The American Revolution and Its Other: Indigenous Resistance Writing from William Apess to Sherman Alexie Stefan L. Brandt Since the early U.S. republic, indigenous writers have learned to cope with their (mis-)representation as potential threats by confronting readers with the inherent paradoxes of American society, employing imitation and mirroring as narrative strategies. Both rhetorical devices, grounded in acts of performance, reveal the gap between the nation‘s promises and its sobering reality. In such Native American ‗performances,‘ the specter of the ‗American Indian‘ that has so long haunted the white imagination is used to articulate and reveal the hidden power and omnipresence of Indian figures in the U.S. cultural imaginary. From early indigenous writers like William Apess to representatives of the Native American Renaissance, such as Sherman Alexie, mimicry and specularity are used as forms of resistance, empowering Native American speakers to find their voices in order to confront whites with their privileges and prejudices. If the notion of doing can be connected to the postcolonial concepts of mimicry and specularity, performativity emerges as the capacity to construct identity, to shape the voice of the subaltern, and to transform it into an instrument of power and resistance. Through the rhetorical means of appropriation and reflection, Apess transcends the discourse of colonization and effectively articulates a formerly subjugated voice. Alexie, on the other hand, offers us a mirror image of dominant prejudices, assumptions and fears regarding American Indians, putting the reader into the role of the subaltern. Introduction: The ‘Spectral’ Presence of Native Americans in U.S. American Culture When the American Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787, Native Americans were more or less regarded as footnotes in the larger AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 42 (2017) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Stefan L. Brandt 36 project of colonization and settlement, barely visible in federal documents or legislature. Although they had inhabited the region of North America for more than 10,000 years, American Indians were denied basic civil rights such as the right to vote or the right to gain U.S. citizenship. The ‗American Indian Wars,‘ that is, the series of armed conflicts between the white settlers and the indigenous population that had been part of American everyday experience since the 1620s, had not yet come to an end when the U.S. republic was founded in the 1780s. While the dominant rhetoric usually targeted the British as archenemies of American political independence, many speeches and publications also dealt with the indigenous inhabitants of the continent as potential threats to the new republic. In a personal letter written in the summer of 1783, George Washington, the leader of the American Revolution and soon the nation‘s first President, compared Indians to ―Wild Beasts of a Forest‖ (―Letter to James Duane‖). 1 In the document, which was codified as a decree of the Continental Congress on September 22, 1783, Washington insisted that both the ‗savage‘ and the wolf were ―beasts of prey though they differ in shape‖ (―Letter to James Duane‖; cf. Utter 1991: 387-88). The ―gradual extension of our Settlements,‖ Washington predicted, would ―certainly cause the Savage as the Wolf to retire‖ (ibid.). A similarly expansionist imagery can be found in numerous official documents released by the U.S. government, especially the ―Ordinance for the Regulation of Indian Affairs‖ of 1786 and the ―Northwest Ordinance‖ of 1787, two declarations strongly inspired by Washington. In the latter, the authors proposed the following procedure for dealing with Native Americans: The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress. (Qtd. in Prucha 1984: 18) The rhetoric of the ―Northwest Ordinance‖ is marked by a conspicuous paradox: While hypocritically rejecting the appropriation of land from Indians ―without their consent,‖ it condones these actions in the same sentence under the circumstance of ―just and lawful wars authorized by the Congress.‖ The U.S. government is staged here as the civilized counterpart to the seemingly ‗uncivilized‘ practices of the indigenous population. In this rhetoric, Native Americans clearly figure as inferior beings, 1 James Duane was one of the leaders of the American Revolution (as part of the infamous ―Committee of Sixty‖) and served - together with George Washington and Benjamin Franklin - as a member of the Continental Congress between 1774 and 1786. He was also Indian Commissioner for the Colony of New York in 1774. The American Revolution and Its Other 37 as heathens and subhumans, barely a match for the white Christian pioneers. As to political practice, American Indians were not granted U.S. citizenship for almost 150 years after the Revolution, let alone voting rights. 2 In the dominant imagination of the 18 th and 19 th centuries, Native Americans mainly functioned as the nation‘s ghostly ‗Other‘ - a terrifying specter that allegorically represented everything the white American was not (or secretly rejected). 3 In Charles Brockden Brown‘s novel Edgar Huntly, or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799) 4 , the American Indian figures as a figment of the white man‘s imagination - a warning of the hidden flip side of civilization. The novel‘s Indians belong to a whole set of ―ugly phantoms‖ (EH 151) that keep haunting the protagonist. Edgar both emulates the Indians in their skills of surviving in the wilderness (EH 203) and participates in grisly scenes of mass murder committed on them (EH 185-189). This double discourse of simultaneously fearing and imitating the Indian permeates Brown‘s novel from beginning to end. Edgar equates the American Indian with ―the rest of animals‖ (EH 203), but also transforms into one himself in the notorious pit scene, in which he slaughters a panther with a tomahawk (EH 158-161). In addition, the first-person narrator Edgar Huntly points to numerous parallels between himself and Queen Mab, a squaw sachem from the Delaware tribe. ―Queen Mab,‖ he informs us, ―were sounds familiar to my ears, for they originated with myself‖ (EH 197). The name ―Queen Mab‖ is also familiar to most readers, who recognize it from Shakespeare‘s play Romeo and Juliet. Originally a white character (in Shakespeare‘s drama she appears as the fairies‘ midwife), Queen Mab in Edgar Huntly transforms into an American Indian, now also signifying the absence of civilization and the surfacing of repressed emotions. Probably forced to convert to Christianity as a child (thus her Christian name ‗Old Deb‘), Queen Mab is a key symbol of Indian subjugation by the white settlers. Having been expelled from her homeland together with members of her tribe, she roams through the rural areas of Pennsylvania as a nomad, accompanied by ―three dogs, of the Indian or wolf species‖ (EH 198). When giving orders to her dogs, her ―sharp and 2 The Indian Citizenship Act was signed on June 2, 1924 by U. S. President Calvin Coolidge. Also called ‗Snyder Act‘ (after New York Representative Homer P. Snyder who had proposed it), this law granted Native Americans the right to become full U.S. citizens. 3 The American-Canadian writer Thomas King draws our attention to the founding events and documents of the U.S. republic to explain this long absence of American Indians in the cultural imaginary: ―[W]hen Great Britain, France, and the newly formed United States sat down in 1783 to hammer out the details of the Treaty of Paris that would officially end the American Revolution, Native people, who had fought alongside both England and the colonies, were neither invited to the negotiations nor mentioned in the treaty itself. So long and thanks for all the fish‖ (2013: 100). 