Last year I took a trip and spent nearly 3 months in Poland. After only a few weeks of staying there, I came to the realization that, despite such a large cultural and geographical gap between my home and the Slavic country, I and many others had much more in common than I first thought. What started out as a cultural exchange between me and the many Poles I met quickly turned into a rabbit hole of information I had never even known existed. A one-off conversation about Native American tribes turned into the realization that there was an entire  movement about them, spanning generations, all the way across the world. Strangely, it all ties back to a 60’s Americana-based trend. . .

Cowboys and Indians – you’ve definitely heard of the concept. It’s a cliche in American pop culture, most pronounced during the heyday of the Western movie. It  sparked a generation of American children’s imaginations, playing as gun-shooting, horseback-riding cowboys fighting Native Americans. However, it wasn’t just American kids during this era that were captivated by this myth. Over 5,000 miles across the world and deep behind the Iron Curtain, Poland —  a Slavic Eastern European country — would play Cowboys and Indians too, except it wouldn’t be the “righteous” cowboys in the lead role, fending off Natives. Rather, it was the Natives defending their land from the greedy, destructive cowboys. 

Why exactly did this role reversal occur, and how did playing Cowboys and Indians contribute to an informal movement of support for Native Americans in a distant Slavic land?