Visions and Visages

From 1933-1945, the Office of Indian Affairs used the publication Indians at Work to document and promote the various emergency work programs that employed Native peoples in the United States.  This paper focuses on the tensions apparent in the periodical between authors who sought to delimit and define Indigeneity and contributors who contested binary formations such as traditional and modern, and native and non-native.  Ultimately, I am concerned with how representatives of the federal government attempted to create a definitive image of the “modern Indian” and how tribal members complicated and contested this effort.