty peaceful Indians in 1763, was only then becoming ubiquitous.53 Although the Seven Years War did much to change the intercultural landscape, the violence that marred the colonisation of Kentucky and its neighbours would serve to further radicalise that region’s population.54 Stories about perceived atrocities spread far, and vivid, gory details were common accoutrements in the western part of the republic.

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By 1794, the war for the Kentucky country was functionally over, the Battle of Fallen Timbers having finally broken Indigenous military resistance north of the Ohio River. Less than a month after that battle, however, a group of white Americans in Cincinnati demonstrated that even friendly, allied tribes were now prone to being perceived as antagonistic ‘others’.55 The word ‘Indian’ had become increasingly loaded and, by the middle of the 1790s, deeply invested with prejudice. It mattered little that the Choctaws were known allies of the American cause, scouts who had served Anthony Wayne shortly before the Battle of Fallen Timbers.56 Nor did it matter that this small group was causing no disturbance. What mattered to those who were about to riot against these harmless few was their ethnicity and, most importantly, the characteristics they had come to associate with it. ‘Is this’, they asked the white man who served the Choctaw their drinks, ‘the kind of Company you keep’.57 For many of those whose lives or bodies had been reshaped by violence, anti-Indianism was not easily—or willingly—set aside.58 Death was hardly a stranger in the eighteenth century, but across the Kentucky country, his face was painted and he carried a tomahawk. Prejudices were deepened by near-death experiences and the sight of fallen comrades; and the guerrillalike nature of the war taught non-combatants to deeply fear their enemies.59 It was not unusual for colonisers to become ‘determined to avenge’ themselves upon (any) Native American they could.60 In contrast, in the northeast of the republic, which had long since moved on from its Indigenous conflicts, attitudes towards Native Americans could be remarkably different. Observing the 1795 treatingmaking process that ended the war in Kentucky, the Reverend David Barrow, an easterner, found occasion to defend the Indians. Barrow accepted that there were superficial differences between his own people and the Indians but he rejected anything more fundamental. The Indians, he noted, wore ‘no breeches nor petticoats, Warst-coats, hats, gowns, shoes or stockings, and pluck up their heads by roots…But what of all this? I ask the question again. What of all this?’61 Barrow could foster such a perspective because his life, and the lives of those he knew best, had been completely unaffected by the recent war. In contrast, John Shane, the western oral historian who transcribed Barrow’s diary decades later, was so disgusted with what he read that he took the opportunity to start an argument with his long dead subject. As he concluded in the margins of his notes, ‘so, this is history? No!’62

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After 1795, wartime attitudes towards the Indians took on an enduring character as oral accounts were spread to neighbouring communities, passed on to children, and committed to print. To be sure, this process had been set in motion in the seventeenth century and had received a significant boost during the Seven Years War.63 The sheer duration of this latest war, however, combined with the intensity of the fighting it generated, helped to create a very a large, very weighty link in the chain of Indigenous conflict.64 The War of 1812, from the perspective of many colonisers, was a bloody epilogue to the earlier contest for the Kentucky country. Whilst many white Americans and Indians had laboured to create a lasting peace following the Battle of Fallen Timbers, survivors told stories and shared memories, justifying and reliving the violence innumerable times; the children of Kentucky’s colonisation were no stranger to the perceived victimhood of their parent’s generation.65 Among the Indians, many sought to stymie the continued development of colonialist settlements. Many tribes had been divided and militarily crippled but for some, the bad blood created by the preceding hostilities was simply too thick to be easily dispelled by such pressing practicalities, particularly when the British resumed their support for anti-US groups in the early nineteenth century.66 The Shawnee brothers Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh are a case-in-­point, having grown up amidst the war and witnessing, from the unique vantage point of youth, the havoc wreaked among their tribe by the deaths of their relatives and kinfolk. Broken family ties and ongoing colonisation of Indigenous lands helped to rally anticolonialist sentiment across the northern Ohio Valley, but relatively few Indigenous veterans of the war for the Kentucky country participated.67 The Shawnee fielded only minimal support for Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh, instead turning their attention to farming and cultural accommodation in an attempt to maintain their communities in the Ohio country.68 Whilst individuals such as Tenskwatawa and Techumseh were relatively unique among their tribe, the same could not be said of the colonisers who, even in victory, still sought to right the perceived wrongs that had been committed against them. Among the Kentuckians, veterans such as Simon Kenton eagerly returned to the fray when the War of 1812 broke out (Fig. 3.1). The Shawnee may have only fielded a tiny group of dissidents during that conflict, but the Kentuckians were well represented.69

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Fig. 3.1  Depiction of the Battle of Tippecanoe (1811), the first test of Tenskwatawa’s and Tecumseh’s pan-Indian confederacy. This image dates from 1889, one year prior to the Wounded Knee Massacre

Peace may have offered a number of distinct advantages to the aspiring landowner and farmer, but across the Kentucky country, white men mustered by the thousand when they were called upon to fight Native Americans. The war for the Kentucky country was transformative. Lasting more than two decades, it produced thousands of casualties and countless stories that preserved (and disseminated) anti-­Indian ideas and  attitudes. As oral and written accounts of the war spread, they were seemingly confirmed by the surviving physical evidence left by the fighting—healed scalps, wounds that continued to disgorge bone fragments decades after they were inflicted, and, perhaps most poignantly of all, a trickle of captives who returned years, and sometimes decades, after they had been kidnapped.70 With every captive who returned, news quickly spread throughout local neighbourhoods and crowds of nearby residents would gather to witness the ensuing reunion.71 The fighting in

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the Kentucky country may have come to an end, but these living artefacts connected the post-combat generation to the stories told to them by their parents. The experiences of these returning captives also inadvertently shed much light on the enduring post-war attitude fostered by so many colonisers. When John Tanner returned from his twenty-eight-year habitation with the Odawa and Ojibwa in 1818, he was frequently mistaken for an Indian. When he had attempted to purchase food on his journey, one set of householders—though happy to sell him ears of corn for his horse— feigned ignorance whenever the weary captive gestured towards his own mouth. When Tanner attempted to make his meaning understood by gesturing towards a loaf of bread as well as his mouth, the corn he had purchased for his horse was taken back. A short time later, Tanner approached another house but was again reproached, this time by ‘a very fat man…[who] came out and spoke to me in a loud and harsh tone of voice.’ Although Tanner turned to leave the man’s property, the coloniser ‘ran out and caught my horse by the bridle…I thought I could comprehend that he was cursing me for an Indian.’72 Just as returned captives were living artefacts of the war, so too were the Indians with whom the colonisers came into contact in later years. Encounters with returning captives helped to maintain a continuity between white westerners and their recent past, but the War of 1812 provided them, as a society, with a very broad epilogue around which the cultural coffers of the Kentucky country could be refreshed. New war stories underlined the region’s shared anti-Indian narrative. Whether involved in the fighting or not, western colonisers had their faith in their own past vindicated through published accounts and, more commonly, the region’s ever-enduring oral traditions.73 This war helped to reinforce a continuity of anti-Indianism, spanning the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Such continuity is particularly important when outmigration from the Kentucky country is considered.

Memorialisation Lived experiences were swiftly transformed into stories and, through the Kentucky country’s vibrant oral networks, were spread far-and-wide. The capture of the Shawnee chief, Blue Jacket; Daniel Boone’s captivity with

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Blackfish; Hugh McGary’s rage; the mysterious disappearance of James Harrod, all were popular examples of the type of material that was canonised by the colonisers of Kentucky.74 The emergence of a shared antiIndian narrative in the Kentucky country helped to define coloniser identities across the region and, as years passed, that shared narrative found new avenues of expression, new mediums of expression, and new audiences. Spurned to leave Kentucky by massive disputes over land ownership and chronically overlapping claims, thousands of colonisers poured out of this region in the early nineteenth century, carrying with them their experiences, memories, and stories.75 In terms of migrants, Kentucky became Illinois’ single largest donor state during the early nineteenth century, whilst west of the Mississippi, Missouri and the wider Louisiana territory also received a significant injection of Kentucky blood, including Daniel Boone and his expansive family.76 Considering the relatively low level of violence that had affected Illinois in the late eighteenth century, the mass migration of Kentuckians during the first decades of the nineteenth century was no small matter. As Kentuckians poured out of that country and into new Indigenous landscapes, they carried not just the tools, seed, and material they required to start their new lives, but memories  and their parents’ stories. Settler-colonial aggression could escalate quickly in these new theatres.77 When Black Hawk, a chief amongst the Sac and Fox, attempted to assert his peoples’ rights in northern Illinois in 1831, the response of the country’s colonisers was telling. Following a spate of fighting and skirmishes, it became clear to Black Hawk that his forces were agitating for a war that they could not hope to win. When (on May 14th, 1832) Black Hawk attempted to surrender, he was attacked by the white militia that had been pursuing him.78 According to one member of the militia, his peers had acted with ‘cowardly vindictiveness’.79 Having gained, in their eyes, a bloody advantage, the colonisers set out to hunt down and destroy Black Hawk and his remaining forces.80 It was not that the colonisers did not desire peace. Indeed, they probably did. But they expected it to be obtained only through a complete military victory. As Black Hawk told one of his prisoners following the battle, ‘Black Hawk would have been a friend to the whites, but they would not let him, and that hatchet was dug up by themselves and not by the Indians.’81

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The elderly chief was not wrong. By attempting to surrender, he had essentially attempted to end the war before it had begun. The colonisers, however, were panicked by the prospect of a renewed Indigenous war and instead sought to end it in the only way they could conceive; through violence. Their actions may have been short sighted and, ultimately, the cause of further fighting, but they were perfectly consistent with cultural precedent. Following this disastrous encounter, conditions rapidly deteriorated in northern Illinois. Over the course of the fighting Black Hawk mustered, perhaps, five hundred warriors. The colonisers, on the other hand, gathered from amongst themselves a force numbering nine thousand, three times as large as the force sent by the government.82 When the war came to an end, it did so—perhaps predictably—in the form of massacre. It is unsurprising that when Black Hawk told the story of his life to Antoine LeClair the following year he painted an unflattering picture of the ordinary colonisers he had encountered: ‘[I] was afraid of the multitude of pale faced militia…as they were under no restraint of their chiefs.’83 In the east, where wars with the Indians were abstract concepts rather living, relevant issues, Native Americans were starting to take on a level of mythical mystique.84 This growing romanticism served to underline how fundamentally western perspectives of these peoples had been reshaped. Within months of Black Hawk’s defeat, the aging chief had commenced a tour of the eastern United States where fascinated Americans took the opportunity to pose questions on a range of subjects to the former renegade. Evidently, eastern Americans were fascinated by Black Hawk and were particularly keen to learn, through him, Native American perspectives on issues of national importance.85 This trend continued when Black Hawk’s autobiography became a literary sensation, creating a celebrity out of the man whilst further romanticising his people.86 In the west (where Black Hawk’s ‘people were treated very badly’) such a scenario was almost unimaginable.87 In the western town of Detroit, Black Hawk, along with other Indigenous leaders, was burned in effigy.88 Rather than looking to the Indians, as many easterners were beginning to, as a type of noble savage, imbued with the particular knowledge of the naturalised man, westerners instead conceptualised the Indians as naturally aggressive antagonists.89 Nor was it insignificant that a western settler now resided in the White House. Indeed, it was especially relevant that it had been Andrew Jackson’s policy of Indian removal, and Black Hawk’s

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resistance to it, that had ultimately led to the late war.90 The implication in Black Hawk’s autobiography was clear. The fault of continued intercultural hostilities lay not upon the shoulders of Indigenous defenders, but on those of colonialist aggressors. Black Hawk ensured that his message was not an ambiguous one: ‘Bad and cruel as our people were treated by the whites, not one of them was hurt or molested by our band…This is a lesson worthy for the white man to learn: use to forbearance when injured.’91 The stories told about the wars for the Kentucky country survived in part because of the interest they sparked in second- and third-generation listeners who went to considerable effort to record and preserve them. John Shane spent much of the 1830s and 1840s travelling through Kentucky and southern Ohio, speaking with the now-elderly survivors of the war and recording their stories and testimonies; almost every story he collected relayed memories of violence. Even accounts that described the atrocities committed by colonisers were frequently imbued with negatively loaded images of the Indians that implicitly excused them.92 To be sure, these elderly colonisers talked with Shane about a variety of subjects, particularly the women with whom he spoke, but, in almost every instance, those discussions ultimately returned to the subject of the war.93 Literature, too, served to record, disseminate, and homogenise these varied memories. John Filson’s The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucky (1784) popularised the life and exploits of Daniel Boone whilst contemporaneous captivity narratives, particularly those that dwelled upon body horror, did much to spread the impression that it was the colonisers who were the real victims of the colonising process. Filson’s account of Boone’s life contained stories of violence, but nuance and a limited degree of empathetic understanding was present.94 As the period progressed, however, this became less common as experiences of violence were increasingly emphasised.95 The portfolio of publications coming out of this region built upon this theme, more consciously and reflectively casting the Indians as a natural obstacle to the spread of civility.96 Humphrey Marshall, an early coloniser and, according to at least one of John Shane’s interviewees, the true author of the Daniel Boone narrative which appeared in Filson’s earlier history, produced the sensationalist History of Kentucky which was published in 1812 and 1824.97 In 1821, Samuel Metcalf published a collection of anecdotes about the war.

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Metcalf’s work was based upon the stories told to him by ‘an early settler in Kentucky’ whom he met on his travels, an early example of oral traditions being recorded and repackaged for the western masses.98 The year 1826 saw the release of James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, a novel which borrowed episodes from the life of Boone and then transposed them onto an otherwise fictitious cast of characters.99 In 1832, John A. McClung’s Sketches of Western Adventure likewise drew upon previously published works, newspaper accounts and, of course, oral histories whilst a year later, just as Black Hawk’s autobiography was causing a sensation in the east, Timothy Flint published his landmark biography of Daniel Boone. Sentimentally and ideologically loaded, Flint helped to refine the frontier archetype, the type of rugged warrior who could fight a bear with nothing but his hands, or outwit hordes of unfeeling ‘savages’.100 But even this remarkable and ostentatious work was based, however loosely, upon an interview which Flint had conducted with the real Boone sometime earlier, as well as other attempts by the author to capture local oral histories and folklore.101 Two years later, Thomas Baldwin’s captivity narrative detailed the destruction of his family during the war in graphic terms.102 As the Indian removals became a reality, the veterans of Kentucky’s colonisation were producing a literary offspring that, though hardly guilty of consistent historical accuracy, served to reinforce the already vibrant traditions that were already being passed within families and local communities. The printed volumes that appeared in the early nineteenth century were not the primary means through which colonisers perpetuated tales of their past, but they were a very public example of the region’s obsession with anti-Indian violence. Moreover, they also served to reinforce the idea that where European Americans settled, or sought to settle, bloody conflicts with existing Indian populations would be the inevitable result.103 Even after the Removal process, westerners continued to revel in stories about the region’s violent past, consuming them as entertainment and as retroactive justification for the recent ethnic cleansing that had been carried out in their name. In 1844, the Cincinnati-­based American Pioneer Periodical provided a public outlet for elderly colonists to recount war stories.104 Although the most significant literary outpouring concerning the war occurred in the wake of the Indian Removal Act, subsequent decades saw no shortage of follow-up material. John W.  Gray’s Life of Joseph Bishop (1858) drew heavily upon the oral testimony in order to remind westerners of the ‘savage[’]s devilish deeds’. John Frost’s Pioneer

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Life in the West, published the same year, provided readers with a vast array of anecdotal tales, legends, and local folklore. It featured fanciful tales and adjective-rich prose, but its thesis was consistent with the other tales emerging around the colonisation of Kentucky: it was a necessary process and the Indians were the main impediment to its peaceful realisation.105 By the 1850s, the war for Kentucky was fast disappearing from living memory. Decades of literary publications and continuing family traditions had, however, ensured that even with the passing of those who had lived through this period, it would remain a potent component in the region’s cultural landscape. The original colonisers may have been dying off, but their descendants continued to carry their torch, retelling tales of antiIndian warfare, oversized heroes, and high adventure.106 Even in the early twentieth century, locally maintained anti-Indian oral traditions still circulated. In 1910, William Elsey Connelley published a remarkable book, The Eastern Kentucky Papers, which was based almost entirely upon hitherto unpublished and unrecorded accounts that detailed Indian warfare and settlement in the comparatively isolated Appalachian portion of the state.107 This remarkable work highlights just how pervasive oral traditions could be. Of course, the sheer endurance of such traditions in eastern Kentucky is most likely the exception rather than the rule; however, their perpetuation into the twentieth century does, nonetheless, emphasise the fundamental relationship that linked social memories from the late eighteenth century to local regional identities.108 According to Connelley, regional practices such as the manufacture of homespun clothing and the predominance of small-scale agriculture further compounded the connection felt by the community to its shared construction of the past.109 This continuity of lifestyle thus acted as something of a living document for those who came of age in this area, emphasising the connection between the modern and historic periods. As late as 1960, Harriet Simpson Arnow, a Kentucky-born novelist who turned her hand to writing social histories of the southern trans-Appalachian region, described this continuity of perceived experience. In Arnow’s own words, ‘Times and places were mingled in my head; the past was part of the present, close as the red cedar water bucket in the kitchen…or the parched corn a grandmother now and then made for us. This was the same parched corn from the old days, or the cornmeal mush we sometimes ate, no different at all from the mush in the stories. An old shirt in a trunk upstairs, square arm-holed, stitched by hand, of cotton grown and woven

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and spun on the Big South Fork of the Cumberland, could have been the same as that worn by some old grandpa with many greats before his name.’110 Born in 1908, two years prior to the publication of Connelley’s history of eastern Kentucky, Arnow’s writing serves to remind historians that place and lifestyle often work in tandem with oral traditions to create a shared sense of the past.111 The frontier may have long since moved on from the Kentucky country, but local communities in areas such as these continued to identify themselves as the descendants of that generation and time. As Arnow put it, ‘My people loved the past more than their present lives.’112 Real or imagined, the community’s construction of its history of violence was a powerful force. Nor was Arnow writing about a phenomenon that generated interest only in the Midwest. By the twentieth century, the colonialist history of the Kentucky country had become part of the national mythology. Transcending oral traditions and the written word, it had become a transmedia phenomenon.114 The colonisation of Kentucky, typically personified by Daniel Boone, was a popular subject for early motion pictures with themed entries appearing in 1906, 1907, 1912, and 1923 (Fig. 3.2).115 The first feature film based upon the life of Boone (With Daniel Boone Thru the Wilderness) was released in 1926, with a second (Daniel Boone) following in 1936.116 Last of the Mohicans, which already drew significant inspiration from Boone’s life, was transposed into comic book form as early as 1942.117 By the 1950s, Boone was thoroughly en vogue with new cinematic and televisual spins on his life and exploits arriving in 1950 (Young Daniel Boone), 1956 (Daniel Boone, Trailblazer) and 1960 (Daniel Boone).118 I.W.  Comics released Fighting Daniel Boone in 1953, a series that revelled in crude depictions of colonialist violence against Native Americans whilst Quality Comics would go on to publish Exploits of Daniel Boone from 1955 to 1956 (Fig. 3.3). That same year, DC Comics, the creators of Batman and Superman, would publish The Legends of Daniel Boone.119 From 1964, the modern image of Boone was further amplified by the release of the wildly popular television series Daniel Boone (1964–1970) starring Fess Parker.120 Capitalising upon the runaway success of the series, Charlton would go on to publish Frontier Scout Daniel Boone, another comic book series, in 1965. Young Dan’l Boone, another television series, would be broadcast in late 1977.121 In more recent decades, the imagery and iconography of this popularisation of Kentuckian colonisation has found its way into a wide variety of media, from The

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Fig. 3.2  ‘Perfection itself—Adjectives unnecessary’: following Attack on Fort Boonesborough (1906), which lasted less than a minute, 1907’s Daniel Boone, Or Pioneer Days in America, presented the first true filmic biography of its titular character. It was heavily promoted by the Edison Company throughout the year of its release113

Simpsons (1990–present) to Leonardo DiCaprio’s Academy Award winning vehicle, The Revenant (2015).122 As of 2020, as the United States reeled from renewed exposure to police brutality against African Americans, statues of slave owners were pulled down across the country.123 In response, Trump, who was deeply critical of those who destroyed historically problematic monuments, announced plans for a National Garden of American Heroes in an ideologically loaded Executive Order that sought to weaponise history against the movement.124 ‘These statues’, the order read, ‘are silent teachers in solid form of stone and metal. They preserve the memory of our American story and stir in us a spirit of responsibility for the chapters yet unwritten.’ Included in the order was a list of 31 foundational candidates for the new garden, individuals who reflected the administration’s preferred interpretation of the country’s past. Alongside Alexander Hamilton, Thomas

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Fig. 3.3  The front cover to the first issue of Fighting Daniel Boone (left) and the poster for Daniel Boone, Trailblazer (right), were part of a wave of Boone-related media that appeared throughout the 1950s and 1960s

Jefferson, and George Washington will stand a statue of Daniel Boone. No Native Americans (or Latinos or East Asian Americans, for that matter), were included in the inaugural list.125 The memorialisation of Kentucky’s colonisation was a long-term affair, carried out by thousands of individuals across a range of mediums which tended to excise cross-cultural nuance and further emphasise colonial victimhood. From contemporaneous oral traditions through to the release of motion pictures, comic books, and television shows, it was  thoroughly embedded into the national mythology, a series of stories that tend to aggrandise the process of colonisation whilst excusing, ignoring, or rewriting the more problematic and troubling aspects of that process. As its figurehead, Boone has become a trope in his own right, representing personal independence, endeavour, bravery, and success. Rarely, however, has he been used to problematise that process in a systematic manner. For the

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time being at least, the buckskin clad, coonskin hat-wearing wilderness icon remains a symbol not of the problematic history so many modern Americans inherit, but their belief in its inherent righteousness.

