Lone Ranger Stereotypes

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The media has a very widespread influence that affects a large group of individuals and companies. Firstly, the companies producing these stereotypical depictions of indigenous peoples have a role in perpetuating these images. As these are the ones funding the projects and films, they choose which films to invest in and scripts to produce. For example, one of the more recent films that came out involving Indigenous peoples (side-stepping the white-washing casting of Johnny Depp for now?) was The Lone Ranger. The film depicted the tale of an Old West adventurer and his trusty sidekick Tonto, an Indigenous person who must fight to stop the extermination of Native Americans to construct a railroad in Native territory. Initially given a production budget of $70,000,000 (“The Lone Ranger” 1) dollars with Columbia Pictures Industries Company, the movie was then brought to Walt …show more content…
To use an example, mental health is an issue that is very prevalent in the Indigenous community. The struggling community of Cross Lake Manitoba requested provincial and federal aid in response to their fight against suicide. After attaining a meeting with Manitoba’s Minister of Health, the only help that was given was “one mental health worker being sent to the community for a single eight-hour shift” (The McGill Daily 1). The inadequate funding and resources the government provided barely did anything to help with the problem and even worse, the suicide epidemic in Cross Lake reached a breaking point where they declared a state of emergency (Puxley 1). The government is guilty in perpetuating these stereotypes—particularly the drunken Indian—because they are not doing enough to shift the (and this is used for dramatics) ‘status quo’ of how indigenous people are being presented to the outside