MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

An examination of the Star Trek television series on its 50th anniversary reveals enduring stereotypes of American Indians who function in the commodification of culture to shape messages of Eurocentric superiority. Like other television dramas of the past and present, American Indian stereotypes featured in characters such as Tonto in the Lone Ranger series and Chakotay in Star Trek: Voyager perpetuate persistent systemic overlapping markers of cultural-racial identity. Those stereotypes appear in a wide array of media and other venues in American culture. Their persistence has shaped the depiction of American Indians across dominant culture in many forums including news coverage of contemporary controversies such as the confrontation of native people and environmentalists with Energy Transfer Partners, a Texas-based company responsible for building the $4 billion 1700 mile pipeline to transport oil from the Bakken Reserve in North Dakota to Illinois.

Using Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical model of terministic screens and my own experiences as a member of the Lakota tribe who grew up on the Fort Berthold reservation in western North Dakota, I will investigate how the representations of American Indians rooted in past stereotypes frame current controversies over land and water rights. The images that accompanied the coverage of the 2017 controversy over the North Dakota pipeline reflect the enduring Frontier Myth and dominant Eurocentric perspective, ultimately deflecting responsibility for the historical mistreatment of native people and degradation of the environment by dominant institutions. Judging by clashes over resource allocation during the pipeline controversy, these racial ideologies remain deeply embedded in American discourse. In all likelihood such conflicts will continue to define the relationships among dominant American institutions, native populations and the environment.