Problematic Legacies The social memory generated by the war for the Kentucky country was certainly no trivial matter and, though its greatest legacy lay in the early nineteenth century, it continued to impact lives and worldviews beyond this—and not just among the region’s colonisers. Even as Indigenous former inhabitants of the region adapted to a new life west of the Mississippi, they maintained oral traditions about the war. In the words of one postremoval Lenape chief, ‘We have no books like our white brothers in which to record these things, but they are written on our hearts, and are transmitted to our children, and by them to theirs, and thus they are preserved.’126 Indeed, this transmission of experience did not just occur within the confines of a single tribe. In the 1850s, a Lenape tribesman named Jim Simonds—or Delaware Jim—described for a council of Nez Perce Indians the process of settler advancement, warfare, and Indian removal that had so afflicted his own people.127 This transfer of knowledge served to connect Indian experiences of the east to those unfolding in the far west but, as strong as these traditions were, they were not immune to the passage of time. By the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, oral traditions among the Lenape, and likely others, had started to break down. According to a modern day member of the community, this occurred because ‘[we] were not living in such tight knit communities, [and did] not [have] so many elders around who had stories to tell.’128 But even in the context of the twentieth century, cultural memories among such groups continued to linger. In 1964, Nora Thompson Dean of the Lenape agreed to fulfil her dying father’s last wish to go and see ‘the ocean where the Delawares came from’. Before arriving at the Atlantic Ocean, where she was at last able to make an ‘offering of tobacco…[to] the spirit in the ocean’ on her father’s behalf, she made a point of visiting the site of the Gnadenhutten Massacre.129 Thompson’s visit to the east coincided with a time when the national perception of Native Americans was beginning to show signs of significant change. The blood and thunder westerns of the preceding decades were beginning to give way to more nuanced and sympathetic portrayals of this

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people.130 But even as attitudes and perspectives were transformed, memories of the war, although growing ever more distant, were able to adapt themselves to this new intercultural context. When a member of the Lenape visited the site of Fort Pitt, she made a point of visiting ‘the big brick jail’ that still stands from the revolutionary period. In her own words, ‘I recall standing there, looking at it, and then at all the steel and concrete around me. I knew some of my ancestors had to have been at that very place. I tried to imagine what it looked like then and what they would think if they could see it now.’131 Although removed from the physical spaces they once occupied, these places still serve to underline a connection between Native Americans and their past, just as lifestyle and place in the early twentieth century connected those in rural Kentucky and Tennessee to theirs. Indeed, members of the Lenape still visit sites in Indiana on a ‘regular basis’.132 Perhaps no anecdotal tale demonstrates the pervasive power of the war for the midwest more than the saga surrounding Jane Quick, an elderly descendent of the notorious Indian killer, Tom Quick. According to tradition, Quick slaughtered Indians (particularly Lenape) by the dozen and for these deeds he was celebrated throughout western Pennsylvania in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, as the prestige which had been attached to Indian killing began to evaporate in the second half of the twentieth century so too did Quick’s legacy and, finally, in 1997, his monument was destroyed by an unknown party.133 Although a seeming note of finality, the destruction of Quick’s monument 202 years after his death did not end this ongoing saga. Arguably nothing indicates just how fundamentally European American perceptions of Native Americans have evolved than the selfless desire of one of Tom Quick’s descendants to ‘make amends for the many murders’ committed by her progenitor.134 In 2005, the elderly Ms Quick was presented with an opportunity that she believed would allow her to do just that when she encountered a group of individuals claiming to be Lenape. Following a period during which the ‘lonely’ Ms Quick was ‘courted’ by this group, she took the bold step of donating her farm to them. Unfortunately, it appears that Ms Quick had instead donated her land to a group whose claim to a legitimate Lenape identity was questionable.135 Aside from the distress this incident caused Ms Quick, it highlights how a series of murders committed over two hundred years ago is still generating no small amount of fallout. Reflecting upon this incident and its modernday implications, our Lenape correspondent summarised her feelings thus:

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‘The last great theft of the white men upon the Indians is identity theft. Imagine that one for a while.’136 Despite significant changes in the relationship between white Americans and Native Americans over the course of the twentieth century, colonisation, physical and cultural, remains an ongoing process; identity theft and cultural appropriation often replacing physical violence and the dispossession of property. Despite a growing trend towards positive depictions and sympathetic readings of history which accept the existence of a genocide, the image of the violent Indian remains a part of how some Americans continue to conceptualise this period. Narratives of white victimhood, historical and modern, remain intertwined and whilst the general trend towards constructive engagement with the US complex, colonialist past is ongoing, they have not been universally accepted. Tom Quick’s statue has fallen, but his spirit has not yet dissipated.

Notes 1. Paul Farhi ‘CNN Settles Libel Lawsuit with Covington Catholic Student’ The Washington Post, January 8th, 2020: https://www.washingtonpost. com/lifestyle/style/cnn-settles-libel-lawsuit-with-covington-catholicstudent/2020/01/07/f0b21842-319e-11ea-91fd-82d4e04a3fac_story. html; Julian Brave NoiseCat ‘His Side of the Story: Nathan Phillips Wants to Talk About Covington’ The Guardian, February 4th, 2019: https:// w w w. t h e g u a r d i a n . c o m / u s - n e w s / 2 0 1 9 / f e b / 0 4 / nathan-phillips-his-story-hate-division-covington. 2. ‘Statement of ---- --------, Covington Catholic High School jr, regarding incident at the Lincoln Memorial’ CNN, January 23, 2019: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/20/us/covington-kentucky-student-statement/index.html; Vincent Schilling ‘A summary of Indian Country Today’s coverage on Nathan Phillips and #MAGAyouth’ Indian Country Today, January 21, 2019: https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/ news/a-summary-of-indian-country-today-s-coverage-on-nathan-phillips-and-magayouth-BEjWHt1qb0eMO2shg6MYdQ; Vincent Schilling ‘Nathan Phillips responds to investigative report on Covington student’s behavior’ Indian Country Today, February 14, 2019: https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/news/nathan-phillips-responds-to-investigative-report-on-covington-student-s-behavior-vhXenuG3kU6VgcRVqCbPg; ‘Native American Elder Mocked by Young Donald Trump Supporters in MAGA Hats? It’s Not That Simple’ ABC News, January

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21, 2019: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-21/native-american-surrounded-maga-trump-supporters-what-happened/10730988; Emanuella Grinberg ‘A New Video Shows a Different Side of the Encounter Between a Native American Elder and Teens in MAGA Hats’ CNN, January 23, 2019: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/21/us/ maga-hat-teens-native-american-second-video/index.html; Victoria Bekiempis ‘New Video Sheds More Light on Students’ Confrontation with Native American’ The Guardian, January 21, 2019: https://www. theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/21/new-video-confrontationkentucky-students-native-american; Mark Curnutte ‘What to know about Black Hebrew Israelites, the group in that Covington Catholic video’ USA Today, January 22, 2019: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/ nation/2019/01/22/black-hebrew-israelites-covington-catholic-videohate-group-other-info/2643519002; ‘What to Know about Black Hebrew Israelites, the Group in that Covington Catholic video’ Chicago Sun Times, January 1, 2019: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/ what-to-know-about-black-hebrew-israelites-the-group-in-that-covington-catholic-video. 3. John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1992), 144. 4. If one were to compile a list of all the Indians wars fought prior to the nineteenth century one would indeed be faced with a formidable catalogue of bloodshed but those conflicts were often separated by significant geographic expanses that rendered each one, in many cases, irrelevant to the others. The conflicts fought in New England in the late seventeenth century had little, if any, appreciable effect on the peoples of South Carolina who would fight two Indian wars of their own in 1711 and 1715. See Virginia DeJohn Anderson ‘The Origins of New England Culture’ William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 48 (1991): 231–237; Virginia DeJohn Anderson New England’s Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); David Hackett Fischer Albion’s Seed: Four British Folk Ways in America (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 1989), pp. 13–205; and Jill Lepore The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), pp. x–xxi. 5. Patrick Griffin’s argument—that the ‘racist impulse’ was ‘unleashed, revealed, or refashioned at the moment of revolution’—certainly makes an important assertion, but it also suggests a sudden transformation where a more subtle argument would be more appropriate. The importance of a literary canon and other such devices ensured that there could

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be no sudden unleashing. Rather, westerners were radicalised whilst the wider community and their view of the Indians was transformed much more slowly. See Patrick Griffin American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and the Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), p. 12. Peter Silver emphasises the ‘terroristic’ nature of Native American attacks during this time in a compelling manner. See Peter Silver Our Savage Neighbours: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2008), pp. xviii–xix, 41, 57. 6. ‘Letter from Arthur St. Clair to John Jay, December 13th, 1788’ in Smith (ed.) The St. Clair Papers, p. 103. 7. Stephen Aron How the West was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 38. 8. Kathleen DuVal orientated her work thoroughly around Indigenous perspectives in her The Native Ground, framing European American colonisers as only one threat (and not even the principle one at that) being faced by the Cherokee and other Indian peoples. For DuVal, the power of the Osage, rather than the power of white peoples, were the chief concern of so many of her subjects. As of the 1760s, the north-facing Cherokee were particularly concerned with the long-time adversaries, the Shawnee, and the threat posed by Europeans was indeed only one force in a much wider Indigenous landscape. It was not long, however, before European Americans overtook the Osage as posing the chief threat to this and other Indigenous peoples in the region. Still, DuVal’s framework is an important reminder not to centre European Americans by default. See Kathleen DuVal The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), pp. 164–195. 9. It is worth noting that it was Dee Brown, in his problematic but seemingly ever-popular book, Bury My Heart and Wounded Knee, who encouraged his audience to read his work whilst ‘facing eastward’. Dee Brown Bury My Heart and Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1970; London: Vintage, 1991), p. xvi. For contemporaneous critiques of Brown’s work see Francis Paul Pruca Review of Bury My Heart and Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, The American Historical Review, Vol. 77 (1972): 589–590; Henry G. Waltman Review of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, Arizona and the West, Vol. 14 (1972): 78–79. 10. For an example, see Amanda Sakuma ‘White Students in MAGA Gear Taunt Native American Elders’ Vox, January 20th, 2019: https:// www.vox.com/2019/1/19/18189668/white-students-maga-gearharass-native-elders; David Williams and Emanuella Grinberg ‘Teen

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in Confrontation with Native American Elder Says He Was Trying to Defuse the Situation’ CNN, January 23rd, 2019: https://edition. cnn.com/2019/01/19/us/teens-mock-native-elder-trnd/index. html; Cleve R. Wootson, Jr., Antonio Olivio, and Joe Heim ‘“It Was Getting Ugly”: Native American Drummer Speaks on His Encounter with MAGA-Hat-Wearing Teens’ The Washington Post, January 22nd, 2019: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/01/20/itwas-getting-ugly-native-american-drummer-speaks-maga-hat-wearing-teens-who-surrounded-him; Robby Soave ‘The Media Wildly Mischaracterised that Video of Covington Catholic Students Confronting a Native American Veteran’ Reason, January 20th, 2019: https://reason.com/2019/01/20/covington-catholic-nathan-phillips-video/; Adam Server ‘The Trump-Era Over Correction’ The Atlantic, January 23rd, 2019: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ archive/2019/01/covington-overcorrection/580987/. 11. Comment by Tom P--------: ‘It may be instructive to delve a bit deeper into North American history. Doing so may give a different perspective than what the author projects on kids growing up in the Ohio Valley. Consider the Beaver Wars from around 1640 to 1670. Basically, this revolved around control of the beaver pelt trade, a valuable commodity at the time. The efforts to gain control of hunting grounds was brutal: some of the bloodiest series of conflicts in North America’s history. At the onset, the Iroquois confederation expanded their control from west of the Hudson River, south of the Saint Lawrence, as far west as Buffalo and down to the present border of northern Pennsylvania, all the way to the Ohio Valley, including Kentucky, pushing out tribes including Nathan Phillips’ Omahas. These were native Americans with anti-native American attitudes bent on colonial expansion of their empire. Did they employ tomahawks? I have no evidence. But they certainly did employ bows and arrows as well as rifles exchanged in trade for beaver pelts with the Dutch, French and English.’ In reply to Darren R. Reid ‘MAGA Teenagers: How the Midwest Was Built on Violence Against Native Americans’ The Conversation, January 23rd, 2019: https://theconversation.com/ maga-teenagers-how-the-midwest-was-built-on-violence-against-nativeamericans-110208. 12. Comment by M--- H (in reply to user c-------k): ‘Hahahahah well before whites ever came here the Natives had a robust industry of rape murder slavery theft and genocide there was never that fantasy of hollywood utopia never ever and they sure were no environmentalist either pouisoned water to get fish ran whole herds of Bison elk deer etc of cliffs complete wholesale killing of herd animals I am so tired of the BS lazy envious lack of intellect fools who harp on the past.’ Reply to a Comment by c-------k:

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https://news.yahoo.com/maga-teenagers-midwest-built-violence-124754216.html. 13. The comments quoted in this paragraph were all left on an article I wrote for The Conversation which was published on January 23rd, 2019. The purpose of the article was simple: to place the confrontation with Phillips into historic context. The article generated a large number of interactions, both on The Conversation itself and on other outlets. On Yahoo News alone it attracted 464 comments, many of which were abusive or threatening. The type of comment received on this article was dependent upon the venue of its publication. In contrast, comments received on Raw Story were generally far more supportive of Phillips, who was a target of particular ire on Yahoo News and from a small but very vocal number of commentators on The Conversation. See Reid ‘MAGA Teenagers’, reprinted on Raw Story, January 23rd, 2019: https://www.rawstory. com/2019/01/maga-teenagers-midwest-built-violence-native-americans. For ‘fought, raped, killed…’ see Comment by D-----n: ‘During the Revolutionary War, my 4th great grandfather was one of a group of Overmountain men that routed a party of Chickamauga Cherokee in what is now Northeastern Tennessee and rescued a kidnapped woman. Unfortunately, they were too late to save a 12 year old boy who had been burned at the stake by the Cherokees. That was a documented historical event that also showed bad people did bad things, but, like Reid’s article, has nothing to do with the presses attempt to sacrifice young Sandman to score political points.’ In reply to Reid ‘MAGA Teenagers’ Yahoo News. 14. Comment by B-----T: ‘More of the Obama Apology Tour….Yes, America is not innocent, BUT even the Native-American Indian Tribes, one against the other, committed terrible violence against each other…..So, when you tell a story about Abuse and War, Tell the Whole Story!!!’ and ‘Also the perpetuation of the false narrative of the oppressed “Native” Americans, leaving out that they also fought, raped, killed, and murdered colonists for hundreds of years… For some reason that part is always left out of the narrative.’ In reply to Reid ‘MAGA Teenagers’ Yahoo News. 15. Lepore The Name of War, pp. 48–70. 16. Portnoy Their Right to Speak, pp. 16–51; Mary Hershberger ‘Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle Against Indian Removal in the 1830s’ The Journal of American History, Vol. 86 (1999): 15–40; Natalie Joy ‘The Indian’s Cause: Abolitionists and Native American Rights’ Journal of the Civil War Era, Vol. 8 (2018): 215–242. 17. Alistair Thomson ‘Unreliable Memories? The Use and Abuse of Oral History’ in William Lamont (ed.) Historical Controversies and Historians (London: University College London Press, 1998), pp. 23–34.

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18. Elizabeth A.  Perkins Border Life: Experience and Memory in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 42–52. 19. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with Jacob Stevens’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC135. 20. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with Sarah Graham’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC45 and Faragher Daniel Boone, p. 147. 21. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with Jacob Stevens’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC134. For details of this battle see also ‘Letter from Daniel Boone to the Governor of Virginia, August 30th, 1782’ in William P.  Palmer Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts from January 1, 1782, to December 31, 1784, Vol. 3 (Richmond: James E. Goode: 1883), pp. 275–276 and Peter Houston ‘A Sketch of the Life of Daniel Boone’ in Ted Franklin Belue (ed.) A Sketch of the Life of Daniel Boone: A Memoir by Peter Houston (Mechanicsburgh: Stackpole Books, 1997), pp. 23–26. 22. William Sudduth and John D. Shane (ed.) ‘A Sketch of the Life of William Sudduth’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC82-83. 23. Faragher Daniel Boone, p.  144. For the perceived level of violence in 1786 alone see ‘Appeal from the Inhabitants of Jefferson County, July 1786’ Bullitt Family Papers A/B 937C, Box 6, Filson Historical Society. 24. R.  Douglas Hurt The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720–1830 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 98–99. 25. William Sudduth and John D. Shane (ed.) ‘A Sketch of the Life of William Sudduth’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC82-83. 26. The Shawnee, it should be noted, attempted to maintain peace throughout 1760s. However, the gradual expansion of the colonisers into their hunting grounds forced a change in policy which would see the Shawnee consistently aligned against the colonisers from the outbreak of Dunmore’s War until the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Edmunds The Shawnee Prophet, pp. 9–25 and Jerry E. Clark The Shawnee (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2007), pp. 72–90. 27. John D. Shane ‘Interview with Isaac Clinkenbeard’ Draper Manuscripts 11CC3. For a discussion surrounding this episode please see Faragher Daniel Boone, p. 254. 28. John D. Shane ‘Interview with Captain John Wilson’ Draper Manuscripts 17CC6-25. 29. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with Doctor Louis Marshall’ Draper Manuscripts 16CC239-247. 30. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with Joseph Ficklin’ Draper Manuscripts 16CC257-285.

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31. ‘Letter from Eliza Ramsey to Lyman C. Draper, February 22nd, 1843’ Draper Manuscripts 8ZZ4. 32. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with William Niblick’ Draper Manuscripts 11CC84-85. 33. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with George Fearis’ Draper Manuscripts 13CC238-244. 34. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with Mrs. Arnold’ Draper Manuscripts 11CC241-245. 35. John D. Shane ‘Interview with Ephriam Sandusky’ Draper Manuscripts 11CC141-145 36. Francois Furstenberg ‘The Significance of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier in Atlantic History’ The American Historical Review, Vol. 113 (2008): 647–677. 37. John Tanner and Edwin James (ed.) A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner (U.S.  Interpreter at the Saut De Ste. Marie) During Thirty Years Among the Indians in the Interior of North America (London: Baldwin and Craddock, 1830) and Jonathan Alder and Larry L. Nelson (ed.) A History of Jonathan Alder: His Captivity and Life with the Indians (Arkon: University of Arkon Press, 2002). 38. Mercedes Vilanova ‘Oral History and Democracy: Lessons from Illiterates’ in Donald A.  Ritchie (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Oral History (Oxford and New  York: Oxford University Press, 2012) pp. 65–75. 39. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with Benjamin Stites’ Draper Manuscripts 13CC56-57. 40. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with Mrs Gough’ Draper Manuscripts 11CC97-98. 41. John D. Shane ‘Interview with Captain John Wilson’ Draper Manuscripts 17CC6-25. 42. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with a Woman in Cincinnati’ Draper Manuscripts 13CC9-18. 43. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with John Hanks’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC138-144. 44. John D.  Shane ‘Interview with William Moseby’ Draper Manuscripts 11CC270-273. 45. John D. Shane ‘Interview with Isaac Clinkenbeard’ Draper Manuscripts 11CC1, John D. Shane ‘Interview with Josiah Collins’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC76, and John D.  Shane ‘Interview with a Woman in Cincinnati’ Draper Manuscripts 11CC279-283. 46. John D. Shane ‘Interview with Captain John Wilson’ Draper Manuscripts 17CC6-25, John D.  Shane ‘Interview with unknown person’ Draper

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11CC279-283, John D.  Shane ‘Interview with George Fearis’ Draper Manuscripts 13CC238-244. 47. ‘Letter from George R.  Clark to Colonel George Mason, November 19th, 1779’ Microfilm B/C 593m, Filson Historical Society, pp. 4–6. 48. John D. Shane ‘Interview with William Clinkenbead’ Draper Manuscripts 11CC54-56. 49. Patrick Griffin has made a similar argument but where he emphasised the agency of the government in fundamentally transforming attitudes (‘most treatments of the development of anti-­Indian attitudes…fail to take into account the role of the state, or if they do they miss its significance’). However, the formative role of violent interactions is being centred in this ­discussion. The power of the state in institutionalising anti-Indian attitudes is not being dismissed, but it is being argued that ground-up agency fundamentally informed the emergence of broad anti-­Indianism. See Patrick Griffin ‘Reconsidering the Ideological Origins of Indian Removal: The Case of the Big Bottom “Massacre”’ in Andrew R.  L. Cayton and Stuart D.  Hobbs The Centre of a Great Empire: The Ohio Country in the Early American Republic (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005), pp. 11–13. 50. It is not sufficient, for instance, to argue, as Jon Meacham did in his popular biography of Andrew Jackson, that ‘skin color has always shaped and suffused America’. Such assertions—aside from being loaded with ideas that have been projected backwards without any real justification— fail to explain the underlying support that underpinned Jackson’s Indian policy. Racism towards the Indians did not merely come into being when the first colonisers arrived in America, nor did it simply develop as a side effect of racism towards Africans and African Americans. See Jon Meacham American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (New York: Random House, 2009), p. 93. 51. Alder and Nelson (ed.) A History of Jonathan Alder, pp. 174–175. 52. David H.  Morris ‘A Sketch of General Harmar’s Campaign in 1790,’ Troy, Ohio, Times, January 29, 1840, p. 2. 53. For examples of modern discussions surrounding the actions of the Paxton Boys see Griffin American Leviathan, pp.  255–257, Silver Our Savage Neighbours, pp. 336–337, and Kevin Kenny Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s Holy Experiment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 5. In his work, Kenny acknowledges the exceptional nature of the Paxton Boys actions in 1763 before arguing that ‘by the time of the American Revolution, it had become common place’. This argument requires some minor qualification; though Kenny is correct in emphasising a significant increase in antiIndian violence by the time of the Revolution he does not emphasise the

