Negotiating Publicity and Persona: The Work of Native Actors in Studio Hollywood

Abstract

The majority of scholarship regarding Native Americans and film has focused on the images of Native Americans as constructed by non-Native filmmakers, but how might we better understand the careers of Native people working as actors in studio Hollywood? I propose studying film publicity material to find traces of the labor and negotiations performed by Native actors as they constructed and maintained their personas. Examining both the construction of studio publicity and analyzing the content of publicity regarding Chief Many Treaties (Blackfeet actor William Hazlett), Chief Yowlachie (Yakama actor Daniel Simmons), Chief Big Tree (Seneca actor Isaac Johnny John); and Chief Rolling Cloud (Muscogee [Creek] actor Charles Brunner), I reveal how publicity material can contextualize actors' experiences and suggest ways that these Native performers used their personas to critique and influence their presences onscreen.