Cinematic Comanches

Dustin Tahmahkera (Comanche) is the Wick Cary Chair of Native American Cultural Studies in the Department of Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Tribal Television: Viewing Native People in Sitcoms.

• List of IllustrationsPreface: Marʉawe in Medias ResAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Comanche Empire Strikes Back1. Jurisdiction: Reclaiming ComancherÍa Cinema2. Kinship: A Captivity Narrative3. Performance: Seeking Representational Justice4. Audience: Comanches Viewing ComanchesAfterword: SubeetʉNotesBibliographyFilmographyIndex

"Extensively researched and thoroughly theorized, Cinematic Comanches seeks to answer the question of why the Comanche Nation is currently experiencing cultural resurgence. Tahmahkera finds that strength scattered throughout the twentieth century, in films and elsewhere, connecting the dots of Comanche survivance from the past into the present. This powerful intervention by a Comanche about Comanches is a must-read for anyone interested in representations of Native people in America."-Liza Black, Tribal College Journal "Cinematic Comanches generates important possibilities for future Native film studies by placing several forms of scholarship in conversation with each other (film theory, cultural studies, Native studies, borderlands studies, etc.). While rooted in enlightening readings and connections between forms of scholarship, this book is largely accessible to readers who may be less familiar with the scholars he summarizes because throughout the work Tahmahkera writes in a personal, engaging, and often humorous tone."-Jacob Floyd, American Indian Quarterly "The strength of Tahmahkera's scholarship in Cinematic Comanches lies in his invitation to borderlands scholars to explore new avenues for understanding Indigenous agency."-Sawyer Young, Western Historical Quarterly "Media scholars, Indigenous and settler studies folks, popular culture buffs, and anyone with interests in decolonization and image sovereignty will find much here to interest and intrigue them. It is exemplary."-Jennifer L. Jenkins, Southwestern Historical Quarterly "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."-Kerry Fine, Great Plains Quarterly “Exceptional. . . . Written with energy and a capacious critical sensibility, Cinematic Comanches feels like the ‘Yes, we can!’ of Indigenous film and media criticism. It is also voraciously interdisciplinary and beautifully executes some of the primary challenges of public intellectual work-to be both learned and hip, both theoretically sophisticated and accessible for undergraduates, both deeply historical and relevant to this very moment.”-Joanna Hearne, author of Native Recognition: Indigenous Cinema and the Western “Tahmahkera writes in an engaging and sometimes humorous style that is generally devoid of academic jargon, which makes it accessible to students yet sophisticated enough in its theoretical grounding to appeal to scholars of Indigenous and media studies.”-Dominique BrÉgent-Heald, author of Borderland Films: American Cinema, Mexico, and Canada during the Progressive Era