Say what Johnny Depp?

[E.P. Grondine]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2013/07/02/what-johnny-depps-the-lone-ranger-means-for-disney/?partner=yahootix

Disney had a decision to make.

They could have gone with two father figures, the perfect answer to their conundrum, but instead went with two fantasy characters, based on their experiece with Pirates of the Carribean.

The result is that Disney is now working on damage control, and minimizing their losses.

[Pono Aloha]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/07/02/196333864/does-disneys-tonto-reinforce-stereotypes-or-overcome-them

Asked if he's Native American, Depp says he grew up in Kentucky, where his great-grandmother and great-grandfather told him he had Cherokee blood. "But over there, could have been Cherokee, could have been Creek, could have been Choctaw," he says.

Whatever!

[Defend the Sacred]

Again, all tribes that are very well-documented. It's a fantasy story, like so many families who decided it was preferable to think of themselves as having NDN ancestors rather than Black ones. Sad, but all too common. His genealogy has been done, so it's rather crazy and insensitive for him to keep on with this b.s.

This video, especially Chris Rock's and others' comments in the section that starts at 5:02, addresses the ancestry myths common in African-American families.

http://youtu.be/YR_p6PdAIrI

In families that quickly assimilated and passed as white... well, I think it's just that they didn't want to be Black, but they felt they had to have some color from somewhere.

There's a show on cable now, by some of the team that did Spinal Tap, about a guy who's researching his family tree. Sure enough, for one episode he thought he had a Native ancestor. Turns out she was Jewish. We know that story ;)

[Autumn]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/07/02/196333864/does-disneys-tonto-reinforce-stereotypes-or-overcome-them

Asked if he's Native American, Depp says he grew up in Kentucky, where his great-grandmother and great-grandfather told him he had Cherokee blood. "But over there, could have been Cherokee, could have been Creek, could have been Choctaw," he says.

Whatever!

Now he is throwing Chickasaw into the mix:  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3445_162-57591526/the-lone-ranger-and-tonto-ride-again/ (around the 6:15 mark in the video)

He also justifies his characterization by saying that in this film Tonto is equal to the Lone Ranger, not a servant as in the old films.  The costume was totally his idea and it was a result of being inspired by a portrait.  Unfortunately, the bird was flying behind the man in the portrait and Mr. Depp thought a dead bird was on his head, so that was his inspiration for the costume, which is pretty pathetic, IMHO.

P.S.:  The reviews so far are pretty bad and all that for $215 million.  What a waste.

[Epiphany]

He's likin' the "C" named tribes, maybe he only read that far down a list of tribes.  ;D

[Defend the Sacred]

He's picking from the five tribes who had early contact and intermarriage with whites. It's members of those tribes that a white person, whose parents and grandparents are also white, is most likely to find among their distant ancestors if they do their genealogy. They're also the tribes that white people are most likely to try to form fake versions of. Sometimes the "descendants" of a fabricated ancestor, or a distant ancestor that doesn't make their assimilated descendants with miniscule BQ NDN, or a white person with rumours they can't confirm will join one of those fake tribes of the fabricated "C" history.

As others have posted about in other threads, there are also A LOT of white people who have unfounded family rumours because they have white ancestors who tried to pass as NDN to get land allotments that weren't their right to claim. The story of being rejected because they were white frauds morphs over time into one of those "we hid in the mountains of Ohio and Texas rather than walk the Trail of Tears" fables.

[Defend the Sacred]

"What I disliked about the movie was everything."

Norman Patrick Brown (Dine') reviews Lone Ranger: http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2013/07/norman-patrick-brown-rating-for-lone.html

"As I saw the credits roll I was amazed that Johnny Depp was first listed above everyone else as an executive producer, and how much incredible power he possessed in creating this movie's creative structure, it failed. As a native filmmaker it was obvious to me that Hollywood once again failed. Yes, yes, it is just a movie, but the ramifications of symbolism and interpretation will be recorded as true among America's non-native uneducated native history buffs, which is very dangerous for our future and perception of who we truly are today."

Read the whole thing. It's a lot funnier than the movie. 

[Otter3]

[quote link=topic=3318.msg35161#msg35161 date=1372864630]
"What I disliked about the movie was everything."

Yes, yes, it is just a movie, but the ramifications of symbolism and interpretation will be recorded as true among America's non-native uneducated native history buffs, which is very dangerous for our future and perception of who we truly are today."

