The comic was published in the 1950's by Dell Comics, I choose to read and focus on issue #1, first published in 1951. The comic series ran for four years, from 1951 to 1958, and had 33 issuses. The series follows a young native-American as he struggles to survive in a pre colonial American landscape. I have a link below.
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/preview/index.php?did=15592
After reading the comic, I was surprised by the lack of stereotypes, it did have a few here and there, but nothing too offensive or harmful. However, I found the comic harmful for other reasons. In the end of the day, the comic takes culture of an entire race and prints it for profit. Even if it is more respectable when compared to other comics at the time, it still exploits another culture.
This deals with the racism portion of the course. In fact, I found strange similarities between this comic and the film, Dear White People (2014). This is due to the film exploring the concept unintentional racism, how white people constantly misrepresent African-American culture, even when they dillusional think they are respecting it. Another great example would be the characters of Black Vulcan and Apache Chief in the Super Friends animated series. Both were meant to be respectful of other cultures and races, but instead exploited them.
Hi Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI audited this course last year, and my M.A. thesis is related to Indigenous representations in Pop Culture. And somehow I am still on the mailing list so I always check out the posts.
First off, I think it is so cool you decided to choose this comic. So many other comics out there depict racism and stereotypes that are far more obvious in their characterizations.
However, I wanted to point out that there is a great deal of racism present in this comic, however subtly. ( I am also a teacher and so I cannot turn down a teachable moment).
First off,I want to point out that traditionally, First Nations people only wear their regalia-- Head-dresses, and feathers--for ceremony. These possessions are prized and given only for highest honours. To risk damage during a hunt would be disrespectful for the intent they were presented. This is across all nations, not just the Pawnee. To see the chief and other men of the communities wearing regalia, is indicative of the writer's ignorance/naivete of Indigenous culture. This is what Thomas King would refer to as "Dead Indians"*. Perpetuating this representation only stands to reinforce the idea that First Nations people have died out. We rarely see them dressed so, and so therefore they must not exist, when in truth First Nations people hold one of the highest rates of population growth (at least here in Canada)
Second, the Pawnee--the apparent focus of this issue--have their traditional lands in the Oklahoma region, whereas the first story is set at Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump, Alberta Canada,and the traditional lands of the Blackfoot people. Now while it is reasonable that outlying families of Pawnee may have reached that territory, it is highly unlikely that the Blackfoot would have permitted a buffalo run to occur on their land. Good for storytelling, but not very realistic in a comic that appears to want to promote itself as realistic and/or accurate.
( end of part 1 since I apparently have a limit)
Part 2.
ReplyDeleteThe second story depicted the Pawnee then down in the Pueblo of New Mexico,which is more likely to have occurred, geographically. My issue though is that in all cases, this comic features the warring between communities when typically they counted coup. Counting coup was like a game that was used to show dominance rather than committing bloodshed with neighbouring communities (in the east, this was much like a game of lacrosse). Additionally scalp hunting is actually a practice of the white settlers. The settlers would present scalps of the "indians" that they killed for the purpose of collecting bounties. To present the entire body was difficult given how difficult travel was back in the day, and so the scalp was taken as proof. It is this consistent normalised depiction of fearsome, threatening, warring people out to take advantage of others,that is the unnoticed stereotype that is very much in line with colonialism and the government's need to acquire land.
A couple of other small points. First, the names, are very whitened. By this I mean, unimaginative. Perhaps a petty comment to make but still is very much consistent with white authorship of Indigenous story-telling.
And finally, although perhaps is due to the quality of the issue when it was uploaded to the data base, is skin colour. To be fair, I would want to see an original copy still preserved to make an honest comment, but, if my suspicion is right, this, like many other comics of the era, was whitewashed. The skin is more pink than brown to make the story more palatable for the readers the comic was intended. Do you think Dell produced this comic for First Nations readers? Or was it mass produced for mainstream Americans?
This tale ( I am not as familiar with this comic as I am others) is very consistent with unintended racism, but the racism is there and highly visible. It has been the history of pop culture for non-indigenous authors to tell the stories of Indigenous people to shape the stories for their own purpose, be it selling comics or something more nefarious as colonization.
Thanks for posting this comic! And much luck with the rest of the course!
-cheers
*King, Thomas,(2012), The Inconvenient Indian, Anchor Canada, print.