Why America Still Needs Tonto
Reposted and Updated 2.27.2014
Today, February 27, 2014 is the anniversary of Wounded Knee II. In 1973 Catholic church built next to the grave sites of the original victims of the 1890 Massacre was occupied by members of the American Indian Movement and their supporters. This is also the week of the 2014 Oscars. I'm still in shock to learn that "The Lone Ranger" was nominated for "best makeup" in 2014. Forty-one years ago, Sacheen Little Feather refused the oscar awarded to Marlon Brando for his performance in "The Godfather." Sacheen was permitted to make a brief speech where she outlined Brando's reasons for refusing the oscar. She stated that he could not accept the oscar due to Hollywood's poor treatment of Indians. Brando brilliantly used the oscars to highlight the mistreatment of the occupiers currently at Wounded Knee as well as the misrepresentation of the American Indian in Hollywood films. It's depressing how little has changed since Sacheen made her stand in 1973. It's depressing how mainstream America still clings desperately to the racist stereotypes presented in this film. Few people realize that, as a result of helping Brando to raise consciousness about the treat ment of Native Americans, Sacheen lost her acting career.
Sacheen Little Feather at the Oscars
Chris Eyre summarized the
problem with the Lone Ranger beautifully when he said. Johnny Depp's
"Tonto" resembles nothing that is Native American in reality. “I
literally don’t know what is Native American about Tonto.” He is correct. Tonto
has nothing to do with Indians. Tonto has everything to do with what White
America still needs Indians to be.
The original Lone Ranger
narrative was a revisionist history that projects a fantasy of what White
Americans need the Indian to be—a “faithful companion” to a white hero. The
very existence of such a “faithful companion” is absurd and problematic for
anyone with a grasp of the reality of Texas history. But, this isn’t a film for
anyone with a consciousness of the ugly realities of American history. This is a film that is made for Whites, by Whites. Its function is not just to entertain. Its
function is to use recognizable stereotypes to tell the white audience what
they are not (guilty) and what they should aspire to be. (Godlike to the
heathens).
The Lone Ranger can’t teach
anyone about the reality of indigenous life, past or present, but it can reveal
a lot about contemporary White anxieties and a guilty National conscience and
an insatiable need for absolution from the victims of “progress.”
Depp’s Questionable
Choices
It didn’t surprise any of the
Native people I know that Johnny Depp behaved predictably as a typical “well-intentioned” white liberal. Despite his “adoption” and conflicting
reports of a distant Cherokee, Creek or maybe Choctaw ancestor, Depp remains a
member of the 1%. As Noam Chomsky elucidates in Manufacturing Consent,
Depp is an elite cultural manager who must be heavily indoctrinated as to his
role in American society. His consent to the dominant racial ideology is
crucial. Depp has means. While he has no cultural connection to any tribal
community, he does have the means to develop a reciprocal relationship with a
tribal community that could help him to understand the error of trying to
rehabilitate an inherently racist stereotype. Depp makes a bad decision to play
Tonto based on the arrogance and ignorance of an outsider. Then, he compounds
his error with a series of equally bad choices.
First, Depp decides he will
play Tonto without soliciting input from cultural authorities and then he
convinces himself that it is necessary and desirable to turn the racist
stereotypes associated with Tonto on their head. He fails to realize that a
stereotype turned on its head is still a stereotype. Next, Depp chooses to work
for Disney, a well-documented vehicle for American racist ideology. Depp has
the means to finance and produce a small independent film with Native American
actors that could have educated and enlightened a small population as to the
real history of Comancheria. He could have picked any number of crucial
contemporary Indigenous issues from which to produce a documentary. He could have chosen to shines
a light on present-day injustices. Instead, Depp chose to make an
action-comedy about a period in Texas history when the Comanche were nearly
exterminated by vigilante settlers.
Depp could have analyzed his
desire to play this role. He could have examined what is lacking in his
privileged existence that attracts him to this White Fantasy of Tonto.