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role of the Revolution (or more accurately, the frontier war which occurred in tandem with the Revolution) in up-scaling the level of violence again. The development of anti-Indian attitudes did not occur in a straight, unchallenged line between 1763 and 1775, but instead amplified slowly whilst major events, such as Dunmore’s War, helped to radically accelerate it. Once the Revolution had begun, however, there was plenty of scope for a true radicalisation of the colonisers that occurred as an answer to the violent clashes which came to dominate the frontier. The actions of the Paxton Boys in 1763 can be interpreted, as Jane Merritt argues, as evidence that the colonisers now believed the Indians to be the custodians of particular characteristics that justified their murders, however such attitudes were not yet ordinary. According to John Grenier, racism between colonisers and Indians had developed by the mid-­ eighteenth century; although much of Grenier’s arguments are sound, his assertion that the race question had essentially been laid to rest by midcentury is problematic. The Paxton Boys have been the subject of focused studies by historians not because their actions were commonplace but because they were exceptional; to argue that the actions taken by this particular group were indicative of an enduring or widespread racism would be a great theoretical leap of faith. Indeed, when colonisers began arriving in the trans-Appalachian region a decade later, they brought with them a number of alternative perspectives and attitudes that competed against the development of a simple anti-Indian racism. See Jane T.  Merritt At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a ­Mid-­Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), pp. 285–295; John Grenier The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 11; White The Middle Ground, pp. ix-xvi, Houston and Belue (ed.) ‘A Sketch of the Life and Character of Daniel Boone, pp. 10–14. Griffin American Leviathan, pp.  27–31 and Silver Our Savage Neighbours, pp. xxi–xxii. 54. For discussion on the Seven Years War see Matthew C. Ward Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754–1767 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), pp. 2–8, 253–254. 55. ‘Letter from Secretary Sargent to Captain Pierce, September 8th, 1794’ and ‘Secretary Sargent to Judge McMillan, September 8th, 1794’ in William Henry Smith (ed.) The St. Clair Papers: The Life and Public Services of Arthur St. Clair, Soldier of the Revolutionary War; President of the Congress; and Governor of the Northwest Territory with his

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Correspondence and Other Papers, Volume II (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke and Company, 1882), pp. 327–328. 56. Kentucky Gazette (Bradford), April 27th, 1793, p. 3. 57. ‘Testimony of N.R.  Hopkins, September 18th, 1794’ Arthur St. Clair Papers, Roll 4, Folder 7 MIC 96 Series 10, Ohio Historical Society; Hurt The Ohio Valley Frontier, p.  141; Kentucky Gazette (Bradford), April 27th, 1793, p. 3, Hurt The Ohio Valley Frontier, p. 141. 58. Gloria Jahoda The Trail of Tears (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), pp. 1–18. 59. Grenier The First Way of War. 60. Alder and Nelson (ed.) A History of Jonathan Alder, pp. 175–176. 61. David Barrow and John D. Shane (ed.) ‘Journal of David Barrow, June 24th, 1795’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC170. 62. Ibid. Peer review, it would appear, never changes. 63. Ian K.  Steele Settling all the Captives Free: Capture, Adjustment, and Recollection in Allegheny Country (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), pp. 77–184. 64. Ward Breaking the Backcountry, pp.  2–8, 253–254; and Griffin ‘Reconsidering the Ideological Origins of Indian Removal, p. 11–14. 65. Edmunds The Shawnee Prophet, pp.  1–6 and ‘Letter from Robert Brackenridge to James Brackenridge, November 17th, 1811’ Brackenridge Family Papers 68M106, University of Kentucky Archive. 66. Stephen Aron American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border State (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), pp. 101–102, 109–110. 67. Warren The Shawnee and their Neighbours, pp.  24–30. The Shawnee brothers were able to draw support from many tribes who had been previously buffered from American expansion by groups such as the Shawnee, Wyandot, Delaware, Mingo and Miami. Although many groups, particularly in areas such as modern day Illinois, had been able to avoid widespread fighting during the late eighteenth century they turned to Tenskwawata and Tecumseh for leadership as Euro-Americans rapidly began to spread across their territory. See Davis Frontier Illinois, pp. 67–152. 68. Edmunds The Shawnee Prophet, pp. 16–17. 69. Elias Darnell A Journal Containing an Accurate and Interesting Account of the Hardships, Sufferings, Battles, Defeat, and Captivity of those Heroic Kentucky Volunteers and Regulars Commanded by General Winchester in the Years 1812–1813. Also, Two Narratives, by Men that were Wounded in the Battles of the River, and Taken Captive by the Indians (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, and Co., 1854).

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70. Alder and Nelson (ed.) A History of Jonathan Alder. 71. Tanner and Edwin James (ed.) The Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, p. 252. 72. Ibid, pp. 248–250. 73. Darnell A Journal Containing an Accurate and Interesting Account of those Heroic Kentucky Volunteers and Regulars Commanded by General Winchester in the Years 1812–1813. 74. John D. Shane ‘Interview with Benjamin Snelling’ Draper Manuscripts 12111-113, John D.  Shane ‘Interview with Sarah Graham’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC45-53, and John D.  Shane ‘Notes Appended to J. Sappington’s Interview’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC70-71. 75. Aron How the West was Lost, pp. 73–90. 76. Davies Frontier Illinois, pp.  122–123, Aron American Confluence, pp. 112–113. 77. Black Hawk, Antoine LeClair (Translator) and J.B.  Patterson (ed.) Autobiography of Ma-Ka-­Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak or Black Hawk, Embracing the Traditions of his Nations, Various Wars in which he has been Engaged, and his Account of the Cause and General History of the Black Hawk War of 1832, his Surrender and Travel through the United States. Dictated by Himself. Also Life, Death and Burial of the Old Chief, together with A History of the Black Hawk War and Also Life, Death and Burial of the Old Chief, Together with a History of the Black Hawk War, by J. B. Patterson, Oquawka, 1882 (Rock Island: J.B. Patterson, 1882), pp. 73–74. 78. Davies Frontier Illinois, pp. 193–198. 79. Elijah Kilbourn ‘Kilbourn’s Narrative: A Reminiscence of Black Hawk’ in Black Hawk, Antoine LeClair (Translator) and J.B.  Patterson (ed.) Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak or Black Hawk, Embracing the Traditions of his Nations, Various Wars in which he has been Engaged, and his Account of the Cause and General History of the Black Hawk War of 1832, his Surrender and Travel through the United States. Dictated by Himself. Also Life, Death and Burial of the Old Chief, together with A History of the Black Hawk War, by J. B. Patterson, Oquawka, 1882 (Rock Island: J.B. Patterson, 1882), pp. 162–164. 80. Patrick J.  Jung The Black Hawk War of 1832 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), pp. 87–89. 81. Note that Black Hawk appears to have often referred to himself in the third person. Kilbourn ‘Kilbourn’s Narrative,’ p. 166. 82. Davies Frontier Illinois, p. 197. 83. Black Hawk et al Autobiography of Black Hawk, p. 87. 84. For a deeper discussion on this, see Lepore The Name of War, pp. 191–226. 85. Ibid, p. 127.

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86. Kerry A.  Trask Black Hawk: The Battle for the American Heart (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007), pp. 20. Such a process would not be limited to Black Hawk alone but would be repeated in the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly around the case of the Sioux chief, Sitting Bull. See Robert M. Utley The Lance and Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), pp. 237–247. 87. Black Hawk et al Autobiography of Black Hawk, pp. 73–74. 88. Trask Black Hawk, pp. 301–302. 89. Griffin American Leviathan, p. 255. 90. Jahoda The Trail of Tears, p. 121. 91. Black Hawk et al Autobiography of Black Hawk, p. 74. 92. For Shane on his own methodology see John D. Shane ‘Interview with Josiah Collins’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC78; ‘My aim has been to get of them, what they themselves know. And what they may not know I will ever see another person’; John D.  Shane, Notes and memos, Draper Manuscripts 12CC78, see also Perkins Borderlife, p. 28. 93. For an example of a woman’s recollection—Sarah Graham on the marriage of Hugh McGary ‘she wo’d when she got in one of her tantrums, tongue him. He wo’d watch, sometimes ½ day trying to slip round her, & if he got a fair catch on her, he wo’d hold her, till he got weary—and say to her O Caty! Ain’t you most done. I’m so tired: but still continue his hold, till she s[h]o’[ul]d submit. “I’ve said all I want to say,” or I feel right easy, & then he wo’d let her go.’ See John D. Shane ‘Interview with Sarah Graham’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC45-53. 94. John Filson The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucky to Which is Added the Adventures of Daniel Boon (Wilmington: James Adams, 1784); and Hugh Henry Brackenrige (ed.) Indian Atrocities: Narratives of the Perils and Sufferings of Dr. Knight and John Slover, Among the Indians, During the Revolutionary War, with Short Memoirs of Colonel Crawford and John Slover (Cincinnati: U. P. James, 1867). 95. See Boone’s story of captivity, and so forth. 96. Kinnan The True Narrative of the Sufferings of Mary Kinnan, Humphrey Marshall The History of Kentucky Exhibiting an Account of the Modern Discovery; Settlement; Progressive Improvement; Civil and Military Transactions; and the Present State of the Country in Two Volumes, Volumes I & II (Frankfort: George S. Robinson, 1824) and John Mason Peck A New Guide for Emigrants to the West Containing Sketches of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, with the Territories of Wisconsin and Arkansas, and the Adjacent Parts (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1836), pp.49, 127–128.

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97. For the contested authorship of Filson’s Boone narrative, see Darren R. Reid Daniel Boone and Others on the Kentucky Frontier: Autobiographies and Narratives, 1769–1795 (Jefferson and London: McFarland and Co., 2009), pp. 197–199. According to contemporary Josiah Collins: ‘Boone’s Filson [statement] was written by Humphrey Marshall. Boone lived at that time at the cross-plains, 10 miles from Lexington. Geof. Caliamers and I had a conversation about some statements, & he said H. Marshall was to blame about that, & that he ought not to have written it. It was always understood that H. M. wrote Boone’s statement as published by Filson.’ John D. Shane ‘Interview with Josiah Collins’ Draper Manuscripts 12CC73. See also Marshall The History of Kentucky. 98. Samuel A. Metcalf A Collection of Some of the Most Interesting Narratives of Indian Warfare in the West Containing an Account of the Adventures of Daniel Boone, One of the First Settlers of Kentucky, Comprehending the Most Important Occurrences Relative to its Early History—Also, an Account of the Manners, and Customs of the Indians, their Traditions and Religious Sentiments, their Police or Civil Government, their Discipline and Method of War: to which is Added an Account of the Expeditions of Generals Harmar, Scott, Wilkinson, St. Clair & Wayne: The Whole Compiled from the Best Authorities (Lexington: William G. Hunt, 1821), front matter. 99. Faragher Daniel Boone, p. 331. 100. For the use of this mythologized image in modern depictions of the frontiersman see the character of Jebediah Springfield who appeared as a fictional historical character in The Simpsons. In addition to wearing a coonskin cap, another famous misnomer connected to Boone, Springfield is depicted as wrestling a bear in an undeniable echo of Flint’s fictionalised frontiersman. See Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Sam Simon, and Matt Groening The Simpsons ‘The Telltale Head,’ Episode Eight, Season One (Fox, 1990). For a discussion on the role of Flint’s volume in helping to shape the mythical aspects of Daniel Boone’s character see Faragher Daniel Boone, pp. 322–323. 101. Faragher Daniel Boone, p. 323. 102. See James A.  McClung Sketches of Western Adventure Containing an Account of the Most Interesting Incidents Connected with the Settlement of the West, from 1755 to 1794: with an Appendix (Maysville: L.  Collins, 1832), p. viii. Thomas Baldwin and Anonymous (ed.) Narrative of the Massacre, by the Savages, of the Wife and Children of Thomas Baldwin, Who, Since the Melancholy Period of the Destruction of his Unfortunate Family, has Dwelt entirely Alone, in a Hut of his own Construction, Secluded from Human Society, in the Extreme Western Part of the State of Kentucky (New York: Martin and Wood, 1835).

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103. This idea was reinforced by published accounts concerning intercultural hostilities west of the Mississippi which continued to suggest that the assumptions which underpinned the works of Flint, Metcalf, et al were indeed enduring truths. Even older accounts which remained in print, particularly Mary Rowlandson’s seventeenth century captivity narrative, served to underline the ideas that all Indians were the natural enemies of white colonisers. See Mary Godfrey ‘An Authentic Narrative of the Seminole War; and of the Miraculous Escape of Mrs. Mary Godfrey, and Her Four Female Children’ in Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stolda (ed.) Women’s Captivity Narratives (New York: Penguin Books, 1998): 217–234, Sarah W.  Wakefield and June Namias (ed.) Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees: A Narrative of Indian Captivity (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), and Mary Rowlandson A Narrative of the Captivity, Suffering, and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Who was Taken Prisoner by the Indian; with Several Others; and Treated in the Most Barbarous and Cruel Manner by the Wild Savages: With Many Other Remarkable Events During her Travels. Written by her Own Hand, for her Private Use, and Since Made Public at the Earnest Desire of Some Friends, and for the Benefit of the Afflicted (Boston: Massachusetts School Society, 1856). For a discussion on the lasting role played by Rowland’s narrative in the nineteenth century see Lepore The Name of War, pp. 26–27, 158. 104. John S. Williams (ed.) American Pioneer, A Monthly Periodical Devoted to Objects of the Logan Historical Society; or, to Collecting and Publishing Sketches Relative to Early Settlement and Successive Improvement of the Country, Volume I (Cincinnati: H.P. Brooks, 1844). 105. John W. Gray The Life of Joseph Bishop, the Celebrated Old Pioneer in the First Settlements of Middle Tennessee, Embracing his Wonderful Adventures and Narrow Escapes with the Indians, his Animating and Remarkable Hunting Excursions Interspersed with Racy Anecdotes of those Early Times (1858; reprint, Nashville: John W. Gray, 1868) and John Frost Pioneer Life in the West; Comprising the Adventures of Boone, Kenton, Brady, Clarke, The Whetzels, and Others, in their Fierce Encounters with the Indians (Philadelphia: John E. Potter & Company, 1858). 106. ‘Letter from John H. Crawford to Lyman C. Draper, September 10th, 1884’ Draper Manuscripts 20C31, ‘Letter from Lemond to Lyman C. Draper, March 22nd, 1853’ Draper Manuscripts 22C41 and ‘Letter from John B. Finley to Lyman C. Draper, December 10th, 1862’ Draper Manuscripts 5E21.

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107. William Elsey Connelly The Eastern Kentucky Papers: The Founding of Harman’s Station with an Account of the Indian Captivity of Mrs. Jennie Wiley and the Exploration and Settlement of the Big Sandy Valley in the Virginias and Kentucky (New York: The Torch Press, 1910). 108. Edna Kenton’s biography of Simon Kenton is a good example of family traditions vanishing with passing generations. Although Edna was a direct descendent of Simon Kenton, her biography of the man relied almost entirely upon sources contained within the Draper manuscripts. Although Edna was clearly fascinated by her ancestor, no meaningful oral traditions had been passed through her family which could then be employed in her biography. Edna Kenton Simon Kenton, His Life and Period, 1755–1836 (New York: Country Life Press, 1930), pp. xv–xxiii, 337. 109. Ibid, p. 23. 110. Harriet Simpson Arnow Seedtime on the Cumberland (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), p. 4. 111. Mimi Conway ‘Interview with Harriet Simpson Arnow, April 6th, 1976’ Interview G-0006, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007). Published by University Library, University of North Carolina and Chapel Hill, 2006. Retrieved from http://docsouth.unc.edu/ sohp/G-0006/G-0006.html on June 9th, 2010: 13:45. 112. Arnow Seedtime on the Cumberland, pp. 3–10. 113. Alfred H. Sauders (ed.) The Moving Picture World, April 6th, 1907, p. 66. 114. Faragher Daniel Boone, pp. 320–263. 115. Attack on Fort Boonesborough, which was less than a minute in duration, was released in 1906. Life of Daniel Boone followed in 1907. In 1912 Life and Battles of Daniel Boone was released. In the Days of Daniel Boone followed in 1923. See Larry Langman A Guide to Silent Westerns (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1992), p. 14, 220, 333. For detailed overview of the plot of Life of Daniel Boone (1907) see Alfred H.  Sauders (ed.) The Moving Picture World, April 6th, 1907, pp. 74–75. 116. Langman A Guide to Silent Westerns, p. 105; Angela Aleiss Making the White Man’s Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies (Westport and London: Praeger, 2005), p. 169. 117. Last of the Mohicans (Gilberton Company: New York, 1942). 118. Young Daniel Boone. Directed by Reginald Le Bord. Los Angeles: Monogram Pictures, 1950. Daniel Boone, Trail Blazer. Directed by Albert C.  Gannaway and Ismael Rodriguez. Los Angeles: Republic Pictures, 1956; Daniel Boone: Volume One—The Warriors Path, VHS. Directed by Lewis R. Foster. Burbank: Walt Disney Company, 1962. 119. Fighting Daniel Boone, Issues 1–6 (New York: I.W. Comics, 1955–1956); Exploits of Daniel Boone, Issues 1–6 (New York: Quality Comics,

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1955–1956); Legends of Daniel Boone, Issues 1–8 (Burbank: DC Comics, 1955–1956). 120. Daniel Boone. Executive Produced by Aaron Rosenberg. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox Television, 1964–1970. 121. Young Dan’l Boone. Directed by Earl Bellamy. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox Television, 1977. 122. ‘The Telltale Head’. Directed by Rich Moore. The Simpsons. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox Television, 1990; The Revenant. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox, 2015. 123. The destruction of statues with roots in racist histories or slavery was not confined to the United States alone. Mark Labdler ‘In an English City, an Early Benefactor is now a “Toxic Brand”’ The New  York Times, June 14th, 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/ world/europe/Bristol-Colston-statue-slavery.html; ‘Who was Edward Colston, Why was his Statue Toppled?’ Al Jazeera, June 8th, 2020: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/edward-colston-statuetoppled-200608074704047.html; Riley Beggin ‘Protesters Tore Down a Statue in the Former Capital of the Confederacy. More May Follow’ Vox, June 7th, 2020: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/7/21283003/protesters-tore-down-confederate-statuevirginia-monuments-alabama-new-orleans. 124. Zachary B. Wolf ‘Trump’s Going to Protect Confederate Statues’ CNN, June 26th, 2020: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/politics/ what-matters-june-25/index.html. 125. ‘Executive Order on Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes’ White House Executive Orders, July 3rd, 2020: https://www. whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-building-rebuildingmonuments-american-heroes/. 126. Captain Ketchem as quoted in George W. Maypenny Our Indian Wards (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1880), p. 19. 127. Alvin M.  Josephy, Jr. The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest: Complete and Unabridged (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995), pp. 321–325. 128. Respondent #1, of the Lenape. Email Interview, May 7th, 2010 by Darren R. Reid. 129. Respondent #1, of the Lenape. Email Interview, May 6th, 2010 by Darren R. Reid. 130. For more on this, see chapter three in this volume. 131. Respondent #2, of the Lenape. Email Interview, May 6th, 2010 by Darren R. Reid. 132. Ibid. 133. Griffin American Leviathan, pp. 3–8.

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134. Respondent #2, of the Lenape. Email Interview, May 9th, 2010 by Darren R. Reid. 135. Sharon Galloupe ‘Jane Quick, Pennsylvania Senior Citizen Swindled out of Family Farm by Wannabe Group Posing as American Indian Tribe’ Delaware Indian News: Lenapei Pampil, The Official Publication of the Delaware Tribe of Indians, August, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2008), p. 27. 136. Respondent #2, of the Lenape. Email Interview, May 9th, 2010 by Darren R. Reid.

