Indian Actors Association

Last updated

The Indian Actors Association was formed around 1936 and was a non-profit Hollywood based organization. They formed after and were influenced by the War Paint Club, an organization meant to protect rights of Native American actors. Additionally, driven by the Hollywood practice of occasionally casting non-native actors as Native Americans in films, the Native actors working in Los Angeles at the time seized their opportunity to establish a pool of “authentic” indigenous actors to work in film. [1]

Contents

Their goal was also to keep indigenous portrayals and culture from being misrepresented on the screen. The Indian Actors Association fought for equality and employment for indigenous actors at a time when they were not seen as important or equal. The country's economic depression and the Western movie hiatus left many indigenous actors unemployed.

Background

Due to the economic depression, coupled with a shift in movie genre popularity, Indian actors struggled to find work. Many Indian actors were Los Angeles-based. Although a few notable Indian actors like Will Rogers, Chief Yowlachie, and Chief John Big Tree had main roles as Indians, other Indian actors would only get hired for smaller roles.

There were very few leading roles for Indian actors, and even when it came to small parts and extras Indian actors had to compete against other actors who were impersonating Native Americans. Indian Actors found themselves competing against Syrian, Arab, Latino, and American actors for parts designed for Indian actors. By using make-up, braids, tanner, and dark hair actors pretended to be Indian and convinced film studios to give them Indian parts. This obviously did not sit well with Indian actors because a lot of the jobs they were trying to get were given to pseudo-Indians. [2]

Many Native American roles were played by actors of other cultures who were pretending to be Native Americans. Indian dialect was often represented by monosyllabic words which were not accurate and Indian actors were not happy with how they were misrepresented. They set up programs to teach studios about Indian dialect and culture. [2]

Indian actors were also unhappy with the difference in pay between them and non-Indian actors. Non-Indian extras made eleven dollars an hour while Indian extras would only make five dollars and fifty cents an hour. [3]

The Indian Actors Association, which was affiliated with the screen actors guild, was created in an attempt to correct the inequality Indian actors were facing and to change misrepresentations of Indians in films. They demanded that only “real” Indians play Indian roles, and suggested that studios use Indian technical experts. They believed that this would help eliminate misrepresentations and teach studios about Indian dialect and pictography. The Indian Actors Association criticized pseudo-Indian actors because they misrepresented action and dialect of Native Americans.

The association established a closed shop agreement for Indian affiliated members. [2]

Luther Standing Bear, founder of the IAA. Luther Standing Bear.jpg
Luther Standing Bear, founder of the IAA.

Founder

The Indian Actors Association was first led by Luther Standing Bear from the Lakota (Sioux) Tribe. He was an outspoken and an author, activist, and performer. [2] He believed that western stories misrepresented Indians so he used his standing in Hollywood to try to change the way audiences saw Indian representations. His younger brother Henry Standing Bear also ran an Indian activist group, the Society of American Indians. The group put on plays and pageants representing historical truth and ethnological accuracy. [4] Standing Bear led the Indian Actors Association until his death in 1939. After his death the association was led by many Treaties and Bill Hazlet, a Blackfeet Indian and actor. He was also always one of the chairmen of the Indian Actors Association.

Accomplishments

Jay Silverheels as Tonto in The Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger - The Renegades (1949) 1.jpg
Jay Silverheels as Tonto in The Lone Ranger.

The Indian Actors Association was eventually successful in achieving some of their goals and raising awareness about Indian representations. They were able to get the wage difference for Indian extras compared to other actors to be eliminated. Indian extras were eventually paid the equal eleven dollars an hour. The Indian Actors Association was also able to empower Indians and spur formation of reform groups. Many Indian actors shared the belief that the best way to address the struggle of Indian actors in Hollywood was to become a part of Hollywood. One of these groups was National League for Justice to American Indians (NLJAI). [5] The association created a booklet, Screen Land's First Americans. The booklet had twenty unnumbered pages of paintings and portraits of chiefly Indian actors. The booklet featured the officers, directors and lady auxiliary of the Indian Actors Association. [6]

The Indian Actors Workshop was another group built on the foundation of the Indian Actors Association. Founded by Jay Silverheels, best known for playing Tonto on The Lone Ranger, the Indian Actors Workshop trained Indians for roles in film and television. Similar groups continued to form well into the 1980s.