4 In the following, Brown‘s novel Edgar Huntly will be abbreviated as EH. Stefan L. Brandt 38 shrill‖ voice can be heard across a great distance. ―An [sic! ] hearer would naturally imagine she was scolding; but, in truth, she was merely giving them directions‖ (EH 199). The spectral presence of Queen Mab, that is, her appearance in the form of threatening images and sounds, is symptomatic of the representation of Indians in the book. 5 As the example of Brown‘s novel shows, Native Americans were often stylized into a kind of nemesis of the westward movement. It is no coincidence that the American frontier was imagined as the dividing line between white civilization and Indian savagery. In the dualistic rhetoric of ‗Us versus Them,‘ Native Americans were assigned the part of the rebels, the archenemies of progress and enlightenment. It is the goal of this essay to explore how Native Americans responded to the rhetoric of ‗othering.‘ Which forms of disobedience did they develop? How did they deal with their own ‗ghostly presence‘ in U.S. cultural practice? Apart from the militant resistance against the invasion of their lands since the 17 th century (see Porter 2005: 48), Native Americans have resorted to various types of less violent protest. In 1827, for example, several Native American tribes, the so-called ―Five Civilized Tribes‖ (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) attempted to emulate the U.S. Founding Fathers and announced the creation of an independent Indian Nation, the so-called Cherokee Nation. In the following law-suit of 1831, John Ross, principal chief of the newly-formed state, defined the suitors as ―the Cherokee nation of Indians, a foreign state, not owing allegiance to the United States, nor to any state of this union, nor to any prince, potentate or state, other than their own‖ (―Cherokee Nation‖ 1831: 2). As a result of the Indian Removal Act, signed by U.S. President Andrew Jackson in 1830, most of the Cherokee were expelled westward to plateaus in Missouri and Oklahoma during the 1830s. What followed was the so-called ‗Trail of Tears,‘ during which 60,000 Native Americans died, including the 2,000 free African Americans and black slaves they took with them. Gerald Vizenor uses the neologism survivance to describe the cultural techniques used by American Indians to authentically document their presence (traditionally in oral form): 5 In his epic novel Moby Dick (1851), written half a century after Edgar Huntly, Herman Melville symbolically reawakens the ghost of ‗Queen Mab,‘ naming the book‘s 31 st chapter (131-133) after the mythical character. Here, Queen Mab is the specter that haunts the crew of the Pequod, that ship which is itself named after a native tribe. Stubb, the second mater of the Pequod, recollects a ―queer dream‖ (131) he had the night before which might - or might not - have revolved around Queen Mab. We can only speculate if Stubb saw a vision of Shakespeare‘s fairy character or that indigenous, ghostly figure from Brown‘s novel. Like the name ‗Pequod‘ itself, ‗Queen Mab‘ is used here as a signifier of doom which connects Native American imagery with a sinister notion of spectrality. The American Revolution and Its Other 39 Survivance is an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or a survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry. Survivance means the right of succession or reversion of an estate, and in that sense, the estate of native survivancy. (1999: vii) Recent examples of such strategies of survivance include the founding of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1968 and, in the following year, the activities of the Red Power Movement which culminated in attempts to occupy the island of Alcatraz (that had once been a part of the protesters‘ native territory) (see Nagel 1995: 947-965). 6 For many decades now, Native Americans have protested against what they see as the unjustified celebration of crucial events in American cultural history, beginning with the discovery of the ‗New World‘ by European explorers. This ‗discovery,‘ they argue, was not glorious or heroic (as many history books seem to suggest), but, in reality, entailed the enslavement and gradual eradication of 536 Native American tribes, culminating in a history of bloody wars. In the wake of this increasingly political climate of discussions surrounding the continent‘s colonial history, Native American activists have engaged in symbolic protest such as the pouring of fake blood over a statue of Christopher Columbus on Columbus Day 1989. 7 Frequently, ironic mirroring is used as a strategy to question established modes of representation. The image series ―Reconsider Columbus Day‖ employs the Columbus theme for a ―Wanted Poster‖ with the Italian explorer as a criminal on the run. ―Grand Theft - Genocide - Racism - Rape - Torture - Destruction of an Entire Culture,‖ it says on the poster, which ironically evokes the image of the famed explorer as a mass murderer (―Christopher Columbus: Hero for the Ages or Genocidal Maniac? ‖ 2010). Another artwork from the same series comments on the idea of ―Thanksgiving,‖ de- 6 It should be added that the American Indian Movement is controversially discussed by Native American scholars. Chippewa writer and scholar Gerald Vizenor, for example, strongly critiques the AIM for their ‗assimilated‘ and ‗commercialized‘ policies: ―The American Indian Movement could be an unusual measure of tribal resistance and the pose of postmodern revolutions. Dennis Banks, for instance, became the kitschyman of reservation capitalism. Russell Means is a postindian movie actor. Bellecourt, on the other hand, has become the kitschyman of liberal bounties, foundation monies, criminal justice, and resistance enterprises in the name of tribal children. This portrait is not an Indian‖ (1999: 43). 7 Such attempts to push Christopher Columbus from the pedestal as one of the nation‘s iconic heroes resonate with similar strategies in literature. A powerful case in point is Thomas King‘s unconventional account of Indian-White relationships The Inconvenient Indian (2012), in which the author suggests to literally remove Columbus from the national imaginary: ―Let‘s forget Columbus. You know, now that I say it out loud, I even like the sound of it. Forget Columbus. Give it a try. Forget Columbus.‖ (3) Stefan L. Brandt 40 veloping the following logic: ―Genocide - Poverty - Hunger - No Thanks No Giving! What are you celebrating? ‖ (Genocide). 8 The sarcastic twist of the ―Columbus Day‖ posters can also be found in numerous works of American indigenous resistance literature, 9 from early U.S. writings to postmodernism. Out of this sheer variety of literary expressions, 10 I have selected two authors whose works temporally frame 8 These acts of political activism surrounding ―Columbus Day‖ stand in the literary tradition of the ‗Native American Renaissance‘ of the 1960s during which intellectuals of indigenous descent articulated their protest in writing. A major representative of this movement is the activist and historian Vine Victor Deloria, Jr. who, being the director of the National Congress of American Indians between 1964 and 1967, became a leading figure of indigenous resistance. It is Deloria to whom the term ‗Red Power‘ is attributed. A major concern of Deloria‘s many historical studies - for example, Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969) and Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact (1995) - is to demythologize white Americans‘ assumptions about American Indians. 9 Following the definition given by Joy Porter in the Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature (2005), I am using the phrase ‗resistance literature‘ as an umbrella term for writings that are concerned with topics of indigenous resistance against colonial and postcolonial oppression. ―Given some of the chronic conditions many Indian peoples live under and the structural limitations placed upon Indian development by non-Indians,‖ it can be argued ―that Indians in fact live under paracolonialism and that it is […] appropriate to think of Indian literature as part of resistance literature‖ (Porter 59). As Arnold Krupat critically remarks in Red Matters, the concept ‗resistance literature‘ is often used abstractly to refer to any type of anticolonial or emancipatory literature, thus obscuring ―the very particular nature of Native American resistance‖ (2002: 9). While acknowledging the desire in many cosmopolitan writings to situate Native literatures in the context of ―any literature directed against oppression and dominance‖ (for instance, by the LGBT community), Krupat strongly warns against this ―universalizing of resistance‖ (2002: 22). 