Mainstream roles finally becoming more available to Native actors

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The time for Native film actors has been a long time coming. But during the last three or four years movie goers may have noticed a much greater number of Native actors and roles finding their way onto the big screen.

Beginning with movies like Dances With Wolves and Thunderheart, opportunities for Native actors in mainstream Hollywood productions have never been better.

That's welcome news for people like activist-actor Sonny Skyhawk, who spoke at Edmonton's Dreamspeaker Festival about the efforts of his organization, American Indians in Film. The group is an advocacy and consulting organization decided to promoting opportunities for Native actors and to ensuring that film portrayals are accurate reflections of modern Native life.

"There is a real history of dishonest portrayals in American films and television," explained Skyhawk, of the Rosebud Lakota Tribe in South Dakota.

In the past, if Native roles existed in films they were almost guaranteed to be stereotypical portrayals of blood-thirsty Indians warring with western settlers. Worse, they were rarely ever played by Native actors.

"Most every young Hollywood actor played a Native role at one time or another," said the California-based Skyhawk.

Everyone from Natalie Wood to a very young John Wayne are included in that category.

Today, Native actors such as Tantoo Cardinal, Graham Green and Jimmy Hermann have become recognizable names in their own right. Still, Skyhawk cautions that in many films Aboriginals still have not reached that point of true accuracy.

"Too often Indians are portrayed in past tense forms - it's almost always in a historical setting," he said.

Instead, Skyhawk would like to see film begin to depict the modern realities of Native life.

"There are Native lawyers and teachers, but that is rarely portrayed."

It is in this area where TV may actually be well ahead of movies. Programs such as L.A. Law have included episodes dealing with very modern Native issues, while programs like Northern Exposure and North of 60 have main characters who are modern Natives. Unfortunately, TV has also some glaring faults, said Skyhawk, who notes that Native characters are virtually non-existent on both soap operas and game shows.

American Indians in Film plays a valuable role in making sure what roles do exist are accurate in their portrayal, said Skyhawk. They also encourage and promote the involvement of young Native people both in front of and behind the camera. At present Skyhawk is involved in a number of projects, which would tap into the growing number of Native actors and production personnel.

"What is needed right now are viable, promotable scripts," he explains.

Eventually, he envisions a time when Native actors and roles will become accepted as an expected part of the industry. Ideally, someday there will be no need for organizations such as his, and there "will be no need for us to even have a conversation like this."