Predatory Colonialism: Indigenous Women and the Violence of Sexual Objectification in the United States

Abstract

I n S e p t e m b e r 1 9 5 4 t h e b u r l e S q u e performer known by the stage name Princess DoMay told a reporter from the Columbus Citizen newspaper that “I’m a full-blooded halfbreed.” DoMay’s tongue-in-cheek declaration was equal parts sales pitch and cultural appropriation, but at the height of the Cold War no one seemed to care. Men, mostly white men, kept turning up at her shows and buying the magazines in which she appeared, always in provocative poses. DoMay’s persona, contrived with her manager and husband, Doug Bonde, was a financially profitable fraud. She knew how to capitalize on racial and sexual stereotypes, parlaying her white privilege into a curated public persona as a racially exotic and sexually accessible Cherokee woman. How did DoMay, and scores of other white women, get away with this fraud? What historical damage did it perpetuate? And how can an Indigenous feminist reading of the past illuminate paths toward sexual sovereignty and empowered women and girls within nurturing communities? This article addresses these questions by focusing on “redface” performers in twentieth-century burlesque and evaluating how Playboy magazine perpetuated predatory representations of women claiming to have Indigenous ancestry. Engaging in this type of historical analysis is traumatic and can be triggering