Directions in Psychological Science
Really? You Don't Look Like an American Indian: Social Representations and Social Group Identities by Stephanie Fryberg

Arianne E. Eason, Laura M. Brady, Stephanie A. Fryberg. (2018). Reclaiming Representations & Interrupting the Cycle of Bias Against Native Americans
Fryberg, Stephanie A., and Arianne E. Eason. 2017. “Making the Invisible Visible: Acts of Commission and Omission.” Current...

Sources: Tukachinsky, R., Mastro, D., & Yarchi, M. (2015). Documenting portrayals of race/ethnicity on primetime television over a 20-year span and their association with national-level racial/ethnic attitudes. Journal of Social Issues

So when you leave Native people out of your news story, book, social media post, art show, etc. you are reinforcing anti-Indigenous racism. Leaving us out is not benign forgetting. It is active and harmful erasure.

One study found that non-Native participants who had less exposure to contemporary Natives were more likely to agree that the U.S. should nullify all treaties, eliminate all reservations, and abolish tribes’ right to self-govern.

Our existence is erased from the public eye. Americans don’t think about our absence. They don’t think about us at all.
Without any examples of living, breathing Native people, the American public starts to see us as less real and even less human.

When a group is negatively represented, that can lead to stereotypes and prejudice, like the idea that women are bad at math.
What Native people face is different. The media, pop culture, and school curriculum do not just represent us poorly. They represent us almost never.

We don’t learn about most people through direct social interactions, but from things like movies and the internet. I have never been to France, but I have an idea in my head that French people like wine and cheese.

It is a bewildering stereotype to encounter. The stereotype that you no longer exist. Nearly half of U.S. adults agree with what that woman said: that all Native Americans are dead and gone.

Once, I was at a grassroots social justice convening in Florida. On a break while people made small talk, a white woman came up to me and said, “I thought we killed all of you.” As in, she thought Native Americans were extinct like the woolly mammoth.

On the rare occasion Native people are portrayed in the media, we live in the past. In one study, researchers typed “Native American” and “American Indian” into the Google image search bar. 95% of the results were “antiquated portraits.”

When you scroll through your phone, read the news, or watch TV it is very unlikely you will see a Native person. Of the 2,336 regular characters on TV from 1987 to 2009, only two were Native.

And finally, you can catch me in upstate New York at Colgate University on November 13.
calendar.colgate.edu/event/anthon...

And then I will be back in Oklahoma for a couple of events. I will be at the Oklahoma City Community College on November 10 and University of Central Oklahoma on November 11!

Next I’ll be at the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit/ Dearborn on Nov 8 talking about the erasure of Native people in the media. www.thehenryford.org/current-even...

What is your tribe doing to help the community during the shutdown?