Predictably, Depp turns to the internet and finds what is always there for
cultural outsiders to find. He finds what many white seekers mistake for
authentic representations of indigenous people -- a White nuage artist
imagining a Native person. He finds the sort of romanticized imagery that makes
Native people cringe, yet fascinates outsiders like himself. Next, Depp does
what all privileged whites have always done when confronted with criticism from
Native people – he ignores them. Then he seeks out yes-men and sycophants to justify
his error. When the movie turns out to be a box office flop, he throws money
at the problem by offering to purchase the grave site of the Wounded Knee
massacre from another White man who’s trying to sell it. When this gesture is
not well received, he goes to Europe to promote the film to other cultural outsiders. Depp uses every
device that a Plastic Shame-man would use to rationalize and justify his many
errors in judgment. Depp mimics the behavior of a plastic shaman in every way -- except of course for pursuing frivolous lawsuits. But
the he has the influence of power of a multi-billion dollar corporation to use
to convince the public that the Lone Ranger is a “tribute” to Indigenous
people.
I saw this movie twice in a
very liberal and enlightened Michigan college town. What shocked me the most
about the film was the inability of the educated audience to see the racist
ideology presented throughout the film especially in the fabricated back story
that is supposed to explain Tonto’s decision to become a “faithful companion to
a Texas ranger. There’s a deafening silence from the progressive community
about the film and there’s been a noticeable lack of comments on Liberal
newsletters and blog about the back story.
Depp’s biggest mistake was
not to play Tonto as a human being. Without a cultural context, Depp mistakes
the vertical lines in the face paint on the nuage painting as an indication
that Tonto should be played as a “fragmented” individual. With this mindset,
Depp seems to think he can construct a whole human being by simply adding
existing stereotypes together into an incoherent mish-mash. Depp appropriates
Comanche ethnic identity and uses it as a ridiculous costume in which to
perform his standard, hackneyed physical comedy. He asserts his white privilege in using perceived spiritual practices for comic effect. He refuses to
acknowledge how profoundly disrespectful this is. Instead, he seeks out questionable “cultural
advisers” who in an Al Jazeera interview insists that there are contemporary Native people
who “talk exactly like Tonto.” In interviews, Depp laughably claims that
Disney “went out of their way to portray Tonto in a positive light.” The question is, positive to whom?
Unfortunately, stereotypes sewn together like something out of a Tim Burton
film, does not make a whole human being.
Depp makes Tonto seem even
more absurd and ridiculous by wearing a taxidermied crow on his head and
attempting to feed it and protect it from a cat by wearing a bird cage on his
head. While I’m sure the Comanche did use crow feathers in a way similar to
other tribes, the use of an entire crow carcass defies all logic. Depp’s
incoherent justifications for this error in judgment make me think of James
Arthur Ray’s logic. He was Oprah’s fraudulent self-help guru who murdered 3
people by trying to out-do the Indians and run a hellaciously hot perversion of
a sweat lodge. The only sense I can make of the crow is that Depp was following
the same misguided logic—If a Comanche warriors were known to wear single crow
feathers in their scalp locks, then an entire dead crow will really legitimize me as a Comanche.
Depp’s “Fragmented”
Tonto
Tonto: The Specimen
Depp begins his feeble effort
to portray a Comanche by presenting a grotesque caricature of an elder. As the
film opens, Tonto is presented to the viewer as a non-human object encased in
glass as part of a “Wild West show”. Presented as an extinct species like the
Buffalo, Tonto is a specimen, frozen in time and existing only for the
edification of a young White boy. In 1933, Tonto would be in his 90s, but he still
can’t speak English properly. He is presented along with extinct animals as a
remnant of the American past. Tonto, as a dehumanized thing on display, wakes up
only to be of use to a White person. The artifact Tonto is
under the complete control of the dominant White society. This common fantasy
reveals much more about the needs of the White audience than it does about
Indians.
