Treatment of American Indians
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The treatment of the American Indian, or Native American, in the movies has mirrored the way this population has been viewed and treated in American history, and over time the view changed on the screen just as it has changed in society at large. At one time, there was little guilt over the way white society had exploited the native peoples or their land, while more recently there has been a growing awareness of the devastation visited on this population by the invasion of their land and the destruction of their culture by white settlers intent on making the land their own. The view of the Indian started with the English, who created an argument to justify English rights to native soil:By denying the humanity of the Indians, the English, like other Europeans, claimed that the native possessors of the land disqualified themselves from rightful ownership of it. . . Defining the Native Americans as "savage" and "brutish". . . armed [the English] with a moral justification for doing so when their numbers became sufficient (Nash, Jeffrey, Howe, Frederick, Davis, and Winkler 32-33). Indians were evoked as stereotypes in motion pictures with few exceptions until revisionist Westerns began to turn the tide the other way. A recent example is Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves (1990), a film that for all its sensitivity to cultural differences and to the importance of Native American culture makes major errors in depicting the history and culture of the Lakota Sioux tribe portra
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ernment relationship of the United States of America to the Great Sioux nation" (Seals 635). The treaty of 1868, following an 1851 treaty, can be assumed to reflect the turmoil and conditions existing prior to its signing. This is about the time in which Dances with Wolves is set. At this time, the Sioux under Red Cloud beat the army of General Sherman, chasing it all over Wyoming. The Americans at the time were suing for unconditional peace on the Bozeman and Oregon Trails. The Sioux and the Arapaho were in a conciliatory mood and agreed to a cease fire on the condition that the Americans abandon their forts and leave forever. The victors would in return allow the Americans to have their roads to the golden Elysian fields of California, Oregon, and Montana. General Sherman agreed to these terms and promised what would later become all of western South Dakota from the west side of the mighty Missouri River to the Wyoming border, to be given to the Indians as their sovereign national territory. They were also to get parts of Wyoming, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Montana as unceded hunting territory. Red Cloud was pleased with the agreement but not with the fact that other chiefs were part of the deal and would get part of t
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Approximate Word count = 2530
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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