Native Americans were the first people to have arrived in America, and to have built an establishment in America. Many people have a stereotype on how they lived and still live currently, and many Native Americans don’t consent to that at all. The way many people believe that the Native Americans lived a nomadic type of lifestyle, such as hunting large animals for food, using animal parts to create clothing, and many other actions. This article that the author has wrote is very convincing on how a Native American feels about how people are stereotyping him and his type of people.
It gives a perspective from a Native American’s point of view of what they deal with on a daily basis, and throughout their entire life. The main reason that is convincing throughout the article is the author’s use of Pathos and Ethos. The first idea that will be discussed is how is Ethos is used to convince the readers. Ethos is used in a very ideal way because, it tells how a Native American feels about how they are being stereotyped. This makes the author credible because she is using her real life examples to show first hand how people being are being mislead into the culture of Native Americans.
This makes the article extremely convincing because the source of information, is coming from the best source possible, which the author herself. The source is the Native American author who feels down emotionally because of the stereotyping of Native Americans. There is no better source than this, and this source can give real life examples of situations that have occurred to them. Also, this source cannot be deemed uncredible, because there is no other source to go to that will tell you that the words of the Native American author are ncorrect. Ethos deals with the credibility of an author, and I think the authors use this the best out of the three ideas, due to the fact of that the source that the authors used was the best source that could be used for this type of scenario. The second idea that will be discussed is the author’s use of Pathos throughout the story. The authors attempts to use the emotions of the Native Americans to appeal to the readers emotions, which I believe is extremely worthy and convincing argument to include in the article.
The argument used in the article is a Native American who was attending a school in California, and the school mascot was a Native American warrior, who had long hair, dark-skinned, and very muscular. The native american student felt very offended by the mascot. The article expresses how unsafe the student felt at his school knowing that the school mascot was based on a stereotype. The school also had parades where two students would dress as “warriors” one being a male and the other being a princess and they would perform a “cultural dance routine.
After the dance routine, the band would follow up by playing a song that was featured in a old western movie, that was played when an Indian was approaching a village of settlers which meant trouble. She felt very offended by the school’s actions, and many students who expressed their school spirit, confronted her and asked her where her school spirit was, and that they were honoring her people. She not only felt down emotionally but she also felt unsafe during the situation. She also mentioned that the students would buy face paint, paper wigs, and feathers to dress up as “Native Americans. She expresses that how she couldn’t figure out how face paint and feathers would represent her people. She then tried to express her concern about this problem to her school’s faculty about getting rid of the offensive mascot. She was ignored and outnumbered, as she mentioned happened to her type of people their entire lives. The author really uses this story to appeal the readers emotions, and it most definitely does exactly that. She also mentions a story of how her little sister felt extremely unsafe at her school.
Where the school mascot was in the process of being removed from the school. Her mom had to call the school because a bunch of the kids at her school that wanted to “save the warrior” said they were going to “teach her a lesson. ” This part was really convincing because know there was threats being put because of a stereotype. These are the reasons I believe that this article is very convincing in portraying the effects that stereotypes have on the people being stereotyped. The author used mainly Pathos and Ethos to appeal the readers.
She used her being Native American as her credibility, showing first hand of what she has gone through. Her using herself as her source was an extremely mart move in convincing the readers. She then used her real life examples of stereotype at her school to appeal to the readers emotions. She described how at times she felt unsafe and angry with the way they were portraying Native Americans. The author put this article into perfect sections inform the readers of the problems Native Americans dealt with.