Young Adults

Native Americans and the Media  ~ by Stephanie Deplanque

With the release of the 3^rd film of the Twilight Saga: Eclipse, I thought we should have a look at the recent changes that occurred in the portrayal of Native Americans in the contemporary picture of American and international media.

In January, we published an article about the possible changes that the film New Moon could bring to the status of Native American actors who have for so long been given mainly stereotype parts. But now, it seems like North America is ready to have American Indian people be part of the picture.

Indeed, the Twilight Saga showed us that the actors interpreting the Quileutes werewolves are now famous worldwide and most of them have already signed for several projects that we are looking forward to seeing. The actors have also been traveling everywhere around the world and have been on photo shoots for several magazines.

But the big change occurred mostly on television series. First of all, season 4 of Big Love starts with the grand opening of the Blackfoot Magic Casino launched by the main character, Bill Henrickson, in partnership with Jerry Flute, member of the Blackfoot tribe. The casino happens to have been built on the Blackfoot land. Throughout the series we discover some of the sides of living on a  reservation: poverty, drug addiction and traffic, teen pregnancy… the way the producers presented some aspects of the lives of the Blackfoot people seemed close to the reality of life on the “rez.” Furthermore, those parts were given to Native American actors like Adam Beach as Tommy Flute, who appears is no less than eight episodes out of nine.

Then there is Benjamin Bratt in Law and Order and more recently Adam Beach in Law and Order: SVU.

There are the occasional appearances in one episode here and there, and this spring we saw Gil Birmingham playing an American Indian man who would stop at nothing to get money for his tribe in the series The Mentalist. He also appeared in an episode of Castle.

And last but not least, from Canada there is Heartland where the recurring role of the veterinary Scott Cardinal is played by Nathaniel Arcand. In this television show, there were also many Native American references last season: the wolf: spirit of the warrior; the wheel of life; and the Native American horse trainer Victor Whitetail (Ben Cardinal) who helped Amy, and who had helped her mother long before.

From Manitoba, there is the new TV series Cashing In, where mogul Matthew Tommy (Eric Schweig) bought the North Beach Casino and we discover the ups and downs of the lives of the characters.

Basically we are now seeing the media showing the reservations as being part of the American scenery and American Indians as part of the picture. Change takes time, but the machinery has started and it can only go better from here. The talented Native actors have a growing international fan base who will want to see more of them either on television or on the big screen!