Summary Of 'Construction Of The Imaginary Indian'

In "Construction of the Imaginary Indian," Marcia Crosby shows that throughout history, there has been an imagined image of a savage, yet illusory indigenous person constructed by the West to justify European colonization, known as the "Imaginary Indian." Until present literature, this Eurocentric approach marginalized Indians as human specimens or peripheral objects. However, Native people have been an imperative component of European history throughout North America. As Crosby states, the indigenous population have always been placed opposite to the West to stress the importance of colonizing and civilizing these peoples by assimilation in an effort to "rescue" them. According to her past judgment, in a binary system where only white people