about tyler blackburn. i’m gonna preface this by saying that i’m not native american and i urge native americans who have spoken about this to send us a message so we can reblog their posts/or for others to recommend posts written by native americans.
anyways, i’m real mad.
honestly, tyler blackburn’s entire career has been built on stealing roles for native americans. and sure, he said he had a reasonable doubt on whether he was native american or not, i mean, who is going to doubt their grandmother?
but let’s think about it, and first let me show you guys a picture from a pilot shot in 2011 (i assume after he was cast in pll and they boasted about having native american rep)
if you look up tyler blackburn plus brave new world, i’m pretty sure there are some articles written by native americans criticizng the casting. they speak about the fact he looks very white + they can’t find any records of him being enrolled with any tribe (i’ll come back to this later because it’s important).
okay so. when he was being casted in pll, they called tyler and asked if he was ethnic and he talked to his grandmother who said ‘Harold, was my, my grandfather’s name, Harold’s great grandmother was Cherokee, Indian.’ okay so, let’s do the math (which yes i know it’s wrong but i need to bring up another thing tyler said
ok: his grandfather’s great grandmother was cherokee.
greatgrandmother: 100%, grandmother: 50%, mother: 25%, harold: 12.5%, tyler’s parent: 6.25, tyler: 3%
now, perhaps the grandmother didn’t marry a white man, maybe she married someone who was already mixed or another native american, but either way, tyler is going to be between 3% and 12.5% native american.
alex was meant to be played by someone who was half native american.
not 12.5%.
now, all i just said is technically wrong, but ‘TB: And I was like — ½ Native American — and I was like, great! Like, I mean, because it, it, the pool is like, so small.’ since tyler brought up what percentage alex was meant to be, i wanted to clarify this.
moving on, why is this wrong, as the newsarticles written by native americans said, they couldn’t find him enrolled anywhere. it means that tyler was not enrolled with any tribe, he had no connection to native americans. which is incredibly important, and native americans prefer have talked about how they dislike the percentages thing (1/8th of blood) as proof of being native american.
tyler was right on one point though – the pool is very small. and it gets even smaller by the fact native americans do not get the chance to play roles meant for them, instead it goes to white boys who look ‘ethnic enough’ like tyler.
tyler learned about this in season 1. he could have quit. he could have said ‘i’m not gonna take the role away from a native american.’ when season 2 introduced more of his backstory, had him visit a reservation… he didn’t think… maybe i should quit and insist they recast my role with a native american actor?? tyler has had this information but a year and he continued benefitting from the lie,
i’m sorry… i’m not comfortable with that. and i’m tired of the posts that seem to just… make tyler a passive figure in all of this. sure, his grandmother told him something that was incorrect. but he always knew that it was a very removed ancestry, but he still took roles meant for native americans. time and time again. in pretty little liars (technically not required for him to be native, but the role was meant to go to a poc). in brave new world. and now in roswell new mexico.
tyler has been benefitting from this. while actual native american actors are excluded from hollywood.
mod capitu.
Being Indigenous this really upsets me. And the more I think about it the angrier I get. This man has literally made millions off being something hes not!! DNA testing has been around forever and he could have easily gotren one sooner. He took roles away from Indigenous actors that could have played this role. Ughhh..
