Native representation in TV and films is 'still in its infancy'

It wasn’t that long ago that Navajo actor Loren Anthony faced the threat that he wouldn't find work in Hollywood after he and several other Indigenous actors walked off the set of an Adam Sandler film.

The 2015 Netflix picture "The Ridiculous 6" was billed as a comic Western — a spoof on the classic "The Magnificent Seven" — but Anthony saw nothing funny about it. For him, it was a script filled with insults toward Native women and elders.

When the Indigenous actors walked off set, an uproar ensued. Though critics and many viewers panned the film, which earned a 0% from Rotten Tomatoes, viewership was still high.

“They said if I continued to push any further with what's happening on that show, they were going to blackball me,” remembered Anthony, who is also a singer and musician. “I was fine if they wanted to do that. Other people saw what happened on their end and decided not to work with me. And that's fine, too, because that drew a line in the sand.”

Seven years later, not only is he still booking jobs as an actor, but he is also coaching and managing other Native actors and preparing to produce a short film.

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Demeaning people in film is 'bullying'

Taking a stand against blatant racist and stereotypical depictions of Native Americans wasn’t a hard choice for Anthony, even knowing that there could be repercussions that could prevent him from acting again. He has no regrets for what he did. He’s still acting, usually sending in his auditions late at night after a full day of chopping wood and hauling it to the homes of Navajo elders across the Navajo Nation for the group he founded known as Chizh for Cheii.

Anthony has worked with youth for years, visiting schools to give presentations that encourage them to find honest work and stay away from drugs and alcohol abuse. At one point he ran the youth crisis center in Gallup, New Mexico. He said a movie like "The Ridiculous 6" does more harm than good.

“Working with youth and telling kids to be proud of who you are, and try to do your best, and doing intervention work on drugs and alcohol, and knowing we have issues like MMIW (missing and murdered indigenous women), high suicide rates,” said Anthony.

“Those types of films continue with the exploitation and appropriation, and I have to come home to face that. If you have a film that is demeaning people, and saying it's comedy, it's not comedy. If everyone isn’t laughing together, and if we are picking on one group, that's not comedy, that is bullying.”

With his background in helping youth, as well as elders, Anthony spends his time coaching and managing other aspiring Indigenous actors who also have dreams of the big screen. And instead of dealing with stereotypical and misrepresentation of Indigenous people in scripts like "The Ridiculous 6," Anthony finished writing his first screenplay for a short film he plans to produce alongside fellow Navajo actor Ryan Begay, who will direct the film.

“I’m trying to help people get out there and do stuff,” said Anthony. “If not me getting booked for something, then somebody else. They can’t be the same faces. It can’t be the same crowd. I’m here to mix it up. Whether people like it or not, there’s a lot of gatekeeping involved. A lot of cliques. A lot of people want to keep for themselves what they know.”

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Last year, Anthony sent in 77 auditions before getting the role he is currently working on. In his nearly decade-long acting career, he has been in over 30 television shows and films, among them the recent revival of Showtime's "Dexter." He said last year was a discouraging time in his career after he was booked multiple times for various acting jobs, only to be later dropped, something he said can be tough to accept. He said his belief and practice in his Navajo traditions has helped to get over the difficult times.

“I'm traditional. So traditional prayers with mountain smoke, it helps me. You have to find your higher power in everything you do,” said Anthony. “A lot of life-changing roles that I would’ve had, I got dropped from, and you have to take that as ‘Oh, it was not meant to be.’ You have to talk yourself through it.”

He met Begay, another established Indigenous actor, on the set of the 2013 picture "The Lone Ranger." Begay has worked on shows such as the recently popular — and depending on who you talk to, controversial — TV show "Dark Winds," an adaptation of novels by Tony Hillerman. He also appears in the film "Fancy Dance," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival late last month.

A United States Air Force veteran, Begay has been an actor since 2011, but his path to the movie industry began after he took a video production class at the Colorado Film School in Denver. He later transferred and completed his fine arts degree in new media art from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

“When I moved to New Mexico, one of my short films got into a short film festival. I saw the audience and other Native filmmakers and that's where I said ‘All right! This is where I want to be,’” said Begay, who was raised in Flagstaff but is originally from the community of Piñon.

Until friends wrote him into a script, he had never acted before. He said he’d audition, hoping someone else would get the role, but in the end he was offered the spot and his acting career began. Since then he’s had parts in the TV show "Yellowstone," and a more recent Peacock show, "Rutherford Falls."

Indigenous representation in movies and TV shows has always been lackluster, though there have been minor gains in recent years. The 2021 Hollywood Diversity Report by the UCLA School of Social Sciences found that 0.9% of actors in 2020's TV broadcast shows were Native. The share was lower for film roles. As for Native directors, none was listed, and the same went for screenwriters.

