Fnmi Stereotypes Analysis

Stereotypical portrayals of First Nations, Metis and Inuit people in movies always remain to be a money making formula for Filmmakers. Even from the very early days, FNMI people have always been portrayed negatively because of the roles that they are casted for. Often, FNMI actor’s roles would primarily be based off of stereotypes such as “Beautiful Maidens” or “Stoic Indians”. Older films, and even newer films that are released recently, still continue to demonstrate these common stereotypes about FNMI people. The problem is that, the non FNMI audience has seen these stereotypes being repeated several times and majority of these stereotypes are very similar to each other. This leads to the non FNMI audience to believe that it is an accurate

This new “trend” lead people to believe that First Nations people were “free spirited” and “chill”. Traditional FNMI cultural clothing was treated as nothing more than a fashion statement. Non FNMI people often wore what they thought was traditional FNMI clothing. This includes headbands and short dresses. A problem with the Non FNMI people wearing FNMI clothing was cultural appropriation. The media and general public did not want to show what real FNMI culture was, but wearing FNMI cultural clothing was seen as okay, since it was in style. In the movie, Sacheen Littlefeather talked about her visit to Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco in 1966. She said that the reactions that she got based on how she dressed surprised her. Some even asked if she was a

They are usually seen wearing very limited amount of clothing. In the movie, there was shown a modern example of this stereotype, Pocahontas. Melinda Micco, Seminole film historian says that the image of Pocahontas that was shown, was almost like “mythic” for American people. She also says, that at the time of this content, Pocahontas was only about 9 years old. Pocahontas become an embodiment, not of FNMI society, but American society and American desire. The stereotype of FNMI women as easy targets have real world consequences. American FNMI women have reported to have experienced high rates of sexual assault. Often, these cases showed that FNMI women were usually assaulted by non FNMI men. To summarize, this movie does display a convincing portrayal of stereotyping and its negative effects. All these stereotypes have had a negative impact on FNMI actors, and even in general, all FNMI people. Since these stereotypes have been repeated in many different movies several times and the stereotypes are all similar to each other, it leads to make non FNMI people believe that it is an authentic representation of FNMI people, FNMI culture and FNMI history, when in reality, all these representations are not real and they are based of what was seen in the media and the