Discussion Question: Pocahontas!

So of course the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Native American stereotypes is the Disney film Pocahontas. I think that one other blogger so far has mentioned it briefly but I think that it could use some more scrutiny... The film was made in 1995 (putting it right in the middle of most of our childhoods) so I'm sure you're probably aware of the film if you haven't seen it. I think that Disney generally does a good job of distributing stereotypical information to the young public and this movie is a great example. The video below is the opening credits to the movie which I think gives the general feel. I think most revealing are the comments that are attached to this video by the public.

PrinceAyenia (15 hours ago)
"Oh great Spirit hear our song,
help us keep the ancient grace..."If only we could live so close to nature as
the Indians did =/

ElsieVanLeeuwenhoek (8 hours ago) I totaly agree with
PrinceAyenia; we reeli dont unnerstand our beautiful world.n the indian way of
life is so beautiful.1:21 makes me giggle.teehee

So here we can see the way that people viewed the movie - as an escape to a better time. I guess my discussion question would be this: why does disney (and for that matter all things that pander to a under 12 year old audience) work so hard to distribute steretypical imagery? I think that in class we provided several examples of stereotypically Native American examples and a lot of them were from our childhood, why is that??