COMS 3109 Lecture 11: Nation Building/Salvage Ethnography
15 Jan 2019
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Document Summary
Putting the indigenous kids in school where they forget about their native culture and take on the american culture. Assumption that native cultures and people were desrined to extinction. The industrialization era left indigenous peoples longing for simpler times. Diverse people depicted as homogeneous and fixed in the past. Noble savage vs. ignoble savage (berkhofer, 1979) Noble being the positive type, ignoble being the negative. Noble: spiritual, connected to nature, brave, stoic, friend to the white man. Cultural appropriation of the indigenous was very popular in movies. The audience for this stuff is mainly white women. Had white people playing roles of indigenous people. Had indigenous women being with white men over indigenous men. Overall, indigenous people were heavily used for marketing. These representations affect the self image young indigeous children. They tell us more about those creating the images than those being represented. Platform from which people can communicate ideas is limited and homogeneous.
