Indian Women as Sex Objects

Blue Corn Comics (repost)

Raymond William Stedman offers a good review of this subject in his book Shadows of the Indian. In a chapter titled "La Belle Sauvage," he begins with Sacheen Littlefeather's infamous appearance at the Academy Awards in place of Marlon Brando:

...[C]olumnist Harriet Van Horne was obviously captivated by the "gentle-voiced Apache maiden...who appeared on the stage in tribal dress." Once the furor was over, suggested Van Horne, "people will still remember that lovely Littlefeather, in her shining braids, explaining as best she could why the most honored actor of the year was letting the chalice pass." The columnist's "heart went out to that Apache lass in her long braids." And that, she asserted, was "precisely what Marlon Brando had in mind.

Was that what Brando had in mind? If so, he had selected his propaganda device shrewdly, for it was, simply, that of the lovely and selfless Indian princess, possibly the most enduring image this land has known. Brando's braided messenger was Pocahontas and U-le-lah and Minnehaha and Redwing and Sacagawea and Sonseeahray and Summer-Fall-Winter-Spring and, some would say, the allegorical America. She was the female manifestation of the Noble Savage myth, changed little from the image created centuries earlier, and far more endearing and viable in the twentieth century than her male counterpart, the forest nobleman.

Stedman describes the self-effacing and self-sacrificing Pocahontas as the model of La Belle Sauvage, then details the image's history:

Through the nation's growing years Pocahontas the Nonpareil—intelligent, guileless, lovely, courageous—turned into Pocahontas the Imitated. Not a season went by that some author, or artist, or playwright, or trademark maker did not call upon her image.

Guy-Kirby Letts continues the thread in his essay on the "Indian Princesses and Cowgirls: Stereotypes from the Frontier" exhibit:

As representations changed, the images of First Nations women as Indian princesses who embodied mystery and exoticism began to emerge. During the post World War I era, the Indian princess is repeatedly portrayed alone in the pristine wilderness, scantily clad in a buckskin or tunic dress, sporting a jaunty feather over two long braids. Most striking, however, is that all of the models are notably white-skinned women.

In What's the Real Story on Sacagawea?, the Straight Dope lays the problem, er, bare:

[T]he Shoshone (like other North American Indians) had no concept of royalty, as Lewis's journals make clear. The "Indian princess" stereotype turns up a lot in misleading history, and even more in third-rate television and movie westerns. The stock Indian princess saves the white hero from her less enlightened brethren, and is often depicted as being tall, beautiful, and freakishly light-skinned. Think of Sacagawea as portrayed in the 1955 film The Far Horizons by that great Native American actress, Donna Reed.

Stedman quotes a description from the 1963 novel The Gates of the Mountains that fits many of the Indian "princesses." Note how the woman must look and act Caucasian to be palatable to the intended audience. By definition, beauty is in the eye of the white, majority beholder.

Sacajawea was not shy, but appealing soft of speech and manner. And she was gracefully feminine beyond any woman I had seen....Her head was not elongated, as so many of the Indians, but rather small and round, Caucasian in shape. So, too, were her features Caucasian.

Sacajawea was not only an uncommonly pretty young girl, she was a regal woman by any standard of any race. No man who ever knew her, was quite the same again.
Grace was hers, and good manners. Intelligence she had, and a quick and lively tongue. Dignity covered her every move. She could look like a queen while gutting an elk....She had no crown but her auburn hair....But Sacajawea was a ruler of men's hearts by God's will.

In short, Pocahontas and company were the female equivalent of the male Indian helpmates: Man Friday, Chingachgook, Tonto. James W. Loewen discusses the role of these "good Indians" in his book Lies Across America.

Sex Under the Buckskins

One element Stedman doesn't address is La Belle Sauvage's sexual overtones. Western men have always thought of "foreign" or "exotic" women as delectable forbidden fruit. Whether it was nubile black slaves, fiery Latina peasants, or demure Asian geishas, they presumed the servile facade hid a siren of smoldering sexuality.

