Thomas King, "You're Not the Indian I Had in Mind"

This story deals with the idea of "identity" and "authenticity," and what it means to be "Indian" in the American consciousness. King is mixed, only part Native American. However during his life and through his experience he struggled with his identity because he was either being ridiculed for not looking like the stereotypical, Wild West style Indian, or he was playing the part and being praised for it. I must admit I have always imagined Native Americans in my mind as the images in old photographs, the tipis and headdresses and Appaloosa horses. But this is a social construct we have created as outsiders to try and section off this group of people from what we consider to be "the norm." We force Natives to fit into a certain mold of leather, lassos, and fringe because this is what we want the "Indian" to be, we want the race we created through media and Hollywood to exist and we have a hard time accepting that it is a construct and that the "Indian" as we know it is not an accurate depiction of what our Native people are. Will Rogers is mentioned in the story as the type of Indian King wants to photograph because he appears white. No one would know Rogers was a Native American by his appearance, and that is the statement King decides to make with his photographic expedition; he decides to show America the side of the Native American they have been ignoring, the side that looks like the rest of us and walks and talks like the rest of us, without all the cliches trailing behind.