Native Americans in the Media, Case Study Example

Overview

Perhaps more so than any other ethnicity within the United States, the Native American has been presented in the media in the most broadly drawn terms, and either favorably or disparagingly so. Television programs, films and even news reports have, until very recently, consistently shown images of the Native American as either a savage or, more rarely, as a noble and victimized spirit, one far more deeply in touch with the earth and the universe than his oppressors. Both have been, of course, over caricatures, denying Native Americans the basic dignity of being seen as another, dimensional segment of society.

The other factor perniciously playing into how Native Americans are and have been portrayed and presented is a tide of culpability within American culture at large in regard to their treatment from the first days of the settling of America by colonists. No other ethnic culture in America bears this distinction, in that, quite simply, they were here first. The African American can justly point to the abduction of his forebears from their native land, but even this pales in comparison to the unalterable fact that we displaced the Native American, and that this is an historical pattern completely at variance with American ideologies. It is this residual and ongoing “national guilt” which has fueled the need to both demonize the Native American, as well as to glamorize, and even deify him, in later popular culture presentations (Smith-Rosenberg 198-200). It may be that this history can never be rectified in a manner satisfactory to both Native American and those still with  power over him. In such a scenario, presentations of Native Americans can never be other than skewed.

Modes of Portrayal

In all entertainment venues and beginning since the advent of cinema in America, Native Americans have been almost exclusively shown in one of three manners: “The good Indian is friendly, courteous…attractive, strong, dignified…and appreciative of nature. The bad Indian is lecherous, vain….brutal, cruel….dishonest and superstitious. The degrade Indian has succumbed to white influence and lost his ‘Indianness’ without being able to assimilate. He is degenerate, poor, often drunken…” (Larson, 2006, p.47).

Earlier Native American characterizations were typically little more than cartoon representations, and usually of the brutal kind. In a mode of propaganda, silent movies and early talking films portrayed them as howling savages, and savages specifically out to slaughter white people. The added menace of their seizing and abusing white women was often thrown into the mix as well, for the message conveyed was that no means of suppressing such a primitive and violent race was questionable under the circumstances. These entertainments strongly implied that we were not in any manner displacing anyone; we were peaceful settlers suddenly under dire threat from brutes (Fixico 141-147).

Imagery and argots have carried on this tradition of vulgarizing and demonizing the Native American so effectively that many remain in wide use today. Few elements in old Westerns were more terrifying to audiences than that of “scalping” the Native American ritual of removing the skin and hair from the victim’s head and carrying it as a trophy. While it is true that certain Native American tribes such as the Pawnee and the Navajo did commit scalpings, the American presentation of this completely overlooks that this barbarism was as well commonly practiced in Europe, and well into the 19^th century. The British, the Germans, and even American soldiers were often ordered to collect scalps from defeated armies. Yet, to the average American mind, scalping is associated only with the Native American.

The cultural image of the Native American did not in any appreciable way alter for decades, from the first silent pictures showing frenzied, bloodthirsty tribes on horseback to television programs of the 1950’s and 1960’s. There were, however, changes. For every exploitation film or Western program that portrayed the Native American as a mindless savage, others, under the influence of the broadening of sensibilities in the 1960’s, deliberately went far in the other direction. Television’s huge hit series Bonanza and The High Chaparral seemingly went out of their way to include gentle, friendly Native Americans. The 1970 film Little Big Man went further; more so than any film or series of the time, it employed humor to both mock Native American stereotypes and to reveal the Cheyenne as fully human in the process.

Nonetheless, overtly one-sided representations were the norm, and it must be stressed that these were in full force until very recently. Moreover, there is nothing inherently better in painting an ethnicity as essentially “good”, rather than savage; it is merely a shifting of the stereotype, and this reached a cultural nadir in the classic “Crying Indian” commercial from the Keep America Beautiful campaign in 1971.  A Native American sheds a tear as he witnesses an incident of littering, and the clear message is that litter is an affront to those most in tune with the earth: the Native Americans. Furthermore, the image enhances the stereotypes of the Native American as a weak, even emasculated, victim. It is unthinkable that the producers of the era would have similarly presented a middle-aged, white man crying.

