QUEER MIMCRY: RE-PRESENTING THE PRIMITIVE IN THE WORKS OF ZITKALA ŠA, MOURNING DOVE, JOHN JOSEPH MATHEWS, AND WOODY CRUMBO By TREVER LEE HOLLAND Bachelor of Arts Northwestern State University Natchitoches, Louisiana 2009 Master of Arts in English Literature Northwestern State University Natchitoches, Louisiana 2011 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May, 2016 QUEER MIMCRY: RE-PRESENTING THE PRIMITIVE IN THE WORKS OF ZITKALA ŠA, MOURNING DOVE, JOHN JOSEPH MATHEWS, AND WOODY CRUMBO Dissertation Approved: Dr. Lindsey Claire Smith Dissertation Adviser Dr. Katherine Hallemeier Dr. Chris Pexa Dr. Louise Siddons ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation committee. Dr. Smith, I am so grateful to you for taking an interest in my work and guiding me through my tenure at Oklahoma State University. You have taught me so much, and I cannot express my gratitude for all your hard work on my behalf. Dr. Hallemeier, thank you so much for all your tireless work and gracious assistance in so many facets of my graduate work. Dr. Siddons, thank you for opening my eyes to so much and making research so much fun and enjoyable. Dr. Pexa, thank you for so graciously agreeing to serve on my committee so quickly at your arrival at Oklahoma State University, even though you did not know much about me or my work. I could not have asked for a more supportive committee, and I am so thankful for all your tireless work and backing. iii Acknowledgements reflect the views of the author and are not endorsed by committee members or Oklahoma State University. Name: TREVER LEE HOLLAND Date of Degree: MAY, 2016 Title of Study: QUEER MIMCRY: RE-PRESENTING THE PRIMITIVE IN THE WORKS OF ZITKALA ŠA, MOURNING DOVE, JOHN JOSEPH MATHEWS, AND WOODY CRUMBO Major Field: ENGLISH LITERATURE Abstract: I argue that addressing early 20th century representation of Native performance reveals potential colonial resistance. I look at Mourning Dove Cogewea, Woody Crumbo’s Eagle Dancer Paintings, John Joseph Mathews Sundown, and Zitkala Ša’s The Sun Dance Opera to explore the ways Native people performed their own racial identities in early 20th century America, demonstrating that performance undermines colonial imaginings of Indigenous American peoples, drawing on performative theory by Judith Butler and Homi Bhabha’s notion of mimicry. Performance and mimicry of Native stereotypes undermine static notions of Native identity by revealing that performance instead of some obscure racial biology “in the blood” determines identity. I look at four textual examples of Native performance and its intersections with gender to reach such a conclusion. In each example, I address how “queerness” challenges representations of Native Americans, especially static notions of gender performance and identity. Historically, gender was thought of as representative of biological sex in similar ways that culture and identity have been conceptualized in relation to an individual’s race. Queerness disrupts such stable sexual identifiers, and in this dissertation, I suggest that queer performance challenges sexual and racial policing. That queerness extends beyond simply gendered bodies to include critiques about racial expectations. My analysis suggests ways that individuals subvert taxonomies of race and gender and sustain identities outside hegemonic normative categories, sometimes by their very ability to perform highly stylized notions of race and gender roles, a resistant act I call queer mimicry. I propose that queer mimicry functions as anti-colonial resistance in opposition to larger frames of American aesthetics, opening up discussions of activism within these texts that too often has simply categorized as playing into white constructions of otherness. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................1 II. QUEER MIMICRY: REPRESENTATION AND RESISTANCE IN ZITKALA-ŠA’S THE SUN DANCE OPERA ....................................................................................29 Discussion of Theoretical Frames ..........................................................................31 “Indian” Operas: Representations of Native Difference ........................................36 Performed Resistance: History and Politics in The Sun Dance Opera ..................44 Encoded Resistance in The Sun Dance Opera .......................................................59 (Re)Presentation and Gendered Resistance in the Opera ......................................69 Hebo as (Re)Presentation of Gender in Sun Dance ...............................................72 III. TOY BOYS, COWBOYWS, AND PLAYING INDIAN: QUEER PERFORMANCE IN COGEWEA .......................................................................................................90 Scholarship on Cogewea ........................................................................................93 Queer Cowboys: Dixie Canary and the Silent Homoerotics of Cogewea .............97 Frenchy: The Return of the Repressed .................................................................108 The Picturesque as Colonial Imagining ...............................................................120 Cogewea as Queer Figure ....................................................................................126 Race and Primitivism: Cogewea as Modernist Text ............................................130 Mimicry of Identity at the Races .........................................................................136 v IV. GENDERED PERFORMANCE AND RACISM IN JOHN JOSEPH MATHEWS’ SUNDOWN .........................................................................................................142 Sundown’s Engagements with Modernism and Osage History ...........................144 Sundown’s Textual Modernity .............................................................................149 Queerness and Chal..............................................................................................155 Homoerotic Context in Sundown .........................................................................167 Indigenous Masculinity as Queer.........................................................................171 Mimicry in Sundown ............................................................................................177 V. “LAUGHING AT THE RIDICULOUS, [AND] THE ABSURD”; WODDY CRUMBO, MIMICRY, AND THE MODERN NATIVE ARTIST ...................192 Trickster Performance and Queer Mimicry .........................................................193 Dancing the Erotic Stereotype: Ted Shawn and Native American Dance ...........200 Emerging Issues in Native American Art ............................................................202 Native Art as Primitive Visual Performance .......................................................205 Racializing Native American Art and Performance ...........................................208 Crumbo’s Life and Work .....................................................................................214 Crumbo’s Challenges to Native Art Expression ..................................................221 Crumbo’s Eagle Dancing Paintings .....................................................................226 Crumbo Performs the Primitive Other: Thurlow Lieurance and Crumbo ...........228 Crumbo’s Subversive Mimicry ............................................................................234 VI. CONCLUSION...................................................................................................242 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................245 vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In 1840s America, a pair of self-described Native Americans traveled around the country performing as Indians for eager audiences. The pair went by the names Okah Tubbee and Laah Ceil. However, as Angela Pulley Hudson reveals in Real Native Genius: How an Ex-Slave and White Mormon Became Famous Indians, in 1852 when Tubbee’s second wife filed for divorce, the public learned that the couple had created an elaborate show (1). Neither Tubbee nor Ceil were Native. Tubbee was actually the ex- slave James McCary whereas Ceil was white Mormon Celesta Stanton (1). Their performances “helped conceal their interracial relationship, as well as other secrets they may have wished to hide, like unorthodox religious beliefs and marital practices” (4). Hudson explores the complex reasons behind the couple’s performances, “analyzing how Indianness [was] a complex of ideas and practices … understood and performed by Native and non-Native people” (10). Increasingly, scholars address performances of 1 racial identity, but Hudson argues that with few exceptions scholars focus on white performers masquerading as Native which her research attempts to redress with its focus on the Black McCary’s racialized masquerade (10). In passing, Hudson alights on an important issue of racialized performance. She makes a provocative and fascinating observation about the way non-Native and Native Americans performed “Indianness.” Hudson’s work paints a fascinating discussion of Stanton and McCary’s performances and the “profit, protection, or even pleasure” that turning “professional Indians” afforded the couple (4). While she notes that Natives played indigenous performances, her work largely leaves