Philip Deloria Playing Indian Analysis

In chapter one of his book Playing Indian, Philip Deloria discusses the history of Europeans assuming Indian identities for rituals and how this often displaced Native Americans. The concept of displacement of the Native Americans that Deloria explains mirrors the shift that Ira Hayes experiences as a Native American soldier in Clint Eastwood’s film Flags of Our Fathers. Though the time periods are extremely far apart, the sense of Native American displacement as the result of white Americans in the film echoes that in Deloria’s writing. Deloria points out the ways in which Europeans and in turn, colonists, viewed Native Americans in which they separated themselves from the perceived Other of the Native Americans. Within a historical context, Deloria explains that “manipulated by colonists, and transformed by the infusion of Indianness, misrule and carnival offered proto-Americans a platform for imagining and performing an identity of revolution” (Deloria, 14). Much like Eastwood, Deloria does not attempt to make his critique more pleasant to read or think about, and instead he focuses on uncovering the truth as it was. In this way, Deloria does not let modern …show more content…
The discussion is critical of this identity play, and by pointing to the specific ways in which Native Americans were othered rather than treated as human beings aligns with Ira Hayes’s narrative in a war-stricken America. Deloria also explains how the use of Native American identity appealed to colonists who wanted to change aspects of their country because of “the freedom, naturalness, and individualism of the native custom” (Deloria, 26). In this way, the identity play that Deloria discusses is actually a reflection on white Americans themselves, and less on the ideals of Native Americans that the colonists