CHAPTER 4

Race and Identity

Abstract  Elizabeth Warren has been a regular target for Trump, particularly her problematic Native American identity. Trump, an adherent to the idea of the ‘vanishing Indian’, has relentlessly mocked her claims to a Native American identity, delegitimising it by emphasising the concept of Indigenous racial purity. To complicate matters, Warren’s claims to a Native American identity have been rejected by many Native Americans. Based on vague family histories rather than cultural experience or a shared identity, Warren’s struggle with her own ethno-identity cast a light on an important phenomenon—Native American identity theft. This chapter examines Native American identity theft and the process of cultural appropriation that underpins it. It explores the ways in which the blood quantum has been used to create a national narrative which implies the eventual disappearance of Native Americans; and how that idea has helped to shape Trump’s approach to Warren. It also examines the ways in which imagery of Native Americans has evolved over the course of the twentieth century, helping to create an aspirational image that has proven itself attractive to many non-Indians who have gone on to claim, often without any basis in reality, an Indigenous identity of their own. Keywords  Identity theft • Elizabeth Warren • Blood quantum • Freedmen • Dawes Rolls • Cinema • Fake Indians

© The Author(s) 2020 D. R. Reid, Native American Racism in the Age of Donald Trump, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58718-5_4

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For a subject worked and reworked so often in novels, motion pictures, and television, American Indians remain probably the least understood and most misunderstood Americans of us all. —John F. Kennedy (Kennedy quoted in Hearings Before the United States Senate Committee on the Interior and Insular Affairs, p. 321)

By March of 2016, Trump had earned many enemies. Racially charged comments by the presidential hopeful had fuelled talk of an ‘open convention’. A Republican insurgency against Trump seemed to be gathering pace.1 On the other side of the political spectrum, Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, had just launched a particularly vociferous series of attacks upon the presidential-hopefully. Questioned about Warren’s criticisms, Trump dismissively waved them off. ‘Who’s that’, he asked, ‘the Indian? You mean the Indian?’2 Trump was, and is, highly critical of Warren’s problematic Indian identity. He, like many other Americans, believes that one’s indigeneity can be measured by racial-biological ratios and, as a result, Native Americans of mixed racial descent can be targeted for de-legitimisation. Invested as he is in the myth of the vanishing Indian, Trump is inherently suspicious of those with contested or marginal Indian identities and, as his experience in the gambling industry demonstrates, he is committed to the idea that they are somehow trying to game the system.3 These assumptions were widely reflected in the 1990s as he struggled to delegitimise the notion of tribal sovereignty. The attacks predicted his later anti-Warren campaign. Native American identity politics were already a battleground in the United States but Trump’s very public use of them to attack a political opponent lent them further publicity and legitimacy. To complicate this situation, Warren’s own position was appropriative in its own right. Like many Americans, Warren was raised in a family in which stories were told about Indigenous ancestors.4 Responding to these family tales, she began to develop a quasi-Indian identity and, by the 1980s, had begun to identify as Native American in official documentation.5 Warren, however, did not possess links to any specific tribe or people though, over time, she began to claim unverified links to the Cherokee.6 As a result, many Native Americans have rejected her claims to any type of Indigenous identity as offensive or damaging, the continuation of a much longer pattern of Indigenous identity colonisation.7 To be a Native American is not necessarily about blood or family histories. In Warren’s

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case, whilst DNA tests suggest that she does have Indigenous ancestors, her links to the Cherokee come from ancestors who squatted on their lands, rather than from actual members of that tribe. Her family history is indeed tied up with the Cherokee people, but thoroughly on the side of the colonisers.8 Donald Trump’s clashes with Elizabeth Warren illustrate two aspects of the colonialist mentality in conflict with each other (Fig. 4.1). Trump is critical of Warren for assuming a quasi-Indian identity but fails to understand (or care) how his racially loaded attacks against her contribute to a larger framework of colonialist control. Trump’s anti-Warren rhetoric is certainly consistent with his fear that non-Indians have been unfairly able to utilise programmes reserved for Indigenous peoples. It is also deeply embedded in troubling demands for Native American racial purity. For her part, Warren likewise draws upon problematic assumptions about the nature of Indigeneity that are often based upon layers of colonialist assumptions. To her credit, Warren has apologised for her past claims to a Native American identity but her long-term commitment to those claims, along with Trump’s ongoing attitude towards mixed race Native Americans, demonstrates that colonialist thinking is  utterly non-partisan.9 Even the well-meaning, thanks to the deeply embedded nature of colonialist assumptions, are in danger of perpetuating damaging stereotypes. In order to understand why the politics of Indigenous identities are so

Fig. 4.1  Tweeted out by Trump on January 3rd, 2019, this banner mocked Warren’s claims to a Native American identity by drawing upon popular ideas about the vanishing Indian

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contested, it is necessary to understand the ways in which they have been colonised, controlled, appropriated, measured, and coveted by non-Indians.

Red Blood Non-Indians have a long history of redefining indigeneity. Native American iconography and narratives have been co-opted for centuries, whilst, on a smaller scale but no less significant scale, Indigenous identities have likewise been co-opted and assumed by outsiders.10 In the modern United States, controversies over who can—or cannot—identify as Native American are an important, albeit rarely discussed, part of the national experience.11 Indigeneity implies many different things to different people. As a broad abstract, however, it often serves as a powerful counterpoint to many of the dominant themes that have emerged in an era defined by comprehensive urbanisation, environmental degradation, technological advancement, and consumerism.12 Having been loaded with ideas, such as anti-urban spirituality, Indigenous identities, stories, and ideas have become valuable commodities.13 Native American Identity-colonisation has deep roots in US history, with the use of Indian costumes by the perpetrators of the Boston Tea Party being a noteworthy early example  (Fig. 4.2).14 Prior to this, the creation of damaging literary tropes in the seventeenth century helped to establish popular misconceptions about the Indians.15 Native Americans were vessels into which white colonisers could pour pejorative ideas: savagery, non-religiosity, cannibalism.16 Over time, however, the coloniser-­ Indigenous paradigm shifted and, as a result, the image of Native Americans was modified or recast entirely. In the twentieth century, following  the military defeat of the western tribes, narratives of violence and savagery began to give way, particularly in the second half of the century, to more nuanced and sympathetic portrayals that allowed the colonising society to explore modernity through a quasi-Indigenous lens. Native Americans became twentieth century icons of environmentalism, neo-spiritualism, folk knowledge, and nativism even as older, more violent images, remained popular touchstones.17 From the implied violence of the tomahawk chop to the image of the woodland prince (or princess), living in a state of balance with the natural world, imagined Indians have the ability to enthral colonialist imaginations.

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Fig. 4.2  Detail from Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbour (1846) shows white Americans, dressed as Indians, throwing crates of tea overboard

The nineteenth century saw the proliferation of villainous Native American imagery, but from the mid-twentieth century, popular culture increasingly began to accept and promote more sympathetic—even aspirational—Indigenous stereotypes. By the 1990s, Warren’s then-employer, the Law Faculty at Harvard University, was boasting that it had in Warren a Native American staff member.18 Whilst Warren seems to have Native American ancestry, her relationship to Indian Country is not rooted in participation in a wider cultural or identity-based tradition.19 Warren is far from unique in this regard. The number of Native Americans who appear in the US census has soared over the past two decades with many non-­ Indigenous peoples beginning to self-identify as Native American based only upon vague family stories. So many of these new ‘Indians’ appear in and around the old Confederacy that William W. Quinn dubbed the phenomenon ‘Southeast Syndrome’.20 Fuelled by thousands of family anecdotes, stories of Indigenous ancestry may indeed (as they do with Warren) point to real Indigenous connections; in other cases, however, they may indicate the presence of another type of repressed racial legacy. As a senior colleague once put it to me (off the record) during an academic

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conference: ‘When a Southerner says they have an Indian ancestor, what they really mean is that they have a slave ancestor.’21 Warren is not southern, however, and a DNA test, which she hoped would allow her to take control of this narrative, confirmed an Indigenous ancestor six-to-ten generations removed from the senator.22 This confirmation only emboldened Trump who tweeted an image of a campaign banner for the senator, replacing the year of the election (2020) with a legend that read: 1/2020—an exaggerated reference to the degree that separates Warren from her Indigenous heritage.23 For Trump, Warren’s attempt to definitively prove her ancestry only confirmed his own deep-­ seated perspective on the issue of Native American  identities; that non-­ pure Indians, or those with marginal claims to a mixed racial or Indigenous background, were unfairly taking advantage of affirmative action policies.24 This is the same perspective that helped to drive Trump in his dealings with the Mashantucket Pequot, Mashpee Wampanoag, the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, and the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians in the 1990s and 2000s.25 Diluted ancestry is a remarkable way to construct race in a country that has historically equated minority status with only the smallest proportion of minority blood. To be Black in America does not require, for example, 4/6  s of a person’s genome to hail directly from an African lineage.26 Barrack Obama, widely proclaimed as the country’s first Black president, was, genetically speaking at least, a mixed-race person, his mother being a white woman and his father a Black man.27 Despite this complex familial history, one that, it could be argued, is more symbolically relevant reflection of the diversity that helps to define the United States, Obama was routinely referred to as Black.28 This simplification of Obama’s heritage is informative, demonstrating that even in the ‘post-racial’ era that his presidency appeared to herald, that old notions about race did indeed continue to hold sway over the nation’s imagination.29 Race is certainly not a Black and white issue, but in the United States it is often made to fit just such a paradigm. To be Black in America might, depending upon the state in which one lived, require the identification of only a single non-white ancestor—‘one drop’ of Black blood has historically been enough to eradicate or, at the very least, seriously mitigate, whatever whiteness is present in the most aggressively racist areas in the country.30 Homer Plessy, the man whose failed attempt to challenge segregation in the Supreme Court laid the foundation for the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine, had only a single Black

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great-grandparent and was able to ‘pass’ for white. Indeed, in some states he was legally white.31 The system of Jim Crow, however, often leveraged the idea that even marginal Black ancestry meant that its bearer, whatever their physical appearance, was legally Black.32 This system emphasised a binary understanding of race that grossly oversimplified an already problematic cultural construct. This binary approach would have a direct impact on Indigenous identities in regions where Jim Crow held sway, with some states reclassifying all Native Americans who remained within their borders as ‘Black’.33 Whilst not a consistent legal principle across the country, the ‘one drop’ principle was important. Non-white ancestry was perceived to immutably corrupt whiteness. In contrast, Native American blood was assumed to dissipate over time. From the late nineteenth century, Native American bloodlines have been routinely quantified and measured.34 As a result, one’s identity and minority status could be linked arbitrarily to bloodline percentages that assume that identity is transmitted biologically rather than culturally.35 Whereas Black blood was seen to dilute whiteness infinitely, Native American blood in this framework was instead seen to dilute itself over time, losing potency as it was mixed with non-Indigenous lineages over the course of succeeding generations. This ‘blood quantum’ reflected an important colonialist belief about the Indians: that they were doomed to diminish and ultimately to disappear. The ‘blood quantum’ is, of course, a construct, a fiction designed to serve a political purpose.36 Just as the ‘one drop’ rule reflects colonialist ideas about the immutability of race and the supposed nature of blackness, the Indian ‘blood quantum’ tells the story of a disappearing people, a blood line which will dilute itself to the point of invisibility, irrelevance, and obsolescence.37 If the ‘one drop’ rule warned society against miscegenation, the ‘blood quantum’ tells that same society that its Indigenous peoples are in a state of terminal decline: they are a part of the country’s past, but not a part of its future. This is the idea that Trump was leveraging so heavily when he mocked Warren’s bid for the presidency with his 1/2020 banner. The roots of the ‘blood quantum’ are to be found in the General Allotment Act (1887) which broke up Indian Reservations into individual land parcels—an attempt to transform Native Americans into private, as opposed to collective, land owners. The Dawes Commission required members of the individual Native Americans to register with the government in order to receive their share of the now privatised reserve.38 Accurately counting and registering these groups, however, proved to be

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a significant challenge, not least because commissioners were deeply concerned about denying allotments to those Native Americans who also possessed African American heritage. The emergence of a ‘blood quantum’ allowed commissioners to execute anti-Black policies, identifying those persons who were of mixed racial ancestry and using their family tree to deny their Indigenous identity (Fig. 4.3).39 Just as Black ancestry damned Homer Plessy in the Jim Crow South, so too was it used against Indigenous communities in the west, creating new divisions, between those with or without African American ancestry, whilst forcing a racialised framework upon Native American cultures.40 The impact of the Dawes Rolls and the ‘blood quantum’ was  profound.41 Over time, many mixed race persons abandoned their Indigenous identities.42 In a few cases, Native Americans not listed on the Dawes Rolls (or other government records) retained a sense of individual and collective identity, fostering communities which survived successive post-Dawes generations. Many (but not all) such groups have since petitioned the US government for federal recognition. The Mashantucket Pequot, the group that Trump attempted to discredit in 1993, is a good example of this.43 Such groups represent a continuity of community but not necessarily a continuity of physical stereotypes. Over the course of many generations,

Fig. 4.3  This enrolment for the Cherokee Census card details the application of Mary E.  Wicket, who possessed ‘1/2 [Indian] blood’. National Archives and Records Administration, NAID 251749

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members of these communities have parented children with non-­ Indigenous peoples, offspring who inherited the identity, traditions, and sense of community of their Native American parent. The result has been a diversification of physical appearances that defy colonialist clichés.44 Even in the 1990s, Trump was guided by problematic assumptions about racial purity among the Indians. When he spoke on-the-air about this issue in 1993, his interviewer, Don Imus, stated that ‘[a] couple of these Indians up in Connecticut [Mashantucket Pequot] look, like Michael Jordan, frankly’. To this Trump replied ‘I think if you’ve ever been up there, you would truly say that these are not Indians. One of there was telling me his name is Chief Running Water Sitting Bull, and I said, “That’s a long name.” He said, “Well, just call me Ricky Sanders.” So this is one of the Indians.’ Trump went on: ‘I’ll tell you, they got duped in Washington and it’s just one of those things that we have to straighten out.’45 As far as Trump was concerned, the Mashantucket Pequot should never have been federally recognised. This was an Indian group that defied his understanding of how indigeneity could be constructed and, as a result, could not be legitimate.46 As Imus put it during that same interview, ‘I don’t think it makes sense to anybody to have Indians operate casinos in New Jersey.’47 This problematic perspective was, and is, shared widely across much of the United States.48 When her political opponents attacked Warren because of her quasi-Indigenous identity in 2012, they demanded proof of her identity and ethnicity. At that point, Warren’s critics were responding to what appeared to be an outwardly white woman claiming an Indigenous identity to advance her career.49 Warren’s claim to such an identity was indeed problematic, but the response of her critics was equally telling about the type of baseline assumptions that inform colonialist power structures—mock war whoops, tomahawk chops, and other racially charged gestures and statements became a part of the political discourse.50 According to the logic of Warren’s critics, to look white is an immediate indicator that one’s claims to an Indian identity is suspect. Despite centuries of contact with non-Indigenous peoples, Native Americans should look, if not necessarily act, in a stereotypical manner if they are to be accepted without question. The reality, however, is very different.51 Many Native Americans have non-Indigenous ancestors. Identity is a socio-­ cultural construct, not biologically determined. The ‘blood quantum’ distorts the very idea of indigeneity, creating colonialist gradations within Native American communities.

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Like the issue of tribal sovereignty, Trump was willing to use problematic Native American identities when it served his purpose. Despite challenging the right of any Indian people to operate as sovereign entities, and dismissing the ethnic legitimacy of most eastern tribes, Trump sponsored the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots in their attempt to gain federal recognition.52 Trump had wished to take on the management responsibilities of whatever casino the Paucatuck Pequots would subsequently open, despite having already dismissed their claims to both tribal sovereignty and an Indigenous ethnic identity. When, in 2002, the Bureau of Indian Affairs agreed to recognise the Eastern Pequot and the Paucatuck Eastern Pequot as one united entity (the two groups had made separate applications owing to a longstanding dispute), Trump effectively lost his influence among them.53 As a result, he sued the now-reunited band, going so far as to offer to  settle the suit for $500  million.54 Underlining how contentious the issue of tribal identity had become, the Eastern Pequot lost their status as a federally recognised tribe in 2005.55 For Trump and many other Americans, Indians are subject to a specific and peculiar set of racial-ethnic rules. Unlike other ethnic forms, indigeneity is characterised as something that diminishes over time, becoming functionally non-existent as more non-Indigenous ancestors join a family line. The transmission of identity and community via culture means little to a framework that demands biological uniformity.56 When faced with an opponent like Elizabeth Warren, or his Native American gambling competitors, Trump’s perspective is informed not by a reasonable understanding of the relevant socio-cultural experience or the ways in which so many Native Americans defy binary racial categorisations. Rather, his perspective is informed by a two-dimensional understanding of indigeneity that seems to demand racial purity whilst it denigrates mixed-ancestry. As ill informed and intellectually problematic as this perspective is, however, Trump’s belief that non-Indigenous peoples take advantage of illegitimate Native American identities is not unfounded.57 Throughout the twentieth century, a small but significant number of non-Indigenous peoples have presented themselves as Native Americans, contributing to a cultural landscape that prioritises colonialist ideas about indigeneity. Some identity colonisers are motivated by the potential for economic gain; others, however, have been motivated by larger socio-­ cultural factors, not the least of which has been the increased value which modern American society has come to place upon perceived Native

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American cultural and spiritual practices. Despite being a marginalised minority, the public perception of its Indigenous peoples has undergone a radical transformation since the nineteenth century and the type Indians who have come to reside in colonialist imaginations are increasingly alluring to outsiders.58

Colonialist Portraits of Aspirational Indians The 1800s saw Indians and European Americans interact in a variety of different theatres. As both groups struggled against the other, defending or usurping Indigenous lands, the national anti-Indian canon deepened. Newspapers spread pejorative accounts, justifying the colonising process through a narrative that emphasised anti-Indian stereotypes: brutishness, savagery, and violence. Added to this was a sense that the far west’s Indigenous population would need to be destroyed before true security could be established in that part of the country. Following his first call for Native American extermination in December of 1890, L. Frank Baum found cause to reflect upon the Indian question once again after he received word of the Wounded Knee Massacre. Despite the indiscriminate killing of Lakota men, women, and children which defined Wounded Knee, Baum was unapologetic in his second antiIndian editorial: ‘Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of this earth.’59 Violent, anti-Indian prejudice was a regular theme in western pulp fiction. Dime novels from the second half of the nineteenth century treated the Indians poorly, frequently depicting them as brutish, violent, and idiotic; the antithesis of how white Americans perceived themselves.60 These stories celebrated white Americans and the conquest of the far west, telling ridiculous stories of adventure, independence, and endeavour through the eyes of over-sized heroes. They propagandised the colonisation of the continent, celebrating the perceived characteristics of white colonisers by denigrating the character of Indian peoples. Daniel Boone was joined by a new raft of colonialist literary heroes. William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody developed a far-reaching reputation based upon the spurious exploits that were attributed to him in dozens of dime novels.61 Live action presentations served to further mythologise the inherent anti-Indian thesis of such

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Fig. 4.4  The Native American cast (1890) of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show

works. Wild West shows, including Cody’s own, presented the colonisation of the west in live action, cirques spectaculaires that included demonstrations of cattle rustling, marksmanship, encounters with Indigenous peoples, and glorified violence between colonisers and their victims (Fig. 4.4). Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World (1883–1915) was a sensation and in 1885 alone it played to more than a million people. Nor was its appeal limited to North America; over the course of its thirty-plus year run it would ultimately tour Europe on no less than eight occasions.62 The advent of motion pictures created new opportunities for colonialist narratives about Native Americans to find expression in a dazzling new format. From an early stage, Indian characters became a cinematic fixture, appearing in forms that mixed assumption, bias, stereotypes, and fetishisation with historic fact. In the early years of cinema, before the industry’s centre of gravity shifted to the far western city of Los Angeles, Native Americans appeared on film in a variety of guises, sometimes villainous, sometimes heroic. Films that presented negative stereotypes, such as The Battle of Elderbush Gulch (1913) or The Squaw Man (1914), were common, but alternatives did exist.63 James Young Deer, a Nanticoke

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Fig. 4.5  White Fawn’s Devotion: A Play Acted by a Tribe of Red Indians in America (1910) was directed by James Young Deer and is likely the oldest surviving silent film directed by a Native American filmmaker

filmmaker, made films about his fellow Native Americans whilst working for the European company Pathé in their American base of New Jersey (Fig. 4.5).64 Nanook of the North (1922), Robert Flaherty’s prototypical ethnographic docudrama that purported to document the lives of Inuk peoples, received worldwide acclaim.65 Over time, however, negative depictions of the Indians came to dominate the cinematic landscape and, by the time sound had arrived, they had become increasingly ubiquitous.66 Over the succeeding decades, villainous Native Americans lit-up the Silver Screen and, with it, countless imaginations. Entire generations came of age surrounded by media that celebrated perceived Indian violence and atrocities. Technological innovation drove new ways of experiencing and internalising the colonising process. Throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s a slew of westerns drew upon, and further cemented, problematic ideas about the colonising process.67 In the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, it was a western-themed cinematic framework that George W.  Bush drew upon in order to communicate the shape of US foreign policy going forward.68 Disney’s Peter Pan (1953) served as the high water mark (though certainly not the final entry) in this important, if troubling, American tradition. Presenting literal red-faced Indians to family audiences, Peter Pan revelled in the image of the idiotic, brutish, and savage Indian man whilst presenting Indian women as either ill-­ proportioned, rude hags or as highly sexualised young women (Tiger

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Lilly) ready to be fetishised by young white men (Peter Pan). Even the film’s soundtrack, normally a highlight from that era’s Disney musicals, unashamedly ridiculed Indigenous peoples. From ‘What Made the Red Man Red’:    When did he first say, ‘Ugh!’    When did he first say, ‘Ugh!’     In the Injun book it say When the first brave married squaw    He gave out with a big ugh   When he saw his Mother-in-Law69

Despite its enduring popularity, Peter Pan’s style of Indigenous representation would become vastly less popular in the half-century that followed it. Three years prior to its release, Delmer Daves’ Broken Arrow (1950), which starred James Stewart, presented a remarkably nuanced portrayal of Cochise, Geronimo, and the Apache to contemporary audiences.70 The same year Disney’s Peter Pan was released, Captain John Smith and Pocahontas (1953), a low budget B movie, retold the now-­ familiar colonialist love story, implicitly suggesting that Native Americans were not biologically inferior beings. Perhaps most significantly during this period, The Lone Ranger (1949–1957) offered the type of Indian protagonist that white audiences could support. Whilst Toto himself was often little more than a trope-driven stereotype, he was an ally of the series’ eponymous hero and, most significantly, an active agent in his own right. Rather unusually, he was even portrayed by a Native American actor (Jay Silverheels).71 John Ford’s Two Rode Together (1961) helped to further this small body of sympathetic post-war Indian portraits. It was in the second half of the decade, however, that the cinematic rebirth of Native Americans commenced in earnest.72 Born Losers (1967), the first of four Billy Jack films, featured a half-­ Navajo Vietnam veteran as its protagonist. Borrowing from the era’s Kung Fu and biker movies, Billy Jack fought to protect the innocent from the excesses of the (typically) white male antagonists who would otherwise ruin their lives. The following year, Star Trek, a show that self-consciously leveraged ideas and imagery related to the perceived glories of the American frontier, saw Native American stand-ins serve as romanticised, tragic figures in ‘The Paradise Syndrome’ (1968). The following year a group of Native American activists began a high profile

