Native Americans in Comic Books

This blog entry is an attempt to recreate an essay I wrote in College for my sociology course about Native Cultures. Since the teacher was herself Native American, we ended up focusing a lot of the class on the treatment of native cultures in America. And I of course being a giant geek had to find some way to incorporate comic books into the class, as I managed to do with nearly every course I took in college.

The simple truth is there are quite a few Native American super heroes and comic books. And while many ethnicities don’t feel the need to emphasis the characters cultural background, Native American super heroes are always depicted in some sort of ceremonial garb and even names that would be embarrassing to see in the credits for Dances With Wolves. They make sure their Native American heritage is broadcast front and center for all to see.

My problem is not that there are comic book characters that are proud of their Native American heritage. My problem is that the displaying of said heritage is so forced. An obvious example of this is the character of Forge from the X-Men. Forge is a mutant whose special mutant ability is that he is a technical genius. Basically he can make any possible machine he can imagine. As such he is responsible for outfitting the X-Men with much of their technological gadgets. He also happens to be a Native American. And we know this because he decorates a typical blue and yellow X-Men uniform with fringe and tassels straight out of an old timey western. He, along with being a mutant, is also a Shaman. In fact it seems like every super hero of Native American heritage is a shaman or medicine man of some type.

The X-Men are actually the worst offenders when it comes to exploiting Native Americans. They have had two characters by the name of Warpath (first John Proudstar and then his brother James) and then the character of Moonstone from the New Mutants. While one would think it is a good thing for a super hero group to feature so many Native Americans, the problem is that they basically scream they are Native Americans. Their costumes and codenames all have a hint of tribal culture to it.

But Marvel is not the only offender. There is of course the famous character from the DC cartoon show Challenge of the Super Friends, Apache Chief. The characters ability is to change size so his super hero name makes no sense other than to simply show that he is a Native American. Also the character’s costume looks like he should be an extra on Bonanza. Meaning he is not showing off true Native American cultural heritage but more what Hollywood stereotypically perceives to be Native American culture.

While costumes are one thing, even the powers given to most Native American super heroes seem to be stereotypical. As I mentioned with Forge, even though his main power is mechanical prowess, the writers felt they had to give him a shamanistic role. And that is where many Native American super heroes seem to lie on the super power spectrum. All their powers are in some way connected to nature and the earth. Warpath is a skilled tracker with animal like senses. Rainmaker of the super team Gen 13 can control the weather. Danielle Moonstar of the New Mutants is connected to people’s souls. All characters with a connection to the earth, a stereotypical Native American trait.

Diversity in comics is good. But diversity based on ignorance is not true diversity. Trying to depict characters as what uneducated people perceive them to be does nothing. To truly show diversity in a book, the writer should instead try to expose the writer to something they may be unaware of about a culture they would otherwise be ignorant of.