The case for extending protection to Native Americans from discriminatory stereotypes in our consumerist society

7/31/2019 The case for extending protection to Native Americans from discriminatory stereotypes in our consumerist society

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Matthew MrozinskiPRAD 335

The Case for Extending Protection to Native Americans from Discriminatory Stereotypes in ourConsumerist Society

Introduction

It has proven better business for corporations to keep certain profitable, yet

discriminatory, brand names than it would be to change them. They prove the dollar value of the

brands, shown by continued sales and rising profits, are worth more to the companies than the

loss of human life caused by suicide, alcoholism and violence that afflicts this population as a

product of the low self-esteem and lack of dignity caused by the continued practices of

discriminatory depiction in the dominant culture. Native Americans are openly, safely, and freely

stereotyped, and make up one of the last remaining ethnic minorities to be dealt with as such.

Other minorities have been depicted as caricatures on everyday household objects to

reinforce the beliefs dominant society holds towards their appropriate place in that society. When

the Civil Rights movement sprang up in the 60s, the advertising culture of the happy Sambo,

fat mammy and Frito Bandito collapsed in response. If we are to live in a truly post-racial

society, we must end the discriminatory depiction of Native Americans in consumer culture

media.

This insensitivity to cultural differences has wide-reaching and devastating consequences

for the dignity of the smallest minority segment in America. In particular, the depiction of Indian

women in advertising and branding has a role in fostering an environment of hopelessness and

desperation on the reservation system as shown by the elevated risks for suicide, alcoholism and

violent death they face. Further perpetuating the downward spiral are alcohol advertisements

targeting Native Americans, luring them into alcoholism with images of the good life and


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escapism. Curtailing the negative effects of these two forces alone would relieve tremendous

amounts of the ethno-stress this population needs to endure just to survive.

Literary Review

The Stereotyping of Native Americans

This article by Dolph Hatfield appeared in theHumanistmagazine, a civil rights

publication, in 2000. The author begins by listing stereotypical misappropriations of various

Native American images:

In sports there are the Washington Redskins football team, the Atlanta Braves and

Cleveland Indians baseball teams, and the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team. Fans of the

Atlanta Braves use the tomahawk chop, [] the Cleveland Indians use the mascot

Chief Wahoo and the University of Illinois uses the mascot Chief Illiniwek (p. 43).

The wide array of products, services, and brands that this image is used to market product

serve[s] to illustrate how freely this minority is symbolized in society (p. 43). Hatfiled asks:

How do we know these uses are discriminatory? Would we buy cars sold as a Jeep African

[or] Jeep Mexican, or tolerate a beer branded as Martin Luther King Jr. Malt Liquor? (p. 43).

The author tags the stereotypes as damaging to the dignity and self-esteem of Native

Americans, which would be most certainly improved if the use of these stereotyped names,

images, and mascots ceased (p. 44). Society has recognized the inequality of stereotypes in the

past (Frito Bandito, Aunt Jemima, etc.) and responded in the past with appropriate changes.

According to the author, the many acts of stereotyping are major contributing factors to more

life-threatening hardships (p. 44), and the future of Native Americans is dependant on these

stereotypes replacement with a modern and positive image of the non-extinct Indian.

Winnebagos, Cherokees, Apaches and Dakotas


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In this 2001 article from the Howard University Journal of Communications, Merskin

likens the practice of using American Indian images to define brand logos, team mascots and

vehicle models to Black Americana collectibles widely available from the 1880s to 1950s. She

argues that the proliferation of these racial caricatures on everyday items and household objects

were nonverbal articulations of racism, the presence of which served the purpose of

reinforcing beliefs about the place of Blacks in American society and making whites feel

more comfortable with, and less guilty about, maintenance of distinctions on the basis of race

well after Reconstruction. These items were meant for daily use, hence constantly and subtly

reinforcing stereotypical beliefs (p. 160). We have done away with the blackface piggy banks

and Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, the Frito Bandito and other stereotyped images have been

modernized or eliminated from campaigns altogether, but the Indian image persists in corporate

marketing and product labeling (p. 167).

The most common use of Indian images is a tool for companies to make brand

associations in their advertising. One example the author provides is the Indian maiden

stereotype as seen in Land-O-Lakes butter. From press releases and company literature, the

author uncovers that the Indian woman on the package is associated with youth, innocence,

nature, and purity, a constructed image of the generic Indian maiden, subsequently

transferring the qualities stereotypically associated with this beaded, buckskinned, doe-eyed

young woman [] to the companys products (p. 165). This thinking extends to all other

industrieswe see teams named Braves, Redskins and Indians to evoke suggestions of a

collectivist image (also fierce, predatory, cultureless and animalistic), while the Jeep Cherokee

name invokes the brands promise to create oneness with nature.


