Reel Injuns

        In class we watched the film 'Reel Injuns'.  I thought it was a really great documentary that made me think about a lot of the movies and especially the cartoons that I watched as a child.  With my parents being amateur cinephiles I had seen almost every single western that the film mentioned however it had never occurred to me to question or really think about the image of American Indians that those films were portraying.  Somewhere in my mind I hadn't thought of them as the same people of Indian descent that I had seen and met.  I guess I had just always pictured those images of Indians as ancient people who no longer lived in this world.  Growing up in Michigan (and later just visiting every summer) my family lived very close to a Chippewa reservation.  I had met many American Indian people and never really realized that these were the people who were being portrayed on TV and films.  However, I never visited the reservation, that I remember, to fully appreciate and view their current culture and what they were doing to keep their own identity.
        When the film brought up Pocahontas I did a little bit of self-assessment on the extent of my knowledge on the subject.  As a little girl she was easily my second favorite Disney princess (second only to the little mermaid).  However, just like the Indians in the western movies I never pictured her as a real person, someone who actually lived and breathed.  I never learned much about her, if anything at all other than the legend, in my history classes as a kid.  So I set out to get an idea of who Pocahontas really was.  For those of you who are like me and are somewhat ignorant on Pocahontas, or Matoaka (her real name), here are a few helpful links.  The first one is an article written by Chief Roy Crazy Horse of the Powhatan people that clears up some of the factual errors.  The second is a book that many of the websites I visited cited as a factual piece of literature that attempts to look at the history under the Disney myth.

http://www.powhatan.org/pocc.html

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3JA3LIHJE41UW/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R3JA3LIHJE41UW



As a final thought; In class when we were talking about how many of the American Indian people have a good sense of humor I couldn't help thinking of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpGfyp6MxkM