The Stereotyping of Native Americans
Until fairly recently the popular culture of American literature and film did not attempt to study the true representations of Indians in North America. Instead they chose to concentrate on the romanticized/savage version of Native people: which is an idealistic view of a Native with long, beautiful flowing hair riding on a horse obsessed with chanting and praying to the savageness of a rowdy, wild Native causing unnecessary mayhem to the white people. This portrayal of Native people in mass media had led to the stereotyping of Natives, which in turn had ricocheted into real life. Not only do non-natives succumb to these ideals, but Natives do as well.
For the last century these representations of the romanticized/savage Indian has been limited to a non-natives perspective such as the novel Pigs In Heaven, written by Barbara Kingsolver and Dances with Wolves, directed by Kevin Costner. These representations, although done with sincerity, lack the authenticity of being projected by a Native person. As Sherman Alexie, author, director, and producer, states: "Only Indians can write about Indians"(Egan 18). The truth in this quote is that a writer expresses their views with compassion from the heart and talent in their blood. That heart and blood of a Native person is authentic. One cannot duplicate the heartache and negativity that a Native person has endured such as alcoholism and poverty. A Native writer such as Alexie understands this concept because he has lived on the Reservation and has dealt with such issues and the negative ideals that a Native sometimes represents. In response to Alexie's work, Shadowcatcher Entertainment producer, Scott Rosenfelt, states: "What f...
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.... The contribution of these Native writers shatters the barrier of placing Native people in a particular mold, a mold that represents the "cookie-cutter" Native. They are responding positively to the modernistic Native and negatively to the "cookie-cutter" version that Hollywood portrays.
WORKS CITED
Alexie, Sherman. Reservation Blues. New York, NY. Atlantic Monthly Press.
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Egan, Timothy. "An Indian Without Reservations: An Interview with Sherman Alexie." New York Times Magazine. 1998.
Eyre, Chris. Smoke Signals. Shadowcatcher Entertainment. Enit Inc. 1998.
Morris, Irvin. From The Glittering World. Norman, Oklahoma. University of Oklahoma Press. 1997.257.
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Welch, James. The Indian Lawyer. New York. Penguin Books. 1990. 349.
Sherman Alexie grew up in Wellpinit, Washington as a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene tribal member (Sherman Alexie). He began his personal battle with substance abuse in 1985 during his freshman year at Jesuit Gonzaga University. The success of his first published work in 1990 incentivized Alexie to overcome his alcohol abuse. “In his short-story and poetry collections, Alexie illuminates the despair, poverty, and alcoholism that often shape the lives of Native Americans living on reservations” (Sherman Alexie). When developing his characters, Alexie often gives them characteristics of substance abuse, poverty and criminal behaviors in an effort to evoke sadness with his readers. Alexie utilizes other art forms, such as film, music, cartoons, and the print media, to bombard mainstream distortion of Indian culture and to redefine Indianness. “Both the term Indian and the stereotypical image are created through histories of misrepresentation—one is a simulated word without a tribal real and the other an i...
Perpetuation of Native American Stereotypes in Children's Literature Caution should be used when selecting books including Native Americans, due to the lasting images that books and pictures provide to children. This paper will examine the portrayal of Native Americans in children's literature. I will discuss specific stereotypes that are present and should be avoided, as well as positive examples. I will also highlight evaluative criteria that will be useful in selecting appropriate materials for children and provide examples of good and bad books. Children will read many books as they grow up.
