fetishize native americans in aspic

I came across your blog by accident this morning and read it with interest. Don't now why I'm writing to you, but I have this strange feeling inside that tells me to write. This all sounds very weird I know, and no, I haven't had too much Xmas eggnog or drunk all the brandy that was meant for the Xmas cake. 

Anyway -- I live in New Zealand and I am white, but I have this absolute passion for Native American people, their history and their culture. I have had it since I was young and it still burns inside of me. I have photos all over my office walls of chiefs, warriors and just beautiful Native American people. I collect artifacts and paintings -- anything I can that is remotely Native American -- through the internet, and I have a bookcase full of books on and about everything Native American. I have done history papers extramurally through a university in the States and I still can't quench my desire to know more. 

Why is it that I have such a passion for this race of people? Why do I feel so at peace when I gaze at pictues of them? Why is it that their wisdom and beliefs seem so natural and right to me? How is it that I feel them in my soul?

I will give you one other piece of info and that is that as a baby, I was adpoted into the family I am in. And a very loving family, to say the least. My natural father I know is a Dutchman, and who is to say that generations ago ,somewhere way back in history, someone on my father's side did not end up in early America. And as we say -- the rest is history.

Or perhaps that is just wishful thinking on my part.

I know you can't answer these questions and I don't even expect you to reply. It just seemed right to put it all down in an email.

Thanks for listening, kind regards,

Cathie

Thank you for writing, Cathie, and for letting me present your questions to this blog's many racially cognizant readers -- it's actually a great follow-up to yesterday's post. I don't know if many readers here, or even any, self-identify as Native Americans, but I do think you'll still get some thought-provoking responses in the comment section here.

Since you asked me what I think about your Native American fetish -- and I do think your extreme interest qualifies as a "fetish"-- I'll try to respond too. I don't know you, of course, so I can't know much about your motivations. I can say, though, that what I'm primarily trying to do with this blog is identify and analyze what I call "common white tendencies." Your extreme interest in Native Americans is an example of a common white interest, or tendency -- not only in the U.S., but elsewhere in the world. And like many other common white tendencies, it's widely considered problematic, at best.

As a reporter for a German newspaper notes, the extent of German interest in the "Wild West," and especially in its "Indians," is "a little astonishing":

At powwows -- there are dozens every year -- thousands of Germans with an American Indian fetish drink firewater, wear turquoise jewelry and run around Baden-Württemberg or Schleswig-Holstein dressed as Comanches and Apaches. There are clubs, magazines, trading cards, school curriculums, stupendously popular German-made Wild West films and outdoor theaters, including one high in the sandstone cliffs above the tiny medieval fortress town of Rathen, in Saxony, where cowboys fight Indians on horseback. A fake Wild West village, Eldorado, recently shot up on the outskirts of Templin, the city where Angela Merkel, the chancellor, grew up.

And on and on. The writer of this article attributes the German phenomenon to one person, "a writer named Karl May (1842-1912), virtually unknown in the United States but the most popular author in German history." May wrote dozens of enormously popular books about a fictional Apache chief named Winnetou:

A con man and Walter Mitty-like homebody who spent eight years in jail dreaming of Wild West adventures, May (the name is pronounced My) wrote dozens of tall-tale books that have sold more than 100 million copies, maybe twice that many if you count translations from the German. Kaiser Wilhelm II, like May a fantasist who loved to dress up in exotic costumes, adored May’s books. So did Einstein and Albert Schweitzer, Kafka and Fritz Lang. Hitler did too.

In New Zealand, has there been someone like May, or some other form of popular culture, that romanticized and/or sensationalized "cowboys and Indians" for you?

It's interesting that while New Zealand obviously has its own indigenous population, the Māori, you're instead fascinated with the more distant Native Americans. Also, your particular fascination is "distant" not only in geographical terms, but also historically. Native Americans still abound today, as do the Māori, and in very different guises, or modes of living, than the ones that you're fascinated with.

So, another good question arises -- why the distance? Why not instead be fascinated with indigenous people less distant, in both geographic and temporal terms?

If you do some poking around on the Net, you'll find that there's a lot of discussion out there -- and frankly, much of it is disdainful -- of white people who are fascinated with what amounts to Native Americans in aspic. I choose that gastronomic metaphor because different kinds of food -- dead food -- are suspended in aspic in such a way that eaters can still see them. The metaphor also works here because it echoes a well-known American cultural critic's analysis of the common white tendency that's exemplified by your Native American fetish.

In her essay "Eating the Other," bell hooks points out that seemingly "exotic" cultures and ethnicities often intrigue white people as a kind of escape from the norms or conventions of mainstream (that is, white) society. As hooks writes, "ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture."

There's clearly more to your longing of sorts, for bygone and dubious conceptions of Native American life, than a mere desire to spice up your life. Still, hooks does point a way here toward a probable motivation for you -- an escape from what you see as a problematic modern (and, perhaps, "white") existence. I would guess that you imagine that the ways "those people" supposedly lived are better than the ways your people currently live?

But then, as hooks points out in her essay (which I highly recommend), your desire for a fantasized, primitive, and romanticized "Other" is situated within, and influenced by, a white supremacist framework and culture. Idealized, airbrushed, and ultimately "self"-serving images, like those that adorn your walls and so on, have been handed down to you, made available by a mainstream culture that feels remorse for its theft, displacement, and genocidal treatment of indigenous peoples. Adoring those people, especially a lost and really unrealistic version of those people, is a way to emotionally and psychologically atone for that loss. You may well feel that kind of remorse yourself. (For more on why white people romanticize "Indians," you could also start here.)

Some -- actually, a lot -- of these love-struck white people even go so far as to proudly proclaim that they themselves have Native American blood. Again, this claim is based on a romanticized and unrealistic conception of what Native Americans were supposedly like; the white "wannabe" of this sort is rarely thinking about today's actual, living Native Americans when they embrace this blood (also revealing -- how very rarely whites make the same claim about something that's more likely to be swimming around inside themselves, that is, black blood).

Such "atonement" rarely has much real effect for the injured, damaged people in question (who, again, are still here). This fetishizing mode of "eating" a primitive Other is a common white tendency in that its really about, and for, the white person doing it. It's almost never instead about or for the Other; if it were, the white people reaching out to Native American-ness would be reaching out to actual, living Native American people. Or in your case, actual, living Māori people.

So that's my tentative guess for some possible motivations for your passion for "anything," as you put it, "that is remotely Native American." Does your passion extend as remotely, or actually as nearby, as actual indigenous people? If not, why not? Also, how much of this passion about an Other is instead a set of feelings and/or emotions about yourself, and about your own people? Again, I don't know you, but I'm guessing the answer is, "a lot." If so, is it really fair, or appropriate, to basically use another people this way?

Thanks for writing, Cathie, and good luck rethinking your fascination. I welcome your response, either in comments here or over email -- please let me know, especially, if you think I guessed anything wrong about you here. And as I said, I also hope that other readers of this blog will have further input for you.