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occupation of Alcatraz Island (1969–1971), drawing further attention to the grievances of modern Indigenous peoples.73 Such activism, which included a high profile occupation of the village of Wounded Knee in 1973, helped to inform a shifting cultural and political environment that was increasingly receptive to deeper, more sympathetic Indian portraits.74 Much of the Indian-themed media from this era was shaped by a traditional Turnerian understanding of American history that a western facing frontier and the lived experiences of white colonisers upon it were essential to the emergence of the modern American character.75 From Daniel Boone to Captain Kirk, the frontier experience was commonly depicted as producing positive, modern American archetypes. The mid-century shift, however, saw popular entertainment begin to reject this perspective en masse, moving away from western themed productions. Those which were still produced increasingly sought to problematise ideas about the assumed history (and character) of the country. Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue (1970) hewed close to the Turnerian view of the frontier, whilst inverting core assumptions about it. This revisionist western featured a villainous portrayal of the US cavalry, unflinching violence, and scenes of sexual assault. If the American character was, as Turner argued, a product of its frontier history, what did revelations about that character, apparently exposed by the Vietnam War, imply about the country’s past?76 Rather than upend Turner’s framing of the frontier, other western productions jettisoned it entirely. Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (1970) presented audiences with perhaps the deepest white-created Native American character (Chief Dan George’s Old Lodge Skins) since Flaherty’s eponymous Nanook almost sixty years prior.77 A year later, the promise of Born Losers was fulfilled by its sequel, Billy Jack (1971), which earned $10 million during its initial release. The film was the re-released in 1973 where it earned a further $8.2 million with subsequent reissues bringing in tens of millions of dollars in further revenue.78 Also in 1973, Marlon Brando declined his Academy Award for his starring role in The Godfather (1972) by having Sacheen Littlefeather, an Apache activist, decry ‘the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry’ from the awards’ stage.79 The following year, The Trial of Billy Jack (1974), another commercial success, was released.80 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest saw Native American issues intersect with those of mental health whilst The Return of a Man Called Horse (1976), further explored the story of a white man who chose to live among the Lakota people. The fourth film in the Billy

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Jack series, Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977) marked the first financial failure in that particular series since the release of Born Losers a decade prior.81 By the time that George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977) was breaking box office records, filmic audiences had experienced a decade of transformative Native American representation. The period from 1967 to 1977 saw a reinvention of Indian representation, though significant issues remained; for all of the advances in storytelling, setting, and characterisation, Native Americans were frequently depicted, even in well-meaning films, by non-­ Indigenous actors.82 Despite this progress, from the end of the 1970s major productions that focused upon Native American characters became rare. Native American characters appeared during this period, but they rarely escaped being cast as supporting characters, sidekicks, or antagonists. An Indian burial ground would underpin Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) whilst one of the antagonists in 1982’s Nick Nolte/Eddie Murphey vehicle, 48 hrs, was Native American.83 Running Brave (1983) was a rare example of a film built around a Native American protagonist (Olympic gold medallist, Billy Mills) and, in 1985, Broken Rainbow explored the negative impact of Reagan-era policies upon the Navajo before going on to win the Academy Award for best documentary in 1986. In the action and adventure genre, Native American musclemen and sidekicks were to be found: First Blood: Part II (1985) retroactively gave the series’ main character, John Rambo, a vague Native American heritage whilst the character of Billy Sole would appear prominently in the Arnold Schwarzenegger-vehicle Predator (1987). The children’s animated series BraveStarr (1987–1988), which featured a super-powered Native American protagonist fighting the villainous Tex Hex on the planet of New Texas in the twenty-third century, was a rare example of an Indian-­ centred story from this time. Meanwhile on the Silver Screen, Young Guns (1988) and its sequel added a ‘Native American perspective into the narrative’ through the character of Jose Chavez y Chavez.84 Native American characters appeared with some regularity between 1978 and 1989, but stories centred upon Native Americans were rare, with Running Brave, Broken Rainbow, and BraveStarr being the most prominent examples (First Blood: Part II’s retroactive and tenuous re-­ ethnicising of its main character notwithstanding).85 The coming of Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves (1990), however, marked a fundamental change and the beginning of a Native American cinematic revival. The wildly successful story of an American soldier who ultimately betrayed the

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US army in order to adopt the ways of the Lakota, Dances with Wolves started a trend that would see Indian characters and iconography used to tell tales of sorrow, forgiveness, respect, and reconciliation.86 Last of the Mohicans (1992), Thunderheart (1992), Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993–1998), Disney’s Pocahontas (1995), Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001), Grey Owl (1999), The Last Samurai (2003), Brother Bear (2003), Into the West (2005), and James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), all told stories which attempted to bridge the divide which had been so openly celebrated decades earlier. In these films, white characters frequently appeared in both antagonist and the protagonist roles and, narratively speaking, forgiveness was high on the agenda.87 Large box office returns and critical plaudits were frequently rewarded to film studios who fulfilled their audience’s desire to consume these reconciliationist fables. Dances with Wolves alone won seven Academy Awards, in addition to accruing a box office haul in excess of $400 million, whilst The Twilight Saga (2008–2012), a series of supernaturally themed films that heavily featured Native American characters who transformed into wolves, collectively grossed more than $3.3 billion.88 Despite rewarding film studios for casting Native American actors, ‘red face’ remained a significant problem. 1999’s Grey Owl starred Pierce Brosnan in the midst of his tenure as James Bond whilst The Lone Ranger (2013) starred Johnny Depp in the role of Tonto, a marked reversal of the TV show’s progressive casting half a century prior. It was not only actors, however, who enjoyed ‘playing Indian’. The rehabilitation of on-screen Indians deepened appreciation for perceived Native American culture and spirituality. No longer predominantly villainous, the imagined Indians who emerged across the twentieth century created a framework of aspiration; presumed values and ways of seeing the world which appealed to a broad cross-section of the American public. Cinema, television, and interactive media have helped audiences to conceive of Native Americans beyond the brutish, violent stereotypes that proved so popular in prior centuries. This interest in non-violent stereotypes has created niches that have been colonised and exploited; and as stereotypes about Native Americans have developed nuance, depth, and pathos, the size and impact of the niche have only increased in size. Imagined Indians have become aspirational characters, and their perceived cultural characteristics increasingly fetishised. That process is far from consequence-free.

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Indigenous Fetishes and Fake Indians When Christopher Columbus described his findings for the Spanish court, he lavished attention on the natural world. ‘There are palms of six or eight different kinds’, he wrote, ‘and the other trees, fruit and plants are equally marvellous.’ According to Columbus, the Caribbean was a ‘wonder’ to behold, filled with ‘splendid pine woods and broad fertile plains, and there is honey’. Birds, too, filled the skies and there were ‘varieties of fruit’. ‘[E]verywhere’ Columbus went, he later wrote, ‘the nightingale and many other birds were singing.’ And in the midst of this bounty—human beings living in a state of implied balance and tranquillity, noble savages.89 According to Columbus, they went ‘naked, as their mothers bore them, men and women alike’, a fitting compliment to the natural beauty which surrounded them. Reflecting on their martial culture he noted that ‘they have no iron or steel or arms and are not capable of using them, not because they are not strong and well[-]built but because they are amazingly timid’. Columbus described a land, and a people, seemingly immune to the sin of greed ‘they are so ingenuous and so liberal with all their possessions that no one who has not seen them would believe it. If one asks for anything they have they never say no. On the contrary, they offer a share to anyone with demonstrations of heartfelt affection, and they are immediately content with any small thing, valuable or valueless, that is given them.’90 The idea that Native Americans are close to nature is as old as European contact with the Americas. It was an enthralling image. If Columbus’s writing had felt at all fanciful or misleading, corroborating reports, not only from other Caribbean islands but from the mainland, seemed to confirm the earthly paradise and state of human/environmental balance which had been found in the Americas.91 From Brazil, stories of happy, naked, generous peoples emerged which prompted Thomas More to write Utopia (1516), his Indigenous-inspired reflection on the nature of society.92 In only a few short decades, the imagined Indian had found a place in European imaginations, a potent ‘Other’ against whom values, ideals, and morals could be measured. That original, idyllic and balanced image did not remain unchallenged for long, however. As it became necessary to justify the colonialist enterprise (or as violent encounters reshaped settler-colonial frameworks), new literary trends, and with them new types of imagined Indians, began to emerge. Captivity narratives—lurid, prejudiced, and exaggerated accounts of violence—became a literary phenomenon in the Anglophone world whilst one-sided oral testimonies spread

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across much of the backcountry, but the idea of the noble savage never entirely disappeared.93 Even as a niche concern, it was a powerful concept. Despite the large number of negative stereotypes that the twentieth century inherited, the noble savage found an enduring space in the popular imagination. D.W. Griffith, the director of the legendarily racist, Jim Crow-supporting epic, The Birth of a Nation (1915), produced a series of Indian films that played with this idea. The Mended Lute (1909) featured plenty of savage and cruel Indigenous caricatures; but so too were its central protagonists noble, caring, and loving. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Griffith’s Indian shorts took the camera outdoors, photographing ‘the wind in the trees’ and placing the Indians in context—their cinematic world was to be unspoiled by progress or cheapened by the artifice of painted backdrops.94 That same fundamental drive shaped how Robert Flaherty approached the production of Nanook of the North. For Flaherty, the lived experience of his Inuk subjects was too modern to be committed to film. Rather than documenting the Inuk as they were, he instead directed his subjects to put on demonstrations of traditional Indigeneity, utilising outmoded tools and techniques for the hunt. It was a disingenuous approach, to be sure, but one which resonated with audiences across the world. Flaherty seemed to have done the impossible, capturing Indigenous peoples living in a state close to nature.95 This fascination with noble Indigeneity bookended the twentieth century; one cannot fully understand Costner’s Dances with Wolves or Disney’s Pocahontas without first understanding Nanook of the North. The noble savage, in its many variations, was aspirational and, in the twentieth century, that created a niche that was ripe for exploitation. There was a receptive audience ready to celebrate colonialist portraits of Indigeneity, and there were non-Indigenous people ready to take advantage of that desire. Fake Indians have been able to profit from this fascination with imagined Indians, leveraging changing or discordant attitudes for personal or professional gain.96 When Donald Trump complained to the Native American Affairs Committee about the Mashantucket Pequot, this was the phenomenon which he believed himself to be referencing. ‘Playing Indian’ is an important theme in American history and, in the modern era, is frequently linked to presumed Indian cultural values, environmentalism, pan-Indianism, and commercial greed.97 Imagined Indians remain one of the powerful ‘Others’ against which non-Indigenous Americans can measure themselves.

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The ‘close to nature’ stereotype is a powerful idea in a society that is confronting mass urbanisation, industrialisation, technological change, and environmental degradation. Archibald Belaney (1888–1938), a British man who moved to Canada in 1906, understood this when he created a fake Indian identity for himself. From the mid-1920s, Belaney became Grey Owl of the Ojibwa, engaging in public lectures that were designed to promote the conservationist cause.98 To his audience, Belaney represented an apparently authentic Indigenous voice who spoke passionately and accessibly about Indigenous ways of understanding the natural world.99 In reality, they had been presented with a fiction; the type of Indigenous American which a post-Nanook world was eager to encounter. Grey Owl’s message resonated with his audience, not because it transcended cultural barriers, bridging coloniser and Indigenous societies, but because those barriers simply did not exist. Belaney was not the first white person to ‘play Indian’ but he was one of the first to recognise its fullest potential.100 In a world that was willing to celebrate colonialist Indigenous imagery, ‘playing Indian’ could prove to be a lucrative venture. Around the same time that Belaney was beginning to sell the image of Grey Owl to unsuspecting white audiences, a much more ambiguous case was reaching its conclusion. Though he certainly fabricated a fictitious identity, Sylvester Long (1890–1932) was not simply a fake Indian. Born 1890 in North Carolina, Long hailed from a complex mixed-race background. His father’s parents were purportedly white and Cherokee whilst his mother hailed from a white and Croatan background. As a young man, Long worked as an Indian performer in a Wild West show before joining the Carlisle Indian School. He was a fluent Cherokee speaker. Following his graduation, he served in the military until he was discharged in 1919. He then moved to Canada where he worked as a journalist for the Calgary Herald. Whilst in Canada, Long wrote articles that advocated for the improved treatment of Indigenous peoples, earning him the ceremonial name of ‘Chief Buffalo’ from a group of Blackfoot Indians.101 It was then that Long’s fraudulency began. Sylvester Long was the son of a North Carolina janitor. In contrast, Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, as he rechristened himself, was the proud son of a powerful Blackfoot chief. He had been abandoned by his mother at a young age and had grown up on the Plains, the inheritor of traditional Blackfoot culture. And he was the toast of New York’s elite socialite scene, the eloquent and handsome Plains Indian who turned out regularly to high society parties, dressed and acting immaculately.102 One hundred

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years earlier, Black Hawk had become a cause célèbre in the east; here, so it appeared, was his spiritual successor.103 Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance became a media sensation and his celebrity ensured that he had access to lucrative financial opportunities. His image, chest bare and head feathered, appeared in advertisements for sport shoes, and the story of his life, the fictitious Autobiography of Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (1928) was a success.104 Apparently predicting the next stage in a storied and increasingly glamorous life, Long Lance attempted to segue into an acting career and two years after the publication of his ‘autobiography’ he was given a starring role in H.P.  Carver’s ethnographic portrait of the Ojibwa, The Silent Enemy (1930). Within two years of that film’s release, however, Long Lance (and his creator) would be dead by their own hand. When rumours started to spread that Long Lance was not what he appeared, racial stigmas turned Indigenous fetishisation into colonialist horror. Rumours quickly spread among his former socialite admirers that not only was he not an Indian but he was, in reality, Black. As one former admirer would later put it: ‘We’re so ashamed! We entertained a nigger.’105 Disgraced and forced back into the binary framework that he had spent most of his life trying to overcome, Sylvester Long committed suicide in early 1932 (Fig. 4.6). The case of Long Lance helps to place the actions of Belaney and his imitators into context. Sylvester Long’s identity has been a source of confusion for historians, some of whom have identified him as an outright fraud and imposter, or as a Black man desperately attempting to escape the racial stigmas of the period by ‘passing’ as an Indian.106 Such blunt evaluations of his character are, however, unfair, even if the true nature of his self-identity remains ambiguous. Long had Indigenous ancestry, but it is unclear if he identified as Native American before his tenure as an Indian performer in a Wild West show. Presumably, he was hired on the basis that he at least could pass for a Native American, but considering his mixed parentage, it also seems possible that he self-identified as an Indian throughout his life. Certainly by the end of his time as a performer, Long could speak fluent Cherokee but it is unclear if he learned this language from his father or the Cherokee performers with whom he worked. Whatever Long’s identity as a child, he came to believe that he was the wrong type of Indian to take advantage of the Indigenous fetishisation which was then en vogue among socialite whites. The Cherokee, one of the ‘five civilized tribes’ which Andrew Jackson had removed from the east, did not necessarily fit the fashionable Plains Indians (or Inuk)

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Fig. 4.6  This advertisement for Goodrich Sports Shoes (1929) featured the likeness and words of Long, then still presenting himself as Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance shortly before his discovery and suicide

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stereotypes of the time.107 Long’s Blackfoot identity was certainly fake, but his status as a fake Indian is much less definite (Fig. 4.6).108 Like Long and Belaney, Espera Oscar de Corti (1904–1999), better known as Iron Eyes Cody, was a passionate advocate for Native Americans throughout his lifetime. Like Belaney, he appeared to foster a sincere and deep fascination with Native Americans (in his case, for the Plains cultures) whilst, like Long, enjoying the substantial benefits his new identity brought him. Corti was born in Louisiana to his Sicilian mother and Italian father. His olive skin and prominent nose made him, to stereotyped colonialist eyes, a perfect casting choice for a wide range of Native American roles. As early as 1926, Corti began receiving work portraying Native Americans on screen, beginning a long and prolific career as a Native American character actor. Corti began to present himself not as a white actor willing to portray Native American characters, but as a Native American himself. He created an entirely fictitious, elaborate Native American identity which seemed to make him the ideal casting choice for the many western-themed films, serials, and television shows being produced throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Corti, who would ultimately appear in no less than two hundred productions, created an elaborate backstory for his new identity including outright, and rather glamorous, lies about his parentage.109 His real father was Antonio de Corti, but in the 1980s he told interviewer Skip E. Lowe that his father was Thomas Plume Cody, a veteran of the silent era and ‘the first real Indian in films’.110 When Corti appeared in public, he frequently wore mock-Indian clothing. Buckskin jackets, wampum belts, and feathered hair were common accoutrements. He was not just an Indian; he was the type of Indian upon which white colonialist fantasies were built. Over the course of a career that lasted from the 1920s to the 1990s, Corti appeared in dozens of films, working with luminaries as varied as John Wayne and Steve McQueen. He also became a spokesperson for Native American causes, presenting himself as a knowledgeable and identifiable advocate for not only Indian issues, but contemporary Native American social problems.111 Corti most famously portrayed the ‘crying Indian’ who headlined 1971’s Keep America Beautiful campaign.112 In this iconic advertising campaign, a Native American paddles his canoe through a litter-infested river. Smoke billowing factories line the shore. The music is epic and western-themed. Once he reaches the shore, the Indian leaves his canoe and steps up to the side of a busy road. A heap of garbage is then dumped at his feet by

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passing motorists. When the camera pans up the Indian is seen shedding a single, solitary tear. Perhaps more than any project Corti participated in, it was this environmentalist message that turned him from successful character actor into a living caricature. The truth of Corti’s subterfuge was not revealed until after his death in 1999.113 Fake Native American identities have proven to be lucrative, offering not only a chance to earn money, but the opportunity to escape otherwise undesirable lives. In the mid-1970s, Asa Earl Carter (1925–1979), a former Klansman and prominent segregationist, reinvented himself by creating a fictitious literary alter ego—Forrest Carter.114 As this Cherokee character, Carter wrote The Education of Little Tree (1976), a fictional autobiography that told the purported story of his youth and how he internalised the values of his Cherokee grandparents. Although Little Tree had some impact whilst Carter was alive (he died in 1979) its republication by the University of New Mexico Press a decade later saw the title go on to sell more than 600,000 copies. An exposé published by the New York Times served to undermine the credibility of Carter’s book, but not fatally so.115 A subsequent motion picture starring James Cromwell was released in 1997 despite of the book’s dubious authorship. Carter’s motivation for assuming a Native American identity is not entirely clear, though his choice strangely mirrors that of Jim Crow victim, Sylvester Long.116 In other cases, however, fake Indian identities have been used primarily for economic gain. In Love and Consequences (2008), a memoir exposed as a piece of fiction shortly after its publication, writer Margret B. Jones fabricated a half-Indian heritage in order to explore the construction of race—as she imagined it—in South Central Los Angeles.117 Similarly, Timothy Barrus, writing as ‘Nasdijj’, had three fake memoirs published between 2000 and 2004 that saw him reflect stereotypical views not entirely distinct from those that defined Asa Carter’s earlier work.118 When asked to describe his literary heritage in 2002, ‘Nasdijj’ responded that ‘My literary lineage is Athabaskan. I hear Changing Woman in my head. I listen to trees, rocks, deserts, crows, and the tongues of wind. I am Navajo and the European things you relate so closely to often simply seem alien and remote. I do not know them.’119 Perceived Native American spiritual beliefs have also proven to be a remarkably tempting source for fake Indians. Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan (1968) was praised at the time of its publication, but later decades saw the work and, in particular, its fabrication of Native

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American spiritual beliefs reappraised by more critical eyes. Ostensibly, an anthropological study based on the received spiritual knowledge of Don Juan Matus in north Mexico, The Teachings of Don Juan instead presents ‘a synthesis of shamanisms’ rather than a genuine transmission of Indigenous spiritual beliefs.120 Following the success of this first work, Castaneda subsequently wrote two follow-up books. Collectively, they helped to inspire significant amounts of interest in the spiritual beliefs and practices they seemed to describe, even when the validity of the texts was called into question. Like Forrest Carter’s Little Tree, issues regarding the authenticity of Castaneda’s work did not necessarily dampen the enthusiasm of readers who helped synthesise their contents and messages into a larger system of New Age beliefs.121 A Western spiritual movement that draws heavily on non-Western religious values, New Ageism has done much to commercialise pseudo-­ Indigenous practices. Dreamcatchers, for example, have become popular symbols of the New Age movement, just as visiting sweat lodges, possessing ‘medicine bags’, and engaging in facsimiles of Indian religious festivals have all become increasingly popular in recent decades. This amalgamation of mismatched Indian custom pays little, if any, attention to the different belief systems of the Indigenous world. A wide variety of consumer goods, from instructional videos to spiritual charms, are available to purchase. Instructional seminars run by peoples with questionable qualifications help to bolster a system in which non-Indians teach, pass on, or sell, as Phillip Jenkins put it, a ‘bastardized form’ of consumer-ready pseudo-­ Indian culture.122 In 1998, the appropriation of Indian belief systems had become so prevalent that the Lakota issued a Declaration of War against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality. This document was a cutting attack upon ‘non-Indian wannabes, hucksters, cultists, commercial profiteers and self-­ styled “New Age shamans” and their followers’ for the ‘unspeakable indignity’ of having so many Lakota practices ‘desecrated, mocked and abused’.123 Despite the directness of the declaration, and the ongoing interest many New Agers have in Indigenous cultures, the Lakota’s Declaration appears to have done little good. Colonisation via cultural appropriation is not limited to the spiritual or environmental realms. Charlatans and fraudsters are certainly an issue, but so too are the sincerely held beliefs that many people possess concerning their own apparent Indian ancestry.124 Vague family stories have fuelled honestly held narratives about Native American roots which some Americans are increasingly seeing as a licence to identify as a part of Indian

