The Twilight Saga: Eclipse: University professors analyze indigenous content

Yes, there are stereotypes about aboriginal people in The Twilight Saga movies. But Deanna Reder, a Cree-Métis assistant professor of First Nations Studies and English at Simon Fraser University, remains unfazed by them as the third installment of the wildly popular movie series, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (which opens in Vancouver on June 30), is about to be unleashed upon the world.

“I’m hesitant to be to be too negative because I think that things are more complicated, and you never want to have the image that popular culture controls people's minds,” she explains by phone. “Viewers are more sophisticated and they can have a lot of fun interpreting popular culture in ways that they want to.”

Reder read the books and watched the movies due to her students’ interest and their delight in seeing indigenous characters included in mainstream entertainment. She does recognize how the Native American character, Jacob (Taylor Lautner), is constructed as a polar opposite to his rival, Edward (Robert Pattinson).

“Edward’s hyper-white. Jacob, he’s First Nations, he’s Jacob Black. And even though Edward’s affluent, his family’s ruled by Italian aristocracy, there’s a European connection in Rome," she says, "whereas Jacob [and his community], they appear poor, their homes are more modest, and they’re always running around half-naked”¦they’re shapeshifting into animals. You can easily make the argument about a racial divide about the civilized versus the savage, and that’s very, very common.”

Her SFU colleague, Eldon Yellowhorn of the Piikani Nation, director of aboriginal studies and associate professor of archaeology, also recognizes the clichés and isn’t bothered by them. In fact, as a vampire fan, he's more disappointed with how the bloodsuckers lack enough of a fright factor. “They’re not scary at all,” he laughs.

Over coffee on Broadway, he tells the Straight that he understands that the indigenous portrayals are actually derived from 19th-century conceptions. “Whenever they portrayed Indians, they always portrayed them with as few clothes as possible because that’s one mark of savagery, whereas to portray the individual as fully clothed, that’s civilization.” He also thinks it's a contemporary retelling of old narrative tropes about civilization versus savagery. “In this case, you have the Europeans as the vampires who colonized the werewolves’ land, and they make a treaty with the werewolves, and of course the werewolves are the indigenous people.”

He regards stereotypes as a form of “visual shorthand” for films. “They don’t have to explain the Angry Indian to anybody because they are already familiar with that.”

Reder did have concerns about the way that a real Quileute Nation legend about being descended from wolves was used in The Twilight Saga and turned into a werewolf story. (For more on her observations, see this article.)

University of Victoria political science professor Janni Aragon, who is Mexican American, also had some concerns. She conducted a panel discussion entitled “Race and Manhood in the Twilight Movie Series” on January 21. In a phone interview with the Straight, Aragon says that attendance was twice the amount of the booked room, with attendees standing in the hall or sitting on the floor.

The panel included women's studies professor Dr. Sikata Banerjee and Indigenous Governance Program director Dr. Taiaiake Alfred. Aragon explains that Alfred, who is Mohawk, spoke about his mixed feelings about the aboriginal characters since he is aware that there is a "dearth of opportunities for indigenous males to be in mainstream books and movies". (Alfred was unavailable for an interview due to being on leave.)

Aragon did note that in the books, Stephenie Meyer had characters refer to indigenous men in derogatory ways. “Historically to [refer to] indigenous men, or men of colour, as smelly, dirty dogs,” she says on the line from Victoria, “there’s a certain racial component to that. When I say 'racial', I mean 'racist'.” Yet she adds, “What the book does is it opens conversations.”

To learn more about the real Quileute Nation, visit www.quileutenation.org/ or www.twilight-quileute.com/ .