Oconaluftee Indian Village Sparknotes

The Oconaluftee Indian Village is a full-size replica of an eighteenth century Cherokee community located in Cherokee, North Carolina. The village brochure serves as an example of the intersection between Native American religions and American tourism in modernity. Tourism funds the attraction, which is owned and operated by the Cherokee Historical Association, and promotes an “authentic” experience that takes visitors back in time with “real Indians” as their subjects. By framing the natives as noble savages, the brochure reveals a history of Native American self-commodification. The Oconaluftee Indian Village both challenges and perpetuates historical trends in the relationship between religion and tourism by creating and defining authenticity

Native Americans who traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show used the press to make social and political statements as well as communicate their opinions of white society. According to memoirs, some Native Americans accepted to travel with a show that portrayed them stereotypically in order to understand “‘the white man’s beliefs about God’s will, and how they act according to it.”’ Although the only way for this goal to be achieved was through the noble savage stereotype, the performance of the stereotype gave Native Americans some control over the ways in which tourism and religion intersect. The tourist gaze is therefore symbiotic because the tourist gains access to the authenticity he or she desires while the Native Americans gather knowledge to better protect their religion and culture against the encroaching white world. Thus, self-commodification can be utilized as a method to adapt but not necessarily resolve a problematic history of colonialism. The Oconaluftee Indian Village provides a more informed insight into the Cherokee tribe than other attractions but nevertheless the tourist gaze still negatively affects the ways in which Native Americans have been and continue to be perceived in the United

The attraction offered an aestheticized representation of Native Americans as savages and hired Native Americans to play “authentic” Indians. Although the Oconaluftee Indian Village and Historyland serve different interests, they have a similar effect on the tourist. Through representations of history in staged performances, a transmission of culture occurs between spectators and performers that creates “a cultural exchange where ‘otherness’ and ‘American-ness’ were negotiated.” American tourists gaze at the exoticized “other” in order to establish the “self” and produce an American identity that does not include the “other.” This construction and reaffirmation of the “self” occurs in both attractions despite the different interests because both attractions exoticize Native Americans. Native Americans are aware of this transmission and, to the extent that they can, control which aspects of their culture and religion to transmit and which to withhold from audiences. The cultural exchange can negatively impact Native Americans because they can be seen as so different that they are excluded from modern American society. At the same time, awareness of the gaze allows Native Americans to protect their religion and culture by selling tourists a