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At the time of the Civil Rights era, minority consumer groups were able to make their

voice heard through the act of boycott. Once marketers noticed the power of boycott, they

provided products and advertising that appealed to a wider range of cultures. Because of their

size as a population, American Indians do not represent a significant target audience to

advertisers; representing less than 1% of the population, and [as] the most economically destitute

of all ethnic minority populations, American Indians are not particularly useful to marketers. (p.

167) This is a true sign of the dollar democracy that exists and the marginalization it creates

for ethnic minorities.

The voiceless nature of the American Indian population within the larger society permits

the stereotypes to persevere. The unstoppable transmission of inaccurate beliefs about Natives

to Whites also applies to Indians; should in adolescence Native children internalize these

representations that suggest that Indians are lazy, alcoholic by nature, and violent, this

misinformation can have a life-long impact on perceptions of self and others (167). The so-

called positive stereotype argument is null because these traits are only held by the ancient,

state of nature Indian.

The S-Word

While I have discussed the state of nature image of the Indian maiden, it is

interesting to note the startling image that arises in competition of this image in mass media that

further demonstrates the injurious effects of stereotyping on minority populations. Merkins 2010

article in the same journal addresses the S-word, or squaw, as it emerges from the vernacular

as a euphemism for the female genitalia to symbolize a contradiction to the Indian maiden, the

anti-Pocahontas, as ascribed by dominant society. This article uses the history of the word and

its usages to liken it to the equivalent of combining the N-word and the C-word. It is further


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suggested that the shared historical contexts of words like Redskin and Brave once shared

analogous purposes in the dehumanization and subordination of Indian cultures during Manifest

Destiny and westward expansion.

The article theorizes that the wide array of individual qualities, experiences, histories,

and characteristics are truncated by stereotyping into a single Pan-Indian identity based on a

unilateral conception of Indianness (352). This unilateral conception is the basis on which all

identity crisis within Indian cultures are founded; youth receive tremendous pressure from peers

to conform to this image and are ostracized for rejecting the stereotypes while on the reservation,

while off the reservation they cling to their Indianness in a whitewashed society by accepting

the stereotypical depictions as honoring their traditions by embracing drunkenness,

culturelessness, and animalism.

The results of these images on Native women are heartbreaking. Native American girls

are two to three times more likely to commit suicide and twice as likely as other Americans to

die before the age of 24 (p. 359). When males internalize the images portrayed in popular

society, they treat their women like how they believe a savage, in the eyes of dominant society,

should treat his squaw; Native women are disproportionately affected by violence at a rate

almost 50% higher than that reported for African American males (359). The author concludes:

Embedding racist and sexist stereotypes in brands, labels, landforms, and media images and

words is an exercise in power (360).

Pro-Drinking Messages and Message Environments for Young Adults

While I mentioned the voiceless nature of Native Americans in the dollar democracy, this

article by Alaniz and Wilkes from theJournal of Public Health Policy offers one instance where

marketers will listen to Native Americans, in a perverse way. For many ethnic minorities who


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may feel excluded from the American milieu, the message seems clear; the alcohol industry

recognizes and welcomes those cultures that were, heretofore, rendered invisible in most other

sectors of society (1998, p. 447). Thus emerged the Crazy Horse brand of malt liquor. Crazy

Horse was a warrior and revered spiritual leader who spoke out against the use and abuse of

alcohol, and fought to keep the U.S. from invading [] in search of gold (462).

The product was banned in some jurisdictions, and its manufacturer Hornell brought suit against

the government, charging that the prohibition was a violation of First Amendment free speech

rights. [] In April 1993, a federal court in Brooklyn, New York ruled [the ban as]

unconstitutional and a violation of Hornells First Amendment free speech rights (p. 464).

