Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

February 28, 2014

Natives to Oscars Depp: Not your Tonto

Depp's Oscar nomination
Native Americans Protest 'The Lone Ranger' Oscar Nomination for Redface

Jacqueline Keeler
Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry
Censored News

PORTLAND, Oregon  Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry, a group of Native parents from across the country are protesting the nomination of 'The Lone Ranger' for an Academy Award in makeup, basically, for Redface. To this end, they are conducting a “Twitterstorm” under the hashtag #NotYourTonto and will try to trend the hashtag both the Saturday night before the Oscars and during the Oscar broadcast.
“There is a double standard regarding Native people and this dehumanizes us to our fellow Americans and reduces their actual knowledge of who we are today. As part of our continued focus on Redface and its continued acceptance by Americans, we are conducting a social media protest of 'The Lone Ranger's' Oscar nomination for Redface. No film today would be nominated for an award for Yellowface or Blackface,” says Jacqueline Keeler, a Navajo/Yankton Dakota Sioux mother and one of the group's founders.
The group EONM, has been fighting Redface in both media and in sports. They trended #NotYourMascot nationally during the Super Bowl and demanded and received an apology to Native parents and their children from Sonic Drive-in for a racist sign that appeared at a Sonic Drive-in in Belton, Missouri during a Washington Redsk*ns/Kansas City Chiefs game in December of last year. Their goal is to eliminate the practice of Native Mascotry—the racist and sterotypical antics seen by fans at games dressed in Redface, and to improve the modern understanding of Native people and Indian Sovereignty to all Americans. They see the Academy of Motion Pictures awarding a film for Redface as counter to this goal and wish to see more Native screenwriters and filmmakers involved in the actual writing and direction of films about Native people. 

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