The Native Oppression and lies..

So, after the previous weeks readings, I still feel like I would like to cover some more issues with Native Americans and brush up on natives on film. I always had a deep respect and appreciation to the Natives and I feel very connected with them in some form. I have a small amount of native blood myself, but I do pride myself on that. I always wondered why it is natives have been so oppressed and not very noticed in our society. I feel we still do not give them the freedoms and the respect they truly deserve. What would have happened if it was the Natives that sailed to the Americas while being greeted by the whites? Would they be at the same position they are today? I I know this is a bit far fetch of a question, but I do think this at times if the table was turned in many different situations in life. How is it for many years U.S. filmmakers looked at the Natives as the “other” and show them as savages. What have they done wrong other than maybe in the beginning try to protect their land?

U.S. policies toward natives as stated in the text during the nineteenth century were to relocate them onto reservations to contain them. I picture cowboys herding cattle. The Native Americans did not seem to be looked at any higher of respect as that cattle either. In fact, the cattle probably got treated better. The natives were stripped from their homes and those who tried to fight back for their property caused the Government to go to war against them even though in my opinion, the U.S. was at wrong here and the natives did nothing that anyone else would not do in this situation. The text also mentions some less obvious tactics against the natives was delivering small-pox infected blankets as a charity front and they would hunt buffalo to near extinction which was means of clothing and food.

Many movies you seen and film even portrayed Natives as animalistic savages. Even today, in the film Apocalypto, they show them being beyond savages. They show two sides however. In the book it mentions that the Mayan culture found itself in war with itself. The movie shows a very peaceful tribes being wiped out by the more violent ones to be used as human sacrifices. I feel this film regardless of showing the better side as well, puts in the heads of our young who may not know the difference and maybe some of the less educated that this is a norm for natives. When a movie shows the Natives to be on a more positive side, much of the time it is because they are to help the white man as we mentioned in class. Tonto being an example was the “dumb,” but loyal Native sidekick to the Lone Ranger. In the text, it even says that Tonto in Spanish means “crazy.” Another way to take the positive image and still give the native a bad name.

More often than not, the Indian was shown in a negative light on film as the bloodthirsty savage that has no education and will come rape and kill. For example, the text mentioned that whenever Hollywood Westerns distinguished a specific Indian nation, they would name and depict the tribes that fought back against the white encroachment. This is one way the Sioux and Apache tribes were seen as violent heathens. The Hollywood Indian is what we see as an image with the native having a headband. This has become a major trademark for natives even though the headband is not Native American at all in the real world. The headband was branded as native because in the Hollywood films, actors needed to keep their wigs on. Every Native American carried a bow and arrow, wore feathered headdresses and smoked peace pipes in their tee-pee. How many Native Americans do you see walking around the street or in a store with a headdress and a bow and arrow in hand? I do not think you will ever know, and much of the time you would not even pick them out from a crowd today .