ABSTRACT
We were somewhere around Custer, South Dakota, at the edge of the Black Hills when my Nordic colleague got this wicked glint in his eyes. I remember him saying something like, “They're all-day passes, let's go back and check out the monument lighting ceremony …” And suddenly the rental car had swung around through the scorching heat and soaking humidity, and was hurtling back toward Mount Rushmore (n.b. Thompson, 1998). From Sergio Leone's taciturn gunslingers to Maurice ‘Morris’ de Bevere's Lucky Luke and Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud's Blueberry, the peoples of the European subcontinent have a strong penchant for playing Cowboys-and-Indians. In my colleague's case, this penchant was tempered by a gleefully morbid engagement with the regalia of the federal government that rigorously ensured those cowboys came out the winners every time. Nor was he alone in this. During a stopover at the monument to the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee just a few days earlier, the only languages we heard in the cemetery were French and German.