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Country. A particularly high-profile example of this occurred when actor Johnny Depp was cast in the role of Tonto in Disney’s modern-era reboot of The Lone Ranger. For his part, Depp had previously expressed his belief that he was part Native American long before being cast in the role: ‘my great-grandmother was quite a bit of Native American, she grew up Cherokee or maybe Creek Indian’.125 Following the movie’s release, however, an Ancestry.com investigation into Depp’s family history revealed that rather than the Indigenous heritage, he actually possessed African American roots.126 Definitively explaining this discrepancy is difficult, but it would appear that, at some point, one of Depp’s maternal ancestors began ‘passing’ for a Native American: that is, they assumed a new ethnic identity which would have helped to shield them from the worst types of discrimination faced by Black Americans. Many white Americans surely must possess Indigenous ancestry. But in many instances, family stories about anonymous Indigenous progenitors are instead a reflection of the country’s complex relationship with race, African heritage, and Jim Crow. There has been a significant and disproportionate surge in the number of Americans who self-identify as Native American. Between the year 2000 and 2010, there was, according to US census records, a 39% increase in the number of people identifying as Native American or mixed-Native American, an extraordinary surge when compared to the 9% overall population growth which was recorded in this same period.127 The coming of cheap consumer DNA tests appears to have further compounded the number of people with no prior Indigenous identity who now choose to represent themselves as Native American. This is a potentially problematic situation for policy-makers as it can distort the size or scale of, for example, average earnings, demographic distribution, or the size and type of socio-economic problems with which some Native American communities must contend.128 This change in census data likely does not reflect organic growth in the Native American population, instead seeming to demonstrate a significant increase in the number of people who now self-identify as Native American.129 The issue is not that people cannot self-identify as Native American. Rather, it is that some non-Indigenous people are identifying as such based upon vague family stories that, in the racially charged history of the United States, might, as they did with Johnny Depp, indicate vastly different ethnic heritages. To problematise the matter further, many Native American communities do not accept the presence of Indigenous

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ancestors as the sole or even the primary basis upon which a person can claim an Indigenous identity. For many, Indigeneity is a lifelong experience—association with a community, a sense of shared identity that has been a part of a person’s upbringing. The discovery of distant Indian ancestors is not, in many eyes, an acceptable basis upon which a person can claim a Native American identity. At worst, attempts to turn distant or rediscovered Native American ancestor into a part of one’s identity can be interpreted as a direct attack, an attempt by non-Indians to assume ownership of, or control over, Indigenous identities.130 Even in Indian Country, identity politics can be controversial. The Cherokee Nation, for instance, has a complicated relationship with identity, not the least of which is related to the treatment of the Cherokee Freedmen. The descendants of slaves owned by the Cherokee, the Freedmen have been a part of the Cherokee Nation for more than a century. Since emancipation, many have continued to identify closely with the band but, in the 1980s, the Nation redefined its membership criteria to require an identifiable ancestor who was registered on the Dawes Rolls. In 2007 that decision was ratified by a vote among Nation members, effectively excluding any Cherokee slave-descendant whose ancestors had not since intermarried with a person who had a documented, biological link to a Dawes Roll signatory. The stripping of their citizenship from the Cherokee Nation was an unwelcome shock to those Black Cherokee who considered themselves (and their ancestors) vital parts of that Nation and its history.131 As one Black Cherokee protester put it, they were ‘Indian by the blood we shed’. The matter was only resolved in August 2017 when a Federal District Court sided with the descendants of the Cherokee freedmen over the Cherokee Nation itself.132 Native American identity politics is a complex field with many overlapping and competing interests; generalisation is extremely problematic. The Cherokee Freedmen are a legitimate part of the Cherokee Nation’s history and culture, even if they are not biologically Cherokee themselves. A more ambiguous case is that of Sylvester Long, who appears to have legitimately identified as Native American but who nonetheless created a fake Blackfoot identity that brought him an abundance of fame, money, and sex. Marginal or contested identities are not the same as those that are fraudulent or fake, but they are illustrative of how problematic identity politics can become when fringe examples are studied. Oscar de Corti had no legitimate claim to the Native American identity that he assumed throughout most of his life. Neither did Johnny Depp, but his

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quasi-­Indigenous sense of self was a good-faith belief, the product of the country’s complex relationship with race rather than a malicious attempt to mislead. Fake and marginal identities are not necessarily analogous, but they often touch upon familiar themes in American popular culture—the willingness to ‘pass’ as a people whose presumed characteristics are the subject of colonialist fascination.

Where the Buffalo Roam Near the beginning of the monstrously popular videogame Grand Theft Auto V (it has sold more copies than Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon), lead character, Franklin Clinton, confronts his best friend and (literal) partner in crime, Lamar Davis, about his reckless behaviour. To this, Lamar responds frankly, directly, and ridiculously: ‘Nigger, that’s that Apache blood in me, homey, you’re lucky I ain’t doing a flying tomahawk and scalp that motherfucking ass.’133 It is the first, but not last, moment in the game that Lamar references a vague, and very likely fictitious, Apache heritage defined by a richly exaggerated image of Native America rooted in more than a century of cinema and pulp fiction. Characterised by a rich combination of farce, ego, loyalty, and stupidity, Lamar is the vehicle through which the game explores America’s difficult relationship with its Indigenous past. Not just a distinctive character trait, Lamar’s part-Apache identity created an important discourse within the game, an exploration of American identity politics and Native American appropriation. It is telling that one of the most detailed explorations of fake Indian identities to be found in the popular culture is a subplot in a highly satirical, often crass videogame.134 Like all of the modern games in this series, Grand Theft Auto V is an unrelenting deconstruction of American society and culture; it engages in a remarkable exploration of the fake Indian phenomenon, challenging existing stereotypes rather than reinforcing them. Even well-meaning popular examples, from Dances with Wolves to Twilight to The Lone Ranger, tend to promote the fantastical at the expense of the reasonable; that is the issue which Lamar’s alleged Apache ancestry in Grand Theft Auto V confronts and explores. When Lamar tells the player ‘I’m going to the great plain beyond where the buffalo keep on roaming’ he was speaking in the vernacular of the imagined Indian, a language in which anti-modern ideals are mixed with colonialist fallacies.135 As Lamar puts it in one early exchange, ‘Me and [my dog] got a special understanding, that’s my Apache blood at one with the animals.’136 Grand Theft Auto

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V is not remarkable because it offers the most subtle or in-depth exploration of the fake Indian phenomenon. It is remarkable because it offers any commentary on the subject whatsoever. In Indian Country and in academic circles, the issue is researched, discussed, and explored.137 But the fake Indian issue is rarely a part of the popular discourse and, when it is, the nuance and historical background required to understand the depth of the problems which it creates is rarely present. The fake Indian phenomenon has a long history, but so too is it linked to the broader history of Native American representation in popular media and the creation of aspirational stereotypes. Like Grand Theft Auto V’s Lamar, Donald Trump has done much to bring the issue to a wide audience. Unlike Lamar, however, he has done little to deepen the popular understanding of this phenomenon. When Trump attacked Warren over her identity, he was wading into a highly complex area in which histories of race, prejudice, media culture, and identity collide. Even for those familiar with the issues, navigating them can be difficult; Trump, however, has defaulted into blunt arguments about racial purity that, if taken to their natural conclusion, have some deeply distributing implications. His rhetorical approach to Indian Country has, since 2017, become conspicuously supportive.138 Declarations of Native American Appreciation Month have lavished praise on the ‘immeasurable contributions’ made by Indian peoples with an increasing emphasis having been placed upon outward shows of respect for tribal sovereignty.139 But when these declarations are understood in the context of Trump’s understanding of Indigenous racial purity, outward shows of support become much more problematic. The White House’s declaration that they ‘remain committed to preserving and protecting Native American cultures, languages, and history, while ensuring prosperity and opportunity for all Native Americans’ is sound in principle, but a problematic understanding of who can, or cannot, legitimately call themselves an Indian turns an otherwise supportive statement into one which could potentially foreshadow problematic future policy.140 Can ‘protecting Native American cultures’ be read to mean ‘protecting [racially pure] Native American cultures’? It is certainly possible, and whilst dealing with identity colonisers is certainly a laudable goal, how can his administration be expected to deal with those peoples who possess marginal or contested identities; or those whose identity this administration erroneously believes to be illegitimate? The stakes are high for an already marginalised group of peoples and clarity and consistency about questions of identity are sorely

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Fig. 4.7  Even as reports about possible changes to the names of the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians garnered Trump’s ire, he still found an opportunity to use the politics of Warren’s problematic identity to attack her141

lacking. The potential for great harm to go unnoticed by the majority of Americans is substantial (Fig. 4.7). Likewise, Warren, who inherited family stories about Indigenous roots in good faith, has found herself in the midst of equally problematic situation. In order to prove the veracity of her family stories, Warren carried out a DNA test. The website upon which Warren published the results of her test was very carefully worded, but even then, it helped to ignite a furious debate between herself and Trump that, though ostensibly about Native American issues, failed to invite any Indigenous people to take a leading role in the discourse.142 Both Trump and Warren have responded to this issue in problematic ways; Warren initially doubled-down on her claims to Indigenous roots through a DNA test that seemed to imply that biology alone was enough to justify claiming a quasi-Native American identity. Trump’s retort, however, made extensive use of the ‘blood quantum’, implying that one’s identity, community, or culture is somehow linked to arbitrary genetic percentages. Neither Trump nor Warren has fully acquitted themselves; nor did either do much to deepen the discourse on this issue.

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Using the name ‘Pocahontas’ to describe Warren was crass and racially charged, to be sure, but the most disturbing issue, which is rarely identified by the press, is not his choice of nickname for Warren, but the way in which his attacks project a framework of racial purity onto Indian Country—‘Pocahontas’ is a symptom of a much deeper issue.143 Trump demonstrated that he was ignorant not only of the implications carried by an ideology of racial purity, but also many of the multifaceted issues related to Indian identity theft and marginal identities. Trump’s engagement with Warren’s identity was related to the attitude he demonstrated when dealing with the Mashantucket Pequot in the 1990s. He is not, however, alone in this. Nor is the company he keeps exclusive to any one group or political party. The failure to understand Native American history and how it informs modern assumptions and policy decisions is decidedly non-­ partisan. Popular engagement with the identity issues explored in this chapter, and the socio-cultural issues explored throughout this book, is lacking and the discourse has suffered accordingly. These issues are not the concern of Indigenous or academic audiences only. In the age of Donald Trump, they are a mainstream affair, common, if frequently misunderstood, aspects of a political landscape intimately linked to historic processes, cultural traditions, and memory.

Notes 1. Maureen Dowd ‘Will Trump be Dumped?’ The New York Times, March 19th, 2016: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/will-trump-be-dumped.html. 2. Maxwell Tani ‘Donald Trump Refers to Elizabeth Warren as “the Indian” when responding to her Tweetstorm’ Business Insider, May 21st, 2016: https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-elizabeth-warrenindian-tweets-2016-3?r=US&IR=T. 3. For a discussion on this, see Chap. 1 of this volume. 4. Among Warren’s early attempts to defend her identity: ‘I still have a picture on my mantel and it is a picture my mother had before that—a picture of my grandfather. And my Aunt Bea has walked by that picture at least a 1000 times remarked that he—her father, my Papaw—had high cheek bones like all of the Indians do. Because that is how she saw it and your mother got those same great cheek bones and I didn’t.’ Warren as quoted in Lucy Madison ‘Warren Explains Minority Listing, Talks of Grandfather’s “High Cheekbones”’ CBS News, May 3rd, 2012: https://www.cbsnews. com/news/warren-explains-minority-listing-talks-of-grandfathers-highcheekbones/.

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5. Warren appears to have outwardly identified as Native American, having been listed as a ‘minority professor’ from 1986 until at least 1995. Warren’s Indigenous identity during this period was nebulous, with no specific tribe or people. This continues to be an unknown factor. See Stephanie Ebbert ‘Directories Identified Elizabeth Warren as Minority’ Boston Globe, April 30th, 2012: https://www.bostonglobe.com/ metro/2012/04/29/elizabeth-warren-was-listed-minority-professorlaw-directories-and/yBZTdrH3Qt8xRu6KZkLDlO/story.html. 6. Krystal Tsosie ‘Elizabeth Warren’s DNA is Not Her Identity’ The Atlantic, October 17th, 2018: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ archive/2018/10/what-make-elizabeth-warrens-dna-test/573205/. 7. Rishika Dugyala ‘Native American Critics Still Wary of Warren Despite Apology Tour’ Politic, August 22th, 2019: https://www.politico.com/ story/2019/08/27/native-american-critics-elizabeth-warren-1475903; Krystal Tsosie and Matthew Anderson ‘Two Native American Geneticists Interpret Elizabeth Warren’s DNA Test’ The Conversation, October 22nd, 2018: https://theconversation.com/two-native-americangeneticists-interpret-elizabeth-warrens-dna-test-105274. 8. Rebecca Nagle ‘Elizabeth Warren Has Spent Her Adult Life Repeating a Lie. I Want her to Tell the Truth’ Huffpost, August 23rd, 2019: https:// www.huffpost.com/entr y/elizabeth-warren-cherokee-apology_n_ 5d5ed7e6e4b0dfcbd48a1b01. 9. Thomas Kaplan ‘Elizabeth Warren Apologises at Native American Forum: “I have Listened and I have Learned”’ The New York Times, August 19th, 2019: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/us/politics/elizabethwarren-native-american.html. 10. Darryl Leroux Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019), pp. 3–19. 11. Hilary N. Weaver ‘Indigenous Identity: What is it, and Who Really Has it?’ American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 25 (2001): 240–255. 12. That is not to imply that the image of the noble savage emerged in response to industrialisation and urbanisation, only that those phenomena gave this concept renewed relevance in later periods. For the roots of the ‘noble savage’ see Mark Spence ‘Dispossessing the Wilderness: Yosemite Indians and the National Park Ideal, 1864–1930’ Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 65 (1996): 27–59. 13. Adam Goudry ‘Communing with the Dead: The “New Metis,” Metis Identity Appropriation, and the Displacement of Living Metis Culture’ American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 42 (2018): 162–190. 14. Benjamin L. Carp Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 141–160.

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15. Linda Colley Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850 (London: Pimlico, 2003), pp. 168–197. 16. Lepore The Name of War, pp. 48–70. 17. Philip Jenkins Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality (Oxford and New  York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 154–222. 18. ‘Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995’: see Laura M.  Padilla ‘Intersectionality and Personality: Situating Women on Colour in the Affirmative Action Dialogue’ Fordham Law Review, Vol. 66 (1997): 844–929, p. 898. For the contemporary public discourse on this subject once details of Warren’s identity became more widely known, see Maggie Haberman ‘Fordham Piece Called Warren Harvard Law’s “First Woman of Colour”’ Politico, May 15th, 2012: https://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/05/fordham-piece-called-warren-harvard-laws-first-woman-of-color-123526; Josh Hicks ‘Did Elizabeth Warren check the Native American Box When She “Applied” to Harvard and Penn?’ The Washington Post, September 28th, 2012: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/ post/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-controversy-over-elizabeth-warrens-claimed-native-american-heritage/2012/09/27/ d0b7f568-08a5-11e2-a10c-fa5a255a9258_blog.html; Garance FrankeRuta ‘Is Elizabeth Warren Native American or What’ The Atlantic, May 20th, 2012: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/ is-elizabeth-warren-native-american-or-what/257415/; Mary Carmichael and Stephanie Ebbert ‘Elizabeth Warren Says She Told Harvard, Penn of Native American Heritage’ Boston Globe, May 31st, 2012: https://www. bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/05/30/elizabeth-warren-acknowledgestelling-har vard-penn-native-american-status/e7rnUDG6k AKvjZJQNr8wjL/story.html. 19. ‘Elizabeth Warren: DNA Test Finds “Strong Evidence” of Native American Blood’ BBC News, October 15th, 2018: https://www.bbc. co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45866168. The microsite created by Warren’s team to disseminate the results of the DNA test, alongside a broader family narrative appears to have been taken offline. The original report was located at the following URL: https://mk0elizabethwarh5ore.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Bustamante_ Report_2018.pdf. 20. William W. Quinn ‘The Southeast Syndrome: Notes on Indian Descendant Recruitment Organizations and their Perceptions of Native American Culture’ American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 14 (1990): 147–154. 21. For a far less anecdotal discussion of the role played by ‘passing’ in creating the false belief in American families that they possess Native American

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ancestors, see James A.  Clifton ‘Alternate Identities and Cultural Frontiers’ in James A.  Clifton (ed.) Being and Becoming Indian: Biographical Studies of North American Frontiers (1993; Prospect Heights: Waveland, 1989), pp. 1–33. This is a difficult area to deal with in terms of direct evidence. Anecdotally it is an issue which some scholars and historians have encountered over the course of their research. Vague family traditions are often oral in nature and their appearance in documentation, by their very nature, makes them difficult to identify or quantify. At a historic society in Kentucky, for instance, the director of that institute told me that the most common inquiry they received from the public related to unsubstantiated stories of Native American ancestors. They were unable to quantify how many inquiries they received, but suggested it was a common occurrence and that only a tiny fraction of such inquiries ever led to any type of corroborating evidence. The director’s colleagues (archivists) confirmed this to me. As much as possible, this chapter will avoid relying upon such vague inferences (this example is included because it is illustrative of a narrative which seems to emerge from professionals who must deal with such claims) and will instead look to explore the issue by building a historic case which will explain this apparent, but unquantifiable phenomenon. 22. Glenn Kessler ‘Elizabeth Warren’s DNA Test Fact Check: What Journalists Got Wrong about Senator’s Native American Ancestry’ The Independent, October 21st, 2018: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ americas/elizabeth-warren-dna-test-fact-check-native-american-ancestry-boston-globe-journalists-trump-a8595001.html. 23. @realDonaldTrump ‘Warren 1/2020’ Twitter, January 3rd, 2019: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/108085895940 4240896. 24. ‘She owes the country an apology’—see Toluse Oloruuipa ‘President Trump Says He’d Have to “Personally” DNA Test Sen. Elizabeth Warren to Settle Bet’ Time, October 15th, 2018: https://time.com/5425398/ trump-warren-dna-bet/. 25. See Chap. 1 of this volume. 26. Nikki Khanna ‘“If You’re Half Black, You’re Just Black”: Reflected Appraisals and the Persistence of the One-Drop Rule’ The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 51 (2010): 96–121; Christine B.  Hickman ‘The Devil and the One Drop Rule: Racial Categorise, African Americans, and the U.S.  Census’ Michigan Law Review, Vol. 95 (1997): 1161–1265; Jon Michael Spencer The New Coloured People: The Mixed-Race Movement in America (New York: New York University Press, 1997), pp. 51–55. 27. Barack Obama Dreams of My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (2016; Edinburgh and London: Canongate, 2007).

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28. Ewen MacAskill, Suzanne Goldenberg, and Elana Schor ‘Barrack Obama to be America’s First Black President’ The Guardian, November 5th, 2008: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/05/uselections20084; Adam Nagourney ‘Obama Elected President as Racial Barrier Falls’ The New York Times, November 4th, 2008: https://www. nytimes.com/2008/11/05/us/politics/05elect.html; Ta-Nehisi Coates ‘Fear of a Black President’ The Atlantic, September 2012: https://www. theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/fear-of-a-black-president/309064/; ‘Barrack Obama’ White House, N.D.: https://www. White House.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/barack-obama/. 29. Bettina L.  Love and Brandelyn Tosolt ‘Reality or Rhetoric? Barack Obama and Post-Racial America’ Race, Gender, & Class, Vol. 17 (2010): 19–37; Olivier Richomme ‘The Post-Racial Illusion: Racial Politics and Inequality in the Age of Obama’ Revue de Recherche en Civilisation Américaine, Vol. 3 (2012): https://journals.openedition.org/rrca/ 464?lang=en. 30. Barbara Chase-Ribould ‘Slavery as a Problem in Public History: Or Sally Hemmings and the “One Drop Rule” of Public History’ Callaloo, Vol. 32 (2009): 826–831; John W. Miller, Jr. ‘Beyond Skin Deep: An Analysis of the Influence of the One-Drop Rule on the Racial Identity of African American Adolescents’ Race, Gender, & Class, Vol. 17 (2010): 38–50; David A.  Hollinger ‘The One Drop Rule and the One Hate Rule’ Daedalus, Vol. 134 (2005): 18–28. 31. Mark Goulb ‘Plessy as “Passing”: Judicial Responses to Ambiguously Raced Bodies in Pleeyx v. Ferguson’ Law and Society Review, Vol. 39 (2005): 563–600. 32. Robert Westley ‘First-time Encounters: “Passing” Revisited and Demystification as a Critical Practice’ Yale Law and Policy Review, Vol. 18 (2000): 297–349. 33. For a discussion which illustrates the ways in which the pre-binary South differed from its post-binary form, particularly as it relates to Native Americans, see Malinda Maynor Lowery ‘On the Antebellum Fringe: Lumbee Indians, Slavery, and Removal’ Native South, Vol. 10 (2017), pp. 40–59. 34. Cedric Sunray ‘Blood Policing’ in Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Andrea Smith, Michelle H.  Raheja (eds.) Native Studies Keywords (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015), pp. 209–220. 35. Ariela J.  Gross What Blood Won’t Tell: a History of Race on Trial in America (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 140–177. 36. Ellen Samuels Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race (New York and London: New York University Press, 2014), pp. 141–142.

