Native+American+Stereotypes

Native American Stereotypes
By: Carly Westerfield

When I began this project, I had very little knowledge of the Native American culture. I thought Native Americans were the people I remembered from my "Thanksgiving" books who wore feathers in their hair and paint on their faces. More than you know, stereotypes surround our world making us believe that so many of the things that we are told are actually true. There is every type of stereotype under the sun. The reason why so many people imagine Native Americans as the same people who are portrayed in the movies where they are wearing animal skins and are decorated with paints is because that is all they know of them. Very few people have taken the time to recognize what has happened to the Native American people. Allow me to point out a few stereotypes of Native Americans. Maybe back in the 1800s Native Americans would wear animal skins and feathers and beads all of the time, but that is not how it is anymore. They wear clothes, similar to thousands of Americans walking down the street in blue jeans and sweat shirts. Also, I have heard a lot of my classmates referring to Native Americans as people who live in tee-pees on land with cactuses and and wild animals. That is no longer true, and hasn't been for quite a while. Lots of Native Americans today live in small huts with their entire families or even smaller, in a trailer on a trailer park. People need to realize that things have changed, and lots of people need to stop assuming that Native Americans are people who live in tee-pees and have totem polls and are surrounded by wild animals and such because that is no longer true.



This is an image of a Native American on their horse a few hundred years ago, living with their family in a tee-pee. Below is a reservation today. Notice how things have changed?

[|Tee-Pee Image] [| Reservation]