A Native American/Amerindian character's POV, particularly when issues of racism and social realism come up . . . working on a couple of pieces of historical fiction in the old/wild west, but with NA lead characters.
I've shortened your post to touch on two points, primarily.
If you're speaking of 'the old West, 1700-early 1900s, you have a MASSIVE amount of information to plow through. My own 1870s novel required thousands of
era maps, government documents, advertisements, newspapers, Tribal documentation, languages, cultures, etc-etc., and still, I had to cross check every piece because they were often written with bias and/or ignorance. As an example, in Sacramento, the most culturally advanced location in the West, in 1876 they were still offering a bounty for 'pieces' of Indigenous Americans...and they had formed strong and social/government supported anti-Chinese and anti-Colored leagues, and so on.
So essentially, Indigenous Americans were considered 'less than human,' but terrified the immigrants (everyone else) so much they believed they had to be exterminated...and that continues today. In contrast, Indigenous American peoples had extremely advanced cultures and societies. So, the savage Europeans were considered 'less than human', who terrified many indigenous peoples so much they believed they had to be exterminated... Funny how that works, huh?
The real problem is, can you relate and express,
how it feels to encounter that depth of racial/cultural hatred in your own homeland?
Now it's one thing if you just want historically accurate racial slurs, there's a bunch. How each treated the other is also easy enough to sort out (once you learn that much of what Indigenous Americans are accused of, they adopted from how they were treated by European immigrants first, believing that's what the Europeans understood...if they even did those things). However, to try and convey how they might have felt, to some degree requires some personal experience or in-depth interviews (which will be, actually shallow).
As to how it will be received, no matter how accurate you are--in all regards--you'll encounter harsh criticism. From the Indigenous side of things, part of that is because even among IAs, there is a LOT of differing opinion. Past preferring being
labeled by their tribe/nation/family, each person's experience, tolerance, and opinion is different as
@The Judge points out. From everyone else it gets worse. I'll restrain my little rant, but there are a LOT of social justice warriors right now who have absolutely no connection to the people or causes they wish to defend--and they usually don't know what they're talking about--but they'll try and correct you, to that which they don't have a clue to.
So,
since you've chosen an era and location (which sets in stone how accurate you need to be), the question is must your character be Indigenous American? I only ask due to the difficulty of that as
@Star-child points out. He also points out another great point. To state, 'Bob looked like X due to indigenous roots,' but past that has no connection to the people, makes the task
much easier.
If not and he/she must be raised in that culture, what dates, which people/tribe, are you sure of the location, terrain, environment, the culture, the language, and so on? There is a LOT you should try to get right since the information is out there.
But, it can be done. Just paint the people--ALL people, race regardless--fairly. Not too good, not too bad, just people as people are after learning their varied cultural perspectives.
In the end, however, it's your project. Best of luck, it's a fascinating subject and a complex but rewarding place and time to investigate.
K2