BY LAURA A. OGDEN Associate professor of anthropology at Florida
International University This movie poster from the film Shark
River manages to cram almost every single Everglades-related
stereotype into one “vivid color” tableau. It is really quite
remarkable, reflecting, in particular, the racial binaries
common to American landscape politics in the early 1950s. Here,
we see, a generic looking “Indian,” wearing a headdress and face
paint that surely no person ever wore in the Everglades,
standing in proud opposition to gun-toting white people who are
trudging through the swamp. In this Everglades, indigenous
people are naturalized as “of the swamp,” (a process that
glosses over Seminole and Miccosukee peoples’ lived histories of
war, resistance, and ongoing disputes about the Everglades’
future and management). On the other hand, whites are simply
outlaws who are “out of place,” endangered by alligators,
mosquitoes, malarial vapors, you name it. As for the blonde
“white goddess” staring off into space . .