He is also compelled by a nostalgic desire to experience the freedom of life on the Plains before it’s all gone. But it is not only the desire to escape from this bloody slaughter which draws Dunbar to the frontier. Deranged officers and soldiers populate the gory early scenes of the film, seemingly bent on their own destruction or the senseless slaying of their brothers. The character is, in part, fleeing to the edges of civilization from a European-American world apparently gone mad in the bloody Civil War. To the disbelief of his officers and fellow soldiers, Dunbar (played by Costner) chooses the furthermost post, located on the Plains-in other words, in hostile Indian country.

¹ The film opens with the young hero, just decorated for an unintended act of heroism (actually a failed suicide attempt), being given the opportunity to relocate to another military post. IN HIS HIGHLY ACCLAIMED 1990 box-office hit, Dances with Wolves, the director, Kevin Costner, tells the story of Lieutenant John Dunbar, a disillusioned Civil War hero gone native. Huhndorf reconsiders the cultural importance and political implications of the history of the impersonation of Indian identity in light of continuing debates over race, gender, and colonialism in American culture. Going Native shows how even seemingly harmless images of Native Americans can articulate and reinforce a range of power relations including slavery, patriarchy, and the continued oppression of Native Americans. Huhndorf asserts that European Americans' appropriation of Native identities is not a thing of the past, and she takes a skeptical look at the 'tribes' beloved of New Age devotees. Another fascinating example is the process by which Arctic travelers 'went Eskimo,' as Huhndorf describes in her readings of Robert Flaherty's travel narrative My Eskimo Friends and his documentary film Nanook of the North. Some are quite pervasive, as is clear from the continuing, if controversial, existence of fraternal organizations for young and old which rely upon 'Indian' costumes and rituals.

Huhndorf looks at several modern cultural manifestations of the desire of European Americans to emulate Native Americans. Huhndorf uses cultural artifacts such as these to examine the phenomenon of 'going native,' showing its complex relations to social crises in the broader American society-including those posed by the rise of industrial capitalism, the completion of the military conquest of Native America, and feminist and civil rights activism.

Displays of this impulse include world's fairs, fraternal organizations, and films such as Dances with Wolves.

Since the 1800's, many European Americans have relied on Native Americans as models for their own national, racial, and gender identities.

Going Native by Shari M. Huhndorf