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Native American culture
Native American culture
Essay about the Sioux tribe
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Of the Sioux movies viewed, there were differences in the accuracy of the portrayal of these people. Both A Man Called Horse and A Man Called Horse III portrayed the Sioux tribe with an almost Neanderthal style haircut. Crazy Horse correctly depicted them with long hair, though traditionally the Sioux parted their hair down the middle with braids on either side.
The poor wigs worn by the actors in The Man Called Horse films didn't help to hide the fact that they were white men underneath. . By the third installment of the Man Called Horse Trilogy a few people with Native American ancestry were cast. Dances With Wolves, on the other hand, seemed to be nearly fully cast with Native Americans,. (Imdb.com)
All movies related to the Sioux are very
accurate in their representation of Sioux clothing. Sioux clothing is generally regarded as being three separate garments for men, a loincloth-like breech, moccasins and leggings that were tied to the breech at the top (Driver 318). This often gave the appearance of trousers from a distance, and in all movies, this appears to be the case. Either the breeches or the breeches combined with the leggings are most often what the Indian men are wearing. Shirts were only worn in the winter months, but this is seemingly overlooked in all the movies. The clothing of the women is historically known as being a dress like garment made of deerskin, and the films took note of this. Another realistic portrayal of Sioux life was their housing. Sioux lived in teepees and were a travelling, nomadic people. All movies noted the teepee, but it seemed that only the modern movies showed the Indians changing residence. In Dances With Wolves, it was due to the winter, the moving buffalo or the approaching white man, and in Crazy Horse it is simply due to the latter. The Man Called Horse movies not only seem to depict the Sioux Villages as
Pages one to sixty- nine in Indian From The Inside: Native American Philosophy and Cultural Renewal by Dennis McPherson and J. Douglas Rabb, provides the beginning of an in-depth analysis of Native American cultural philosophy. It also states the ways in which western perspective has played a role in our understanding of Native American culture and similarities between Western culture and Native American culture. The section of reading can be divided into three lenses. The first section focus is on the theoretical understanding of self in respect to the space around us. The second section provides a historical background into the relationship between Native Americans and British colonial power. The last section focus is on the affiliation of otherworldliness that exist between
The movie Dances with Wolves was a real good movie and I enjoyed watching it. It showed how life was back in the time of the Civil War. The movie also showed how Indians lived and how they respect everything except the white men.
In the film Dances with Wolves, the settlers view the Indians as primitive and uncivilized creatures. Dunbar, played by Kevin Costner, needs a change of pace so he decides to go to the "furthest outpost." Upon arriving at his post, he gradually realizes that the Indians are just as scared of him as he is of them. Soon Dunbar identifies with their way of life and in the end has to choose to live either as a settler or as an Indian.
Born in the mid to late 1840’s, he was passed on his fathers’ name of Crazy Horse, which he received for his natural warrior ability. “Crazy Horse was always a stand out, not only in his skills as a warrior but also in terms of his looks and character.”(Famous) Prior to the United States westward expansion, Crazy Horses tribe, the Oglala Lakota Sioux, roamed the Black Hills of the Dakota Territories freely. Gold, raw minerals, and new land to settle would drive the Americans deep into Sioux territory and eventually lead to many battles and many deaths. As a very young boy, he witnessed the brutality of the United Stated Army, when Lieutenant John Grattan rode into their Sioux Camp and started trouble with the tribal chief, who was eventually shot in the back. The Sioux fought back and massacred all 30 United States Army troops. The incident would kick off, what would be known later as, the Sioux Wars. The Grattan massacre would be the first of many massacres at the hands of Crazy Horse and the Sioux. After leading Lieutenant Colonel William J. Fetterman and his soldiers from their fort into a trap and slaughtering every single one of them, the Sioux had established themselves as a force to be reckoned with. The American settlers and military would vacate the lands and posts. Red Cloud, giving them their peace settlement, would sign a peace treaty, but that wasn’t good enough for Crazy Horse. He would continue to fight off American expansion that would ultimately create an alliance between the Sioux and Cheyenne. This alliance would bring about the greats victory for Native Americans at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Teaming up with Sitting Bull, these two would end up killing 231 United States soldiers, including General George
Few events in history have impacted a culture as much as the introduction of the horse into plains Indian culture. The positive impact of the horse on North America's indigenous people has been romanticized forever in popular culture. The portrait of plains Indian horse created by the likes of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood is far from complete. While the horse did make nearly every aspect of Native American life more efficient, the spread of horses also contributed to the violence in the southwestern region of the United States in three ways. The trade of horses among the plains Indians created competition for resources, encouraged and contributed to raiding, and allowed the domination of the region by the Apache Indians.
Hollywood has helped create and perpetuate many different stereotypical images of the different races in the world. Those stereotypes still continue to affect the way we think about each other today and many of those stereotypes have been proven to be historically inaccurate. The movie Dances With Wolves, directed by actor Kevin Costner, does an excellent job in attempting to promote a greater acceptance, understanding, and sympathy towards Native American culture, instead of supporting the typical stereotype of Native Americans being nothing but brutal, blood thirsty savages.
As a result, both films represent Native Americans from the point of view of non-Native directors. Despite the fact that they made use of the fabricated stereotypes in their illustrations of the indigenous people, their portrayal was revolutionary in its own times. Each of the films adds in their own way a new approach to the representation of indigenous people, their stories unfolding in a different way. These differences make one look at the indigenous not only as one dimensional beings but as multifaceted beings, as Dunbar says, “they are just like us.” This is finally a sense of fairness and respect by the non-native populations to the Native Indians.
