American Indian Culture and Research Journal

After seeing Disney’s Pocahontas, every kid wants to be John Smith. —Television commercial for Burger King’s Pocahontas Kids Meal The last three decades of the twentieth century have seen a resurgence of films with Native American themes. In addition to a growth in the number of such films, there has been a qualitative difference: the new generation of films has attempted to counteract previous stereotypes, to accurately portray the history and culture of Native groups, and to be sympathetic to the political claims of Native Americans. There has been a concomitant effort to include Native Americans on every level of production, not only as actors, but also as screenwriters, directors, and historical consultants. Films that favor Native Americans to some degree have existed from The True Heart of an Indian (1909) to Broken Arrow (1950). By the late 1980s, however, almost any film about Native Americans had to pay at least lip service to these concerns. This trend has been recognized and referred to as “sympathetic” or “progressive” Indian films. Be this as it may, even many of these “progressive” films depict Indian culture primarily through the experience of a white (and usually male) protagonist. The white mediator fills a range of functions, which progress chronologically as the concerns of the larger white American society shift. This progression involves a debate on the white conquest of Native America, first affirming and celebrating it, and then critiquing it. The subjects and concerns of these films then shift from the actions of society as a whole, to the role of an individual white in either accepting or rejecting his place in this conquest. The concern with collective responsibility will be abandoned, as the repercussions of this responsibility would indict American society as a whole. Instead, the actions of a single white protagonist, often an outcast from society, provide the audience with a vicarious reprieve.