Teaching Indians how to do stuff (1950s)

WATCH:

The Indian Sanitarium Will Help You (?)

A 1940s U.S. Department of Interior film produced by the Office of Indian Affairs. A film about health practices and hospitals:

https://archive.org/details/TheIndianSanitariumWillHelpYou

During the 1950s in the USA, a large amount of prescriptive material appeared in the form of magazines, handbooks, and guidance films, teaching proper manners and good behavior in a rapidly evolving post-war society.  In this context, the U.S. Department of the Interior commissioned two short films produced by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1952 aimed at teaching young Native Americans how to properly use a telephone and answer calls.
The political context of the era is key here, as the 1950s represented a kind of pinnacle in the federal government's assimilationist intentions about Native American communities, whether it be the attempt to abolish protected reservation territories or the forced teaching of Anglo-American values in federal residential schools.
These short films, which at first seem to resemble the innocuous orientation films of the time in their format and approach, in fact aim not simply at the acquisition of new cultural codes, but at the complete rewriting of the most traditional thought patterns.  Analyze their scenography and purpose in the light of ethnographic and anthropological data, as specifically relevant to the Navajo culture, as the students and the examples in the movie are clearly aimed at this community. 

Two short films here: 

Telephone Etiquette
Receiving a Telephone Call

We didn't need their help.