As Stedman's "ruler of men's hearts" example shows, the Indian princess was little different. Other examples reinforce the point. Malinche, the slave girl who translated the Aztec language for Cortés, became his mistress and bore him a son. In Dances with Wolves, Kevin Costner makes a beeline for the comely Indian maiden, who turns out to be a captured white woman. People (including Disney's filmmakers) want to believe Pocahontas had blissful romances with John Smith and John Rolfe.

As in the rest of our culture, we've made the iconic Indian princess more overtly sexual in recent years. She's still with us in old Cher videos, movies like Road to El Dorado, and comics like GEN13. And each time she reappears—for instance, in the OutKast outrage—people are likely to protest.

Perhaps because of this, you don't see the image much in the mainstream media anymore. But the more innocent version is still on display. Oddly, you can find it often in mass-market dolls, plates, and other alleged collectors' items. Tourist shops in Indian Country and at kitschy places like Disneyland also carry the retrograde icons.

Examples of Indian Princesses 

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If You Can't Have One, Be One
What about non-Indians who claim to be descended from Indian princesses? In an excerpt from Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, Vine Deloria Jr. explains the phenomenon:

During my three years as Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians it was a rare day when some white didn't visit my office and proudly proclaim that he or she was of Indian descent.

Cherokee was the most popular tribe of their choice and many people placed the Cherokees anywhere from Maine to Washington State. Mohawk, Sioux, and Chippewa were next in popularity. Occasionally, I would be told about some mythical tribe from lower Pennsylvania, Virginia, or Massachusetts which had spawned the white standing before me.

At times I became quite defensive about being a Sioux when these white people had a pedigree that was so much more respectable than mine. But eventually I came to understand their need to identify as partially Indian and did not resent them. I would confirm their wildest stories about their Indian ancestry and would add a few tales of my own hoping that they would be able to accept themselves someday and leave us alone.

Whites claiming Indian blood generally tend to reinforce mythical beliefs about Indians. All but one person I met who claimed Indian blood claimed it on their grandmother's side. I once did a projection backward and discovered that evidently most tribes were entirely female for the first three hundred years of white occupation. No one, it seemed, wanted to claim a male Indian as a forebear.

It doesn't take much insight into racial attitudes to understand the real meaning of the Indian grandmother complex that plagues certain whites. A male ancestor has too much of the aura of the savage warrior, the unknown primitive, the instinctive animal, to make him a respectable member of the family tree. But a young Indian princess? Ah, there was royalty for the taking. Somehow the white was linked with a noble house of gentility and culture if his grandmother was an Indian princess who ran away with an intrepid pioneer. And royalty has always been an unconscious but all-consuming goal of the European immigrant.

The early colonists, accustomed to life under benevolent despots, projected their understanding of the European political structure onto the Indian tribe in trying to explain its political and social structure. European royal houses were closed to ex-convicts and indentured servants, so the colonists made all Indian maidens princesses, then proceeded to climb a social ladder of their own creation. Within the next generation, if the trend continues, a large portion of the American population will eventually be related to Powhattan.

While a real Indian grandmother is probably the nicest thing that could happen to a child, why is a remote Indian princess grandmother so necessary for many whites? Is it because they are afraid of being classed as foreigners? Do they need some blood tie with the frontier and its dangers in order to experience what it means to be an American? Or is it an attempt to avoid facing the guilt they bear for the treatment of the Indian?
 

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Indian Princesses in the Stereotype of the Month Contest

Indian princesses on Facebook
"All Native women are hoes"  
Nude Navajo model  
Indian maiden in PISTOLFIST  
A look at LIVING CORPSE #3  
Pageant contestant = sexy chief  
Aztecs game cover shows scantily-clad woman wielding axes  
Indian women are "squaws," sex objects in YouTube videos  
eBay auctions Red Indian girl, squaw, Pocahontas costumes  
Indian Restaurant waitresses dress like sexy Indian maidens  
OMEGA FLIGHT:  Sexy young woman becomes a shaman  
OUTLAW SQUAW stars generic buxom Indian beauty
"Butterfly dancer" ornaments portray Indians as fairies  
Card shows chief admiring Little Miss Sunbeam as Indian  
Mattel debuts slender "Princess of the Navajo" Barbie doll  
Disney Store sells Pocahontas costume with wig and fringe  
Miss USA dresses as scantily-clad chief in faux warbonnet

