"When these prejudicial stereotypes are applied to First Nations peoples of North America, what is “authentically Indian” becomes submerged and dehumanized by the “colonial mind set,” which promotes a “falsely superior [Anglo-American] ‘we’ versus [Indigenous] ‘them’ perspective.” According to Cornel Pewewardy, “The colonizer’s falsified stories have become universal truths to mainstream society and have reduced indigenous culture to a cartoon caricature. This distorted and manufactured reality is one of the most powerful shackles subjecting Indigenous Peoples. It distorts all indigenous experiences, past and present.” The result is miscommunication, misunderstanding, and “dysconscious racism,” a term for a type of racism that “unconsciously accepts dominant white norms and privileges.” Joyce E. King elaborates: “Dysconscious racism is an uncritical habit of mind (that is, perceptions, attitudes, assumptions and beliefs) that justifies inequity and exploitation by accepting the existing order of things as given. It involves identification with an ideological view point which admits no fundamentally alternative vision of society.” Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann state in their 1967 book, The Social Construction of Reality, “He who has the bigger stick has the better chance of imposing his definition of reality.” As was discussed in the introduction to the present book, writers, directors, and producers of television shows are primarily Euro-Americans who wield highly influential and enormous sticks."
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