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37. Kathleen Ratteree and Norbert Hill The Great Vanishing Act: Blood Quantum and the Future of Native Nations (Golden: Fulcrum, 2017), pp. xiv–xvi; Doug Kiel ‘Bleeding Out: Histories and Legacies of “Indian Blood”’ in Ratteree and Hill (eds.) The Great Vanishing Act, pp. 80–93. 38. Katherine Ellinghaus Blood Will Tell: Native Americans and Assimilation Policy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), pp. 23–44. 39. Katherine O.B.  Osburn ‘“Any Sane Person”: Race, Rights, and Tribal Sovereignty in the Construction of the Dawes Rolls for the Choctaw Nation’ The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Vol. 9 (2010): 451–471; Jesse T. Schreier ‘Indian or Freedman? Enrolment, Race, and Identity in the Choctaw Nation, 1896–1907’ Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 42 (2011): 458–479. 40. Kimberly Tallbear ‘DNA, Blood, and Racializing the Tribe’ Wicazo Sa Review, Vol. 18 (2003): 81–107. 41. Even among those who were not necessarily affected by the issue of mixed race ancestry, the allotment programme and Dawes Rolls could be controversial and problematic, not least because of the (intentionally) disruptive impact they would have upon the affected communities. See Tom Holm ‘Indian Lobbyists: Cherokee Opposition to the Allotment of Tribal Lands’ American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 5 (1979): 115–134; there were also long-term legal implications with questions related to the nature of Native American identities dating to this process still unresolved. See Rose Cuison Villazor ‘Blood Quantum Land Laws and the Race Versus Political Identity Dilema’ California Law Review, Vol. 96 (2008): 801–837. 42. Tiya Miles Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (Oakland: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 191–203. 43. For a discussion detailing the survival but invisibility of non-federally recognised Indian groups in New  York see Samuel W.  Rose and Richard A.  Rose ‘Outside the Rules: Invisible American Indians in New  York State’ Wicazo Sa Review, Vol. 30 (2015): 56–76. 44. Jean M.  O’Brien ‘State Recognition and “Termination” in Nineteenth Century New England’ in Amy E.  Den Ouden and Jean M.  O’Brien (eds.) Recognition, Sovereignty, Struggles, and Indigenous Rights in the United States: A Sourcebook (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), pp. 149–168. 45. ‘Broadcast Transcript, Imus on the Air, June 18th, 1993’, pp. 244–245. 46. Trump’s mode of thinking here is far from unique—failing to recognise Native American peoples as such has been an important force in shaping the history of Native American groups who have been written out of existence or otherwise had their identity denied over the last two hundred

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years of colonialist exercises. See Jean M. O’Brien Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010) pp. 145–200. 47. ‘Broadcast Transcript, Imus on the Air, June 18th, 1993’, p. 244. 48. Renee Ann Cramer ‘The Common Sense of Anti-Indian Racism: Reactions to Mashantucket Pequot Success in Gaming and Acknowledgement’ Law and Social Inquiry, Vol. 31 (2006): 313–341. 49. Katherine Q. Seelye and Abby Goodnough ‘Voters Shrug at Revelations of Ethnic Claim in Senate Race’ The New York Times, May 23rd, 2012: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/us/politics/elizabeth-warrens-indian-claims-dont-sway-voters.html; ‘In Mass. Senate Race, Warren on the Defensive Over Native American Heritage’ NPR, May1st, 2012: https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2012/05/09/ 151784645/in-mass-senate-race-warren-on-defense-over-native-american-heritage?t=1579773859240; Matthew Daly ‘Warren “Never used” Native American Claim to Advance her Carrer’ AP News, February 14th, 2018: https://apnews.com/eb2d8595193843f6a6e14acf544ff48f; James S.  Robbins ‘End of Elizabeth Warren’s Presidential Campaign? New Claim of “American Indian” Heritage’ USA Today, February 7th, 2019:https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/02/07/elizabethwarren-dna-results-percentage-cherokee-nation-native-americancolumn/2799968002/. 50. ‘Elizabeth Warren “Mocked with Native American Gestures”’ BBC News, September 25th, 2012: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19723601; Nick Gass ‘Boston Radio Host at Trump Event Mocks Warren with War Whoops’ Politico, June 29th, 2016: https://www.politi c o . c o m / s t o r y / 2 0 1 6 / 0 6 / d o n a l d - t r u m p - w a r r e n - c a r r- w a rwhoops-224948. 51. Ruth Garby Torres ‘How You See Us, Why You Don’t: Connecticut’s Public Policy to Terminate the Schaghticoke Indians’ in Ouden and O’Brien (eds.) Recognition, Sovereignty, Struggles, and Indigenous Rights in the United States, pp. 195–212. 52. Trump Hotels and Casino Resort, Inc. ‘Trump Signs Agreement with Paucatuck Eastern Pequot’ Press Release, March 27th, 2000. Casino City Times: http://www.casinocitytimes.com/news/article/trump-signsagreement-with-paucatuck-eastern-pequot-122096. 53. David M. Herszenhorn ‘Two Feuding Indian Tribes are Recognized, but as One’ The New  York Times, June 25th, 2002: https://www.nytimes. com/2002/06/25/nyregion/two-feuding-indian-tribes-are-recognized-but-as-one.html. 54. Greg Levine ‘Trump: Offers to Drop Suit Vs. Eastern Pequots for $500million’ Forbes, December 3rd, 2004: https://www.forbes.

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com/2004/12/03/1203autofacescan05.html#72628287aef8; Jim Adams ‘Trump Sues Eastern Pequots’ Indian Country Today, May 30th, 2002: https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/trump-sueseastern-pequots-2Rw48tX1ekWJQtJYh04TiA. 55. For a discussion on the types of evidence which are and which are not accepted for this process, see Hope M. Babcock ‘“This I Know from my Grandfather”: The Battle for Admissibility of Indigenous Oral History as Proof of Tribal Claims’ American Indian Law Review, Vol. 37 (2012): 19–61. For the de-recognition of the Eastern Pequot see Jane Gordon ‘Recognition Rejected, Two Tribes Regroup’ The New  York Times, October 23rd, 2005: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/nyregion/recognition-rejected-two-tribes-regroup.html; Paul Zielbauer ‘Federal Court Agrees to Hear State’s Appeal on Tribal Issues’ The New  York Times, October 26th, 2002: https://www.nytimes.com/ 2002/10/26/nyregion/federal-court-agrees-to-hear-state-s-appeal-ontribal-issue.html?src=pm. 56. This is a topic discussed by the subjects of a recent New York Times-­ produced short documentary in which Native Americans explore the impact of the ‘blood quantum’ on their lives and their identities. See Michèle Stephenson and Brian Young ‘A Conversation with Native Americans on Race’ The New York Times, August 15th, 2017: https:// www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000005352074/a-conversationwith-native-americans-on-race.html. 57. Paul Pringle and Adam Elmahrek ‘Minority Contractors Claiming to be “Native American” to Undergo Nationwide Review’ Los Angeles Times, September 18th, 2019: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/ 2019-09-17/minority-contractors-native-american-review. 58. For an overview of this issue see Laura Browder Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), pp. 1–11. 59. ‘Editorial’ Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, January 3rd, 1891. 60. For a survey of the literature which helped to form nineteenth century ideas about the nature of Native Americans see Jacquelyn Kilpatrick Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), pp. 1–15. 61. Don Russell The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill (1960; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979), pp. 494–503. 62. L.G.  Moses Wild West Shows and the Images of the American Indians, 1883–1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), p. 30. 63. Aleiss Making the White Man’s Indian, pp.  1–58; Kilpatrick Celluloid Indians, pp. 16–64.

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64. Linda M. Waggoner Starring Red Wing! The Incredible Career of Lillian M. St. Cyr, the First Native American Film Star (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), pp. 83–113. 65. Mark Cousins The Story of Film (London: Pavilion, 2011), p. 83. 66. For Nanook and its ethnographic imitators, see Erik Barnouw Documentary: A History of Non-Fiction Film, 2nd Revised Edition (Oxford, New  York, and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993) pp. 36–51; Aleiss Making the White Man’s Indian, pp. 39–58; Kilpatrick Celluloid Indians, pp. 36–64. 67. Kilpatrick Celluloid Indians, pp. 36–64. 68. Douglas Kellner ‘Bushspeak and the Politics of Lying: Presidential Rhetoric in the “War on Terror”’ Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 37 (2007): 622–645. 69. Clyde Geronimo, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske (dir.) Peter Pan (New York: RKO Radio Pictures, 1953). 70. Angela Aleiss ‘Hollywood Addresses Postwar Assimilation: Indian/White Attitudes in Broken Arrow’ American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Vol. 11:1 (1987): 67–79. 71. Megan Basham ‘Unmasking Tonto: Can Title VII “Make It” in Hollywood’ American Indian Law Review, Vol. 37 (2012–2013): 549–596. 72. Robert Horton ‘Mann and Stewart’ Film Comment, Vol. 26 (1990): 40–47. 73. David Milner ‘“By Right of Discovery”: The Media and the Native American Occupation of Alcatraz, 1969–1971’ Australasian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 33 (2014): 73–86; Rhiannon Bertaud-Gandar ‘Laying Claim: Framing the Occupation of Alcatraz in the Indians of “All Tribes Alcatraz Newsletter”’ Australasian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 35 (2016): 125–142; Troy Johnson ‘The Occupation of Alcatraz Island: Roots of American Indian Activism’ Wicazo Sa Review, Vol. 10 (1994): 63–79. 74. Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo ‘Holding the Rock: The “Indianization” of Alcatraz Island, 1969–1971’ The Public Historian, Vol. 23 (2001): 55–74; Elizabeth Rich ‘“Remember Wounded Knee”: AIM’s Use of Metonymy in twenty-first Century Protest’ College Literature, Vol. 31 (2004): 70–91; John Kostner ‘American Indians and the Media’ CrossCurrents, Vol. 26 (1976): 164–171. For the impact of the Wounded Knee Incident and occupation of Alcatraz Island on US Indian policy, see Dean J.  Kotlowski ‘Alcatraz, Wounded Knee, and Beyond: The Nixon and Ford Administrations Respond to Native American Protest’ Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 72 (2003): 201–227.

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75. For a discussion on the ubiquity of the frontier thesis see Ray Allen Billington ‘The American Frontier Thesis’ Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 23 (1960): 201–216; for a deconstruction of Turner’s thesis see Tiziano Bonazzi ‘Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis and the Self-­ Consciousness of America’ American Studies, Vol. 27 (1993): 149–171. 76. For a discussion on memories of the My Lai Massacre see Joachim J.  Savelsberg, Ryan D.  King, Rajiv Evan Rajan and Lacy Mitchell ‘Constructing and Remembering My Lai Massacre’ in Joachim J. Savelsberg and Ryan D. King (eds.) American Memories: Atrocities and Law (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011), pp. 34–52. 77. Leo E.  Olivia ‘Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man as History’ Western American Literature, Vol. 8 (1973): 33–54. 78. Brian Hannan Coming Back to a Theatre Near You: A History of Hollywood Reissues, 1914–2014 (Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 2016), pp. 231–238; ‘Billy Jack Vs. Hollywood: Tom Laughlin Interviewed by Beverley Walker’ Film Comment, Vol. 13 (1977): 24–30. 79. ‘Sacheen Littlefeather Declines Marlon Brando’s Academy Award on His Behalf’. 45th Academy Awards (1973). Available to view at: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=2QUacU0I4yU (last accessed—23/01/20); Marlon Brando ‘Brando’s Oscar Speech’ Cinéaste, Vol. 5 (1973): 62. 80. Hannan Coming Back to a Theatre Near, p. 240. 81. Sharon Waxman ‘Billy Jack is Ready to Fight the Good Fight Again’ The New  York Times, June 20th, 2005: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/ 06/20/movies/billy-jack-is-ready-to-fight-the-good-fight-again.html. 82. Aleiss Making the White Man’s Indian, pp. 81–100. 83. Making his first appearance in 1977, Apache Chief, a heavily stereotyped character, appeared in several episodes of the superhero cartoon Super Friends (1973–1985). The character of Forge likewise added a degree of Indigenous diversity to the popular X-Men comic book in 1984. See André M. Carrington Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), pp. 111–113 and P.  Andrew Miller ‘Mutants, Metaphor, and Marginalism: What X-actly Do the X-Men Stand For’ Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Vol. 13 (2003): 282–290. 84. ‘Interview with John Fusco by Darren R.  Reid’ January 25th, 2020. Fusco was the writer of Young Guns, Young Guns II (1990), Thunderheart (1992), and Dreamkeeper (2003). He graciously agreed to speak with me for this project. 85. Native Americans were also depicted in interactive media, such as videogames. Custer’s Revenge (1982) saw players charged with dodging Indian arrows so they could sexually assault an Indigenous woman, a rare example of outright bigotry in the medium. Indian characters such as Thunder

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from Killer Instinct (1994), Nightwolf from Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), or the eponymous characters who starred in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (1997) and Brave: A Warrior’s Tale (2005) vastly increased Native American representation in the medium, even if they failed to seriously deconstruct or rectify existing stereotypes. Prey (2006) and Gun (2006) both attempted to depict deeper Native American characters than the medium was accustomed to but, ultimately, both failed to break free of the colonialist framework in which they were working. John Willis ‘Pixel Cowboys and Silicon Gold Mines: Videogames of the American West’ Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 77 (2008): 273–303. 86. As Young Guns writer John Fusco put it, Dances with Wolves started a new ‘high point’ in Native American representation on screen, following a period in which that representation had ‘died’ following the end of the 1970s. ‘Interview with John Fusco by Darren R.  Reid’ January 25th, 2020. 87. Beyond colonialist narratives, this era also saw the re-emergence of Native American filmmakers as key agents of Indigenous representation on screen. A new generation of Indigenous filmmakers produced a series of post-colonialist pieces that explored aspects of Native American life rarely seen in film or television. These works were artistically and culturally beautiful, though few of them have found a wide audience; Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals (1998) being a notable exception. Despite this limited commercial success, Native American filmmakers are increasingly able to tell their own stories on their own terms. Whilst the colonialist revival films of the 1990s and 2000s appear to have largely come to a halt, postcolonial Indigenous filmmaking continues at pace. See Joanna Hearne Smoke Signals: Native Cinema Rising (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012). 88. Box office statistics from Box Office Mojo: https://www.boxofficemojo. com/ (last accessed January 27th, 2020). For a discussion on the use of wolf imagery in cinematic portrayals of Native Americans see Keepers of the Forest—A Tribe of the Amazon in the Modern World. Directed by Darren R. Reid. Coventry: Studio Academe, 2019. 89. Christopher Columbus and J.M.  Cohen (ed. and trans.) Four Voyages (London: Penguin, 1960), pp. 115–123. 90. Columbus and Cohen (ed.) Four Voyages, pp. 115–123. 91. Lilia M.  Schwarcz and Heloisa M.  Starling Brazil: A Biography (New York and London: Allen Lane, 2018), pp. 1–15. 92. John Hemming Red Gold, pp. 20–21. 93. For captivity narratives see Colley Captives, pp. 168–202. For oral histories see Chap. 2 in this volume.

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94. Daniel Fairfax ‘“The Beauty of Moving Wind in the Trees”: Cinematic Presence and the Films of D.W. Griffith’ in Charlie Keil (ed.) A Companion to D.W. Griffith (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2018), pp. 74–105. 95. Cousins The Story of Film, p. 83. 96. Browder Slippery Characters, pp. 111–141. 97. Rayna Green ‘A Tribe Called Wannabee: Playing Indian in America and Europe’ Folklore, Vol. 99 (1988): 30–55; Philipa J.  Deloria Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 95–127. 98. Donald B.  Smith From the Land of Shadows: The Making of Grey Owl (1990; Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2000), pp. 8–32. 99. David Chapin ‘Gender and Indian Masquerade in the Life of Grey Owl’ American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 24 (2000): 91–109. 100. For a discussion on this issue from the perspective colonial-immigrant processes, see Shompa Lahiri ‘Performing Identity: Colonial Migrants, Passing, and Mimicry Between the Wars’ Cultural Geographies, Vol. 10 (2003): 408–423. 101. Donald B. Smith Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance: The Glorious Imposter (Markham: Red Deer Press, 2000). 102. Eva Marie Garroutte Real Indians: Identity and Survival in Native America (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 1–4. 103. Trask Black Hawk, p. 20. 104. For a discussion about this book which reframes it as ‘the first Black prairie novel’ see Karina Vernon ‘The First Black Prairie Novel: Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance’s Autobiography and the Repression of Prairie Blackness’ Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 45 (2011): 31–57. 105. Irvine S. Cobb, as quoted in Garroutte Real Indians, p. 2. 106. For examples see Vernon ‘The First Black Prairie Novel’, pp.  31–57; Melinda Micco ‘Tribal Re-Creations: Buffalo Child Long Lance and Black Seminole Narratives’ in Ruth Hsu, Cynthia Franklin, and Suzanne Kosanke (eds.) Replacing America: Conversations and Contestations (Honolulu: College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature, University of Hawai’i, 2000) pp. 74–80. 107. Nancy Cook ‘The Only Real Indians Are Western Ones: Authenticity, Regionalism, and Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, or Sylvester Long’ in William R. Handley and Nathaniel Lewis (eds.) True West: Authenticity and the American West (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), pp. 140–152. 108. Garroutte’s Real Indians is an excellent analysis of this phenomenon, but even her reflection upon Long’s identity is guarded, drawing few clear conclusions about the nature or legitimacy of his indigeneity. See Garroutte Real Indians, pp. 1–10.

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109. Angela Aleiss ‘Iron Eyes Cody: Wannabe Indian’ Cinéaste, Vol. 25 (1999): 30–31. 110. Luis Remesar (dir.) ‘Skip Lowe Interview with Iron Eyes Cody and Wendy Foote Cody’ Skip E. Lowe Looks at Hollywood (Los Angeles and New  York, N.D.), available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= rnagOziqXfo (last accessed January 27th, 2020). 111. Espera Oscar De Corti (Prod.) ‘American Indian Awareness with Iron Eyes Cody’ (Unknown), available from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=bwa4gG2h-MU (last accessed January 27th, 2020). 112. ‘Pollution—Keep America Beautiful Campaign’ Ad Council: https:// www.adcouncil.org/Our-Campaigns/The-Classics/Pollution-KeepAmerica-Beautiful-Iron-Eyes-Cody. 113. Aleiss ‘Iron Eyes Cody: Wannabe Indian’, p. 30. 114. Allen Barra ‘The Education of Little Fraud’ Salon, December 21st, 2001: https://www.salon.com/2001/12/20/carter_6/. 115. Dan T.  Carter ‘The Transformation of the Klansman’ The New  York Times, October 4, 1991, p. 31. 116. Browder Slippery Characters, pp. 111–141. 117. David Treuer ‘Going Native: Why Do Writers Pretend to be Indians?’ Salon, March 7th, 2008: https://slate.com/culture/2008/03/why-dowriters-pretend-to-be-indians.html. 118. David Usborne ‘US Publishing Rocked by “Fake Author” Scandal’ The Independent, January 28th, 2006: https://www.independent.co.uk/ news/world/americas/us-publishing-rocked-by-fake-author-scandal-6110575.html. 119. Jonathan Gottschall The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Boston and New  York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), pp. 159–160; ‘Nasdijj the Not-So-Real Navajo’ Time Magazine, N.D.: http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1868982_1868981_1868974,00.html. 120. Robert J. Wallis Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Contested Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies, and Contemporary Pagans (New York; Routledge. 2006), p. 40. 121. Wouter J. Howard New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (New York: State University Press of New  York, 1998); ‘Don Juan and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ Time Magazine, March 5, 1973: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,903890,00.html; ‘Mystery Man’s Death Can’t End the Mystery; Fighting Over Carlos Casteneda’s Legacy’ The New York Times, August 19th, 1998: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/19/arts/ mystery-man-s-death-can-t-end-mystery-fighting-over-carlos-castanedas-legacy.html.

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122. Philip Jenkins Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality (Oxford and New  York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 4. 123. ‘Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality’ retrieved from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid= 730 (last accessed January 27th, 2020). 124. Tim Giago ‘Claiming Indian Heritage Becomes Popular’ Huffington Post, January 28th, 2008: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ claiming-indian-heritage-_b_83641. 125. James Lipton (wri.) and Jeff Wurtz (dir.) ‘Johnny Depp’ Inside the Actor’s Studio. Season Eight, Episode (New York: Bravo, 2002). 126. ‘Unmasking the Lone Ranger’s Leading Men: Real Life Heroes in Hammer and Depp’s Family Trees’ Ancestry.com, June 26th, 2013: https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2013/06/26/lone-ranger-heroeshammer-depp-family-trees/. 127. Tina Norris, Paul L.  Vines, and Elizabeth M.  Hoeffel ‘The American Indian and Alaska Native Population: 2010’ 2010 Census Briefs (Washington: U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Census Bureau, 2012): https://www.census.gov/ history/pdf/c2010br-10-112019.pdf. 128. Circe Sturm Becoming Indian: The Struggle Over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-First Century (Santa Fe: School of Advances Research Press, 2010), pp. 31–87. 129. The vast increase in those identifying as Native American from 2000–2010 was predicted by the change from 1990 to 2000, in which a 26.4% increase in Native Americans was recorded against a total population increase of 13.2%. See ‘The American Indian Population: 2000’ 2000 Census Briefs (Washington: U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Census Bureau, 2001): https://www. census.gov/prod/2001pubs/mso01aian.pdf. 130. Kim Tallbear ‘Genomic Articulations of Indigeneity’ in Teves, Smith, and Raheja (eds.) Native Studies Keywords, pp.  130–156; Rebecca Naggle ‘Op-Ed: I am a Cherokee Woman. Elizabeth Warren is Not’ Think Progress, November 30th, 2017: https://thinkprogress.org/elizabethwarren-is-not-cherokee-c1ec6c91b696/. 131. Circe Strum ‘Blood Politics, Racial Classification, and Cherokee National Identity: The Trials and Tribulations of the Cherokee Freedmen’ American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 22 (1998): 230–258. 132. Kat Chow ‘Judge Rules That Cherokee Freedmen Have Right to Tribal Citizenship’ NPR, August 31st, 2017: https://www.npr.org/sections/ thetwo-way/2017/08/31/547705829/judge-rules-that-cherokee-

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freedmen-have-right-to-tribal-citizenship. For quote, see the placard prominently featured on the headline image. 133. ‘Repossession’ Grand Theft Auto V, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 4, Directed by Rod Edge, Written by Dan Houser, Robert Humphries, and Michael Unsworth (New York: Rockstar/Take Two, 2013 and 2014). 134. Although rare, some mainstream media has  attempted to engage with Native American identity  politics. Vision Question (1985), featured a character who (falsely) styles himself as a ‘half-Indian spiritual adviser’. The novel Not Enough Indians by Harry Shearer (best known for his voice acting work in The Simpsons), also tells the story of a fictional American town which, to avoid bankruptcy, creates a new, fictitious Indian identity for itself in order to open a casino; much of the humour in the book is derived from the increasingly ludicrous ways in which the non-Indian townsfolk interpret their new identity. In a more direct engagement with the issue, the fourth season of The Sopranos features a story in which a character attempts to end a Columbus Day protest by Native Americans by threatening to reveal that Iron Eyes Cody was not Native American (more details on Iron Eyes Cody can be found later in this article). See Harry Shearer Not Enough Indians (Boston: Justin, Charles, & Co., 2006). 135. For a discussion on perceived Indian anti-modernism see Edward MacDowell ‘Antimodernism, and “Playing Indian” in the “Indian Suite”’ The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 87 (2004): 370–422. For quote see “Lamar Down” Grand Theft Auto V, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 4, Directed by Rod Edge, Written by Dan Houser, Robert Humphries, and Michael Unsworth (New York: Take Two, 2013 and 2014). 136. ‘Chop’ Grand Theft Auto V. 137. For examples, see Dean Chavers ‘5 Fake Indians: Checking a Box Doesn’t Make You Native’ Indian Country Today, October 15th, 2014: https:// newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/5-fake-indians-checking-abox-doesn-t-make-you-native-Z9mn2ErpHEWl5BDNU9LJRw; ‘Open Letter from Indigenous Women Scholars Regarding Discussions of Andrea Smith’ Indian Country Today, July 7th, 2015: https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/open-letter-from-Indigenouswomen-scholars-regarding-discussions-of-andrea-smith-5jTCIy_ mHUCCE26kGsH49g. 138. ‘President Donald J.  Trump Proclaims November 2017 as National Native American Heritage Month’ White House, October 31st, 2017: https://www.WhiteHouse.gov/presidential-actions/president-donaldj-trump-proclaims-november-2017-national-native-american-heritagemonth/; ‘Presidential Proclamation on National Native American Heritage Month, 2018’ White House, October 31st, 2019: https://www.

