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During early childhood, Indians and non-Indians learn a definition of “Indianness” (Merskin, 1998, p. 159). Around 18 months of age, human beings begin to recognize themselves as distinct and separate from their mothers and others (Lacan, 1977). By age 6, most attributes of personality formation are already established (Biber, 1984). The content of the information that consciously and unconsciously reaches children is critical for the formation of a healthy, grounded sense of self and respect for others. Today, in the absence of personal interaction with an indigenous person, non-Indian perceptions inevitably come from other sources. These mental images, the “pictures in our heads” as Lippmann (1922/1961, p. 33) calls them, come from parents, teachers, textbooks, movies, television programs, cartoons, songs, commercials, art, and product logos. American Indian images, music, and names have, since the beginning of the 20th century, been incorporated into many American advertising campaigns and marketing efforts, demarcating and consuming Indian as exotic “Other” in the popular imagination (Merskin, 1998). Whereas a century ago sheet music covers and patent medicine bottles featured “coppery, feather-topped visage of the Indian” (Larson, 1937, p. 338), today's Land O’ Lake's butter boxes display a doe-eyed, buckskin-clad Indian “princess.” The fact that there never were Indian “princesses” (a European concept), and most Indians do not have the kind of European features and social “availability” that trade characters do, goes largely unquestioned. These stereotypes are pervasive, but not necessarily consistent, varying over time and place from the “artificially idealistic” (noble savage) to images of “mystical environmentalists or uneducated, alcoholic bingo-players confined to reservations” (Mihesuah, 1996, p. 9). Today, a trip down the grocery store aisle still reveals ice cream bars, beef jerky, corn meal, baking powder, malt liquor, butter, honey, sugar, sour cream, chewing tobacco packages, and a plethora of other products emblazoned with images of American Indians. To discern how labels on products and brand names reinforce long-held stereotypical beliefs, we must consider embedded ideological beliefs that perpetuate and reinforce this process.

Rarely acknowledged, particularly in business and communications, is that animals have interests in decisions that affect them. This chapter raises questions about how stakeholding is defined and explains why the circle of ethical consideration has been limited to human beings but should be expanded when so much of what we do impacts animals – animals who often labor for our benefit, not theirs, whose bodies are used as food, whose skins are used for fashion and furniture, and who are experimented upon, all without their consent, nor representation of their interests beyond essential physical needs. Animals as laborers/workers for our interests is an important expansion to business and public relations (PR) ethics. While labor is deeply raced and gendered, it also is species dependent. Many practices allowed with animal workers would never be permitted or certainly regarded with concern, if among human beings. Freeman's (1984) two-tiered sense of stakeholders is applied and the argument made that animals should be included in the array of stakeholders, the argument being they are not only silent but also silenced as have been marginalized human groups. This chapter offers a textual analysis of the cover of the December 09, 2013 issue of Time magazine and a response article which serve as a case study for considering animals as stakeholders integral to PR–corporate social responsibility–diversity, equity, and inclusion intersection. I examine deer in the urban landscape and ask whether their perspectives are included in decisions about population, habitat, and health. If communications are to be ethical, inclusive, and socially responsible, animals must be affirmed as part of DEI commitments. Action steps/recommendations for doing so are included.

The fundamental issue of this thematic section, as phrased in abstract terms by hooks (1992, p. 23), is that the consumption of racial difference, or as she puts it, “eating the other,” and its profound effects: “When race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure, the culture of specific groups as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races…affirm their power-over.” Though this nicely encapsulates the subject at hand and associated consequences, it does little to contextualize or account for changes over time – both of which are crucial if are engage commodity racism now.