The Moonspeaker:
Where Some Ideas Are Stranger Than Others...

THE IMAGINARY INDIAN AND THE BENIGHTED WHITE GUY

Abstract

Around the turn of the twenty-first century, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars published important studies examining and deconstructing media stereotypes of Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island. These works take a range of approaches, from detailed studies of representative works to broader-based examinations of the practices and influence of such key professions as journalism, publishing, anthropology, or history. Whether obviously positive, distinctly negative, or something more subtle, these stereotypes fill the toolbox of settlers engaged in an ongoing process of attempted erasure of Indigenous peoples themselves and attempted appropriation of their cultures and histories. All together, these stereotypes add up to what popular historian Daniel Francis refers to as "the Imaginary Indian." The burgeoning network of Indigenous media and scholars have created and deployed a strategic set of counter-stereotypes of so-called "white people" in their resistance to these mainstream attempts to appropriate and destroy Indigenous nations. I suggest this complex of images be referred to as "the Benighted Whiteguy." While "benighted" has connotations in the mainstream definition of an involuntary state, Indigenous use of the term references both accidental and deliberately chosen states and actions. After outlining the images characterizing the Imaginary Indian and the Benighted Whiteguy, this paper will compare and contrast their deployment in the mainstream and Indigenous media using the categories of acculturation, attempted cultural appropriation, and resistance to assimilation.

Introduction

December 2021 photograph of a black hellebore bloom by Dominicus Johannes Bergsma, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license via wikimedia commons.

Defining the Media

Comparison and Contrast

Conclusion

References Cited

Spencer, W.G. (Translator)
1971 Celsus, De Medicina, Volume 1. Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann Ltd. London.