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“The truth about stories is that that’s all we are,” says Thomas King, one of North America’s most influential contemporary Native writers. Stories create images, mythologies, understandings, but also, unfortunately, harmful stereotypes. Over the last several decades, the issue of the representation, and especially misrepresentation, of the Native peoples of North America has come forcefully to the forefront of artistic effort, political action, and academic research alike. The current heated debate over the new version of The Lone Ranger movie, released by Disney in the summer of 2013, illustrates the nature of this on-going controversy once again. In this class, we will take a look at the representation of North American Native peoples, tracing – and hopefully dismantling - the stereotypes that still to a very large extent determine the way non-aboriginal people of both United States and Canada, but also of Europe, view people of aboriginal descent. As a next step, we will look at how Native writers, filmmakers, and artists strive to counter those stereotypes and misrepresentations in their works, creating a corpus of modern cultural and fictional texts to which Native people can relate, and which serve to portray them and their struggles in a more insightful and authentic way.
Primary Texts: tba
Works Cited:
Chamberlin, Edward J. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2004.
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. |