As the film progresses, Depp
resurrects Tonto as the savage stereotype. He has no concept of a warrior as
part of a sacred lifeway, so he can only present Tonto as a one-dimensional
stereotype. Depp imagines a Warrior who is separated from any community who is
entirely focused on violence and revenge. He is stupid, even though is
bi-lingual. He is cowardly when faced with danger, even though he is supposed
to be a warrior. Tonto is an incompetent guide and even more incompetent in trying
to kill the demonic Butch Cavendish. He is entirely dependent on the Lone
Ranger to act as his savior. Tonto is portrayed in a typically stereotypical
fashion. He ogles White women, drinks whatever alcohol he can find and throws
tomahawks while adopting the standard fierce savage pose.
Everything about this
conception of Tonto belies the reality of the Comanche society. The stereotype
erases the fact that the Comanche at the time were the greatest light Calvary
in the world and they successfully defended their homeland against the Mexicans
and the Texans. Only the incredible power of the U.S. government and the
invention of the repeating rifle defeated the most powerful Native American
Nation.
Portraying Tonto as the Lone
renegade savage without a family or a tribal community reinforces the idea that
White settlers were justified in the systematic dispossession o Comanche lands.
Historically, there were no White saviors standing up for the human rights of
the Comanche. Depp reproduces the savage
stereotype just to give the Lone Ranger something to compare himself to.
"Best make up" is actual Blackface
Another thing that seems to
have escaped the notice of Depp’s liberal defenders is that he portrays Tonto
in
literal Blackface. It is unconscionable that the oscar committee could nominate a film for "best make up" that utilizes actual black face. Depp chose to play this role with white clown makeup
and literal black paint on his face and around his eyes. The face paint makes
him like a white actor being a buffoon in black face paint. On the scene on top
of the train when Depp mugs for the camera with eyes bulging out, he seamlessly continues
the tradition of the racist minstrel show. Depp’s Buffoonish antics done in
Blackface is in no way a “tribute” to Native people. In the end, Depp is a
white man with black paint on his face speaking in a mock dialect. There is no
difference between this so-called entertainment and the entertainment style of
the days of the Wild West shows and the minstrel shows.
Disney’s Entertainment
is Political
Disney has always been a major vehicle to convey
the racial ideology of America. Just as
the Nazis used Nordic folklore to establish a National Aryan identity, Disney
revised European fairy tales to teach White American children what it means to
be White. (As a reference, please see the YouTube videos documenting Disney’s
racism below.) Since the 1930s, Disney cartoons
presented some of the most racist stereotypes which shaped the consciousness of
American children for nearly a century.
In Peter Pan, What Makes the Redman Red, Native people are presented
without faces, without individuality or humanity. We are depicted as primitive
and superstitious creatures who behave in a nonsensical manner. We talk to
horses and trees and the wind and we look more like animals than people. Native
women are consistently depicted as over-sexed sq***ws who want nothing more
than to abandon our own people to be with a white man.
African Americans are depicted as savage cannibals
or happy servants as in the Song of the South or as monkeys in Jungle book or
as “Jim Crow” in cartoons. Asians in Disney films are depicted as sly and
inscrutable and depicted as sneaky cats or other duplicitous creatures.
Because Disney whitewashes the truth of the
American past and present, I do not allow my children to consume Disney
media. Disney dutifully re-creates the
ideological legacy inherited from Manifest Destiny. I strongly object to Disney because the cartoons and films teach young people to
submit to the rule of the powerful elite; not to question the existing social
order; and to distrust any proponent of collectivist values.
Perhaps the reason that White audiences don’t pick
up on Disney’s racial ideology is that Americans have never been aware of their
present-day racism. In the 1930s, people
watching Wild West shows that depicted wild Indians losing battle after battle to
soldiers resembling Custer. They couldn’t see the racial ideology being promoted.
