Redface

White actor Richard Barthelmess portraying a Native American chief in the 1934 pre-Code film Massacre.

Redface is the wearing of makeup to darken or redden skin tone, or feathers, warpaint, etc. by non-Natives to impersonate a Native American or Indigenous Canadian person, or to in some other way perpetuate stereotypes of Indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States. It is analogous to the wearing of Blackface.[1] In the early twentieth century, it was often white performers, who wore blackface or redface when portraying Plains Indians in Hollywood Westerns.[2] In the early days of television sitcoms, "non-Native sitcom characters donned headdresses, carried tomahawks, spoke broken English, played Squanto at Thanksgiving gatherings, received 'Indian' names, danced wildly, and exhibited other examples of representations of redface".[3]

Redface has been used to describe non-Native adoption of Indigenous cultures, no matter how sympathetic, such as the painters in the Taos Society of Artists during the early 20th Century portraying themselves in their own works wearing Indigenous clothing.[4]

  1. ^ The Associated Press (March 17, 2019). "Native Americans say movement to end 'redface' is slow". The Oregonian.
  2. ^ Peter Antelyes (2009). "Haim Afen Range: The Jewish Indian and the Redface Western". MELUS. 34 (3). Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States: 15–42. doi:10.1353/mel.0.0047. JSTOR 40344855. S2CID 126754809.
  3. ^ Dustin Tahmahkera (2008). "Custer's Last Sitcom: Decolonized Viewing of the Sitcom's "Indian"". American Indian Quarterly. 32 (3). University of Nebraska Press: 324–351. doi:10.1353/aiq.0.0012. JSTOR 25487882. S2CID 161435088.
  4. ^ John Ott (2009). "Reform in Redface: The Taos Society of Artists Plays Indian". American Art. 23 (2). The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Smithsonian American Art Museum: 80–107. doi:10.1086/605710. JSTOR 10.1086/605710. S2CID 191229545.