Playing Indian is a 1998 nonfiction book by Philip J. Deloria, which explores the history of the conflicted relationship white America has with Native American peoples.

[1] The focus is on how and why white Americans mimic stereotypical ideas of Indian traditions, images, spiritual ceremonies, and clothing, citing examples such as the Indian princess, Boston Tea Party, the Improved Order of Red Men, Tammany Hall, Scouting societies like the Order of the Arrow, and in more recent decades, hippies and New Agers.

[2] Referring to D. H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature, Deloria argues that white Americans have used an idealized image of the anachronistic Indian of historical times, and the practice of "playing Indian" to create their own national identity; both identifying with Indians as liberated, patriotic New World inhabitants in touch with nature, while simultaneously denigrating real, contemporary Native American people as ignorant, savage others, incapable or unworthy of preserving their own cultures.

[5] A recurring trope in this pattern is "the Indian 'Death Speech'", an example he cites is from James Fenimore Cooper's The Redskins, "You hear my voice for the last time.

"[5] In their dying moments, these Indian figures offered up their lands, their blessings, their traditions, and their republican history to those who were, in real life, violent conquering interlopers.