Read the whole thing. It's a lot funnier than the movie.
[/quote]

I agree.   Disney ads say, "This July 4th, witness the rise of an American Legend!"  The Disney marketing monster unleashed on Native Americans.  :P

[Defend the Sacred]

Adrienne Keene of Native Appropriations suffered through this racist mess. She found herself in a theatre surrounded by white people laughing at genocide, who seemed perfectly happy to see NDNs portrayed as dumb and crazy. That said, the film is getting terrible reviews, even by people oblivious to the racial issues.

I saw The Lone Ranger so you don't have to http://nativeappropriations.com/2013/07/i-saw-the-lone-ranger-so-you-dont-have-to.html

"After it all happens, and we're to understand all the Comanche are dead, Tonto picks up his bird from the river full of floating feathers, shields, and bodies. I braced myself for the emotional realization that his entire tribe had just been slaughtered. Again. But no. Instead the camera pans up and we are shown Silver, the horse, standing in a tree holding the LR's hat in his mouth. To which Tonto quips, "Yes. Something definitely wrong with that horse." The scene then quickly cuts to a loud brass band and celebration at the unveiling of the railroad line back in town.

"Let me reiterate that, not in Tonto speak, because it's important: They slaughter an entire tribe of Natives, and there is no discussion. Just an awkward joke and a cut to the next scene. What?"

"So clearly I went into this with a critical lens, but you wouldn't expect anything less. This film has come under a lot of harsh criticism, and for the most part, it deserves it. As a piece of cinema, it's just a bad movie. On top of a bad movie, we have layers of stereotypes and harmful representations that are going to keep haunting us as Native peoples for years to come.

"My theater had a bunch of kids in it. I kept thinking about what images they were leaving the theater with–and that left me upset and worried. Now an entire new generation is going to play the Lone Ranger and Tonto at recess, thinking Indians talk in incomplete and inconsistent pidgin English, think all Indians are dead, and that it's ok to dress as an "Indian" for Halloween. While this might be a flash-in-the-pan film, it solidifies the continuing views of Native peoples as lesser, as relics of the past, as disappearing, as roadblocks to "progress." Tonto might have been less of a sidekick and running the show, but in the end, the LR gets the girl and the glory, and Tonto ends up in a museum. Hows that for a re-imagining."

Read the rest: I saw The Lone Ranger so you don't have to

Twitter is abuzz with people totally grossed out at this racist mess, and horrified at the many gratuitous ways NDNs are slaughtered, with genocide being played for laughs. Though some are asking that we try to focus instead on the good work Native filmakers are doing, instead of continuing to critique this. But Disney is still pushing this thing and so people's phones are ringing for comments. The only upside of this is that some Natives are being quoted, and Adrienne is doing lots of interviews because even some mainstream media outlets are pretty shocked at the racism, sexism and gratuitous, racialized violence in the doomed Lone Ranger.

[Odelle]

Unfortunately, it appears that Adrienne has gotten a lot of flack (to put it mildly) for her writing on Tonto:
http://nativeappropriations.com/2012/07/real-indians-dont-care-about-tonto.html

[Epiphany]

I really appreciate Adrienne Keene's work.

From the link Odelle passed on:

The irony of this whole situation kills me–I'm not allowed to criticize Johnny Depp, a public figure, and we're supposed to lay off of him because he has "Indian heritage," is a "good person," and doing "good things" for Indian country.

But me, a Cherokee woman going to graduate school so I can give back to Native communities and help more Native students go to college, who puts herself out there for criticism and hate because I dare question how Native people are situated in our society, is not an Indian or even a good person. Why does Johnny get a free pass?

Let me remind you that this is all over TONTO. Tonto. A character that has gone down in history as one of the worst and lasting stereotypes of Native peoples, and continues to affect us today.

[loudcrow]

http://ethnicelebs.com/johnny-depp

Johnny is descended from a woman, Martha, who born in 1612, and who was of African descent. Martha's daughter, Elizabeth Key (also an ancestor of Johnny), was the first woman of African ancestry to successfully take legal action to free herself from slavery. This happened in 1656. Johnny is descended from Martha twice (on one family tree, she is both one of his eight times great-grandmothers, and one of his nine times great-grandmothers). That would mean that Johnny is of 3/2048 African ancestry.(1)

Johnny's nine times great-grandmother, Nicketti Opechancanough, was of Powhatan Native American ancestry, making Johnny of 1/2048 Powhatan Native American descent.

