Crafting "the Indian": knowledge, desire and play in Indianist reenactment

Abstract

"In Europe, Indian hobbyism, or Indianism, has developed out of a strong fascination with Native American life in the 18th and 19th centuries. Indian hobbyists dress in homemade replicas of clothing, craft museum-quality replicas of artifacts, meet in fields dotted with tepees and reenact aspects of North American Indian lifeworlds, using ethnographies, travel diaries, and museum collections as resources. Grounded in fieldwork set among networks of Indian hobbyists in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the Czech Republic, this ethnography analyzes this contemporary practice of serious leisure with respect to the general human desire for play, metaphor, and allusion. It provides insights into the increasing popularity of reenactment practices as they relate to a deeper understanding of human perception, imagination, and creativity. Petra Tjitske Kalshovenis a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester"--Provided by publisher.

Contents

Setting the stage : Indianism and what it is not -- Indian hobbies, European contexts : history, historiography, ethnography -- "Is this play?" : reframing metaphoric action on Indianist playgrounds. Buffalo Days Camp 2003 : journal -- Amateurs at work : modes of knowledge making and remaking -- Shifting selves around authentic replicas : crafting the past into the present -- Matter, metaphor, miniature : marvels of the model -- Appendix. Missouri River story : a tale of playing for high stakes.