More Examples of Indian Princesses  
Dawnstar from the Legion of Super-Heroes  
Sexy Indian Halloween costume from an eBay auction  
Sexy Indian Halloween costume from an eBay auction  
Sexy Indian Halloween costume from an eBay auction  
Enola the shaman (Elena Finney) from Charmed  
Faux Indian maidens on OutKast's Grammy performance  
Faux Indian maidens on OutKast's Grammy performance
Indian babe with wolf from WILDE KNIGHT
Janet Pete (Alex Rice) in Coyote Waits
Indian Girl from 3 Wishes Lingerie  
Sexy Indian from 3 Wishes Lingerie  
Pocahontas from 3 Wishes Lingerie  
Suede and Feathers from 3 Wishes Lingerie  
Sexy Chief from 3 Wishes Lingerie  
Naughty Navajo from 3 Wishes Lingerie
Alope (Anita Brown) from The Lone Ranger  
Warrior Nations Amazons
Kyla (Tamara Feldman) on Smallville  
Janet Pete (Alex Rice) in Skinwalkers  
The First American Dinner Party  
Ice skater Krylova dances "Last of the Mohicans"  
Spirit of the Earth Barbie Doll  
Taran from PETER PARKER:  SPIDER-MAN 2001  
Gen13's Rainmaker (another view)  
Woman playing Tiger Lily in Peter Pan
"River of Dreams" painting  
Loving Heart doll
Morning Bird doll  
Native American princess costume  
TOMAHAWK #137  
Land O' Lakes butter maiden  
Topless Indian maiden—probably from a WW II warplane  
Fruit Gum ad

More on Indian Princesses and Sex Objects  
Nude Navajo model  
Criticism of "Savage Love"
 Monkman's central figure
The Redskin magazine controversy
Land O' Lakes poem  
Masturbatory fantasies  
The first Indian princess?  
The Rez Dog calendar:  role models or sex objects?
Tiger Lily in Peter Pan:  an allegory of Anglo-Indian relations  
Pocahontas bastardizes real people Pocahontas II:  flawed again  
The facts on Sacagawea

 

Related Links

Tonto and the "good Indian"

"Marriage or bust" for Disney's women

Squelching the s-word

Essentialism and the Role of the Non-Indigenous in Native Studies

Brianne, Tapwewin

Essentialism: the view that categories of people, such as women and men, or heterosexuals and homosexuals, or members of ethnic groups, have intrinsically different and characteristic natures or disposition¹ 

Is Native Studies an essentialist-based discipline? Should only indigenous members of a community study their culture, tradition, and relations? Is there room for non-indigenous individuals within the realm of Native Studies?

First, I argue that Native Studies is not grounded in essentialism. My first reason is simply that there are too many Euro-American scholars in the field for it to be considered essentialistic. Secondly, I will take the standard philosophical approach, that states for there to be Native Studies, there must in fact be recognized an especial group of people called Native, Aboriginal, Indigenous etc. And for this group to be especial, there must also than be another group of non-Native, non-Aboriginal, non-Indigenous etc. And I argue that both the Native and non-Native groups, by being not of the same group will therefore have different discourses of Native Studies and what Native Studies is.
Because there then exists non-Native discourses of Native Studies, Native Studies cannot be open only to the Native population of scholars. Additionally, the changes in non-indignous society and culture have as much to do with Native Studies as Indigenous adaptation over time. Therefore, the Native Studies as a discipline cannot function in isolation, "teaching about whiteness, how whiteness frames Indigeneity and how Indigenous people know whiteness should stand as a central component of the discipline of Indigenous studies."² 

So "No," I do not believe that Native Studies is exclusive to Indigenous scholars. I believe that if a Cree scholar is researching Blackfoot people and knowledge (as Ladner did in A Bunch of Dots in a Circle or Writing the Circle: A New Understanding of Blackfoot Governance³), that the wall of essentialism is broken down. As human beings we have the ability to transmit and accept knowledge and the methodology of transmission and acceptance are more important than who is giving and receiving said knowledge. ALL people are intrinsically different. From our genetic make-up to our experiential learning, to our perception of the senses, it cannot be known just how different and individual humans truly are. And in our utter lack of uniformity we can be loosely grouped in human, ethnicity, nationality, occupation etc. However, I find there to be nothing essential about these groupings that truth, acceptance and experience cannot rearrange. Our intrinsic different(iation) lies within our person.

