Johnny Depp on A 'Happiness Mission' in Wounded Knee

Abstract

LWld remains the most fundamental of issues in Native North America, followed by those
of tribal sovereignty Wld representation. Johnny Depp offered to buy the iconic land at
Wounded Knee Wld gift it to the Lakota Nation. This article reflects not only upon the limitations,
but more importWltly upon the political implications of this approach, particularly
when it is deployed as a resource for nonnative Wld material daims of Indigenous peoples
in a settler-colonial society. Looking at the Wounded Knee ownership case through the
lenses of postcolonial Wld affect theories, this article examines how the issues of Indigenous
lWld, sovereignty and representation become linked when Oglala Lakota, as recipients
of a philWlthropic gift Wld of a happiness that is not their own, acquire a "happiness
duty, "as defined by Sara Ahmed. Depp's declaration of intention can be read as Wlother
text within the colonial archive, given how it justifies intervention with the perceived unhappiness
of Native culture. What then, would it mean politically to recognize unhappiness?