The focus is on how and why white Americans mimic
stereotypical ideas of Indian traditions, images, spiritual ceremonies, and clothing, citing examples such as the
Indian princess,
Boston Tea Party, the
Improved Order of Red Men,
Tammany Hall,
Scouting societies like the
Order of the Arrow, and in more recent decades,
hippies and
New Agers. Referring to
D. H. Lawrence's
Studies in Classic American Literature, Deloria argues that white Americans have used an idealized image of the anachronistic Indian of historical times, and the practice of "playing Indian" to create their own national identity; both identifying with Indians as liberated, patriotic
New World inhabitants in touch with nature, while simultaneously denigrating real, contemporary Native American people as ignorant, savage
others, incapable or unworthy of preserving their own cultures. "Disguise readily calls the notion of fixed identity into question," writes Deloria. "At the same time, however, wearing a mask also makes one self-conscious of a
real 'me' underneath." The book is a reworking of Deloria's 1994
Yale doctoral dissertation. He explores the white American dual fascination with "the
vanishing Indian" and the idea that the white man can then be the true inheritor and preserver of authentic "Indianness", with the only "authentic" Indians being dead and in the past. A recurring trope in this pattern is "the Indian 'Death Speech'", an example he cites is from
James Fenimore Cooper's
The Redskins, "You hear my voice for the last time. I shall soon cease to speak." his book has itself been compared to scholarly work on
blackface and to the work of
Richard White. ==See also==