"This, then, is America!"

Abstract

This thesis seeks to analyze the image appropriation of the Cherokee Indians by the creators of the outdoor drama Unto These Hills, which premiered in 1950. The drama was imagined and written by white North Carolinians in the late 1940s, and the majority of actors who performed in the drama for over fifty years were whites painted to look like Native Americans. In 2006, the eastern band of Cherokee attempted to reappropriate their history and culture by hiring Indian playwrights and filling almost all of the roles with Native Americans, Cherokee or not. Both appropriation and reappropriation were parts of larger trends in the United States and other parts of North America.