Miss Indian America: Regulatory Gazes and the Politics of Affiliation
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Miss Indian America:
Regulatory Gazes
and the
Politics of Affiliation
Wendy Kozol
T H R O U G H O U T ITS EXISTENCE, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has
turned to photography to document interactions hetween Native
Americans and the federal government. By the mid-twentieth century,
BIA publicity photographs were using visual strategies similar to those of
other federal agencies to represent social prohlems and the government's
solutions to those prohlems. There are a predictahle range of pictures
such as before and aher housing projects, schoolchildren in classroom
settings, and job training programs. Photographs such as these have long
appeared in the BIA newsletter, the Indian Record, and are available to local
and national publications, .sometimes with accompanying captions and
press releases. Such pictures support public relatioas efforts to demon-
strate the successes of" BIA programs by envisioning Native Americans'
access to the state and inclusion in the national experience. This visual
rhetoric, however, is contingent on alterities that are disciplined and reg-
ulated and by the elision of the violent history of genocide that is also the
"national experience."
Is there, then, anything we can learn from these pictures of Indians who
pose for the camera as they participate in government projects, including
the project ot visual documentation"; Do these photographs only repre-
Feminisi SttidiesH. n o . I (Spring 2(XI5). © 200.'i by Feminist Studies. Inc.
64
Wendy Kozol
sent an assimilationist agenda that denies the history of colonialism and
genocide? Are they simply to be dismissed as propaganda?
Among the thousands of photographs taken hy the BIA, one group of
images from the l%Os and \970s features a series of Miss Indian America,
and her counterparts. local pow-
wow princesses and reservation
heauty queens.' Carefully com-
po.sed pictures show women in
traditional dres.s who smile for
the camera and often appear
with banners that announce
their titles. For instance, one
photograph from 1972 features
i\\(i women standing on an air-
port tarmac in front of an air-
plane (see fig. 1). A young wom-
an with long dark hair, identified
as Miss Nora Begay (Navajo),
smiles at the camera as the han-
ner across her chest and the
crown on her head declares her
Miss Indian America XVIII. Her
l{)ng dress, reminiscent of nine-
teenth-century fashions, seems
Tij;. I. "Miss Indian America XVIII. Nora Begay
(Navajo)." No. 75-CL-9.V44. Photograph ot" out of time in comparison with
t.ontempitrary Indian life, Rr, 75. Records of the the white woman wearing a
BIA, National Archives at College Park. Maryland fashionable suit standing next to
(NACP).
htr. The unidentified blonde
woman wears a short-skirted suit, glove.s, and a handbag that suggests that
she is a flight attendant, an assumption reinforced hy the airplane behind
her. The figures stand in the Ujreground, which encourages the viewer to
peer closely at these two women. Gender connects the women, for flight
attendants and heauty queens conventionally emhody popular feminine
values. Behind them, the tail of the plane prominently displays the airline's
logo, "National." Compositional proximit).- of the two figures, their smiles.
6€ Wendy Kozol
and the sign behind them mobilize both nationalism and gender to create
a visual association between the women. At the same time, their racial dif-
ferences foreground the relationship between alterity and universality
around which nationalism pivots. One ohvious reading, then, is that these
publicity photographs, similar to pictures of successful building projects,
promote an image of Indian adaptability to modern life.
Scholarly critiques of representations of Indians often focus on the ways
in which photographs, movies, museum exhibitions, and other popular
itnages perpetuate stereotypes of Native peoples. For instance, Richard King
argues that. "Native Americans are alternately removed from history,
frozen in an unreal ethnographic present, rescued from extinction . . . or
assimilated into national narratives and made supplemental to white histo-
ries of the nation."^ This historiographical focus has had important political
and analytical power in efforts to understand the cultural forces of colo-
nialism. The temptation, however, is to contrast popular images with docu-
mentary photographs to establish the claims of a real Indianness against
such distortions. Philip Deloria warns against the search for more authentic
representation because such efforts can lead to their own romanticized
imagery.' This move to the "real" often reproduces an ethnographic gaze at
Indians that has been prevalent in both popular and academic discourses
since the nineteenth century.* For instance, my project has been criticized
for not conducting ethnographies to contrast with the photographs 1
examine. Such critiques, however, privilege a certain notion of experience
as more authentic while assuming that images can only lie or only tell the
truth. A more pertinent question is how does visual culture participate in
constructing historically specific notions of identity and experience; As
Stuart Hall argues about diasporic cultures, we need "to theorize identity as
constituted, not outside but within representation . . . not as a second-order
mirror held up to reflect what already exists, but as that form of representa-
tion which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects, and thereby
enable us to discover places from which to speak."^ Rather than search for
authenticity in these photographs, which offer neither mimetic reflections
nor only distortions, scholars need to explore how the pictures themselves
participate in the historical narration of Indian identities.
