other Indians in a completely different face and form. This film, as the big winner of the Oscars that year, has a lot to praise. It covers a wide range of topics, including trust, friendship, family, man and nature, social change, racism, terrorism and other core issues of modern society. It is also rich in the display of good and bad things, including good and bad Indians, good and bad white soldiers, cruel deprivation of nature, and reasonable demands from nature, cruelty of war, and love and love. The warmth of family life is the breakdown of the individual mind in a repressive environment, and the complete reconstruction of the individual mind when alone. From the perspective of cultural anthropology, it undoubtedly has a very high research value. The following author will briefly interpret the film from the perspective of cultural anthropology course study. 2. The meaning of "participatory observation" Officer Dunbar chose to live alone in the grassland area after making great contributions, and gained the opportunity to go deep into the Sioux and get along with them day and night. In the process, Dunbar went deep into the lives of "others" to observe and experience. In the beginning, the two sides did not understand each other's language at all, nor did they understand the meaning behind each other's actions, so they figured out each other's intentions. Because Dunbar saved a woman in the Sioux, he gained the initial trust of the Sioux, and he started frequent interactions after that. During the interaction, he learned the Sioux language, acquired the name of the Sioux, and even married a white woman who grew up in the Sioux tribe. He chose to understand and accept the language of the Sioux, eat in the way of the Sioux, follow the tradition of the Sioux with a new name and hold a wedding. Although Dunbar has no anthropological training, he has been very successful in participatory observation, which can be said to put himself in the shoes of the local people and see things around him. 3. From Ethnocentrism to Cultural Relativism The theory of cultural relativity founded by Boas, the father of modern American anthropology, tells people that to understand and understand a certain culture, we must start from the value and belief of the culture itself, not Adopt the standards of other cultures. The whites and Indians in the film have a certain attitude of contempt for each other at first. For example, the wind exudes contempt for the physical gestures that Dunbar uses to communicate. Dunbar can't understand the practice of not returning things after picking up things among the Sioux. This is because they all have worldviews and ways of thinking that are rooted in their own culture, and they all have a certain degree of ethnocentrism. However, in the subsequent interactions, they gained an understanding of the local meaning of each other's cultural meaning, and then they were able to start from the other party's own values and beliefs, and accept the other party's culture well. For example, the Sioux used Dunbar's weapons for armed confrontation. Dunbar went to town in every aspect of life vulgar. In this respect, the film can be said to be a good example of cultural relativism. 4. Supplementary Background Knowledge The Sioux (English: Sioux) highlighted in the film is a nation among the North American Indians. In a broad sense, Sioux can refer to any person whose language belongs to the Sioux group of the Indian language group. The Sioux people originally lived in the area east of the Great Lakes in North America and were engaged in farming, mainly growing corn. There have been pictographs, worship the sun. Since the beginning of the 19th century, due to the oppression and slaughter of the colonists and whites, some of them moved westward to the prairie, and once formed the "Prairie Alliance". Later, some were forced to relocate, and finally they were concentrated in several barren Indian reservations in South Dakota, North Dakota and other states, and there are about 45,000 people. Another 2,000 people are in Canada. Of the Pacific Rim Indians, the Sioux were the most stubbornly resistant to white invasion, and they were considered the best cavalry in the world—but also the last on horseback. As the last tragic words of the film Dances with Wolves: "Thirteen years later, their homes destroyed, their buffalos gone, the last band of free Sioux submitted to white authority at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. The great horse culture of the plains was gone and the American frontier was soon to pass into history.
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