So now that I have claimed the space of the non-indigenous within Native Studies, I would like to share some of what I have learned regarding the role of a non-indigenous person in Native Studies. Because of individual differences and differences of categories stated above, not all areas of Native Studies are accessible for non-indigenous scholars. In fact Champagne states that "most contemporary theories of group action can provide only partial explanations for the conservative cultural and political organization of indigenous peoples and for their cultural and political continuity to the present."⁴ And non-indigenous scholars are not able to capture, I believe anyway, the true essence of being indigenous, just as indigenous people are not able to know what it is to be Euro-American. This conversation can go on for eternity as an individual argues that you cannot know what the other feels, sees, hears, and believes. So instead we use various methodologies to try and create the best picture and clearest lines of communication. We admit in the beginning that respect grounded in humanity is what we share.

Role: the function assumed or part played by a person or thing in a particular situation.⁵
I will focus on the function assumed by a non-indigenous person in the realm of Native Studies. This is the crucial part to be mindful of in today's world of oppression, power imbalance, and racism. The best intentions can lead to horrid results if a person is not continuously conscious of his/her role in a given situation.

Below is a list of the possible (probable) roles a non-indigenous Native Studies scholar may be asked to assume.⁶ (Remember: We are above all else individuals, with different experiences, temperaments, beliefs, and connections. This list is not exclusive or inclusive to ALL non-indigenous Native Studies scholars. We will all be assuming our own unique role.)

• Aboriginal Community Liaison Officer in the oil & gas, forestry, and mining
• positions in health & wellness;
• environmental management;
• consultants and project manager;
• educational policy research and planning;
• teaching/educator;
• government employees or representatives;
• lawyer 

However, non-indigenous scholars in Native Studies need to aware of their actions and function. Theories such as White Privilege and Agency need to be foremost in a non-indigenous scholars mind. A good example is in the entertainment sector - White Characters and the Question of Agency. Therefore, it is more important how a non-indigenous scholar theorizes and acts versus what position he/she holds. Non-indigenous scholars can/should assume the following roles without stealing the intellectual, political, and geographical space⁷ of indigenous people;

• supporter
• motivator
• listener
• learner
• honourer
• advocate⁸
• negotiator⁹
• communicator¹⁰

This is my conclusion after 4 years of studying Native Studies and Aboriginal Partnership and Governance at the University of Alberta. Non-indigenous scholars must be careful not to smother indigenous initiatives and individuals. They must allow for indigenous people to govern and assert themselves. Whiteness coincides with indigeneity, but must not consume it. And above all else, we are all humans.
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End Notes  

1. Oxford American Dictionary, "Essentialism."

2. Chris Andersen, "Critical Indigenous Studies: From Difference to Density." Cultural Studies Review, Vol. 15, No. 2, (2009): 94. 
http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/view/2039 

3. Kiera L. Ladner, "A Bunch of Dots in a Circle or Writing the Circle: A New Understanding of Blackfoot Governance." 

4. Duane Champagne, "In Search of Theory and Method in American Indian Studies." The American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 3, (2007): 353.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/aiq/summary/v031/31.3champagne.html 

5. Oxford American Dictionary, "Role."

6. Faculty of Native Studies, "Will a Native Studies degree get me a job?" Question and Answers. http://www.ualberta.ca/NATIVESTUDIES/home/nsqna.pdf

7. Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto, 2nd ed. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2009 (pp. 19).

8. Jason D. Brown and David Hannis, Community Development in Canada, 2nd ed. Toronto: Pearson Canada, 2012 (pp. 73).

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.
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Indian Princesses and Cowgirls: Stereotypes from the Frontier

Pocahontas, Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley. When we think of women in the “wild west,” these are the images that come to mind. The Indian princess is a serene, noble savage. The cowgirl is a smart-talking, gun-slinging dynamo. These stereotypes are so deeply ingrained in our popular culture that we scarcely give them a second thought. A collection of popular culture images of Aboriginal and western women from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, currently showing at the Presentation House Gallery, unveils and challenges these representational stereotypes.