In today’s media, cultural portrayals of Native Americans have not so much redressed earlier wrongs, but have jumped far ahead to mock our own lengthy history of bias. From Seinfeld,  television’s classic situation comedy of the 1990’s, came the episode wherein the hero continually finds himself insulting the Native American woman he wishes to date, using idiom like “reservations” and “Indian-giver”. In 2000, The Simpsons featured an episode in its eleventh season largely set in an Indian casino, and enjoyed free rein in parodying more modern stereotypes of Native American insight and spirituality.

Even this minor progress in how Native Americans fare in film and television, however, is nonetheless the product of a nearly wholly white person’s enterprise. This is a vital issue, for virtually all other ethnicities in America now engage to a substantial extent in the creative forces determining their own presentation. African American writers and directors have enjoyed great influence over the last few decades, as well as have Indian and Latino film and television program creative staff. None of this is by any means a threat to established, predominantly white power bases, yet the fact remains that it is a tangible progress in infusing ethnic integrity factors in all entertainment venues.

For Native Americans, this is only just beginning and in the most minimal way. This is the scenario, despite the inescapable reality that only input from actual Native Americans can do justice to any meaningful portrayal of them, as well as taking into account that Native Americans have long been employed in film and television in small capacities.  “As Commanche writer Paul Chaat Smith argues…’If it’s true that Indians have been deeply involved in the movie business, it’s also true that those films aren’t really about Indians in the first place’” (Singer, 2001, viii). When a film such as Smoke Signals receives great acclaim and awards at its 1998 premiere for its honest and refreshingly realistic presentation of Native Americans, it is important to consider how very isolated the occurrence is, as well as the relative novelty of its timing. It begs the question: what other ethnicity in America would be willing to wait that long for recognition?

Mentalities Behind Traditional Native American Portrayals

It appears that an irrefutable component behind any mass-marketing of a biased image of a race or ethnicity is fear. In the case of the Native American in America and how he has been culturally represented, several fears are in fact at play.

The first and most obvious is the classic aspect of the “civilized colonist’s” fear of the savage. When children are taught in school about the first Thanksgiving, it is still greatly emphasized that the “Indians” who came to the settlers’ aid were unusually kind. No matter the actual truth in what occurred between Native Americans and colonial pioneers during the first centuries of the nation’s development, and wherever in the land these conflicts or alliances arose, the fact remains that people who considered themselves enlightened, modern and civilized were thrown into contact with people who existed in more primitive, tribal ways. That such ways may have been peaceful and even spiritually inspired is beside the point; to the settlers, the Natives Americans spoke strange languages, dressed in a raw and outrageous manner, and practiced arcane rituals. They were very different, they were not European in behavior, so they were savage and therefore terrifying (Nichols 61-65).

This enabled, again, a means to assuage any feelings of wrongdoing in regard to depriving them of land which had been, essentially, their own. Moreover, as the European sensibilities within the colonists saw it, there was no reason to actually treat a savage humanely, for those not Christian were not actually human. Thus were the first representations of Native Americans born, and carried on for a very long time. Fear both creates and derives its power from ignorance and, when a group is viewed as sub-human, violence and manipulation are sanctioned by those confronting them. This translated nicely into film, pulp novels, and all coeval media.

Added to this form of fear was the element of a greater and more savage masculinity which would threaten the women of the colonies. The historic accounts of Native American drunkenness are not without foundation; European settlers found alcohol to be a wonderfully efficient means of dulling the Native American males. Excessive alcohol consumption produces something like an emasculating effect in men, for the drinker is usually rendered physically incapable of exhibiting anything like masculine force. This strategy of the new Americans brought with it a legacy ongoing today: “(Native Americans) have three times the rate of alcohol-related injury and illness” (Hales, 2008, p. 350). Even less widely known is that Native Americans also suffer from a disproportionate rate of pedestrian deaths caused on highways, and it is believed this is linked to having to walk great distances to get the alcohol banned on many reservations.

