Changing Native American Stereotypes in the Film, Dances with Wolves

Dances with Wolves’ sense of identity is entirely with the Lakota Sioux when he is captured by the U.S. Army, his original people, and is beaten, yet Dances with Wolves refuses to cooperate with them, “I am Dances with Wolves, and I have nothing to say to you. You are not worth talking to.” Dances with Wolves sense of identity is closely related to his mindset.

In the movie Smoke Signals the writer Sherman Alexie frequently shows stereotypes of the Native American people and shows the audience why the stereotypes are not true or meaningful. Focusing on the character Thomas, the film portrays him like he would be the stereotypical Indian sitting around the campfire telling stories. I think the film did a good job trying to show that, as he is often telling stories and he is even guided by his dreams making him seem like a spiritual person.

“Dear John Wayne” by Louise Erdrich is about the stereotype of the Native American, being a savage race on film and how the Native Americans watching the film react to those stereotypes.

Stereotypes have been around since the start of humankind. They have crossed all people and all time frames, but appear to target and negatively impact the minority. In the history of America, Native Americans have been stereotyped into a few images. These images to the majority of the public, give a glimpse of what a Native American is. The reality is; however, that those images do not represent all tribes and all aspects of the Native American culture. Instead, society has mashed together what they believe Native Americans should be and who they are. This problem of stereotyping has not gone away, and will not go away until people choose to be educated on the matter. The fact is that there are many individuals who believe these stereotypes and do not know any differently. There has been many common stereotypes over the years. Hollywood has a played a major role in influencing these thoughts about Natives. There are stereotypes that have withstood time and are still found in today’s world. Lastly, Natives are still dealing with effects of being seen as something they are not. Throughout history, Native Americans have been negatively impacted by stereotyping and prejudice, and are still impacted by this today.

Another issue is how Native Americans internalize the stereotypes that are forced upon them. In a study conducted by Fryberg, Markus, Oyserman, and Stone (2008), they found three common stereotypes of Native Americans in mass media: Spiritual people who are in tune with nature, warriors, or people with stereotypically bad outcomes, such as alcoholism. It is important to note that not all of these stereotypes are negative, and in fact a few of them are positive. What Fryberg et al. (2008) found, however, was that regardless if the stereotype was seen as positive or negative, all three of those variations caused harm in the form of “students’ feelings of personal and community worth, and achievement-related possible selves” (p. 216). It did

According to the film critic, Phillip French, “The Western has always been about America rewriting and reinterpreting her own past,” if this is indeed the case, then the two most popular Westerns of the early 1990s reveal that many Americans had rejected the traditional interpretation of the Old West. The critically and commercially successful, Dances with Wolves and Unforgiven, repudiated the patriotic frontier myth that had characterised the Western when it was the preeminent genre in American cinema. Informed by new Western historiography, itself an expression of political concerns that had been moving into the American mainstream since the 1960s, the movies display a complex and nuanced understanding of the frontier experience. Dances with Wolves rejected the traditional narrative of the inherent superiority of the Anglo-American hero conquering both Native Americans and the wilderness, and also focused on the environmental destruction that accompanied the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Unforgiven would similarly reject the frontier myth, replacing the democratic, civilised frontier town, with a brutal regime in which white men’s property rights prevail over any sense of justice. The film is noted for its self-reflexive nature, with a writer documenting and embellishing the tales of the Old West before the viewer’s eyes. This self-reflexion indicates that Americans were re-evaluating the myths of the frontier, and seeing them for what they were, creations by the

Many European settlers have been using the term savages to refer to many indigenous people like the Yuchi, Mariames, Salinan, Cherokees, and the Puebloan. The indigenous people have always been underestimated by the Europeans settlers when being called savages due to their different mindsets and the ways of living that they had. All these tribes were called savage unjust and untrue because in the Journal of Christopher Columbus, Christopher describes them as “very well made” they look like they have very well built bodies. (qtd. in American Yawp, The Journal Of Christopher Columbus, 37-68) The Indians were really smart people but really different in many ways to the European Americans. The indigenous people are thought of as noble savages according to the article “Thanksgiving and the Myth Of Native American “Savages”” by John Horgan. Indigenous people should not be considered savages because they have were able to survive for a long time.

The constructive portrayals of Native Americans exist in the same way as the negatives and can be equally as damaging. Positive tropes tend to set a higher standard for a race and can lead to vacuous

Hollywood has helped create and perpetuate many different stereotypical images of the different races in the world. Those stereotypes still continue to affect the way we think about each other today and many of those stereotypes have been proven to be historically inaccurate. The movie Dances With Wolves, directed by actor Kevin Costner, does an excellent job in attempting to promote a greater acceptance, understanding, and sympathy towards Native American culture, instead of supporting the typical stereotype of Native Americans being nothing but brutal, blood thirsty savages.

Both of these examples are de-humanizing to Native Americans because the opposite is true. Native Americans have always had very tight knight family groups, they are accepting of everyone in their tribe including the young and old, members native to other tribes, and even homosexuals. The belief that they are barbaric is just an opinion; this isn't any different than the belief that Christians were wrong when Christianity was first established, yet the Christians of this time were not accepting of another religion (despite the fact that one reason for coming to North America was religious freedom).

The portrayal of Indigenous people in the film Dance with Wolves written by Michael B., produced by Jim Wilson and Kevin Costner illustrate a new perspective of the life of the Indian. The main character, Lieutenant Dunbar, encounters an indigenous man known as Kicking Bird that later on, the movie will create a relationship with Dunbar. Through this interaction, Dunbar will be accepted into the tribe and in his journey with the Sioux people, he finds a new way of life. This move is based on the American Frontier and the capture of the last Free roaming tribe f the Sioux people. Filmed mainly in South Dakota and Wyoming. The attempt to recreate the image of the Indian shows the similarity with every Hollywood depiction of Indigenous tribe,

Native Americans make up less than .9% of the United States population. With this trivial number, it is difficult to keep its culture and traditions alive as generations progress. In the short story “War Dances,” author Sherman Alexie morns the loss of Native American identity through a deprecating tone which illustrate a divide between generations.

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.

Among many things, Native Americans fought against Europeans and the new American government, are to preserve their cultural and traditional religious beliefs. Most of the challenges facing Indians today are the legacies of those conflicts. Alexie illustrated the consequences of denigration of Native Americans in Flight. Zits again back in time to 1876, the battle of little bighorn in another body of a young Indian boy. He couldn’t believe he was standing right next to the seventh Calvary with George Armstrong Custer. He called Custer “Crazy egomaniac who think his going to be the president of the United States. Custer is one of the top two or three dump asses in American history” (Alexie 69). Lieutenant Custer took his army ignoring his superior

“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