page_title: Contemporary Native American issues in the United States
section_title: Historical depictions in art
hierarchical_section_title: Contemporary Native American issues in the United States / Societal discrimination and racism / Historical depictions in art
caption_attribution_description: English: Dancing Secotan Indians in North Carolina. Watercolour painted by John White in 1585. Deutsch: Tanz der Secotan-Indianer in North Carolina. Aquarell von John White aus dem Jahr 1585.
context_page_description: Contemporary Native American issues in the United States are issues arising in the late 20th century and early 21st century which affect Native Americans in the United States. Many issues stem from the subjugation of Native Americans in society, including societal discrimination, racism, cultural appropriation through sports mascots, and depictions in art. Native Americans have also been subject to substantial historical and intergenerational trauma that have resulted in significant public health issues like alcoholism and risk of suicide.
context_section_description: A number of 19th and 20th-century United States and Canadian painters, often motivated by a desire to document and preserve Native culture, specialized in Native American subjects. Among the most prominent of these were Elbridge Ayer Burbank, George Catlin, Seth Eastman, Paul Kane, W. Langdon Kihn, Charles Bird King, Joseph Henry Sharp and John Mix Stanley. While many 19th-century images of Native Americans conveyed negative and unrepresentative messages, artists such as Charles Bird King portrayed Native American delegates with accuracy. His paintings are often used as records for Native American formal dress and customs. During the 16th century, the artist John White made watercolors and engravings of the people native to the southeastern states. John White's images were, for the most part, faithful likenesses of the people he observed. However, some like artist Theodore de Bry used White's original watercolors to alter the poses and features of White's figures to make them appear more European. 
  There are also many depictions of Native Americans on federal buildings, statues, and memorials. During the construction of the Capitol building in the early 19th century, the U.S. government commissioned a series of four relief panels to crown the doorway of the Rotunda. The reliefs encapsulate a vision of European—Native American relations that had assumed mythic historical proportions by the 19th century. The four panels depict: The Preservation of Captain Smith by Pocahontas (1825) by Antonio Capellano, The Landing of the Pilgrims (1825) and The Conflict of Daniel Boone and the Indians (1826–27) by Enrico Causici and William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians (1827) by Nicholas Gevelot. The reliefs by European sculptors present versions of the Europeans and the Native Americans, in which the Europeans appear refined and the natives appear ferocious.
  In the 20th century, early portrayals of Native Americans in movies and television roles were first performed by European Americans dressed in mock traditional attire. Examples included The Last of the Mohicans (1920), Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans (1957), and F Troop (1965–67). In later decades, Native American actors such as Jay Silverheels in The Lone Ranger television series (1949–57) came to prominence. Roles of Native Americans were limited and not reflective of Native American culture. For years, Native people on U.S. television were relegated to secondary, subordinate roles relative to the white protagonists as shown in notable works like Cheyenne (1957–1963) and Law of the Plainsman (1959–1963).
  By the 1970s some Native American film roles began to show more complexity, such as those in Little Big Man (1970), Billy Jack (1971), and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) which depicted Native Americans in important lead and supporting roles.  Regardless, the European narrative perspective was prioritized in popular media. The "sympathetic" yet contradictory film Dances With Wolves (1990) intentionally, according to Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, related the Lakota story through a Euro-American voice for wider impact among a general audience. Like the 1992 remake of The Last of the Mohicans and Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Dances with Wolves employed a number of Native American actors, and made an effort to portray Indigenous languages. Many film scholars and Native Americans still criticize films like Dances with Wolves for its 'white savior' narrative that asserts European-Americans are the necessary saviors of people of color like Native Americans.
  Many documentaries have been created partly in response to unbalanced coverage of Native American perspectives in history and partly to educate the public about the shared history of conflict between Native Americans and European colonizers. In 2004 producer Guy Perrotta presented the film Mystic Voices: The Story of the Pequot War (2004), a television documentary on the first major war between colonists and Native peoples in the Americas. The documentary portrayed the conflict as a struggle between different value systems,
caption: Secotan Indians' dance in North Carolina, watercolor by John White, 1585
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