American West Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Linda Scarangella McNenly, Native Performers in Wild West Shows: From Buffalo Bill to Euro Disney, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012, 254 pages.Native Performers in Wild West Shows moves past a litany of excellent histories concerning the global influence of Wild West shows to create a "revisionist history" that begins in the late 19th century and ends in 2005. It also looks at various types of Wild West performances that took place around the world, including contemporary examples in Paris at Euro Disney and mock Wild West shows called Buffalo Bill Days in Sheridan, Wyoming. Anthropologist Linda Scarangella McNenly focuses on Native performer's experiences and perspectives that are suggested in archival materials and articulated in contemporary interviews with the intention of explaining how Canadian and American Native participants interacted with dominant society through this venue to produce subjective social meanings. Her revisionist history is intended to provide an examination and a re-examination of cultural, social and political expressions of Native identity and agency. Considering the span of both time and place, this is a challenging undertaking.Scarangella McNenly adopts Mary Pratt's well-used concept of "contact zone" as a space that allows for negotiations of power within a colonial context. The idea of the contact zone has been employed by anthropologists and historians frequently in discussions of North American fairs, powwows and rodeo competitions as a way of understanding how indigenous peoples have negotiated social identities and acted as political agents. Most recently, Mary Ellen Keim (2011) used this concept to weave together a holistic view of rodeo in Canada as a space where new identities and new relationships between indigenous and settler communities were crafted, contested and negotiated. Scarangella McNenly's adds Ortner's emphasis on "practice theory" to allow for an examination of such processes through discourses and representations, and to clarify how free will and intentions are part of webs of power structures and relationships. Multi-sited research is employed as a way to facilitate her "research pathway," which is based on "an experience" that cuts across places, ethnicities, archival records (including print media), oral narratives and personal accounts. This book is organized as a series of case studies and is intended to "examine processes, encounters, and relationships through time and space."Chapters 1 through 4 focus on Wild West performances and productions in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, ending with a brief overview of the Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch, last produced in 1932. Chapter 1 provides a fleeting introduction into the basics of American Wild West shows as an international sensation, where the performance of imperialism disseminated ideas about race, progress and indigenous peoples alongside world's fairs, museums displays and dime store novels. Chapter 2 and the remaining chapters follow a similar pattern: the first section of each uses archival sources and popular media to explain the context of Native participation, and the closing section brings "forward Native performers' perspectives and experiences to explore how they engaged with and negotiated these encounters." Chapter 2 looks at American Wild West shows as employers and Native performers as employees. Scarangella McNenly realizes her intention of providing Native perspectives on historic experiences through archived letters, show programs and personal memoires to outline the reasons why Native performers wanted to work in Wild West shows, including work for work's sake, monetary advantage and travel. Chapter 3 explores Wild West shows as performances of identity juxtaposing stereotypical representations of exotic cowboys and Indians in various forms of Western print media with "warrior identity" created by Native participants. …