The First Nations of Americans
The common generalizations of First Nations people was shaped during the rise of Hollywood through portrayals in classic American cinema. So much to the point, that even Native people grow up with these misconceptions about their own people and culture. If we are not some primitive version of man called savage, we are often the complete opposite. Peaceful societies that once knew more about Nature than we do today. A version of man that was more in tune with Mother Nature, a version of a Native called noble.
"Hollywood has made over 4000 films about Native people; over 100 years of movies defining how Indians are seen by the world." (Diamond 2010).
If you do not know any First Nations people personally, you likely think of one of these tropes that are not reflective of a people as a whole. If it is not some version of a primitive culture deduced to a mascot, it is some projected stereotype of what many people think is a Native American shaped by movies and pop culture.
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| The First Avenger, Jim Thorpe, Captain America |
United States president Theodore Roosevelt might have been Americas loudest conservationist. He liked to travel and journal his observations of wildlife, landscapes, and cultures along the way. When Roosevelt toured the Southwest in 1913, he made sure to schedule some time to see the Hopi Snake Dance. He also made sure to chronicle that leg of the journey in his diary.
We were received with friendly courtesy, and that was partly due to showing good manners ourselves...There were hundreds of onlookers the day we were there. Many of the tourists did not show the proper respect for the religious observance they were watching. (DOI 2016)
Tourism in rural areas has its obvious negative sides, one of them being the watering down of traditions due to consumerism. As the chairman of the Hopi tribe, Benjamin H. Nuvamsa explains,
That depicts this negative aspect to perceiving Native people as some culture that once held the keys to life, a path to tranquility, or the secrets of enlightenment. People are just people. No matter what time they lived. Some just have an ability to describe it.
These stereotypes do not just effect individuals outside of tribal communities. They also stain the brains of Native people just the same way.
Neil Diamond is a Canadian filmmaker from the Cree tribal community. Reel Injun is a documentary inspired by his experiences as a child in Waskaganish, Quebec. Like many children from his era growing up watching John Wayne, he would play cowboys and Indians after local screenings of Westerns in their remote community.
Diamond remembers that although all of the children were in fact "Indians", they all wanted to be "cowboys". As an adult, he would constantly be questioned by non-Native's if his people still lived in teepee's and rode horses. He realized that all of their preconceptions about Native people were derived from those classical Hollywood films he grew up watching and mimicking. I had similar experiences all throughout school. I remember other students would ask me if we lived in teepee's or had regular houses.
There is a cultural disparity amongst Native people from the rest of America that is different than the ones we normally see in our country. It is the main reason people do not find these stereotypes harmful. Native American religions are not accepted as being legitimate. Our Federal Courts will overrule a tribe's cemetery as being sacred burial ground and orders to relocate grave sites in the name of progress. This type of thinking sets the tone for how Native culture, Native religions, and Native people are to be treated. Consider this, the First Nations of people in America were not granted full citizenship until 1924.
The year of 2013 was tougher than normal for farmers in California. The severe drought was impacting their livelihood, their crops. Today, there are many that find the evidence supporting climate science hard to believe, yet are willing to consider the Native American Rain Dance as a plausible solution to "changing the climate back."
This is an example of how the noble stereotype has influenced the perception of Native Americans. Often, it appears in society as a form of new age mysticism. A Rain Dance ceremony to end that severe drought in California was being performed when passersby could not help but notice and say, “It’s pretty impressive to see this. It does make you think about things. Maybe there is something to the rain dance. I don’t know. We try to teach our daughter to conserve and do what we can to help out.”
Bree Steffen is a reporter for KOCO in Oklahoma. She reported on an incident involving tribal communities clashing with a pop culture stereotype.
Those classic westerns did a lot for progressing cinema, but they also took Native people back in many ways by re-introducing us into popular culture as the noble savage or godless heathens. That is the problem using First Nations people as team mascots, it perpetuates and promotes this grouping of Native cultures into one of the few stereotypes. This leads to a lack of respect for Native Americans religious beliefs.
Normally, only worn for ceremonial occasion under the consent of tribal leaders, headdresses are strictly to be adorned by the worthy. They are not merely aesthetic, they are of great spiritual and religious importance.
Honor. Power. Respect.
These are the terms we associate with the headdress. For so long, I could not articulate or understand my strong gut reaction to seeing people make up their own headdress. There is the obvious and blatant mocking, but this upsets me more than the typical chants, slurs, or stereotypes. This is the slow knife of subtle racism that twists, reminding us that we have been reduced to a ghost image of what we once were. I think about my ancestors looking up at that star spangled banner waving as their people were massacred in front of them. Turning their heads to a crucifix that was raised after all of their people were slaughtered in God's name. Not everyone looks at an American flag and sees the same thing.
