Dancing With Wolves

It is clearly seen that there was gendered division of labor in the film as the men focused much on animal hunting and war fighting whereas the women focused on raising the children, cooking or to do the house chores. Soon after Dunbar told the Sioux about the discovery of migrating herd of buffalos, the Sioux shifted the entire tribe nearer to the location of the buffalos and celebrated for their upcoming hunt by gathering around the campfire and dance along with each other. Also, we can see that the Sioux tribe practices barter system when Dunbar traded his military uniform and hat for the Sioux’s traditional clothing and accessories. As the story progresses, when Kicking Bird saw how Dunbar and the wolf were chasing each other in the field, he then suggested and named Dunbar as ‘Dances With Wolves’, officially acknowledging him as one of the Sioux tribe members. Later on, Dunbar and Stands With A Fist eventually fell in love with each other and when they were getting married after Kicking Bird released her mourning, Dunbar realized how generous the entire Sioux tribe was to him, offering him the most valuable thing they could afford, as it’s one of the traditions that Sioux practices.

The Buffalo were very important to the Native Americans tribes living in the Great Plains because Buffalo was their main food. They have many uses like: Buffalo bones provided marrow to eat, Buffalo bones were carved to make knives, and could boiled to make glue, Buffalo skin could be used to make clothes, moccasins, bedding, saddle covers and water-bags, dried Buffalo dung provided fuel for fires, and even the tail of a Buffalo could be used as a fly swatter. Then tragedy struck. When the first explorers came to the Great Plains, they killed over 35 million buffalo for either sport or food and the drive the Indians of the Great Plains. That step reduced the buffalo population to 1,500 but the year of 1912.

The near-extinction of the American Bison was the result of the following: the loss of habitat due to the expanding livelihoods of ranchers and farmers, government policy aimed to destroy the food source of the native Indians, and most importantly, the senseless slaughter of the species by the market hunters due to the high demand for bison hides

The buffalo were evidently everything to the Native Americans, hereby causing the defeat of buffalo to fall hand in hand with theirs. The plains Indians used bison as not only food, but in religious rituals, for clothing, for hunting, for shelter, and more. The buffalo were an integral part of the native’s lives. In the aftermath of the increasing killings of bison, the lives of countless Native Americans were destroyed. The said 30-60 million buffalo which had roamed freely upon the Great

Restoration of the Bison is something that has been going on for the past two decades. As a matter of fact, several Native American tribes have come together to form the Inter Tribal Bison Cooperative (ITBC) which has been set out to bring bison back onto the American plains in the midwest. Bison have an intimate relationship in the traditions and rituals of Native Americans. The importance of bison within the culture has made bringing back the bison an important issue in the preservation of wildlife. However, some of the arguments made by the ITBC show that the bison's economic value should be the main factor why they should be brought back. Yet others involved in this cause suggest that buffalo restoration

The buffalo would supply the Indians with their necessities for living including resources for thread, clothes, food and shelter. The buffalo was also used for trading things more valuable. An important action that undermined the Plains Indian culture was the large killing of buffalo in a short period of time. Army commanders who worked in the north west often tried to deprive the Indians of their main source of survival by killing the buffalo as a way to drive them of their land. As the population of buffalo dwindled, the Plains Indians had no means of independent support or nourishment and were forced to accept the US government’s policy of living on Indian reservations. The killing of buffalo was supported by the US military in order to undermine the survival of the Indians, and up to 250 buffalo were killed each

The Native Americans developed their cultures, communities and way of life around the buffalo. About 24 to 28 Native American tribes had figured out how to use the buffalo in 52 different ways for food, supplies, and war. The hooves, for example, are boiled to use as glue. The humpback is, that part of the buffalo is really kind of sturdy, and so it's used for making shields, the hides for making a teepee.( The buffalo was indeed the most important resource for them. In Document 5 it show how much the Native American relied on the buffalo for for everything for example they used the buffalo’s tongue for hair brushes and their bones, for silverware, dice and brushes. After the Americans killed most of them they had to move to reservations or they wouldn’t be able to survive. In 1870 the American hunters killed at least 100 million buffalo a year. By the 1880s, the buffalo were dying out and most plains peoples were being forced onto reservations. The Native American people were not happy going to reservations but that's the only way they could survive do to their number one food supply dying out. The Natives lost a lot of the land from the

Despite their efforts, they continued to be marginalized. In frustration, the Plains Cree chiefs had said, “the buffalo were our only dependence before the transfer of the country, and this and other wild animals are disappearing, and we must farm to enable us to live” (Carter 68). It was clear that the Plains Cree tried desperately to make an agricultural economy work. It was essential to their survival and well-being. Unfortunately, government intervention implemented restrictive policies, which created misconceptions of First Nations people being unmotivated to do well.

Because buffalo were becoming extinct, the Native Americans had no real diet and their population began to decline rapidly.3

In the movie Save the last dance the film explores various issues current in the United States as well as all over the world. The movie explores peer pressure especially in a black dominant school population. Themes of Violence, adolescent pride and interracial relationships were greatly represented in the film. Also it touches on early parenthood, pressures of a low income environment, racial status, racial stereotypes and prejudice as well as loyalty to friends. Psychologically the movie represents Memory, Learning, Thinking, Motivation and emotion, Development, Sex and gender as well as Social realm.

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

Everyone has a preconceived opinion of how a certain ethnic group is in terms of the way they live, the morals they hold, the way they deal with people different from them, and how they deal with one another. We come to these conclusions by what we have seen in the media, heard from other people, or actually experienced ourselves. Most people would consider these opinions to be stereotypes. Dances with Wolves is a motion picture that deals with and touches on all sides of personal stereotypes we as American and American Indians have about each other. John Dunbar takes us through and allows us to see how it is to come into a situation he was not familiar with and then eventually the

Dances with Wolves and Avatar are thought to be very different, but they are actually more similar than viewers may realize. First off, these are two must see films! The viewer walks away with much more than just having seen a movie. Both of these movies encourage cultural understanding, motivate, and teach individuality.

The Indians relied on buffalo for survival. In Dances with Wolves, Dunbar quickly learns that hunting buffalo is key for survival. Dunbar’s new friends end up having to move to a different location because there were no buffalo to hunt and Dunbar decides to go with them. The Indians use the buffalo fur for blankets, teepees, and drums (Native American Culture). They also would eat the meat of the buffalo. They used everything so that nothing was wasted. Also in The Searchers there is a scene that shows the white men killing all the buffalo in the valley. They did that because they knew how important they were to the Indians survival. Obviously, they didn’t care about them surviving because they had kidnapped Ethan’s niece.

Additionally,