Native Americans: How We Have Adopted Their Culture & Changed it to Fit Our Society
By: Liz Suski
Tags: Cultural Appropriation

Native Americans: How We Have Adopted Their Culture & Changed it to Fit Our Society Liz Suski Follow May 6 · 6 min read

cul·tur·al ap·pro·pri·a·tion

The unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices & ideas etc., of one people or society by members of another & typically more dominant people/society.

You’ve no doubt seen cultural appropriation. It may be in your everyday life and you might not even recognize it or it may just be something that you’re used to at this point. It appears every now and then when your children beg you to watch Pocahontas with them; or when your significant other wants to watch westerns like The Ridiculous Six. It may even appear when you least expect it; like in the 2012 Victoria’s Secret fashion show, as pictured on the right.

Crumb, Natalie. 2017.

Cultural Appropriation, as defined above, is one unfortunate thing (among many others) that we (as a society that’s supposed to welcome all cultures) have created with our white supremacy. We’ve done this with multiple groups in our society, yet one of the more devastating ones to exist is the appropriation of the American Indians’ culture.

This has been going on for, well, since Christopher Columbus came from Italy on his boat and discovered America. And until we decide to not only love ourselves but others, this appropriation will never disappear. Cultural Appropriation exists because we don’t love the people we share our continent with, and it will continue to exist until we change.

Disney’s Pocahontas: A Poor Representation?

Disney’s Pocahontas was released in 1995 and shows a fictionalized account of the real Pocahontas. She was married off at a very young age and then found by John Smith. He, too, was real, but the actual Pocahontas was just a child when she met him and when she was kidnapped and taken to England where she was forced to assimilate to their culture. Her name was changed to Rebecca and then she was paraded around for years before she finally succumbed to a disease.

Disney doesn’t show us this. Instead, they give us a carefree and happy version that focuses more on the invented romance of the whole story. This paints a joyful picture of one of the worst events in our history.

Chris Bodenner wrote an article for The Atlantic on Pocahontas on June 30, 2015, considering whether the film does more harm than good. His piece includes many different perspectives that give insight into the movie and American Indians, including perspectives from Indians themselves. There’s one by Kenzie Allen, a descendant of the Oneida Tribe, that really hits the mark on the appropriation:

It’s this question that Allen raises that makes you think. Disney is infamously known to change the stories of the princesses to make them more wholesome and family-friendly, making them less accurate to the original Grimm tales. If Disney isn’t going to be accurate, they should at least be socially responsible. But why be responsible when you can make money?

The National Museum: An Excellent Resource

The National Museum of the American Indian was built in 1989, six years before Pocahontas came out. The statement on their website explains the mission: “A diverse and multifaceted cultural and educational enterprise, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is an active and visible component of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum complex. The NMAI cares for one of the world’s most expansive collections of Native artifacts, including objects, photographs, archives, and media covering the entire Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego”(National).

“Since the passage of its enabling legislation in 1989 (amended in 1996), the NMAI has been steadfastly committed to bringing Native voices to what the museum writes and presents, whether on-site at one of the three NMAI venues, through the museum’s publications, or via the Internet. The NMAI is also dedicated to acting as a resource for the hemisphere’s Native communities and to serving the greater public as an honest and thoughtful conduit to Native cultures — present and past — in all their richness, depth, and diversity.”(National)

The museum works with Native communities to make sure that they have all the right information about their tribe and culture. It’s like a breath of fresh air — it’s not every day that you see something like this. The museum continues to educate and inform the general public, all the while showing us what Native culture and history look like, without whitewashing or using ridiculous costumes to show us.

Here is the link to the museum: https://americanindian.si.edu/

Literature & Change: Tommy Orange, There There

There, There was published by an American Indian writer, Tommy Orange in 2018. Orange is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Unlike Pocahontas, the novel was written by a Native person and it also focuses more on the aspects of Native culture that are ignored by popular media. By the novel becoming popular it expanded these viewpoints that are usually not seen by others. It takes place in Oakland, California and according to Orange, you never see this locale represented in movies or shows. For Orange, it’s not about cultural appropriation but cultural representation. “In popular media, you often see one version of what native people are and its history and its reservation and I just know a more dynamic world and so I just wanted to represent where I come from and that’s Oakland,” said Orange in an interview in 2018 at the Miami Book Fair.

Orange, Tommy. There There. 2018.

The novel focuses on urbanity and how the Natives of Oakland are living in a city and not the usual mountains or forests that their ancestors lived in. Because of this, they aren’t seen as ‘real’ natives to our society, when in fact they are. In the prologue of the book, he states, “Plenty of us are urban now. If not because we live in cities, then because we live on the internet. Inside the high-rise of multiple browser windows. They used to call us sidewalk Indians. Called us citified, superficial, inauthentic, cultureless refugees, apples. An apple is red on the outside and white on the inside. But what we are is what our ancestors did. How they survived” (Orange 10).

According to Orange, being Indian has never been about returning to the land. “The land is everywhere.”

Cultural Appropriation: What Now?

It’s been approximately thirty-one years since the museum was built, twenty-five since Pocahontas was created, and about two years since the novel came out. During this time period other contemporary Native authors, filmmakers, and musicians began to make their mark on our world. Some of these authors are David Treuer who wrote the recent book, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present, Toni Jensen, Eddie Chuculate and Daniel H. Wilson (Wurth). A few filmmakers are Chris Eyre, Shirley Cheechoo, Georgina Lightning, and Rodrick Pocowatchit, who released a movie in 2019 called, The Incredible Brown NDN. And lastly, but certainly not least, are a few Native musicians: Pura Fe, Marvin Rainwater, Chuck Billy, and even Jimi Hendrix.

The cultural appropriation will continue to exist because of movies like Pocahontas, but hopefully, as time goes on, it will start to disappear as we begin to visit the National Museum of the American Indian (whether it’s in person or on the web) and as more American Indian authors like Orange begin to speak up for the history and culture.

Works Cited

Bodenner, Chris. “Does Disney’s Pocahontas Do More Harm Than Good?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 30 June 2015, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/06/pocahontas-feminism/397190/

Johnson, Nicholas Garcia. “Busting Stereotypes: Appropriation of the Native American Image.” Public Anthropology, 8 Feb. 2018, scholarblogs.emory.edu/publicanthro/2017/11/25/busting-stereotypes-appropriation-of-the-native-american-image/.

“National Museum of the American Indian.” Home Page | National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian, americanindian.si.edu/.

Orange, Tommy. There There. Vintage Books, 2018.

PBS Books, director. Tommy Orange on “There, There” at the 2018 Miami Book Fair. Youtube, 17 Nov. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFc7nREWy34&feature=youtu.be.

Wurth, Erika T. “14 Contemporary Books By Native American Writers To Get Excited About.” BuzzFeed News, BuzzFeed News, 27 Jan. 2020, www.buzzfeednews.com/article/erikawurth/native-american-novels-tommy-orange-there-there.

Young, Brian, and Zócalo Public Square. “Film: The Reality of Native Americans in Hollywood.” Time, Time, 11 June 2015, time.com/3916680/native-american-hollywood-film/.

Images Works Cited

Cromb, Natalie. “Karlie Kloss Wearing a Native Headdress.” NITV, SBS, 20 Oct. 2017, www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2017/10/20/appreciation-spiritual-connection-nope-you-are-not-entitled-appropriate-our-1.

Orange, Tommy. “There, There.” Amazon.com, www.amazon.com/There-novel-Tommy-Orange/dp/0525520376.