Actor condemns 'Savage Images'

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Acclaimed Iroquois actor Gary Farmer spoke to about 150 people at the Horowitz Theatre on the University of Alberta campus, Jan. 20. The audience, made up of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, came to hear Farmer's presentation "Savage Images of Native Americans in Film."

"I am here to share the reality of an Indian man," said Farmer, as he intertwined stories of his own childhood and life as an actor throughout the presentation.

Farmer, focusing on cinema because of his acting background, selected clips from six films - Thunderheart, Cheyenne Autumn, Peter Pan, The Searchers, Black Robe and Fargo. The Peter Pan clip was from a filmed stage version and not the recent animated Disney movie. Each of the clips presented stereotypical Indian behavior. Farmer asserted that these images affect how Aboriginal people view themselves, as well as how non-Aboriginal people perceive and understand Aboriginal people.

The Thunderheart clip was the scene that attempted to portray a Lakota ceremony. In this scene, the Val Kilmer character received a vision of his Lakota father, who is an alcoholic and unable to care for his son.

The Cheyenne Autumn scene had two Cheyenne warriors, played by Ricardo Montalban and Sal Mineo, talking to a white school teacher. The teacher is taking the orphaned Cheyenne children away while the warriors try to escape the army. This scene reinforced the perception that Indian people were unable to care for their own children.

The Peter Pan clip portrayed Indians as childish, cowardly, superstitious, and grim-faced. All of the actors were white and the costumes consisted of head bands with large foam feathers sticking out the back, buckskins and enormous braids.

The Searchers reinforced the idea that the only good Indian was a dead Indian. The scene from Black Robe, which is also Canada's highest grossing movie ever, was the gauntlet scene in an Iroquois village. Farmer, an Iroquois, said that the Jesuit priest was the protagonist, the good guy, the one audience roots for.

The audience was never given the reason why "the bad, bad Iroquois were beating the priest," he said.

The final clip shown was from the Coen brothers film, Fargo. Farmer considered the Coen brothers the best independent film makers in the U.S., but they couldn't rise above Aboriginal stereotypes either. The Shep Proudfoot character in Fargo is a vicious Indian criminal who speaks in monosyllabic grunts.

"This reinforces the concept of the savage Indian," said Farmer. "He has no humanness. The biggest obstacle to being accepted as human beings is how we're perceived - how we're portrayed.

"Only when we take control of our lives will the problems be addressed," he continued. "It's a condition we - Native and non-Native people - are subjected to."

But Farmer sees a way out of this perception problem.

"We must decentralize Hollywood," he said. "The technology is now available to everyone to tell our own stories from our own points of view."

But he also cautioned that Aboriginal people should not allow themselves to consider imposed images as reality. He used the example of Indian powwow princesses, an image imposed upon Aboriginal people, as something embraced by Aboriginal people that he said had no basis in reality.