I have to admit that my exposure to Indigenous people, culture and history was rather limited and filled with stereotypes
growing up. There were those John Wayne western movies that filled the small screen every Saturday afternoon. I don’t
think there was anything real about those movies and they were definitely a negative. I know too many grew up believing — and probably believe today — that all Indigenous people were Plains Indians who rode horseback and slaughtered buffalo when they weren’t busy harassing the “poor, innocent white settlers.”

With all of the massacres of Indigenous people that I have read about over the years, perhaps psychologically speaking, the qualities of many of the settlers were projected onto the Native people, using these depictions to wreak even more brutality on Native people as their land and resources were taken from the — treaty or no treaty.