Playing Indian

Format: Paperback Language: English ISBN: 0300080670 ISBN13: 9780300080674 Release Date: September 1999 Publisher: Yale University Press Length: 262 Pages Weight: 1.50 lbs. Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 9.4" The Boston Tea Party, the Order of Red Men, Camp Fire Girls, Boy Scouts, Grateful Dead concerts: just a few examples of white Americans' tendency to appropriate Indian dress and act out Indian roles "A valuable contribution to Native American studies."--Kirkus Reviews This provocative book explores how white Americans have used their ideas about Native Americans to shape national identity in different eras--and how Indian people have reacted to these imitations of their native dress, language, and ritual. At the Boston Tea Party, colonial rebels played Indian in order to claim an aboriginal American identity. In the nineteenth century, Indian fraternal orders allowed men to rethink the idea of revolution, consolidate national power, and write nationalist literar