SOCI 2070
The Imaginary Indian
Today’s Class
1.
2.
3.
Colonialism, ‘Indians’, Land and
Politics
The Rest in the West: Images of the
Imaginary Indian
Are discourses of the Imaginary Indian
‘innocent’?
Today’s Readings
Required
1.
Daniel Francis, The Imaginary Indian: The Image of
the Indian in Canadian Culture, 1-9, 219-224.
2.
Valda Blundell ‘Aboriginal Cultural Tourism in
Canada’ Joan Nicks and Jeannette Sloniowski (eds)
Slippery Pastimes: Reading the Popular in
Canadian Culture Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier
University Press, 2002, 37-60.
3.
Don Kelly ‘And Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, Get
Ready for some (Ab)Original Stand-up Comedy’
Drew Hayden Taylor (ed.) Me Funny Vancouver:
Douglas & McIntyre, 2005, 51-65.
The Imaginary Indian
“…my attention shifted from the display cases to the
people who were tending them. I became aware that
the facility was staffed entirely by Indians. But I
found myself thinking that they didn’t look like Indians
to me, the Indians I knew from my school books and
from the movies, the Indians, in fact, who were
depicted inside the museum displays I was looking
at.”
“The Indian is the invention of the European.”
Daniel Francis
Discourse


“a group of statements
which provide a
language for talking
about (representing) a
particular kind of
knowledge about a
topic”
“it also limits the other
ways in which the topic
can be constructed”
Stuart Hall

Produces
‘meaningful
knowledge’
 Influences social
practices


Has effects:
produces social
relationships
Connected to power:
not ‘innocent’
Land and Politics in British North America

Royal Proclamation of 1763
 Guaranteed Aboriginal title to land
 Land treaties negotiated to expand European
settlement

British North America Act, 1867
 ‘Indians’ and their lands are defined as a federal
responsibility
Land and Politics in British North America
• Indian Act, 1876
• Defined ‘Indians’
• “any male person of Indian blood reputed to belong to a particular
band, any child of such person and any woman who is or was
lawfully married to such a person”
• Reserve system
• Land set aside for Indians
• Government policy of assimilation
• Socialize Indians for integration into European
culture
The Imaginary Indian
“Europeans have tended to imagine the
Indian rather than know Native people,
thereby to project onto Native people all the
fears and hopes they have for the New World.
If America was a Garden of Eden, then
Indians must be seen as blessed innocents.
If America was an alien place, then Indians
must be seen to be frightful and bloodthirsty.”
Daniel Francis
Cowboys and Indians



Cowboys are good guys
Settlers are innocents
Indians are:






Bad guys
Wild and savage warriors
Uncivilized
Not trustworthy
Childlike
Simple minded: speak in
‘broken english’

The Violent Warrior
 The Drunken
Indian

Film Selections:


Stagecoach (1939)
Last of the Redmen
(1947)
Beyond the Wild West?
‘Real Indians’:
 Stoic (don’t show
emotions)
 Noble
 Victims
 Spiritual
 Connected to the
environment

The Noble Savage
 The Spiritual Indian

Film Selections:
 Indian in the
Cupboard (1995)
The Imaginary Indian

Cultural symbols and
practices thrown together
to create the image of the
Indian

Ideas, assumptions, and
forms of representation
that may intersect with,
justify/explain, and
produce practices of
economic, political, social,
and cultural
marginalization
Includes:
 The violent warrior
 The drunken Indian
 The noble savage
 The spiritual Indian