Tribal Television by Dustin Tahmahkera

Author:Dustin Tahmahkera [Tahmahkera, Dustin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Performing Arts, Television, History & Criticism, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, Native American Studies, Media Studies
ISBN: 9781469618685
Google: p0GbBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2014-01-15T04:05:56+00:00

Redcorn boldly claims the object belongs to him, yet his solution is to house it “in a museum,” a stark contrast to his initial outrage and to Natives’ historical and ongoing repatriation efforts and calls for museums and universities to return, not possess and preserve, their people’s cultural items. Then on the following page, Redcorn all but admits he has previously sold tribal objects to the archaeologist when he advises Hank to proceed with caution: “Do not take his first offer.” More damning for Redcorn’s cultural integrity is a producer’s handwritten note next to Redcorn’s line concerning “what is already mine”: “looks valuable I sold stuff to univ[ersity] 300 bucks.”44

In act 3 of the beat sheet for “The Arrowhead,” “Hank hears from Redcorn that Native Americans’ land was taken—just as Hank’s land is being taken. This is interesting [to] Hank. They go off to talk more about it.” Once they arrive “at Redcorn’s, Hank is interested to learn about history.”45 Hank and Redcorn share narratives of land loss, but to equate the two land thefts drastically downplays the indigenous-settler specificities of broken treaties, violence, assimilation efforts, and racism, not to mention absolves Hank of any personal guilt or responsibility (evocative of the outcome in the aforementioned episode with Bernie Mac) as a contemporary settler living on a piece of land that, according to Aibel and Berger’s pitch, was formerly inhabited by Redcorn’s grandfather.

When Hank digs in his yard and finds “an old retail sign which reads ‘Souvenirs,’” Hank pursues its origins at “the downtown Hall of Records and finds out that his parcel of land was zoned as a souvenir store in the 1920s. . . . John Redcorn’s grandfather ran it.”46 Meanwhile, the archaeologists resume digging up Hank’s yard and suspect they have found “mysterious and wondrous glyphs” on “an old metal sign of some kind.” After Aibel and Berger make a migratory turn toward the highly contested Bering Strait theory—“It bears a striking resemblance,” they note, “to Asian text characters and Indio-European writings”—“Hank proves them all wrong by whipping out his garden hose and s[p]raying the dirt off the sign—an old retail sign which reads ‘Souvenirs.’”47 What began as the development of a resolution involving Hank and Redcorn working together soon becomes Hank’s show in representing his version of settler self-determination.

Redcorn, however, was not the only indigenous character to intervene in Hank’s land dilemma in the pitch. Aibel and Berger posed an additional story line that, if aired, would have introduced several other opportunistic Indian characters. The writers’ submission of other Indians is highly unusual, considering that Redcorn’s only blood relation ever depicted in any of the 259 episodes of King of the Hill is his son, Joseph, and, in one late episode, his previously unknown daughter, Kate. Other relations very briefly reference Redcorn’s father (John Redcorn II), grandfather (John Redcorn I), and a sister. For Aibel and Berger to pitch multiple Indian characters could be deemed a feat in itself, yet their Indians quickly slip into a regressive camp of representations.

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