Native American Analysis

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Friday, February 3, 2012 Intro to Literature Native Americans By watching “Real Injun” and reading “Flight Patterns”, we are able to better understand the Native American culture. By Native Americans being portrayed through the media, we have a certain image in our heads about what they are supposed to talk, dress, and act like. Movies like Pocahontas and John Wayne help shape these images in our heads. By acting on these stereotypes, we are diminishing the Native American spirit, and what it really means to be Native American. Throughout time, Indians are portrayed to the rest of the world through the media such as television and movies. Even the first moving picture featured Native Americans! Indians in…show more content…
Most sources question whether Crazy Horse was ever even photographed. Like the previous example, the world’s imagination is so captured on how Native Americans are portrayed through the media, they believe that all of these pictures are actually real because of the Native American image the world has in their heads. I think that if people were more educated on the different types of Native Americans, people would not be as gullible for all of those years. I imagine that a lot of people think that because the picture of “Crazy Horse” has a feather in his hat, people think that must be him. Even in the movie they were laughing about…show more content…
There are many popular movies today have a negative impact on American Indians. Pocahontas shows a girl in a skimpy dress with a headband running around barefoot. Even as a kid, I remember watching these movies and thought that’s how all Native Americans really looked like! Headbands became in every movie, which contributed colonialism. People who know nothing about American Indians, especially children like when I first saw it, think this is how Native Americans dress. They think that they all shoot bows and arrows just like in Pocahontas. In “Flight Patterns”, when William tells the taxi driver he’s Indian, the taxi driver thinks William is from India. “No, not the jewel-on-the-forehead Indian,” said William. “I’m a bows-and-arrows-Indian” (433). Even though right after that William explains that he is Spokane Indian, “Bows-and—arrows Indian” is the only thing that can make the Taxi driver understand he’s not from India. If they showed people in movies like Pocahontas who looked like William, people would be able to recognize Native American culture better and could relate to them more then “bows and arrows”. By watching “Real Injun” and reading “Flight Patterns”, we are able to better relate to Native American people. Through analysis, we are able to see how these images of Native Americans are shaped in our heads and how wrong these images actually are. By acting
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