“We Were Indians First, Before We Became Croats”: “Playing Indian” on the European Frontier

Abstract

This paper proposes a comparative analysis of the “imaginary Indian” trope by examining its configuration and dissemination in the American and European popular culture. Commenting on the West German Winnetou film series (1962–1968), East German Indianerfilme (1966–1985), and the 2016 Winnetou adaptation Der Mythos lebt (The myth lives on), all of which were filmed in today’s Croatia, it argues that in both the American and the European context, the phenomenon of “going Native” has served as a site of ideological investment that has resonated with processes of geopolitical/economic expansion and the consolidation of hegemonic power relations. We contend that, like in the U.S., in Germany, too, the cultural and national identity politics has been negotiated through the Western frontier myth. The last part of the paper maintains that the transplantation of the “imaginary Indian” to the Croatian soil has led to an unexpected mutation, and possible exhaustion, of the paradigm. Discussing its reduction to a trivial tourist spectacle and its carnivalization in the 2005 Croatian comedy Što je muškarac bez brkova (What is a man without a moustache), we argue that the defetishization and inflated commodification of the trope in the Croatian context has divested it of its romantic veneer and subverted its function by creating a rupture between the expectation and representation.

The research for this article was funded by the project Sjevernoameričke književnosti i kulture u hrvatskom i europskom kontekstu (North American literatures and cultures in the Croatian and European context) of the Center for North American Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Osijek.

We extend a special word of gratitude to Alex Dáhayíí; Crisosto Apache, Assistant Professor at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design in Colorado; Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr., Professor and Chair of Indigenous Nations Studies at Portland State University; LaRayne Woster, Lakota language and Native American Studies teacher at St. Joseph’s Indian School in Chamberlain, South Dakota; Dustin Tahmahkera, Professor and Chair of Native American Cultural Studies in the Department of Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma; Patsy Phillips, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Wanda Bunker from Akta Lakota Museum and Cultural Center for their kind and generous help with the linguistic and culturally-specific aspects of our research. Our gratitude also goes to Simone Poirier-Bures, author and retired member of the English Department at Virginia Tech University, for her valuable comments and suggestions.

Appendix (by Sanja Runtić)

Even though we concluded this paper implying that, except in tourism, Winnetou’s footsteps have all but disappeared from the Croatian social scene and that Winnetou is an anachronous trope whose successful navigation into twenty-first-century digital media currents and the ever-diffusing entertainment seascapes is doubtful at best, shortly after this paper was completed, I had an experience that challenged, but also consolidated, some of its main arguments.

On August 26, 2022, I was caught up in a media uproar following the Ravensburger book controversy, referred to in the Introduction to this book. I was approached by a reporter from a Croatian online news portal, who asked me for my opinion on Karl May’s Winnetou novels and May’s usage of racial and colonial stereotypes. I was also asked to comment on Ravensburger Verlag’s decision to remove from their program two children’s books written in the manner of Karl May and give my opinion on whether cancel culture is “a positive or a negative phenomenon”¹⁷¹ and whether “certain literary works should be critically assessed in their historical context”¹⁷² in order to uncover elements of “racism and cultural appropriation, or should such works simply be—canceled.”¹⁷³ At the time, I was unacquainted with the controversy around Ravensburger Verlag and the cancel culture debate, so the 1,340-word statement I sent to the reporter focused on the historical and cultural backdrop to May’s Winnetou series and its film adaptations. Using some of the arguments presented in this paper, I emphasized the importance of situating literary works in their historical context and maintained that Winnetouism is the Europeans’ fantasy about themselves and that, as a form of epistemic injustice that reproduces the reductive and warped stereotypes of Indigenous people, which, among others, results in their silencing and invisibility, it is considered harmful and degrading. I also pointed out that for more than fifty years, there has been an alternative to works such as Winnetou—a substantial body of literature by American and Canadian Indigenous authors—and suggested that social media seem to have opened up a new paradigm that can convey the Indigenous perspective and help challenge long-standing skewed representations, preconceptions, and intergroup attitudes perhaps more efficiently than the traditional media.¹⁷⁴

