"American Indians and the American Imaginary" considers the power of representations of Native Americans in American public culture. The book s wide-ranging case studies move from colonial captivity narratives to modern film, from the camp fire to the sports arena, from legal and scholarly texts to tribally-controlled museums and cultural centers.The author s ethnographic approach to what she calls representational practices focus on the emergence, use, and transformation of representations in the course of social life. Central themes include identity and otherness, indigenous cultural politics, and cultural memory, property, performance, citizenship, and transformation. "American Indians and the American Imaginary" will interest general readers as well as scholars and students in anthropology, history, literature, education, cultural studies, gender studies, American Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. It is essential reading for those interested in the processes through which national, tribal, and indigenous identities have been imagined, contested, and refigured. "

This book reexamines the Anglo-American literary genre known as the ?Indian captivity narrative? in the context of the complex historical practice of captivity across cultural borders in colonial North America. This detailed and nuanced study of the relationship between practice and representation on the one hand, and identity and alterity on the o

American Indians and the American Imaginary considers the power of representations of Native Americans in American public culture. The book's wide-ranging case studies move from colonial captivity narratives to modern film, from the camp fire to the sports arena, from legal and scholarly texts to tribally-controlled museums and cultural centres. The author's ethnographic approach to what she calls "representational practices" focus on the emergence, use, and transformation of representations in the course of social life. Central themes include identity and otherness, indigenous cultural politics, and cultural memory, property, performance, citizenship and transformation. American Indians and the American Imaginary will interest general readers as well as scholars and students in anthropology, history, literature, education, cultural studies, gender studies, American Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. It is essential reading for those interested in the processes through which national, tribal, and indigenous identities have been imagined, contested, and refigured.

Addressing the origins of racism and oppression in American society, this book provides an analysis of the political, psychological and spiritual climate that made possible the imprisonment and slaughter of American Indians by the British between 1576 and 1736. It describes the capture and manipulation of fabled Indians such as Squanto (who brought seeds of maize to starving pilgrims and taught them how to cultivate it) and Pocahontas (the Indian Princess), as well as the early Inuit. The author goes beyond these isolated incidences of captivity to explore the underlying impulse to capture - the tradition of oppression. She looks at a range of fundamental issues, including human prey, clerical authority, wilderness seduction and colonial power, and the book is laced with photographs and captivity narratives and romances written by captives as well as captors.