The critical value of these photographs, then, lies not in their ability to
Wendy Kozol 67 document "real" subjects but rather in how publicity photograpKs of fig- ures in standardized poses and compositions participate in the contested arenas ot identity formation. This is one reason that my interests here are less in the decisions that individuals made ahout the camera, important as that research is, than in how visual culture provides particular representa- tions ahout agency, identity, and nationalism. This project draws on the work of visual culture scholars who explore visual representations as "polycentric, dialogical, and relational sites mediating between individu- als, communities, and cultures."* Rather than understand the govern- ment's gaze in BIA photographs as only an imperialist gaze, we do better to explore how photographs otTer complex mediations about the histori- cal formations of cultural identities. In this regard, the historical context under which the government undertook projects of documentation can illuminate not why a particular person posed, but what role(s) visual cul- ture plays in struggles over identity. ln figure I, for instance, the photograph combines signs of the modern, corporate state with ethnic markers to hail Miss Indian America as a sub- ject distant from popular stereotypes, a subject who i.s both Indian and American, both a representative of Native peoples and a modern citizen of the United States. Signs of mobility (the tarmac, the tail of the plane, preparations for another flight) offer evidence of modern life against tradi- tional symbols of Indianness in her dress and beadwork. Spectacle and agency coexist here, for even as the camera's gaze marks Miss Indian America's difference, her smile at the camera confronts the viewer's expectations about identity and citizenship. Disjunctures posed hy pictures of Miss Indian America force a reconsid- eration of the federal government's gaze at Indians. Government agencies have long served as gatekeepers, disseminating and regulating popular knowledge about marginalized cotnmunities to other American publics. The BIA's cultural authorit\' to invest certain narratives with the legiti- mating claims of "realitj'" and "history" mediates viewers' knowledge about Indians' relationships to the state. Here, at least, the gaze constructs visual knowledge about citizenship and difference in ways that refuse easy categorizations about the place of the Native American subject withiti, not outside, the national imagination/
68 Wendy Kozol This project, then, is not about recovering a more accurate or authentic view of Indians. Instead, it critically engages with the photograph.s in order to explore the role visual culture plays in the complex (re)inscriptions of nationalism. We need to interrogate Mis.s Indian America's relation to Indianness, modernity, and to the state, rather than to dismiss photo- graphs similar to this one a.s simply more evidence of the coercive policies of assimilation. The concept ot assimilation relies on a center/periphery model that envisions outsiders w ho learn to conform to normative society without a corresponding impact on dominant culture. The complex meanings in these images discredit the center/periphery model inherent in assimilationist rhetoric. .\s Ella Shohat writes. "Since racial definitions, eth- nic hierarchies, gender identities and sexual belongings are situated and conjunctural, shifting and transmuting across histories and geographies, they explode and implode a unified narrative of what constitutes 'racial,' 'national.' and 'sexual" identifications and affiliations."* In other words, identities and experiences of hoth marginalization and national citizenship are relational and mutable. Thus, as Shohat suggests, affiliation is a better model for understanding marginalized groups' relationships with the nation. .Affiliation, far more than assimilation, acknowledges the dialogic nature of identity formations. Citizenship and belonging are highly contested and conflictual relation- ships and ones that are formed at a variety of local, community, national, and transnational levels. Both ideal and material constructions of commu- nity form through struggles and negotiations over permeable norms, boundaries, and .social institutions.* Those negotiations, as Hall reminds us, occur not just in social interactions but also in photographs and other forms of representation that encode the often contradictory affiliations between shifting positionalities. In this regard, markers of affiliation in these photographs tell us little about these women's individual choices or actions. Instead, they represent identity as a collective ideal shaped by both material conditions and cultural defmitions of gender, race, citizenship, and belonging, f Carefully composed studio portraits of MLss Indian Ameri- cas articulate not individual agency but rather, through their repre- sentative status, social and political affiliations with both Indian and national citizenships.
Wendy Kozol 69 The concept of affiliation emerges from theoretical debates in postcolo- nial studies about the complex workings of identity within colonialism. Postcolonial scholars have explored issues of ambivalence, identification, resistance, voice, and other strategies used by subalterns. For instance. Homi Bhabha's highly influential concept of atnbivalence in colonial discourse examines how mimicry appeals to the colonizer's desire for the partially assimilated other who is "almost the same but not quite." Equally impor- tant, for the colonized, mimicry creates gaps or slippages that reassert other subjectivities and histories and hence secure spaces of resistance.'" Others have criticized Bhabha's definition for its essentializing assump- tions about subaltern identities. They explore both the possibilities of, and limitations to, colonized peoples' ability to destabilize colonial discourse. These debates have produced important theoretical insights into the "con- flictual ambivalence l^etween colonizer and colonized."" Linking concepts of ambi\ aleiice and mimicry to affiliation, we can see how photographs of Miss Indian .America engage with various gender, racial, and national iden- tifications. Performing a pan-Indian and nationalist script within the frame- work of the beaut)- pageant offers "imitation with a difference." This, in turn, raises questions about how photographs depict a collective ratber than individualized repre.sentation of agency that mediates, if not disrupts, colonialist narratives. As we will see, these photographs provide insight into the cultural politics in play as representative Miss Indian Americas perform across boundaries of local Indian communities, pan-Indian cultural and political struggles, and the apparatuses of the state. Struggles over identity and affiliation in photographs of Miss Indian Americas and powwow princesses, as my analysis of figure I suggests, are evident in the interactions Iwtween factors such as tradition and moderni- ty, citizenship and ethnicity, as well as spectacle and agency. More specifi- cally, I will argue that adaptations of the Euro-American beauty pageant and the consequent gender renegotiations are central to these seemingly contradictor>' claims of nationalism and Indianness. Rather than prioritize gender over ethnicity, however, government photographs ot Indian beau- ty contestants expose Miss Indian America's affiliations as simultaneously gendered, ethnic, and nationalist, in using the concept of affiliation. 1 do not intend to erase the lengthy history of the federal government's, and
