Neoliberal Natives: Projections, Disruptions, and Survivance within Casino Narratives

Abstract

Upon the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) in 1988, Indian gaming has been at the forefront of Native American discourses regarding sovereignty, self-determination, and economic development. Gaming operations hold the preeminent place in popular culture figurations of Indigeneity, essentially eliminating other concerns from narratives of indigenous/non-indigenous relations. Much work has been done on the lack of authentic portrayal of indigenous peoples in a variety of cultural mediums, but portrayals of gaming and particularly the Natives who run those gaming operations have begun to fill the limiting space once reserved for the noble and violent savage imagery of the past centuries.

Throughout the course of this study I will be examining the casino figure Alex Longshadow in Banshee, in juxtaposition to Gerald Vizenor’s novel Heirs of Columbus and the television series Longmire, narratives I view as survivance narratives, or, “narrative[s] [of] resistance that creates a sense of presence over absence, nihility and victimry” (Vizenor Survivance 1). These surviance narratives, then, refute more tropic figurations of the Casino figure represented in this study through the character of Alex Longshadow in Banshee. Utilizing Chadwick Allen’s trans-Indigenous methodology and Shari Huhndorf’s transnational scholarship to examine the unique comparative positioning of these characters, exposing how different mediums and authors interpolate and/or refute colonialist neoliberal characterizations regarding gaming.