Singing Redface Essay

For decades, Native Americans have been misrepresented in our society by the government and media. Hollywood is the main form of misrepresentation and cause of cultural confusion, concerning Native Americans. However, music plays a large role in misguiding society’s view of the Nations.
From a young age, Americans are taught the “true” way Native Americans live and have lived since before Columbus landed in the Caribbean. I can vividly remember being in a Thanksgiving play when I was in fourth grade, dressed as an Indian and standing off to one side of the stage, pretending to look on fiercely as my people approached the pilgrims. I also remember playing cowboys and Indians regularly with my cousins and toy guns. I was playing Indian. We

also played games such as, cops and robbers. It is interesting to me that these two games have the same premise, one group is the good guys and one group is the bad guys, one group is trying to capture/fight the other, and one group represents all this is good while the other group represents all that is wrong in the world. The first group is the cowboys/cops and those have to be the good guys, because there is no such thing as a bad cowboy/cop right? There is no situation in which the robber can be a good guy, even the story of Robin Hood, the good thief, is questionable when deeply studied, and since the cowboy is the good guy the Indian must automatically be the enemy.
So, if we grow up thinking of the Native American as the bad guy, when does the Native American become the good guy? It is difficult to play Indian for years and develop a certain attitude towards Native American culture and then be expected to have the correct attitude once a child becomes an adult. If children are not playing Indian themselves, then they are watching someone on television or in the movies play Indian. Growing up, my cousins and I could be found either outside playing or surrounding a TV playing western movie. The type of movie that the hero always wins by defeating the bad guy, usually by killing the person, and that bad guy is often a white guy playing an Indian.
Native Americans are not the only culture to have been misappropriated by the media, African Americans also face this problem. It all began in the early 1800s with Blackface Minstrelsies. Minstrel shows sole purpose was entertainment; consisting of live dances, singing, comedic numbers, and variety acts (Giacona, n.d.). Blackface Minstrelsy is only one of many types of minstrel shows depicting a false or comedic way of life for different cultures. White Americans were curious about the lives of African American slaves, and they wanted a safe and convenient way to learn about the lives of African Americans. Thanks to performers, like Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice, audiences were presented with a backward, fabricated story consisting of made-up “negro” songs, dances, and stories presented by white people with makeup on to look black (Giacona, n.d.).
While blackface means to become African American by acting and looking black, redface means to become Native American by looking and acting like a Native American (Giacona, n.d.).

Singing redface is the act of preforming, through song or dance, to replicate a Native American. Usually, singing redface is meant to as way to honor a Nation or a person’s Native American background, but singing redface almost always comes across as defamatory and an untrue stereotype. We, as a society, have been ingrained with the stereotypical Native American for so long that we do not know what true Native American culture is, much less if someone is singing

redface.
For example, I have been listening to Tim McGraw’s “Indian Outlaw” for years, and I did not stop long enough to think that the song may offensive to certain cultures or that Tim McGraw was singing redface. In his song, McGraw depicts a “bad boy” character who is half Cherokee and half Choctaw. Time McGraw sings, in first person, and during his music video acts as a Native American who is half Cherokee and half Choctaw. That is the definition of singing redface. He makes references to playing a tom-tom and killing animals from a hundred yards with a bow and arrow, both of those things are clearly made up. There is no such thing as a tom-tom drum in Native American culture, but there is in Hollywood Indian culture, and a modern day bow and arrow is only accurate/power enough to about fifty yards.
The song is riddled with false and offensive lyrics toward the Nations.

The music video is no better. Through his video, McGraw turns what was once savage Indians into a modern day outlaw. He does this by riding an Indian motorcycle and wearing a leather jacket with the Avirex Choctaw football team logo which, I believe is supposed to be a Native American shield or perhaps dream catcher, and an Indian chief in full headdress on the back (Casey, 2017). Motorcycles and leather jackets are heavily associated with outlaw biker gangs, so in using these visuals McGraw wants to enforce the idea that his character is a really bad outlaw. The official music video can be found on YouTube at,

https://youtu.be/kqlR4IEl_04.
Another problem faced by the Nations is racial antipathy. Racial antipathy can be described as a deep seated hatred or dislike of someone based on their race (Antipathy, n.d.). This is primarily caused by Hollywood film making, but music also contributes to the racial antipathy of Native Americans. Tim McGraw does this in “Indian Outlaw” by making his main character a bad person, which people then associate all Native Americans as potential outlaws. That is just one of many examples of how a song can create a subconscious opinion of a race.
Even when people from other cultures think they are doing something to help or honor Native Americans, it is usually more harmful than good. Idealized sympathy is, “sympathy for an imaginary Native American caricature, (Giacona, n.d.).” When music artists are advocating on behalf of Native Americans through song, they are using idealized sympathy. Idealized sympathy goes hand in hand with cultural misappropriation, which is the theft of cultural commodities by an outsider for profit or to create a false stereotype (Giacona, n.d.).
When music artists, intentionally or unintentionally, commit idealized sympathy and/or cultural misappropriation they cause cultural confusion. Cultural confusion is just what it sounds like, it is the act of spreading false information about a culture to create an untrue stereotype. In the past music artist, such as Don Fardon, have taken true songs written and sung by Native Americans and twisted the song so much, that it no longer represents a true Native American viewpoint or idea (Giacona, n.d.).
Native Americans have been misrepresented by music for many decades, and they will continue to be misrepresented until someone stops them. I not sure what is going to need to change in order for Americans to learn the truth about the Nations, but I do know that it starts on the stage and in the movies. The public should be more critical of the music that represents other cultures, before excepting it as truth. they