Common Stereotypes Of Native Americans

The European arrival into North America was an extremely significant point in history. The arrival in 1492 led to a cultural diffusion between the immigrants and the Native Americans who helped form America as it is today. Although many colonies made peace with the Native Americans upon arrival, there were many people who did not mind executing the Native Americans for their land. The Chesapeake Bay colonies (Virginia and Maryland) were the first of several colonies to begin massacring the native peoples for land. The execution of the Native Americans later led to a genocide during Lincoln’s presidency, and Indian reservations were created with the means of concentrating the Native Americans. Although many new inhabitants to North America
knew the Native Americans as peacemakers, many still persisted to call the natives savages and warlike. This misinterpretation has carried on to present-day when in fact the white or European immigrants were the savages who led people to believe false accusations of the Native Americans.

Stereotypes of any kind are difficult to obliterate, especially those that began at the start of a new settlement and have lingered on into present-day.
Common stereotypes are that Native Americans still live in tee-pees, are warlike savages, dumb, always serious or mean, alcoholics, and so forth. Stereotypes of Native Americans are so overpowering through the 1998 production of Smoke Signals that contained characters who disagreed on how a Native American must look. As one character said to another, “‘You gotta look mean or people won’t respect you. White people will walk all over you if you don’t look mean. You gotta look like a warrior, like you just came back from killing a buffalo.’ ‘But our tribe never hunted buffalo; we were fisherman’” (Alexie). False accusations about Native Americans have become so dominant that Native Americans think they must act a certain way to be part of their own culture such as when Sherman Alexie referenced back to his childhood when he questioned why his father drank. Alexie’s father responded back, “I drink because I’m Indian” (Alexie). But Alexie later referred to alcoholism among Native Americans as a “damp reality” because most Native Americans he knows are alcoholics and he himself is a recovering alcoholic. Although alcoholism is a “damp reality” the description of Native Americans being bloodthirsty savages is but another false accusation often made by many sports teams. Many Native Americans are beginning to take offence to the
fierce mascots named after them.

Mascots are usually portrayed as animals to represent how fierce and/or warrior-like a team may be. Teams such as the Chiefs, Redskins, Warriors, and Braves all depict Native Americans as fierce competitors. Many Native Americans are taking offense to these names because not only are the characters taking away the cultural meaning but the logos keep the Native Americans marginalized (Munson). The misrepresentations are demeaning and should not be the only way to depict American sports teams. Not only are these titles demeaning but “if you look at Chief Wahoo on [the Cleveland Indians] hats and put Sambo next to him it’s the same thing” (Alexie). Sambo is considered a racial slur and is not permitted in the United States because of its meaning against the African heritage; Chief Wahoo is the same thing but against the Native American culture. People were able to stop discriminating between the obvious colors of white vs. black, but most people are not able to stop discriminating toward Native American vs. white and black because the savage-like depiction is predominant in the United States.

Since the first settlement, Native Americans have been perceived as savages in contrast to the Europeans.
The Europeans were the ones who purposely killed the Native Americans, opposite to what Americans have been raised to believe. Native Americans did not actually create reservations, “the U.S. military and government made reservations. It was a place where [Native Americans] were supposed to be concentrated and die and disappear… I think it’s out of self-destructive impulses that Native Americans have turned reservations into sacred spaces” (Alexie). Along with reservations, the story of Pocahontas was not the story that actually took place. In Disney’s version of Pocahontas, “the movie makes little reference to the European greed, deceit, racism, and genocide that were integral to the historical contacts between the Indians and Jamestown settlers” (Pewewardy). Since children are raised through most of their childhood to believe stories that are not true, when the time comes to actually learn about the historical events the brain has to almost erase all prior knowledge to the
subject.

European advancement into North America has done nothing but demean the Native American culture, create stereotypes, and generate false historical events. Native Americans were generally peacemakers until the Europeans tried to kill off Indians in means of obtaining their land. Even in present-day America, Native Americans are still wrongly accused of actions that they did not commit. As Sherman Alexie said, “this country is bad at admitting its sins” and therefore Americans, as a whole, need to respect the Native American culture and not demean the people whose ancestors created the land that we live on.

Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. “Sherman Alexie on Living Outside Cultural Borders.” Interview by Bill

Moyers. Moyers & Company, 2013. Web. 4 Sept. 2013.

Munson, Barbara. “Human Beings Are Not Mascots.” Rethinking Pop Culture and Media.

Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools Ltd., 2011. 149-52. Print.

Pewewardy, Cornel. “A Barbie-Doll Pocahontas.” Rethinking Pop Culture and Media.

Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools Ltd., 2011. 110-11. Print.