Migration, Mobility & Borders: Reading Response - Week 5

Allison Brown HIST 5400: Migration, Mobility & Borders Dr. Hampton September 22, 2022 Reading Response - Week 5 Phillips’ Staging Indigeneity: Salvage Tourism and the Performance of Native American History (2021) examines how American Indian culture throughout the United States is shaped and staged by different perceptions and acts of “salvage tourism”. Phillips defines “salvage tourism” as combining the “theoretical framework of salvage ethnography with the practices and yearnings of heritage tourism, meaning the experiences of travelling to places and taking part in activities that aim to represent the 1 stories and the people of the past.” At its core, salvage tourism builds on the identity of American Indians in storytelling and 2 perception to build a “distinctly American identity—one that can only really be achieved with Indians.” In turn, this salvage tourism for American identity was utilized as a tool in a way to counter modernity in a controlled manner, as Phillips writes, “By saving snapshots of what they consider to be expressions of Indianness in its purest form, salvage tourism underpins the notion that Indian cultures and Indian people are static and unchanging; when they inevitably change, they are no longer considered3 Indian.” This capturing of an unchanging, distant past in turn could support the racially charged and anti-migration policies being pursued nation-wide. In Oregon, the celebrations of American Indian identities stood in 4 stark contrast to the racially charged policies against Asian and African Americans. Additionally, these notions of American Indian identities prevent a static identity in some forms of economic production. The creation and production of these three dramas that Phillips focuses on are all tools of economic investment and indicate a tension between the creation and preservation of culture, being changed or shaped for a new audience, briefly, “as local economies faltered, American Indians, 1 Katrina M. Philipps, Staging Indigeneity: Salvage Tourism and the Performance of Native American History (University of North Carolina Press, 2021). pg. 20 2 pg. 20 3 pg. 25 4 pg. 47 Indian history and images of Indians became the most promising and potentially profitable regional 5 tourist endeavors.” Striking a balance between presenting culture in an authentic, organic way, this juxtaposition of preserving accurate indigeneity and modernity is striking. Phillips writes, “The American system of capitalism has wrongly placed Indigenous people, in the words of David Arnold, as the ‘unwitting victims of American progress’ … These problematic demarcations assume that, as with cultural markers of indigeneity, there is no room for change in how Indigenous people engage in local economies.”6 By acknowledging the impacts of capitalism in the creation and reimagination of these productions is to acknowledge the racial undertones of presentation in these spheres. The transfer of these productions as not only being a reproduction of history but rather a living, changing interpretation of the role of American Indians in modern American culture. On this, Phillips writes that tourism “has moved 7 from something imposed upon the Eastern Band to something intrinsically tied to its sovereignty.” By balancing the role of these productions as either performances of indignity or as representations of Indigenous culture is difficult, according to Phillips neither of these means “of preserving Indian history for the local and regional Indians whose histories formed the basis of each production” as Phillips argues that the concept of salvage tourism functions in a unique capacity which the economic impact of 8 “Indianness” cannot be separated. 5 pg. 26 6 pg. 74 7 pg. 145 8 pg. 199 Discussion Questions Phillips writes, “Rather, in a nod to the previous chapter, these suggestions happened as the BIA was moving toward the policy now known at Termination, which would sever the relationship between native nations and the federal government, dismantling both reservations and tribal sovereignty.” (pg. 122) 1. What role does the BIA and the federal government play in developing American Indian identities and the formation of salvage tourism? 2. How does the change in relationships between tribes and the federal government impact their depiction of American Indian histories? On tribal gaming and casinos, Phillips writes, “Concentrating on how the Eastern Band has fought to resist Hunter’s focus on salvage tourism allows us to see how tourism-- from turn-of-the-century endeavors to Unto These Hills and Harrah’s-- has moved from something imposed upon the Eastern Band to something intrinsically tied to its sovereignty … tribal gaming helps drive economic growth, and the Eastern Band can diversify its own economic interests and tourism practices. The casino, then, has effectively altered the function of the drama.” (145) 3. Phillips writes of tribal gaming/casinos as a means of economic development for American Indian communities. Does Phillips properly address the challenges posed by casinos on American Indian populations? 4. Should the author have addressed the concerns/contexts of tribal gaming, or is this not critical to her arguments?