70 Wendy Kozol especially the BIA's, coercive policies of assimilation. Rather, the concept of affiliation foregrounds the inequalities that structure identities, which shuttle "back and forth between concentric circles of affiliation riven hy power a.symmetries.'"^ In other words, what is at stake here is how visual struggles over identity negotiated BIA policies of "forced inclusion."'^ This analysis of BIA photographs of beauty queens from the 1960s and 1970s begins with a discussion of how visual constructions of Indian identi- ties mediate competing expectations of authenticity and modernity.'^ Next, I attempt to move beyond assimilationist models of visual culture by locating photographs of Miss Indian America within the social, demo- graphic, and political contexts in which Indian beauty pageants became popular. Einally, I examine changing BIA policies to consider visual acts of affiliation with the state. RETHINKING AUTHENTICITY Euro-American visual representations have long projected colonial desires on to the "available" female body of the vanquished Indian. Since early colonization, depictions of the noble and ignoble savage have elevat- ed the Indian maiden to an invented royait\- in contrast to the figure of the squaw or exploited drudge. Numerous scholars have argued that images of Indian princesses, such as Pocahontas and Sacagewea, idealize Native women who either rescued white men and/or aligned with them to facilitate the processes of colonization.'''Some of the BIA photographs of contemporary Indian beauty queens, such as an undated picture of Ruth Stewart (Chippewa), appear to conform to this historical conven- tion of the Indian princess.'* The Vilas County, Wisconsin, beauty queen stands in the foreground aiming a bow and arrow at the camera. She seems timelessly available as she smiles at the camera, wearing a fringed and beaded dress with moccasins and an elaborate beaded headband. An indistinct, darkened background brings her close to the picture plane while a raking light directs the viewer's gaze onto her body as she takes aim with her bow and arrow. The natural setting and archery motif seem once again to envision Native peoples as "living relics of the past." As Leah Dilworth points out, the rhetoric of colonialism and empire building often relies on the dialec-
Wendy Kozol 71 tical contrast between modernity and an ahistorical primitivism. Such rhetoric locates "authentic" Indians in an edenic past untouched by histo- ry or civilization, thus connecting authenticity to primitivism.'' Similarly, in a 1964 photograph of Miss Indian America X, Williamette Youpee (Sioux) emerges from a teepee wearing a traditional dress with feathers and beads, beaded necklace, braids, and feather headband.'* Behind her are two more teepees and an indistinct background. No signs of modern life disrupt the timelessness of this image; instead the teepees envision an abo- riginal scene that no longer exists. BIA pictures such as those of Youpee and Stewart appear to dehistori- cize Indian cultures by erasing evidence of daily urban or reservation life. Dilworth argues that primitivist assumptions about noble Indians who courageously resist oppression, an increasingly popular rhetoric in the twentieth century, elide historical contingencies that shape identity and agency," Although these two photographs can be read as reproducing an ahistorical romanticism, the context of the beauty contest itself refuses such a timeless construction of the "living relic." Beauty pageants emerge within twentieth-centurv' cultures, thus unsettling any easy assumptions about the timelessness of these subjects. Photographs of Miss Indian America, and related pictures, are typically staged compositions, many of them studio portraits. These Miss Indian Americas were not captured unaware, as in some forms of documentary. Photographers used several compositional conxentions to depict beauty contestants and powwow princesses; the two most popular were the head and shoulders shots and full-length portraits in natural settings, most often with the suhject in traditional attire. Rather than interpret these pictures as evidence of either Indian women's agency or complicity, these photographs articulate multiple affiliations with both Native Atnerican and national identities. Their status as Miss Indian Americas or local coun- terparts, moreover, foregrounds their social representativeness rather than their individual identifications. A photograph of Viola Noah, runner-up for the Choctaw Princess at a 1973 Labor Day gathering, eloquently exposes these complex, even com- peting forms of affiliation (see fig. 2). She stands in the center foreground of the composition posing for the camera with her trophy and a bouquet
Wendy Kozol Fig. 2. "Miss Viola Noah, runner-up for Choctaw Princess at Lahor Day Mt-eting at the Coundl House, 9lij7^r No. 352-73-7^9, Photograph of Indian liie .submitted by .\rea BIA Offices. Muskogee Area Office. RG7S. Records of the lilA, NACI'. of flowers in her hand. Echoes of Euro-American beauty contests fore- ground the processes of mimicry in which the slippages also call attention to spaces of difference. C'ontrasts abound, for Noah wears a traditional beaded necklace, headband, and hair ornaments along with a blouse made of a contemporary sateen material. Behind her in a rural setting .sits a police car and other automobiles that, similar to the trophy, contrast with more conventionally romantic symbols of the Indian maiden. Noah's smile ds she displays her trophy % isually articulates her proud participation in this beauty contest while the sign of the state's power, the police car, hovers hehind her. Labor Day celebrations t>pically promote civic pride through a mythology about an industrial urban workforce tbat ignores the employment histories of the presumably preindu.strial and agrarian Indians. Both the government's gaze and Noah's display of her achieve- ments, however, insist on inclusion in this national mythology, an inclu- sion marked hv ambivalence.
