Until today I was under the impression that if your Tootsie Pop wrapper had the image of an Indian taking aim at a star with his bow and arrow that you had won a prize (although I have always been unclear on what the prize was *read: lazy*). But according to the Tootsie Pop people this is not the case. And according to the internet, I am not the only person who is wrong about this, as a matter of fact it looks as though people have been wrong about this since the 1930's!
How can so many people have been so wrong about something for so long? There are plenty of other pictures on the Tootsie Pop wrapper; children playing football, tennis, marbles, skiing, and sailing. Why are these images taken at face value while the Native American image needs further explanation. Is it because we consider all of these other activities to be 'normal' or rather 'white' and thus 'normal'? Is the only way to process the image of something 'other' than what we are comfortable or personally familiar with to assume that there must be some ulterior motive for it's mere existence? Could this be a symptom of America's systematic 'mysticizing' of Native Americans?
It makes you wonder...
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