This fear of the “savage” then both permits and encourages harsh treatment and grossly biased representations. The other fear within the white community, and existing since the beginning, is an awareness of that very wrongdoing and a sense of retribution to come. It is fear through guilt, and this fear is what is largely responsible for the deifying of the Native American more recently promulgated in media. In a very real sense, white Americans began to set up the Native American as a divinity they had insulted and needed, commencing in the 1960’s, to propitiate. The best means to do this was not in redressing actual, territorial injustices, but rather to employ that same media to present him as more noble than themselves, and always more deeply connected to spiritual elements. For the fearful and guilty white Americans, this approach carried with it a highly effective palliative power; so spiritual and lofty a people would not be unduly concerned with past transgressions or in mundane, worldly issues like land rights. In presenting him as a finer and more evolved being, white America bestowed upon him both the power to forgive and an unconcern with what, precisely, might need to be forgiven, or avenged.

Differences in Other Ethnic Representations

By no means has the Native American been the sole victim of media bias. America’s cultural history is openly acknowledged as severely blighted by such things. Asians, Africans, Latins and Indians have been, in essence, universally misrepresented as existing within their larger home here. Less damaging, yet equally prejudiced, portrayals have been made regarding European immigrants from Ireland and Italy as well, and in news, film, and television. All of this was acceptable because the media of the times, until quite recently and in most cases, simply sought to reflect popular conceptions that were unchallenged in the American mind.

Yet the Native American scenario here is different, then and now. No other ethnicity comes from the same place, and quite literally, because every other ethnicity within America came from somewhere else. This seemingly obvious fact is often ignored, but is enormously pivotal. Implicit in any immigration is an obligation within the immigrants to adapt, conform, and “become” much what the prevailing society demands. So too is it to some degree expected by all parties concerned that there will be ignorance on both sides, at least initially. Immigration may not be a violent process, but it carries with it stages of adjustment nearly on traumatic levels.

Where the Native American is concerned, white Americans were the immigrants. This fact, never initially acknowledged or ever properly addressed, can never be truly compensated for. To do so would require a complete upheaval of the very fabric of the nation, for it goes to its founding. Therefore, in media as in life, the Native American is perpetually shuffled around without ever being viewed in an honest and rational manner. Media can in essence go no further than what occurs in real life: “As Michael Riley (Roswell Museum, New Mexico) concludes, Native Americans are not only trapped by history, ‘but are forever trapped in the history of film’” (Rollins, O’Connor, 2003, p.6).

Impact, Conclusion

It is perhaps sad that what may well be the most impactful modern instance of Native American issues coming to the fore of American Media and consciousness was the brief 1973 appearance at the Academy Awards of Sacheen Littlefeather, representing actor Marlon Brando and refusing the award in his name because of the maltreatment of Native Americans. The young lady was booed off the stage, but not merely because it was seen as an inappropriate occasion in which to make the statement. Then, as would most likely occur even now, it was a decidedly unwelcome reminder of a past we dare not fully confront.

The means for progress to be made in how Native Americans are portrayed in media is blatantly obvious, and substantiated by America’s history with other ethnic groups direct involvement. Only when Native Americans are empowered to have active voices in all elements of film, television and other media outlets can there ever be a valid and genuine reflection of the people.

Obviously, this can’t be accomplished until suitable reforms are made in basic education and living for Native Americans, within or outside of reservations. However, once such an entitlement is begun, it takes on a momentum of its own and is not easily suppressed. The opportunities here, perhaps more so than with any other maligned culture, are enormous, for in real expression may both the Native American and the larger white populations come to an understanding long absent. It is too much to hope that a form of redemption will be available to America through this. Nonetheless, knowledge, including that which is conveyed through entertainment media, is a potent force against residual fear and guilt, and a greater sense of understanding can only enhance life for the Native American in America, and consequently life in America itself.

Works Cited

Fixico, D.L. Daily Life of Native Americans in the Twentieth Century. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print.

Hales, D. An Invitation to Health, Brief. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning, 2008. Print.

Larson, S. G. Media and Minorities: The Politics of Race in News and Entertainment. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006. Print.

Nichols, R.L. Indians in the United States and Canada: A Comparative History. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Print.

Rollins, P.C., and O’Connor, J.E. Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2003. Print.

Singer, B. R. Wiping the War Paint Off the Lens: Native American Film and Video. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press, 2001. Print.

Smith-Rosenberg, C. This Violent Empire: The Birth of an American National Identity. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Print.