The Native American Stereotype

Anyone who’s studied history knows the effect that white people have had on civilizations, usually referred to as “White Man’s Burden”, the ideas they came up with when they wanted to “help” the people of indigenous areas. Although the phrase comes from the actions of colonizers in the early 1900s, it has still occurred in the history of the United States of America. Everyone knows about the Pilgrims and the “Indians”, something taught in elementary school, how the government did their best to “help” them keep their property after practically stripping them of their culture. Native Americans were seen as inferior, and to this day they are treated that way. It’s gotten to the point where they themselves don’t want to be seen as more than a quiet and stupid “Indian”. In “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie, he uses his own experience to state that becoming smart and surpassing those expectations of the stereotypical Indian is the only way to get rid of it, however in “Indians Today, the Real and Unreal” by Vine Deloria Jr., he states that in order for White Americans to stop seeing the Native American stereotype, they should just stop trying to “help” them altogether. No matter how smart – to society’s standards-, they become, those stereotypes and low expectations will still exist.

Sherman Alexie sees the Native American stereotype as something you have to escape from, something he was able to save himself and escape from. His abilities had low expectations from the minute he was born, expectations that were applied to all his friends and family by the White Americans.

He says that if he’d “ been anything but an boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy on the reservation and is simply and oddity.” Now, not a lot of money goes into the Department of Education in the first place, especially for the schools in bad areas. But even then, when a brilliant young kid starts showing potential others take notice and begin to offer up what they can to help him become something that will change the country, make him a prodigy. For Native Americans on the other hand, they’re not seen as kids with the potential to change the world but as “oddities” that change the way people think. Seeing a smart Native American making their mark on the world is confusing and makes people wonder “how they’re so smart” or “why”. He decided to go beyond expectations and