10 In this context, countless indigenous authors could be mentioned who dealt with the dominant discourse of colonial oppression in their writings. In his essay on non-fiction indigenous prose, Bernd Peyer lists the historical studies by George Copway (1850), William Whipple Warren (1851-54), Peter Jones (1861), and Andrew J. Blackbird (1887) as examples for 19 th -century indigenous authors who subtly rejected hegemonial notions of the westward movement. ―All four,‖ Peyer claims, ―perform a precarious balancing act between a sincere show of deference toward mainstream notions of social advancement and an equally candid manifestation of pride in traditional ways, especially their native languages‖ (2005: 119). Numerous books written during the Native American Renaissance since the 1960s by authors such as N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, Paula Gunn Allen, Janet Campbell Hale, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Thomas King, can be interpreted as ‗resistance literature.‘ The writings by these (and other) authors express unique indigenous voices linked to the rich cultural imaginary of American Indians rooted in performativity and confident self-fashioning. Examples of influential works of this type of literature include Momaday‘s groundbreaking novel House Made of Dawn (1966), which centers upon an alternative, indigenous vision of history and worldunderstanding, and King‘s parodic short story ―A Seat in the Garden‖ (1993b), in which two white farmers experience visions of an Indian spirit which turns out to be a mere projection of their imagination. Krupat further lists Silko‘s Almanac of the Dead (1991) as resistance literature due to ―its insistence on a north- The American Revolution and Its Other 41 the development of U.S. resistance literature: William Apess‘s autobiographical writings of the 1820s/ 30s and Sherman Alexie‘s tongue-incheek narratives of Indian life from the 1990s and 2000s. The writings by Apess and Alexie seem representative of indigenous literature for a number of reasons. Like many other texts by American Indian authors, they eloquently articulate resistance to the pervasive effects of colonialism. This resistance is shaped in the form of a stylistic feature of great rhetorical power - irony, and frequently outright cynicism. Through this literary device, Apess‘s and Alexie‘s works reveal a harsh disappointment in and skepticism of the promises of the American Revolution. This irony also stands for a whole set of aesthetic techniques employed by indigenous writers to enable readers to immerse themselves in the texts. ―Indian voices,‖ Joy Porter explains in her essay for the Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature, ―must perform complex and shifting negotiations […] in order to make a strategic and subversive impact upon literate Euro-America‖ (2005: 59). As I will show in the following, two strategies have become particularly essential in this type of indigenous resistance literature: 1. imitation - that is, the playful emulation of the American ideal of equality, and 2. mirroring - that is, the reflection of the injustices of U.S. social life through the metaphor of the ‗looking glass.‘ Both rhetorical devices, I will argue, are grounded in acts of literary performance, revealing to readers the unsettling gap between the nation‘s promises and the sobering reality into which these promises eventually turned. In the literary performances by Apess and Alexie, the specter of the ‗American Indian‘ that has long haunted the white imagination is used to expose the hidden power and omnipresence of Indian figures in the U.S. cultural imaginary. In this context, I want to employ the term ‗specter‘ to refer to the ghostly presence of Native Americans in the dominant white imagination. French philosopher Jacques Derrida uses the concept to identify figures in the hegemonic imagination that are perceived as menacing and disruptive. However, he argues that these spectral figures also embody what he calls a ―condition of possibility‖ (1994: 82). They are unruly and free, transgressing norms and violating the boundaries of hegemonic culture. The spectral quality of the Native American is recognizable in the figure of Geronimo, an Apache leader fighting against the intrusion of white settlers into native grounds in the 1880s. Geronimo, whose tribal name was Goyaalé, became a symbol of indigenous resistance and cultural pride. Throughout his life, he remained an ambiguous character. Alsouth/ south-north directionality as central to the narrative of ‗our America‘‖ (1998: 51-52). What all of these texts seem to share is that they advocate a decisively critical stance towards U.S. history and ideology, poignantly criticizing that the nation, which prides itself on the motto ―All men are created equal‖ in its Declaration of Independence, has too often denied this promise to its ethnic minorities, especially American Indians. Stefan L. Brandt 42 though he converted to Christianity during his imprisonment in the 1890s and even recommended it to other natives in public writings, he also told his tribes-people that he remained faithful to the Apache religion. Despite his resistance to white cultural dominance (or maybe because of it), Geronimo has been appropriated into an imagery of non-conformism acceptable to all ethnicities in a series of Hollywood movies. In the Hollywood blockbuster Conspiracy Theory (1997), the name Geronimo is linked to a white man‘s desperate fight against a tyrannical system that culminates in madness and terror. Geronimo is not an agent in his own right in this movie, but simply a signifier for protest and, most importantly, the enabler of a love story between two white characters. There are numerous examples of Native Americans who are integrated into the dominant imagination as involuntary symbols of their own degradation and inferiority. Take Pocahontas, for instance. A historical figure, Pocahontas, whose tribal name was Matoaka, was the daughter of a powerful Native American chief named Powhatan in the Chesapeake Bay area in Virginia. As legend has it, she was involved in an event in the year 1607, when she saved the life of British captain John Smith, who was about to be executed by her father. The event was first reported in John Smith‘s Generall Historie of Virginia (1624), seventeen years after it supposedly happened. Even though the incident seems highly unlikely for a variety of reasons, Pocahontas, as a mythical figure, has turned into an indispensable part of the American imaginary, manly because she gave up her own culture and religion to accept the white man‘s beliefs. She even assumed a European name, Rebecca, and married one of the settlers, John Rolfe of Jamestown. Thus, she stands for the romantic union between America‘s first inhabitants and the pioneers from Europe. A comparable image of interracial union can be found in the annual holiday of Thanksgiving. First celebrated by the Pilgrims in 1621, Thanksgiving was designed to thank the Christian God for a good harvest. In common representations, settlers are shown eating turkey together with their Indian allies in an atmosphere of harmony and friendship. The main function of such idealizing images is to conceal the fact that the encounter between Native Americans and white settlers was in reality anything but harmonious. There were numerous bloody wars against the Native American population. Some of them, such as the Pequot War of 1637, took place before the Revolution, but the majority of these socalled ‗Indian Wars‘ happened even after, culminating in the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 and - the very last one - the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890. In the following section, I will take a look at what Malini Schueller, in her book by the same title, has aptly described as the ―messy beginnings‖ of the early U.S. republic and its treatment of Native Americans. Following Homi K. Bhabha‘s approach of postcolonial theory and combining it with Richard Schechner‘s notion of performativity, I will discern between The American Revolution and Its Other 43 two modes of Native American resistance in literature and culture: mimicry 11 , that is, the strategic adaptation of a species to its environment, and specularity 12 , that is, a rhetorical play with mirror images with the purpose of undermining established notions and assumptions. The aim in both forms of resistance is to empower Native American speakers in a performative fashion and make their concerns heard to a mainstream audience. Voicing Resistance: Mimicry, Mirroring, and Performance in William Apess Notably, mimicry and specularity, as strategies of self-fashioning, are both based in the aesthetic realm of performativity. By using these devices, the speaker becomes an actor, articulating and negotiating aspects of identity which would otherwise be left unspoken. One of the key insights of performance theory is that acting is everything. Or, as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has put it, ―there is no ‗being‘ behind the doing, acting, becoming. ‗The doer‘ is merely made up and added into the action - the act is everything‖ (1969 [1887]: 45). 