Indigenous Bodies Indigenous Bodies Reviewing, Relocating, Reclaiming Edited by Jacqueline Fear-Segal and Rebecca Tillett Cover illustration: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, The Red Mean: Self-Portrait, 1992, acrylic, newspaper collage, shellac, and mixed media on two canvas panels, 90 × 60 inches. Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2013 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Michael Campochiaro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Indigenous bodies : reviewing, relocating, reclaiming / edited by Jacqueline Fear-Segal and Rebecca Tillett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-4821-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Indian art—North America. 2. Indian philosophy—North America. 3. Indian artists—North America. 4. Human body—Symbolic aspects. 5. Human body in art. 6. Human body in literature. 7. Indian literature—North America—History and criticism. 8. American literature—Indian authors. I. Fear-Segal, Jacqueline. II. Tillett, Rebecca. E98.A7I48 2013 704.03'97—dc23 2012045313 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii Editors’ Introduction ix Jacqueline Fear-Segal and Rebecca Tillett Foreword: “Of bodies changed to other forms I tell”: Tumblebuggery, Creation Stories, and Songs xxv Carter Revard I VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS 1 Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Indigenous Bodies, Indigenous Stories in a Post-Columbian World 3 Carolyn Kastner 2 Restating Indigenous Presence in Eastern Dakota and Ho Chunk (Winnebago) Portraits of the 1830s–1860s 17 Stephanie Pratt II DISMEMBERMENT AND DISPLAY 3 Plaster-Cast Indians at the National Museum 33 Jacqueline Fear-Segal 4 William Lanné’s Pipe: Reclaiming the “Last” Tasmanian Male 53 Lynette Russell III GENDER AND SEXUALITY 5 Sodomy, Ambiguity, and Feminization: Homosexual Meanings and the Male Native American Body 69 Max Carocci vi Contents 6 Devil with the Face of an Angel: Physical and Moral Descriptions of Aboriginal People by Missionary Émile Petitot 85 Murielle Nagy IV IMAGINATION AND COMMODIFICATION 7 Marketing Indigenous Bodies in the Fiction of Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexie 101 Joanna Ziarkowska 8 Stories from the Womb—Esther Belin’s From the Belly of My Beauty 113 Ewelina Ban´ka photo gallery follows page 126 V DIS-EASE AND HEALING 9 Prayer with Pain: Ceremonial Suffering among the Mi’kmaq 129 Suzanne Owen 10 Coping with Colonization: Aboriginal Diabetes on Manitoulin Island 145 Darrel Manitowabi and Marion Maar VI PHYSICAL LANDSCAPES 11 Representing Indigenous Bodies in Epeli Hau’ofa and Syaman Rapongan 163 Hsinya Huang 12 The Many Indigenous Bodies of Kai Tahu Khyla Russell and Samuel Mann 179 Contributors 191 Index 197 Acknowledgments The editors would like to thank members of the Native Studies Research Network, UK, for their ongoing enthusiasm and intellectual inspiration since the network was founded in 2006. Special thanks go to all committee members past and present: Max Carocci, Graeme Finnie, Mick Gidley, Claudia Haake, Sam Maddra, Jacky Moore, Stephanie Pratt, David Stirrup, Gabriella Treglia, and Robin White. Additional thanks go to our colleagues in the School of American Studies at the University of East Anglia for their untiring encouragement and support. Chapter 4 is a distilled and abridged version of arguments made by Lynette Russell in her monograph Roving Mariners: Australian Aboriginal Whalers and Sealers in the Southern Oceans, 1790–1870 (SUNY Press, 2012). An earlier version of chapter 11 was published in the Tamkang Review, “Representing Indigenous Bodies in Epeli Hau’ofa and Syaman Rapongan,” 2010, 40.2: 3–19. vii Editors’ Introduction J F -S r T acqueline ear egal and ebecca illeTT When working on the island of New Caledonia, the French missionary and ethnologist, Maurice Leenhardt (1878–1954), in conversation with his most trusted Native informant, Erijisi Boesoou, proclaimed: “In short, what we’ve brought into your thinking is the notion of esprit” [spirit or mind]. To which Boesoou retorted: “Spirit? Bah! We’ve always known about spirit. What you brought was the body.”1 James Clifford recounts this story in his classic biography of Leenhardt. Outlining how Leenhardt strove to comprehend the different structure of experience that could make such a response possible, Clifford presents Leenhardt’s subsequent ethnographic theorizing as a direct, or sometimes indirect, exposition of this rejoinder. He notes how “a dialog of interpretations is portrayed in the anecdote,” because it was “an exchange that turns upon Western mind-body dualism and finally unravels it.”2 The story, which has become apocryphal, presents us with a clear reminder of how the concept of “the body” has very specific cultural, historical, and ideological roots. It offers a powerful illustration of how the body’s meanings are unsta- ble, open to contest, and can be interpreted differently in contexts where understandings of embodiment are fed from different cultural, or different historical sources. In Paul Rabinow’s words, “the intimate linkage between the two key symbolic arenas, ‘the body’ and ‘the person,’ ” would have to figure prominently on any list of distinctively Western traits.3 Acknowledging not only the power of this Western binary but also its dominance and endurance, the chapters in this collection unpack and inter- rogate this imposed construction, in order to challenge its presuppositions and review, relocate, and reclaim the density and complexity of traditional indigenous beliefs. This book is concerned with the indigenous body as a site of persistent fascination, colonial oppression, and indigenous agency, and the endurance of these legacies within Native communities. At the core of ix