Desmond Michael Hassing

An enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and a San Diego native, Desmond Hassing is an artist, scholar, and archivist who focuses on educating Western subjects on the intentionally disremembered subject of the Indigenous Peoples of North America. Founder of the Indigenous Peoples Reading Room, a planned open access scholarship archive of “Indian” iconography from the early 20th century featuring more than one thousand examples of Golden and Silver Age comic books (1938-1975), Hassing has also contributed to public scholarship by compiling an annotated bibliography of Native American, First Nations, and Pacific Islander representations in DC/National comic books of the same period. Entitled The National Indian Project, the bibliography was formed from a survey of roughly 35,000 DC/National comic books from 1938-1975 and is a public access document located at Comicbookindians.com.

Hassing’s research interests focus on how the iconography of the Hollywood Indiantrope in comic books, advertising, and minor league baseball mascots during the 20th Century served to aid the construction of Western American Identity and how the companies and institution that have deployed this iconography throughout their history adapt as the narrative they create is challenged by those seeking to generate a new sense of National Identity in the 21st Century.

Hassing is also a film director and conceptual performance artist. Hassing’s most recent film, #stillhere, has been selected for the First Nations Film and Video Festival, California’s American Indian and Indigenous Film Festival, the One Heart Native Arts and Film Festival, the Wairoa Maori Film Festival, and was a finalist at the 2016 Equality International Film Festival.