Great Plains Quarterly

In his new study of Indigenous representation, Dustin Tahmahkera (Comanche), the Wick Cary Endowed Chair in Native American Cultural Studies, builds a complex and nuanced study of Comanche presence in film and other types of media. Tahmahkera raises important questions of representational agency and power: “who represents whom, and in effect, who lays claim to Comanche significations” (11). In so doing, he engages with “Comanche” as a signifier in order to capture that power of representation to present Comanches as a living, breathing, contemporary peoples, rather than as a group frozen in the past, particularly the past as represented by the supposed fall of the Comanche empire, while also resisting a monolithic construction of Comanche representation and of the Comanche as a people.

Tahmahkera grounds the project in the Comanchería, both in the traditional territory and reach of the Comanche and in their continued presence as the Comanche Nation, currently headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma. The introduction and chapter 1 establish Tahmahkera’s guiding concepts and provide an informative, in-depth, and Comanche-centric examination of Comanches (both real and fictional) as cast, crew, and creators in film, including Tahmahkera’s great-great-great-grandfather, Comanche chief Quanah Parker. Importantly, Tahmahkera’s concepts, including the media borderlands, cinematic Comanches, and representational jurisdiction, serve as the ground for the rest of the book, which focuses on Disney’s The Lone Ranger (2013) and actor Johnny Depp’s notorious performance as [End Page 362] Tonto, a Comanche character. Though the book focuses on the film at length, it is not a study of the film, but rather an examination of the film positioned inside the Comanche-centered concepts and cinematic history.

Chapter 2 provides an especially interesting and developed analysis of Johnny Depp’s controversial adoption by Comanche elder LaDonna Harris, which Tahmahkera positions as a contemporary captivity narrative that opens a space for Comanche influence in the production of the film. Importantly, the “capture” of Johnny Depp reveals important moves by Comanche elders and leaders to gain agency in the production of The Lone Ranger. Playing on the idea of capture/adoption as a way to replenish the tribe and establish networks of relationship, Harris’s savvy move presents a type of intervention that allowed the tribe to have more input than they otherwise might have had in the creation of the film and created actual benefits to the peoples represented in the film. Chapter 3 engages with the film in a more conventional, but still Comanche-centered, textual analysis, and chapter 4 presents a textured and focused Comanche-centered reception studies–type examination.

Cinematic Comanches presents an important conjunction of Native American studies and film and media studies. Additionally, it illuminates both past and present Comanche participation in the representation of Comanche people across representative media, raising important conversations about the futurity of this representation and resisting the so-called fall of the Comanches by depicting them as a people very much participating in their culture, past, present, and future.