How Are Native Americans Portrayed? Are They Portrayed As Savages Or Primitives?

Some Guidelines for evaluating media portrayals of Indians Cultural questions: How are Native Americans portrayed? Are they portrayed as savages or primitives? Inferior? Simple? Or are they portrayed as members of a complex culture with norms and values and religious systems that ask the same basic questions as other societies? Are Native Americans lumped together as one culture, as if there is only one Indian culture? Are they seen as diverse, following the same practices, with the same lifestyles and customs? Are they depicted as cultures of the past, without contemporary significance? Is the focus on the material? On objects? Or is there a recognition of the deeply alive nature of Native cultures and an emphasis on the importance of the sacred in everyday life? Are Natives depicted as individuals or as communities? Is the communal nature of Native societies understood and respected? Are Natives measured by the standards of success of the majority culture or by their own standards? Are gender and elderly roles treated with importance? Many Native cultures are matriarchal and all value the wisdom of elders and the importance of ancestors. Or, are Native cultures presented according to Western standards for gender and generational issues? History: Does history reflect the viewpoint of the victor? Is an Indian massacre called a triumph or a victory for example? Is sovereignty respected? Are Natives depicted as self- determining? Are the contributions of Native Americans recognized? Are the events important to Native Americans emphasized or glossed over? Language: Are loaded words used such as “savage,” “squaw,” “warpath,” “redskin” etc. Or, is the language respectful and honoring? Do Natives speak in the broken English of Hollywood movies? Or do they speak as those who come from an oral tradition and value the ability to convey thoughts wisely? Role models: Are heroes only non-Natives? Are Natives shown as contributing positively to society? Are there positive Native role models for Native children to identify with? Are non-Natives depicted as the authority figures that need to take a parental type role to help the Indians? Or, are Natives shown as mature, responsible people who work hard to take care of the needs of their own? Literature The printed word has a long rich tradition in the Western world. Stories have been captured on stone, papyrus, clay, parchment and paper. Literature of the ancient world can be traced back to times near to the original source. The copy trail can show how variants crept into a text. To be literate, for much of Western history, was to be among the elite. Knowledge was under the control of those who could read and those who had access to printed materials. Post-Gutenberg, books became the norm for disseminating information. Other forms of print such as newspapers and magazines were created to convey short term knowledge to complement the long term view of most books. Eventually, the Industrial Revolution, advances in printing technology, the rise of public education and other factors led to the notion that literacy was no longer a privilege, it was a right. Among Native tribes, the tale is quite different. Orality, the spoken word, was the primary means of disseminating information. Storytelling, in oral form, relies on conventions that may exist in printed form, but aren’t as crucial when the text is written instead of spoken. The printed word can be complex and abstract. The ease of reviewing allows for longer stories (in general) and portability means the original source need no longer be present. Oral storytelling requires proximity; the speaker must be near to the listener. Spoken language relies on word pictures and memory enhancing devices to ensure that stories are passed along from generation to generation. Before the arrival of Europeans to the New World, there was little in the way of written language on the continent. Most tribal languages weren’t codified until missionaries, government agents, traders and linguists began to compile dictionaries and grammars of Native tongues. In Native terms then, literature can be defined in terms of both oral and written works. And, written works can include pictographic depictions, such as the Ojibwe use of pictographs on birch bark to preserve rituals. Ruoff (1991) notes, “American Indian oral literatures are performed arts. Over time, a general structure for a traditional ceremony, myth, or song tends to be established by a tribe. But within that structure, a ceremonialist, storyteller, or singer is usually permitted some leeway to create his or her own interpretation. As long as the interpretations are accepted by the group as true to the spirit and content of the original, are performed appropriately, and achieve the desired result, many tribes consider each performer’s version as valid.” In addition, it is common for the audience to participate in the telling. This level of flexibility and interaction is ill suited for the characteristics of the printed word. Yet, this became the primary means for preserving Native stories when whites began to record them. Even after audio recording technologies became available, the printed word remained the dominant means of conveying Indian stories. Libraries, for example, will typically have a multitude of Indian story collections and anthologies available in printed form, but often little in terms of recorded material. Clements (1996) notes “two diametrically opposed views” on the value of European- American written records of Native American stories. One view uncritically assumes that these written records “provide absolutely reliable information about the nature of American Indian oral expression.” The other view dismisses these written records as “utterly worthless.” Many of these early written records are an odd mix of the Kings English and Latin oratory patterns combined with stereotypical “Indian” terminology. The result was a written construction that no Indian would ever utter. The esthetic features and artistic values of Native American verbal expression often gave way to the idea that Native Americans were pre-literate and thus their stories lacked an element of abstraction that needed to be provided by the translator. Because of this, Clements (1996) states that “careful examination of the processes that yield particular representations of Native American verbal art must accompany critical evaluation of published Native American ‘literature.’” Henry Schoolcraft and others began to collect Indian stories and publish collections. Scholars like Ruoff (1991) have argued that many of these collections do not provide an accurate representation of the material they intended to preserve for readers. By failing to take into account the nature of performance or the cultural significance of the story, much of the original is lost. Storytellers in tribal societies are highly valued. They have an element of entertainment in their tribal roles, but primarily they are the teachers and socializing agents for their culture. For Western civilization, most storytelling is entertainment. Native songs and stories were sung and told to help in the healing process, to ready warriors for battle, to win over a lover, and to ask the spirits for blessings. To be a storyteller is to be a person of influence in a village or among a clan. Knowledge from outside the tribe was slow to arrive and suspect until the storytellers decided to incorporate it into the oral collective. Stories were for everyone, not just the privileged few. In this sense, all Native stories are popular culture. Because of the oral nature of Native storytelling, each generation faced the possibility of losing its stories if they weren’t passed down to the next generation. Charles Eastman in Indian Boyhood (1902) described the process of how his tribe trained boys to preserve the stories: “Almost every evening a myth, or a true story of some deed done in the past was narrated by one of the parents or grandparents…on the following evening he was usually required to repeat it…The household became his audience, by which he was alternately criticized and applauded.” The stereotype of Native Americans with respect to language is hard to reconcile with reality. Western movies gave us the Indian who spoke in stilted English and had difficulty expressing thought. In reality, Indians are very verbal people. In fact, most Western writers specialize in fiction or in poetry, many Native writers publish in both genres. Given this background, its not hard to see that Native American literature is a relatively young discipline. It does not have the thousands of years of tradition that Western literature has. And, since many Native stories were first put into print by non-Native writers, the Indian writer has obstacles to overcome if they want to set the record straight, or have their versions of stories accepted as the norm over those that have been widely circulated. On the other hand, Native American storytelling is rich in tales and song. It too had been passed down from generation to generation, but not with the preciseness of Western literature. Indian stories were more “alive” in that they could change and evolve over time. Once a story is set in print it becomes more like an object, unchanging. It is estimated that more than 30,000 books had been written about Native Americans by 1997. Of these, roughly ninety percent were written by non-Natives. It would be impossible to try to address them all. But in a rough sense, we can break them down into two categories: fiction and non-fiction. As far as fiction is concerned, the image of the Indian was established by writers such as James Fenimore Cooper and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and popularized later by writers such as Zane Grey. Often these stories romanticized the experience of meeting and interacting with Indians. White pioneers were heroes, Indians savages.

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