Stereotypes About Native Americans

Anyone who is Native American or if you prefer American Indian, has at least one time in their lives experienced being judged or looked at based on a stereotype. If I had a nickel for every time I've run into a stereotype about Indians in my lifetime I'd be a very rich woman by now.

Let's look at the terminology I'm using here first, while it doesn't directly tie into stereotyping, it is still a part of it and some non-Indian's reactions to Native Americans. Notice how I use Native American, American Indian, Native, Indian, and indigenous person interchangeably? Well there is a reason for that. Most Indians don't really care which term you use when describing the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The fact is none of them are strictly correct. Take Native American for example. Some non-Indians actually get offended if someone who is Indian uses that terminology. Many times in my life I've had someone pop up and say, "I was born here, I'm a Native American too." Yes, when looked at from that perspective the person is right. However when someone who is Indian uses the terminology it means more to them than just that they were born here, it is a statement that their people were here before the ancestors of those who are not of indigenous extraction ever got here. It's not meant as a slight, but some take it that way. Then there is the term "Indian," we got tagged with that because some Italian guy named Columbus thought he had landed in India. It is a complete misnomer when it comes to describing us, and yet, it is commonly used today. It is so common in fact we actually use it ourselves. Then comes the term "Native" and much like Native American, this seems to garner comments as well, and we find ourselves back to, "I was born here, I'm a Native." Whew! Most of us in an effort to avoid these sorts of confrontations have resorted to using the name in our languages that we've called ourselves for thousands of years. However, even that has its problems in that if someone has never been exposed to any of the different Native American cultures, they have no idea what you are talking about, and you find yourself back to using the so-called politically correct terms.

Now you may be wondering what this has to do with stereotypes. Well easily the term Indian has been linked to a number of incorrect and derogatory stereotypes such as the drunk Indian, and the medicine man to name a few (we won't get into how our patriarchal society doesn't like the idea of a medicine woman). Generally speaking I've run into either one or the other of these. Someone either thinks that all Indians are drunks and drug addicts, or they think that all Indians are spiritual and somehow more in touch with the rest of the universe and divinity than anyone else. It makes it very difficult when it comes time to explain to the uneducated that the reality is probably somewhere in between. Like anyone else on this planet, Indians are just human beings who do the best they can. There are those of us who are alcoholics, and those that use drugs, and there are those who are very spiritual and from whom we can learn a great deal. But most of us are just what we like to term as common Indians. We have jobs, go to school, raise our families, try to make enough money to get by and just do the best we can in life for ourselves and our children just like everyone else. Many of us think that preserving our languages, culture and spirituality is important and to that end we do what we can, but not everyone feels that way. I had a close friend in college whose father purposefully did not teach his children their native language because he felt they would have any easier time in life if he didn't. And I've had friends and family who have fallen prey to alcohol and drugs. It's not solely an Indian problem as those who buy into stereotypes would like to think, but rather a worldwide problem.

There is another widely held stereotype attached to a popular holiday, Thanksgiving. There is a tremendous amount of mythology attached to Thanksgiving. While I am all for the holiday, it really grates on my nerves when I see stereotypes being perpetuated in the name of this holiday. This goes back to the generic use of the word Indian, many people make the assumption that because there were Indians at the first Thanksgiving celebration that this means all people of indigenous extraction are affiliated with Thanksgiving. All you have to do is look at Thanksgiving decorations and typically you see the pilgrim's white and black outfit, and then the Indian's which generally speaking consists of a generic leather fringed dress and moccasins, and a headband for a female, and a breech clout, leggings, and moccasins for the male, possibly a fringed leather shirt as well. The Indians or Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving were the Wampanoags, and while some of their dress was similar to what we see in the many of the decorations, most of it was not. The women wore deerskin skirts that they wrapped around themselves along with deerskin leggings, moccasins and fur capes. The men did wear a breech clout along with the capes, leggings, and moccasins during the cold weather months. Both sexes braided their hair and wore one feather in it. There were no large eagle feather head dresses, or leather shirts, or dresses with fringe as you see in Plains tribes such as the Lakota. The problem with such generic generalizations when it comes to Indians (or the pilgrims for that matter since there were different factions among the puritans of which the pilgrims were one) is that it allows the ignorant to lump all Native people under the term of Indian. It leaves out the fact that there were hundreds of tribes with their own languages, cultures, spiritualities, and regalia.

The biggest and most harmful mistake that can be made about any race not just American Indians is to not acknowledge the fact there are different groups with their own cultures, and traditions within all racial groups. It's not any different than if you go to Europe for a vacation. You don't expect that everyone is going to speak the same language, have the same foods, traditions, traditional clothing etc. To walk up to someone who is English culturally and expect that their traditions are the same as someone you met in Germany would be ludicrous. If you went to visit the African continent and met someone who was Afar from Ethiopia you wouldn't expect that their traditions, language and culture were the same as say someone from the Ashanti who live in Ghana in Western Africa. They might both be Black or even both consider themselves to be African, but they have different cultures. Yet I see this time and time again in the United States and elsewhere when it comes to Native American tribes.

Stereotypes can be harmful in so many ways because they have the capacity to drag you through the dirt, or place you on a pedestal, or worse mainstream culture turns you into something generic. We owe it to ourselves and our future generations not to allow these types of stereotyping to continue. There is so much to be learned from other cultures, but these things will never be learned if we do not teach our children, and educate ourselves about the difference between what is a stereotype and what is a fact.