Print View - The Fight Against Native American Mascoting

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Ben West and Aviva Kempner’s Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting is a brilliant, powerful, provocative and evocative exploration and deconstruction of the depiction of North America’s Indigenous people in popular culture, primarily in the sports world, but also in other arenas as well. Cowboy and Indian movies – or the “Western,” as the genre depicting First Nations people came to be known – has long been among Hollywood’s most popular productions. Shortly after the invention of cinema, filmmakers started shooting Native Americans. By 1894 Thomas Edison Studios shot the seconds’-long Sioux Ghost Dance and Buffalo Dance, featuring Sioux members of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show performing the title dances to be viewed via kinetoscopes. 1898 also saw Edison’s Indian War Council.

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The post The Fight Against Native American Mascoting appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ed Rampell.

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