Prepared for Dr. X
Eng. 101
Final draft # 1
“Historical depictions of Native Americans in Main Stream Hollywood” As a child growing up on the reservation, my brothers and I grew up watching western movies being that my father was an enormous John Wayne fan. Not knowing the racial implications that were being put into effect in those movies. I remember us playing cowboys and Indians and I always wanted to be on the cowboys side because whoever was on the Indians side was always going to lose just as they did in the movies. It wasn’t till recently that I looked at those pictures in a different point view a different lens if you would say. Native Americans still to this day are depicted as negative stereotypes through main stream media. Films such as Windtalkers, Flags of our Fathers, The new World, and Bury my heart at wounded Knee show how Hollywood movies still depicts the stereotypes that Native Americans are still inferior, Savages, people needing a White Savior to progress in the word. The first way Hollywood stereotypes Native Americans is portraying them as inferior to whites. For example in the movie Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee the scene where the senetors and congress men are determining what to do with the indigenous peoples land. Without having any insight of the Native Americans. It isn’t until later in the movie when they get a native man to cosign on the plans they have set out to put the Sioux tribe on reservations that are divided and sold to white Americans. There is also another scene where the senator and the general are talking to the president and the general says “I’ll say it till my tongue bleeds if we’re ever going to claim what we bought from the French and whoop the Mexicans for its going to mean killing Indians.” It shows how white superiority is based on the government’s power to determine life or death, a power that white