Conclusion
Overall, this project has successfully analyzed newspapers in order to get a better understanding of how Native Americans are portrayed in the media in the context of Thanksgiving. We first looked at the broad findings within the corpus using AntConc and then attempted to answer specific questions I posed in the introduction. Many of my original hypotheses were shown to be imprecise, which in turn enhanced my comprehension of the nuance of this corpus.
Due to the wealth of information provided by the Chronicling America database, there are many more avenues of research to be done on the topic that expands beyond the singular search term I have used to guide my project. Regarding the specific Chronicling America search term “thanksgiving indian” there are additional corpus analyses to be done using AntConc and Voyant.
As mentioned previously, there is still a noticeable lack of indigenous representation as well as the proper portrayal of indigenous issues in American media. In fact, during the 2020 election, CNN used an info-graphic that broke down a specific exit poll into various races. White, Latino, Black, and Asian got their own boxes but CNN chose to label Native Americans as “Something Else.”
Native Americans were rightfully angered by this form of erasure since they were an influential voting bloc in battleground states. As a result, the phrase “something else” was reclaimed by indigenous tribes and became a rallying cry that brings to light how indigenous people have continued to survive and maintain their culture despite hundreds of years of genocidal acts brought against them: Native Americans are “something else.”
This highlights the importance and timeliness of this issue and how the long history of demeaning, stereotypical portrayals of Native Americans continue to be devoid of recognizing the diversity of tribes and should be properly addressed today.
Finally, I would like to thank Professor Gabriel Pizzorno and my classmates Esat Bayar, Calvin Duran, and Jean-Philippe Bombay for their assistance and valuable feedback.