Liberty and justice for all?
Just as, "Calling the rain or praying for rain," is not the same thing as "praying TO the rain." An indivduals intent might be pure, but when the meaning is lost, the ceremony is lost too. Without that original meaning, a dance becomes just a dance, and a song becomes just a song. Like the headdress, when we talk about our tribal chiefs and warriors, it is akin to another culture's military veterans. Just as you would not desecrate our United States military, the same respect should apply to ours.
In the end, it is easy to understand why these stereotypes have been around for so long. Much like urban legends, superstitions, and other common misconceptions, stereotypes perpetuate by ingraining themselves into the popular culture. So much to the point, they are no longer preconcieved notions and folklore, they are the truth.
Sources:
DOI. 2016. US Department of the Interior. October 27. Article can be accessed at: (https://www.doi.gov/blog/conservation-legacy- theodore-roosevelt).
Diamond, Neil. 2010. Reel Injun On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian. Article can be accessed online at: (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/reel-injun/).
Magee, Maureen. 2014. When in drought, rain dance. The San Diego Tribune. (January 25). Online article can be accessed at: (https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/sdut-rain-dance-drought-oceanside-park-native-american-2014jan25-story.html).
West, Weather. 2014. The Ridiculously Resilient Ridge continues into 2014; California drought intensifies. California Weather Blog. Article can be accessed online at: (http://weatherwest.com/archives/1085).
Brettman, Allan. 2019. Native American group asks Nike to stop selling Cheif Wahoo gear. The Oregonian. Article can be accessed online at: (https://www.oregonlive.com/playbooks-profits/2014/04/native_american_group_asked_ni.html).
Christina Fallon Explained. Everything Explained Today. Article can be accessed online at: (http://everything.explained.today/Christina_Fallin/).
Myers, Jay J. 2008. The Sacred Hopi Snake Dance Impressed Theodore Roosevelt. Originally published Wild Wild Magazine. HistoryNet. 2018. (https://www.historynet.com/sacred-hopi-snake-dance-impressed-theodore-roosevelt.htm).
The Snake ceremony is of such a sacred nature and was becoming so heavily exploited in past decades and became so overrun with disrespectful tourists that it was threatened with extinction...Facing this, and coupled with the advent of easily affordable hobbyist photography, the practitioners, left with no alternative, closed the ceremonies to non-Indian spectators in approximately the 1950s. (Myers 2008)
That depicts this negative aspect to perceiving Native people as some culture that once held the keys to life, a path to tranquility, or the secrets of enlightenment. People are just people. No matter what time they lived. Some just have an ability to describe it.
These stereotypes do not just effect individuals outside of tribal communities. They also stain the brains of Native people just the same way.
Neil Diamond is a Canadian filmmaker from the Cree tribal community. Reel Injun is a documentary inspired by his experiences as a child in Waskaganish, Quebec. Like many children from his era growing up watching John Wayne, he would play cowboys and Indians after local screenings of Westerns in their remote community.
Diamond remembers that although all of the children were in fact "Indians", they all wanted to be "cowboys". As an adult, he would constantly be questioned by non-Native's if his people still lived in teepee's and rode horses. He realized that all of their preconceptions about Native people were derived from those classical Hollywood films he grew up watching and mimicking. I had similar experiences all throughout school. I remember other students would ask me if we lived in teepee's or had regular houses.
There is a cultural disparity amongst Native people from the rest of America that is different than the ones we normally see in our country. It is the main reason people do not find these stereotypes harmful. Native American religions are not accepted as being legitimate. Our Federal Courts will overrule a tribe's cemetery as being sacred burial ground and orders to relocate grave sites in the name of progress. This type of thinking sets the tone for how Native culture, Native religions, and Native people are to be treated. Consider this, the First Nations of people in America were not granted full citizenship until 1924.
The year of 2013 was tougher than normal for farmers in California. The severe drought was impacting their livelihood, their crops. Today, there are many that find the evidence supporting climate science hard to believe, yet are willing to consider the Native American Rain Dance as a plausible solution to "changing the climate back."
Not only was 2013 the driest calendar year on record in California, but in some places 2013 eclipsed previous record minimum precipitation values by around 50%. Nearly the entire state is currently experiencing dryness that hasn’t been experienced in living memory, and across the most populated parts of California the ongoing drought is more severe than any previous event in well over a century (Magee 2014).