13 Thus, I want to propose a reading in which this notion of doing is connected to the postcolonial concepts of mimicry and specularity as described by Bhabha. In particular, my essay will show how performativity, that is, the capacity to construct identity through acts of performance (Schechner 2002: 110-111), may be used to shape the voice of the subaltern and transform it into an instrument of power and resistance. 11 The Oxford English Dictionary defines ―mimicry‖ as ―the action, practice, or art of copying or closely imitating, or […] of reproducing through mime‖ (―Mimicry‖). Employed as a strategy of resistance, mimicry exposes the initially shallow nature of such imitation and transforms it into a gesture of ironic performativity. By utilizing techniques commonly attributed to white hegemonial practice, a Native American performer of mimicry makes visible the ideological patterns behind the discourse and subtly reveals the systemic imbalance lying at its heart. 12 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ―specular‖ can be defined as the state of being ―obtained by reflection only; not direct or immediate.‖ The OED adds that ―specular‖ phenomena are characterized by ―having the reflective property of a mirror‖ (―Specular‖). In my usage of the term, ‗specularity‘ refers to the representation and performance of literary Indians as mirror images of the white imagination. Following Homi K. Bhabha, who employs the concept in his writings on postcolonialism, ‗specularity‘ originally connotes a sense of projection and misrepresentation. Used as a vehicle of resistance, the mirror image can be reversed into a performative vehicle that helps readers understand the mechanisms behind this kind of stereotyping and question their assumptions regarding native people. 13 For the notion of ‗acting‘ instead of ‗being‘ constituting the basic act of performance, see Butler‘s study Gender Trouble (1990: 25), Auslander‘s essay ―Just Be Your Self‖ (1997: 28-38), and Carlson‘s book Performance (1998: 1-9). Stefan L. Brandt 44 A good example of this use of performative strategies in early indigenous writing is William Apess, one of the first Native American writers whose works were published in book form. For good reason, Apess‘s five major works have been classified as ―resistance literature‖ (Weaver 1997: 55). And - as his contribution to the Mashpee Revolt shows - he was not only a man of words, but also a man with a ―militant consciousness‖ (O‘Connell 1992: xiv). When the Mashpee tribe demanded equal rights from the state government in May of 1833, Apess traveled to Cape Cod to visit the old indigenous town of Mashpee and, in the following months, published various articles on the ongoing events in newspapers (for example, the Boston Advocate and the Barnstable Journal). In all these texts, he voiced Native American concerns with an unusual tone of indigenous pride, basically instigating the natives to start a revolt. The recurring phrase in Apess‘s Mashpee pamphlets, ―We […] as the voice of one man,‖ clearly alludes to the ―We the People‖ from the U.S. Constitution. 14 I n the following, I will examine which rhetorical means Apess uses in his writings to create this distinctive voice of resistance. The first strategy he uses, which I position under the header of ‗mimicry,‘ is based upon the attempt to appropriate the white perspective. By modeling his own life story, published in 1829 under the title A Son of the Forest, on the basis of Christian narratives of conversion, Apess managed to stylize himself into a model American, a self-made man, very much in the fashion of Benjamin Franklin. Notably, his own father was of white and Pequot descent, his mother a Native American and possibly African American. In Bhabha‘s terms, Apess thus represents ―a hybridity, a difference ‗within‘‖ (1994: 13). It is the aim of A Son of the Forest to reconstruct this hybridity as a paradigm of the young nation, rebellious and striving, yet also disrupted and torn. This becomes obvious in the description of Apess‘s childhood ordeals. Rejected by his parents, he grew up under the regiment of a cruel grandmother who almost battered him to death. Throughout his life, he struggled with the pitfalls of civilization, including severe bouts of alcoholism. Despite these obvious shortcomings in his personal development, Apess managed to fashion himself, according to his autobiography, into an agent of his own fate. It was not until the publication of his fifth book, Eulogy on King Philip, that he changed his name from Apes with one ‗s‘ to Apess with two ‗s‘s. There are many speculations why he did this, one being that he no longer wanted to be called ‗Apes.‘ 15 ―Nothing scarcely grieved me so much,‖ he writes in his life 14 In a document entitled ―Let Us Rule Ourselves‖ from May 1833, Apess declared: ―We say as the voice of one man that we are distressed and degraded daily by those men who we understand were appointed by your honors‖ (qtd. in Nielsen 1985: 408). For a discussion of Apess‘s references to the founding fathers and their ―radical strand of democratic republicanism,‖ see O‘Connell (1992: lxxiii). 15 On the genealogy of spelling William Apess‘s surname in various editions of his writings, see O‘Connell (1992: xiv). The American Revolution and Its Other 45 story, ―than to be called by a nick name‖ (Son 20-21). Like so many other Native Americans in the 1820s and 30s, Apess rejected the distorted images of Indians in the public rhetoric. In order to effectively fight these injustices, he felt he had to enter the system and change it from within. Thus, his writings constantly oscillate between resistance to and a tactical employment of the dominant rhetoric. Apess continuously condemned the evils committed in the name of Christianity. At the same time, he also celebrated his conversion to the white man‘s religion and especially his call to becoming a Methodist preacher (Son of the Forest 83). In his writings, Methodism also figures as a performative tool, particularly since the movement‘s concept of ‗sacred self-sovereignty‘ can be used to convey his egalitarian ideas. If God is immanent within every human being, there can be no distinction between the races. In this view, the Native Americans who suffer from racial injustices have very much in common with the American revolutionaries. Both engage in a passionate quest for recognition and also share a yearning for unrestricted freedom. In A Son of the Forest, Apess aptly captures the rebellious foundations of Methodism and deploys them for an argument in favor of Native American self-determination. Since his own conversion to Methodism is characterized as an act of performance, his fellow Christians figure as ―happy instruments in the hands of the Lord Jesus‖ (73). According to Apess, the Methodists have accomplished that ―which others have failed in performing‖ (73). Seeing himself in the tradition of George Whitefield, Apess believed in the dialogic qualities of Christianity, especially itinerant preaching and open-air sermons. Again, the element of performance is placed in the foreground. Apess‘s appropriation of the dominant discourse can be seen as an ironic compromise - a strategy of subverting ideology from within. Throughout his writings, Apess inverts racial stereotypes and replaces them with a vision of shared global identity. In this manner, he accentuates the ―social kindness of the Indians‖ (129) and praises their ability to enjoy the ordinary things in life. ―They seem to lead the most wretched life in the world; and yet they [are] perhaps the only happy people in the world‖ (130). Apess‘s construction of Indians as model individuals for U.S. society is connected to the second important strategy in early Native American resistance writing. I want to term this technique ―indigenous specularity.