Analysis of Literature

The literary review has clearly shown the effects of this identity crisis in which

advertising has played a key role in creating. Advertising heavily shapes the socialization process

that children undergo. Children recognize racial similarities and bind their identities to the people

who are like them. When Indian children are presented this pervasive image of these archaic

and romanticized depictions of their own type, the construction of identity is instable and

wrought with contradictions in the belief that Merskins fictional pan-Indian (2010, p.352)

stereotypes must be fulfilled to gain acceptance in the dominant culture. The perpetuation of

these image and use of derogatory words in popular culture well after the Civil Rights era

mirrors the popularity of Black Americana collectibles after the reconstruction in existence as

well as in absurdity. Just as these collectibles desensitized Americans to post-Reconstruction

racism towards blacks (2001, p. 160), the outdated images of Indians contribute to the public

belief that Indians are ancient, extinct or historical.


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They are allowed to continue under innocuous premises, as mentioned: excused for

honoring a great history, its for the environment, or theyre only words and logos, but as

demonstrated, their meanings are rooted deeply in a far more toxic history than we are lead to

believe. The danger lies in accepting these cultural definitions of selfwhich Indians can do in

seeking acceptance in the dominant cultureand when dominant society believes these images

as factual.

When we acknowledge that using racist stereotypes in advertising are discriminatory and

continue the practice of using them, it sends the wrong message to the group being stereotyped.

It shows a selective attitude towards civil and human rights, saying that some minority groups

are worthy of equality while others are not. These attitudes create the environments of

desperation on reservation systems that contribute to the exercise in power (Merskin, 2010, p.

360) that ensures the destruction of Indian communities and culture, which were the means to the

end goal of the Dawes Act (or the General Allotment Act of 1887, the goal I reference was to

end the Indian problem). I think we need a call to action for aggressive rebranding, starting

with household brandseliminating the Land-O-Lakes girl, the Jeep Cherokee name, and Sue

Bee Honeys Indian headdress, and replace them with non-racial symbols that effectively convey

the same (or a similar) message. Team names that are too engrained in the traditions of sports

fans to abandon should consider branding without the caricatured mascots.

We see through the courts protection of corporate free speech in the past that it comes

down to the consumer to speak in this dollar democracy the only way they can, by changing

spending habits. If this message is spread to the dominant culture and they are sensitized to the

damage they cause by supporting these brands, marketers will realize that stereotypes in

advertising like this might actually be a little bit pass and begin to phase them out of the


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equation. If not, we may see a complete destruction of Indian communities and culture across the

country within the next few generations. It is not honoring a great tradition to keep them

trapped in the past through the use of these images, at least no more than the old Aunt Jemima

ads were honoring the traditions of blacks in servitude.

Analysis of Advertisements

On the following page, I have included an image of a print ad for American Spirit brand

cigarettes, the tagline of which reads: Natural tastes better. The pack design features a generic

headdress-wearing chief pulling on a peace pipe and an indigenous bird of prey design on the

top. The body copy mentions the ecological methods of tobacco growing used to make their

cigarettes and that protecting the earth is as important to us as it is to you. The intended effects

of this advertisement serve to make the link between the American Spirit brand and traditional

Native American views on environmentalism to suggest that the tobacco tastes better because is

grown like the Indians grew it.

This ad indirectly targets Native American consumers of all ages, and especially children.

It functions in a similar manner to the Crazy Horse malt liquor brand Native women have the

highest incidence of smoking compared to any other ethnic group, at 40.8% of the population

(Merskin, 2010, p. 359). In the search for identity, Native Americans will adopt brands such as

Native Spirit because it features the Chief, headdress, peace pipe, and bird imagery, which are all

sacred symbols. These sacred symbols are very tribe-specific, and the manner in which they are

combined is an example of the Pan-Indian identity created by dominant culture that Merskin

describes.


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ReferencesAlaniz, M., & Wilkes, C. (1998). Pro-Drinking Messages and Message Environments for Young

Adults: The Case of Alcohol Industry Advertising in African American, Latino, and NativeAmerican Communities.Journal Of Public Health Policy, 19(4), 447-472.

Hatfield, D. L. (2000). The Stereotyping of Native Americans. Humanist, 60(5), 43.

Merskin, D. (2001). Winnebagos, Cherokees, Apaches, and Dakotas: The Persistence of

Stereotyping of American Indians in American Advertising Brands.Howard Journal Of

Communications, 12(3), 159-169. doi:10.1080/106461701753210439

Merskin, D. (2010). The S-Word: Discourse, Stereotypes, and the American Indian Woman.Howard Journal Of Communications, 21(4), 345-366. doi:10.1080/10646175.2010.519616

Documents

The case for extending protection to Native Americans from discriminatory stereotypes in our consumerist society