SOURCE: Strong, Pauline Turner. “Playing Indian in the Nineties: Pocahontas and The Indian in the Cupboard.” In Hollywood's Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film, edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor, pp. 188-205. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.

In the following essay, Strong analyzes Hollywood's approach to Native American characters and culture using Pocahontas and The Indian in the Cupboard as representative examples.

Hollywood has long taken a leading role in shaping the American tradition of “playing Indian.” This chapter considers how this tradition is mobilized in two family films released in 1995: Disney's heavily marketed Pocahontas and the Columbia/Paramount adaptation of Lynne Reid Banks's popular children's novel The Indian in the Cupboard. Borrowing a concept from Donna Haraway, I would place my “situated knowledge” of these films and their associated playthings at the intersection of, first, my scholarly interest in the production...