Tipis and Totem Poles



Easily confused.

O'siyo,

Indigenous peoples in the Americas are a diverse group, from hunter-gatherers to massive civilizations.

In fiction, though, they're all the same: Essentially, like summer camps. Much like Culture Chop Suey and Spexico, Hollywood Geography strikes again. Note that other indigenous groups may be portrayed this exact same way, which can be considered Critical Research Failure.

The trope name comes from two particularly common tropes of this: Plains Indian tipis, and Pacific Northwest totem poles. The two are socially organized quite differently; also, the Great Plains tend to be drier than The Other Rainforest.

When an Indigenous American cultural mishmash is applied to an individual's clothing, that's Braids, Beads, and Buckskins. Compare Magical Native American, which often relates to this.

Examples of Tipis and Totem Poles include:

Anime and Manga

Shaman King has the Patch tribe, supposedly from the Southwest. They live in pueblos...and Silva's final attack resembles a totem pole.
Gigantor featured some aborigines treated in this way. Even worse when you consider that this was set in the twentieth century or later.

Film

Disney's version of Peter Pan hit this trope along with other "Indian" stereotypes.

Literature

Twilight has the Quileute wearing animal skins in a flashback. It's called The Other Rainforest for a reason, people!

Live-Action TV

Power Rangers: Angel Grove is in California. In Tommy's part of the Zeo Crystal arc, he's living among plains Indians, who are implied to be his ancestors, something explicitly confirmed in another episode, when one of them, from a reservation just outside Angel Grove, is his brother. There's even an arrowhead to contain some Eldritch Abomination.
All natives in The Wild Wild West lived in tipis, no matter where in the USA they might have been.

Video Games

Arguably some of the Pokémon Black and White Mons, such as Sigilyph and Braviary. Black and White is in New York City.
Nightwolf from Mortal Kombat has been Hopi (in the film) and Lakota (in the games), has had Braids, Beads, and Buckskins, and has had a number of stereotypical powers that, if not autochthonous to Western stereotypes, are based on one culture or another. In the cartoon, he has a wolf named Kiva.

Mitakuye oyasin.