Hollywood has manipulated and repeatedly mocked many cultures, especially that of the Native Americans. This article is an attempt to help contribute to the true history of Native American cinema, relating to Neil Diamond’s documentary, “Reel Injun.” The film shows a century of Native American representations in Hollywood, ranging from extremely racist imitations, to more inspiring stories, like the movie “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner,” which portrays a more authentic Native American story.
During the silent era of cinema, most filmmakers would never hire Indigenous actors, but rather white people, who used offensive practices like redface. Redface is a racist method involving the use of paint and stereotypical clothing to make someone appear more like the “Classic Native American”. When sound came into play, actors started using gibberish to represent Native American languages. Hollywood thought of Native Americans as “mythological creatures” who rode wild horses and strung arrows while riding free in the wind, when in reality, many Indigenous people don’t conform to these stereotypes, as “…most of us can’t even ride,” director Neil Diamond remarks in his documentary. These are only some of the ways Hollywood has manipulated the Native image into a money-making scheme.
According to Jesse Wente, a film critic of Ojibway Descent, Hollywood producers tried to subsidize the Native American culture. In Wente’s words, this was “[An] ingenious act of colonialism…robbing nations of an identity…” In reality, Native Americans have hundreds of languages, cultures and identities, which Hollywood has tried to erase, using film to attempt to make Native cultures disappear. Along with this tactic, the film industry also used white actor John Wayne to portray the white hero the industry wanted. He defeated Native American “villains,” giving the white savior and Native American villain tale the push Hollywood wanted. This popular power dynamic was something that catapulted Hollywood into targeting Indigenous peoples through a series of gruesomely racist movies, which the majority of the American audience applauded.
Despite centuries of Hollywood’s inherent racism towards Indigenous communities, the film industry couldn’t seem to get its hands off the Native culture. Even so, Indigenous peoples were portrayed as incompetent villains that America needed to be protected from. True Native American culture was not often depicted in cinema, especially for Westerns, as films consisting of Indigenous characters were frequently warped to erase their history. Eventually, in more recent years, Hollywood producers and directors finally began making progress toward correct representations of Native Americans instead of distorting the plot to try and erase Native history and culture. “…cinema was being altered to tell our stories our way,” Jesse Wente says. Director Neil Diamond remarks on this progression of genuine Native American stories in Hollywood by noting, “A new age of Native cinema is born.”
Future progression in Native American cinema may lead us to wonder what may come next for Indigenous films, and where director Neil Diamond plans to go from here in his journey to rewrite Hollywood’s inaccurate depiction of Native American culture.
