Exploitative depictions of Native Americans in advertising were not limited to those published in North America. European marketers quickly capitalized on the many fantasies that could be read into what was often a monolithic interpretation of hundreds of unique Indigenous cultures. Here, the United Kingdom’s National Savings Bank enlists a cartoon Native family to deliver a punchline about low interest rates. This illustration falls into the category of minstrelsy, a type of racialized performance in media that is historically most associated with the negative, buffoonish caricaturization of Black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Native American minstrelsy came with its own host of grotesque tropes, including the color red as a substitute for Native skin tones (commonly referred to as redface); a pastiche of ceremonial dress that combined headdresses with buckskin tunics and long black braids; and the reduction of language to catchphrases meant to provoke laughter. In this instance, “how” is a bastardization of the Lakota/Dakota greeting better anglicized as “hau.” This poster was created at the height of the Red Power movement when Natives across North America fought for their identity and sovereignty. Despite many landmark moments in this struggle, including the occupation of Alcatraz that happened in the year this poster was published, overtly racist advertising of this kind was still common across America and beyond.
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