17 - Willkommen in Pullman City (The Indianthusiasm episode)

What's with the bizarre obsession that some Germans have with Indigenous people from North America? Every year, thousands of Germans gather to dress up and play "Indianer"—or at least their imagined, naive stereotype of what it's like to be a First Nations person—complete with appropriated powwow dances, regalia, and living in tipis. On this episode, Ted, Michelle, and Isaac go through some of the darker history of this phenomenon, and Ted and Isaac interview Drew Hayden Taylor, a Canadian writer from the Curve Lake First Nation. A few years ago, Drew made a documentary for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called "Searching for Winnetou," in which he visits some of the "Indian hobbyist" communities in Germany to see firsthand what it's all about. 

You can find Drew Hayden Taylor's documentary "Searching for Winnetou" here: https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/episodes/searching-for-winnetou

And you can learn more about Drew and his work on his website: http://www.drewhaydentaylor.com/

There's also a great documentary from the New York Times called "Native Fantasy: Germany's Indian Heroes" that you can find on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcuyYUgFMd0

On this episode, we cited from the following sources: 

"The Role of the Romantic West in Shaping the Third Reich" by W. Raymond Wood: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25668974?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

"Germany's Obsession with American Indians is Touching—And Occasionally Surreal" by Red Haircrow for Indian Country Today: https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/germanys-obsession-with-american-indians-is-touchingand-occasionally-surreal

"Why Germany can't quit its racist Native American problem" from Deutsche Welle :https://www.dw.com/en/why-germany-cant-quit-its-racist-native-american-problem/a-52546068

"Karl May museum returns Native American human scalp" from Deutsche Welle: https://www.dw.com/en/karl-may-museum-returns-native-american-human-scalp/a-57181103

Produced by Isaac Würmann.

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Follow Spaßbremse on Twitter (@spassbremse_pod). Music by Lee Rosevere. Art by Franziska Schneider.