My Mixed Blooded 2 Cents Worth On Johnny Depp As Tonto

I was thinking about writing this back over the summer when Disney's The Lone Ranger was still in theaters and we did a special Western Friday Fright Night and went to see it.  But, I thought I would think about it for a while and revisit the issue here during Fright Month AKA The Countdown To Halloween.  That is precisely the reason that we are doing westerns today.

As anyone who has even passing knowledge of this film knows, Johnny Depp assaying the role of Tonto, a disturbed trickster Comanche, suddenly stirred up controversy this past summer, despite the fact that he was playing the role had been known for years.  In fact, even when stills from the set started to pour out, no one said a thing.  The controversy sort of hit the main stream media suddenly right before the film's release when Native and non-natives alike started to crow (pun intended) about a "white man" or "non Indian" playing a native role that had been so beloved when Mohawk actor Jay Silverheels played the role in the 1950's television series (actually it premiered in 1949).  Well there are several things in this that I think should be addressed; which is precisely what I intend to do below.  Of course, this is just what I think, my own personal opinion, but it seems to me that there are points that need attending in regard to what I think is hypocrisy on the part of some the loudest Native voices out there crowing about this.

Silverheels as Tonto

First one point that people seem not to get.  Johnny Depp did not get cast in the role of Tonto.  This was his project from the get-go and there was no doubt that he was going to inhabit this role.  People seem not to get this (and this comes mostly from non-native people in the media), he brought the project to Disney and he produced the film.  He's getting little credit for that in the press.  It stars a boat load of native actors from Saginaw Grant (Otoe-Missouria/Sac & Fox/Iowa) to Gil Birmingham, who is actually Comanche.  It also features the Comanche language in some places, a language that is endangered (heck, even Internet Movie Database doesn't have it listed as a language, pathetic! [on their part]).

The first of these issues for is in regard to Depp's actual ancestry.  People have practically accused him of lying about having any actual Native American ancestors, though it can be proven that he had a Tsalag (Cherokee) great-grandmother.  That is not without question.  People have claimed that he keeps changing his story about this ancestry when asked about; on the Cherokee subject, he has not.  What he has said is that at various times, people in his own family have said they heard that they might also be part Muskogee Creek or Navajo Dineh.  This goes to the question of who gets to be "Native American" in this country.  That has changes drastically since the 1980's, when the first Indian casino was opened up after The Indian Gaming Act of 1988 (now I am not talking about bingo here, I'm talking full fledged casino complexes).  On the face of it, it seems like a great idea, and if handled deftly, it can be.  But, really people are just people, and when money and power dangle in the face some people, they cannot help but be seduced by it.  It is a fact that some tribes starting kicking people out, based on their heritage not being "Indian enough" for tribal enrollment, even if they were born on the reservation and had been members from birth.  I know of one case in the Pacific northwest, where a young man was "FBI," that is "full blooded Indian" but had ancestry from 4 different tribes (this is not uncommon at all in the region, actually it's kind of the norm--just go watch Dead Man [another Depp film] and check out the character of Nobody). Again, I don't have a thing in world against "Indian Casinos," so long as they don't actually hurt tribal members.   This is all quite a change from they way it used to be.  It is basically topsy-turvy now.  Poor mixed blooded people would do just about anything to "pass" as white--I got bugged about that by a-gi-do'-d (my father) a lot, because I baulked at, but he was from what is known as the "coat and tie generation."  I knew that over in Louisiana you could have your ass drug into court where they would make you swear you DIDN'T have any "Indian blood."  So make no mistake, Johnny Depp is a mixed blooded actor with actual Native ancestry--that has meant very different things through-out his lifetime.