However, my statement was not only printed out of context but also the part on the importance of evaluating literary works in their historical context was left out. My opinion was pitted against the statements of four Croatian editors and authors, all of whom sharply criticized Ravensburger’s withdrawal of two Young Chief Winnetou children’s books. By taking the discussion to the terrain of the highly emotionally charged cancel-culture dispute, conflating my arguments with allegations made by those “insisting that Winnetou be canceled in popular culture,”¹⁷⁵ and adding to my statement a sentence I did not authorize, which found its way into the headline (“Cultural Scandal: Horrible and Outrageous or Commendable? Writers and Editors Unanimous on Winnetou’s ‘Cancelling,’ Native American Literature Professor Praises the Publisher”),¹⁷⁶ the article portrayed me as an advocate of cancel culture—the very thing the other four interviewees vehemently opposed.¹⁷⁷ As a result, my attempt to convey the Indigenous, postcolonial, and American Indian studies perspective on Native stereotyping and appropriation got completely misconstrued. I was labeled a promoter of censorship, which I am absolutely not, and was called out by angry adversaries of call-out culture, whose backlash against myself and my home institution is still circulating the digital space.

Based on the fallacy that by advancing the Indigenous point of view in this debate, one automatically condoned book banning and challenged freedom of expression and speech, the long-due conversation on Indigenous representation in Europe was diverted and diluted to a defense of Western values and, yet again, turned into Europeans’ soliloquy about themselves. As a result, those on the other side of the argument were not only subjected to but also made responsible for the public attacks launched against themselves. As Carmen Kwasny, the chairperson of Native American Association of Germany, reveals,

[J]ust a non-existent call to forbid Winnetou is enough to unleash a storm of indignation, and the result, among other things, is that all those who want to provoke critical thinking are insulted and harmed in the worst possible way and their competence is massively questioned. . . . Until we felt the consequences of this sham debate in the form of obnoxious verbal attacks, I thought this would be a very good way to educate a wider public about stereotypical assumptions. Not by a long shot. In the meantime, I got a completely different impression. It is all about business, about page clicks, and audience ratings. The more intense the sentiment, the more money is made. . . .¹⁷⁸

Kwasny’s description of the detrimental ramifications of corporate media’s need for sensationalism and page clicks, resulting in an experience similar to mine, demonstrates not only that, like so many times in history, Indigenous people have been excluded from the discussion about themselves but also that, one way or another, Winnetou still pays off. A random YouTube search for the keyword “Winnetou” a month after Ravensburger’s announcement entirely confirmed this. Dozens of new weekly Winnetou uploads—from numerous reviews, audio-book renditions, and movie soundtracks to a recipe for “Winnetou Casserole from the Dutch Oven”¹⁷⁹ and a crochet tutorial for a “Winnetou handbag”¹⁸⁰—prove that the commercial demand for Karl May’s “imaginary Indian” has burgeoned as a result of the ensuing debate. Significantly, with 406,925 visitors, Bad Segeberg Karl-May-Spiele reached an all-time attendance record in 2022¹⁸¹ while, in the first week of October, 2022, prices for Ravensbuger’s withdrawn Young Chief Winnetou titles on German eBay went up to €300.

Fig. 4.8

None of the two screenshots in Fig. 4.8 contain eBay’s logo. The authors tried to obtain permission for using the screenshots through eBay’s “request permission” form. However, books are not included in the materials for which one can request permission. The materials included are films, shows, commercials, paid online advertisements, and web/mobile applications (https://brandpermission.ebay.com/requestpermission). According to eBay’s Intellectual Property Guidelines, no written permission is required if an unaltered eBay screenshot is used for educational materials (https://brandpermission.ebay.com/guidelines#brands-do-not-require-permission; https://brandpermission.ebay.com/faqs)

Prices for Ravensbuger’s Withdrawn Young Chief Winnetou Titles in October, 2022. (“Der junge Häuptling Winnetou,” eBay.de, https://www.ebay.de/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313&_nkw=Der+junge+Häuptling+Winnetou&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_osacat=0&_odkw=der+junge+häuptling+winnetou).