Americans consuming what now seems as blatantly racist Disney cartoons,
watching Step ‘n Fetch it minstrel shows, collecting racist kitsch and
displaying lawn jockeys all claimed not to see any racism in the media of the
day. In the same way, contemporary
Disney racism remains unperceived by contemporary American audiences.
While Disney has attempted to re-brand itself, and new "progressive" minded writers have
replaced the old, the basic messages that Disney feeds the public about race, gender and
class have not. Every racial group was stereotyped in the film. Blacks, Asians and other immigrants are used
as background. They are depicted as cowardly, passive and accepting of their
status as “happy workers.”
One thing I kept asking myself throughout the film is
where are all the women? Women of color have no voice in this film. The
nameless Chinese woman is depicted as a sinister pimp. Comanche women were
entirely missing from the film. They were shown in only one scene and only as
the dead. The only women in the film with any significant lines were white
woman and they were divided into the patriarchal dichotomy of Madonna / whore. Female
sexual slavery is depicted as something comical and empowering. Red correctly states that the railroad
required prostitution on order to function, but the film erases the real
history of brutal forced prostitution of Mexican and Indigenous women that
accompanied the railroad. Rebbecca is exalted as an innocent and pure white
woman even though historically she would have most likely been a slave-owning
confederate demanding the extermination of the Comanche along with the rest of
the European settlers.
Tonto:
the Savage
The Cognitive
Dissonance of the Windigo
Depp spends the
majority of the film grunting, “Windigo getting away.” When he meets the Lone Ranger, he is depicted
as an inferior, incompetent and threatening savage who’s only mission in life
is to kill the Windigo. He perpetuates
the present day stereotype of Native American men who take any action as
threatening, violent thugs. His white
prince civilizes him by convincing him to abandon his misappropriated belief in
Windigos. The film promotes the
Christian ideology that the savage must abandon his backward thinking and
accept the Christina morality that forbids any act of revenge against an
oppressor. Tonto is encouraged to accept the law as his only redress for past
atrocities. The scary bad Indian has always been any Native male who take any
action toward retribution. The good Indian passively accepts that he has no
right to avenge wrongs perpetrated against him.
Growing up in
Michigan, I heard many different versions of the Windigo story. I never heard
one where a man fights or kills one. The Windigo story is a healing story that
works on many levels. It’s basically a story about a man overcome by greed who
eats too many beavers, or some other animal and transforms into a monster. Of
course a cultural outsiders are going to pervert the story to be what they want
it to be. In all the stories I’ve heard, the Windigo is redeemed by a female
character. Either a woman or a group of women see the man underneath the monster.
The Windigo is transformed back to a human being by unfreezing his frozen heart
with hot grease or lard. The story teaches that while greed can transform a
human being into a monster, there is a way to get back to your human self if
you seek assistance from your tribal members.
The Windigo story is appropriated and made into an absurdity and quickly
abandoned. The audience is expected to believe that Tonto held a belief in
Windigos his whole life that he suddenly abandoned to spend his life being of
service to a man hired by a government bent on the extermination of his
remaining relatives.
The
Othering of the Land
Even the land itself is
depicted as cannibalistic. This is an
alien view to the Indigenous mind where Nature is in balance and the world of
the European brings unbalance and disharmony to Nature. In the light of the popularity of the Idle No
More movement where Indigenous people all over the world are engaging in collectivist
action to protect sacred sites and preserve the balance of the environment, it
would do us all good to pay close attention to Disney’s demonization of the
environment and utter silence on the actions of multi-national corporations
that are destroying the environment. Where blame is laid is always a political
statement.
