"Of which I took possession"

: settler materiality & the Plains feathered headdress

Abstract

The “war bonnet,” an eagle feathered headdress originating with the tribes of the North American Plains, has been a key element in material-based mimesis and commodification among non-Native people. Manufacturing headdress replicas has become a successful commercial project via major costume companies as well as small businesses, domestically and abroad. As a source of material fascination for non-Native people, this research traces the complex milieu of identity and object through an examination of the historic and contemporary interaction between the headdress and U.S. settlers. Written as a series of historical vignettes woven with ethnographic data this dissertation spans a period of 400 years, framing the consumption of the headdress within a reading of settler semiotics and a detailed chronology of U.S. iconography.

This project places special emphasis on how objects function in settler colonial contexts as a means of national identity, seeking to integrate settler colonial theory into research on objects and materiality. As such, I propose a new theoretical framework introducing the concepts of settler materiality and settler semiotics. This dissertation is multi-sited drawing on archival and ethnographic research in over twenty U.S. states and three countries.

Date of Award	28 Jun 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Mattia Fumanti (Supervisor) & Stan Frankland (Supervisor)