‖ By this, I mean a play with mirror images with the purpose of making the white man see the world with Native American eyes. In his pamphlet ―An Indian‘s Looking-Glass for the White Man,‖ Apess invokes the image of the mirror to challenge traditional ways of seeing. ―Assemble all nations together in your imagination,‖ he writes, and then let the whites be seated among them, and then let us look for the whites, and I doubt not it would be hard finding them; for to the rest of the Stefan L. Brandt 46 nations, they are still but a handful. Now suppose these skins were put together, and each skin had its national crimes written upon it - which skin do you think would have the greatest? (―Looking-Glass‖ 157) Apess here invites his white readers to reflect on their views and perceive the world with fresh eyes. Skin, he claims, is used in the white rhetoric as a ―pretext‖ to keep Native Americans from their ―unalienable and lawful rights‖ (156). ―I would ask you if you would like to be disfranchised from all your rights, merely because your skin is white […]? ‖ (ibid.). Once again, Apess holds a mirror up to the reader‘s eyes, a ―looking glass‖ as he puts it. This ‗looking glass,‘ Laura Donaldson observes, ―turns the power of representation back onto the alleged ‗civilizers.‘ In so doing […], the mirror mutates from a vehicle of mimicry into a much more active political instrument‖ (211). 16 By conjuring up the authority of the Bible, Apess‘s essay performatively exposes a contradiction between the self-proclaimed tenets of the Christian doctrine and the practice of racial discrimination. Apess thus playfully reverts the double-edged discourse of ―colonial specularity‖ (Bhabha 1994: 114), putting the white audience into the subject position of an Indian. In many ways, Apess‘s Indians function as the better Christians, even the better Americans, since only they embody the virtues of respect and true spirit. 17 Colonial Specularity and Native American Performativity in Sherman Alexie A more contemporary version of colonial specularity is presented in the writings of Sherman Alexie, a Native American author who grew up on the Spokane reservation in the state of Washington. Alexie openly plays with the established images regarding Native Americans, often referring to popular texts such as comic books or Hollywood films. In his collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Alexie reanimates two well-known characters from American popular culture, a 16 The image of the mirror is central in numerous writings of Native American literature. Often the ‗mirror‘ stands for an act of self-recognition, but sometimes also for acts of misrecognition. In a crucial passage in Momaday‘s House Made of Dawn (1966), Abel, the Native American protagonist, and Angela, the rich white woman who seduces him, stand naked in front of a mirror, now functioning as a vehicle for the indigenous gaze: ―He could see her reflection, like a silhouette, in an oval mirror on the wall. When she faced him again, they were both naked‖ (57). Central passages from Louise Erdrich‘s Love Medicine (1984) revolve around mirrors that either reflect the characters‘ true personality or symbolize the shallowness of stereotyped perception (48, 78, 174, 190, 206, 221, 336). 17 In a crucial passage from A Son of the Forest, Apess compares the American settlers to the Indians, since both were feared by the British due to ―their art of war‖ (156). The American Revolution and Its Other 47 former law enforcement officer named ―The Lone Ranger‖ and his Native American sidekick Tonto. Together the two fight injustice in the Wild West. The Lone Ranger was a popular radio show in the 1930s and became a TV series in the 1950s. It has also been turned into a comic and has just very recently been filmed again. In the title-giving short story in the book 18 , Alexie humorously confronts his readers with some of the stereotypes regarding Native Americans. The first-person narrator seems haunted by the vision of himself as a blood-thirsty Indian. At the same time, he struggles for his own voice and rejects restrictive labels. In one of his nightmares, he dreams that his white girlfriend, with whom he constantly fights, is a missionary‘s wife and he himself a war chief. We fell in love and tried to keep it secret. But the missionary caught us fucking in the barn and shot me. As I lay dying, my tribe learned of the shooting and attacked the whites all across the reservation. I died and my soul drifted above the reservation. Disembodied, I could see everything that was happening. Whites killing Indians and Indians killing whites. (―LR‖ 186) Alexie‘s stories are full of ghostly images haunting the Native American protagonists. For the character in ―The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,‖ it becomes impossible to distinguish between the real and the imaginary. ―How do you talk to the real person whose ghost has haunted you? ‖ (―LR‖ 189). The setting of most of Alexie‘s writings is a haunted city - Seattle, the largest city in the Pacific Northwest region of the States. Notably, Seattle was named after a famous Native American, Si‘al, a chief of the Duwamish tribe in the Washington territory, whose name was anglicized and then used for the city. Alexie repeatedly refers to the symbolic presence of Chief Seattle in the city named after him. In one of Alexie‘s novels, a character notes that the Indian still haunts the city because his bones were supposedly lost somewhere in the urban labyrinth (IK 140). 19 In ―The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven‖ one protagonist laments that the city is in a way cursed from the Native American perspective. ―Indians can reside in the city [of Seattle], but they can never live there‖ (―LR‖ 187). The reason for this inability to live in Seattle is apparently because Chief Seattle‘s ghost is still lurking in the city. Alexie needs the spectral figure of Chief Seattle to endow his narratives with a sense of density. Like Pocahontas and Geronimo, Chief Seattle has been transformed into an icon of the white imagination, especially in light of a speech he gave to Governor Stevens in March of 1854 where 18 Henceforth, Alexie‘s story ―The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven‖ will be abbreviated as ―LR.‖ 19 In all further references to Indian Killer, I will use the abbreviation IK. Stefan L. Brandt 48 he allegedly mourned the ecological destruction of his homeland and encouraged Indians and whites to respect each other. Chief Seattle actually gave that speech, but he held it in the Lushootseed language. Someone transferred the words into the Chinook dialect, and a third person crafted an English translation. Years later, another English version of the speech was put together based on these fragments and published in 1891. Today, at least four versions of the speech exist. In one of them, Chief Seattle refers to ―railroads‖ (qtd. in Utter 1991: 124), although they did not exist in the Washington Territory in 1854. There is also mention of ―the slaughter of the buffalo‖ (ibid.), although there were no buffaloes in the area and Si‘al probably never encountered one in his entire life. He and his people lived on fishing. Despite these obvious inconsistencies regarding their historical accuracy, the surviving segments of Chief Seattle‘s speech seemed significant enough to be reconstructed in the 1970s as an example of early ecological consciousness. An especially drastic version of Seattle as a place of colonial specularity, eerily haunted by its Native American ancestry, can be found in Sherman Alexie‘s book Indian Killer. In this very controversial novel, referred to by Alexie himself as a ―feel good novel about interracial murder‖ (Egan 1998), the city is terrorized by a serial killer who massacres and scalps his white victims and embellishes