Native American Stereotypes In The Lone Ranger

For over 80 years, Americans have been entertained by Hollywood productions on the big screen. Movies and films have always been a favorite pass time of the country. As a result of the fact that so many Americans turn to the big screen for fun, there is a lot of influence potential carried with the films or the movies that Hollywood produced. With increased ability to disseminate information comes the responsibility of presenting images that are accurate and factual. The influence and perception that Hollywood created was not always positive. There were multiple groups that were marginalized in film through stereotypes. Native Americans were one of the groups that were negatively

I’m not the Indian you had in mind; a video that was written and directed by Thomas King challenges the stereotypical image that America has towards Native Americans. King is also the author of a short novel “A seat in the Garden”. This short story also challenges the established perspective that American society has towards the Native Americans. There are various stereotypes and perspectives that a majority of the public has toward a particular group. For example some of the common stereo types that are seen throughout the media are that all Asians are good at math, women are primarily sex objects, All Africans like fried chicken, and all Mexicans are gangsters. These stereo types are not completely true for an entire group, yet they

Thomas King’s chapter “Forget Columbus” surrounds the idea that the preconceived notions that Americans have about their own history, and the Native Americans who have resided here for centuries, are wrong. Columbus never discovered America. The

Stagecoach – a movie that is widely accepted as the most damaging movie for the Native identity – helped to illustrate this image to viewers at the time. As a result, many Americans believed Natives were all uncivilized and violent, leading to nationwide stereotyping and prejudice. The Indian was the enemy of America as a result. Stagecoach also shows Natives being hunted like animals, which sends the image of them being non-human and thus they should be treated as such. Stagecoach and movies like it mispresented Natives for decades and caused a loss-of-identity amongst the Native community because Natives were dressed the same throughout various films. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s where Natives were properly represented on

Columbus has always been portrayed as an enlightened, peaceful explorer who “discovered” a new world, and became friends with the native people. Howard Zinn’s view on Columbus’s encounter with the natives is an entirely different perspective. Zinn describes Columbus as a man who is willing to torture and kill others to be able to accomplish what he wants; in this case he wanted to obtain gold and other resources to take back with him to Spain.

Throughout recorded human history, authors, leaders, and researchers, have documented the past from many different perspectives, and viewpoints. Not every historian has the same stance on a certain issue, therefore, differences in point of view occur in almost every writing. In the textbook The American Pageant, A People’s History of the United States by Larry Schweikart, and Michael Allen, and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, the reader can see many different perspectives throughout each reading. The infamous explorer known as Christopher Columbus, has been documented in many different ways. Depending on the reading, Columbus has be called everything from a “[...]symbol of the new age of hope”, to an inhuman tyrant who captured Indians and turned them into slaves.

Racism towards Native American tribes and individuals have been found throughout mainstream media. From nationally broadcasted sports games to popular Hollywood movies, Native Americans people have been stereotyped and/or culturally appropriated. Many examples of these stereotypes are blatant and have been portrayed for in the media for decades.

In the article Hello Columbus: America was No Paradise in 1492, by Robert Royal, Royal argued that Native Americans, along with Columbus, are portrayed wrongly in society today, from schools to media.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed west and found himself on the shores of a new world. His mission was to secure new land for Spain. Other European countries heard of his findings, they too crossed the ocean in hopes of securing new opportunities in this newly discovered land such as fur trading and gold mining. Little did they know that a community of indigenous people had already settled in this land thousands of years before. The Europeans decided to negotiate with the natives in order to set up their own communities in the land but the Native Americans held beliefs about society and religion that were far different from their European peers. Europeans thought the Indians to be “Noble Savages, gentle and friendly, but uncivilized, brutal, and barbaric” (citation). They could not see past their own

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.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus “discovered” what is known today as North America. Mistakenly, Columbus thought that he had landed in the Indies, and therefore the native peoples were called “Indians.” The New World soon became flooded with Europeans from a number of countries, and the Indians allowed them to settle on their land. Treaties and agreements were made between the settlers and the neighboring tribes in which European goods were exchanged for Indian land and assistance. The survival of these settlements could not have survived without the active support and protection of the Native Americans. However

People may try to argue that nobody would know about the Native Americans if Columbus did not “discover” them. If Columbus did not discover the Native Americans, more people would probably know about them because around 8 million of them would not have died. Though Christopher Columbus praised the nature he “worked so hard to discover”, he failed to mention the people there for obvious reasons. In his second letter to the king and queen of Spain, our preconceptions about what kind of person he was is confirmed. He acted entitled and somewhat rude towards the royals. If that was how he treated his superiors that funded his trip, you can only imagine how he spoke to the natives.

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.

The narrator is living in Seattle with his white girlfriend. They fight constantly. After a bad fight he imagines that they are an Indian chief and a missionaries wife on an Indian reservation. Their romance starts a war between the whites and the Indians. The next day he breaks up with her and moves back to the reservation.

“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