Globalization has pushed the contemporary world to recognize better cultural groups previously underrepresented in the media. As a result, more cultural groups are now known to the global community, and there are bigger opportunities for them to be seen or heard in various forms of media. Native Americans, in particular, have risen to mainstream recognition because they are now visible in the media. However, while this is a progressive step towards their continuous efforts at reclaiming cultural respect, there is still much work to do to ensure that they are accurately represented in the media. Among many other ethnic and cultural groups in the United States, Native Americans are one of the most misrepresented groups of people because they are negatively affected by the deeply ingrained stereotypes and prejudices assigned to them by the dominant Caucasian society. Scrutinizing such misrepresentations is critical because Native American cultures are diverse (as various Native nations cultivate them), nuanced in various ways, and so much different from the stereotypes chained to their identities throughout American history. Being aware of the media’s misrepresentations of Native Americans from past to present helps other non-Natives to be continuously aware of how to recognize Native American cultures properly.

Native Americans have been negatively depicted in the media since the era of European colonization. Common forms of media in Europe during the 16th to 19th century, such as visual art and literature, almost always portrayed Native people as “savages” and “uncivilized.” One notable example is the 17th to 19th-century narratives of non-Natives who were previously captured and held as prisoners by Native people. Their stories were a popular sensation in Europe and America because of how they detailed their practices as violent and savage (Hirschfelder and Molin). In this literature, Native Americans are dehumanized as their actions are interpreted negatively by Euro-Americans who perceive themselves as the defenseless and civilized ones while blatantly ignoring the fact that they are the aggressors towards the Natives as they invaded their territories and claimed arbitrary ownership of their resources.

The misrepresentation of Native Americans was not limited to literary works, as their identities were also either romantically depicted as violent-hungry creatures or as the source of organic and mystical powers. A contrasting pair of examples are Jaques LeMoyne’s drawing of an Indian scalping practice in 1565 (Hirschfelder and Molin) and the 1880 soap product called “Chief Soap” (California Secretary of State’s Office). LeMoyne’s drawing emphasized the violence of the Native people’s scalping practice without including an accurate and respectful context as to why they did so. Meanwhile, Chief Soap utilized the Native American stereotype of being “pure” and “natural” as a marketing strategy. Such early examples of cultural stereotyping towards Native people, in general, paved the way for further misrepresentations towards them in later years because it set up their identities as less equal to the dominant Caucasian society.

When other forms of media, such as radio and television, emerged and developed in America, Native Americans continued to be subjected to stereotyping. While the virulent efforts of the American government and society to physically eradicate Native Americans from their respective territories continued to exist, the media contributed to this extermination process by increasing the negative representation of Native Americans in the newly developed entertainment industry. An example is the Wild West shows and films that emerged from the 1880s to the 1920s, during which Native Americans participated in Buffalo Bill Cody’s live shows as performers. In these shows, “Native performers would either play the defeated enemy or, with Sitting Bull and other Indian leaders, a more dignified and romanticized Indian figure” (Berny 2). Such roles perpetuated the dual stereotype of the violent savage and noble Indian at the same time. Additionally, these shows not only humiliated Native American individuals by being reduced to mere “performers” of their cultural heritage for the non-Natives’ fascination, but their culture was also commodified by non-Natives who paid to be entertained by their cultural practices.

With the onset of the film and television media, the Native American identity also continued to be stereotyped into the same dichotomy. Early Western films either depicted Native Americans as warmongers who violently massacred white settlers for unfound vengeance, or they were portrayed as a helpless race that needed a white savior. Under the bloodthirsty savage trope, historical events like the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre were romantically represented in films like Theodore Wharton’s The Indian War Refought: The Wars for Civilization in America as a battle wherein the white American soldiers are portrayed as heroes while the Natives are villains deserving their demise (Berny 2). On the other hand, other films like James Young Deer’s The Red Girl and The Child portrayed Native Americans under the noble Indian trope by making them allies of white settlers. For non-Natives, this “Native ally” identity was the only acceptable identity of Native Americans because they were not vicious towards white settlers, nor were they helplessly dependent on the white Americans for their sense of self. Nevertheless, these portrayals were still negatively impacting Native Americans because they were greatly misrepresented again in the media.

