Gazing into the world

The intersting thing about the concept of the gaze is how it is so fundamentally tied into Western thought. We do try to categorize, map, and understand every aspect of our lives. So, when the first settlers came to America, gazed on the American Indians, and declared them Savages, it fundamentally effected how they would look on them from that point forward. Besides creating a sense of otherness in the American Indians, it also allowed for the Colonists to feel justified in looking down on American Indian cultures and ideas. The gaze colonizes the American Indians into a people who can never be looked at as equal or even the same as those doing the gazing. They've become a part of the environment, something that has to be dealt with as an obstacle to Western progress.