The Indian Actors Association was able to function as a support group and provided subsistence funds for out of work Indians. They were able to raise these funds through membership dues, powwows, and performances for local clubs and organizations. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Actors' Equity Association</span> American labor union for theater performers

The Actors' Equity Association (AEA), commonly called Actors' Equity or simply Equity, is an American labor union representing those who work in live theatrical performance. Performers appearing in live stage productions without a book or through-storyline may be represented by the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA). The AEA works to negotiate quality living conditions, livable wages, and benefits for performers and stage managers. A theater or production that is not produced and performed by AEA members may be called "non-Equity".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Screen Actors Guild</span> American labor union (1933–2012)

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) was an American labor union which represented over 100,000 film and television principal and background performers worldwide. On March 30, 2012, the union leadership announced that the SAG membership voted to merge with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) to create SAG-AFTRA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iron Eyes Cody</span> American actor (1904–1999)

Iron Eyes Cody was an American actor of Italian descent who portrayed Native Americans in Hollywood films, famously as Chief Iron Eyes in Bob Hope's The Paleface (1948). He also played a Native American shedding a tear about pollution in one of the country's most well-known television public service announcements from the group Keep America Beautiful. Living in Hollywood, he began to insist, even in his private life, that he was Native American, over time claiming membership in several different tribes. In 1996, Cody's half-sister said that he was of Italian ancestry, but he denied it. After his death, it was revealed that he was of Sicilian parentage, and not Native American at all.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Casting (performing arts)</span> Pre-production process for selecting actors, dancers, singers, or extras for roles or parts

In the performing arts industry such as theatre, film, or television, casting, or a casting call, is a pre-production process for selecting a certain type of actor, dancer, singer, or extra for a particular role or part in a script, screenplay, or teleplay. This process may be used for a motion picture, television program, documentary film, music video, play, or advertisement, intended for an audience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tonantzin Carmelo</span> American actress

Tonantzin Carmelo is an American actress. She is known for her acting roles in film, TV and stage productions including in the Steven Spielberg miniseries, Into the West, for which she received a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female in a Television Movie or Miniseries.

A background actor or extra is a performer in a film, television show, stage, musical, opera, or ballet production who appears in a nonspeaking or nonsinging (silent) capacity, usually in the background. War films and epic films often employ background actors in large numbers: some films have featured hundreds or even thousands of paid background actors as cast members. Likewise, grand opera can involve many background actors appearing in spectacular productions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wes Studi</span> Cherokee actor and film producer

Wesley Studi is a Native American actor and film producer. He has garnered critical acclaim and awards throughout his career, particularly for his portrayal of Native Americans in film.

<i>Cheyenne Autumn</i> 1964 film

Cheyenne Autumn is a 1964 American epic Western film starring Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, James Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson. It tells the story of a factual event, the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878–79, told in "Hollywood style" using a great deal of artistic license. The film was the last western directed by John Ford, who proclaimed it an elegy for the Native Americans who had been abused by the U.S. government and misrepresented by many of the director's own films. With a budget of more than $4 million, the film was relatively unsuccessful at the box office and failed to earn a profit for its distributor Warner Bros.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stereotypes of Indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States</span> Generalized representations of Indigenous peoples

Stereotypes of Indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States of America include many ethnic stereotypes found worldwide which include historical misrepresentations and the oversimplification of hundreds of Indigenous cultures. Negative stereotypes are associated with prejudice and discrimination that continue to affect the lives of Indigenous peoples.

Imagining Indians is a 1992 documentary film produced and directed by Native American filmmaker, Victor Masayesva, Jr. (Hopi). The documentary attempts to reveal the misrepresentation of Indigenous Native American culture and tradition in Classical Hollywood films by interviews with different Indigenous Native American actors and extras from various tribes throughout the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luther Standing Bear</span> North American Oglala Lakota writer and actor (1868–1939)

Luther Standing Bear was a Sicangu and Oglala Lakota author, educator, philosopher, and actor. He worked to preserve Lakota culture and sovereignty, and was at the forefront of a Progressive movement to change government policy toward Native Americans.

The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is the world's largest Indigenous film and media arts festival, held annually in Toronto in the month of October. The festival focuses on the film, video, radio, and new media work of Indigenous, Aboriginal and First Peoples from around the world. The festival includes screenings, parties, panel discussions, and cultural events.

