Indigenous People Review Native American Characters In Film & TV

you're sick away you have the most unusual names here oh my god hi my name is marianne buggs i am native american i'm a registered member of the caddo tribe from oklahoma and i'm also cheyenne and rappo my name is silas cleveland i'm from lander wyoming i myself am eastern shoshone i am calder ness from kennebec south dakota i'm bartness who's death and i was raised on the lord rural sioux tribe indian reservation so you're also raised i'm brandi lewis i am enrolled member of the choctaw nation of oklahoma and today we're going to be

reviewing some native american characters in film and tv native american and indigenous representation in film is quite often inaccurate and the reason for that is that oftentimes the stories are being told by non-natives i grew up watching westerns with my dad on tv i'd say sometimes i'd say why are we watching this movie again with these people who aren't really indian we called ourselves indian those days and he'd say well maybe someday we'll actually win because we were always the ones that got killed off or you know worse things our houses are fine you think

that only because you don't know any better i don't think very many natives like hearing these kind of things there's so much we can teach you we've improved the lives of savages all over the world savages not that you're a savage just my people no listen that's not what i meant let me explain let go no i'm not letting you leave that dress kills me it's such a disneyland sort of take on the historical figure of pocahontas savage is just a word you know a term for people who are uncivilized like me well when i

say uncivilized americans i'd say you are some of the most civilized people have been for centuries what you mean is not like you for many years i resisted watching the movie pocahontas just because i knew it was going to be a bad representation i really kind of stay away from these tags like i i never really had our kids watch them because they're not even close to the truth yeah you know yeah she's super hyper sexualized but i liked when she's you know reacted to him calling her a savage because i think that's what a

lot of people think still to this day pocahontas in reality historically was a young girl she was taken and forced to marry john smith against her will and it wasn't a beautiful love story she had a lot of trauma in her life that i when i read the story a long long time ago i really related to because i think a lot of our people are still to this day suffering from the trauma they experienced whether it's this generation or past generations are you even in north dakota they pronounce it three different ways he went

here having a native american track someone you're amazing i think she's actually a great tracker too she was yeah it's a really big deal when you see native americans in film and sacagawea being part of my ancestries in my tribe that's a pretty big ordeal to me i was struck by her outfit because that's the next thing i look at is i try to figure out what tribe they are by looking at their dress and it was very um non-native american yeah it's just a stereotypical um portrayal of her with the braids i bet a

lot of people haven't heard of sacagawea before and so at least it was educational from that viewpoint i assume this is like like a kids movie technically you're a council meeting crasher scene from twilight the council leaders dad quill's grandpa and two clear water clearwater took over for her good name died venezuelan can you say quillians in the beginning i don't know if that's a tribe but maybe it is there's 570 plus tribes in the united states so i don't know all of them shape-shifters this is a great example of oral tradition which is a

very very important part of native american history stories being passed down for generations and now i see at the end they're near water and she's wearing the older lady is wearing shell earrings so it must be in the pacific northwest i'm guessing actually overall i was really happy that uh there were so many native american actors making money i think they did a good job you know showing to modern native americans they dress like everybody else and not every native has a crazy name or anything you know they had the seth clearwater i think it

was on there regular names there are many traditional last names still but not everybody's named like pocahontas or something like that are you really i've heard of them as if if he hadn't heard of that maybe he wouldn't really be indian because i tell people what my tribe is and kato isn't a well-known tribe and they say i've never heard of that as as i made it up can you be the peacemaker the music i'm a boy my name is omri great spirit can be a child which mean i don't think the great spirit would

be a white child especially how do you know english we know the english the english there's stuff for us to fight the french for them i know that's true and i wonder how many people watching this film actually caught that that was not at all what i expected it was going to be about maybe in a cover i think a lot of people don't realize the accuracy of his comment that uh native americans were employed by the english to fight the french that's really important for people to know the accurate part of history what i've

experienced is children being told what their parents think based on what they've seen in old westerns and i think this would give them an alternate view much closer to the truth of my people that is really cool that it's like some magical cupboard and then he can he can kind of learn about the tribe or like the past one day this ranch is gonna be yours but i don't want this ranch what is going on who is this woman was she adopted maybe you are ungrateful and you don't deserve this well you're an indian giver

how is promising someone something then taking it back named after us i'm like confused because why is she blonde why does she not look one speck of indian yesterday i saw you try to milk a male buffalo whatever mom it worked i put it in the fridge i mean there's it's actually kind of funny but elders are having a school definitely playing into like i would hope that the writers and the producers of this particular show would talk to the two native american actors that they employed to do this i feel like it's meant to

be joking about the stereotypes actually i guess i would want non-native people to know that you know a lot of times the stereotypes that you see are so like overt it's laughable i think that the majority of the clips that i saw had inaccuracies as far as portraying native american people you know i'd love to see hollywood giving more opportunities out there to different native americans i really just think it's it's it's important to have native people telling native stories and i think the more realistic and the more the more natives that they bring on

to these sort of movie you know they're just there's so many interesting things with the indian tribes i think a lot of people would really enjoy to watch if one of those movies made you want to learn more about native american tribes you should research which ones are in your state i hope that you the audience don't get all of your ideas about native american people from tv and and movies that you are encouraged to explore native american accuracies um there's a lot of books out there are powwows that happen in every major city and

if you want to learn more about actual native people talk to them