American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Efforts by Native Americans to control their own public image result, in part, from a desire to counteract five hundred years of white people's imagery of Indians, including consistent misreprsentation in Hollywood Westerns. This paper, which focuses on Native American responses to Westerns, relates to a larger research project that examines the representation of Indians by natives themselves in film and video documentaries. Although I present native responses to portrayals of Indians in recent Westerns, I do not pretend to "speak for" Native Americans in this paper. Rather, I have researched the topic in order to discover some of the potentials and pitfalls of the role of visual communication in intercultural relations. Because the paper concerns general issues of representation, I often refer to Native Americans (and whites) in general terms. Both of these populations are, of course, quite diverse. Therefore, exceptions exist for each of the general statements that I make, but the issue of cross-cultural represesentation is so important in native media and scholarship that a general discussion seems warranted. Issues in cross-cultural visual representation are part of the broader problem of racism. Euro-American culture has incorporated negative attitudes toward many ethnic groups, subcultures, and other nationalities. The process has been systematic alienation: Cultural resources are used to make poor people and those of non-European ethnicity feel inferior and separate. Several consequences emerge from this estrangement between ethnic minorities and Euro-American culture. Negative attitudes lead to deleterious treatment of members of other cultures. Frequently, the negative beliefs themselves contradict fact, but the danger is that these beliefs will be internalized by the members of the ethnic minority; for example, some Indians internalize white stereotypes of the “drunken,” “savage,” or ”lazy” Indian. Alcoholism and unemployment result from cultural dislocation and economic deprivation, but the process of systematic alienation shifts the responsibility for these socially unacceptable behaviors to the victims themselves.