In exchange for room and board, the actors were cast in Ince’s films or loaned out to other directors.ĭuring that decade, white directors like Ince, Cecil B. He also recruited several Sioux people from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. In 1913, director Thomas Ince hired Native Americans who had performed in those traveling shows to work at his film production studio in Santa Ynez Canyon near Santa Monica. These shows celebrated the conquest of the West and the decimation of the Native American population, but for the Native American actors who participated in them, they were also a means of earning money for their families. Often, Native Americans in Wild West shows reenacted crippling defeats such as the Wounded Knee Massacre. Many prototypes of Native American stereotypes (such as living in teepees, hunting for buffalo, scalping enemies, wearing feathered regalia, and having a savage demeanor) gestated in these vaudevillian theatrics. Starting in 1883 with Buffalo Bill, these shows toured the United States to display their “tamed” wild Indians in extravagant rodeo performances. They’re uninspired facsimiles of old stereotypes that stem from late 19th-century Wild West Shows. The film’s producer, Netflix, was quick to defend Sandler’s jokes as “a broad satire of Western movies and the stereotypes they popularized…” In actuality, however, these jokes aren’t anything novel or creative. A few days later, Indian Country Media Today leaked several pages from the script, which features jokes depicting Native Americans as dirty, animalistic backdrops. Last month, 12 Native American actors walked off the set of Adam Sandler’s forthcoming comedy, The Ridiculous Six. I promised myself I’d never play “Indian” again-and since then have turned down several auditions for big budget films.
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Looking at myself in the mirror in full costume, I felt shameful for mocking my spirituality.