The show features over 200 photographs, postcards, calendars and other historical images of “Indian princesses” and “cowgirls” which graphically depict the historical representation of women, race and the colonial west.

In the struggle for national identity, Canada and the United States began constructing their own creation myths and fanciful stories. For both of these countries, manufacturing a national identity involved an aggressive, if not genocidal, form of cultural appropriation of First Nations peoples and culture.

Appropriation involves strategies for occupation. This entails a reworking of both real and imagined spaces appropriate to the needs and fantasies of the occupier, as well as a fundamental need to cloak the acts of appropriation in appreciation. Unfortunately, throughout the history of colonization it has primarily been women who have been made amenable to occupation by refiguring and redrawing them in an appreciated, though stereotyped, image.

The squaw is transformed into an acceptable figure of desire by turning her into a lighter-skinned, less threatening twin—the beautiful and heroic princess—while the cowgirl is transformed into a “white savage” who transgresses both sexual and spatial boundaries. This double strategy not only masks Native peoples with European appearances, but is also used to represent the untamed nature which resides in both the frontier and white cowgirl.

The imaginary constructs found in European notions of femininity and wild savagery are grafted onto First Nations and frontier women, bringing civilization to the wild and the wild to civilization in a more palatable form. In essence, Native women become more “feminine” and white, and white frontier women become more “wild” and native.

According to Gail Valaskakis, one of two guest curators, “The discourse of the Indian as noble and savage, the villain and the victim… is threaded through the narratives of the dominant culture and its shifting perceptions of the western frontier as a land of savagery and a land of promise.” Like the cultural narratives of the western frontier which sustained them, textual representations of real First Nations peoples reveal stories of conquest and its legacies. “The Indian social imaginaries expressed in literary, artistic, academic and media images circulate in the discourse of our everyday action and events. In the conflicting power relations of different communities and interests, they work to construct identities with different ideologies and meanings that become central sites of cultural struggle,” said Valaskakis.

The images on exhibit demonstrate how First Nations identity and cultural struggle are grounded in representation and appropriation, representations which have been appropriated by others in a political process that confines the Native past as it constructs the Native future.

“The ambiguous representation of Indian women which we associate with the western frontier has been with us since the earliest colonization of the Americas,” said Valaskakis.

As representations changed, the images of First Nations women as Indian princesses who embodied mystery and exoticism began to emerge. During the post World War I era, the Indian princess is repeatedly portrayed alone in the pristine wilderness, scantily clad in a buckskin or tunic dress, sporting a jaunty feather over two long braids. Most striking, however, is that all of the models are notably white-skinned women.

The masculine transgression of cowgirls in wild west fiction depicted the romanticism of an underlying “Indian nature.” Pictures of cowgirls, adventure heroines and outlaw women were first produced for wild west, rodeo and vaudeville shows, dime novels and monograms as a means to promote sales. However, in actual frontier society, many women deliberately took on this fictional role through the act of “playing Indian.”

Playing Indian was an opportunity for white women to escape the conventional and often restrictive boundaries of society. Rodeo and wild west show cowgirls generally featured “butch” women wearing pants and performing death defying stunts on horseback. These performances mimicked the fantasy of the Native huntress and warrior as imagined in the minds of nineteenth century onlookers.
“Historically, the adventure-loving frontierswoman was explained away as an Indian ‘warrior maiden,’ then as a sexual rebel, and finally, like her counter point the cowboy, as a product of the open range,” said Burgess, co- curator.

However, the relationship between these three stereotypical incarnations is not strictly temporal. “Their respective characteristics,” noted Burgess, “existed in tension with each other, just as they do now, teasing out the gender anxieties produced by the changing sexual freedom of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

Article originally published in The Peak.

Indian Princess and Cowgirls: Stereotypes from the Frontier

Essays by Gail Guthrie Valaskakis and Marilyn Burgess, and one artist's project by Rebecca Belmore 1995, 83 p., 46 ill. (23 colour), bilingual publication, $20. Valaskakis’s essay proposes an analysis of historical and contemporary images of Indian princesses, while Burgess examines the myths of the cowgirl in North American culture. Belmore’s bookwork was created especially for the publication.