Wendy Kozol 7} Was it just had planning or happenstance, then, that the photographer included the police car, whose coercive a.ssociations belie claims of inclu- sion: Perhaps the photographer was in a rush or wa.s insensitive to larger historical meanings. Or perhaps she/he recognized the irony and posi- tioned the subject intentionally to create the juxtaposition. It is not possi- ble to identify the police car but it could he part ot the tribal police force. If so, the photograph would then also foreground the complex alliances hetween Native American governance structures and state and federal gov- ernments. Speculations about the photographer's intentions, however, remain unanswerable. In talking about the government's gaze, it is impor- tant to note that lew ot these pictures identify specific photographers. Authorship lies primarily uith the BIA who copyrighted and circulated the pictures. Eor the most part, individual photographers did not receive credit. Thus, the BIA establishes a governmental gaze through visual documents that produce a narrative of an "inclusive" nation. Images such as this one of Noah should also make us suspicious of any assumptions about the corruption of an authentic Indian culture. Instead, BIA publicity photographs of Miss Indian America, and her counterparts, ask us to engage with beauty pageants as cultural strategies through which Indian communities struggled not only to survive but also to develop coherent identities in modern environments. .Since the early days of colonization, Indians have adopted, and adapted, pageants, parades, and other Euro-American cultural practices, often as a means of subversively keeping traditions alive.^ Whereas the pow^wow has roots in earlier cultur- al traditions, the Miss Indian America pageant and local contests for pow- wow princesses are twentieth-centurv adaptations of Euro-American practices. Rather than presume that a traditional culture has been lost or perverted by mass media, capitalism, or technology, photographs of Miss i ndian Americas provide evidence of the sustaining nature of popular cul- tural forms to foster negotiations over what it means to be an Indian with- in the national imagination. BEAUTY PAGEANTS AND H I S T O R I C A L A F F I L I A T I O N S After World War H, conservative politicians in Congress as well as high- level administrators at the BIA advocated an end to the federal trust rela-
74 Wendy Kozol tionship with Native peoples. They argued that reservations segregated Indians and kept them from fully assimilating into U.S. society a.s citizens. Congressional legislation in the 1950s began to implement termination policies ending trust responsibilities that protected lands and resources on reservations. Relocation programs, a central component of termination policy, were designed to assimilate Indians into mainstream society. Poverty and the lack of resources on reservations as well as the promise of economic opportunities in cities encouraged many to leave. The BIA distributed photographs and brochures throughout the reser\'ations to envision a better life in urban areas. The success of these public relations campaigns is evident m the jump from 13 percent of Native Americans living in urban areas in 1950, prior to these relocation programs, to 44.5 percent by 1970 when federal policies shifted again toward job training and economic development programs on reservations.^' Far from being l>eneficial. relocation was often a pernicious process of separating people from established communities and thrusting them into bewildering and hostile environments with inadequate resources and support systems. Native .American migrants struggled to cope with these dramatic changes in their lives. Many Indians found urban life intolerable and returned to the reservations. Eor those who stayed, a variety of com- munity organizations and cultural practices such as powwows, educational programs, summer camps, and beauty pageants helped to ameliorate exploitative conditions and address social and cultural needs. Some of these practices, such as the powwow, drew^ on earlier traditions but were trans- formed over time by urban interests and needs, the impact of commodified popular culture, and new modes of transportation.^ Other activities, like the beautv' pageants, were more clearly adaptations of dominant social or cultural practices. As Vine Deloria jr. writes, "by the 1970s it was possible to find wholly new kinds of behavior generally accepted as'Indian.'"" Such organizations and practices fostered the primarily urban phenome- non of pan-lndianism that encompassed a broad range of practices from radical separatist claims made by Red Power activists to beauty contests that incorporated elements from multiple cultural traditions. Collective intertribal practices themselves were not new to the 1960s and 1970s, but rather developed at various historical moments as political and cultural
Wendy Kozol 75 responses to the imposition of colonial rule. As a contemporary expres- sion, however, pan-lndianism emerged in the postwar period with partic- ular political and social resonances." Scholars critical of the utility of the concept of pan-lndianism argue that it ignores or denies the continuing centrality of tribal affiliations to Indian identities. Others have warned of the essentialist elements evident in supratribal claims of a common Indian- ness." Ear from betraying tradition or reinscribing essentialist claims, Rachel Buff argues, the powwow princesses that she studied in the 1990s incorporated their ideas of tradition wnth contemporary popular culture to carve out identities meaningful to their modern lives. Such efforts recon- cile competing forces of commodification with oppositional knowledge within the pan-Indian circuits of pow^wows and other urban ceremonial practices.^'' Photographs of Mi.ss Indian America and the other native princesses similarly reconcile competing forces of tradition and modernity in images that hail these women's representative status. As the caption accompany- ing the 1968 photograph of Sarah Ann fohnson (Navajo) states, "Miss (Indian) America is selected on the basis of dedication to all Indian peo- ple."" The Miss Indian America contest began in 1954 and wa.s held each year in Sheridan, Wyoming, until 1984 when it moved to Bismarck, North Dakota. The event includes a pageant parade, a fashion show of traditional tribal dress and an Indian giveaway in which each contestant gives a per- sonal possession to her sponsor. The contestants are judged on their abili- ties to interact with people, their knowledge of Indian culture, and their performance in the talent contests.^ By the !y60s, tribes, powwows, and rodeos all sponsored heauty pageants, many of which continue today. Winners of tribal contests com- pete in the Miss Indian America contest, which has a similar organizational structure and similar pretensions to professionalism as the national Miss America pageant. The original goals of the pageant included the desire to improve relations hetween Indians and non-Indians, picking up the rhetoric of "goodwill ambassador" familiar from other beauty pageants. Similarly, scholarship money legitimizes this contest as it does with other pageants. Comparisons with the more famous Miss Atnerica contest foreground
76 Wendy Kozol
their greatest similarity, that is, the
way in which beauty pageants privi-
lege the female hody as the site of
both feminine beauty and national
identity. Sarab Banet-Weiser argues
that "pageants create a national field
of shared symbols and practices that
define both ethnicity and femininity
in terms of national identity." In
other words, the visuality of the
beauty pageant inscribes nationalist
narratives onto the gendered body,
thus collapsing identity with repre-
sentation such that contestants,
especially the winner, come to repre-
sent the nation.^^ Similar to her
counterparts in other beauty con-
tests. Miss Indian America's l>eaut\^ is
presumably her achievement, which
Fig. 3. ".Sarah Ann Johnson. Miss Indian America locates her within a profoundly
XIV." No. 7.VCL-95-17, Photograph of Contem- complex set of national, ethnic, and
porary Indian life. RG 75. Record.s of the BIA. gender affiliations.
NACP.
