Making the White Man's Indian Native Americans and Hollywood Movies

Subjects:

• Popular Culture » Film Studies
• Multicultural Studies » Native American Studies

Reviews:

• The literature includes dozens of books on the Hollywood Western, and perhaps a dozen just on the representation of Native Americans in Hollywood film....[t]he writing and research are scrupulous and engaging. Highly recommended. Lower-/upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, general readers.
  —Choice December 2005
• Making the White Man's Indian reminds us that films were made to make money and that they reflected whatever niche Indians occupied in the American attitude toward Indians and minorities at the time the films were made. Professor Aleiss explains why Hollywood representation of Indians has swung back and forth between the Indian-as-savage and the Indian-as-noble and sympathetic. Portraying Indians as people is not new....Hollywood may shape images but it responds in a cultural context. Her reviews of many obscure or forgotten films are a bonus....[b]elongs in the mainstream of current interpretations of Indian representations.
  —NDO North Dakota Quarterly Fall 2006
• While Aleiss's book is a serious study, it is lively and very readable, full of little-known facts and anecdotes that add interest to its analysis....[M]aking the White Man's Indian is a useful addition for most libraries.
  —Multicultural Review Winter 2005
• [D]raws on behind-the-scenes material such as correspondence, evolving scripts, studio publicity materials, reactions from film critics and Native American groups, and records of the self-censorship organization, to cast new light on the portrayal of Native Americans in US films.
  —Reference & Research Book News/Art Book News Annual August 2005

• Endorsement From Andrew Sarris,
  Film Critic
  New York Observer: Aleiss is to be commended for providing a clear-eyed, level-headed and marvelously researched film history that explores the tangled and too frequently shameful treatment of Native Americans on the nation's screens over the past century. She takes the American film industry, warts and all, for what it is as a commercial enterprise largely under the aegis of corporate capitalism. She has illuminated a problematic page of American film history with clarity and brio.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Hollywood and the Silent American
• A Cultural Division
• Indian Adventures and Interracial Romances
• War and Its Indian Allies
• Red Becomes White
• A Shattered Illusion
• Savagery on the Frontier
• Beyond the Western
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Motion Pictures Screened
• Appendix B: Motion Picture Archives
• Selected Bibliography