Portrayals of Native and Indigenous Police on Television: Stereotypes or Attempts at Authenticity?

• In Event: The Intersection of Media and Crime: Interrogating Crime Control, Violence, and Marginalized Identities

Abstract

Portrayals of Native and Indigenous people on television have long been the dominant culture’s stereotypes. Whites have been “the standard” whereas Native and Indigenous people and cultures have been typecast as more “natural” and, simultaneously, substandard. Although there have been almost no representations of Native and Indigenous police officers on television crime dramas, there have been Native and Indigenous characters who are perpetrators of crimes in these series, falling into the tropes of noble savage, drunk, backwards or, for women, brutalized. However, Native and Indigenous characters have primarily been invisible.

This research is based on a content analysis of seasons 1 and 2 of Dark Winds, an AMC crime drama focused on Navajo police in the 1970s. The content analysis finds that the portrayal of the Navajo police on Dark Winds portrays them as ethical but balancing between a mainstream (white) understanding of law enforcement and the viewpoints in the Navajo community which are different. The victims in the series are all Navajo, yet often embody stereotypes so that they are similar to white victims (young, female, light-skinned, English-speaking). A content analysis of the perpetrators shows an interesting departure from most crime dramas: all are white.

Author

• Sarah F. Fischer, Marymount University