the corpses with owl feathers. The main characters in this bizarre tale of revenge and blood-thirst are the following: John Smith, a 27-year old construction worker born to Navajo Indians but raised by white parents, who struggles with his complicated cultural background and soon emerges as a prime suspect; Marie, a beautiful civil rights activist and Spokane Indian from the University of Washington who feels distanced from her tribe; Jack Wilson, an expoliceman and writer who claims to be half-Indian and who writes the ‗book-within-the-book‘ novel Indian Killer; and Dr. Clarence Mather, a professor of Native American Studies, a ―wannabe Indian‖ (58) who brags about having been adopted by a Lakota Sioux family as a child. It is the white professor, an utterly unlikable character, who stylizes the mysterious Indian Killer into a ―creation of capitalism‖ (245) and a ―revolutionary construct‖ (ibid.). For enthusiasts of traditional ‗Whodunit‘ mysteries, Indian Killer proves quite disappointing since the actual killer is never exposed. The novel continually plays with the notion of John Smith being the Indian Killer (―John needed to kill a white man‖ 25), but we never learn whether John‘s homicidal anger is just a fantasy or whether it leads to an actual murder. Instead, we are left in the book‘s finale with the unsettling image of the anonymous Indian Killer decorating himself with birds‘ feathers and dancing on the graves in an Indian cemetery with the ghosts of his forefathers. This rather open ending was criticized by Arnold Krupat, one of the most acknowledged scholars of American Indian fiction, as evi- The American Revolution and Its Other 49 dence for Alexie‘s ―Red Nationalist rougetude‖ (2002: 115). 20 The fact that the killer remains unpunished in the novel, Krupat argues, suggests that acts of vengeance on the side of Native Americans can be deemed legitimate. According to Krupat, the novel encourages American Indians to express ―anger, rage, and a desire for murderous revenge‖ instead of suppressing or channeling them ―into other possible action‖ (2002: 103). The aesthetics of Alexie‘s novel, however, goes beyond a simplistic endorsement of retaliation against whites. Far from serving as a pamphlet encouraging Indians to avenge the century-long genocide of their people, Indian Killer can be interpreted as a mirror fantasy, exposing a situation that Native Americans and other people with an ethnic background had to suffer for centuries — being ostracized and persecuted simply because of the color of their skin. 21 Therefore, the novel‘s Indian Killer has to remain a specter, without race and, we might add, without gender. He or she may well not be a Native American, white or black or of any other ethnic background. It is the fantasy of a murderous past rooted in American history that haunts the city of Seattle in Alexie‘s book. In a story from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, we are confronted with a similar Indian revenge tale that involves the notorious General Custer, who was famously defeated in the Battle of Little Bighorn by an alliance of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes (under the guidance of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse 22 ). In the narrative, it is the Indians who maraud and pillage white settlements. ―Last night we burned another house. The Tribal Council has ruled that anything to do with the whites has to be destroyed‖ (―Distances‖ 105). Likewise, Indian Killer narrates its tale of racial revenge as a fantasy of performance. The settings in which the acts of vengeance are staged seem exaggerated and almost fantastic in their dramatic composition. In one 20 Krupat uses the concept of rougetude (e.g., the proud insistence on a common indigenous identity) to identify what he calls ―‗racist‘ politics‖ in Indian Killer (2002: 116). As opposed to the idea of négritude from literary movements of the 1930s, denoting ―African essentialism‖ (Krupat 2002: 115), Alexie‘s rougetude is based upon the assumption that there is and should be a mixing of the races. However, this mixing is subsumed in the novel under the ―complex experience of being an Indian‖ (ibid.), thus insisting on the generic nature of the category ‗Indian.‘ 21 Other texts designed as ethnic ‗mirror fantasies‘ include Stephen King‘s horror novel Pet Sematary (1983) which is mainly set near the burial ground of a Native American tribe, and Michael Wadleigh‘s thriller Wolfen (1981), in which a group of Native Americans terrorizes the city of New York City by transforming into ferocious animals. Wolfen makes reference to the Native American past of the New York area which was owned by the Lenape tribe until 1626. 22 In Indian Killer, the mysterious title-giving character is associated with Crazy Horse. ―It was Crazy Horse,‖ one of the minor figures speculates, ―And he‘s more. This Indian Killer, you see, he‘s got Crazy Horse‘s magic. He‘s got Chief Joseph‘s brains. He‘s got Geronimo‘s heart. […] He‘s all those badass Indians rolled up into one‖ (IK 219). Significantly, one of the short stories from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is titled ―Crazy Horse Dreams.‖ Stefan L. Brandt 50 especially striking passage, Christopher Columbus is employed as an actor in a time-travel fantasy concocted by an elderly Duwamish Indian named Carlotta Lott. ―I‘ve got me a time machine,‖ Carlotta tells the protagonist John Smith, And I can show you how to use it. You can go back to that beach where Columbus first landed, you know? You can wait there for him, hidden in the sand or something. C-a-m-o-u-f-l-a-g-e. And when he gets on the sand, you can jump out of hiding and show him some magic, enit? Good magic, bad magic, it‘s all the same. (IK 253-254) Carlotta‘s bizarre tale is framed by her explanations that Indians were deceived and exploited by the first white settlers: ―We‘ve been good to white people, enit? When they first came here, we was good to them, wasn‘t we? […] And what did they do? They killed us‖ (IK 253). The act of striking back is vested in the implausible pattern of a science-fiction story, with only superficial resemblance to real (or even historical) events - especially given the fact that the novel is set in the state of Washington, some 5000 kilometers from the ―beach where Columbus first landed‖ (IK 253), namely the island of San Salvador on the Bahamas. Embedded in the sketchy anecdote of Indians going back in time and confronting the perpetrator Columbus is the idea of performance, or ―camouflage‖ (IK 254), as Alexie puts it. 23 This imaginary revenge is initially not more than a mind game that has not yet passed a reality check. When Carlotta asks John if he wants to actually see the ―time machine‖ (IK 253) she has just told him about, he answers ―Yes,‖ but the old lady‘s hand, with which she apparently offers him the device, is empty. All he is left with is the rusty paring knife from a dumpster Carlotta gave him as a present before she told him the Columbus tale. ―John stared at Carlotta‘s empty hand, and then at the knife in his own hand, and understood‖ (IK 254). What he apparently understands at this moment is the notion that he still has to perform a ‗magic‘ transfer (the word ‗magic‘ is used nine times in only two pages) from the abstract realm of fiction to the dirty reality of everyday life. The disappearance of the imaginary ‗time machine‘ into thin air after Carlotta‘s narration and the simultaneous materialization of the knife suggests a similar move to that performed in the novel‘s ending, when the still anonymous Indian Killer dances with the owls. The violence the Indian Killer epitomizes is at once there and not there. The knife 23 As far as the ideas of performance and performativity are concerned, Alexie‘s narratives strongly resonate with other texts written during and after the Native American Renaissance. Momaday‘s House Made of Dawn (1966) is permeated by the notion of indigenous songs accompanying and shaping the protagonist‘s actions (53, 129, 164, 185). Silko‘s Ceremony (1977) revolves around performances of dancing through which Native American knowledge and history (or the loss thereof) are conveyed (10, 116, 165-166). The American Revolution and Its Other 51 and the fire are physical manifestations but also richly filled with references to the world of fiction and mythology. Another point of reference in Indian Killer, linking mythology and social reality, is the connection to John Ford‘s western The Searchers (1956), after which a whole chapter in the book is named (IK 319-321). In Ford‘s movie, John Wayne plays the Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards attempting to locate his missing niece who was abducted as a child by Indians. Ethan‘s hatred of people of different skin color is mirrored by the raging obsession of his Native American counterpart, chief Scar. Notably, one of the characters in Indian Killer, the mixed-race youngster Reggie, imitates this entanglement of racial hatred by declaring sympathy with the Indian-hating white character played by John Wayne. ―I understand what John Wayne is feeling. How would you feel if some white people kidnapped an Indian kid? I‘d cut them all into pieces‖ (IK 320). Thus, the movie‘s oscillation between the white Indian-hater Ethan and the Native American white-hater Scar is effectively transferred to the level of Alexie‘s novel, in which racial hatred also crosses the lines of skin color. 