Manifest
Destiny Re-branded as Progress
Through-out the film, the word "progress" is used as code for Manifest Destiny. Disney merely re-cycles the same colonial attitudes of the 1950s without any regard for historical accuracy. The white hero eases the white audience's guilty consciences in the same way that churches, governments and all other Colonial institutions have always done -- attribute a deliberate campaign of mass genocide and exploitation of indigenous resources as an inevitable act by an invisible force. In the past, the genocidal crimes of Colonial governments was attributed to "God's will." In the present, the causes are much more cosmic and undefined. The railroad is depicted as necessary to progress and the need to exterminate a race of people is made to seem inevitable. The genocide of the Comanche is highly romanticized in this film. The Comanche are seen as tragic victims who are resigned to die in order to make room for the inevitable "progress" that the white race requires. The real brutality and savagery brought about by Colonial institutions that consciously and systematically worked together to exterminate a people to make way for white "progress" were completely erased. That is no accident. That is the type of "entertainment" that White America demands.
Apologists for the film, claim that people of conscience shouldn't be upset by the way Depp portrays Tonto because the film is fictional and never intended to about "real indians." What they conveniently omit it that the film depicts real individuals who really lived and died in what is known today as the state of Texas. The Texas Rangers are not fictional. They really existed. The railroad, the calvery, the Comanche Nation, the settlers. These are all part of real American history. However, the truth that is
whitewashed in the film is that the Comanche people were hunted down and
murdered by Texas Rangers. The “law” that the Lone Ranger believes in so
zealously sanctioned the genocide of the Comanche people. Genocide wasn’t even a work in the 1860s, and
it certainly wasn’t a crime. The genocide perpetrated in the Americas was
divine providence. Genocide wasn’t called a crime until white people murdered
other white people during World War II.
Lone Ranger apologists that Disney is a mirror to the what America is really thinking. Disney is not a mirror. It is a political machine. Its function has
always been American holocaust denial.
This film reinforces the idea that White settlers, by virtue of their
superior progress, should rightfully hold indigenous land and resources. It erases the reasons for Comanche
self-defense and attributes all evil and wrong doing to two White “bad apples”
who are seen as a unique aberration, an anomaly, not like the rest of the
settlers and soldiers at all. This is a very carefully crafted lie. This isn’t “just
entertainment.” Disney has always force-fed generations of American children
historical revisionism to justify the current racial hierarchy.
The Lone Ranger
erases the accomplishments of Comanche. It ignores the fact that the US
annihilated an advanced society in order to forge an easy path to California’s
gold. The Comanche used the technology of the day, horses, better than any
other people on the planet. They invented sustainable technology such as
controlled burns to create an environment that was teaming with game. The U.S.
annihilated an advanced society in a matter of decades. Disney covers it up in
149 minutes.
The film erases the
Comanche-Kiowa-Apache alliances. It erases the fact that the majority of the
white settlers were pro-slavery as were the Texas Rangers. It erased the
intelligence and skill or Comanche warriors who formed alliances and created
forms of democracy not seen in the white world. It erases the voices and the
role of women in Comanche society and shows them only as dead sq**ws. It erases
the fact that the Texas rangers were paid to murder Comanches. It erases the
fact that the law so dearly embraced by the Lone Ranger did nothing to protect
the human rights of the Comanche people. It erases the fact that the treaties
were laws that the whites thought nothing about violating. It erases the fact that
the official U.S. policy was removal and that removal was solely in the
economic interests of the settlers and the very rich.
American
Holocaust Denial
The mission of the
Texas Rangers was the deliberate mass extermination of all indigenous peoples
inhabiting Comancheria. There were no
laws to contain their savagery. They scalped Comanche people and mutilated the
dead. They castrated corpses of men and small boys. They ripped open pregnant
women’s and removed fetuses. They collected the private parts of women. They
bragged about cutting out the heart of a sq**w and displaying it on a stick.
There is nothing heroic about the Texas rangers. This savagery is not the work
of a mystical demon, it was the deliberate systematic savagery of a Colonial
empire. None of it was destined to occur. None of it was caused by mysterious
cosmic forces.
What
does it say about you if you need to romanticize Manifest Destiny?
Journalist
John L. O’Sullivan published this statement in the New York Morning News on
December 27, 1845:
“…And
the claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess
the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of
the great experiment of liberty and
federated self-government entrusted to us.
