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Ep. 172 - The Foundational Myth Machine: Indigenous Peoples of North America and Hollywood

Added 2022-12-14 15:45:50 +0000 UTC

Soldiers from the US Cavalry defeat the Plains Indians, securing new territory for their burgeoning empire. A group of settlers fends off an armed Indigenous tribe on horseback in their intrepid effort to conquer new lands. A Civil War hero decides to head for the frontier in its waning days, forging an undying friendship with the Native people there.

Each of these summaries describes a film made within the last hundred years that explores dynamics between white settlers and Indigenous people in North America in what we now know as the United States, and sometimes Canada. The problem, of course, is that these films, and so many others like them, don’t — to say the least — present this history accurately. Instead, since Hollywood’s inception, the viewing public has been primarily fed a diet of reductive, dehumanizing, and paternalistic depictions of Indigenous people.

But why have stories involving Indigenous people so frequently involved the perspectives of white settlers? Why are the vast majority of these stories confined to the genre of the Western, replete with shootouts and stagecoaches? What role does the U.S. government play when it comes to the stories we’re told about Indigenous people, how has the historically simplistic portrayal of Native people benefited the interests of the United States and Canada? And how — above all — was the expansion of US empire westward and, later, across the globe, inextricably linked to the Hollywood project of romanticized Western ideals.

On this episode, we examine the history of Indigenous depictions in Hollywood, looking at the ways the entertainment industry has sanitized the genocide and subsequent enduring abuses of Indigenous people, recycled centuries-old “noble savage” tropes, and argue that Indian dehumanizations wasn’t just an accidental byproduct of white supremacy, but was essential and central to the establishment of America’s sense of self and moral purpose.

Our guest is Anishinaabe writer, broadcaster and arts leader Jesse Wente.

Guest

Jesse Wente is an Anishinaabe writer, broadcaster and arts leader. A member of the Serpent River First Nation, Jesse has been a CBC Radio columnist, film critic, program director at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the founding Executive Director of Canada’s Indigenous Screen Office, where he now serves as Senior Advisor. He is also the author of the memoir, Unreconciled: Family, Truth and Indigenous Resistance, which was published in September 2021 by Penguin Books.

Show Notes

From Tarzan to Tonto

Jesse Wente | February 9, 2017 | National Museum of the American Indian

The Time Is Now: The Power of Native Representation in Entertainment

June 2022 | Illuminative

Indigenous Representation Is Still Scarce in Hollywood: ‘We Need More Native Stories’

Crystal Echo Hawk | October 11, 2021 | Variety

Native and Indigenous Writers Ask Hollywood to Advance Film and TV Representation

Katie Kilkenny | October 12, 2020 | The Hollywood Reporter

The Movement Creating Better Native American Representation in Film

Angie Jaime | February 18, 2020 | Teen Vogue

Uprooted: The 1950s plan to erase Indian Country

Max Nesterak | November 1, 2019 | APM Reports

Why I Won’t Wear War Paint and Feathers in a Movie Again

Brian Young | June 11, 2015 | Zócalo Public Square / TIME

The Twilight Saga’s Issue with Indigenous Culture

Shea Vassar | May 20, 2020 | Film Daze

Why Every Horror Film of the 1980s Was Built On ‘Indian Burial Grounds’

Dan Nosowitz | October 22, 2015 | Atlas Obscura

Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (Review)

David Sterritt | Summer 2019 | Cineaste Magazine

Making the White Man's Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies

Angela Aleiss | 2005 | Praeger

The Stereotyping of North American Indians in Motion Pictures

John A. Price | Spring 1973 | Ethnohistory / Duke University Press

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here.

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