24 Alexie‘s characters are deeply entrenched in a net of self-fulfilling prophecies and media-created images that produce a reality they purport to merely depict. Alexie‘s Native American and white characters seem both guided by such medial constructions, from Cowboys-and-Indians comic books to mainstream television series and Hollywood blockbusters. One protagonist in the short story ―The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven‖ tries to solve his personal problems by watching television day and night, carefully absorbing all the colorful images provided by the small screen. ―For weeks I flipped through channels, searched for answers in the game shows and soap operas‖ (―LR‖ 187). Equally, in Indian Killer, the writer Jack Wilson seeks inspiration for his major work, titled Indian Killer, from various media which he haphazardly peruses. ―The writing had always come easy to him before, but he could barely manage to write a few paragraphs of Indian Killer before he had to stand up, stretch, read a magazine, watch television‖ (IK 337). It is precisely those media that the hateful images directed against Native Americans seem to come from. The right-wing radio host Truck Schultz, an emblematic character in Alexie‘s novel, employs the sentiment generated by the Indian Killer panic to further his own purposes. Talking himself into a rage, Schultz adds fuel to the fire by exploiting the anger against Native Americans. ―It‘s true, citizens, it‘s true. We should have terminated Indian tribes from the very beginning. Indians should have been assimilated into normal society long ago‖ (IK 209). ―Now,‖ he goes on, ―we should find this Indian Killer, give him a fair and speedy trial, and then hang him by the neck until he is dead‖ (ibid.). And as if this did not already reflect the 24 For a detailed reading of the structural parallels between Alexie‘s novel Indian Killer and Ford‘s western The Searchers, see George Mariani‘s essay. Stefan L. Brandt 52 common stereotype of the ‗only good Indian being a dead one,‘ Schultz cheers himself into the climax of his speech: ―Yes, citizens, to paraphrase one of our great military leaders, Philip Sheridan, the only good Indian Killer is a dead Indian Killer‖ (ibid.). It is through Alexie‘s subtle sense of sarcasm that the stereotypes commonly attributed to American Indians are debunked in the novel‘s aesthetics. Instead, the reader is positioned into the role of subaltern, wondering how she/ he would react to the systemic racism and exclusory politics of an antagonistic environment. In the narrative construction of Indian Killer, established codes of representation are replaced by a more complex, however strongly ambiguous, image in which Native American agency and performativity emerge as key devices of identification. Conclusion: Sacheen Littlefeather and the Eloquence of Silence In the course of their histories, television, radio, and cinema have all created stereotypical images of Native Americans, silencing efforts to speak about the genocide of indigenous populations. In 1973, Hollywood actor Marlon Brando refused to accept the Academy Award for The Godfather in a spectacular gesture and instead sent a spokesperson from the American Indian Movement 25 to utter his criticism: Sacheen Littlefeather, a Native American civil rights activist, who had already participated in the occupation of Alcatraz Island by protesters in 1969 and the uprising at Wounded Knee on February 27, 1973. In her widely-discussed appearance at the Academy Awards ceremony on March 27, 1973, Littlefeather explicitly pointed to the negative portrayal of Indians in Hollywood films being the main reason for Brando‘s rejection of the Oscar. Originally, the civil-rights activist wanted to read out a 15-page statement by Brando, but was stopped by the producers, who threatened to have her arrested if she spoke longer than 60 seconds. Ironically enough, this unprecedented act of protest is anticipated in a short speech of one of the show‘s presenters, Swedish actress Liv Ullman. By way of announcing the next recipient of the trophy, which happened to be Littlefeather replacing Brando, Ullman quoted the phrase that ―often to be most eloquent is to be silent‖ (―Marlon Brando's Oscar® Win‖: 0: 05-0: 08 mins). Littlefeather did not quite follow the advice given by Ullman, talking for over a minute about the ―treatment of American Indians today by the film industry […] and on television, in movie-reruns‖ (ibid.: 1: 35- 1: 54). The organizers of the Academy Awards ceremonies learned their 25 For an analysis of the American Indian Movement as a significant grassroots movement in the 1970s, see Dan Berger‘s recent study Struggle Within (2014). See also Churchill and Wall (2002). The American Revolution and Its Other 53 own lesson from this incident, prohibiting proxy acceptances of awards for all future times. I have argued in my essay that the lens of performance theory offers an apt instrument for a postcolonial reading of Native American literature and culture. In William Apess‘s and Sherman Alexie‘s writings, indigenous resistance is subtly communicated through the vehicle of performance, based upon the authors‘ ironic adaptation of the dominant rhetoric and their masterly play with audience expectations. The rebellious gestures of these texts are underscored and intensified by the devices of mimicry and specularity, that is, by the modes of imitation and reflection. It is through these strategies that the underlying statements of the texts concerning Native American empowerment and retribution can come to life in the dynamics of the texts. The literary theorist Arnold Krupat has claimed that Apess aspires to be the ―licensed speaker of a dominant voice,‖ who merely imitates the colonizer‘s discourse (1989: 148). In contrast, I have contended that, through the rhetorical means of appropriation and reflection, Apess transcends the discourse of colonization and effectively articulates a formerly subjugated voice. Moreover, he encourages us to share this voice and accept it as ours. By the same token, Sherman Alexie offers us a mirror image of dominant prejudices, assumptions and fears regarding Indians. The force of stereotypes is broken in his writings by a distinctly ironic viewpoint. The ‗eloquence of silence‘ demanded from Sacheen Littlefeather is transformed in a typical Alexie text into a performative spectacle, in which repressed feelings and emotions are allowed to come to the surface verbally. It is by means of a frivolous staging of rage and revenge fantasies that the protagonists learn to cope with the tremendous injustice of everyday cultural and political practice. And it is with these voices that the impulse of resistance to white dominion in U.S. American society is articulated and strengthened. References Alexie, Sherman (1993a). ―Crazy Horse Dreams.‖ The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York: Grove Press. 37-42. Alexie, Sherman (1993b). ―Distances.‖ The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York: Grove Press. 104-109. Alexie, Sherman (1993c). ―The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.