VLVL2 Indian country

[pynchonoid]

re Yuroks, Vato & Blood in Vietnam, (not to mention
the Native Americans in M&D):

CAMP SCORPION, Iraq, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Northern Babil
province is what the Marines call, in their typically
politically incorrect way, "Indian country." When
there are ambushes on Army supply convoys, when
roadside explosions claim the limbs and lives of
American servicemen driving in Humvees [...] 

"Raid in Iraq's 'Indian Country' " 
By Pamela Hess
Published 8/6/2003 6:20 AM
<http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030804-022042-6813r>


...see also the review I linked the other day:

<http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=114661059720058>

Peter Schrijvers. The GI War against Japan: American
Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II.
New York: New York University Press, 2002. xiii + 320
pp. Bibliography, notes, index. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN
0-8147-9816-0. 

[...]  It is interesting, then, to note the continuous
flashbacks in U.S. soldiers' wartime narratives to
either the Indian wars or to the American Indians
themselves, when they are trying to give meaning to
the fights they are involved in or to make sense of
the people they are confronted with, enemies or allies
alike. This pattern was far from being new as it was
present during the Philippines war during which the
Filipino rebellion was often depicted in "Indian"
terms. The imagination of the GIs, nurtured by their
education, the mass media, and mass entertainment, is
also a key factor in understanding the last figure
pinpointed by Schrijvers, namely the romantics. The
Pacific islands, such as Hawaii for instance, were
often places that were expected to match
"prefabricated illusions" (p. 28), which soldiers had
been lulled into by films featuring Dorothy Lamour in
the 1930s and 1940s. Even the U.S. armed forces
guides, aimed at introducing these soldiers to foreign
lands and cultures, used "colourful vignettes and
facile generalization, leaving many blank spaces for
the reader to fill in" (p. 29). [...] 


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