Camp Sensibilities: Tradition, Narrative, and Playing Indian at American Summer Camps

Abstract

Storytelling is an integral tradition at American summer camps. Summer camps allow children to participate in a form of narratological escapism and abandonment of ‘real world’ societal rules: where children play with their expression, identities, and how they interact with one another. Through analyzing hegemonic representations of the ‘Indian’ and other settler-colonial myths in American Camp Association publications, this paper illustrates that the most enduring summer camp tradition is the misappropriation of Native American symbols, names, and iconography. The narratological paradox of the American summer camp is that while it attempts to provide an escape from modern life and societal constraints, by ‘playing Indian’, summer camps have in fact partaken in one of the United States’ oldest traditions. In addition, this paper engages with the importance of situated knowledge and auto-ethnography in summer camp research.