Stereotypes Of Native Americans In The United States

Native Americans have experienced a “historical trauma” that is characterized by enduring a history of institutional racism and discrimination by the dominant culture in America (Hays & Erford, 2014). Even today, Native Americans are being forced to assimilate or abandon their rich cultural heritage through the policies of our nation. With these ongoing discriminatory actions, counselors have a unique opportunity to lessen the effects of racism and discrimination that impact Native Americans. According to the ACA Code of Ethics (2014), counselors have the ethical responsibility to advocate for people who are faced by systemic oppression and discrimination. In our text, Hays and Erford (2014) suggest facilitating opportunities to advocate for Native people by raising social awareness by educating the masses through writing articles, disseminating educational materials, and even facilitating cultural sensitivity training programs in the community. Counselors may even empower Native people to advocate for themselves, drawing from the strengths of the community.

Another issue is how Native Americans internalize the stereotypes that are forced upon them. In a study conducted by Fryberg, Markus, Oyserman, and Stone (2008), they found three common stereotypes of Native Americans in mass media: Spiritual people who are in tune with nature, warriors, or people with stereotypically bad outcomes, such as alcoholism. It is important to note that not all of these stereotypes are negative, and in fact a few of them are positive. What Fryberg et al. (2008) found, however, was that regardless if the stereotype was seen as positive or negative, all three of those variations caused harm in the form of “students’ feelings of personal and community worth, and achievement-related possible selves” (p. 216). It did

Native Americans acculturate on different levels, from non-English speaking and traditional to fully immersed into the United States norms (Hays and Erford, 2014). Like Asian Americans, Native Americans also value to mind-body, harmony, and balance spiritual beliefs (Hays and Erford, 2014). Moreover, Native Americans show respect to their Native elders, not unlike the Asian’s familial respect for the elderly family members (Hays and Erford, 2014). In my opinion, one way to reach Native Americans is in the form of elementary school outreach directed at Native American children. A counselor could discover a resource they need and help the family attain help. Even though Native Americans may distrust the Caucasian race, with purposeful, genuine caring and the desire to help cannot be overlooked.

Many races are unjustly victimized, but Native American cultures are more misunderstood and degraded than any other race. College and high school mascots sometimes depict images of Native Americans and have names loosely based on Native American descent, but these are often not based on actual Native American history, so instead of honoring Native Americans, they are being ridiculed. According to the article Warriors Survive Attack, by Cathy Murillo (2009) some “members of the Carpentaria community defended Native American mascot icons as honoring Chumash tradition and the spirit of American Indian Warriors in U.S. history and others claimed that the images were racist stereotypes” (Murillo, 2009). If people do not attempt to understand

For many Native Americans, there is an insightful feeling of being disregarded within our American society. While being ignored, Native Americans are expected to comply to the stereotypes and misunderstandings of what we know as Indians. If you were to speak with a person who was “Native American” they would culturally identify themselves as a part of their national tribe such as Apache, or Cherokee. In modern times, Native Americans are only discussed in their pre-1900 existence. Throughout schools nationwide, students learn about Native Americans twice yearly, (one lesson around Columbus Day and another lesson around Thanksgiving). In the essay “All Indians Are Dead?” Sarah Shear states, “Students are graduating from high school without even basic knowledge of contemporary Native challenges

Uses of icons, symbols, and illustrations of Native Americans have changed ever since Europeans have made contact with the new world. Between various types of media such as art and eventually theater, film, and other forms of entertainment, depictions of Native Americans in the U.S. have seen an evolution over many centuries. Past the beginning of the 20th century, illustrations of Native Americans have seen an evolution in behavior, becoming more culturally aware and sensitive throughout multiple forms of media, but while some depictions may still harbor offensive and insensitive depictions, there are still some forms of popular culture that have either changed their use of Native American illustrations or have become more aware of their motives.

Before I joined this class I didn’t know much of anything about Native Americans except the stereotypes that were shown on television whether they were positive or negative like all Native Americans live on a reservation, all Native Americans are drunks, and all Native Americans are spiritual.