Culture gives definition to a group of people’s way of life. Culture defines people; It is who the people are. The Navajo Indians are a group located in the southwestern part of the United States with a distinct culture. They originated there sometime between the year “1200 and 1500” (Craats 4). Unlike the beginning of their residence in the United States, different aspects of the culture have changed, but the Navajo people still remain a culturally rich group of people.
...views of these people and what they are expected to be, is taken away as the viewer realizes that the life of the natives is very common and understandable. This film almost goes to prove that often the reason that a certain group is tagged by prejudice views, is because little is known about where they are coming from, how they live or what they are experiencing in life. The film Dances With Wolves does a good job of proving that often our stereotypical views of others are inaccurate, and that the Native Americans of the west were not all that different from the whites that also inhabited the plains.
Throughout this unique class, we have explored many amazing facets of the Dine’ people. From stories, to pieces of art, to the language itself, the beauty of Navajo culture is easily seen by all who have the fortune to come into contact with them. Unlike Navajo culture, however, the Western world uses a very loose definition for “beauty” that typically revolves around physical traits: a beautiful girl usually looks a certain way, a beautiful voice usually sounds a certain way, and a beautiful painting usually looks a certain way. The Western world merely looks at physical beauty and from this vision has developed a formula for what is and what isn’t considered beautiful. To the Navajo People, beauty is a much deeper, more meaningful concept. As we have explored in class, the beauty way of life, hozho, rules the way that a Navajo person should act and interact in daily life. Hozho is not only physical but also mental, spiritual, and purposeful.
There were six main sub-tribes of Sioux Indians namely the Mdewakanton, Sisseton, Teton, Wahpekute, Yankton, and the Yanktonai tribe. The Sioux were hunters, farmers, and gatherers. Their main crops included corn, berries, and fruit, while their meat diet consisted of antelope, elk, turkey, and deer. After horses became available to the Sioux in the 16th century, buffalo became their main source of food as well as clothing.They were considered nomads because they never stayed in one place for an extended period of time. Most of the time, the Sioux relocations were solely due to the changing buffalo migration pattern. The teepees (cone shaped tents made from buffalo hides) were designed so that they could be pitched and disassembled easily for fast transportation. John Garraty, an American historian and biographer once described...
“Perhaps there is no other group in the world that has quite so diverse and rich culture as that of the Native Americans. With their gilded history that is rich in strife, struggle, and triumph, the Native American culture is indeed very colorful” (Bantwal). Native American culture is very diverse and it has a very colorful history. It is extremely diverse and in fact the term Native American is a broad term that is used to cover all Native tribes in America. Throughout history there has been conflict not only among the different tribes but also there was plenty of fighting against the white men. Much of the fighting between the Native Americans and the white men was due to misunderstandings, mistrust, and miscommunication. Many thousands of years ago “the nomadic ancestors of modern Native Americans who hiked over a “land bridge” from Asia to what is now Alaska” (History.com). Once they reached Alaska they slowly spread out across the continent of North America. They spread out and separated into different tribes who all have many of the same core ideas but the main thing that separates them is their location in the country. There are Indians from the plains, the pacific coast, the southwest, and the northeast and different locations also. One main idea that is pretty much the same for each tribe is the closeness and respect they show for the land they live on. The history of the Native Americans as a whole is pockmarked by conflict. The conflicts between the tribes were very common and happened because of land disputes or just because of the close proximity of the tribes. But when the white men entered the picture this is where miscommunication and mistrust came into play. The white men wanted the land that...
This is because photographers and writers make Indians resemble the Indian stereotype. A photographer in the 1900’s Edward Sheriff Curtis would take a box of paraphernalia to his photo shoots, like wigs, clothes, and backdrops in case he ran into an Indian who did not look the part Curtis would pay these Indians to change their hair or their outfit until they looked like an “Indian”(King, 34). I do not understand why Curtis would continue taking pictures of Indians in these stereotypical outfits, when he knew that they did not look that way; however Curtis was not the only one who created this stereotype. Karl May a writer, wrote a book on Indians, creating all these stereotypes, when in real life May had never even met an Indian. This seems strange that May would write a book validating this stereotype, when he himself had not even met an Indian in person. These stereotypes that were created by people like Curtis and May are unacceptable and as a student, I can help people understand the
In a traditional Western film the clothing for the hero is usually a white hat, (this is to show purity). The hero would also wear a brightly coloured shirt , a pair of jeans and cowboy boots with spurs on the back of them. The hero is also very clean and also normally tall and good looking. A traditional Western includes things like white settlers living in a town and a white hero fights white baddies and usually the hero wins. In a traditional western the Native Americans attack the towns where religious and peaceful people live. This makes the Native Americans look like bad people and the whites as good people.
Horses, Indians and Cowboys have been around for many of years. Imagine the West without horses- no swift ponies, cavalry steeds, or stagecoach teams. No spirit guides, wild mustangs, racers, or rodeo broncos. Actually Spanish conquistadors brought horses to North America as late as the mid-1500’s. Horse culture dominated the West until the arrival of trains and automobiles in the twentieth century. In the art of the West, the always popular horse is a timeless icon. Native Americans are also a favorite in western art. Often they have been portrayed as mythical figures- sometimes as primitive people living in an undisturbed wilderness, at other times