<i>Pony Soldier</i> 1952 film by Joseph M. Newman

Pony Soldier is a 1952 American Northern Western film set in Canada, but filmed in Sedona, Arizona. It is based on a 1951 Saturday Evening Post story "Mounted Patrol" by Garnett Weston. It was retitled MacDonald of the Canadian Mounties in Britain and The Last Arrow in France, Spain, and Italy.

<i>Reel Injun</i> 2009 Canadian documentary directed by Neil Diamond

Reel Injun is a 2009 Canadian documentary film directed by Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond, Catherine Bainbridge, and Jeremiah Hayes that explores the portrayal of Native Americans in film. Reel Injun is illustrated with excerpts from classic and contemporary portrayals of Native people in Hollywood movies and interviews with filmmakers, actors and film historians, while director Diamond travels across the United States to visit iconic locations in motion picture as well as American Indian history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Native Americans in film</span> Depiction of Native Americans

The portrayal of Native Americans in television and films concerns indigenous roles in cinema, particularly their depiction in Hollywood productions. Especially in the Western genre, Native American stock characters can reflect contemporary and historical perceptions of Native Americans and the Wild West.

<i>The Sons of Great Bear</i> 1966 East German Western film

The Sons of Great Bear is a 1966 East German Western film, directed by the Czechoslovak filmmaker Josef Mach and starring the Yugoslav actor Gojko Mitić in the leading role of Tokei-ihto. The script was adapted from the eponymous series of novels by author Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, and the music composed by Wilhelm Neef. The picture is a revisionist Western, pioneering the genre of the Ostern, and emphasises the positive portrayal of Native Americans, while presenting the Whites as antagonists. It is one of the most successful pictures produced by the DEFA film studio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Redface</span> Use of costumes to caricature Indigenous Americans

Redface is the wearing of makeup to darken or redden skin tone, or feathers, warpaint, etc. by non-Natives to impersonate a Native American or Indigenous Canadian person, or to in some other way perpetuate stereotypes of Indigenous peoples of Canada and the United States. It is analogous to the wearing of Blackface. In the early twentieth century, it was often white performers, who wore blackface or redface when portraying Plains Indians in Hollywood Westerns. In the early days of television sitcoms, "non-Native sitcom characters donned headdresses, carried tomahawks, spoke broken English, played Squanto at Thanksgiving gatherings, received 'Indian' names, danced wildly, and exhibited other examples of representations of redface".

Kimberly Norris Guerrero, is an American actress in film, TV, and stage; and a screenwriter. She has over two dozen screen appearances, generally playing roles of Indigenous women. Norris played Gen. Custer's American Indian wife in the movie Son of the Morning Star, and guest starred in TV shows such as Walker, Texas Ranger, Longmire, Grey's Anatomy, and Seinfeld. She appeared in the well received mini-series, 500 Nations, and twice played Cherokee chief Wilma Mankiller. Norris-Guerrero is also a college professor, motivational speaker, Native American activist, and co-founder of two non-profit organizations aimed at aiding youth in Native American communities.

Pretendian is a pejorative colloquialism used to call out a person who has falsely claimed Indigenous identity by professing to be a citizen of a Native American or Indigenous Canadian tribal nation, or to be descended from Native ancestors. As a practice, being a pretendian is considered an extreme form of cultural appropriation, especially if that individual then asserts that they can represent, and speak for, communities they do not belong to. It is sometimes also referred to as a form of fraud, ethnic fraud or race shifting.

References

  1. ↑ webmaster@aaanativearts.com. "Native american actress and actor". www.aaanativearts.com. Retrieved 2016-10-04.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Aleiss, Angela. Making the White Man's Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies. Praeger.
  3. 1 2 Rosenthal, Nicolas. Reimagining Indian Country: Native American Migration and Identity in Twentieth-century Los Angeles. Chapel Hill: Univ Of North Carolina.
  4. ↑ Vigil, Kiara. Indigenous Intellectuals: Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the American Imagination, 1880-1930. Cambridge University Press.
  5. ↑ Leahy, Todd; Wilson, Raymond (2008-08-11). Historical Dictionary of Native American Movements. Scarecrow Press. ISBN   9780810862623.
  6. ↑ Screenland's First Americans. California: Pioneer Press. 1935.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.