Moving from the Boston Tea Party to the present, this is an exploration of the ways in which non-Indian Americans have played out their fantasies about Indians in order to experience national, modern and personal identities.

Moving from the Boston Tea Party to the present, this provocative book explores the ways non-Indian Americans have acted out their fantasies about Indians in order to experience national, modern, and personal identities. In this complicated tug-of-war between imaginings and actions, Indian people have been embraced and rejected, frequently humiliated and occasionally empowered. The historical anxieties revealed by Playing Indian continue to haunt Americans -- both Indian and non-Indian -- to this day.