Understanding Native Americans in the Film, Dances with Wolves Essays

Understanding Native Americans in the Film, Dances with WolvesTo dance with some sensation is to work maven with him. When you dance, you lay selves aside and you try to move as one person. Every step flows cautiously into the next. You never want to step on the toes of the other person and with your hands you guide each other in various directions, but always to compassher. The dance is a journey one that brings two often very different people to beat upher. For that brief sentence that the two are dancing they act as one person, displace all differences aside. The film, Dances with wolves, accomplishes this feat. For one hundred and eighty-one minutes it allows us to get caught up in the dance of the white man and the Indians. Dances with wolves, disregards cultural barriers and nevertheless focuses on people for who they are as individuals. At the beginning of both dance, people are cautious. They must first feel-out the other person. They must get a sense of who the other p erson is, and what is meaningful to them. In the film, Dances with Wolves, bum Dunbar approaches the Indians with this same apprehension. He is a white America who is alone on the frontier. He may be scared of the supposed savages, but he never lets on. The stereotypical Indian is a brutal savage-like beast who kills for the pursuit of killing and ravages the countryside. In the first scene of the movie, this is the image that I received. It seemed gravid to imagine any sense of brotherhood that could be found in the hearts of the Indians as we watched them scalp an innocent American named Timmons. My initial reactions, however, were disregarded as I continued to watch. I observed the first resistance between Dunbar and the Indians. It was an encounter much like th... ...ried to a terrorist with a scientifically gifted sneaky child. What I want to say, and I ask you to count this back We must look at racism as a disease. It is a cancer. It is very good and noble that the Pres ident has started this initiative. But you cannot flummox a band-aid on to treat cancer.Throughout the film and through the powerful testimonies mentioned above we realize the need for us to put stereotypes aside and genuinely desire to understand the Native American culture. It is only after we pass on danced with them that we can truly know them. Works CitedDances with Wolves. Dir.Kevin Costner. Perf. Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, and Rodney A. Grant. 1990. videocassette. American Indian Studies. www.jupiter.lang.osakav.ac.jp/krkvls/FinalMovie PBS News Forum. March 1998. www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/race_relations/jan- june98/denver