Appropriations, Creative Subversions, and Conversations: The Indianer in Contemporary Germany and the Double Entendre of Re-enactment

Abstract

This article will contextualize Indianthusiasm in a contemporary setting. While the German fascination with Indigenous cultures is hardly new, Indigenous engagement with and critique of the Winnetou phenomenon in the past ten years has produced a space of indictment and, more important, a space for conversation. Writers and artists such as Drew Hayden Taylor, Bear Witness from A Tribe Called Red, and others have engaged with the Indianer image as they employ Gerald Vizenor’s concept of Native survivance. In dealing with a simulacrum of Indigeneity, these artists engage with a myth with decidedly little Indigenous content, from a nation known primarily as armchair colonialists.