Native Americans in film
In 1950, the watershed film Broken Arrow appeared, which many credit as the first postwar Western to depict Native Americans sympathetically.
[1] Contemporary Native filmmakers have employed the use of visual sovereignty, defined by Seneca scholar Michelle H. Raheja as "a way of reimagining Native-centered articulations of self-representation and autonomy that engage the powerful ideologies of mass media," to take back the right to tell their own stories.
These stage performances toured America and Europe, presenting romanticized fiction about the American frontier which some audiences misunderstood as history.
The film featured a sympathetic depiction of Native American characters; however, critics describe their portrayal as a "helpless Indian race...forced to recede before the advancing white.
[10] Deer, an actor, writer, and director, was involved in the production of over 150 movies, an example being White Fawn's Devotion: A Play Acted by a Tribe of Red Indians in America.
[15]In 1914, ethnologist Edward S. Curtis directed silent film In the Land of the Head Hunters, a fictionalized documentary about the lives and culture of Kwakwakaʼwakw people of the Queen Charlotte Strait in Canada.
The film dramatizes a famine experienced by the Ojibwe during the post-classical era and incorporates folklore, spiritual visions, and religious elements.
[1][19] A few successful Indian/white marriages did occur in film during these early years, such as A Cry from the Wilderness (1909), A Leap for Life (1910) and The Indian Land Grab (1911).
Feather headdresses were culturally and historically correct for approximately two dozen Plains tribes, and those of the American southwest were often wearing traditional clothing.
[22][23] Beverly R. Singer argues that "Despite the fact that a diversity of indigenous peoples had a legal and historical significance in the formation of every new country founded in the Western Hemisphere, in the United States and Canada the term 'Indians' became a hegemonic designation implying that they were all the same in regards to culture, behavior, language, and social organization".
[citation needed] In the 1970s, Revisionist Westerns like Little Big Man and Soldier Blue often portrayed Native Americans as victims and white people as the frontier's aggressive intruders.
Colonel George Armstrong Custer as a lunatic – a fool and a fop – whom the white protagonist betrays for the sake of his adopted Indian family.
[27] 1990's Dances with Wolves, while hailed by mainstream audiences and providing jobs for many Lakota actors, has also been cited as a return to the White savior narrative in film.
[31] Like Powwow Highway, it is also a road movie and buddy film that examines friendship, fatherhood, and the roles of tradition versus modernity in Indian Country.
Kyle's cyclist gang invites him for a bike ride which Josh joins their group, and he takes them to a secret waterfall where they spray-paint graffiti in the sacred site and litter the ground, Josh gets into trouble with John, and he apologizes to John's family and challenges his rival Kyle to a mountain bike race.
Furthermore, white actors have never faced a shortage of roles available to them in Hollywood, while Native Americans and other marginalized groups continue to experience this.
[44] Dark Cloud, also known as Elijah Tahamont, was an Algonquin chief born in St. Francis Indian Village, Quebec, Canada who lived from 1861 to 1918.
Luther Standing Bear, also known as Ota K'Te (Plenty Kill), was born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and lived from 1868 to 1939.
From 1911 to 1914, James Young Deer was Head of Production/general manager for the Pathé Frères West Coast Studio located in Edendale, California.
He was married to Native American actress Red Wing and died in 1946.Wes Studi, born in 1947 in Oklahoma, is a Cherokee actor and professional horse trainer known for starring in over 80 films.
He is credited with bringing versatile and masterful performances into Hollywood which have helped to dismantle some of the stereotypes surrounding Native Americans within the industry.
Outside of film, Westerman has used his musical talents to bring greater awareness to issues facing indigenous people in the United States.
He was also an ambassador for the International Indian Treaty Council, a multinational organization striving for the self-determination and autonomy of indigenous peoples across the world.
[31] Like Powwow Highway, it is also a road movie and buddy film that examines friendship, fatherhood, and the roles of tradition versus modernity in Indian Country.
[32] Written and directed by Mi'kmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby, Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) tells the story of Aila, played by Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, as she goes up against Popper, an Indian agent and head of the nearby residential school.
Barnaby explores life in a post-colonial society through the lens of a zombie apocalypse where they must resist and fight against their oppressors and avoid extinction.
[63] Written and directed by the Cree-Métis filmmaker Danis Goulet, Night Raiders (2021) takes place in a dystopian post-war North America where children are owned by the state.
[64] Written and directed by Chloé Leriche, Before the Streets (French: Avant les rues) is a 2016 Canadian drama film[65] Set among the Atikamekw people of northern Quebec, the film stars Rykko Bellemare as Shawnouk, a man undertaking the process of restorative justice after accidentally killing someone in the process of committing a crime.
Reservation Dogs is an American comedy-drama television series created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi for FX Productions.
It follows the lives of four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma, as they spend their days hanging out and committing crimes to earn enough money to leave their reservation community.
