The affinity with the North American Indian in Czech literary discourse on the democratic roots of Czech national culture.

This paper surveys the Czech cultural appropriation of the North American Indian in a historical perspective, through the three radical changes of the political paradigm: the first Czechoslovak democratic republic (1918-1938), the communist era (1948-1989), and the post-Velvet Revolution present. Although the American Indian was appropriated as a symbolic structure with surprisingly different functions in various social and political contexts, in most cases it figured in the democratic discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]