#kliph nesteroff

[oldshowbiz]

I’m featured in Rolling Stone this week, talking about my new book Outrageous. Why not order a copy of the book as a gift?

[gatheringbones]

[“Hundreds of Native American performers toured in Wild West shows at the turn of the century. Most considered it a respite from the oppressive reservation system, a lesser of two evils. Neither inexperienced nor naïve, some volunteered to join with P.T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill simply to escape the oppressive reservation system and attain an income on the side. It was reported that some split payments with Barnum and Cody to help recruit others. Those hired as interpreters secured favorable conditions and good pay. Harvard scholar Philip Deloria said that joining a Wild West show served “as a form of escape from agency surveillance.” Nearly one hundred Natives were recruited from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota every year. “Indeed, the most significant regular flow of money onto that reservation between 1883 and 1913 may have come from Lakota performers traveling nationally and internationally,” wrote Deloria. “The late 1880s and early 1890s in particular were starving times for many Indian communities, and performing represented, not simply escape, but also food and wages for Indian actors from a number of reservations.”

The Office of Indian Affairs, later the Bureau of Indian Affairs, objected to both the Standing Bear decision and Buffalo Bill’s recruitment process. They believed providing Natives with a taste of freedom would make their imprisonment unmanageable. Insisting that no Natives leave without the permission of the OIA, they fined Buffalo Bill several hundred dollars for doing something that the courts had already determined was perfectly legal.

Thomas J. Morgan, the new OIA commissioner, came up with a blackmail plan. He announced that anyone wishing to join a Wild West show was free to do so, but if they did, they would be stripped of their allotments and the annuities spelled out by treaty. He wrote in his annual report, “Indians must conform to white man’s ways, peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must.” Suddenly it became much harder for Buffalo Bill to secure performers. Few were willing to risk losing their tribal status or the paltry annuities granted them in exchange for land. As a workaround, Buffalo Bill secured permission from federal authorities to offer potential Native American performers a plea deal: join the show or go to jail.

The famed Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull fled to Canada after the Battle of Little Big Horn and the death of General Custer in 1876. After months in hiding, he was extradited back to the United States, where he was given the option of prison time or performing with Buffalo Bill. Reduced to a mere sideshow attraction, comedian Rich Hall observed in his 2012 television special Inventing the Indian, “It was as if a Guantánamo detainee suddenly had to appear on X Factor.”]

Kliph Nesteroff, We Had A Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story Of Native Americans And Comedy

[bookcoversonly]

Title: We Had a Little Real Estate Problem | Author: Kliph Nesteroff | Publisher: Simon Schuster (2021)

[doppleganger-rental]

[ninja-muse]

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem is the best non-fiction book I’ve read so far this year! Hugely informative, almost compulsively readable, and full of interviews and solid research. If you’re at all interested in the subject, I highly recommend.

[backlogbooks]

An interesting book so far!

[thesociologicalcinema]

"We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans and Comedy" ~ Kliph Nesteroff (https://www.amazon.com/Had-Little-Real.../dp/1982103035)

[aunti-christ-ine]

From  the Twitter account  of  @oldshowbiz​