Holly May Treadwell - Animality and Nationality in Graphic Novels: The Representation and Categorisation of Native Americans in the Red Wolf Story Arcs.

My paper takes a critical approach to the use of categories in the writing and illustrating of Red Wolf from 2017-2019. This study focuses on issues of representation and aims to examine where and how the comics destabilise and challenge racist stereotypes in the medium as well as in society, where and how they further construct such views, and consequentially what needs to be improved in future representations in order to portray Indigenous characters as full, complex humans with agency over their own stories. By undertaking this analysis, I aim to examine where and how these comics use the medium as a tool to raise awareness of indigenous cultures and the problems facing their communities, as a political artefact and a social commentary on the above, and to hold the comics accountable and encourage creators to take responsibility for any discrimination and inequalities found within the works. I will be conducting a close-reading of the texts and examining them in relation to the two dominant categories that Indigenous peoples are written into: the “Bloodthirsty Savage” and the “Naïve Sidekick”, which will be scrutinised and problematised whilst being used as a basis from which to compare the representations.