Studio portraits of Miss Indian
America re!y on conventions drawn from fashion photography. The 1968
photograph of Johnson typifies this genre (see fig. ^). .A standard head and
shoulders shot with an indistinct background encourages the viewer to
gaze at the beauty of Miss Indian America XIV. Her shoulders face square-
ly to the front as she looks direcdy into the camera. A gentle raking light
falling on her cheek calls attention to her face in the very center of the
composition. The reliance on conventional fashion portraiture repro-
duces a visual tradition that aligns beauty ideals with identity. By position-
ing Miss Indian America within the genre of fashion photography, this
photograph locates and, to an extent, contains her Indian identity within
those gender politics. A caption for a photograph of another conte.stant
states this explicitly: "This Indian miss w^as selected as the loveliest of herWendy Kozol 77 tribe to compete for the title of Miss Indian America."^' The visual and rhetorical affiliation to Miss America .signals how embodiment acts as an ambivalent site of interactions between femininity, Indianness, and nationalism. This is not a matter of either affiliation with the nation or with a pan-Indianness but rather a relational mobilit\- that shifts between these poles of identificatitin. The Miss America pageant over the course of the twentieth century has promoted not only gender but also racial ideals through the figures of its white beauty queens. Banet-Weiser argues that even in recent years whiteness prevails as the reigning nationalist principle. At the same time, she points out that this framework is not seamless hut rather provides room to contest dominant notions of femininity.'' If the tradition of the Miss America pageant has been to cele- brate whiteness, then hy appropri- ating the title, the Miss Indian America contest not only colludes with but also destabilizes the cate- gory of beauty hy di.srupting the connection between gender ideals and whitene.ss. Clothing further pushes the Miss Indian .Americas away from, not toward, the Miss America pageant. Native women in these pictures always appear F'ig. 4. "Miss llfaiia |o I larragarra. Miss linlian fully dressed in traditional attire, America XXII." Indian Reiord. )an.-Fel>. 1976. 7,V1R, never in the bathing suits that are Folder 19, KG 75. Records of the BIA. NACP. the hallmark of the more famous contest. These pageants construct an ambivalent space of imitation with a difference that in turn secures an affiliation with a pan-Indian identifi- cation. In this regard, affiliation with the normative non-Indian practices of gender and sexuality coded in the Miss America pageant are simulta-
78 Wendy Kozol neously counterhegemonic in visualizing Indian collectivities that speak to both local and pan-Indian identities. Another portrait style features full-length views of Miss Indian Amer- icas in outdoor settings. For instance, Deana Jo Harragarra (Kiowo-Otoe), Miss Indian America XXII, poses in the foreground looking just off cen- ter of the camera (see fig. 4). She wears an elaborately embroidered cape that covers her entire body, and smiles for the camera while the dappled sunlight creates patterns in the wooded scenery behind her. Her proud stance as she smiles directly at the camera, along with her attire and titled repre.sentative status, claims her Indianness. The confluence of symbols here equates Miss Indian America with nationalist rhetoric while also destabilizing the expected connections between gender, citi- zenship, and whiteness. Certainly there is the danger here of recupera- tion through exotici.sm as government photographs gaze at Indian princesses in outdoor locations. The rhetoric of colonialism and empire building often relies on the dialectical contrast between modernity and ahistorical primitivism. 1 would argue, however, that photographs such as this one set up a tension between this recuperating move and the destabilizing effects created by the confluence of ethnic and racial mark- ers. Importantly, signs of affiliation, especially signs that link modernity to Indianness disrupt colonial rhetoric that equates whiteness with progress and civilization. In this sense, affiliation does not reassert the primacy of whiteness, that is, an assimilationist model that presumes a normative racial identification. Rather, markers of both modernity and tradition push at the boundaries of the historical associations of white- ness with the nation. Here, too, it is critical to go beyond conventional feminist critiques of beauty pageants as simply tools of objectification and oppression. Although photographs of Miss Indian America can be understood as part of a broader specularization of the female body, other, even contradictory, meanings also appear in these images. Within the available spaces for representing Indians in this period, we should not ask why did women participate, hut rather what are the implications of such participation." My objective here is not to interrogate the motivations of individuals but rather to argue for a visual representation of agency and, more specifically, a social or pan-
Wendy Kozol 79 Indian agency. By agency, 1 refer to social, rather than individual, processes and struggles for subjectivity, empowerment, and identification. Captions and visual strategies that emphasize Miss Indian Americas' representative status foreground these women as metonymic agents of a collective identi- ty with complex affiliations of citizenship and belonging. More specifically, these photographs articulate historically resonant positionalities that rely on identity claims associated with pan-lndianism in the 1960s and 1970s. Thus, even as traditional femininity may be reinscribed through the appa- ratus of the heauty pageant, visualizing Indianness also reclaims social and political identities in these pictures. In other words, the Miss Indian America photographs assert Indianness not, or not merely, trapped by Euro-American stereotypes. Representations of beauti*- contestants' talents further reveal affiliation at work in these pictures. The more famous Miss America pageant has long promoted its role as a scholarship competition to differentiate it trom other beauty contests. Features such as the talent contest also help to establish an aura of respectability around the specularit>' that is central to these pageants." Similarly, Indian beauty contests require contestants to demonstrate their competency with Indian histor) and traditional craft skills. More than respectability, however, is at stake here. Traditional skills legitimize Miss Indian America's claim to represent "Indian America." For instance, the 1977 photograph of Miss Indian America XXIV. Graci Ann Welsh (Chemeheuvi-Mohave), depicts a young woman posed in the mid- dle of the composition, smiling directly at the camera." She wears a long fringed dress, beaded leggings, and moccasins that recall a visual histor)- of the primitive Indian princess. The attached press release states that Welsh's "traditional skills were beadwork and the Mohave Bird Song." The pre.ss release for the Miss Indian America contest, how^ever, con- notes a different claim of authenticity than that promoted by Hollv-wood and other popular discourses. Here, Miss Indian America's skills include Welsh's modern talent, "a Baton routine to the music 'Rocky.'" Tradition and modernity merge not only through her talents but also visually in the beaded crown, which combines traditional craft skills with a modern, non-native symbol of royalty. The thoroughly modern banner, located in the center of the composition, further reveals the "place of hybridity
