Twilight's Inaccurate Portrayal of Native Americans

"So do you think we're a bunch of superstitious natives or what?"

Based on what the media has shown us about Native Americans it is not a surprise that yes, most people do think they are a bunch of superstitious natives. The quote is from today's most popular book series written by Stephanie Meyer. The first book was recently made into a movie. This movie of course was "Twilight". The Native American characters in this movie immediately intrigued me. We rarely see any representations of Native Americans in the media, especially geared towards teens, so I wanted to further dissect how they were being portrayed in this movie.

The specific scene I reviewed involved the leading female role, Bella Swan, and the main Native American character, Jacob Black. Jacob is part of the Quieluete tribe that inhabits the La Push reservation in Washington. Jacob and his friends all have long dark hair and olive skin with dark features, a typical image of what a Native American looks like. While visiting his reservation, Jacob tells Bella a legend from his tribe. Immediately flashbacks are shown in a mystical fashion with shadowy figures that are wearing "traditional" Native American clothing. Mysterious music plays in the background alluding to danger and magic.

The legend in summary states that the Quieluete tribe is descendants from werewolves that have made a treaty with an enemy clan called the "cold ones" (vampires). The treaty is an agreement that the Quieluete tribe will leave the vampires alone if they do not enter their land. Although it is not shown in this scene it turns out the legend is true and Jacob and his friends on the reservation become werewolves to protect their land from the vampires that live close by. Bella is a teenage girl who recently moved to Washington and has made friends with Jacob. She happens to be dating Edward, one of the Vampires the Quieluete tribe has made a treaty with.

Once again Native Americans are being portrayed as a mystical people with magical powers and a deep connection to nature. The Twilight story is intended as fiction and meant to be entertaining. It is geared towards teens, but does expand to younger and older audiences. Considering the majority of the characters are middle class Caucasians it seems to appeal more to that demographic.

On the surface the scene is simply a part of a fictitious story and is meant to create mystique and add to the plot. Most people would look at this and not see anything racist or stereotypical about it. It seems innocent and obviously just a story. In the article "Noble Savages in Twilight" a Twilight fan states "Like Anne Rice she created a fictional book with mythical creatures that do not exist nor ever existed."

This is where the problem comes in. The Quieluete tribe is not fictitious and the La Push reservation is their real home in Washington. To me this is the harm in portraying a real people in such a mysterious fashion. It makes it appear like they are not real and young teens viewing this see them as not human or not existent. Also the fact that they are seen as on the same level of vampires perpetuates the idea of them as mythical creatures.

This made me think of the article "Crimes Against Humanity" by Ward Churchill. Churchill says, " Hollywood has released more than 2,000 films portraying Indians as strange, perverted, ridiculous and often dangerous things of the past...we have thus been thoroughly and systematically dehumanized." While I don't think dehumanizing the Quieluete tribe was Meyer's intention, she shows ignorance in perpetuating a stereotype of them and connecting a completely false legend to their tribe.

The scene also does not show the whole reservation. It is completely set on the beach and does not give a representation of how the Quieluete tribe actually lives. From the scene it seems like a peaceful secluded place to live. While I do not know the specific life of the Quieluete tribe, many Native Americans that live on reservations suffer from poverty, alcoholism and poor education. Churchill states "We suffer the highest rate of infant mortality, death by malnutrition and disease. Under such circumstances, alcoholism and other escapist forms of substance abuse are endemic in the Indian community." Now I understand you would not want to put this issues in a children's book, but when the only time we see a representation of Native Americans is this one it makes people naïve to the real issues. Why was it necessary to make an Indian tribe werewolves? To me it was an easy choice for her and a sign of laziness. Of course it was easy to connect the ever-mythological Native Americans to a fake legend of werewolves.

There are two ways I think she could have gone about it differently. If Meyer was set on making the Quieluete tribe werewolves she should have researched their own legends more thoroughly and incorporating more of their real traditions and ways of life. She could have not made it a legend of the past but some recent incident that caused it. The better option would be to not make them werewolves at all. They could have been characters in the book, because I do think it is a good idea to have more Native American characters in the media. However she could have easily made a number of people enemies to the vampire and random people could turn into werewolves. I do think the whole vampire-werewolf feud is a bit overdone and she should have been more creative all together.

Works Cited

Churchill, Ward (1994). "Crimes Against Humanity" in Margaret Anderson and Patricia Hill (eds.) (1994). Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. pp. 366-73.

Schmidt, Rob. "Noble Savages in Twilight." Web log post. Newspaper Rock. 08 Aug. 2008. Web. .

Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1). Boston: Little, Brown Young Readers, 2006. Print.