"Going Native"

In her book, Huhndorf examines the role of Native identities in the creation of national history and in the reaffirmation of the dominant culture. She begins by discussing the phenomenon of “going native,” or emulating Native American rituals and ways of life. “Going native” serves as a means of alleviating anxiety about our country’s origins while simultaneously reaffirming its dominance over the Native cultures. It is these contradictory effects, of denying and solidifying the violent history of European Americans, that are worrying to Huhndorf.

In chapter one, she shows the place Native Americans took in the final years of the military conquest of North America by European Americans, and their place in the newly fashioned history of the European Americans. She highlights two world’s fairs: the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 and the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. These two events served to mark the transition from the conquest era and to establish a national history. In Philadelphia, one of the primary goals was to establish America’s national character as “the Pioneer Spirit, Republicanism… and Progress” (25). Progress was the most important of these, in technology and expansion of “civilization”. Technology was touted as the main mark of America’s worth, and explicit comparisons were made between the technology of the “advanced” European American culture and the “primitive” Native culture. Progress in expansion and growth served to implicitly ascribe the violent removal of Native populations as an inevitable effect of the rise of civilization. Both technological and expansionist progress also assimilated Native cultures (or any culture considered less “advanced”) into steps in the evolutionary process rather than separate entities. After the official end of the military conquest in North America, the Columbian Exposition reaffirmed the ideas of Native cultures presented in Philadelphia and the comparisons that implied white supremacy, as well as created a national history based on the colonization of America by European settlers beginning with Columbus. Chapter 1 finished by discussion the evolution of fascination with and emulation of Native life, from individual “autobiographies” through the Boy Scouts.

Chapter 2 deals with European America’s forms of “going native” with regards to the Arctic and Eskimo/Inuit peoples. First, explorer Robert Peary brought six Polar Eskimos to New York. A young boy, Minik, was adopted into a white family and later sharply criticized the events that brought him there. The arrival of the Polar Eskimos created a fascination with the Arctic by America, which led to increased expeditions to and colonial power over the Arctic and its peoples. Secondly, the documentary Nanook of the North disguised the actual effects of colonialism while “articulat[ing] colonial power relations indirectly though a Western –derived discourse on gender” (87). The colonization and exhibition of the Arctic undertook many of the same feats as the colonization and exhibition of North America, but it did so in the name of science. Eskimos captivated America’s attention because they more closely resembled (more “primitive”) European Americans than African or Native Americans had. The “fantasy of freedom” (104) provided by Eskimos spurred acts or fantasies of “going native” in the Arctic.



I think that Huhndorf raises many important issues about “going native” and Native identities in American dominant culture. First, she outlines the contradictory nature of it. Popular culture, though the guise of praising or honoring Native cultures, serves to hide our nation’s violent history as the progress of “civilization” rather than the conscious acts of groups and individuals. The transfers the guilt to an abstract concept rather than our ancestors. Popular culture also reaffirms dominance over Native cultures by assimilating them into its own history.

The examples of “going native” in today’s dominant culture are widespread. Some examples: the Boy Scouts, the Washington Redskins (a football team, www.redskins.com), many cigarette labels, and movies (from Dancing with Wolves to Pocahontas and Peter Pan), to name a few. Like Asian Americans, Native Americans seem to be stereotyped and commoditized with very little public outcry. It is important to ask why: because Native America’s culture has been so assimilated into European American culture? Or because there is no specific precedent: people just assume they don’t mind the use of stereotyped images if not used in a positive way? Either way, these images are rampant intoday’s culture.

In the end, I feel torn. Huhndorf is absolutely correct, and I feel that the examples of “going native” in today’s culture worsen the problems by desensitizing people to the issues of Native peoples. At the same time, I wonder how any culture, dominant or not, could show respect for another without partially assimilating it into its own framework. So, how then to find a middle ground between domination and assimilation of a culture and complete alienation and otherizing of it?