John
Quincy Adams made this statement in 1811:
“The
whole continent of North America appears to be destined to Divine Providence to
be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system
of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of
social usages and customs. For the common happiness of them all, for their
peace and prosperity, I believe it is indispensible that they should be
associated in one federal Union.”
South
Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun made this statement:
“We
have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian
race—the free white race. To incorporate
Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind, of incorporating an
Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is
composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that. Ours,
sir, is the government of a white race.”
If the
Lone Ranger were real, he would have thought and believed as the Texas rangers thought and believed. The Lone Ranger would have believed that Tonto was of a lesser race. All the Texas rangers of the
1860s were required to believe this. Not one of them questioned the dogma of the day. The Lone Ranger character is a deliberate lie meant to cover up a shameful past.
The Racist Back Story
It is extremely disturbing to me that not one person, Native or non-Native has expressed any outrage over the racist back story presented in this film. I was shocked to sit and watch a liberal audience, just eat up the assertion that a child could be responsible for the genocide of his entire village. It seems the effect and the intent of the racist back story behind The political agenda behind the Lone Ranger is to completely white-wash the real and brutal history of the attempted annihilation of hundreds of separate sovereign Native American Natoins, and to completely erase the collaboration of the church, the state and the military the corporations and the settlers in genocide. Instead, the audience if manipulated to focus on two "bad actors." The intent is to keep them from every learning about the oppressive Colonial institutions that formed their society, from ever analyzing them or holding them accountable for their present day atrocities. Every Disney story is about a single white "prince" who comes to the rescue of the main character without ever upsetting the existing unjust social order. Disney is about fantasy. It's about not questioning the order of things. It's about accepting hierarchy and waiting for a prince to come and save you. In real life there are no such princes.
The back story is a distraction to cover up the ugly collaboration between the Texas Rangers and the White settlers to exterminate the Comanche. The film allows the white audience to throw the real history of their ancestors down the memory hole. It allows them to exist in a state of blissful ignorance about how they came to have everything they now possess. America needs a non-threatening Tonto who will not remind them of the bloodshed and oppression that created their current privileged positions. Depp provides them with the fantasy they so desperately need to ease their guilty consciences. But that should come as no surprise since Depp has aided and abetted Disney in its racist propaganda for much of his career. He made enough money doing it to buy himself a Carribean island that is fairly close to the area where Columbus made his "discovery" of America.
In this film, Tonto is the instigator of his
own people’s genocide. When I was this, I was disgusted that a ten-year old
Comanche child was blamed for the systematic extermination of his village. It is further asserted that this child would
have been isolated from the rest of the Comanche tribe. This is ridiculous. The
film makes a reprehensible political statement meant to erase the reality of
Texas history. It’s even more infuriating to me that the racist back story is
further justified by unintelligible references to nuage racial karma.
Americans need to believe that indigenous
peoples DID something to bring about their own extermination. Such fantasies
allow them to continue enjoying their un-earned privileges holding illusion of blamelessness.
The only explanation I can come up with for this sick and twisted back story is
that Americans need a Tonto to feel guilty for the history they can’t face –what
their ancestors did to secure their present day privileges.
Tonto: The Vanished
Steiner
Racial Ideology
This film is oozing
with the racial doctrines of Rudolf Steiner. It manipulates the audience into
believing that indigenous people were a races destined by some cosmic force for
extinction in order to make room for the inevitable “progress” of the white
race. The Comanches go to their deaths with resignation. The White race is
depicted as the future, the “red race” is the past. These deliberate
dichotomies prevent any deeper or analytical thought about the real events that
transpired in Comancheria in the 1860s.
The American Indian Removal policies were studies and adapted by the
Nazis in World War II. One of the founding fathers of Nazi racial ideology was
Rudolf Steiner. Steiner cults are gaining increasing popularity in the United
States today. His main points are presented over and over again in this film.
