Cultural Appropriation: The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith , Black Robe and Dance Me Outside

Abstract

This chapter focuses on literary and cinematic texts in which Indigenous peoples have been appropriated by non-Indigenous authors and filmmakers: The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), written by Australian author Thomas Keneally and adapted by Australian director Fred Schepisi; Black Robe (1991), written by Northern Irish-Canadian author Brian Moore (1984) and adapted by Australian director Bruce Beresford; and Dance Me Outside (1994), stories written by Canadian author W.P. Kinsella and adapted by Canadian director Bruce McDonald. The chapter probes the ways in which settler-colonial culture borrows from Indigenous cultures. These case studies were produced either prior to or in the midst of debates surrounding the legitimacy of non-Indigenous representations of Indigenous culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The chapter also discusses multiple adaptations through historical antecedents to the novels (Keneally’s novel’s basis in the historical figure of Jimmy Governor, a mixed-race man who, along with his brother, murdered several white people in early twentieth-century Australia; Black Robe’s use of the Jesuit writings in New France) and the continuation of Dance Me Outside’s narrative and characters in Nick Craine’s graphic-novel version of the screenplay ultimately used to shoot the film (1994) and CBC television’s The Rez (1995-1997).