MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Western ideologies of colonization still permeate American popular culture, often maintaining negative stereotypes and representations of Native American cultures. Though today we do see more Native Americans in American popular culture and media, they are still severely under- and misrepresented peoples, their voices still silenced by the hegemonic American narrative in many ways. The AMC television series Fear the Walking Dead (FTWD) launched in 2015 by Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson is garnering increasing interest as its plot progresses, though as of yet, the spinoff series remains largely lacking in critical scholarship compared to its parent series, The Walking Dead. FTWD arguably shares with its parent series the affinity for violence and Western genre tropes, as its introduction of Native American character Qaletaqa Walker (played by Michael Greyeyes) in Season 3 (2017) and his vengeance to reclaim land for his people from a white Western family ranch directly ties the show’s primary plot to the “Cowboys vs. Indians” narrative. Considering the loaded background of Hollywood’s Western genre and the American mythology of the West’s endorsement of settler colonial ideology, the depictions of violence and villainy surrounding Walker in FTWD warrant serious scrutiny. This presentation aims to explore how Walker is cast into historically oppressive Western genre stereotypes which villainize and misrepresent indigeneity; how Walker’s stereotyping perpetuates hegemonic settler colonial ideology; and what the implications are of these settler colonial stereotypes towards indigenous people lingering in American popular culture.