The Integration of Native Americans Through the Prism of American Movies Essay

Introduction

When looking at the topic of Native American integration into society, the best way to define the word “integration” would be to resort to social groups and civilization in general. According to Schinkel, the process of integration represents a long-term procedure when cultural and socioeconomic elements of a developing society are shared by different social groups (4). Therefore, integration could also be connected to assimilation and further naturalization of people. The definition of “integration” can be perceived as a multitude of relations between unique units that tend to act collectively to protect the system and prevent its disruption (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Phillimore 180).

In a sense, integration could be linked to instability because of the groups that are continually integrated into a homogeneous society. The core idea of integration would be to make visible social structures, such as profession, family, or affiliated groups, and allocate certain functions to responsible individuals.

The Relevance of Integration for Native Americans

Integration is rather relevant for Native Americans because many native people are often forced to do something they are not supposed to in order to satisfy the requirements of non-native populations. For example, Lieutenant Pratt from the Carlisle boarding school believed that Natives should complete integration into white society in order to live better. To integrate the natives into the white society culture, boarding schools like the Carlisle were opened across the U.S. and Canada in the 19th Century. The concept of integration was created through the interface of boarding schools seeking to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Western culture by separating them from their communities.

The schools forced them to learn English and practice Christianity and trained them to work in a capitalist economy-usually as servants or farmers to help the white society. Teachers punished the children for speaking Native languages and subjected them to neglect, malnourishment, and solitary confinement, as well as other forms of physical and sexual abuse. Nearly 200 Native children died at Carlisle, often from a combination of malnourishment, sustained abuse, and diseases like tuberculosis and flu brought on by poor living conditions.

Thus, it was the integration that made Native Americans feel pain and perceive the allegedly positive deeds as genocide. The whole world should know about the atrocities that happened at the Indian boarding schools. The truth about human life loss and the lasting consequences of the schools must be uncovered. This kind of historical disturbance cannot remain covert because this attempt to wipe out Native identity, language, and culture continues to manifest itself in the disparities that native communities face, including trauma, cycles of violence, abuse, and psychological impacts. The process of integration turned out to be the definitive contributor to how Natives are seen and treated even nowadays.

There is still this mentality among some whites that Natives should be treated differently and controlled because they are seen as the “exotic antelope on the wall.” Hence, the key idea behind the concept of integration is to get Native Americans forced into the dominant white culture, where they must first be cleansed from their “savage nature.”

The Thesis

The first idea that has to be covered when dwelling on the dominant white culture and its impact on the alleged savage nature of Native Americans is the portrayal of Indians in The Vanishing American. For instance, Aleiss dwells on how the conditions across reservations were exceptionally different (471). The destruction was set up to affect the Indian community from within, as the primary task was to destroy their culture, and the ultimate mission would be to exterminate Native Americans. Similarly, there was a strong connection between integration and internalization in Smoke Signals, where Native Americans were outright objectified by white people. Rollins dwelled on how the humiliation of Indians has led to the development of a romanticized image of Native American struggles that could not be alleviated (216).

There is also a scene in Dancing with the Wolves that can be utilized to reinstate the existing stereotypes about Native Americans and their savagery. Closer to the end of the movie, Dunbar breaks down the sentiment that Indians are nothing but thieves and beggars (Baird 94). The main character chooses to believe that Native Americans are dedicated, family-oriented, and harmonious overall.

The theme of the complex relationship between white Americans and Indians is also covered in The Exiles. This movie takes a diametrically opposite approach to the narration and utilizes nonverbal communication to show how the main characters are not able to integrate into big city life (Schweninger 49). The ambiguity of the Native American dilemma cannot remain unnoticed because of the expectations being undermined by the majority of Indian characters being placed between good and evil. In Atanarjuat, for example, cultural taboos are broken, but it helps the community heal (Raheja 209).

The story of the main character in this movie represents a sequence of unique narrative decisions that make even socially unacceptable deeds look good. With this information in mind, integration cannot be considered a positive add-on to the existence of the Indian community in America.

Conclusion

One particular issue that has to be noted when dwelling on the importance of the integration of Native Americans is the increasing focus on the enemy image that has contributed to the destruction of the actual Native identity. This idea hardly connects to any of the bibliography entries described above because of the subjectivity of victimization and its consequences. The sacrifice and internalization cannot be compared when it comes to movies and actual stories from Native Americans because the persecutor’s perspective is the only vantage point available to American filmmakers. Accordingly, further stereotypization of Native Americans becomes a questionable task due to the lack of neutral points in the narration. This is where the enemy image becomes exceptionally strong and takes over everything else. Reconciliation and understanding cannot be achieved because they are not driven by historical experiences.

The two extremes will have to be investigated further. Researchers have to gain a better understanding of how misrepresentation might have let Americans down even more than Native Americans, despite the displacement of the latter. An all-inclusive society represents a utopian concept that is most likely to remain unachievable regardless of how hard people are going to try to bypass the disintegration of Native American culture.

Therefore, the new image of Native Americans might be constructed on the basis of notions that gray morality performs significantly better than any other image produced by American filmmakers. The movie industry went too far trying to popularize Native Americans while drawing the only line between Indians and cowboys, with nothing in between. This is where the problem of proving one’s Indianness is going to play an important role since authentic Americanness might be just as hard to define.

Works Cited

Aleiss, Angela. “The Vanishing American: Hollywood’s Compromise to Indian Reform.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 25, no. 3, 1991, pp. 467-472.

Baird, Robert. ““Going Indian” Through Dances with Wolves.” Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, 1993, pp. 91-102.

Grzymala-Kazlowska, Aleksandra, and Jenny Phillimore. “Introduction: Rethinking Integration. New Perspectives on Adaptation and Settlement in the Era of Super-Diversity.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 44, no. 2, 2018, pp. 179-196.

Raheja, Michelle H. Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film. University of Nebraska Press, 2011.

Rollins, Peter, ed. Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film. University Press of Kentucky, 2011.

Schinkel, Willem. “Against ‘Immigrant Integration’: For an End to Neocolonial Knowledge Production.” Comparative Migration Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, 2018, pp. 1-17.

Schweninger, Lee. Imagic Moments: Indigenous North American Film. University of Georgia Press, 2013.