The (mis)representation of Native Americans in Hollywood Premium

With Martin Scorsese’s recently-released ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ being based on the horrors meted out against the Osage community, here’s a deep dive into how mainstream films have represented the indigenous peoples of the Americas

In Martin Scorsese’s recently-released Killers of the Flower Moon, the auteur adapted his screenplay from David Grann’s book of the same name. The book and the film cover a series of real-life murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Oklahoma back in the early 1920s after oil deposits were discovered beneath their land and they were given ‘headrights’ for the profits made from those deposits. The non-fictional tale digs deep into the systemic exploitation perpetuated by white people against the Osage nation.

This is similar to the way the indigenous peoples of the Americas have been portrayed by Hollywood, that is, predominantly controlled by white people. From starting as stock characters that turned into regressive stereotypes, the portrayal of Native Americans in films, predominantly Westerns, was negative. Only a little over 30 years ago did Native American filmmakers, through their works, provide the right representation for their culture. To understand this shift which is yet to reach its destination, we have to travel back in time to comprehend its evolution.

Even before the first feature film was made, heroic Indian figures were portrayed in inexpensive paperbound fiction stories called dime novels back in the 1860s. Then came the age of travelling vaudeville performances called the Wild West shows which were the forefathers of the Western genre that became one of the major cornerstones of the then still-young Hollywood industry. Shows such as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show popularised conflict between cowboys and Indians, and this romanticised fiction about the American frontier was misunderstood by many as actual history. The Native actors were either given unfriendly characteristics or profound humbleness which could’ve very well created the bloodthirsty savage/noble Indian dichotomy that long followed.

During the turn of the century, white directors and producers, who were making almost all Hollywood films, resorted to the ‘helpless Indian’ trope as seen in films like The Indian Runner’s Romance (1909) and The Red Man’s View (1909). The one that got noticed the most was celebrated filmmaker D.W. Griffith’s The Red Man and the Child (1908). He also made A Pueblo Legend (1912) and The Massacre (1912) where both films failed to show Native Americans in a positive light. The filmmaker would later go on to make the infamous, racist propaganda film The Birth of a Nation.

In 1914, filmmaker Theodore Wharton directed The Indian War Refought: The Wars for Civilization in America, a film that romanticised multiple battles in which Native Americans were massacred and buried in mass graves. It was advertised openly that the film was approved by the U.S. government and made under the direction of the War Department. It was also the time during which films stereotyped Native American attires by adding feathers to their hair or having elaborate feather headdresses.

After reducing their characters to mere stereotypes, Hollywood went a step ahead when they let white actors play Indigenous characters. Commonly known as ‘whitewashing’, this wasn’t unique to the Native American group as Hollywood was letting white actors play members of other racial groups like Blacks and Asians. Whitewashing, with regard to Indigenous characters, resulted in two issues — it impeded the right representation in the film industry and forced actors to take up stereotypical roles. Similarly, when synchronised sound made its way into theatres in the 1930s, the Indigenous characters in films were made to speak an alien-sounding language that often was not a genuine Native language. English dialogues were sometimes spoken backwards and later printed in reverse to make them sound “Indian”.

Buffalo Dance and Sioux Ghost Dance, made in 1894, are two of the earliest films that feature Native Americans. Both films were shot at Thomas Edison’s Black Maria which was the world’s first film studio. According to the Edison catalogue, the performers in both films were genuine Sioux people and performers from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.