Cowboys and Indians.....offensive?

[mrgrouper]

Yesterday was the teachers strike, so I took my son to Gulliver's World in Warrington. Gulliver's world has hardly been updated since the 1980s, however I like this because it has a retro feel to it and reminds me of when I went there as a child. Most of the signage is from the eighties.
Anyhow there was a couple there who were clearly unimpressed by its dated appearance. We were in the Wild West part of the park and there is a large sign that says Cowboys and Indians. The woman started pointing and said she could not believe in 2016 they would have such a politically incorrect sign.
I was a bit surprised. Is Cowboys and Indians now racist and offensive? It is the first I have heard of this.

It's a funny one isn't it. Yes it is horrible and offensive. Or rather it should be. We wouldn't find children playing at nazis vs Jews sweet but cowboys and Indians is ok. I think we find it ok because it is so far removed from our experiences, the Indians with their headdresses are like fairy tale creatures and the cowboys are brave warriors of a new world.
My mum got ds2 the Playmobil fort so we now have toy cowboys and Indians. I felt uncomfortable about it but my mum doesn't see it as anything other than a fictional game, like Peter pan fighting the pirates. I've read all the little house books with dd though and we've talked about the history so the games they play with the Playmobil are not quite so racist. The Indians often end up in the fort having kicked the white settlers out of Indian territory

"I am struggling to imagine the number of Native Americans likely to be visiting Gulliver's World."

Brexit- might I suggest a name change before you do any more "you can't say anything nowadays" posts? Otherwise you are rather playing to the stereotype..............

jusr away to look out my picture of Roy Rogers...yeehaaaaaaa

It is referencing Westerns with John Wayne and the like, Lazy. That's the issue. The way Native Americans were represented in those films until very recently was not unlike the stereotype blackface/mammy etc stereotypes of black Americans in film.

In westerns, they were primitive naked savages in a continual state of war who kill whites, rape and kidnap white women, hardly ever say anything other than 'Ugh' and 'How' etc etc. Occasionally a reliable sidekick like the Lone Ranger's Tonto. If there was a noble Native American character/seductive 'squaw', they were invariably played by white actors in make-up.

There's a really interesting book I read somewhere about how Hollywood kept a village of I think Navajos living traditionally somewhere near the big studios, and would just send out a bus and hire them as cheap extras whenever they needed 'Indians'. Which is apparently why virtually all Western 'Indians' speak Navajo, wherever the film is supposedly set, because they always used the same people.

Why were they called Indians?

Because wide-boy "don't ask too many questions" Columbus had convinced himself (as well as his backers) that by sailing West he would actually reach India (in the East). In one of the quirks of history involving a dodgy map and everything to lose, Columbus hit land almost exactly where he had told everyone "India" should be.

Hence West Indies ...

So obviously the folk running around wondering "Who are these people ?" and "I wonder if they are friendly ?" were christened (rather too literally) "Indians".

Why were they called Indians

I think it's something to do with Columbus thinking he'd found the West Indies and thought he was near India?

It is somewhat shocking that some people don't know the real history of colonisation. The effect on the Native American population of colonisation (esp disease and land grabbing), the population of Australia, parts of South America, the Raj in India (Amritsar massacre anyone?) and even Ireland.

History that's often not taught in schools. Or is one sided.

Didn't the whole "Indians" thing all stem from a mistake? I swear I read somewhere at school that Columbus wanted to reach The East Indies (aiming for what is now Japan), by sailing a new westward route, but instead landed in The New World by mistake. He came into contact with the indigenous population and began referring to them as "Indians", as his original destination was the East Indies.

Oops....cross post!

That's very interesting Lurking, I hadn't realised that.

No, many Native Americans identify themselves as Indians or American Indians.

Eddie Izzard on the Mayflower.

No, many Native Americans identify themselves as Indians or American Indians.

My post makes it seem a bit like i think it is ok. I don't think it is ok, i meant "we" as in it being a societal norm to play at cowboys and Indians. I would love to see more education about this at school. The dcs and i have loved pouring over the atlas tracing the progression of white people through the land and seeing how the native Americans were pushed back. We've left much of the murdering out for now though! I remember learning about it at school, not really understanding the scale but feeling deep sorrow at how white people devastated the buffalo and the native people's way of life alongside it.

There's a really interesting book I read somewhere about how Hollywood kept a village of I think Navajos living traditionally somewhere near the big studios, and would just send out a bus and hire them as cheap extras whenever they needed 'Indians'.

The always entertaining (and possibly part-Cherokee) Rich Hall did a fascinating documentary which mentioned this a while back.

Also it was referenced in an episode of "The History Detectives" for those who get PBS - someone had a ledger from a relative which detailed payments to these movie extras.

Ah ok Thankyou. I enjoy history, shame we didn't cover that school.

My post makes it seem a bit like i think it is ok. I don't think it is ok, i meant "we" as in it being a societal norm to play at cowboys and Indians.

I agree I think my post saying I considered it 'the name of the game' sounds dismissive which isn't how I feel obviously.

I wonder how history is taught in US schools about this period of time?

The history of the US is fascinating esp in regards to how other people are treated.

I enjoy history, shame we didn't cover that school

There's a lot of history out there to cover.

It's not very important, the number of Native Americans who visit gullivers.

Knowing the history of the conquest of America, the brutality caused by the colonisers, the eradication of Natives across the Americas, the resettlements to the reservations, the misrepresentation of all this in Hollywood and fiction where the colonisers and cowboys were brave and the Natives savage, and the current treatment of Natives today across the Americas...

Do you really think we should still be painting it as an exciting and adventurous part of history. A Holocaust or Slavery attraction wouldn't get past the drawing board and it's due purely to historical misrepresentation that we don't see this as equally atrocious.

tracing the progression of white people through the land and seeing how the native Americans were pushed back

if there was a MN award for understatement, I would nominate that post ... genocide is probably a more accurate description.

Google the 'Trail of Tears' death march in the 1830s, for anyone who isn't aware of the appalling history of the forced removal of various tribes in order to free land for white settlement.

And, of course, later 'resettlements' are the unspoken backstory to Little House in the Prairie.

Actually, for an accessible modern take on it in fiction, Barbara Kingsolver's novel Pigs in Heaven (which is about the fallout from the illegal adoption of a Cherokee child in her earlier novel The Bean Trees) is quite informative on Cherokee history, including more recent horrors like children being taken off reservations and forcibly sent to boarding schoosl where they were forced to convert to Christianity, forbidden to speak their languages, made to cut their hair, given English names etc to try to eradicate their culture.

I agree with Borogove.

Indigenous people in the U.S. do often refer to the tribal groups collectively as 'Indian.'

Obviously 'American' is also a colonising term. Why would they have a preference for it?

That sounds very much like the stolen generation in Australia

I can think of a few films from Australia that try to tell the story of the stolen generation. Are there similar films from the USA or is it a period people don't want to talk about?

Indigenous people in the U.S. do often refer to the tribal groups collectively as 'Indian'

If groups want to reclaim a word as part of their identity then they're entirely entitled to do that. But in the context of 'cowboys and Indians' that's not what's happening, because the 'Indian' in that scenario is a savage who attacks the brave westerners. Surely you can see the difference?

DD's GCSE History course covered the American West. It was extremely interesting, much more so than rehashing 20th Century Europe all over again.