Steiner believed that the white race is more morally advances and that
extinction of the inferior races was an inevitable part of human evolution. He
strongly believed that the red race must go extinct in order for the white race
to evolve. The white race was the race of the future to Steiner. He believed
that the evolution will not be peaceful and that violence between the races was
necessary for the White race to evolve to higher levels. Today, the nuagers
call it dimensions. The Lone Ranger is
the white protagonist who is depicted as a “spirit walker” a more spiritually
evolved being than the Comanche who have the misfortune of being born into an
inferior race that must submit to their own extinction in order for a grand
cosmic plan to take place. In the 1860’s, it was God’s divine providence that requires
extinction of inferior races, in the 1930s it was spiritual evolution, in the
Lone Ranger it’s making room for progress. It’s never anyone’s fault, it’s
always an unconquerable supernatural force.
Incoherence
as a Political Tool
Of all the
irrational absurdities of this film, dumping the silver in the river is the
hardest to understand. Tonto’s entire
purpose for being when we first meet him is to kill the Windigo, but when never
even find out if the Windigo is killed in the new plan to dump the silver. This act makes no sense at all. The Comanche
were being systematically starved to death.
If there were a hero in this film, wouldn’t he put their stolen
resources to good use? Why not buy food, clothing and the necessities of
survival. Why not “buy back” the stolen lands? If the Lone Ranger is such a
champion of “law and order” why not hire an army of attorneys to conduct a
truth and reconciliation hearing to expose the racist genocidal policies of the
military and the government. Why no use the silver to launch a campaign to
regulate the exploitive railroads. Why not buy back all the slaves freedom with
all that wealth? Throwing it in the
river in some incomprehensible symbolism makes no sense at all. But then, no
one ever organizes for the collective good in a Disney film. One waits for a
prince to come. One waits to see is one is destined become nobility.
Tonto:
The Ghost
In the end of the
film, Tonto, the specimen, packs his suite case, dresses as a Whiteman and walks
into the Arizona desert. Tonto passes from 1 one-dimensional stereotype to the
next for the entertainment of the White audience, but he is never seen as a
whole human being. He has been animated only to tell the story of
a fictional white male hero to another white male. He has become the ultimate
good Indian – no longer any threat to white society. He waits in suspended
animation until a white person needs him to tell a comforting lie and then he
fades away. He has no needs, no family no cultural relationship and no context no existence.
Nothing to threaten the status quo.
Depp may think he is giving Native Youth a depiction of a warrior that will empower them, but in actuality he has merely re-branded cultural imperialism.He is a walking embodiment of “End of the Trial” Kitsch animated by Disney. All the evils and excesses of the settlers and the Texas Militia Rangers are erased. There is so much historical revisionism, absurdity and deliberate incoherence that the viewer is incapable of learning anything significant about real Texas history. Deep has the means, the power and the privilege to do some real good in educating the American people about the current conditions of indigenous people all over the world struggling for their right to be indigenous and to live on lands they have always lived on. I guess Depp just doesn't have the character or convictions of a Marlon Brando.
Depp has made a lot of noise about paternalistically purchasing the Wounded Knee grave site for the "poor NDNZ", but as of this day he hasn't taken any action. Several traditional Lakota tried to reclaim the land legally by siting the 1868 Treaty of Laramie, but their efforts failed. There is no evidence that Depp offered the Lakota any assistance in undoing the treaty violations that allowed a white man to purchase their ancestors grave sites. With all his wealth and power, he could have brought the issue to national attention the way Marlon Brando's refusal of the oscar brought attention to corruption and exploitation on the Pine Ridge reservation.
Native people have been tweeting and pod casting all this week about a organizing a twitter storm during the Oscars on Sunday March 3, 2014 using the hashtag #NotYourTonto. It sounds like a good start, but Indigenous people need a lot more from people posturing as our allies. We need the respect and national voice that Marlon Brando gave to us. We need our treaties recognized as law. We need an investigation into the murders of the 57 American Indian Movement Activists who were murdered by GOONS armed and supported by the United States Government. We need real allies and real activists. Indigenous people don't need Hollywood sell-outs like Depp. We don't need Disney's lies about our history. We DO NOT need Tonto. A guilty and fearful white America does.
