scholarly journals Circulating Regalia and Lakȟóta Survivance, c. 1900

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 146
Author(s):  
Emily C. Burns
Keyword(s):  
Women Artists ◽  
Cultural Assimilation ◽  
Public Display ◽  
Public Statement ◽  
Wild West Shows ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Wild West

This essay offers object biographies of two examples of Lakȟóta beaded regalia that traveled with Wild West performers to France in 1889 and in 1911, respectively, as exemplars of Gerald Vizenor’s concept of survivance. By examining the production of the objects by women artists within the Lakȟóta community and visually analyzing their designs, this article highlights the regalia as an opposition to both settler colonial political suppression and enforced attempts of cultural assimilation. The article stresses that the beadwork’s materiality bears traces of its intended circulation and public display that are enacted when Lakȟóta individuals wore the regalia in the context of Wild West performance in France. Both when rooted in the Lakȟóta community and when circulating through Wild West shows, the objects evince Lakȟóta survivance. When the regalia was acquired by non-Native individuals in France, who projected new meanings onto the objects, the function of the regalia as a public statement of Lakȟóta survivance subtly continued to operate through generated revenue for the community and through the visibility of Lakȟóta culture through continued circulation.

Wild West Shows

2000 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 362
Author(s):  
L. G. Moses ◽  
Paul Reddin
Keyword(s):  
Wild West Shows ◽  
Wild West

Beyond Feathered War Bonnets

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-31
Author(s):  
Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Native People ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Wild West Shows ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Wild West

Despite the messages of power and progress that museums, exhibitions, and even Wild West shows created and encouraged, Kiowa and other Native people negotiated and transformed them, making cultural and political spaces and opportunities. Creating these spaces for cultural expression was also work, and Kiowa people engaged in cultural production as labor and as a means to maintain cultural life during the assimilation era. The spaces that Kiowa and other Native people created at the turn of the century would later be taken up by subsequent Kiowa cultural producers.

Poor Lo

Jockomo ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 53-74
Author(s):  
Shane Lief ◽  
John McCusker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
Wild West Shows ◽  
Wild West

While based on local families expressing their blended Native and African legacies, the development of the Mardi Gras Indian cultural system was also shaped by the stereotyped notion of the “American Indian.” Throughout the nineteenth century, as the United States expanded westward across the continent, theatrical and musical productions increasingly incorporated stereotypes of Native Americans, sometimes appearing in Wild West shows. This fell within a larger pattern of minstrelsy, a form of entertainment based on ethnic caricatures especially popular at that time. This chapter examines how minstrelsy, including the Wild West shows, influenced local enactments of “Indianness” in New Orleans. Conventional historiography has often seen the Wild West shows as the point of origin for Mardi Gras Indian traditions. This historical axiom is dispelled, however, and the nineteenth century entertainment industry is instead revealed as a phenomenon which reinforced previously existing cultural practices.

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