-
Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination (review)
- Common Knowledge
- Duke University Press
- Volume 10, Issue 2, Spring 2004
- p. 362
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Rent from DeepDyveCommon Knowledge 10.2 (2004) 362
[Access article in PDF]
Shari Huhndorf, Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 220 pp.
Sometimes imitation is neither sincere nor flattering. Huhndorf argues that when white Americans mimic Native American traditions, impersonate Native identities, and collect and view Native-made objects, they simultaneously attempt to conceal and reenact their violent conquest of Native America. The range of people implicated in this mess (from Arctic explorers to New Age spiritualists) suggests that no contact between white and Native America is unimplicated. Huhndorf poses a question that, despite several decades of academic soul-searching, is still worth asking: can there be virtue in this relationship until white America articulates an identity that acknowledges the violence of its (past and present) relationship with Native America?
Nancy Elam Squires works on "Indian" fiction and poetry by Native American and non-Native authors, and on the history and literature of the American West and Alaska.
- Purchase/rental options available:
