“What’s on the earth is in the stars; and what’s in the stars is on the earth”: Lakota Relationships with the Stars and American Relationships with the Apocalypse

How is colonialism connected to American relationships with extraterrestrial beings? This commentary analyzes contemporary and founding US mythologies as constant, calculated attempts for settlers to obtain indigeneity in this land stemming from a fear of the “unknown.” From Columbus’s arrival to the Boston Tea Party, from alien and UFO fervor to paranormal experiences, spiritualism, New Age, and American Wicca, American mythology endlessly recreates conspiracy theories to justify its insatiable desire for resource extraction. I examine the US American mythology of extraterrestrials from two directions: the Oglala Lakota perspective of spirits born through a constellation of stars, and the “American” perspective of extraterrestrials born out of settler futurities. Manifest Destiny goes so far as to take ownership over time and reconfigure it into a linear, one-way street that is a progression towards apocalypse. For American Indians and other peoples targeted by the United States government, conspiracy theories prove true. Those who are targeted, Native and otherwise, understand as the violence of American mythology pours across the continent—abduction and assimilation, or death. How can Indigenous nonhuman ontologies orient settler ethics for the future?

North American Aboriginal Philosophy of History: A Historical Thick Interpretation of Deloria's God Is Red

Native American history, for its ceremonial/cyclic time sequence, is often seen as a part of Native American mythology. Regarding civilization, Euro-American historians compare it with Reason, and hence, undermine the view of Native American history as the factual assessment of the aboriginal world. Deriving methodical approaches from the insights of Norman K. Denzin, this article aims to explore within the domain of Native American non-literary writings the nature of Native American history. The analysis of the methodical connection between historical thick interpretation and its praxis in Native American historiography illustrates the dynamics of Native American philosophy of history disregarded by Eurocentrism. This analysis employs critical techniques anchored in the historical thick inscription proposed by Denzin to understand the philosophy of Native American history Vine Deloria Jr. represents in God Is Red concerning modern historiographical modes.

The Neo-frontier in Contemporary Preparedness Novels

As the era of globalization and comfort ends, preparedness novels embrace humanity's dystopian future and leap at the chance for societal rejuvenation on more localized terms. The three textual case studies explored here put forward a value system derived from the lives of the pioneers and settlers. The frontier, a classic trope of American mythology, is reimagined as the neo-frontier, a time–space continuum located at the porous divide between civilization and wilderness. While this trope provides an antidote against consumer culture's perceived rootlessness and effeminacy, it also legitimizes problematic attitudes, including racism, sexism and a penchant for top-down hierarchies. By regressing to traditional models, the white man avoids succumbing to the excesses of savagery, for example cannibalism, and places himself outside historic time.

Stolen Spirits

The windigo is a Native American spirit belonging to the Algonquian tribes of North America and Canada. Although well-documented in Western literature, the windigo spirit of stories like Pet Sematary by Stephen King and “The Wendigo” by Algernon Blackwood are stripped of their original context and are mere stereotypes of the cultures they originate from. By looking at the depictions of windigo in these specific Western stories and in Native American beliefs, it is possible to see how stripping spirits of their original contexts is harmful to Native communities. Western appropriation has long-lasting effects on the perceptions of Native American cultures by the average consumer and even scientific communities. In this paper, I document the depictions of windigo in Native American mythology, those of Western literature, and the effects of appropriation and misrepresentation on Native communities. I analyze the way the windigo are represented in Western literature and argue that Native American spirits should belong to the cultures they originate from.

Misja na Księżyc. Filmowe obrazy wielkiego skoku ludzkości

Mission to the Moon: Cinematic portrayals of the giant leap of mankindThe article analyzes the portrayals of the trip to the Moon in the following motion pictures: Le Voyage dans la Lune dir. Georges Méliès, 1902, Apollo 13 dir. Ron Howard, 1995, Opération Lune dir. William Karell, 2002 and First Man dir. Damien Chazelle, 2018. The author addresses the changes in the symbolic dimension of the cinematic portrayals of Moon conquest as well as the visual representation of those changes. The principal focus of the article is on the special place of the Moon conquest within American mythology and recent attempts at both restitution and demy­thologization of this particular myth.

The Musical

This chapter analyzes and discusses the performance of Chicago, which opened in 1975. Here were the key elements of Fosse’s art, the carnal act on one hand and, on the other, the indefinable American something that toys with our imaginations and infuriates the authorities. Sex and jazz worked as a set, like crime and show business in the early talkie. The chapter argues that in his faithful adaptation of Maurine Watkins’ play, Fosse brought out all the bawdy chaos that “Chicago” meant in American mythology. To close, the chapter discusses the reception of the musical as well as the inevitable changes in the cast after the first several hundred performances of Chicago’s initial run.

The Rural Ideal

This chapter examines how the rural ideal, or the beliefs about the prestige of farm homes and families, developed in the United States and how it in turn influenced the placement of dependent children. It first considers how the American mythology that glorified agriculturalists gave rise to the notion that any farm was better for a child than an institution. It then shows how the Midwest came to be seen as a popular place for farm placements onto farms, as well as the best representation of the farm environment that reformers and placers sought to give children. It also explores how the reliance on the Midwest for placement homes began and paved the way for children to be sent to farms in need of laborers. Finally, it discusses the host of problems confronting farming in the Midwest that nonetheless did not deter child welfare workers from believing that farm life still represented the American ideal.