Native Americans in the Movies: Portrayals from Silent Films to the Present MichaelHilger. Rowman and Littlefield, 2016.

Abstract

in the Movies: Portrayals from Silent Films to the Present Michael Hilger. Rowman and Littlefield, 2016.It has been frustrating over the past thirty-five years, answering and re-answering the same questions regarding American Indians and the American Indian experience from students ranging in age from six to forty-five. Do Indians live in tipis? Why are Indians so mystical? What is in that 'peacepipe' they smoke? What's so bad about the 'Redskins' and other Indian mascots? And so on, ad nauseam. The age group really does not matter; I get the same litany of questions. Mindful of my promise to myself and to my American Indian friends to remain patient and to avoid overly sarcastic responses, I answer the mind-numbing questions with measured language delivered in sincerity-dipped tones. When I have asked non-Indian students what they think of American Indians, the sixyear-olds respond, They are mean! and the older students say, They love nature. So, through all we have been through as pluralistic and multicultural nation, it is not stretch to conclude that with regard to American Indians and their American experience, non-Indians remain, as group, pretty clueless. To what can we attribute this condition? We can blame school curricula that omit and distort the American Indian experience, and we can blame schoolteachers, prekindergartenthrough graduate school levels, who seldom speak of American Indians in the present tense. We can blame museum curators and scientists whose fascination with American Indian bones (just the bones) seems boundless. We can blame governmental policymakers who patronize in repetitive cycles, deciding whether to American Indians or to allow American Indians to help themselves. To the extent that the Bureau of Indian Affairs and tribal governments are run by American Indians, we can blame American Indians themselves. Throughout my academic career, I have focused my attention on television and movie portrayals of American Indians for their complicit roles. As father, I grew frustrated during my kids' most impressionable years with having to explain Disney's (and other cartoonists') racist portrayals of American Indians. And I am not alone in this frustration with Hollywood. Over the years, researchers have detailed how films, television shows, and images in popular culture propagate and perpetuate this collective ignorance. From Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr.'s seminal 1978 The White Man's Indian to Michael Ray FitzGerald's 2014 on Network TV, steady stream of studies analyzes this phenomenon from multiple angles-photographic images, images in popular culture (TV, film, advertisements, etc.), and school textbook treatment of the American Indian experience.To this flood of evidence, we can now add Michael Hilger's in the Movies: Portrayals from Silent Films to the Present. Hilger divides this very enlightening and useful study into two parts-a ninety-one-page critical examination of film portrayals of American Indians/First peoples and 337page encyclopedic listing, arranged alphabetically, a new canon of most sound films [and television films] and solid representation of silent films (and the rare animated short) in which and First characters play significant role (93). This listing is subdivided further in three appendices -Films by Nation (seventy-one different Nations/ Tribes listed), Image Portrayals of Americans (e.g., attack on fort, homosexuality, Native American activist, romance between mixed-blood American man and white woman, vengeance, etc.), and television films.The essence of Hilger's critical examination of cinematic portrayals of is reiteration of the well-documented dichotomous depiction of American Indians in films as either the Savage Savages or the Noble Savages. As Hilger succinctly states, With only minor variations. …