From maps, monuments, and architectural features to stamps and
currency, images of Native Americans have been used again and again
on visual expressions of American national identity since before
the country’s founding. In the first in-depth study of this
extraordinary archive, Cécile R. Ganteaume argues that these
representations are not empty symbols but reflect how official and
semi-official government institutions—from the U.S. Army and the
Department of the Treasury to the patriotic fraternal society Sons
of Liberty—have attempted to define what the country stands for.
Seen collectively and studied in detail, American Indian imagery on
a wide range of emblems—almost invariably distorted and bearing
little relation to the reality of Native American–U.S. government
relations—sheds light on the United States’ evolving sense of
itself as a democratic nation. Generation after generation,
Americans have needed to define anew their relationship with
American Indians, whose lands they usurped and whom they long
regarded as fundamentally different from themselves. Such images as
a Plains Indian buffalo hunter on the 1898 four-cent stamp and
Sequoyah’s likeness etched into glass doors at the Library of
Congress in 2013 reveal how deeply rooted American Indians are in
U.S. national identity. While the meanings embedded in these
artifacts can be paradoxical, counterintuitive, and contradictory
to their eras’ prevailing attitudes toward actual American
Indians, Ganteaume shows how the imagery has been crucial to the
ongoing national debate over what it means to be an American.
 Officially Indian is published in concert with the
Americans exhibition, which opens October 26, 2017, at the National
Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. American Indians
represent less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, yet names and
images of Indians are everywhere: military weapons, songs, town
names, advertising, and that holiday in November. Americans invites
visitors to take a closer look, and to ask why. Featuring nearly
350 objects and images, from a Tomahawk missile to baking powder
cans, Americans examines the staying power of four stories
(Thanksgiving, Pocahontas, the Trail of Tears, and the Battle of
Little Bighorn) that are woven into the fabric of both American
history and contemporary life. By highlighting what has been
remembered, contested, cherished, and denied about these stories,
and why they continue to resonate, this exhibition shows that
Americans have always been fascinated, conflicted, and profoundly
shaped by their relationship to American Indians.
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