The 2022 report examined 407 scripted broadcast, cable and digital platform television shows from the 2020-21 season. It reported that 2% of actors on broadcast scripted shows were Native, with lower numbers on cable and streaming shows. The share was once again lower for film roles.

Begay said Native cinema and television are still relatively new, and people don’t realize just how new it is. Although there has been Native representation in films (sometimes just one character or crew member on set), having a majority Native cast in shows is a big boost.

“It’s still in its infancy even after so many years,” said Begay. “To have a majority Native cast, it's being presented to everybody that it can be done.”

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Bringing a Native perspective to a project

Begay had heard about Anthony walking off the set of "The Ridiculous 6." He knew that this type of treatment and cultural insensitivity, racism and stereotypical depiction of Native Americans was happening still in the film industry, but he had not experienced it.

“People were talking about this stuff and I wanted to experience it for myself,” said Begay. “It's important to stand your ground on things, and that's why I did 'The Lone Ranger.' You go through the whole assembly line of making Indians. Of course, they can have a cultural advisor that they're not listening to, but they are there just to say they have one. That’s the reality of it.”

For many indigenous people, "The Lone Ranger" was problematic because of Johnny Depp’s depiction of Tonto, the Native character of the movie. Many people saw it as a racist portrayal of Native Americans, even if Depp claims to have some Native ancestry, and even after it was reported that he was adopted into the Comanche tribe in 2012.

The popular TV series "Dark Winds" is also another project many have issues with. The show is an adaptation of mystery novels Tony Hillerman wrote in the early 1980s, and follows two Navajo police officers as they search for clues in a double murder case. For many Navajos, Hillerman’s books, mostly about their tribe, are seen as cultural appropriation because of his extensive writing on the tribe's culture and traditions.

“Why is this show based on Tony Hillerman’s interpretation of Navajo people being made, being greenlit, and being produced by mostly non-Navajo Native people in 2022, at a time when Native people are gaining representation and we are more visible in mainstream media and kind of in popular culture?” said Melanie Yazzie, co-founder of Red Nation and American Indian Studies professor at University of Minnesota. Yazzie, who is also Navajo, talked about "Dark Winds" in an October 2022 Red Nation podcast.

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“It’s very verbatim to Hillerman, the way Navajo people are portrayed in 'Dark Winds,'" Yazzie said in the podcast. "Why is it stuck in the '70s and '80s paradigm? When Navajo people ourselves have really challenged that and dismantled it, and moved so far forward?”

Begay said "Dark Winds" interested him because he wanted to “see where they were at” in terms of Native inclusion and Navajo portrayal. He said they did try to involve the Navajo perspective by bringing Navajo and other Indigenous writers on board, adding that certain little things could’ve been improved on but has high hopes for the second season.

“I can say my piece at what I can control for the most part, but in the end it will come out, and it did,” said Begay, referring to Navajo and other Native critics of the show. “That’s why I tell people you have to watch the films, the TV shows, you have to support these actors. It's not just about the main characters who aren't Navajos."

"But all these other Navajo actors who are on there, on crew, you are watching to support them," Begay said. "But you are also watching to understand what might be wrong with it, and if you can talk about it, and talk to other people about it, then we can start this dialogue of 'what do we need to fix.' What do they need to fix?”

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'It made me feel like somebody'

Begay said it's only barely getting to that point that Indigenous artists can make a living as full-time actors. Getting into the door is the tough part and the process is still just as difficult as it has always been. Actors have to work at it and hope they get a callback, he said.

“You get so many ‘no’s,'” said Begay. “You get rejected all the time. It's a silent rejection because they don’t tell you that you don't get the job. It’s a tough process. People have to understand that the audition is the work. Doing the audition, building the character — that is the work, and booking the role and getting on set is only the payoff to do what you worked on.”

Begay and Anthony both agree on why they got into the industry, and it wasn't for the money. It was because they love the art of performing. Anthony has always loved the stage. Before he was an actor, he was a musician. But it's the feeling of performing that has motivated him to keep acting.

“The entertainment part of myself is the whole reason for getting into acting in general,” said Anthony. “Starting off with music, playing music as a kid, touring. It doesn't matter how big or small the stage is, it's always made me feel safe, and in control of my life, it's made me feel like somebody. It's made me feel special.”

Now the two acting friends are preparing to make the short film Anthony wrote. Begay has directed and produced other short films, and he also creates public service announcements for Indian Health Services. He is looking forward to directing this film.

“It’s all in pre-production now, " said Anthony, who plans to film in Gallup, where he lives. “It’s my first time doing something this big. I’ve done little things. We want to film it here in Gallup. We are looking at doing things to raise the bar and create our own table, instead of waiting for someone to invite us to a table. We also want to bring our friends along who have also been in the same situation of being overlooked and underestimated.”

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Arlyssa Becenti covers Indigenous affairs for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send ideas and tips to arlyssa.becenti@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Native actors still have to work harder to create opportunities