Be warned this is about to be a BRICK OF TRUTHINESS.
The war bonnet is a loaded symbol. It carries many layers of meaning, some more obvious to certain audiences, than others.
The war bonnet is part of the Great Plains peoples (such as the Sioux, Crow, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, and Plains Cree) traditions. It was given to a member of their society as recognition for a great accomplishment. This could be in battle, diplomacy, or leadership. This was formal headwear, used in ceremony and in formal nation to nation meetings. While I will not say that no woman was ever presented with one, it is extremely unlikely that a woman would ever wear one. This is due to different roles that men and women had in their society at the time.
By the middle to late 1800, with the expansion of the United States westward the US government had enacted a series of laws, policies and methods of dealing with the “Indian Problem.” Formalization in Western thought of specifically the United States Indian Problem is encountered when Tocqueville and Beaumont first encountered Native Americans in the city of Utica, New York. Both authors seem equally struck that they were witnessing a passing tradition, doomed to extinction. This is the modern american origin of the Vanishing Native. The people that they encountered where Iroquois (who don’t wear war bonnets), a confederacy of nations that Benjamin Franklin spent over a year with and to whom credits his ideas of democracy. But 100 years later, the Iroquois where already forced on to reservations by gunpoint. It should also be noted that the Iroquois where instrumental in the French and Indian war, but that is a story for another time.
During this same time, Native Americans that the Federal Government was currently “dealing” with, were more western Native American Nations. It was Abraham Lincon, freer of the slaves, that ordered the execution of “Indian Rebels” otherwise known as Souix or Dakota. The Dakota plunged simultaneously to their deaths on one giant gallows before thousands of spectators. It remains the largest mass execution in American history. This can be pointed to as the beginnings of the Modern American publics imagination of what an Indian looks like.
(side bar: “Indian Problem” being solved by rounding them up and killing them this ethnic minority “Problem” Predated WW2…. where did you think he got his ideas)
After the American civil war, there was a great call for wild west shows, and dime novels. Both of which condensed the Modern American image of what an Indian looks like to the Peoples of the Great Plains. The focal point of and defining characteristic in both Wild West Shows and dime novels to distinguish Native Americans was the War Bonnet. It was the War Bonnet that was the tip of the spear in the media blast in defining to Post civil war and Modern Americas vision of the Indian. This tradition of visual short hand of defining Indians was carried into Movies and Television. Like it or not, 566 unique and wildly different cultures are from that point forward defined by a war bonnet. It was in the wild west shows that there was a dual narrative of who the Indian was: Noble Savage, and Frightening Boogy man who will kill you just like a wild animal would. Women where almost completely defined by the wild west shows, dime novels, movies and television as property, wild creatures that just need to be tamed by any means necessary.
In American Policy at the time, it was often said the only good Indian was a dead Indian, and to kill the Indian but save the man. Boarding schools, where children were removed from their home and beaten starved killed for not becoming “American”. It was for their own good, decreed the American Government. Forced onto reservations, treaties were long since ignored, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs was created by the WAR DEPARTMENT to deal with the Indian problem.
The Trail of tears, the long Walk, force relocation by gunpoint… to solve an ethnic “problem”
After the Indian wars officially ended and open hostiles declined (not disappeared) It became the BIA’s task to assimilate the Indian. Policy after policy was enacted. Most notably were : the Dawes Act, American Indians get the vote in the US 1924 (after women), Indian Reorganization Act Indian 1930s, Relocation Act of 1956.
Until 1978 it was illegal for Native people to practice their religion. Native people could be, and often were, imprisoned for using these same items in ceremonies. Ironically, while nonnative people were using sacred objects in mimicking the Indians at sports events, Native people had to stand by and watch their culture mocked while they themselves could not participate in the same activities in a religious way. Meaning it was legal for a white person to wear a war bonnet, but not a person who was from a Plains Native Nation.
Then Wounded Knee 2 happened in 1973, once again Native Americans where in the media, coincidently, it was taking place on a Dakota reservation. War Bonnets where seen. Once again, the war bonnet is the Modern American Image of the Native American.
Current stats on Native Americans:
Life expectancy for a Native American Male in the US is 56
The overall violent crime rate among American Indians and Alaska Natives is 150 per 1,000 persons, meaning one out of 7 American Indians or Alaskan Natives has been a victim of violence. That rate is three times as high as the rate for blacks, three and a half times higher than whites, and four and a half times higher than Asians.
90 percent of perpetrators where not American Indian. This makes American Indians and Alaskan Natives the largest target of hate crimes per capita.
Sexual violence against women on reservations is 12 times the national rate. 1 in 2 Native American women are sexually assaulted or raped.
90% of rapists are white.
99% of rapes reported to authorities do not even get investigated. Access to plan b for women on the reservation … well there isnt any.
Abortions for pregnancies that are a result of rape, totally unavailable on reservations.
Native Americans both on and off the reservation, live in the highest rate of poverty of ANYONE, both in Canada and the US.
Suicide is 4 times the national rate in both Canada and the US.
I won’t even get started on drug and alcohol use.
Native Americans per capita are the largest group of people in Prison.
75% of these violent crimes don’t get investigated.
Of the 25% that do, only 10% are brought to court.
Out of the 10 % that get brought to court only 2% are prosecuted.
I will do the math for you 0.05% of these violent crimes ever go before a judge.
Native Americans per capita are the largest group of people in the Armed Services, this can be directly tied to both poverty and a sense of responsibility when it comes to protecting their home. A few of these service members have earned the right to wear the war bonnet. All of them are honored by all Native Nations.
As Margo Thunderbird, an activist of the Shinnecock Nation, has put it: “They came for our land, for what grew or could be grown on it, for the resources in it, and for our clean air and pure water. They stole these things from us, and in the taking they also stole our free ways and the best of our leaders, killed in battle or assassinated. And now, after all that, they’ve come for the very last of our possessions; now they want our pride, our history, our spiritual traditions. They want to rewrite and remake these things, to claim them for themselves. The lies and thefts just never end.”
So, now that you know that very summarized chunk of history, do you see why its insulting for a white woman, to wear a war bonnet?
“Do you know why Indian rain dances always worked? Cuz Indians would keep dancing until it rained.” Sherman Alexie
Further information can be found at