Using the power of popular culture to combat stereotypes of Native Americans drives Lee Francis, a self-described “indigenerd” who grew up with a passion for comics but who rarely saw portrayals of indigenous people and certainly not as superheroes.
“I grew up with ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Star Wars’ in the house. I grew up a nerd, and it’s hard to be a nerd and showcase your indigenous identity,” Francis told a group of about 60 students who gathered to hear him Monday night in the Student Union at Fort Lewis College as part of the Native American Center’s Speaker Series.
Francis, who has a background in education, teaching at Laguna Acoma High School in New Mexico, is now fully engulfed in popular culture – seeking to bring complexity and modernity to outdated, mainstream tropes of indigenous people.
Francis owns Native Realities, a company producing comic books, graphic novels and with plans to create video games, featuring Native American superheroes.
He also owns Red Planet Books and Comics in Albuquerque, a comic and graphic novel store featuring stories of Native Americans, and he organized Indigenous Comic Con in Albuquerque.
Tapping popular culture, Francis said, is a bit like fighting fire with fire.
He sees influencing current popular culture as one of the few effective ways to add accuracy, complexity and nuance to stereotypes of Native Americans spread historically by past eras of popular culture dating to the 1600s.
“The thing about popular culture is it settles in the brain. We’re permeated by it,” he said.
Francis noted the power of popular culture when talking to a Navajo code talker who had never seen “Star Wars” but was aware of the influence of the series given his familiarity with “the little trash-can robot that rolls around.”
“It’s how popular culture absorbs us,” he said.
Popular culture from four eras, he said, gives us incomplete views and harmful stereotypes of indigenous culture:
The 1600s provided the view of the “noble savage,” the wild human uncorrupted by civilization.The 1700s presented the view of the “vanishing Indian,” a stereotype that Francis said provided psychological solace to settlers taking land from Native Americans and violating sovereign treaties.The 1820s and the election of President Andrew Jackson gave the view of the “red devil,” a stereotype that enabled Americans to psychologically accept efforts to exterminate Native Americans.In the late 1800s, “a sense of guilt” emerged in popular culture, he said, giving us the “neo-noble savage,” a stereotype that uses the original “noble savage” stereotype to represent positive modern values, such as environmental consciousness.Using comic books, graphic novels and video games, Francis said, is a way to fight the simplistic views of indigenous culture passed on over the centuries.
“When we tell our own stories, we are able to deconstruct these stereotypical images and we can combat the view that the only way to exist is as a ‘red devil’ or a ‘noble savage,’” he said.
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