The way media harms Native men

If you’ve seen a movie, book, show, etc, that has Natives in it, you’ve probably come across Native men portrayed in an incredibly toxic way. This can be found in Disney’s Pocahontas, Twilight, Game of Thrones, The Road to El Dorado, Mortal Kombat, and countless other pieces of media.

“The Stoic Native Man” trope is the one I’m talking about and it ties back to the stereotype of the “Noble Savage”. Native men are shown as emotionless, stone faced, and often violent and abusive. This is a toxic mentality and unfortunately lots of people believe it.

I remember as a child, I watched Pocahontas, and I hated Kocoum. I had no remorse for him when he died, until I saw the movie again later and felt terrible for him. He was set out from the beginning to be hated by the audience, despite all he wanted was to protect his people from clearly violent colonizers. This trope is so harmful, it indoctrinates young Native children to root against themselves.

In Pocahontas, Kocoum is made out intentionally to be unlikeable, his death is used for the benefit of a colonizer. Disney portrays him as emotionless, Pocahontas even comments on this saying “He looks so serious.” Kocoum is also shown to be the most vocal in driving out the colonizers, but this is meant to seem bad and irrational. And later he is meant to be seen as violent when he fights John Smith and it is a hundred percent intentional that he breaks Pocahonas’s necklace, a final attempt of condemning him.

And of course Kocoum is not alone in being written this way. Twilight does the same trope, but for different reasons. Jacob is shown with the same stoic, emotionless, and sometimes violent way. Although this is meant to make Bella choose Edward, who is also abusive, it is meant to create racialized fetishization. You all know what a harlequin romance novel is, well that was the character intention behind Jacob. That he, being a Native man and being written in this way is meant to be romanticized by the reader. Kocoum was never meant to be a possible love interest, but Twilight presents the options of a white stalker or a physically imposing Native man.

But how Jacob is written showcases the other way Native men, and also Native women, are portrayed, by being oversexualized. For Jacob and the other Natives in Twilight, they are usually shown shirtless while most of the white characters are not. Native men are fetishized as being “exotic”, “wild lovers”, and “violently over protective”. Usually shown dominating over the “Docile white woman”. (Savage Thunder is an exact example of this.) It should be needless to say this is incredibly gross and yet it keeps showing up in media.

These tropes and stereotypes are far from being grounded in reality, but unfortunately people end up believing it. Native men suffer from violence and ftishization because of how they’re shown in the media.These tropes were created to demonize Native men so colonizers could be written as saviors, thus justifying the violence inflicted on Natives.

How would I say you should write Native men? Like people. Native men are absolutely capable of being kind hearted, funny, emotional, caring, and happy. An example of a Native man I enjoy is Little Creek from Spirit, he’s shown as intelligent, compassionate, and fun loving, and he is without a doubt one of my favorite characters of all time. So don’t create a Native man as a character who is just going to be a stoic brute with no purpose other than to be villainized.