The Indian princess and the squaw: an exploration of the objectification of Native American women

Abstract

The harmful consequences of interpersonal objectification for women have received considerable empirical attention. However, research considering the impact of race and ethnicity on objectified women is lacking and, thus far, no research has investigated how objectification affects views of Native American women. Historically, stereotypes of Native American women have been influenced by colonization in ways that other groups of women have not. Today, Native American women face higher rates of sexual assault compared to women of other races, resulting in what has been coined as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. The present studies seek to extend objectification research to Native American women using Haslam’s (2006) model of dehumanization (Studies 1 & 2) and explore how objectification can affect victim-blame in an acquaintance-rape vignette (Study 3). The first two studies found that a Native American woman was mechanistically objectified to a greater extent than a White woman. Study 2 used the Scrambled Sentence Task to prime the “squaw” stereotype, and a mediation analysis indicated that the activation of negative stereotypes explained the objectification of the Native American woman. Furthermore, Study 3 did not find any significant differences between blaming the victim, whether the victim was specified as a Native American woman or White.

Keywords: Objectification, Dehumanization, Native American women, Stereotypes