LAUSR

ABSTRACT A reoccurring trope in American cultural history is that of the ‘Vanishing Indian’. Scholars have described this trope as a form of ‘indigenous erasure’ whereby settler societies discount and eliminate the presence of American Indian peoples, cultures, and polities. This erasure is part of a larger colonial imperative to diminish the existence of American Indians in order to access land and resources. One method of erasure is to narrowly define who might be an American Indian. Though this has been described in qualitative research through stereotype, no quantitative work has examined American Indian cultural erasure and elimination. This is not entirely surprising as there have been few quantitative studies in general on political attitudes towards American Indians. We use a survey experiment to test this assumption by presenting participants (n = 1794) with a fictitious news story about an American Indian tribe and altering the descriptions of the tribe along 14 different portrayals. This allows us to understand the link between depiction, assessments of ‘authenticity’ and the willingness to support further economic or political rights for American Indians. Our results demonstrate the ease with which American Indians are invalidated and support for greater resources and self-governing rights are diminished.