What is a real Indian
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
The word Indian can bring forth so many different emotions, so many different images, but which of them are correct? In all honesty, that question cannot be answered. No one can tell anyone what a real Indian is or if a real Indian even exists any longer. Are Indians, themselves, confused as to what it really means to be Indian, have they been trapped by the same stereotypes that have given us our present views of what an Indian is? There are so many different places that we have all gained our ideas about what it means to be an Indian that it sometimes becomes difficult to distinguish between those ideas. Movies, books, and school seem to have the largest impact on how people have come to view the Indian as the other.
We've all seen it, the vision of a tall, muscular man, his ruddy skin burnt and chapped from long days in the sun, his gleaming black braid of hair topped with a lovely display of feathers, and an impractical little tan buffalo hide skirt with fringe stopping at mid-thigh. This is the image of an Indian that Hollywood has painted for us, never really varying from the formula. The movies turned the Indian into a vicious killer out to rape and or steal the white man's women and children, never mentioning the years of persecution that had occurred to the Indians on behalf of the white man. This example stayed true through most of the early days of movies and television...