Native Apparitions

Critical Perspectives on Hollywood’s Indians

Steve Pavlik, M. Elise Marubbio, Tom Holm

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780816535477
• eBook ISBN:
  9780816537402
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism
• Index: Social Sciences

In Cherokee, the term for motion picture is a-da-yv-la-ti or a-da-yu-la-ti, meaning "something that appears." In essence, motion pictures are machine-produced apparitions. While the Cherokee language recognizes that movies are not reality, Western audiences may on some level assume that film portrayals offer sincere depictions of imagined possibilities, creating a logic where what is projected must in part be true, stereotype or not.
 
Native Apparitions offers a critical intervention and response to Hollywood's representations of Native peoples in film, from historical works by director John Ford to more contemporary works, such as Apocalypto and Avatar. But more than a critique of stereotypes, this book is a timely call for scholarly activism engaged in Indigenous media sovereignty. The collection clusters around three approaches: retrospective analysis, individual film analysis, and Native- and industry-centered testimonials and interviews, which highlight indigenous knowledge and cultural context, thus offering a complex and multilayered dialogic and polyphonic response to Hollywood's representations.
 
Using an American Indian studies framework, Native Apparitions deftly illustrates the connection between Hollywood's representations of Native peoples and broader sociopolitical and historical contexts connected to colonialism, racism, and the Western worldview. Most importantly, it shows the impact of racializing stereotypes on Native peoples, and the resilience of Native peoples in resisting, transcending, and reframing Hollywood's Indian tropes.

CONTRIBUTORS

Chadwick Allen
Richard Allen
Joanna Hearne
Tom Holm
Jan-Christopher Horak
Jacqueline Land
Andrew Okpeaha MacLean
M. Elise Marubbio
Steve Pavlik
Rose Roberts
Myrton Running Wolf
Richard M. Wheelock

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface: A Dedication in Memory of Steve Pavlik
• Indians, American Indian Studies, and the Depiction of Indigenous Peoples in American Commercial Cinema: An Introduction
• Thank You, Adam Sandler and Co., for Giving Us a Native American Rosa Parks Moment
• Reconsidering America’s Errand: Wilderness and “Indians” in Cinema
• Fighting the White Man’s Wars (on the Silver Screen): A Look at the Images of Native American Servicemen in Film
• The Dys-passion of the Indian, or Tonto Goes to Town
• Look at the Heart of The Searchers: The Centrality of Look to John Ford’s Commentary on Racism
• Searching for Pocahontas: The Portrayal of an Indigenous Icon in Terrence Malick’s The New World
• The Four Horsemen of Mel Gibson’s Epic Apocalypto: Racism, Violence, Mendacity, and Nonsense
• Avatar: Colonization Marches On . . .
• Through Indian Eyes: Programming Native American Cinema
• “You Have to Define Yourself as an Inuit Person, If That’s What You Want to Do”: An Interview with Andrew Okpeaha MacLean
• Filmography
• Contributors
• Index