PLAYING OURSELVES:INTERPRETIN CB
Publication date:
15 March 2007Length of book:
242 pagesISBN-13: 9780759110618
"Playing Ourselves" explores the ongoing trend for reconstructed historic sites to broaden their interpretation of early America by adding Native American interpreters to staffs that formerly presented from a primarily European perspective, examining the reasons behind this shift and the effects it has on visitors and performers. Peers uses her detailed observations of five historic reconstructions to both examine the theoretical aspects of their cultural performance and advise interpreters and their managers on how to more effectively present the inclusive history to which they aspire.
Playing Ourselves offers a lively, sophisticated, and trenchant account of the movement to include Native interpreters and perspectives in living history museums in the U.S. and Canada. Focusing on five historical sites in the Great Lakes region, Peers reveals how stereotypes are both reproduced and subverted in encounters between visitors and Native interpreters. In its emphasis on the agency of indigenous interpreters, this book is a welcome contribution to the scholarly literature on cultural tourism, cultural performance, museum representation, and contemporary indigenous life. I look forward to sharing Playing Ourselves with my students in anthropology, performance studies, museum studies, and Native American Studies.--Pauline Turner Strong, University of Texas at Austin, associate professor, University of Texas at Austin, author of American Indians and the American Imaginary