Political column – August 20

In the distant past, and not knowing of the plight of the Native Americans, I used to play a game called Cowboys and Indians in which I indulged in disgusting and outdated stereotypes including running around whooping and smacking my mouth.

There were extenuating circumstances. In those days it was what lots of free spirited children did, having being denied education on the historic wrongs meted out to the Native Americans, or Red Indians as we would call them in our institutionally-created ignorance.

We have come a long way since those dark times. The enlightened children of today pursue more wholesome existences, stuck in their bedrooms with their devices, bullying each other on social media, and cursing the older generation as they watch television and observe first hand the climate change crimes of irresponsible adults.

Those childhood follies left me scarred, literally. We used to make bows and arrows out of sticks and string. Today they would order them online (and you can get little plastic ones online, I've checked). My older brother shot me straight through the upper lip. If I look carefully I can still see the circular scar.

There were other games we played. Japs and Commandos. Dry sods of earth made great grenades. Cops and Robbers too where, shamefully, we took not account of the socio-economic hardships which may have led to them becoming robbers in the first place.

Of course the Cowboys and Indians stereotypes owe a lot to the film industry, but I think a lot of the mythology grew up long before Hollywood. Early in the 20th century Buffalo Bill toured Britain with a Wild West show in which Native Americans themselves were among the performers. When it came to Wellington in 1904 it included members of the Sioux, Ogallala, Brule, Uncapappa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes.

Sacheen Littlefeather, who appeared on stage at the 1973 Academy Awards where she politely rejected Marlon Brando's Oscar, is an Apache.

In a dignified short speech she explained on live television that this was because of the continued misrepresentation of Native Americans on screen, and also because of recent events at Wounded Knee, a confrontation at the site of a 1890 massacre of 300 Sioux by the US Seventh Cavalry.

Nearly half a century on, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has given a formal apology to her for the "unwarranted and unjustified" treatment she received as a result of her statement on stage that night.

To try to find out what happened, I thought the Guardian would be a good place to start. "The speech was greeted with jeers from the audience," it said.

And according to the BBC News website she was "booed offstage."

In fact, if you watch the clip, she left the stage to thunderous applause. There were briefly a few boos, I counted perhaps five, as she got into Brando's reasons for declining to accept the award, but they were drowned out by a growing swell of clapping.

However she has said that she has been mocked, discriminated against, and attacked for making that speech.

Hollywood does have a lot else it could apologise for. My mum would never let me watch the Jungle Book because she thought it was a crass Americanisation of the classic Rudyard Kipling story.

For movie bigwigs, entertainment value trumps historical accuracy.

But an enduring shame is how animals used to be treated in the movies before higher welfare standards prevailed. In the 1936 movie The Charge of the Light Brigade so many horses were killed during filming the big charge – they were deliberately tripped up – that the furious star Errol Flynn is said to have got into a physical confrontation with the director.

And if you believe that lemmings commit suicide by throwing themselves off cliffs, then you have been taken in by a myth popularised by "White Wilderness," a 1958 Walt Disney documentary, which showed lemmings plunging off a cliff into the ocean.

According to a 1983 investigation by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation producer Brian Vallee the scenes were faked with, he alleged, the filmmakers actually pushing the lemmings off.

Finally, a cry of pain. After thinking I had dodged the bullet for so long, I turned up two little lines on the test kit on Wednesday. Aaargh.