80 Wendy Kozol among notions of authenticity and the natural as they function in ethnic pride politics,"" Miss Indian .America photographs such as this one envi- sion pan-lndianism not as a return to a precolonial "tradition" but an assertion that, as Gail Tremblay insists, "we are twentieth-century people celebrating a culture that is as alive as we are."^' To underscore my point, critiques that focus only on capitulation or assimilation miss the complex processes ot affiliation at work in these pictures. In claiming an Indian identity among the iconographic meanings avail- able, however, traits of Indianness remain bound up with gender logics that situate Native women within dominant regimes of femininity'. Both the dis- ciplinary logics ot the beauty pageant and the government's gaze envision a pan-Indian identity through the spectacle of their bodies. The complicated nature of invented tradition reinscribes dominant gender norms even as assertions of Indiannes.s insist that we revisit and reconceptualize notions of identit)^ and agenc). This is not. however, to suggest an unprohlematic representation of agency for such images also elide the history of trauma and genocide that continue to shape contemporary Indian identities. The nationalist rhetoric associated with beauty pageant traditions of femininit>' and respectability e.xposes the ways in which identities always interact with, and are constrained hy, disciplinary modalities of power. G A Z I N G AT THE iMA The March/April 1977 issue of the Indian Kectird features a photograph of Miss Indian America XXIll, Kristine Rayola Harvey (White Mountain Apache), riding a horse and carrying a large feather (see fig. 5). The caption announces that she is part of the Indian delegation in President Jimmy Carter's inaugural parade. In the background, people in contemporar)' clothing stand on the street dressed against the January cold. The crowd's gaze at Harvey reinforces the viewer's gaze as both stare at Miss Indian America in ethnic attire participating in this ritual display of national power. How, one can surely ask. does an image such as this one keep from reinforcing stereotypes of Indians as "living relics" or aborigines who exist outside of modern time? Certainly, these photographs of Miss Indian America move across an iconographic terrain heavily dominated bv stereotypes, and thus always run the danger of being recuperated. Their
Wendy Kozol Rg, .*>. "Miss Indian Aint-nta XXIII. Knsiine Rayola Harvey (White Mountain Apache) Riding in the Inaugural Parade." liuim Record. Mar.-Apr. 1977. 75-IR. Folder 19.75-IR-26-1, K(.; 75. Records of the BIA, NACP. historical relevance, however, goes beyond this because, as I have tried to argue, these photographs represent neither a capitulation to dominant gender ideals, nor a simplistic reclaiming of a traditional Indian identitv. Providing insights into the complexity of representation, the concept of affiliation also encourages a reconsideration of the role of the state. The BIA photographs do not simply reflect either a "real" history of pan- lndianism or a totalizing government gaze. Instead, the camera locates the BIA's gaze as a participant in, rather than a mere reflection of, the inter- sections hetween federal pohcy and Native peoples' contestations over identity that mark this period in BIA-Indian relations. Reception further complicates a.ssumptions about the regulatory gaze of the BIA. Readers ot the Indian Record and other BIA publications certainly included powerful whites and especially white men in Congress, in the ad- ministration, and at the BIA. These photographs, however, also circulated in venues available to Native .Americans. By the 1970s, the majoritV' of staff of the BIA were Indians and Alaskan natives, raising qucstion.s about a uni-
82 Wendy Kozol form federal gaze. Equally significant, tbese pictures circulated (through the newsletters) at regional and national BIA offices, whose administrators and visitors included Indians. Several photographs in the Indian Record, for instance, depict former or present Miss Indian Americas reading the news- letter.*^ These staged pictures speak not only to the government's camera or a white public but also to Native American readers. !n this way, BIA publicity efforts visually address multiple audiences within, not outside, the institutional structures of the state. The history of the BIA's relationship with Native peoples has been one of broken promises, exploitation, bureaucratic obstacles, and discriminato- ry treatment. By the 196()s, the BIA had a ver>- complicated relationship with Indian communities whose deep mistrust of the bureau resulted from the oppressive federal policies imposed on Indians over the last two cen- turies. .And yet, ongoing struggles over policies of termination and self- determination demonstrated that Indians w^re and remain in key ways intertwined with the BIA as the administrator of federal trust responsibili- ties. As M. Annette Jaimes-Guerrero observes, despite a painful histor)- of coercive actions, "Indians have generally held that a federal bureau to represent Indian peoples is better than none at all."'* In the l%Os. a range of visual media participated in the struggles over political agency and cultural identity that characterized this period of social change. Competing images of Indianness included romanticized stereo- types of Native Americans by counterculture movements that idealized aboriginal groups as authentic resistors of capitalism and imperialism. In contrast, Indian activists in this period helped fuel demands for self-deter- mination among Native Americans themselves. Media coverage of dramat- ic protests such as fish-ins and building takeovers presented to the nation an image of Indians, not as vanquished and pathetic, but as empowered activists using contemporary political tactics to protest oppression.*" Beginning in the 1960s, Native American activists became increasingly visible as they fought against termination while seeking to gain more control over resources and programs. Devastating economic develop- ments resulting from termination further contributed to the growing recognition of the failure of this policy to achieve improvements for Native peoples. Activism also emerged in the context of the civil rights
Wendy Kozol 83 movement, as well as the women's movement and antiwar activism. In dialogue with these other movements. Native Americans developed both a political vocabulary and grassroots mobilizing tactics. The yearlong occupation of Alcatraz (1969), the takeover of the BIA building in Washington, D.C. (1972), and the Siege of Wounded Knee (1973-1975) are some of the most well-known events from this period. Other struggles included legal and extralegal battles over fishing rights in the Northwest, efforts to gain control over tribal governance, and demands for Indian participation in the BIA at higher levels of administration. This activism and the media attention it garnered influenced the federal government's retreat from termination and relocation policies in favor of a govern- ment-regulated plan of self-detertnination.