Predictably, the opportunity to exploit the resurgence of Indianthusiasm and its soaring profitability has quickly been embraced by Croatian tourist industry. In September 2022, local media reported that German-based Croat Ivica Zdravković, the star of the Winnetou Show at German Pullman City theme park, is to appear in a series of promotional videos at various Croatian locations, including the Starigrad Winnetou Museum described in this paper. Zdravković expressed his eagerness to use his image as Winnetou to promote Croatian gastronomy and destinations and attract German tourists in pre- and post-season under the slogan “Winnetou was born in Germany, and his homeland is Croatia.”¹⁸² His employer, Claus Six, on the other hand, plans to expand his Wild-West enterprise by opening a theme park in the vicinity of Starigrad modeled after his Pullman City Western town (Fig. 4.9).¹⁸³

Fig. 4.9

Photograph by Joško Ponoš/Cropix. Reproduced by permission of Joško Ponoš and Cropix. Written permission from the copyright holders (Joško Ponoš/Cropix) enclosed

Ivica Zdravković as Winnetou.

However, the 2022 Winnetou controversy has unveiled not only Winnetou’s continuing profitability and marketability but also its capacity to reinvent itself and yet again resurface in various current social situations—moments of increased political and economic and, as of late, environmental uncertainty. As Oliver Welke, the host of German heute-show, satirically remarked: “These days, Germans long for simple problems. Climate, Ukraine, that is all far too complex. But the banning of Winnetou! Everyone gets that, even if it is not true at all.”¹⁸⁴ According to Lange, Google Trends data on the trending of the Winnetou keyword and hashtag in Google searches and on social media have shown that, in the period from August 22 to August 24, 2022, Germans’ interest in Winnetou was significantly greater than interest in inflation and electricity price and that it almost reached the enormous interest in fuel price from March 2022, “when the price of diesel jumped from €1.65 to more than €2.30 in just a few days” (Fig. 4.10).¹⁸⁵

Fig. 4.10

Reproduced from the source cited in the text and the bibliography (graphs/charts/tables are not protected by copyright)

Interest in Winnetou, Gasoline Price, Electricity Price, and Inflation (Mirko Lange, “Der erfundene Shitstorm: Chronologie eines Medienversagens,” Scompler. Accessed October 4, 2022, https://www.scompler.com/winnetou/?fbclid=IwAR3GRj-X3xXhVdqK_bqUcYWUfNW-X41kcsNXwlcAJECBWpMvU3M8bKOtaxU).

The ability of Europe’s “imaginary Indian” to be conveniently revived and injected into the social arena in times of mounting collective anxiety once again defines it as a floating signifier that is infinitely malleable to multiple cultural, ideological, and economic ends. As this paper has attempted to show, it is only by exposing its inherent hollowness and how its manifold implications and manifestations have “canceled” the real Indigenous voice, and tailored our expectations in the process, that a de(con)struction of this centuries-old phantom can begin.

It is high time we asked ourselves why, instead of learning about and interacting with real Indigenous people, who are today just a mouse click away, and reading their authentic literature, we choose Winnetou sequels for ourselves and our children, or why, instead of enjoying masterpieces of contemporary Indigenous cinema, such as Zacharias Kunuk’s Atanarjuat, we prefer to watch a group of Europeans hopping around a campfire at a remote Croatian mountain site, playing out an outworn 130-year-old fantasy. As far as I know, with the exception of Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, none of the works by renowned contemporary American and Canadian Indigenous authors, who have fundamentally changed North American literary landscapes in the last fifty years, have been translated and published in Croatia. Is this not also a form of censorship? The opinion of North American Indigenous peoples—resilient, resourceful, and proud communities that have been struggling to ensure the survival of their ancestral traditions in the aftermath of destruction and deal with multiple traumas of colonization, both historical and ongoing—is necessary for any conversation about their representation. It is only by acknowledging their perspective, by engaging in a critical reflection on how Indigenous identities have been ruptured and engineered through ideological, discursive, and material practices, and by questioning the representational conventions underlying our own expectations and attitudes that a true intercultural dialogue can be attained. We owe it to them, but also to ourselves, to finally make it happen.