Despite its historical inaccuracies, a 1914 Moving Picture World advertisement claims, It can be therefore considered a propaganda film, with the goal of rationalizing the government's actions.
This film depicted the massacre as a battle it was directed by the War Department and approved by the United States government. Army soldiers killed over 250 Lakota Indians, including men, women, and children, and buried them in a mass grave. In 1914, Buffalo Bill directed The Indian War Refought: The Wars for Civilization in America which romanticized multiple battles including the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, wherein U.S. Griffith would later become infamous for his creation of The Birth of a Nation, a racist propaganda film that portrayed the KKK as heroic. The Massacre romanticized Custer's roles in the Indian Wars, with recurring scenes of white mother struggling to protect her infant, while a Native American mother is killed and collapses offscreen. Griffith released A Pueblo Legend and The Massacre, which both failed to show Native Americans in a positive light. Deer, an actor, writer, and director, was involved in the production of over 150 movies, an example being White Fawn's Devotion: A Play Acted by a Tribe of Red Indians in America. Ĭirca 1910, Nanticoke film director James Young Deer was hired by Pathé to produce accurate Native American silent films with positive portrayals. The film featured a sympathetic depiction of Native American characters however, critics describe their portrayal as a "helpless Indian race.forced to recede before the advancing white." Similar depictions included The Indian Runner's Romance (1909) and The Red Man's View (1909).īy 1910, one-fifth of American films were Westerns. Griffith released The Red Man and the Child. James Young Deer was a Nanticoke (Native American) film director involved in over 150 Native-themed silent films. Some Native actors chose to portray the shows' chiefs as belligerent, while others portrayed their roles with humble dignity - possibly creating the bloodthirsty savage & noble Indian dichotomy, or "double stereotype." Silent film era In his 1917 novel, Cody identified himself as an "Indian fighter," and his wild west shows led to widespread misrepresentation of Native Americans, despite involvement with Native American actors. In 1912, Buffalo Bill Cody produced a three-minute silent film titled The Life of Buffalo Bill, starring himself. These stage performances toured America and Europe, presenting romanticized fiction about the American frontier which some audiences misunderstood as history. įrom the 1870s to the 1910s, Wild West shows such as Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show popularized conflict between cowboys and Indians.
4 Whitewashing of Native American charactersĬirca the 1860s, stories involving heroic Indian figures were proliferated in dime novels.2.1 Revisionist Westerns featuring Native characters.Raheja as "a way of reimagining Native-centered articulations of self-representation and autonomy that engage the powerful ideologies of mass media," to take back the right to tell their own stories. Contemporary Native filmmakers have employed the use of visual sovereignty, defined by Seneca scholar Michelle H. Starting in the 1990s, Native American filmmakers have attempted to make independent films that work to represent the depth and complexity of indigenous peoples as people and provide a realistic account of their culture. In 1950, the watershed film Broken Arrow appeared that many credit as the first postwar Western to depict Native Americans sympathetically. A variety of images appeared from the early to mid 1930s, and by the late 1930s negative images briefly dominated Westerns. The portrayal of Native Americans in film has been criticized for perceived systemic problems since the inception of the industry for its use of stereotypes that range from violent barbarians to noble and peaceful savages. Especially in the Western genre, Native American stock characters can reflect contemporary and historical perceptions of Native Americans and the Wild West. The portrayal of Native Americans in television and films concerns Indigenous roles in cinema, particularly their depiction in Hollywood productions. The War Bonnet (1914) starring Mona Darkfeather, who was not Native American.
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