* Changes in federal policy began to appear in the early 1960s, as first the Kennedy administration and later the lohnson administration developed the policy of self-determination. Federal policy goals now included the preservation and maintenance of cultural and tribal identities. A Senate committee overseeing Title fV of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972, the Indian Education Act, articulated such goals when it wrote, "Indian programs should thus be fashioned to meet Indian needs and pre- serve Indian culture, language, and traditional values."" Reforms in this period included increased appropriations for programs on reservations, changes in education programs, and more power to tribal governments. A crucial moment occurred in 1970 when President Richard Nixon officially ended the federal policy of termination. The following decade saw a series of legislative acts designed to support the new policy of self-determina- tion. This crucial decade in Indian Rights activism began with the passage of the Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971. A host of other legis- lation, such as the Menominee Restoration Act (1973) and the Indian Education .Assistance and Self-Determination Act (1975), were important landmarks in the emerging federal poHcy of self-determination.''" Although self-determination proved less exploitative to Native peoples, Erancis Prucha and other historians point out the "inescapable paradox" in this policy because maintaining trust responsibility' continues the long history of federal paternalism. In the 1970s, the director of the American Indian Law Center Sam Deloria similarly observed that the transition of
84 Wendy Kozol federal policy to sell-determination "reflects only a tactical shift in the fundamental commitment of a society to bring Indians into the main- stream, not a movement toward a true recognition of a permanent tribal right to exist."" Increased growth of the federal bureaucracy and ongoing regulation and intrusion hy government agencies has put further limits on self-determination. Eor instance, in the 197()s, new federal regulations gave the BIA the power to grant tribal enrollment numbers or BIA certifi- cation that is required for all who claim Indian identity in order to receive fmancial and social services. .\s Guerrero points out, "State certification of identity does not promote tribal self sufficiency."'''' Promotion of a government-inflected definition of self-determination is evident in the Indian Kecord that features Harvey at the inaugural parade. The accompanying story about the "huge success" of the Indian inaugural hall praises the initiative of Native Americans who were disturbed that "American Indians were generally left out of inaugural activities." This claim envisions self-determination as an act of inclusion within national ceremonies. The front-page article in this newsletter fea- tures President |immy Carter's visit to the BIA in which he asserted his commitment to improve conditions on reservations and to increase the number of Indians in top positions in the government programs affect- ing Native Americans. Paternalism envelops this upbeat litdtan Record story ahout the Carter administration's renewed commitment to the federal policy of self-determination. During the 1960s and 1970s, attempts to reconceptualize Indian relation- ships with the U.S. government intensified debates ahout identity that refute simplistic a.ssumptions about either collu.sion with dominant culture or oppositional identities, [oane Nagel argues that "like other ethnic groups, American Indians are engaged in an ethnic dialogue with the larger society and with the state, hoth of which themselves grapple with and influence the direction of ethnic change.... The question of who is 'really' an Indian comes up again and again."" A number of court cases filed in the 1960s and 1970s confronted this question as Indian groups increasingly sought legal recognition of their tribal status. The differing criteria that government agencies and Indian tribes used to define who is a "real" Indian reveal not only the conflicted and fluid nature of identity- but also the pro-
Wendy Kozol
found material consequences of those definitions. As |ames Clifford
observed, the history of Indian cultures is not a history of "unbroken trib-
al institutions or cultural traditions. It is a long relational struggle to
maintain and recreate identities."*
Similarly, photographs of Miss Indian America's afBHation to the nation
complicate a.ssumptions abiHil v\ho is an American and what criteria define
that status. A photograph of
Wahleah Lujan (Taos Pueblo),
Miss Indian .'\merica XIll from
1967, shows a young woman
wearing moccasins and a
fringed wrap that envelops her
body (see fig, 6). She steps
toward the camera while the
U.S. Capitol building in
Washington, D . C , looms
behind her. The blurry tail of a
car at the edge of the frame
captures the energy of modern
life as does the fringe on her
dress that swings in motion.
Ward Churchill details the
misinforination and manipu-
lation of the media by the
tederal government against
organizations such as the
American Indian Movement
during this period/^ This
Fig. 6. "Wahleah Lujan, Miss Indian America XlII
(Taos Pueblo). January 27. 1%7." No. 750-CL-9.V photograph, similar to the one
II. Photograph ol'Conieniporar)' Indian life, ot Harvey in the inaugural
RG 75. Records ot the IMA, NACP. parade, speaks to a different
politics of representation enacted by the government. Here, the camera
participates in the government's shifting policies, in this case literally repre-
senting Indiannt-ss within tbe shadow of federal power. BIA photographs
such as this one visualize Miss Indian America's affiliation to the nation in86 Wendy Kozol
ways that validate a federal policy of self-determination but not of self-suffi-
ciency.
Public relations photographs of Indians who worked at the BIA further
expose the workings of affiliation. Many Indians in this period lobbied for
increased acces.s to jobs within the BIA. especially at higher levels of
administration. By 1980, 78 percent of BIA employees were hidians and
Alaskan natives." One photograph from 1974 that illustrates tho.se changes
features Ignatius L. Billy, a Pomo Indian who had just been appointed as
director ol personnel for the BIA.^' The photograph shows him talking
with a young woman in traditional dress holding a feather and wearing
the now familiar beaded crown of Miss Indian America. The caption states
that "one of the first official functions" for Billy "was to greet Miss Indian
America, Clare Manning, a Shoshone Bannock Indian." This stock public-
ity photograph places the two figures close to the picture plane, posed in
profile as if in conversation. The documentary convention of a staged
conversation in which the subjects ignore the camera secures a veracity
that is critical to BIA claims to he responsive to Indian demands. Photo-
graphs such as this one, along with statistics on employment practices at
the BIA, demonstrate that the government gaze itself is complicated and
fractured by multiple Indian gazes. Such photographs profoundly prob-
lematize insider/outsider models just as terms such as Native American
and Miss Indian America symbolically {and problematically) incorporate
ethnicity within the nation.*
The incorporation of inequalities within representations of affiliation is
evident in the depiction of gender as it relates to citizenship. Billy's husiness
suit hails his participation in modern masculine spaces of U.S. corporatism
and his incorporation within the government structure. He leans back,
hands in his pockets, smiling comfortably in three-quarter profile at the
Native woman. By contrast, and to further emphasize the point. Miss
Indian America in her traditional dre.ss, her face barely visible, appears as
the exotic, aboriginal maiden. Manning's subjectivity is lost amid her sym-
bolic presence as a Miss Indian America. Here, the visual representation of
Indian citizenship is sharply delineated by gender differences.
