Dances With Wolves

Samantha Hoppe – Reel Injun and Dances with Wolves Journal The biggest downfall to the Western genre is its discrimination against Native Americans. In Reel Injun (2009) directed by Neil Diamond, Native Americans confess their thoughts when watching Western films when they were younger. They always thought of the Indians as the enemy, never realizing that they were Indians. These movies not only belittle the Native American culture, they mock it. In fact, most Western movies portray Indians in a completely inaccurate and demoralizing way. Dances with Wolves, on the other hand, portrays Native Americans in the right way. To begin, Dances with Wolves depicted two Indian tribes which were fairly different from each other. There were the Pawnee, warriors with no respect for life, and the Sioux, a noble tribe which killed only out of necessity. Dances with Wolves finally demonstrated that Indian tribes had distinct characteristics. Whereas, in older films, all Indians were portrayed as Plains Indians according to Reel Injun. This method of filming may have lowered the budget, but it ripped certain tribes of their culture. Due to this method, viewers imagine Indians in one specific

In fact, Jesse Went, an Ojibway film critic, stated that Western films are “robbing nations of an identity” by solely portraying the dress of one tribe. In Dances with Wolves, the Pawnee and the Sioux wore distinctly different garb. The Pawnee wore loincloths and little else. They wore feathers in their hair but never headdresses. On the other hand, the Sioux were mostly fully clothed with little skin showing. Their garb was made of animal hides, and they also wore some feathers. In addition, in Dances with Wolves, the audience was aware of the tribe names. In traditional Westerns, the Indians are simply known as the savages or the enemy. The audience never knows their