Native American Women

In my Bachelor’s Thesis I want to introduce the culture of Native American women, and strike out especially their way of life and their importance in their tribes and communities. I want to deal with the issue of European and European American clichés about Native American women. When we as Europeans think about Native American women today we are influenced by different media like Hollywood movies and books about Native Americans. We might picture a bloodthirsty warrior, sitting on his horse, shouting, his tomahawk raised high above his head. Then we might see the lowly squaw with her baby tied to her back gathering food and little sticks for making a fire. We might also have the “Pocahontas-picture” in our mind and think of the romanticized story of the Indian princess that saved the life of a British soldier. I want to find out if some of these clichés are true and which ones were definitely fabricated by early settlers and continued by European whites who just did not understand Native American society.