Our Indian Princess : Subverting the Stereotype

In this path breaking study, anthropologist Nancy Marie Mithlo examines the power of stereotypes, the utility of pan-Indianism, the significance of realist ideologies, and the employment of alterity in Native American arts.

Mithlo explores how contemporary Native American women artists deploy stereotypes in their work. Drawing on interviews with the artists, she describes how they employ essentialized images of Native Americans pragmatically for advancing political claims in the public domain. Furthermore, she deals with how essentialized images of whites in their works may serve to define Native identity, just as white images of Natives largely work as a means of constructing white self-identity. --Book News, Inc., November 2009

[Mithlo] places the narratives of Native women artists in dialogue with theorists and highlights points of convergence and disparity between them. Thus she mobilizes Native women s narratives as authoritative texts to achieve a necessary step toward reaching intellectual parity (pp. 7, 21). Some ethnographers efforts to alternate between their own exegesis and the narratives of consultants result in jarring and disconnected texts. However, Mithlo successfully integrates her complex theoretical discussion with the artists own commentary. --Museum Anthropology Review, vol. 5, no. 1-2

A series of testimonials from native women in the arts forms the basis for the Chiricahua Apache art historian's evaluation of the scholarly literature surrounding notions of representation and identity through the Indian Princess. Mithlo's interviews with seven female artists, compiled over a twenty-year period, provide the framework for analysis. In her study, she charts how these artists express identity through cultural projections in the arts as an avenue for understanding self-inscription.... This densely written text is full of surprises, as Mithlo packs each chapter with personal experiences, narratives, and a critical treatment of wide ranging scholarly sources to state her case. It all makes for a demanding, but worthwhile read. --The Canadian Journal of Native Studies XXXI, 2(2011)