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Reviewed by:
  • Native Apparitions: Critical Perspectives on Hollywood's Indians ed. by Steve Pavlik, M. Elise Marubbio, and Tom Holm
  • Michael Lerma (bio)
Native Apparitions: Critical Perspectives on Hollywood's Indians edited by Steve Pavlik, M. Elise Marubbio, and Tom Holm University of Arizona Press, 2017

native apparitions is an edited collection exhibiting three approaches to research: retrospective, individual film, and Native/industry-centered interviews (12). Essays on film legacies highlight a binary focus on "valorized noble" or "violent reactionary" Indianness. This book begins with Myrton Running Wolf's indictment of the film industry as having tremendous power and capability to force others to do what they would not otherwise do: set agendas on topics' salience and, therefore, prevent other topics from being portrayed in film and shape consciousness.1 The title Native Apparitions itself is powerful: "Typically, Indian people view spirits as powers, whether negative, positive, or even neutral. Powers have to be administered … so at the very least they do no harm" (5, 6). Stereotypes in film are spirits with a power all their own. These scholars negate stereotypes' negative impacts.

The book begins with "Indians, American Indian Studies, and the Depiction of Indigenous Peoples in American Commercial Cinema" by Steve Pavlik, M. Elise Marubbio, and Tom Holm. This introduction calls colonizers to task in their yearning to dismiss their bloodthirsty nation-building deeds through storytelling and filmmaking. Ignoring stereotypes in film works subtly on Indigenous individuals, as well as all consumers of film.

"Reconsidering America's Errand: Wilderness and 'Indians' in Cinema" by Richard M. Wheelock argues that the fight over framing the American Indian in films and media is a continuation of the battle to frame the origin of America in a positive light. "Fighting the White Man's Wars (on the Silver Screen): A Look at the Images of Native American Servicemen in Film" by Richard Allen and Tom Holm showcases Indigenous servicemen as either betrayed scouts or superwarriors. Both of these depictions represent something "safe" for exploitation by the US military, a simplistic binary leaving colonial actors little choice but to "take the land."

"The Dys-passion of the Indian, or Tonto Goes to Town" by Chadwick Allen explores Tonto's changes across time in film and media depictions. The theme across this eighty-year history is the experiences involving settler-colonial trauma and settler colonial power. In "Look at the Heart of The Searchers: The Centrality of Look to John Ford's Commentary on Racism," Marubbio discusses the epiphenomenal focus on racism toward Indigenous [End Page 171] people in spite of the more obvious sensationalization of violence toward Indigenous people and Indigenous women. The novelty of this essay is its attention to the treatment of Indigenous women in which racial and sexual tension color the storytelling.

In "Searching for Pocahontas: The Portrayal of an Indigenous Icon in Terrence Malick's The New World," Pavlik depicts the "real," or as historically accurate as has been portrayed, Pocahontas in The New World. This essay argues for the prismatic inclusion of agency exercised by Pocahontas, dismissing the "pawn" behavior previously depicted by other content.

In "The Four Horsemen of Mel Gibson's Epic Apocalypto: Racism, Violence, Mendacity, and Nonsense," Holm assesses Apocalypto as racist and inaccurate, calling Gibson to account for retelling the cliché involving Western fantasies of Indigenous savagery. This film is merely another attempt to absolve colonial actor nations of their guilt over land appropriation by way of the tired narrative that Indigenous nations brought collapse upon themselves.

In "Avatar: Colonization Marches On …" Rose Roberts questions the harmlessness and favoritism toward Avatar by arguing that it still fails to escape a classic film pitfall: longing for a time and place in which a "noble savage" can thrive in an ecologically sound environment overrun by imperialists. In "Through Indian Eyes: Programming Native American Cinema," Jan-Christopher Horak analyzes the multitude of stereotypes one should expect to find in classic western films and journey narratives. This work exemplifies the benefits of non-Native and Native collaboration in fighting back against stereotypes.

In "'You Have to Define Yourself as an Inuit Person, If That's What You Want to Do': An Interview with Andrew Okpeaha MacLean," Joanna...

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