The closest most non-American Indians have ever come to connecting emotionally with a Native culture was during a viewing of Pocahontas.
I know, she’s caricature and not a real Native American, but that’s exactly my point. They’ve been so marginalized in our society that all we know of them mostly consists of racist stereotypes and animated Disney characters. And when someone says there’s something wrong with them, we think, “What’s the problem.”
The same scratching of the head occurs when we think of the racial slur “Redskin.”