"Being an Indian ... I didn't even realize that's what I was -  an Indian -  in fact I jumped up and down in protest 'I'm not an Indian  -  I'm not an Indian!' when my relatives would tell me I was. After all, Indians were the bad guys on T.V. and though we didn't have running water that year or even telephones  -  yes  -  we did have television."

Anita Valerio, who describes herself as "half blood Indian and half Chicana," describes one of the most damaging aspects of stereotyping, which is the process of internalization. In this short quote, Valerio points to several significant ideas: her own inability to name herself and to recognize her culture; her total identification with a negative stereotype ("Indians were the bad guys"); and the power of television as a teaching tool.

Try this exercise: close your eyes and invite images of American Indians from popular culture into your vision. What do you conjure up? If the images come from popular culture, they will most likely fall into the category of stereotype. In a recent poetry reading in Tucson, Sherman Alexie began his reading by taking on some of these stereotypes. He lowered his voice and spoke very slowly, saying that if he did these two things, and always looked into the distance instead of at the person with whom he was speaking, he was automatically considered a wise and noble Indian. And it didn't really matter what he said, because anything that came out of his mouth had to be spiritually profound. Alexie's novels, particularly Reservation Blues, highlight the transformation of negative to positive stereotyping, so that American Indian cultures and peoples are no longer overtly targeted for genocide, but rather for wholesale appropriation and exploitation.

Diana Burns' poem, "Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question," introduces us to a powerful use of sarcasm to lay open what it's like to be the target of stereotyping. Pay particular attention to the ending of the poem; we'll speculate in class how the ending affects your reading.

A wonderful benefit of living in the Southwest is easy and plentiful access to a huge amount of research and resources on the many American Indian cultures. Our visit to the Arizona State Museum on campus and the "Paths of Life" exhibit will offer an auspicious start in gaining knowledge and confronting stereotypes.

(Source for Valerio quote: Anita Valerio, "It's In My Blood, My Face - My Mother's Voice, The Way I Sweat," in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, eds., Persephone Press, 1982, p. 42.)