Staging Indigeneity

“Nuanced. . . . [Phillips] situates the dramas she has come to watch in the context of each town’s economic ambitions and its fraught history with Indigenous people.”—Journal of American History

“A compelling story of how Native American history is quite literally staged, why its staging persists as a tourist attraction across the United States, and what the complex conditions for its production and performance were and are.”—American Indian Quarterly

“Phillips’s excellent book forces us to consider how we depict our history—who creates it, who controls it, and for what purposes. . . . In an age when some Americans are calling for us to sanitize our history—to revere and celebrate it rather than to think critically about it—[Staging Indigeneity] could not be more appropriate, useful, or relevant.”—Journal of American Ethnic History

“An excellent study of conquest or settler tourism. . . . I learned a great deal from reading this book.”—American Indian Culture and Research Journal

“Phillips deftly demonstrates how tourism based on loose interpretations of historical events both builds cultural memory and elides concrete classification into categories like ‘authentic’ or ‘exploitative’.”—Western Historical Quarterly

“A powerful demonstration of the importance of Indian pageants in the historical and continued commodification of Indians and Indianness by white America for economic benefit. . . . [R]elevant and timely. . . . Staging Indigeneity is not just for Native American and Indigenous performance studies scholars interested in the construction of Indigeneity through performance but for anyone interested in US American identities. Phillips has provided a great example of how to uphold Native sovereignty and explore Indigenous identity within the confines of settler-colonial cultural productions and performances.”—Theatre History

“Thoroughly researched and well-written. . . . Phillips rejects simple narratives and, instead . . . brings a nuanced understanding of these varied motivations as well as the shifting meanings that the pageants hold for American Indians over time.”—North Carolina Historical Review

“This is an important study about “playing Indian” and the complexities of American Indian identity.”—CHOICE

“This is an important study about 'playing Indian' and the complexities of American Indian identity.”—CHOICE

“Phillips has a keen eye for observation and possesses a deep knowledge of these contemporary performances. Her writing is beautiful, her analysis of the productions is stunning, and her central theoretical apparatus of 'salvage tourism' is enticing.”—Boyd Cothran, York University