Bone Dry: Appropriation of American Indians' Spiritual Practices and Implications for Their Collective Cultural Identity

• In Event: Critical Reflections on Cultural Citizenry

Abstract

This critical discursive analysis showcases the co-optation of American Indians’ spiritual practices by those who are privileged using a communication-based theoretical orientation called semiotics. Semiotics, the result of Peirce's and Saussure’s independent bodies of work that focuses on “how meaning is produced, shared, and sometimes contested” (Westerfelhaus, 2004, p.106) is used to analyze the signs and symbols within the discourses. Additionally, this analysis explores how historical, economic, and cultural contextual factors provide a springboard for the infusion of colonization, stereotyping, commodification, essentialism, exoticism, and racist ideologies within these discourses.

Author

• Noell Jackson, University of Denver