‖ The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York: Grove Press. 181-190. Alexie, Sherman (1996). Indian Killer. New York: Grove Press. Apess, William (1831). A Son of the Forest, the Experience of William Apes, a Native of the Forest, Written by Himself. [1829]. New York: G.F. Bynce. Apess, William (1836). Eulogy on King Philip, as Pronounced at the Odeon, in Federal Street. Boston: Published by the Author. Apess, William (1992). ―An Indian‘s Appeal to the White Men of Massachusetts.‖ [Dec. 19, 1833]. On Our Own Ground. Ed. B. O‘Connell. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts. 205. Stefan L. Brandt 54 Apess, William (1992a). ―An Indian‘s Looking-Glass for the White Man.‖ [1833]. On Our Own Ground. Ed. B. O‘Connell. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts. 155- 161. Auslander, Philip (1997). ―‗Just Be Your Self‘: Logocentrism and Différance in Performance Theory.‖ From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge. 28-38. Berger, Dan (2014). Struggle Within: Prisons, Political Prisoners, and Mass Movements in the United States. Oakland, CA: PM Press. Bhabha, Homi K (1994). The Location of Culture. New York, NY: Routledge. Brown, Charles Brockden (1998). Edgar Huntly, or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker. [1799]. Ed. with an Introduction by Norman S. Grabo. London and New York: Penguin. Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge. Carlson, Marvin (1998). Performance. A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. ―Cherokee Nation v. The State of Georgia.‖ January Term, 1831. 20 U.S. 1; 5 Pet. 1; 8 L. Ed. 25. [online] https: / / www.sfu.ca/ ~palys/ USSC1831Cherokeev Georgia.htm. [Accessed 6 Apr. 2017] ―Christopher Columbus: Hero for the Ages or Genocidal Maniac? ‖ The New Moderate. Oct. 10, 2010. [online] http: / / newmoderate.com/ 2010/ 10/ 10/ christopher-columbus-hero-for-the-ages-or-genocidal-maniac. [Accessed 3 Apr. 2017] Churchill, Ward & Jim Vander Wall (2002). Agents of Repression: The FBI‟s Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Conspiracy Theory (1997). Dir. Richard Donner. Perf. Julia Roberts, Mel Gibson, Patrick Stewart. Warner Brothers. DVD. Deloria, Vine Victor, Jr. (1969). Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. New York: Macmillan. Deloria, Vine Victor, Jr. (1995). Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact. New York: Scribner. Derrida, Jacques (1994). Specters of Marx. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. London: Routledge. Donaldson, Laura E. (2000). ―Son of the Forest, Child of God: William Apess and the Scene of Postcolonial Nativity.‖ Postcolonial America. Ed. C. Richard King. Urbana and Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press. 201-222. Egan, Timothy (1998). ―An Indian without Reservations.‖ The New York Times Magazine. Jan. 18. [online] http: / / www.nytimes.com/ 1998/ 01/ 18/ magazine/ an-indian-without-reservations.html. [Accessed 4 Apr. 2017] Erdrich, Louise (1984). Love Medicine. Rev. ed. London: Flamingo. ―Genocide - Poverty - Hunger… No Thanks No Giving.‖ [online] https: / / me.me/ i/ genocide-poverty-hunger-no-thanks-no-giving-what-are-you- 4667963. [Accessed 6 Apr. 2017] Hinds, Janie (2004). ―Deb‘s Dogs: Animals, Indians, and Postcolonial Desire in Charles Brockden Brown‘s Edgar Huntly.‖ Early American Literature 39.2. 323- 354. King, Stephen (1983). Pet Sematary. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. King, Thomas (1993). ―A Seat in the Garden.‖ One Good Story, That One. Toronto: HarperCollins. 83-94. King, Thomas (1993). Green Grass, Running Water. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. The American Revolution and Its Other 55 King, Thomas (2013). The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America. Anchor Canada. Krupat, Arnold (2002). Red Matters. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Krupat, Arnold (1998). The Turn to the Native: Studies in Criticism & Culture. 1996. Lincoln and London: Univ. of Nebraska Press. Krupat, Arnold (1989). The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. The Lone Ranger (2013). Dir. Gore Verbinski. Perf. Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, Tom Wilkinson, William Fichtner, Barry Pepper. Walt Disney Pictures. Mariani, George (2011). ―Negotiating Violence and Identity in Sherman Alexie‘s Indian Killer.‖ fiar: forum for inter-american research. 4.2. Special issue ―Indigenous America - América Indígena.‖ [online] interamericaonline.org/ volume-4-2/ mariani/ . [Accessed 27 February 2017] ―Marlon Brando's Oscar® Win for The Godfather.‖ [online] http: / / www.you tube.com/ watch? v=2QUacU0I4yU. [Accessed 2 Apr. 2017] Melville, Herman (1992). Moby Dick. [1851] Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics. ―Mimicry.‖ Oxford English Dictionary. [online] http: / / www.oed.com/ view/ Entry/ 118659? redirected From=mimicry#eid. [Accessed 5 Apr. 2017] Momaday, N. Scott (2000). House Made of Dawn. [1966]. New York: Harper. Moon, Randall (1993). ―William Apess and Writing White.‖ Studies in American Indian Literatures 5.4. 45-54. Murray, David (1991). Forked Tongues: Speech, Writings, and Representation in North American Indian Texts. London: Pinter Publishers. Nagel, Joane (1995). ―American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Politics and the Resurgence of Identity.‖ American Sociological Review 60.6. 947-965. Nielsen, Donald M. (1985) ―The Mashpee Indian Revolt of 1833.‖ The New England Quarterly 58.3. 400-420. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1969). On the Genealogy of Morals. [1887]. Trans. Walter Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale. Ed. with Commentary by W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. O‘Connell, Barry (1992). ―Introduction.‖ On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot. Ed. Barry O‘Connell. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts. xiii-lxxxi. Peyer, Bernd (2005). ―Non-Fiction Prose.‖ The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature. Eds. Joy Porter & Kenneth M. Roemer. Cambridge et al.: CUP. 105-124. Porter, Joy (2005). ―Historical and Cultural Contexts to Native American Literature.‖ The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature. Eds. Joy Porter & Kenneth M. Roemer. Cambridge et al.: CUP. 39-68. Prucha, Francis Paul (1984). The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Abridged edition. Lincoln: The Univ. of Nebraska Press. Schechner, Richard (2002). Performance Studies: An Introduction. London/ New York: Routledge. Schechner, Richard (2003). Performance Theory. London/ New York: Routledge. Schueller, Malini Johar (Ed.) (2003). Messy Beginnings: Postcoloniality and Early American Studies. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press. The Searchers (1956). Dir. John Ford. Perf. John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood. Warner Brothers. DVD. Silko, Leslie Marmon (1992). Almanac of the Dead: A Novel. [1991]. New York: Penguin Books. Stefan L. Brandt 56 Silko, Leslie Marmon (1997). Ceremony. New York: Penguin Books. Smith, John (1632). The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. London: Edward Blackmore. ―Specular.‖ Oxford English Dictionary. [online] http: / / www.oed.com/ view/ Entry/ 186108? redirectedFrom=specular#eid. [Accessed 6 Apr. 2017] Utter, Jack (1991). American Indians: Answers to Today‟s Questions. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press. Vizenor, Gerald (1999). Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance. 1994. Lincoln/ London: Univ. of Nebraska Press. Warrior, Robert Allen (2004). ―Eulogy on William Apess: Speculations on his New York Death.‖ Studies in American Indian Literatures 16.2. 1-13. Washington, George (1783). ―Letter to James Duane.‖ Rocky Hill. September 07, 1783. [online] http: / / teachingamericanhistory.org/ library/ document/ letterto-james-duane. [Accessed 2 Apr. 2017] Weaver, Jace (1997). That the People Might Live: Native American Literatures and Native American Community. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. Wolfen (1981). Dir. Michael Wadleigh. Perf. Albert Finney, Diane Venora, Edward James Olmos, Gregory Hines, Tom Noonan. Warner Brothers. Stefan L. Brandt Institut für Amerikanistik Universität Graz