MovieChat Forums > Reel Injun (2010) Discussion > So now i know what a injun isn't...

So now i know what a injun isn't...

posted 9 years ago by afkeBanks
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My conclusion about indians in america after watching this movie is:
filmgoers thinks indians in movies are awesome, but they really could care less about them in real life. And since this is a movie, we are only told what is wrong or right about the movieinjun. But we are not going to tell you anything about realinjun culture.

I stumbled upon this film by accident Netflix. The movie was, great, funny and a real eye opener. (And partly that is because i did not even know that the massacre of indians went on until the 1980's or something. I always though that most of the indians were killed right away when columbas came to america in 1492)

Anyhoe...

They kept saying well injuns did not do this, and they did wear this. But what were they wearing and doing. (or was this movie not made for everyone?)

What i missed was some reaction, did the filmmakers tell the childrencamp people they where doing it wrong. Or what anyone was doing wrong?

Horses are not native to america, so the native americans couldnt have rode on horses. So i dont understand they did not give a little of back story on what they indians etc did do. And since they brought up the horse. Does that mean that the real history indians in this movie talk about starts after columbus.

If i wanted to know more about americas original inhabitants what documentory should i watch?

[–] MadSimian 9 years ago

They couldn't really tell you about 'realinjun' culture because there are way too many tribes to do so in the relative short time of this documentary. That's because each and every tribe has different beliefs, customs, histories, ways of dress and so on.

You seem to see natives as part of some overall "nation" with each tribe being like a "state or province" within said nation and all having some basic similarities with each other...which is as far from the truth as it can be. Most tribes had nothing to do with each other aside from certain organizations such as the Iroquois League of Nations(which was actually formed BEFORE Europeans of any kind set foot on North America) and any inter-tribal confrontations that happened from time to time.

As for learning about the various tribes and their histories/cultures, Wikipedia is probably your best bet by starting out here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States

Because, to be quite honest, just like what I said above, a one-off documentary film that attempted to detail ALL tribes would be inherently too long to make. To even make a dent, you'd probably have to make a tv series out of it a la something by Ken Burns which hasn't been made yet(that's a hint to any documentarians out there lol).

**edit**BTW, the "reaction" you were looking for IS the "Reel Injun" documentary itself. lol

The future belongs to those of us still willing to get our hands dirty. SaschaKonietzko