Native Americans are often identified as people who wear headdresses, have long hair, high cheekbones, red skin, ride horses, and kill buffalo. Most people don’t really care about how this affects Natives because they either don’t personally know any or they’re just insensitive towards these people. I find that the most damaging views on Native Americans is the way Hollywood and media has portrayed these people to be. In fact, they aren’t even portrayed as normal, functioning human beings; they are dehumanized and humiliated due to being viewed as alcoholics, addicts, uneducated, and illiterate. White America has put most other races into a box that consists of stereotypes and hurtful assumptions of those people. Being that the United States

For over thirty years, schools and national sports teams have used Native American names as their mascots, nicknames, and logos. There has been a lot of controversy over it since the 1940’s. According to the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, there are two conflicting viewpoints; ¨keeping this imagery honors Native American people, supports nostalgic feelings, and saves funding.¨ On the other hand, ¨keeping this imagery is offensive and degrading because it is sacred to Native American people, and perpetuates negative stereotypes.¨ Those who are for Native American names say that they are ¨complementary,¨ and that they are not meant to be hurtful. Those who are against it say that statistics show that it promotes a negative self- esteem.

Duran’s book offers  clinical experience to provide guidance to counselors working with the native people. By taking theory into actual day-to-day practices Duran presents us with information on effective strategies to prevent problems like substance abuse, intergenerational trauma, and internalized oppression. The book has multiple cases from Duran’s research of those who are traumatized due to a historical event. I found this book very helpful in my research because it gives me insight on the cause of trauma due to our western views. The book is written by a psychologist with a PHD which makes this information accurate. The purpose of this book is to teach psychology students and new counselors to treat Native Americans better because they

In fact, myths and stereotypes always exist among different races. In my opinion, these myths and stereotypes are formed by the culture differences, and our ignorance. People have conceived a lot of negative ideas about American Indians that they are mystical environmentalists or uneducated. Actually, this is a process of awareness. First, through movies, cartoon, people imagine about how the American Indians are. However, the director and producer of those movies just focus on making money through movies, so they build the appearance of the Native American in a unique way to attract audiences. In addition, the movies are belong to Non-Indians, so Non-Indians are always nice, helpful and friendly in stories. In the opposite side, American Indians

But because of a race based judicial system the vast majority of these women never see their abusers or rapists brought to justice. laws have stripped Indian nations of all criminal authority over non-Indians. As a result, Indian nations are unable to prosecute non-Indians. Children on these reservations also face a great struggle with violence and neglect. “Today, a vast majority of American Indian and Alaska Native children live in communities with alarmingly high rates of poverty, homelessness, drug abuse, alcoholism, suicide, and victimization.”(Culp-Ressler, 1). Being in a content state of fear and depression takes a very strong toll on the youth of these reservations. These children are almost told that by simply being born they lose at life and are guaranteed to end up in jail , a homeless drunk or dead. Another relatively new threat to the youth of Native American youth is gang violence. Though it’s a relative new issue it a very fast growing issue. The reservation in pine ridge South Dakota reported having 39 Gangs in

My knowledge of Native Americans culture stems from my parent’s teachings about the topic. When I was young my mother went on multiple mission trips to the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. My mother came back with stories and cultural details unbeknownst to most of citizens I interact with today, one particular story described kids in the tribe that had no shoes and walked around bare foot constantly. I was appalled by this as a child and decided I too would go without shoes, this didn’t last long but this book helped me understand and provide context for my early childhood lessons about Native America culture. In the book the narrator, Junior, reminded me of the lack of health options for the reservations. Often times reservations are idiotically far away from real health care providers that have modern equipment and a surplus of the most up to date medications. This probably accounted for why it was so dangerous to do Junior’s surgery when he was a child. Later my mother explained how bad alcohol addiction was on the reservation, at the time my aunt was going through withdrawn from alcoholism. I couldn’t imagine a population of people who a majority of the people in it have an addiction to alcohol.

The Lakota Indians are a tribal Native America group that resides in the northern part of the United States. Although a large number of Indians have immersed themselves into American culture, several tribal groups carry out their daily affairs on Indian reservations. The Lakota Indian 's primary location is in South Dakota and North Dakota. Native American’s have been victims of historical trauma, sometimes referred to as multi-generational trauma. There is a sense of powerlessness and hopelessness associated with historical trauma that contributes to high rates of alcoholism, substance abuse, suicide, and other health issues (Birchfield, 2000). The Lakota Sioux is one such group that has suffered greatly due to trauma. Lakota people are marginalized and stereotyped and live in poverty because

The decisions that the united states made affected other countries by not allowing visitors from other countries or by keeping an eye out for stereotyped people already in the country, even if they’re innocent. I think that everybody goes off of stereotypical belief that all iraqian are terrorists. Terrorists are using an ultimate weapon that all humans have within themselves; fear. Terrorist want to use fear to control us; to turn ourselves against each other. Yet if we do let the stereotypes down, a handful of terrorists might be able to sneak into our country to