f A Native American ‘playing Indian’: Internal colonization in professional wrestling rhetoric

This article focuses on the tension extant in the ways in which Tatanka, a Native American wrestler (person), assumes the identity of another tribesperson (persona) to generate both economic and social capital. We address Tatanka’s narrative as an example of internal colonization and commodification, given that he had to ‘play Indian’ to pass as an authentic Native American. We discuss these two critical concepts and then provide some analysis of the public fragments that surround Tatanka’s narrative.