Similarly, a 1968 photograph that features Vice President Hubert Hum-
phrey shaking hands with Miss Indian America XIV, Sarah Ann JohnsonWendy Kozol 87
(see fig. 7), foregrounds gender differences
in national identity. This staged public
relations event accompanied President
I vndon Johnson's "Special Message to
'Congress on the Problems of the
\merican Indian: The Forgotten .Ameri-
can." Jn his .speech, Johnson outlined new-
goals that included a commitment to a
policy of self-determination, the need to
eradicate systems of paternalism, and
increase Congressional appropriations for
new programs." In the photograph,
Fig. 7. "Vice I'residenl Hubert H. whiteness and modernity are embodied in
Humphrey shakes hands with Miss the figure of the vice president in a busi-
Indian .\merica XIV at the press
ness suit whereas gender and ethnicity are
briefing on tbe President's Message
to Congrftss on Indians al the on display through the body and the
Department of the Interior.'" Indian clothing of Johnson. Affiliation to the
Record, Marcb ]%&. 75-IR-2. RC, 7.";.
Records of tbe BIA. NACP.
nation takes on different meanings in this
photograph than in the picture of the
flight attendant with Miss Indian America
XVII! (see fig. 1). Where gender connected women as feminine citizens,
here Indian citizen.ship is hoth included and contained by gender and eth-
nic differences between Humphrey and Johnson. The camera's gaze here
captures the hierarchical nature of participation in projects of national-
ism, notably through the racialized and gendered spectacle of difference
that visually reproduces a history of federal paternalism. Affiliations in
this photograph are at the same time tribal (evident in Manning's cloth-
ing), pan-Indian (through Miss Indian America herself), racialized (seen in
the handshake), national (the ceremonial act), and gendered (through
resonances with both Indian and national pageants).
As this photograph shows, inclu.sion within the national imagination
does not imply a liberal equality or the government's advocacy of a multi-
cultural pluralism. Quite the contrar)'. The BIA'.s visual gaze may compli-
cate claims of authenticity, difference, or citizenship but always within,
not outside, hierarchical social structures and cultural formations. Alter-88 Wetjdy Kozol Fig. a. "Mrs. SU.SI1..' Y ellow tail. Miss Indian America. Virginia Struud, Col. l;rne.st CJiildt-rs- Job Corps: Washington Rozell. Mrs. Mary Frisby. DAR-Columbus cbapters; .Sam Yankee (Chippewa)." No. 7,'>-C"I,--93-27. Photograpb of Cuniemporary Indian Life, H.C,75. Record.'; ol llie BI.\. NACP. The setond while woman is not idfntillcd in ihi-1 aption. ity is, and has always been, crucial tt) nationalism, as hoth the state and the political economy depend on the racialization of its populations. These images do, however, provide evidence for destabilizing binar\' assumptions of dominance and marginalization that continue to shape debates on nationalism. Affiliation reveals how diverse groups "stretch with their bodies the boundaries and definitions of Americanness."" Significantly, these hodies incorporate suhjects differentially within, not outside, the fic- tion of a unified nation. N A T I O N A L I S M AND A F F I L I A T I O N In a 1971 publicity photograph. Miss Indian America, Virginia Stroud (Cherokee), smiles at the camera as the banner acro.ss ber dress and headed crown on her bead prominently declare her titled statu.s (see fig. 8). Tbis group portrait also includes Susie Yellowtail (Crow) on one side of her and
Wendy Kozol 89 on the other side are Colonel Ernest Cbilders from Job Corps in a business suit and two representatives from tbe Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). The two white women respond to the occasion by wearing headed necklaces, and one also has a feather headband. The third Native American in tbe group, Sam Yankee (Cbippewa) stands next to the white women, proudly staring at the camera. He wears only a l")eaded loin- cloth and a feather headdress, along with a group of feathers in his hands. The group poses in an unidentified office space witb a forest setting visible in the background. This picture fascinates me because of its apparent complicity witb stereotypes ot Native Americans and white appropriations of Indian sym- bols. In particular, Yankee's minimally clotbed and overweigbt body fore- grounds the voyeuristic potential of the gaze. It seems hard to ascribe agency to figures such as Yankee who appear to submit to caricature. Here, we have to move beyond a concept of agency as an unprobtcmatic act of resistance. Instead, we need to confront tbe ambivalences of identi- ty and agency provoked by tbis image. If agency is an act linked to some kind (.)f political project, then it will always and necessarily be shaped, even compromised, by tbose contexts. 1 find this picture compelling because of how it links agency witb the contradictory workings ofthe national gaze. It celebrates Stroud's status as Miss Indian America in the company of a Washington bureaucrat and tbose representatives of wbite, gendered, nationalism—tbe I.MR. The significance of photographs such as this one, therefore, does not lie merely in their historical value as public relations or even propaganda: nor, I would argue, can we read them as misguided acts of collaboration by Indians. Ratber, their historical impor- tance lies in how they illuminate the processes of cultural exchange and negotiation t>ver national identities. Equally important, silences about the historical violence of colonization also shape these narratives of nation- hood. Miss Indian Americas' participation in government publicity pro- jects reveal the workings of nationalism, not as a top-down monolithic structure that includes or excludes, but as an ongoing process of inclu- sion, affiliation, and containment of diverse subjects. In otber words, nationalism does not exclude alterity but ratber visualizes tbe racialized hierarchies that define the nation, the state, and tbe political economy.
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