Reinterpreting the West: Native American Self-Representation in Film and Historical Narrative

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the story of the West and how the Hollywood had chosen to represent Native Americans in films. Since the expansion of the US towards the west coast Native Americans had not been represented faithfully. They were considered a "vanishing race" whose lands would become under settlers' control. Native Americans had been represented like enemies of the settlers also in early Western. In the last century Westerns changed the way to represent Native Americans, considering the genocide and the displacement of Indians westward. With films such as Broken Arrow(1950), Dances with Wolves(1990), Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) and Fancy Dance (2023) Native Americans are seen sympathetically. Both in Broken Arrow and Dances with Wolves the protagonists go native and find an Indian lover. They both side with Indians when white people wanted to conquer their territories. Killers of the Flower Moon is based on real events of the 1920s. Many Osage were killed out of greed because of the mineral rights that made the tribe rich. In Fancy Dance the protagonist Jax investigates on her sister disappearance because FBI and Indian Tribal police decided to not search for her sister Tawi because she had already disappeared in the past. Her persistence in the investigation led to the discovery of his sister's body. Tawi is only one of the thousand women that disappear every year and whose cases will never be solved.