The Binary of Meaning: Native/American Indian Media in the 21st Century

Abstract

Native/American Indians have been historically marginalized in traditional news coverage since the earliest media practices in the United States. Influenced by the media, or forged by the media, research about Native/American Indian identity has continued to evolve and thrive in this new century by at once looking back and gazing forward. This critical essay analyzes the themes of Native/American Indians in the media through narrative frameworks, finding significant shifts in the portrayal of contemporary issues—such as in the contentious legal case of Cobell v. Salazar—when Indigenous voices are heard. Finally, by analyzing the powerful juncture of identity and media, this article suggests six thematic directions for future studies in this arena.

KEYTERMS:

• American Indian identity
• Cobell v. Salazar
• Native Americans
• Race
• Media
• Rhetoric

The author acknowledges the support of the Gaylord Family professorship in making time and resources available to undertake part of the research for this article.

Notes

In his reading of Publick Occurrences , Sanchez (2009) analyzed the reports of Indian wars and showed them to be negatively slanted against indigenous peoples through the choice of words and descriptors the articles used. What emerged were frames of violently hostile Indians who seemingly operate without cause or provocation, a view that historical fact disproves.

Conventions vary, often according to geography, about the preferred name for indigenous people. For this article, we will use this combination of both as an inclusive alternative.

In his own Thanksgiving Proclamation, President Barack Obama struck a rhetorical balance between the historical antecedents of the Thanksgiving tradition and the political sensitivities among many Native/American Indians who view this celebration as a time of mourning.

DuBois first wrote about this in an 1897 commentary he published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine and later incorporated it as a chapter/section in his groundbreaking 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk. He described double consciousness as state of contested identity which produced a psychological condition where the “Negro” experienced the “twoness” of hosting “… two warring ideals in one body” (1969, p. 45). Carstarphen (2011) argued that the binary of Native American/Indian identity represents a similar, but different tension, one that calls for a simultaneous habitation of two selves in one—indigenous and U.S. citizen—informing an identity that rhetorically, if not structurally, is conjoined and equal.