This is an example of how the noble stereotype has influenced the perception of Native Americans. Often, it appears in society as a form of new age mysticism. A Rain Dance ceremony to end that severe drought in California was being performed when passersby could not help but notice and say, “It’s pretty impressive to see this. It does make you think about things. Maybe there is something to the rain dance. I don’t know. We try to teach our daughter to conserve and do what we can to help out.”
Bree Steffen is a reporter for KOCO in Oklahoma. She reported on an incident involving tribal communities clashing with a pop culture stereotype.
"Protesters led by Choctaw musician Samantha Crain staged a protest at the Norman Music Festival in Oklahoma, as Native Americans were outraged on social media when Fallin wore a Native American-style fringed shawl with the word "sheep" on the back and performed a fake war dance while her boyfriend Steven Battles ridiculed the protesters and flipped them off from the stage."
Those classic westerns did a lot for progressing cinema, but they also took Native people back in many ways by re-introducing us into popular culture as the noble savage or godless heathens. That is the problem using First Nations people as team mascots, it perpetuates and promotes this grouping of Native cultures into one of the few stereotypes. This leads to a lack of respect for Native Americans religious beliefs.
"We know the Plains headdress, or warbonnet, is a powerful image. Within the indigenous cultures it comes from, it represents honor and power. The man wearing it has been acknowledged as a person worthy of great respect. Highly symbolic, headdresses are of great spiritual importance and were only to be worn by the consent of tribal leaders, usually on ceremonial occasions. But in the popular catalogue of images of Indians in America, it represents all natives. It pronounces us wild and majestic, a warrior people who once were but do not exist now."
Normally, only worn for ceremonial occasion under the consent of tribal leaders, headdresses are strictly to be adorned by the worthy. They are not merely aesthetic, they are of great spiritual and religious importance.
Honor. Power. Respect.
These are the terms we associate with the headdress. For so long, I could not articulate or understand my strong gut reaction to seeing people make up their own headdress. There is the obvious and blatant mocking, but this upsets me more than the typical chants, slurs, or stereotypes. This is the slow knife of subtle racism that twists, reminding us that we have been reduced to a ghost image of what we once were. I think about my ancestors looking up at that star spangled banner waving as their people were massacred in front of them. Turning their heads to a crucifix that was raised after all of their people were slaughtered in God's name. Not everyone looks at an American flag and sees the same thing.
Liberty and justice for all?
Just as, "Calling the rain or praying for rain," is not the same thing as "praying TO the rain." An indivduals intent might be pure, but when the meaning is lost, the ceremony is lost too. Without that original meaning, a dance becomes just a dance, and a song becomes just a song. Like the headdress, when we talk about our tribal chiefs and warriors, it is akin to another culture's military veterans. Just as you would not desecrate our United States military, the same respect should apply to ours.
In the end, it is easy to understand why these stereotypes have been around for so long. Much like urban legends, superstitions, and other common misconceptions, stereotypes perpetuate by ingraining themselves into the popular culture. So much to the point, they are no longer preconcieved notions and folklore, they are the truth.
Sources:
DOI. 2016. US Department of the Interior. October 27. Article can be accessed at: (https://www.doi.gov/blog/conservation-legacy- theodore-roosevelt).
Diamond, Neil. 2010. Reel Injun On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian. Article can be accessed online at: (http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/reel-injun/).
Magee, Maureen. 2014. When in drought, rain dance. The San Diego Tribune. (January 25). Online article can be accessed at: (https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/sdut-rain-dance-drought-oceanside-park-native-american-2014jan25-story.html).
West, Weather. 2014. The Ridiculously Resilient Ridge continues into 2014; California drought intensifies. California Weather Blog. Article can be accessed online at: (http://weatherwest.com/archives/1085).
Brettman, Allan. 2019. Native American group asks Nike to stop selling Cheif Wahoo gear. The Oregonian. Article can be accessed online at: (https://www.oregonlive.com/playbooks-profits/2014/04/native_american_group_asked_ni.html).
Christina Fallon Explained. Everything Explained Today. Article can be accessed online at: (http://everything.explained.today/Christina_Fallin/).
Myers, Jay J. 2008. The Sacred Hopi Snake Dance Impressed Theodore Roosevelt. Originally published Wild Wild Magazine. HistoryNet. 2018. (https://www.historynet.com/sacred-hopi-snake-dance-impressed-theodore-roosevelt.htm).
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