Indians Are Stereotyped

There is no question about it but IMHO this sterotyping is promoted by the social in-activists within and outside the community. Virtually billions are spent to try and overcome the poverty, alchohol/drug problems, high incidence of suicide, etc. with little apparent success so you have to wonder who is benefitting. Trying to find the success stories is virtually impossible.........they are out there and here is one.

Natives say they get no respect
Cultural stereotyping rampant
By BRETT CLARKSON, TORONTO SUN

As the only aboriginal kid in school, Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux was frequently called a "squaw" and a "darky" by the white children.

"I'm resilient, so I fought my way through it and I survived it," she recalls.

Growing up in a home fraught with alcoholism and violence, she dropped out of high school at 16, only to return to university and finally completing her PhD in anthropology in her 40s.

Now Wesley-Esquimaux teaches aboriginal history and culture courses at the University of Toronto and Laurentian University to students of all backgrounds.

She says younger aboriginals are only recently beginning to show signs the community is recovering from the cultural stereotypes promoted by Hollywood and the trauma of the residential schools suffered by the older generations.

"The aboriginal community is stereotyped as uneducated for the most part, and that's certainly an issue we're grappling with," Wesley-Esquimaux says. "You know, that they don't like to work, that they're lazy, that they work on 'Indian time', that they only come in when they feel like it. There's all kinds of biases and stereotypes."

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