Over the course of my research I have found many examples of Indigenous activists objecting to stereotyped and slanderous depictions of Native Americans in film and television.
The 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, all enjoyed waves of Native activism in which politicians and film producers were hounded by organized agitation that demanded they to do something about the images they were presenting.
Without exception their concerns were dismissed by non-Natives, whether they be politician, film director, or newspaper journalist. If the protests got press coverage, the headlines usually mentioned something about the activists being “on the warpath,” “seeing red,” and other stereotype clichés.
In each era, the complaint lodged by activists was the same. The stereotypes seen on the screen were defining what an American Indian was for non-Native viewers, distorting history, reality, and adversely influencing thought. In other words, it was malicious propaganda. Non-natives learned everything they thought there was to know about the Indigenous population from the movies. And for most of its existence, the movies presented every character as a stereotype in a historically dishonest situation.
Television amplified the problem, rerunning the old stereotyped films constantly during its earliest years. TV soon created hundreds of hours worth of stereotypes of its own as the 1950s television western craze took hold.
It wasn’t until 1966-1967 that television networks responded to some of the concerns Native activists had about the way Native peoples were depicted. It took fifty-five years for someone to listen. The first major Native American protest objecting to slanderous screen depictions was in 1911(!)
The television series Custer with Wayne Mauder had a disclaimer added to it in 1967 after Native activists objected to the glorification of the notorious general. And in a television first, The Virginian (1968) hired all Native actors to play all the Native roles, but only after special guest star Buffy Sainte-Marie held up production and demanded it. Initially they told her it couldn’t be done because “there are no Indian actors.” Sainte-Marie called their bluff, responding, “I’ll find them for you.”
