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A while back, New York’s Fifth Avenue Easter Parade was the unlikely setting for a gentle, ironic probing of a decidedly ungentle fact: even through white Americans no longer think of themselves as conquistadores when they view Indian people, white ignorance and disregard of Indian reality remains massive.

Do Indians Shave? is a series of brief, on-the-street interviews with costumed parade-goers, conducted as the crowds swirl around the subject and the crew.  The mood on the street is festive.  The interviewer keeps the conversation brief and low-key: he simply asks each subject a few basic questions about Indian people, questions that sound like they belong in a grade-school primer.  Out tumbles a potpourri of inane myths, gross inaccuracies, and inadvertent slander of Indian people.  These smiling, pleasant people are, unfortunately, perpetuating the lies that have been used to justify genocide, and the mindless indifference, or at best, mild and inactive concern, that makes possible the continuing oppression of Indian people.  And it’s all such good fun on a sunny Easter Day.

Question:  Is the gross ignornace about Indigenous peoples still prevalent?