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White House.gov/presidential-actions/presidential-proclamationnational-native-american-heritage-month-2018/. 139. ‘Presidential Proclamation on National Native American Heritage Month, 2019’ White House, October 31st, 2019: https://www.White House.gov/pr esidential-actions/pr esidential-pr oclamationnational-native-american-heritage-month-2019/. 140. ‘Presidential Proclamation on National Native American Heritage Month, 2019’. 141. @realDonaldTrump ‘They name teams out of STRENGTH, not weakness, but now the Washington Redskins & Cleveland Indians, two fabled sports franchises, look like they are going to be changing their names in order to be politically correct. Indians, like Elizabeth Warren, must be very angry right now!’ Twitter, July 6th, 2020: https://twitter.com/ realDonaldTrump/status/1280203174008303616. 142. Responding to a similar, but not identical, case, a group of Indigenous women scholars wrote in an open letter: ‘we recognize that histories of “playing Indian” have gone hand in hand with dispossession of land in Indian Territory during allotment. Playing Indian is enabled by and supports the dominant narrative that Indigenous peoples are vanishing or already vanished. The material consequences of that narrative includes ongoing claims by the state, by science, and by non-Indigenous individuals to Indigenous lands, sacred sites, remains, and both individual and group representations of us. Our concerns are grounded in these histories, and we challenge both individual and structural forms of Indigenous erasure.’ ‘Open Letter from Indigenous Women Scholars Regarding Discussions of Andrea Smith’. 143. For examples see Rachel Frazin ‘Trump Calls Warren “Pocahontas,” Knocks Wealth Tax’ The Hill, July 12th, 2019: https://thehill.com/ homenews/administration/473543-trump-calls-warren-pocahontasknocks-wealth-tax; Maya Oppenheim ‘Trump Repeats Racial Slur Against Elizabeth Warren, Calling Senator “Pocahontas”’ The Independent, September 30th, 2018: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ americas/trump-elizabeth-warren-pocahontas-racial-slur-repeats-presidential-run-a8562136.html; Jordyn Phelps ‘What’s Behind Trump’s “Pocahontas” Taunt of Warren’ ABC News, October 16th, 2018: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-pocahontas-taunt-warren/ story?id=58530657.

CHAPTER 5

Epilogue

Abstract  The Trump administration does not exist in an Indigenous-­ facing vacuum. It is part of an Americas-wide system which frequently represses or marginalises Native American voices. From the Trudeau government in Canada to the Bolsonara administration in Brazil, the Trump administration is only one aspect of a continent-spanning colonialist process. This concluding chapter seeks to place the Trump administration in a broader pan-American context whilst highlighting areas of interest for future research. Keywords  Brazil • Jair Bolsonaro • Amazon • Evo Morales • Bolivia • Justin Trudeau • Canada The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages … American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tarter, New Zealander and Maori—in each case the victor, horrible though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundation for the future greatness of a mighty people. —Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt (Roosevelt The Winning of the West, Volume III, p. 45)

On January 23, 2020, Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s controversial, right wing president, boasted that ‘the Indian had changed, he is evolving and © The Author(s) 2020 D. R. Reid, Native American Racism in the Age of Donald Trump, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58718-5_5

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becoming more and more, a human being like us’.1 For Bolsonaro and many of his supporters, a key aim is the setting of Brazil’s Indigenous peoples on a course that will ultimately lead to their disappearance. In 1998, the future president even went so far as to heap praise on the American cavalry whilst lamenting Brazil’s failure to ‘decimate the Indians’ in a comparable manner.2 That no longer being an option, Bolsonaro instead suggested that the government ‘demarcate indigenous reserves in a size compatible with the population’. In other words, to greatly reduce the size of tribal lands.3 For his part, Trump has projected friendship and transnational legitimacy onto his Brazilian counterpart, praising, for example, Bolsonaro’s handling of the Amazon fire crisis in 2019: ‘I have gotten to know President [Bolsonaro] well in our dealings with Brazil. He is working very hard on the Amazon fires and in all respects doing a great job for the people of Brazil—Not easy. He and his country have the full and complete support of the USA!’4 Trump failed to note that Bolsonaro’s own policies may have directly exacerbated the Amazon crisis. An avid supporter of development in the rainforest, Bolsonaro has repeatedly signalled greater tolerance for logging and mining activities in the region—their impact on Indigenous peoples (which is substantial and potentially catastrophic) being of little importance.5 Indeed, if Indigenous peoples were associated with lands of a ‘size compatible with [their] population’, as Bolsonaro desires, they could be removed almost entirely from the discourse. As it stands, environmental and ecological change centres Indigenous peoples in the discussion about climate change and the exploitation of rainforests.6 About this, Trump has said nothing. His interest in Brazil’s Indigenous peoples, and his opinion on the impact of non-consensual eco-systemic change upon them, is conspicuous only by its absence.7 The Trump administration does not exist in an Indigenous-facing vacuum. Across the Americas, the ongoing plight of hundreds of different Indigenous peoples and cultures is subject to vast power imbalances daily affected by the whims, ideologies, and historical perspectives of those who control the government and apparatus of their respective administrations. In Bolivia, the country’s first Indigenous president, Evo Morales, was ousted in 2019. Throughout his presidency, Morales had pushed for reforms that strained the country’s relationship with the United States.8 According to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), a think tank which ‘advances ideas rooted in [their] belief in … American strength and global leadership’, Moraels’s re-election in 2009

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posed a fundamental challenge to democracy in the country, because it ‘subvert[ed] the country’s constitution’ whilst relying on support from ‘Cuban and Venezuelan dictators’ for legitimacy.9 Even as postcolonial discourse and Indigenous pride seemed to increase as a result of Morales’s presidency, opposition to him solidified in the United States.10 Following Morales’s resignation, the White House issued a statement that reiterated the core argument made by the AEI almost a decade prior: Morales’s departure, they said, ‘paves the way for the Bolivian people to have their voices heard’ following the ousted president’s attempts to ‘override the Bolivian constitution’.11 At the other end of the continent, Justin Trudeau’s lofty rhetoric about ‘reconciliation’ with Canada’s First Nations has failed to lead to a meaningful shift in government policy. Since becoming Prime Minister in 2015, Trudeau has promised significant changes to government spending, respectful negotiations with First Nation governments, and justice for the thousands of Indigenous children who were adopted out of their birth cultures in the 1960s. Few of his promises have been meaningfully actioned, however, with much of his lofty rhetoric giving way to inaction, at best, or the continuation of anti-First Nation colonialist policies at worst.12 Trump and the United States are part of a wider, trans-American movement (contemporaneous and historical) which has consistently ignored, overruled, relocated, disenfranchised, intimidated, and marginalised Indigenous peoples. Trump exists on a continuum that connects him to other American leaders, from Justin Trudeau in Canada to Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Across the Americas, centuries-old colonialist processes continue to unfold. To examine the Trump administration through a lens shaped by Indigenous affairs and historic perspectives is to connect its policies with much larger trends, both within the United States itself and across the Americas. This book is far from the final word on Trump’s relationship with Native Americans. Indeed, there is significant work to do going forward. Indigenous peoples and the colonialist attitudes which are directed towards them are neither peripheral nor niche concerns. They are linked to ideologies with roots planted deep in the cultures of the Americas, transcending national boundaries and impacting how governments, nation-states, and other actors behave. Histories of exploitation and colonisation are not closed books, lessons to be learned about long since concluded. They are ongoing processes that defy easy periodisation, occurring occasionally in the full glare of the media, but often in obscurity,

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away from the view of a wider public whose understanding of the issues (and their context) is likely to be fragmentary. This book was created to provide context, discussions, and analysis relevant to the Trump administration and its relationship with the US Native American population, but there is more to be said on the subject and there are other contexts into which these discussions need to be placed. Trans-national and deeper trans-cultural approaches will likely lead to fruitful pieces of analysis in the future. Donald Trump and others like him are part of an ongoing set of historic processes, traditions that can, depending upon policy and attitudinal changes, be perpetuated, disrupted, hampered, or enhanced. History is not an objectively understood field. It is highly contested and often co-opted by political or ideological extremists who use it to selectively support modern ideas. Understanding the relationship between the past and the present, the way in which colonialist histories are memorialised, curated, and transmitted between generations can add significant depth when studying modern administrations which must interact with Indigenous peoples. To centre history in this discussion is to recognise the important role that perceived historic narratives play in the age of Trump, whilst offering a corrective narrative based upon primary research and the in-depth studies already carried out by the academe. This book does not offer a definitive corrective narrative, for none can exist in such a subjective field. But it has aimed to offer one which is at least credibly rooted in the available evidence. Such is a small but important act in a socio-political context which seems to privilege ‘alternative facts’ as highly as it does.

Notes 1. ‘Brazil’s Indigenous to Sue Bolsonaro for Saying they are “Evolving”’ Reuters, January 24th, 2020: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-brazilindigenous/brazils-indigenous-to-sue-bolsonaro-for-saying-theyre-evolving-idUKKBN1ZN1T8; for the most part, media attention dwelled upon the ‘evolving’ insult, whilst ignoring the ideological assimilationist underpinning which Bolsonaro then articulated: ‘What we want is to integrate him into society so he can own his land.’ In some articles this key phrase is not mentioned, in others it is quoted by subjected to no analysis or contextualisation. For examples see Tom Phillips ‘Jair Bolsonaro’s Racist Comment Sparks Outrage from Indigenous Groups’ The Guardian, January 24th, 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ jan/24/jair-bolsonaro-racist-comment-sparks-outrage-indigenous-

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groups; ‘Brazil Indigenous Groups Accuse Bolsonaro of Racist Comment’ The New  York Times, January 24th, 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/ aponline/2020/01/24/world/americas/ap-lt-brazil-bolsonaro-indigenous.html; ‘“The Indian is Becoming [a] Human Being Like Us”, Jair Bolsonaro’ Latin American Post, January 27th, 2020: https://latinamericanpost.com/31826-the-indian-is-becoming-human-being-like-usjair-bolsonaro. 2. ‘Jair Bolsonaro, Correio Braziliense, April 12th, 1998’ as quoted in Mariana Simões ‘Brazil’s Bolsonaro on the Environment, in His Own Words’ The New York Times, August 27th, 2019: https://www.nytimes. com/2019/08/27/world/americas/bolsonaro-brazil-environment.html. 3. João Ker ‘“More and More Human”, “Smelly” and “Mass Manoeuvre”: Bolsonaro’s Statements About Indians’ Estadão, January 2th, 2020: https://politica.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,cada-vez-mais-humanofedorentos-e-massa-de-manobra-as-declaracoes-de-bolsonaro-sobreindios,70003171335. 4. @realDonaldTrump ‘I have gotten to know President [Bolsonaro] well in our dealings with Brazil. He is working very hard on the Amazon fires and in all respects doing a great job for the people of Brazil—Not easy. He and his country have the full and complete support of the USA!’ Twitter, August 27th, 2019: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/ 1166357258726498304. 5. Indeed, environmental and ecological changes often have particularly destructive impact on Indigenous peoples wherever they are located. See Randall S. Abate and Elizabeth Ann Kronk ‘Commonality Among Unique Indigenous Communities: An Introduction to Climate Change and its Impacts on Indigenous Peoples’ Tulane Environmental Law Journal, Vol. 26 (2013): 179–195; Gabriela Canedo Vásquez Inequality and Climate Change: Perspectives from the South (Dakar: Codesria, 2015), pp. 121–136; Kathryn Hochstetler ‘Environmental Politics in Brazil: The Cross Pressures of Democracy, Development, and Global Projection’ in Peter R. Kingstone and Timothy J. Power Democratic Brazil Divided (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), pp. 103–123; Kyle Powys Whyte ‘Indigenous Women, Climate Change Impacts, and Collective Action’ Hypatia, Vol. 29 (2014): 599–616; Marybeth Long Martello ‘Arctic Indigenous Peoples as Representations and Representatives of Climate Change’ Social Studies of Science, Vol. 38 (2008): 351–376; ‘The Real Reason the Amazon is on Fire’ Time Magazine, August 26th, 2019: https://time.com/5661162/ why-the-amazon-is-on-fire; Steven Mufson and Andrew Freedman ‘What You Need to Know About the Amazon Rainforest Fires’ The Washington

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Post, August 27th, 2019: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climateenvironment/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-amazon-rainforestfires/2019/08/27/ac82b21e-c815-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story. html; Erin Corbertt ‘What’s Happening in the Amazon? Brazil’s Rainforest Has Been on Fire for Three Weeks’ Fortune, August 25th, 2019: https:// fortune.com/2019/08/25/causes-of-amazon-forest-fires/. 6. For quote see João Ker ‘“More and More Human”, “Smelly” and “Mass Manoeuvre”: Bolsonaro’s Statements About Indians’ Estadão, January 2th, 2020: https://politica.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,cada-vez-maishumano-fedorentos-e-massa-de-manobra-as-declaracoes-de-bolsonarosobre-indios,70003171335. 7. For an example of media coverage surrounding Trump’s reaction to the Amazon crisis and Bolsonaro, see Caitlin Oprysko ‘Trump Backs Brazilian President as he Rejects Aid for Fighting Amazon Fires’ Politico, August 27th, 2019: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/27/presidenttrump-twitter-brazil-jair-bolsonaro-amazon-rainforest-wildfires-1476072. 8. Jonas Wolff Re-engaging Latin America’s Left? US Relations with Bolivia and Ecuador from Bush to Obama (Frankfurt: Peace Research Institute, 2011). 9. Roger F.  Noriega Evo Morales’s Reelection: Last Stand for Democracy? (Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 2009). 10. Rasaleen Howard ‘Language, Signs, and the Performance of Power: The Discursive Struggle over Decolonization in the Bolivia of Evo Morales’ Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 37 (2010): 176–194; Jonas Wolff Challenges to Democracy Promotion: The Case of Bolivia (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011). 11. ‘Statement from President Donald J. Trump Regarding the Resignation of Bolivian President Evo Morales’, November 11th, 2019: https://www. whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-donald-jtrump-regarding-resignation-bolivian-president-evo-morales. 12. Leyland Cecco ‘Canada Indigenous Leaders Divided Over Trudeau’s Pledge to Put Them First’ The Guardian, February 18th, 2018: https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/18/canada-indigenous-firstnations-justin-trudeau-pledge-reaction; Joanna Smith ‘Trudeau Defends Record on Indigenous Issues, as Stump Speech Mentions are Brief’ CBC News, October 20th, 2019: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/justin-trudeau-indigenous-winnipeg-1.5328086; Jorge Barrera ‘Trudeau Ducks Question on Whether He’d Accept First Nations Child Welfare Compensation Ruling’ CBC News, September 21st, 2019: https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/trudeau-town-hall-child-­

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welfare-1.5292200; Alicia Elliott ‘Canada Doesn’t Care About Indigenous Children’ Huffpost, October 9th, 2019: https://www.washingtonpost. com/opinions/2019/10/09/canada-doesnt-care-about-indigenouschildren; Joanna Smith ‘First Nations Funding Cap is Still There, Despite Trudeau’s Promise’ Huffpost, June 17th, 2016: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/06/16/political-will-to-lift-first-nations-funding-cap-isthere-needs-time-chief_n_10515960.html.

Index1

A Affordable Care Act, see Obama care Anti-Indian radicalism, 56–62 Arnow, Harriet Simpson, 67, 68 Auga Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, 25 B Baldwin, Thomas, 66 Bannon, Steven, 4, 6 Baum, L. Frank, 33, 34, 101 Black Hawk, 63–66, 84n86, 111 Black Lives Matter, 19, 31 Blood quantum, 21, 97–99, 120, 128n56 Blue Licks, defeat at, 53 Bolivia, 138 Boone, Daniel, 6, 51, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 70, 85n97, 85n100, 101, 105

media about, 6, 68, 105 media depictions of, 68, 85n100 Boston Tea Party, 94 Brazil, 108, 137–139 Buffalo Bill, see Cody, William C Canada, 26, 110, 139 Cannibalism, 94 Cherokee, 43n52, 51, 75n8, 77n13, 92, 93, 110, 111, 114, 116, 117 Choctaw, 2, 3, 10n2, 59 Cody, William, 101, 102 Columbus, Christopher, 31, 108 Cooper, James Fenimore, 66 Coronavirus, 30, 31, 45n61 Covington, 73n2 Cowboys and Indians, 27 Creek, 3, 33, 48n76 Custer, George Armstrong, 6, 20–22

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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INDEX

D Depp, Johnny, 107, 116, 117 Disney, 103, 104, 107, 116 DNA, 96, 116, 120, 123n19 E Espera Oscar dr Corti, see Iron Eyes Cody F Fake Indian biographies, 108–119 Filson, John, 65, 85n97 Flint, Timothy, 66, 85n100, 86n103 Frontier, 6, 58, 66, 68, 81n53, 104, 105 G General Allotment Act, 97 Grand Theft Auto V, 118, 119 H Harriet Tubman $20 bill, 4 Hermitage, 4 H.R. 312, 24 I Idle No More, 26–32 Illinois, 55, 63, 64, 82n67 Indian Removal, 3, 5, 11n11, 21, 37n17, 47–48n76, 52–53, 64, 66, 71 Iron Eyes Cody, 113, 135n134 Iroquois Confederacy, 32

J Jackson, Andrew, 3–5, 7, 11n11, 14n29, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 33, 37n17, 43n52, 44n54, 47–48n76, 64, 80n50, 111 Jackson, Lyncoya, 33, 47–48n76 K Kentucky, 50–53, 55–63, 65–68, 70–72, 76n11, 124n21 Kerry, John F., 84n86 Keystone XL, 7, 26–28, 30, 42n49 L Lakota, 20, 33, 101, 105, 107, 115 Last of the Mohicans, 66, 68, 107 Lenape, 71, 72 Long Lance, Chief Buffalo Child, 110–114, 117, 132n106, 132n107, 132n108 Long, Sylvester, see Long Lance, Chief Buffalo Child M Make American Great Again (MAGA), 50 Marshall, Humphrey, 65, 85n97 Mashantucket Pequot, 24, 96, 98, 99, 109, 121 Mashpee Wampanoag, 25, 96 McGary, Hugh, 53, 63, 84n93 Miller, Stephen, 6 Mnuchin, Steven, 5, 6 Moluntha, 53

 INDEX 

N Native American Heritage Month proclamation, 28 Native Americans, depictions in popular media of, 119 Native Americans in the US census, 95, 116 Navajo, 2, 5, 106, 114 Navajo Code Talkers, 1–5, 32, 46n70, 47n73 New Age spiritualism, 115 Nez Perce, 71 O Obama, Barrack, 13n21, 26–28, 96 Obama care, 28 Odawa, 62 Ojibwa, 62, 110, 111 One Drop Rule, 97 Oneidas, Tuscaroras, Mohawk Cayugas, Senecas, Onondagas, see Iroquois Confederacy Oral histories, 52, 53, 66 P Paucatuck Pequot, 100 Pennsylvania, 72, 76n11 Phillips, Nathan, 50, 76n11, 77n13 Psychological warfare, 57 Q Quick, Tom, 72, 73 R Rolls, Dawes, 98, 117, 126n41 S Second World War, 1, 2, 10n4, 46n70 Shane, John, 52–57, 59, 65

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Shawnee, 32, 33, 51, 60, 62, 75n8, 78n26, 82n67 Shawnee and Cherokee relations, 51 Statues, removal of, 31 T Tanner, John, 62 Tecumseh, 32, 60, 61, 82n67 Tenskwatawa, 32, 60, 61 Treaty of Fallen Timbers, 32 Tribal sovereignty, 18–20, 23–26, 28, 29, 31, 34, 39n35, 41n39, 42n49, 42–43n52, 43n53, 92, 100, 119 Trump, Donald, 1, 18–34, 69, 92, 138 bankruptcies of casino businesses, 4 declaration of a ‘National Garden’ by, 31, 69 executive order issued by, 11 gaming interests, 23 inauguration of, 27 talking to Don Imus, 20 talking to the Native American Affairs Committee, 23, 109 Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians, 25, 96 2016, Election of, 13n25, 92 V Vanishing Indian, 7, 8, 18, 19, 21, 37n17, 92, 93 Violence, stories about, 65 W Warren, Elizabeth, 5, 6, 8, 82n67, 92, 93, 95–97, 99, 100, 119–121, 121n4, 122n5, 123n18, 136n141 Wounded Knee, 33, 61, 101, 105