Native American Culture Research Paper

After looking through the texts assigned for this unit as well as some popular discussions about how Native Americans are represented in the media, I believe that our views as a society as a whole have become more accepting and kind in the ways that we portray members of other ethnic groups including Native Americans. I think that we have come a long way from viewing Native Americans only as savages and that we are beginning to tap into the deeply spiritual nature that should be represented in the depiction of Native American cultures. I think that there is a lot more awareness in society now as far as how we view people of other cultures. However, we do tend to portray people how are currently threats to us in a more negative light than other

During slavery, both sides of the argument were portrayed in a very polarizing way. Moving forward into the 2oth century, we saw Germans as the bad guys in WWI and WWII. There was also a portion of our society that believed that African Americans were wrong during the Civil Rights Movement. During the Cold War, we thought the only good Russian was a dead Russian and more recently, we associated evil with Arab and Islamic states. However, just because the cultural group we fear changes doesn’t mean that as a society our views and stereotypes of those cultures change. I believe that is partially because of how certain cultural groups portrayed by Hollywood and other media sources. I also believe that Disney is on of the biggest criminals when it comes to using stereotyping ethnic groups and races in their

243) which basically states that Native Americans were of lesser thought processes than other ethnic groups or races. Today, we have proven that to false with various Native Americans being leaders in various groundbreaking endeavors and being successful in our current American culture. I think that it helps that in today’s mainstream American society that we are generally more accepting of people who are different than the ‘American standard’. However, that raises the question whether or not there should be a standard for what it means to be an American because if we really a so-called ‘melting pot’ then there should be an exact expectation of how a person should look or act or anything as long as they follow our laws. The traditional laws of course, more like common laws, which everyone should abide by. I think that we should take the time to focus on what those cultures actually are instead of relying on the media’s mass produced stereotypes to be the basis of our judgments of the people within those stereotypes and