In movies and TV shows it feels as if Native Americans are being hidden from TV. The only memories I have of seeing Native Americans in movies are racist depictions from Disney. For example in Peter Pan it influences heavy stereotypes brought upon Indigenous people. Like the stereotype that all Native women are beautiful which wouldn’t seem as harmful until you realize that 56.1% of Native women will experience sexual assault, according to a survey conducted by the U.S Department of Justice. Because of this, Native American women have traditionally been oversexualized, leading to an increase in sexual assaults. But even when there is good production involving Indigenous people, it’s not nearly as popular as those Blockbuster knockoffs that look like they were made in one day. Every race deserves their fair share of representation but it feels as if Natives have one of the shortest ends of the sticks. There are very few shows and movies that have an all-Native cast but it seems that even if there is, it gets hidden behind a wall for no one to see.

The constant banishing us from the outside world and only saying our name when reading out loud history books makes it seem as if we don’t exist. Our culture and ways of life continuously fails to be shown properly on TV, plus most Indigenous people don’t even have access to WiFi. Even if they wanted to, they can’t even see their own race and have nothing to relate to. Younger Natives won’t be able to see and recognize their own culture. It hides and slowly gets rid of the evidence that we exist and even when we try to fight back in peaceful ways we have to hop from one streaming service to another spending way too much money on wanting to see our own faces.

Not having our culture and our beliefs being easily accessed makes it so other cultures don’t truly understand the pain we still continue to go through as a whole. Without being able to show who we actually are and our different personalities we become the stereotypes. Being able to cast our differences on TV for anyone to see makes others realize truly who we are. Shows like Reservation Dogs, Mohawk Girls, Rutherford Falls, Dark Winds and Wild Indian are all examples of shows created by the Indigenous. Because of this, it represents our lives in a more accurate light. One of the big ones being Reservation Dogs, it was written and directed by an all Indigenous cast. It shows a group of four Indigenous teenagers and shows how they have to navigate life. This show doesn’t bank on stereotypes and if anything makes fun of them showing that they are not very true compared to Native culture. The main focus isn’t on the fact they are purely Indigenous it instead shows that we all have our own lifes and aren’t all the same. But even with this staple in television there still is an over lacking source of representation.

Even with these few TV shows there is still so very little to show for what the Native community have accomplished. And the media still struggle to fully show what everyone still continues to go through. After looking at multiple lists of shows and movies that at least included Native American actors the biggest list only contained 15. Let alone it just kept repeating the same couple of TV shows. Of course our community is grateful for the little that we have but it only seems that very few movies and shows actually get their name out there.