You can learn more my follow
#WoundedKneeII and #NotYourTonto on twitter.
Please contact the White House and
demand an independent investigation into the deaths of AIM activists killed
between 1973 and 1975 on and around the Pine Ridge reservation.
Virginia AIM has done a good job of keeping up a list of murdered activists whose deaths have never been investigated.
Maybe Depp could do a film about these unsolved murders?
![]()
The Jazz Singer was not nominated for best make up in 1927.
Yet the Lone Ranger was nominated for best make up in 2013. So much for
historical progress.
RESOURCES:
BOOKS:
Aleiss, Angelo. Making
the White Man’s Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies. Westport,
CT: Praeger. 2005.
Anderson, Gary
Clayton. The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land,
1820-1875. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. 2005
F395.A1A532005
Colllins, Peter
and John E. O’Connor. Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native
American in Film. University of Kentucky Press. 1998.
Gwynne, S.C. Empire
of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches. The
Most Powerful Indian Tribes in American History. New York, New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2010 (E99.C85P38352010)
Kavanaugh, Thomas, Comanche
Ethnography. Field Notes of E. Adamson Hoebel Lincoln, Nebraska:
University of Nebraska Press. 2008.
Kiernan, Bob. Blood and
Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Dafur.
Yale University Press. 2007.
Kilpatrick,
Jacquelyn. Celluloid Indians. Native Americans on Film. Lincoln,
NB: University of Nebraska Press. 1999.
Richardson,
Rupart Norval. The Comanches: Barrier to the South Plains Settlement.
Autsin, TX: Eakin Press. 1996. (E99.C85R51996)
Schilz, Thomas
Ford and Jodye Lynn Dickson Schilz. Buffalo Hump and the Penateka
Comanches. El Paso, Texas: University of Texas at El Paso. Southwestern
Studies Series No. 88. 1989.
Singer, Beverly
R. Wiping the War Paint Off the Lens: Native American Film and Video. Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press. 2001.
Unlearning
the Language of Conquest: Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism Chapter 5“Conquest
Masquerading as Law.” Vine Deloria Jr. Austin: University of Texas Press. 2006.
Stephanie A.
Fryberg Stanford University
University of Arizona
page
Fryberg,
Stephanie A. University of Arizona American Indian Social
Representations:
Do They
Honor or Constrain American Indian Identities?
Fryberg, Stephanie A. Psychological
consequences of Stereotypes
Williams, Robert
Jr. (Lumbee) Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization
AUDIO:
Psychological
consequences of Stereotypes
Depp's
Tonto: A Major Setback for the Native American Image
Marlon Brando on the Dick Cavett show after refusing the 1973 oscar
People booed because "I ruined their fantasy with the intrusion of a little reality."
http://youtu.be/-0OPtfm5sOc
WALT
DISNEY RACISM ON YOUTUBE
What Makes the Red Man Red http://youtu.be/0ppe1tDB6X8
Native
Appropriations:
I saw The
Lone Ranger of you don't have to
Does Johnny Depp's Tonto make The Lone Ranger a 'minstrel show'?
Lone Ranger: A
Mess of a Show
Seeing Red:
Hollywood's Pixeled Skins by Harvey Markowitz
INTERNET RESOURCES:
STEINER RACISM - prevelant in the backstory
Steiner’s Racism –
Waldorf Watch
Steiner Waldorf Schools Part
1-3 The Problem of Race www.dcscience.net/?p=3853
The Quackometer: The
Insidious Pervasiveness of the Cult of Rudolf Steiner. 7/5/2012 www.quackometer.net
Copy Left @DontPayToPray
Anyone who copies and distributes this information for the purposes of educating the public about the racism in this film will be considered one of my best friends ever.
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