[Epiphany]

http://ethnicelebs.com/johnny-depp

Johnny is descended from a woman, Martha, who born in 1612, and who was of African descent. Martha's daughter, Elizabeth Key (also an ancestor of Johnny), was the first woman of African ancestry to successfully take legal action to free herself from slavery. This happened in 1656. Johnny is descended from Martha twice (on one family tree, she is both one of his eight times great-grandmothers, and one of his nine times great-grandmothers). That would mean that Johnny is of 3/2048 African ancestry.(1)

Johnny's nine times great-grandmother, Nicketti Opechancanough, was of Powhatan Native American ancestry, making Johnny of 1/2048 Powhatan Native American descent.

Professional genealogists do state that Johnny Depp's ancestor is Elizabeth Key
http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2013/06/26/lone-ranger-heroes-hammer-depp-family-trees/

The claim about Nicketti Opechancanough does not have the same level of scholarly backing. Apparently there is no evidence that such a person existed.

Princess Nicketti is the name given to a Virginia Indian woman believed by some to have been the daughter of Opechancanough, a leader of the Powhatan Indians and the brother of the paramount chief Powhatan. While the name has been referenced almost exclusively on twenty-first-century genealogy websites by people claiming family relationship, no scholarly evidence exists that Princess Nicketti ever lived. A careful search of seventeenth-century records in Virginia yields no one by that name, male or female. And no name of a child of Opechancanough was ever recorded in that century. The writings about her stem from a single published source: Alexander Brown's genealogy The Cabells and Their Kin (1939). Significantly, Brown calls Nicketti's story only a "very interesting tradition" and adds, "I cannot vouch for it[s accuracy]," but he had heard about her from several prominent Piedmont Virginia families. Subsequent writers have quoted Brown's text as fact.

Another problem with the Princess Nicketti legend is that North American Indian tribes did not have princesses in the European sense. Most tribes were relatively egalitarian, and egalitarian societies do not produce aristocracies. Even the more hierarchical Indian cultures, such as the Powhatan, did not have European-style royalty.

Despite the evidence against Princess Nicketti's existence, she remains a popular figure, especially among those interested in family history. As evidenced by the numerous claims of relation to Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas, and to the privileges granted those alleged relations in the Racial Integrity Acts, Virginians have long valued connections, real or mythological, to Indian "royalty." Those connections have most often been made through women, who likely are seen as less threatening than males like Opechancanough, for instance, who led Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622-1632). Claims of ancestry through the Powhatan Indians are more common, as well, probably because it was an especially well-known tribe.

The American Indian author Vine Deloria has argued that Americans seek family connections to Indians in order to relate in a more personal way to the frontier and, perhaps, to expiate guilt related to the treatment of American Indians. Others have pointed out that during parts of the twentieth century claims of Indian ancestry sometimes exempted people from laws that segregated whites from nonwhites. For instance, in Virginia the Racial Integrity Acts, passed in the 1920s, outlawed marriage between whites and nonwhites (the latter classification included Virginia Indians, who state officials believed to be black) and required that people's racial statuses be recorded at birth; elite Virginians who claimed ancestry to Pocahontas, however, could still register as white.

"Nicketti" is not an identifiable Indian name, and is probably a corruption of some other name. It could be derived from "Necotowance," the former name of a creek in King William County, taken in turn from the personal name of Opechancanough's male successor. Nothing is known about that man except that he signed the Treaty of 1646 on behalf of many of the Powhatan tribes. He disappeared from the English records after 1649.

http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/nicketti_princess#start_entry

[Defend the Sacred]

The family trees - all unsourced, and full of fantasies - around Opechancanough Powhatan and the nonexistent Nicketti are a big, old, racist mess.

Supposedly, one of my 11th great-grandfathers was married to Opechancanough's mother, allegedly Paupauwiske Poawomeck (Powhatan). IF this woman existed, it's unclear which children were hers and which had other mothers. All the family trees around them are a mess. I believe some of these lineages were fabricated to claim that men like Raleigh Croshaw, a notorious NDN killer, was actually NDN. I think it's a way white people are trying to falsely blame NDNs for the massacres that their white ancestors committed against NDNS.

The family trees around these individuals routinely give them strange, non-Native names (like Cleopatra! or Disney-type names in English) and Euro-type titles of royalty. Of course the latter also happens with people who fabricate ties to Euro royalty; they just can't accept that their ancestors were normal people. Anyway... The unsourced family trees around these ancestors routinely conflate unrelated people from totally different tribes and centuries; they swap around people's birthdates by literally hundreds of years, swap around parents and children, and generally do everything possible to destroy their credibility. That's the sort of stuff Depp's defenders are relying on.

[Defend the Sacred]

Related discussions in our thread on solid, sourced genealogy vs vague family stories, especially about how non-Native's vague family stories about NDN ancestors usually do not bear up under scrutiny: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=3981.0