More modern films also continuously exploited Native American culture for profit by appropriation, whitewashing, and fictionalizing Native American history and heritage. For example, Disney films like Pinocchio (1940) and Peter Pan (1953) featured stereotypical caricatures of Native Americans in some of their scenes. In terms of whitewashing, the 1982 film The Legend of Walks Far Woman featured Rachel Welch as the Native American protagonist despite being half white and half Bolivian. Casting a non-Native to play a Native American role is problematic as it is racially insensitive, and it takes away the voices of actual Native Americans in real life because they are presented as caricatures by the media. Finally, the film industry fictionalized Pocahontas by establishing a love story between Pocahontas, who was depicted as an adult Native American woman, and John Smith, a European colonial explorer. In real life, however, Pocahontas was a child when Smith arrived in North America as an explorer.

These examples of how entertainment media misrepresent Native American identities contribute to the real-life problems that Native Americans face in contemporary times. The perpetuation of the “bloodthirsty savage” trope keeps them associated with crime and victimization while having less accessibility to equal social and economic opportunities. Similarly, the “noble Indian” and the “helpless Indian” stereotypes in the entertainment media diminish the Native American integrity by perpetuating the idea that they are useless and considerable as social outcasts for being “dumb or lazy.”

In contemporary news and social media, Native Americans are still significantly misrepresented via marginalization. News on Native American issues is often made with inaccurate or incomplete data, which leads to the perpetuation of misrepresentation. For example, the missing-person case of Gabby Petito in 2021, juxtaposed with the thousands of missing or murdered Native Americans recorded by the Department of Interior in the National Crime Information Center, emphasizes how the same issues are biasedly reported by news media companies (Golden). Many Native Americans who had relatives who went missing or were murdered did not receive any single article or comprehensive news coverage from news companies. Additionally, an article by Jenni Monet for the Columbia Journalism Review also notes that there are hardly any Native American journalists in the news industry, which exacerbates the lack of accurate representation in the news. As a result, Native American issues are either unheard or misheard by mainstream society—leading to further worsening of the problems they experience daily.

In social media, Native American stereotypes and misrepresentations are also still rampant. Non-Native influencers or celebrities misuse cultural symbols like art styles and fashion designs to gain profit or popularity on online platforms like TikTok and Instagram. For example, brands like Urban Outfitters, Fourth Ray, and Goop sold products with kits for sage-burning (a practice done by Native people for medicinal and spiritual purposes) on Instagram in 2019—propelling it into a cultural appropriation trend (Defino). Non-Native online creators who also sell products misuse Native American designs and use them for profit while claiming them as their original designs at the same time. A recent example is Sam McKnight’s 2023 TikTok video, which featured a hairstyle he called “Balmain Vertibow” (Clark). The hairstyle was originally worn by the Navajo, Hopi, and Pueblo people, but McKnight did not appropriately credit them for his supposedly original design. Finally, the infamous practice of using Native American clothing styles for cosplays during Halloween or other events is still present today. 

In other online platforms, Native American stereotypes and other inaccurate or outdated representations are still shared as jokes or memes by netizens, resulting in the perpetuation of misrepresentation of Native Americans in real life. TikTok trends and social media platforms using hashtags related to Native American issues and experiences like #NativeTikTok contribute to misrepresentation when netizens misuse them to gain online clout. These examples make a caricature out of Native American cultures as they misrepresent the true meanings of each item or practice related to Native American history.

The persistence of misrepresentation of Native Americans in the media throughout history underscores the need for greater efforts towards better cultural sensitivity. Being consistently misrepresented continues to negatively impact Native Americans on an individual and collective level, as they are perpetually never seen or heard in an accurate and respected way by mainstream American society and the government. Addressing this problem requires more proactive and collaborative measures that start with better awareness and open-mindedness toward the collective mistakes that non-Natives have committed toward Native Americans for generations. When this process becomes more widely accepted and practiced, perhaps the healing process for Native Americans can finally progress into a better state compared to their current state.