This document discusses the representation of Native Americans in popular culture, specifically in the comic book Scalped and the video game Red Dead Redemption. It describes how Scalped portrays Native characters in criminal and "negative" ways, but also argues that Native communities need to be willing to have complex representations, not just stereotypes. The document then analyzes Red Dead Redemption, noting how the game at first presents Native characters through stereotypical views of an anthropologist character, but later subverts expectations by showing Native characters as more knowledgeable than the anthropologist. It suggests this represents some progress in moving beyond stereotypical portrayals.

2. A little over a year ago, I had an interesting
online debate with a fellow blogger about the DC
Vertigo comic book Scalped.
For those who don’t know, Scalped is billed as
“the Sopranos on an Indian reservation,” is
written by an award winning (but not Indigenous)
writer named Jason Aaron, and represents
Native people in a way that many commentators
have referred to as “negative.”
The “boss” and all the evil-doers, as well as the
agent trying to catch them are all either full-
blood or mixed blood members of the Ogala
Lakota tribe.

3. My opposite in this debate claimed, and I will not
disagree, that the representation of these
fictional Indians, on their fictional Prairie Rose
reservation, was damaging because it portrayed
Indians in a very negative light.
But my counter was this: if those of us in the
Native American community want to be taken
seriously as a part of contemporary American
popular culture– to rise above the stereotypes–
we have to be willing to be presented in ways that
are “real.” We have to be willing to be Darth
Vader if we want to be Luke Skywalker, to be
Cruella DeVille if we want to save the dalmations.

4. Video games are quite clearly in the realm of
popular culture. And while I wish to focus on a
few specific examples from one particular game,
I want to set the landscape quickly by showing
just a few American Indian– or American Indian
inspired– game characters to set the stage for
this discussion.
Stereotypes abound.

13. In the video, the player hears Harold McDougal–
an anthropologist from Yale who is studying “the
Injuns”– lay out his initial view of the American
Indians in Red Dead Redemption as he speaks to
the game’s protagonist, John Marston.
Notice that is fits many fictional stereotypes (and
sadly, once held beliefs), and while he doesn’t
use the word “noble,” it invokes the “Noble
Savage” imagery.
We later meet Nastas, McDougal’s American
Indian ally and one of his research participants
(though I doubt he had IRB approval).

15. Here we see a rhetorical inversion: McDougal,
the scholar, is a character that would typically be
considered intellectual and a representation of
what is “right,” but we see in the video:
1) He is shocked that Indian and “white” blood is
the same
2) He uses cocaine to “think”
3) He has no sense of what Nastas knows
4) He has little sense of “reality” (but is sure of
his own ideas)

17. The gamer now starts to see the narrative
tensions. The protagonist, Marston, doesn’t
appear to take a side, but the professor comes
more and more unhinged as he moves forward,
playing the stereotypes of the Western genre out
in a comical inversion wherein Nastas, and in the
next clip even the villains, appear much wiser
and more well informed.
Notice the ethos in play as McDougal attempts to
use his position as a Yale scholar to justify his
opinions and his “research.”

19. I would not assert that Nastas represents a
quantum leap forward for the portrayal of
American Indians in video games and popular
culture, but he indicates a sort of progression
from Deloria’s sense of “playing Indian” to
offering a mediated Indian that shows depth and
the potential to be not “just” a savage, not “just”
a warrior, not “just” a shaman, not “just” a sex
symbol, but to be a character with depth and
narrative force.
Of course every good thing has its end…

21. All images used linked to their
sources. All video recut from
walkthrough videos here.