Performing Germaness, Reclaiming Aboriginality

My research project provisionally entitled "Performing Germanness, Reclaiming Aboriginality" investigates historical and contemporary North American Aboriginal responses to the German Indianer image. I use the term Indianer to differentiate between the German idea of Aboriginal people and actual Aboriginal peoples to emphasize the fragility and ambiguity of the Indianer image. The image that Hartmut Lutz calls Indianthusiasm is an archetype of a neo-romantic idea, built on the tensions of Anti-modernism at the end of the 19th Century. The central 19th Century trope that the Indianer belonged to the past- either an allegorical past closer to Nature and God or an anachronistic, savage world who required assimilation to the dominant society or risked extinction- has remained entrenched in the German consciousness. Today the image of the Indianer is still binary and still shifting- but firmly situated in the past and representing either idealized or demonized figures whose contemporary image or struggles are not completely recognized. Aboriginal writers and artists who critically engage with the Indianer image are continually confronted with the same fictional and unstable image that has enduringly influenced the German cultural imagination- a binary that has more in common with German cultural heritage than actual Aboriginal peoples. Building on Lutz`s term Indianthusiasm and my forthcoming article "Reconsidering Winnetou: Karl May Film Adaptations and Contemporary Indigenous Responses", this project will make links between historic and modern examples of Indigenous performances in the space of the German homeland and consider to what extent Aboriginal performers challenged the cultural image of the Indianer. Taking the form of case studies, I will trace examples of historical and contemporary forms of resistance. Examining the historical acts of resistance by Aboriginal peoples in Germany in the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries, I use three contemporary examples to explore the current German relation to Aboriginal peoples by addressing the intersections of modernity, nationhood, performance, and popular culture found in the image of the Indianer. Used in German literature and culture for a host of ideological purposes, the Indianer image reveals its crucial role as symbol, cultural myth, and stereotype that helped to define German identity. Contemporary responses have begun to reclaim the Aboriginal image through a variety of multimedia platforms including literature, film, music, and performance. As these artists challenge the counterfactual aspects of the Indianer, it is no surprise that their challenges are met with resistance from a German perspective. While there is a long standing tradition of scholarship dedicated to the iconic figure of Aboriginal peoples in the North American and British cultural imagination, the reappropriation of the German Indianer image from historical and contemporary Aboriginal literary and transmedia perspectives has yet to be fully considered.

The Lise Meitner Project Performing Germanness, Reclaiming Aboriginality was a project that created more controversy in Austria than I anticipated. The premise was to examine the artistic, film, and literary responses of North American Indigenous artists to the German Indianer image, which is broadly understood to be encompassed by the 19th Century author Karl May and his Winnetou series. On the one hand it is fascinating that Indigenous artists are aware of and have decided to engage with an idea of Indigeneity that is obviously both fiction and fantasy. On the other hand, the Indianer image in central Europe is so pervasive that it continues to influence contemporary understandings of what it means to be Indigenous. I had the opportunity to present at academic conferences and receive valuable feedback regarding the project. My work was well received by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and was deemed both interesting and necessary. In the public spotlight, however, my project was received differently. The project was selected by the FWF to be featured publicly and an article appeared in Der Standard. I was shocked both by the amount of online comments (500) as well as the content of the majority of the comments. What became clear was the German speaking hesitation to engage with a nostalgic and fundamental part of many readers childhood, namely Winnetou. I recognized that there is still much work to be done in developing intercultural understandings in a contemporary context. The project has also resulted in publications and invited lectures.7 articles have been published or commissioned and I will be presenting at an important symposium, Entangled Gaze: Indigenous and European views of each other, in Toronto, Canada in October 2017, specifically on this project. I am anticipating a book length manuscript in 2020.