Native American Stereotypes

The long history between Native American and Europeans are a strained and bloody one. For the time of Columbus’s subsequent visits to the new world, native culture has

Native Americans as a whole have been typecast as drunks ever since the coming of the white man’s “fire water.” TS Naimi, MD et al. reports that alcohol is responsible for 11.7% of all American Indian and Alaska Native deaths, compared to 3.3% for the U.S. general population (939). This disturbing discrepancy reinforces the age old notion of the “drunk Indian.” Generalizations aside, is there some truth to this stereotype? Are Indians more likely than other races to be drunks? Of all the races, “Native Americans have the highest prevalence (12.1%) of heavy drinking…A larger percentage of Native Americans (29.6%) also are binge drinkers” (Chartier and Caetano 153). Although some research has been done on genetic causes, little is

Native American people have a unique struggle in society. This stems from cultural epidemics like drug addiction, alcoholism, obesity, and rampant suicide, but also systemic racism and a sort of cultural lag. This is not meant to be a critique of culture, simply an observation of the condition of the families I have helped serve over the course of this internship. To be “Native” has become a slew of stereotypical representations. Stereotypes do not represent reality, but they do affect how individuals view themselves, and limit their ability to become anything but what they are expected to be. This is called the self-fulfilling prophecy. If Native American children grow up in a closed network, such as a reservation or a boundary, they are presented

The fascination with Native Americans has been a constant with outsiders since explorers first “discovered” the New World. The biggest surge in this fascination came in the mid-19th century when the Indian Wars were starting to come to an end and the belief that Native Americans were disappearing, walking into the sunset never to be seen again. This led to an increase in the collecting of anything Native American, from artifacts to stories to portraits. The inevitable outcome of this was that Native Americans, who were never considered very highly to begin with, where now moved into a category of scientific interest to be study. This scientific interest in Native Americans is what many museums and other institutions based their collections and exhibits on and is one of the issues that many Native Americans have with how both their people and their culture were, and to some extent still are, represented in these places.

Amitabh Bachchan, he is considered as the most prejudiced actor of famous personality of the Indian industry. He is very famous among them.

The different resources of the Native people had such as the use of wooden tools instead of iron and the little amount of clothing they wore gave the explores the image of them being simple..(Doc. 2B) But in fact the Native Americans had advanced cities such as Mexico City. Mexico City is an ancient city built a top of a lake.(Doc. 1A) Under the impression that the Native Americans were simple the Europeans used this to feel ethical in enslaving

These stereotypical binaries of the childlike and savage Indian are directly linked to the narratives of white settler society and colonization. Essentially, by classifying all First Nation cultures under a monolith of a few stereotypes the white setter society claimed dominance over the First Nation peoples as they created the lens through which the First Nation’s history and identity would be read. The influence of the press and government policies lead to the acceptance of these stereotypes as defining truths about First Nations people which aided the settler societies in solving the Indian problem by destroying what it meant to be Indian. In this way, the stereotypes not only developed the idea of assimilation to save the Indian, but they

Associated with wearing skins, living in teepees, and riding horses Native Americans are viewed as ‘country’ and lack of knowledge. Shown as dumb and have a lack of formal education, most of them live in poverty invested areas. Because of this, they feel that “one representation is better than no representation.” When a group feels underrepresented their psychological relevance and has a toil on the overall ethnic group and can make a difference in lives. Inaccurate and negative representations of Native Americans can be detrimental to the overall perception to the race in general.

Throughout the films I have watched this semester, American Indians have been constructed and represented in many different ways. Throughout this semester, different films in different eras have led to stereotyping American Indians and poorly portraying the construction of Native life. At the beginning of this semester, films portrayed Indians as savages who couldn't kill a cowboy, but at the end of the semester, that stereotype changed into American Indians represented as helpless people who cannot be rescued from the alcoholism and distress found on reservations. The ways the Native Americans are portrayed in these films create an image that America views Indians in today's society. In the first films viewed in class, they created the life

The Indigenous Peoples were not all Plains Peoples. Many of the indigenous people were from the southwest United States, with many splinter groups and many more different cultures (Text 5). With hollywood's portrayal of the Plains people they lost all the culture of the many groups of people who were very different. With the loss of the culture and only one culture of the Indigenous peoples represented the reality of the representation was sorely inaccurate. The Iroquois were a group of people in the Central New York region who had a largely different culture from the Plains People. Their society was a matriarchal society, in which the women would own the land and head the family (Text 1). The Plains People were not portrayed in such a fashion making an even bigger gap in the representation of each culture.

Many races are unjustly victimized, but Native American cultures are more misunderstood and degraded than any other race. College and high school mascots sometimes depict images of Native Americans and have names loosely based on Native American descent, but these are often not based on actual Native American history, so instead of honoring Native Americans, they are being ridiculed. According to the article Warriors Survive Attack, by Cathy Murillo (2009) some “members of the Carpentaria community defended Native American mascot icons as honoring Chumash tradition and the spirit of American Indian Warriors in U.S. history and others claimed that the images were racist stereotypes” (Murillo, 2009). If people do not attempt to understand

     In Conclusion the author, Leslie Silko, displays the poverty and hopelessness that the Native Americans faced because of the white man. The Author elaborates this feeling of hopelessness in the Indians myth explaining the origin of the white man. As a result

Women of other categories like Asians, Latinas and Native Americans face similar stereotypes to Black women. The two Black women stereotypes that Asians, Latinas and Native Americans can be compared to are the Mammy and Jezebel stereotypes. These stereotypes are either a threat to masculinity or an ideal way to be feminine in the male thought.

The Europeans quickly agreed on a very simple (and self serving) set of assumptions about the native peoples they encountered in the New World: there were "good Indians" and "bad Indians." The good were simple, free, and innocent; the bad were degraded, brutal, and untrustworthy. All individuals, all tribes, at all times could be understoodand all were inferior in the light of Western, Christian civilization. Children are harmed when they are bombarded with stereotypical images because they internatlize these negative perceptions and will hold the images throughout their lives. When a child sees or meets a Native American, their first impressions are the ones they were shown from the books and pictures they saw.

Native American representations in film is particularly important in influencing public opinion regarding depictions and beliefs of what Native people are like. Often associated with popular film in the United States is an Anglo constructed representation of a dated, drunken, and traditionally dressed Native person that seems to perpetuate these stereotypes. Because some shows are so popular in the United States, the effects can be powerful. The influence of these pictures comes from the large viewing audience, the cultural majority of the audience, and a failure to accept modernity of Natives. Still in the twenty-first century, there are several representations like this that imitate stereotypes, impact the majority culture, and negatively impact Native American communities. In this essay, I will analyze a case of this stereotyping of Natives in a modern comedy television show called Family Guy.