Between the Reel and Real: American Indian Representation in Film

The reason why Indians were projected so heavily into movies, was the romance of the tragedy Chris Eyre, Cheyenne/Arapaho filmmaker.

I want to begin by acknowledging the problematic nature of the misnomer “American Indian”. Where possible tribal affiliations are used.

Representations of American Indians have spread into many cultural domains, and each have played a turn in creating and perpetuating the Western ideal of ‘American Indian culture’. The misrepresentation of American Indian culture has continued harmful stereotypical representations of American Indians, furthering unequal power relations, (rooted in colonialism), rendering American Indians internally colonised within American hegemony. The American Indian ‘image’ is woven into American and Western culture in numerous ways. For example, through film and media, photography, literature, anthropological studies, museums, art and architecture, public monuments, tribal casinos, sports and so forth. However, portrayal of Native culture in these ways, especially appropriated images, works to create a pan-Indianism which can perpetuate, transform and in some cases work to replace culture and lived histories of tribal groups. For example, most representations of American Indians, especially in film, centres on the perceived appearance and behaviour of Plains Indian groups. The following is a brief overview of American Indian filmic portrayal but is by no means a comprehensive list or analysis of all films made with American Indian characters.

In early Hollywood film, the common stereotypical motifs of American Indian characters included the ‘noble savage’; or the ‘brutal savage’; picturing them as supreme horsemen; spiritual and at one with nature and animals, and at times the loyal sidekick. We can see these motifs in a slew of films including, Dance Me Outside (McDonald, 1994), The Searchers (Ford, 1956), The Lone Ranger, (Heisler, 1956 and Verbinski, 2013). The Last of the Mohicans (Mann, 1992), for example, encompasses the classic themes of American Indians as sidekicks or secondary to the white-man, (Chingachgook, Magua, Uncas), American Indians being spiritual and at one with nature, as bloodthirsty warriors and savages, and of course, the notion of the vanishing Indian. Then there’s the idea that American Indians exist in a sense of timelessness, or that they all live in the Southwest deserts, and if not in the desert then on reservations rife with crime – Thunderheart (Apted, 1992), Wind River (Sheridan, 2017). American Indian characters or the American Indian image is also prevalent in the science fiction genre; think of the Na’vi in Avatar (Cameron, 2009), or the werewolves in The Twilight Saga (Hardwicke, 2008).

However, American Indian identities have changed in line with political, social and economic affairs in the United States. Thomas Edison’s Buffalo Dance (1984) depicting the Laguna Pueblo peoples were the first moving images of American Indians. American Indians were very popular characters in silent era films, and were portrayed most famously by Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance. This era saw American Indians as ‘noble savages’, striving for survival – The Silent Enemy (Carver, 1930) alludes to the silent enemy of starvation, yet fuelled the trope of the vanishing Indian. From the 1930s, in line with the Great Depression, American Indian identities in film suggest that the audiences were looking for a new type of American hero, which came in the form of white, cowboys, and saw American Indians become brutal savages – The Plainsman, (DeMille, 1936), and Stagecoach (Ford, 1939), which Jesse Wente, (Ojibway producer) described as ‘one of the most damaging movies for Native peoples in history’ due to their depiction as wild, violent, backwards and vicious.

Broken Arrow (Daves, 1950) reinvented the American Indian stereotype, no longer rendering them villains or savages. From the late 1960s onwards American Indian became metaphors for the oppressed, their characters began to fight back, physically, visually and empowered – Billy Jack (Laughlin, 1971), One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (Forman, 1975). In One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest the character of Chief Bromden, played by Will Sampson, (Creek Nation) is portrayed as the silent observer, and though stoic, is dignified and ultimately empowered. This shift correlates to American Indians beginning to assert themselves more politically and engage further in activism such as the American Indian Movement, Occupy Alcatraz in 1969 and Occupy Wounded Knee in 1973 as well as the civil rights movement. A Distant Trumpet, (Walsh, 1964) unintentionally redefined power dynamics between Native and non-Native characters. In a scene where white characters are abusing American Indians on a Navajo reservation, an American Indian speaks off-script in the Navajo language, rebuking the white characters and turning the tables on the white actors. At the time no one checked the Navajo translation and so his act of defiance was not discovered until later. The below still from the film shows the moment. The white soldier’s following line is, ‘no, I am not a fool, you are’.

The 2013 remake of The Lone Ranger (Verbinski) was problematic, firstly with the casting of Johnny Depp, himself an icon, as Tonto, an American Indian icon. With few realistic pop-culture portrayals of American Indians Tonto becomes less a character, and more a harmful stereotype of Native behaviour. He is a stupid yet cunning sidekick, with near unintelligible, monosyllabic speech. More recent films have strived to bridge the gap between the ‘Hollywood Indian’ stereotype, and realistic portrayals of American Indians, either today, or in the past. Hostiles (Cooper, 2018) shows the brutal reality of 1892 and the relationships between American Indians and American soldiers, depicting violence and brutality on both sides, as well as humanity and compassion for family survival, rendering neither American Indian characters or American soldiers as ‘humans’ or ‘savages’. Though the storyline takes care not to show either sides as more or less violent, the standpoint is only from the American soldier perspective, with the Native characters straddling the stereotypes of Comanche warriors, or as characters embedded with cultural values and dignity. Wind River (Sheridan, 2017) highlights some realities of life on reservations today as well as the need to learn and intergenerationally transmit traditions, yet falls short on eliminating stereotypical tropes, and is still written and acted through a non-Native lens. The Revenant (Iñárritu, 2015) depicts the negative impact of settler-colonialism in the US, including lawlessness and exploitation, and the still serious issue of sexually abused, missing and murdered indigenous women in North America.

In most Hollywood films with American Indians, female characters are near absent or used as extras performing domestic duties, fleeing from violence, or portraying an ‘Indian princess’ motif, epitomised by Pocahontas, (Goldberg & Gabriel, 1995) who represents non-Native, American embodiment of society/ desire. Having grown up with the Sioux tribe since being a child, ‘Stands with a Fist’, the female lead in Dances with Wolves (Costner, 1990) has a distinct appearance, (more Flintstone-esque with dishevelled hair and dirt on her face), from the Sioux women around her, wearing more traditional dress and neat plaited hair. Perhaps the strongest Native female leads in recent years are shown in Moana (Clements & Musker, 2016), with Moana’s and her grandmother’s adventurous and independent Native Hawaiian personalities.

There has been an emergence of American Indian self-representation, in part due to increasing numbers of American Indian scholars, Native produced media, and arguably the introduction of the SAG-AFTRA Native American Committee which works to promote the interests of American Indian actors, increase roles and ensure filmic portrayals no longer reflect harmful stereotypes and instead depict the lived realities of American Indians. Media can act as a vehicle for self-determination, and American Indians having visual sovereignty works to decrease misrepresentation and to reframe dominant discourses about Natives in film, how meanings are created, how self-representations can be circulated and ultimately help to promote socially, culturally and politically the identity of American Indians today.

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