All this talk about Depp's ancestry got me to thinking about something that as far as I know has not been brought up in this "discussion" in regard to who gets to call themselves "American Indian;" and that is of CIB cards.  So what the hell is a CIB card?  Well, first I should say that it is a card issued to people of federally recognized bands/tribes/nations by the BIA.  So what the hell is the BIA?  Well, it's a government agency called Bureau of Indian Affairs stuck in the Department of Interior (you know, the one with all the forests and wildlife...), a popular nickname for this agency in Indian Country (the real one, not the one that the military refers to!) is Bullshit In Action.  It is an extremely corrupt part of the government, rife with all sorts of bad stuff from blatant incompetence to out and out stealing.  A CIB card is Certificate of Indian Blood--that's right, they issue cards to "federal" tribal members telling them how "Indian" the federal government thinks they are!  Sound familiar??  I could go off on an extremely long post on this alone, which I won't, but my reason for bringing it up here is because there are plenty of tribes that are trying to get federal recognition that have state recognition already. Here in Georgia we have a group of Lower Porch Creek that have that status, same with several other states, especially here in the southeast.  So, if you are say part Georgia Creek, part Houma from Louisiana and part Eastern Cherokee, the only part the Feds are going to recognize is the Eastern Cherokee part.  Secondly, relying on the actual blood quantums on these cards is not a good idea.  A while back I was acquainted with two identical twins from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.  When they received there CIB cards, the government had put two different numbers on their cards!!  Knowing about this issue further muddies the water when a person can rightfully claim native ancestry, without actually wanting anything to do with the federal government.  My point is that a person of mostly southern heritage, and all that involves, like Depp, could have ancestry through one of these groups and federally recognized tribal members basically treat these groups the same way the US government does (want to know more about this?  Go read up on Jack Abramoff!). It's thorny!!  And brings up the next issue:  that of the sovereign rights of federally recognized tribes, as a Nation to Nation relationship with the government of the US.  One of those issues involves the legality of native adoption.

In the past, several federally recognized tribes have asserted their rights to adopt members and, in some cases, place these people on the federal membership roles, and in almost all cases the US government has not accepted this, using treaty breaking refusal to bar these adoptions from being placed on federal roles, claiming these people, in most cases, have no actual native blood (apparently when the practice more resembles Judeo-Christian norms, this is not a problem--as spouses in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma are Federally recognized).  Federally recognized native nations have all rightly protested this action by the US government, whether they practice such adoptions or not.  So having given my opinion about Depp's actual native ancestry above, I would like to say that I also support the notion of formal adoption (that is the same thing as being granted citizenship in foreign country, nothing less) by native nations if they choose to do so, especially when it is an old and time honored tradition amongst the people.  This is absolutely the case with the Comanche.  Johnny Depp was formerly adopted by the Comanche and even recorded a traditional Comanche song that is included in the film that is credited as "Johnny Depp and the Comanche Nation."  End of story.  Or at least it should be, but there are some Native people who say this doesn't matter, that Depp should not have been in the role in any case.  I say that's hypocrisy.  There were several Comanche consultants on the film, including William Two Raven Voelker, who assisted with the design of the stuffed bird that Depp's Tonto wears...again write a whole post on that...suffice that Voelker insists that it is traditional).  

There are so many other aspects of the film and Depp's performance in it that I could take up in length...mercifully I won't.  I will say that even those aspects that some natives have (in my opinion simple-mindedly) advanced, such as Tonto's speech, his face paint, his strange gait, etc., since the film's release there have been just as many native voices chiming in to defend all of those and more (such as two Navajo Dineh comedians, pointing out the deliberate sneakiness of Tonto's way of speaking).  I do want to say, first of all that this is the most violent Disney film I think has ever been made.  It does not shrink from the horrible concepts of Manifest Destiny and the mutilated violence of westward expansion.  We are shown a flashback of Tonto as a child in the midst of a massacre; he is basically the only survivor.  We see that his mind is broken, especially when he picks up the dead raven from the river--which becomes his headdress.  If one if familiar with PTSD in any way, then it is hard not to also think of him as a psychologically devastated child who, as a reluctant adult, deals with it by becoming one hell of a trickster (try watching the scene of him with the forced Chinese railway workers and see if that isn't absolutely the case).  Personally, I think it's a rather important film in this regard.  Nuff said.  Wado for reading.

Depp meeting Navajo President Ben Shelly