Another response to Indians Shanghaied by Shanghai Noon:

Thanks for your remarks. It's never too late to comment on an old movie—especially since they get recycled constantly on cable and DVDs nowadays.

The tribe in question had some Lakota or Sioux elements, but the movie never said which tribe it was. I assume it was a generic tribe with all the stereotypical traits of such a tribe. The enemy tribe also was generic; half-naked braves with their heads shaved almost always signify "bad" Indians (often Pawnee).

To distinguish east from west, all you have to note is where the sun rises and sets, so that isn't hard. I don't see any evidence that Chan's character went east. No evidence he crossed a huge mountain range like the Rockies not once but twice.

That he crossed all of Nevada and all of Utah to reach western Colorado is highly unlikely. That he traveled further to reach eastern Colorado is even less likely. Yet that's still some distance from Sioux territory—especially in the latter part of the 19th century, when whites began to limit the Sioux's range.

So I find your whole scenario implausible, which leads me back to my scenario. The filmmakers misused Lakota Indians as the standard for "good" Indians in the West, including Nevada.

>> This movie was inadvertently correct a lot of the time. Of course, by choosing the "Sioux" tribe, it's easier to do this because most stereotypes are based on them to begin with (like I say, there are only two kinds of Indians: Lakota, and the people who wish they were Lakota.) <<

It may have been inadvertently correct for the Lakota culture, but it was wrong to either 1) situate the Lakota in Nevada, or 2) portray Nevada's Indians (i.e., the Paiute or Shoshone) as Lakotas. Using Lakotas as the default Indians anywhere from Arizona to Pennsylvania is wrong, wrong, wrong.

By the way, I can pretty much guarantee that all sorts of Indians—the Navajo and the Pueblos, for starters—have no desire to be anything but themselves. That Indians as well as Anglos want to be Lakotas sounds like another stereotype.

Anyway, after seeing the movie, I concluded it's worse than I thought it was, not better. I'll have more to say on it eventually.

Rob

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