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Peter Pan and "The Red Man":

I remember as a child singing along to the song, "What Makes the Red Man Red?". It's catchy and when you are young you don't think much of it. However, after watching the movie over again I can clearly see how race and labor are relevant in this scene.

It is obvious that the Native Americans' skin is depicted as a bright red which serves as a nod to the racial slur of "red skin". In the image above, Peter Pan is seen wearing a headdress. Most people are unaware of the significance of the headdress. Each feather within a headdress was earned for brave acts that served the tribe (http://www.indians.org/articles/indian-headdress.html). As Peter sits alongside the chief and his daughter, he sits with a composure that communicates, "I'm in charge". This is nothing new when observing our history. The white man strolls to the tribe and is given some sort of "authority", or so we would like to believe. The chief speaks broken english and therefore seems "less educated". Just as the song begins the chief exclaims, "Teach him pale-face brother all about Red Man..." as if Peter knows more about them than themselves. As the Natives sing, they refer to themselves as "Red Man", "Injuns", etc. In this scene, the Native American is once again portrayed as being a warring nation. War was a part of their culture, but within our depiction they are consistently featured: wearing war paint, violent, animalistic, and therefore as an other. Native Americans were more than warriors. However, in Peter Pan they are made to appear one-dimensional. All of the Natives are mute (with the exception of the chief), they are violent and covered in their war paint and a typical attire for a warring nation, etc.

As the song continues, Wendy (the young english girl) is forced to go and get firewood while everyone else in the tribe dances. This division of labor is also inaccurate in it's depiction of the dynamics between who worked when and who did what. Within many tribes women were not devalued, but rather their tasks were seen as just as important as the warriors' obligations (Cabrillo Lecture). This sexism creates a wedge between Wendy and the celebration going on. Angela Davis mentioned sexism in her article, claiming that when our society creates a wedge between races and genders, women of both color suffer. Community is valued in Native American culture. If they were celebrating, the tasks wouldn't all be set on one person, let alone a single woman. Having a woman prepare and "do the work" is a theme within our white culture. By the end of the scene, Wendy's brothers have gone rampant and they begin to speak broken-english like the Natives'.

The depiction in this scene, on multiple levels, is inaccurate. By the english children running around "like savages" it discredits the native american culture as a whole. Much like the children in Hortense J. Spillers's article "Mama's Baby Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book" young native american children experienced natal alienation by being ripped away from their families.After they were ripped away, they were forced to adhere to our cultural norms by cutting their hair (in their culture it is believed that their ancestors' live in their hair so it was vital to take care of it and allow it to grow), to attend "religious school" in order to be saved, to have very little contact with their families, etc. This was all a wide-spread effort to diminish any shred of culture they had instilled in them. Through the articles we have read, this is true for the children in slavery also. While they had their own subculture within our "white society", they witness whippings and physical authority being exercised for "disobedience"; or what the master would deem disobedient. Through punishment, the African Americans were made slaves while their culture in Africa was wiped away in the "new world".

Much like the african american, the native american icon has been turned into commodity. The struggle of the native is rarely focused upon. They have been sold in the form of products much like the documentary discussed for the organization of slavery. Native americans are the face of products such as: pipes, costumes, tobacco, sports teams, casinos, cartoons, old western movies, etc.

The conquerers were able to use religion as a tool to justify the horrendous acts committed to both native americans and the african americans through the churches they sent native american children to, missions, and slavery. In doing this, the conquerers both profited and felt justified in committing these inhumane acts. They were able to discredit cultures' that had thrived and existed by claiming they were subordinate and sub-human. In the image above, they are assuming this to a degree. They created "the red man" and had the white young boy sit alongside him authoritatively.