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Real Indian

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17 views4 pages

Real Indian

Uploaded by

angelpainadath
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Personal Reflection

AlanBarthalomeyo

SY 066 A05: Sociology of Community: The Indigenous Context

Meagan Coates

June 21, 2023


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The documentary ‘Reel Injun’ directed by Neil Diamond, Catherine Bainbridge and Jeremiah

Hayes, released in 2009, was based on how Native Americans was portrayed in Hollywood

movies. The real life of the Native Americans is not as same as that shows in the movies back in

time. The director has succeeded in showing the real life of them. In search of the reality, Neil

came to know the several stereotypical assumptions about the Native Americans which existed

among others. In the beginning of the movie, he revealed his childhood thought about the

cowboy in the movies cowboys and Indians are opposition teams. Without realizing they were

Indians, they stood with cowboys.

In other people’s perception, due to what is shown in the movies, the Native Americans

are someone who wear feathers and ride horses even in this century. But in reality, they wear

normal dresses and most of them use old vehicles which are barely considered as vehicles by

others due to its pathetic condition. According to the narrator, the fantasy of the historic warrior

is something that could not be changed so as the legends of Chief Sitting Bull and Tashunka

Witko also known as Crazy Horse and the battle of Little Big Horn which turn into legend since

the Hollywood started telling its story. For Native people Crazy Horse is mystical warrior as

same as represented in movies.

The evolution of movies portraying Indians happened dramatically after silent era. Even

though Indians were represented as bad people, some people really wanted to be Indian because

of the mythological approach of the movie. Then it become like, the movies were actually found

for the Indians and Americans started hating the Native Americans. In movies about Indians, the

‘White people’ started to play as Indian. When once the director of one movie wanted real Native

people for the movies, he could not even find. There was a time when people thought that hippies

are Indians.
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Even in some cartoons, Popeye, Looney toon, so on, which I watched as child, shows the

Indians now only I came to know that it was Indian. In some of them the Indians were pictured

as bad. In the case cowboy and Indian, my little mind thought that the Indians were the villain,

and the cowboys were the heroes which was always portrayed as heroic symbol, even in famous

cartoon Tom and Jerry.

‘Reel Injun’ have shown the impact of the movies and its presentation in one’s life and the

necessity of portraying the reality than the fake legendary heroism which gives a fake image

about the whole community. The directors have succeeded in what they aimed of.
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Reference

1) Neil Diamond, (2009). Reel Injun [video].

https://www-nfb-ca.confederation.idm.oclc.org/film/reel_injun/

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