Upside-down American Flag Symbol Analysis

The upside-down American flag symbolizes white society and the U.S. government’s upheaval of Native Americans’ lives, as well as Native American activist’s desire to upend “White American” in turn. Mary describes the upside-down American flag as “an international signal of distress. It was also the American Indian’s sign of distress.” Nineteenth-century Ghost Dancers “wrapped [themselves] in upside-down American flags, symbolic of the wasičuns’ world of fences, telegraph poles, and factories which would also be turned upside down, as well as a sign of despair.” In other words, as white settlers colonized indigenous people’s land, the world as Native Americans knew it was corrupted, or turned upside down. As settlers and the U.S. government then began forcing Native Americans to assimilate to white, Christian culture, Native Americans’ homes became hostile, unfamiliar places. The Ghost Dancers hoped that the “wasičuns’ world […] would also be turned upside down,” which suggests that they inverted the American flag during their ceremony to symbolize their goal of undoing “the white man’s system.”

Mary mentions several other instances of when Native Americans—usually AIM activists—wore upside-down American flags. During the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building, “many [activists] wrapped themselves in upside-down American flags—like the Ghost Dancers of old.” This act reflects the fact that indigenous people at this time (the 1970s) were still in a state of distress because of the U.S. government’s mistreatment of them, but also that the activists hoped their resistance would undo white society, or turn it upside down. The upside-down flag therefore reflects Native American activists’ belief that the way to end indigenous people’s oppression was to undo the systems of “White America” that caused and perpetuated their suffering.