"You don't look Native... I seen Natives in the movies..."
How many of you have heard these words? Seriously...
Pretty much up until we saw "Tonto" - Jay Silverheels, we rarely saw genuine Native American people on either the silver screen or television. We saw Italians decked out in regalia that did not belong to the regions they were supposed to be from, with warpaints that had little association with the tribes they represented.
"Iron Eyes Cody" or Espera Oscar de Corti was of Italian American heritage and was perhaps the most famous of these actors, however he went above and beyond acting and actually forged a connection with Native America to the point where he was highly respected by many Indigenous for his walking the Red Road.
The Peoples of Turtle Island, were many and varied, from rich dark skin and hair, brown eyes, slender and tall, to paler skin and hair, different coloured eyes and stockier build. Sit on a busy corner in Los Angeles and watch the people walking past for an hour. The Indigenous peoples of The Americas are as many and varied as the peoples you would see walking past you there.
Things have changed these days... Graeme Green, Chief Dan George, Will Samson, Russell Means, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Irene Bedard, Gil Birmingham, Tantoo Cardinal, Lou Diamond Phillips and Zahn Tokiya-ku McClarnon just to name a few shows us how much things have changed, we know these names from film and television. Yet these good people do not all look the same, some are darker, some are lighter, some have longer hair.
Add to this list the numerous members of the younger generations of Native and we now begin at last to see some true native diversity on the big and small screen.
But back to the topic, "Them Good Ole Western Movies" well apart from barely if at all showing any true representation of the rich textures of the native people, they would have you believe that all natives lived in Teepees, all natives were pure hunter gatherers, all natives spoke the same language, danced the same dance, sang the same song and were all the same.
We know this is not true, we know Woodlands lived in log cabins, Plains were more nomadic, we know natives farmed and followed the seasons, we know those who lived in the forests were of lighter skin then those who traversed the great plains were darker in skin tone. we know there were many languages, dances, songs and traditions and it is only very recently that these differences are finally being shown...
So much for learning anything from "them good ole western movies".
A story I was recently told of the modern era, was a group of people from Maine flew in to Kansas and were highly disappointed not to find the old towns, stagecoaches, wagon trains and Cowboys and Indians running wild throughout the state ... Because that is what the movies they watched showed them... Wouldn't you think the fact that they could buy an airline ticket to fly and land at an airport in Kansas, might not have given them a clue that maybe things were not quite what they saw on the silver screen?