“Film is more than the instrument of a representation; it is also the object of representation. It is not a reflection or a refraction of the ‘real’; instead, it is like a photograph of the mirrored reflection of a painted image.” (Kilpatrick) Although films have found a place in society for about a century, the labels they possess, such as stereotypes which Natives American are recognized for, have their roots from many centuries ago (Kilpatrick). The Searchers, a movie directed by John Ford and starred by John Wayne, tells the story of a veteran of the American Civil War and how after his return home he would go after the maligned Indians who killed his family and kidnapped his younger niece. After struggling for five years to recover his niece back, who is now a young woman, she is rescued by his own hands. Likewise, Dances with Wolves is a Western film directed and starred by Kevin Costner. It is also situated during the American Civil War and tells the story of a soldier named John Dunbar that after a suicide attempt; he involuntarily leads Union troops to a triumph. Then, by his request he is sent to a remote outpost in the Indian frontier “before it’s gone”. There, the contact with the natives is eminent and thus it shows how through those contacts this soldier is transformed into another Indian that belongs with the Sioux to tribe and who is now called Dances With Wolves. While both John Ford and Kevin Costner emphasize a desire to apologize to the indigenous people, they use similar themes such as stereotypes, miscegenation, and the way characters are depicted; conversely, these two movies are different by the way the themes are developed within each film.
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007. Print.
One of the most common stereotypes are that all Native Americans are alcoholics, more so than other ethnicities. A study was conducted by Karen Chartier, a Faculty Associate the University of Texas looking in to this truth of this stereotype. She discovered that it was white people, specifically white men who were more likely to consume alcohol on a daily basis (Chartier & Caetano, n.d.). Often Natives are discriminated for their culture and being “red skinned.” This can be seen by sports teams, from high school to the pros. Like the Southwest Indians, or the Washington Redskins. Some teams have changed their names and logos from these offensive examples, but some like Washington’s NFL team have yet to replace the name. There’s many other examples of stereotypes that they face. Like that they run on “Indian time” therefore they are always late for planned events, hence that they are all lazy. Other ones like they are all uneducated and never go to college, or when they do go to college they receive “special” aid from the government (Ridgway, 2013). However, that aid that they receive is available to other historically disadvantaged groups as well, and is part of what the government owes them for taking their land which is states in the contracts that were signed (Ridgway,
... a variety of readers, Drew Hayden Taylor uses a variety of tones. His views on First Nations stereotypes are expressed through his essays “What’s an Indian worth These Days” and “Why did the Indian block the Road”, and through his use of humorous, which shows how ridiculous stereotypes are, informative, which gives disproves stereotypes through evidence, and sarcastic tone, which stretches a reader’s understanding about a topic, he is able to challenge and contradict stereotypes about First Nations people.
The mind of an infant and toddler is a sponge to language. Whether or not the child is able to speak, their brain is rehearsing and affirming the linguistic structures they hear, and the period of baby talk—called “babbling”—is a crucial time of experimentation with sound. During this time, the child will babble while in social situations in order to see which phonological structures receive positive responses from their parents—i.e. which combinations of sounds elicit responses. If a child cannot hear the sounds that their language offers, the child does not have the opportunity to babble. A child with significant hearing loss will still make sounds in infancy, but will quickly cease due to the lack of response and the fact that they cannot hear the sounds they are making and so cannot affirm them for themselves.
Neil Diamond reveals the truth behind the Native stereotypes and the effects it left on the Natives. He begins by showing how Hollywood generalizes the Natives from the clothing they wore, like feathers
...uld be used in therapy. The obvious limitation to this lies in the ease of transmission of information to other professionals. I feel that limitation is not a serious problem, however, as the usefulness of information given by a diagnosis is questionable. I do, however, concede an serious advantage to the categorical diagnosis in training and research on treatment. It would be impossible to train students in the entire range of presentations that can occur, and having a limited range of diagnoses provides a good foundation for conceptual groupings. Being able to use these groupings for research also fosters better training. This is the one area in which I feel that categorical diagnosis is a requirement. In conclusion, I would find the ideal system to be training using a categorical system, but within the context of actual application a more descriptive system.
While researching the early relations between the American Indians, and the first European settlers, Jane Tompkins found that the way history was recorded seemed to mislead her. In her essay " ' Indians': Textualism, Morality, and the problem of History," Tompkins found that the historians put prejudice facts, and looked down upon Native Americans. Clearly it is seen that even through time, historians are still this way. This dilemma must be illuminated to find out who and why this has happened.
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