Welcome to a new blog Tom is writing on mixed descent Indigenous representation in visual pop culture (movies, tv, video games, comics)
Mixedness can be a plot element for a character while not diminishing identity, a struggle in the real world of the “inconvenient Indian.” Many characters have mixed backgrounds but fully identify with their Nation and in most cases are not seen as less than by their Indigenous peers.
Elora Danan and the remarkable Reservation Dogs
There are many ways that 2021 tv series Reservation Dogs has broken the mold with its authentic stories, writing, and acting. Kahnawà:ke Mohawk actor Devery Jacobs plays Elora Danan Postoak, one of the main characters and unequivocal member of the community. The last season of the show revealed to us and her that her father was a white man. This didn’t change her own identity, nor how any of her peers saw her.
Mixedness here is used as a plot element without engaging in any heavy-handed meditations on blood quantum. First Nations are used to having mixed people in their communities, and often it doesn’t register as problematic.
Blood quantum is a problematic measure of Indigeneity based on descent from “full blooded” ancestors.
“Blood quantum emerged as a way to measure “Indian-ness” through a construct of race. So that over time, Indians would literally breed themselves out and rid the federal government of their legal duties to uphold treaty obligations.” – Dr. Elizabeth Rule (2018)
Echo (Maya Lopez) in Comics and TV
The 2024 tv series Echo establishes the titular Maya Lopez as Choctaw, but the original comics left her Father’s mixed tribal origins unspecified for a long time before clarifying as Cheyenne. Her mother is Mexican. She has, as far as I can tell, always been put forth as an Indigenous character whose mixedness does not compromise that Indigeneity.
The character was created by writer David Mack and artist Joe Quesada, neither of whom are Indigenous.
The comics character was originally a side character in Daredevil comics, and has sporadic appearances since.
A recent miniseries, 2021’s Echo: Phoenixsong has Echo travel back in time to Cahokia, a little-known Indigenous city in the southern United States. It is written by Rebecca Roanhorse, an Indigenous writer, with art by Luca Maresca
In the MCU, Echo first appeared in the Hawkeye tv series before spinning off into her own miniseries. She is portrayed on screen by Alaqua Cox, a Native American actress from the Menominee Nation, with descent also from the Mohican nation. Her eponymous miniseries was made with participation from the Choctaw Nation, and a Native Director in Sydney Freeland. I loved it.
“Echo delivers something I have yet to see in a Marvel movie or series: the feeling of being on a Rez.” – Vincent Schilling, “NativeNerd review: Alaqua Cox crushes it as Marvel’s ‘Echo’” (2024).
Sarah Rainmaker and Ratonhnhaké:ton in Comics & Videogames
Sarah Rainmaker was a comic book superhero from the 1990s Gen13 from Image comics. She is depicted as Apache of mixed descent but identifies fully as Apache.
Sarah’s powers are inherited from her white soldier dad, but unsurprisingly, it manifests as weather-related – another in a long line of Native heroes with nature-related powers. Besides being native, Sarah’s main character trait was being gay. It is not my favourite depiction.
She was created by writer/artist J. Scott Campbell.
Sarah Rainmaker’s Apache mother, Becky, and white father Steve Callahan, were featured briefly in the Team 7 series from Image Comics. Becky is drawn by Jason Johnson in 1996’s Team 7: Dead Reckoning.
Ratonhnhaké:ton, also known as Connor Kenway, is the protagonist of the 2012 video game Assassin’s Creed III from Ubisoft.
Ratonhnhaké:ton’s mixed heritage is a part of the game’s narrative, but he and his people always identify him as Mohawk and fully Indigenous. There are occasions in the game where he is told to use the name “Connor Kenway” and that he can pass as Spanish or Italian, but due to video game mechanics he spends most of the time wearing claw-necklaces and beads and isn’t particularly remarked upon. On one occasion, while in prison, another character calls him a “halfbreed.”
“They…hired a Native American voice actor for Connor, Noah Watts. Watts was from the Crow and Blackfeet nations, though, so he was coached by [Mohawk Cultural Advusor Thomas] Deer about the Mohawk language. The Kahnawà:ke Mohawk community near Montreal also had some of its residents help sing and voice act for other characters in the game.” Stalberg (2021).
The only other thing remarkable about Ratonhnhaké:ton as a mixed character is the game’s commitment to capitalist sub-games. The character happily goes about on several missions to accumulate wealth and participate fully in the early capitalist economy. I would have liked to see more regard for a Mohawk view of wealth – but it is a video game. It’s also for an American audience, so the implications of a First Nations person fighting for “freedom” in the form of white, slaveholding imperialists who have no problem with manifest destiny are not explored.
(One of the ‘intolerable acts’ labelled as such by the nascent revolution was the Royal Proclamation of 1763. This act is often called the ‘Indian Magna Carta’ because it acknowledges, however implicitly, Indigenous title to land.)
Non-Indigenous Characters and Audiences
The case of Chavez in the 1988 film Young Guns shows some of the limits of my thesis. The character, based on a real historical person, seems to identify as Navajo or Apache, but his white friends frequently refer to his mixed heritage rather than accepting his Tribal affiliation. We don’t get a chance to see how his Tribe treats him.
The real Jose Chavez y Chavez was a mixed-descent historical character portrayed by mixed actor Lou Diamond Phillips in the film.
Chavez the character was given many imagined First Nations trappings like knife-skills and warpaint. He recounts stories of his mother’s people on “his” Reservation being massacred.
I hadn’t realized Lou Diamond Phillips was mixed, like his famous character. “I never claimed to be a Native actor, but I do have Native blood” wikipedia quotes Phillips (with footnotes). In addition to his Cherokee heritage, Philips was adopted by an Oglala Lakota Sioux family in a traditional ceremony. (look for more on adoption in a later chapter)
Writer Theda Perdue points out in her 2005 book Mixed Blood Indians that mixedness not diminishing identity resonates with the large number of First Nations that have matrilineal traditions. That is, that children inherit no familial status or rights from their fathers. Mixing in early colonial society overwhelmingly involved white men and Indigenous women, meaning children inherited their mother’s nationality.
Métis academic Dr. Chris Anderson has pointed out that all Indigenous nations are mixed in one way or another. It is more useful to think about their sense of distinction as coming from their connection to land and their kinship relationships, rather than problematic blood quantum.
“If you think about the Métis as mixed, you’re also going to think about First Nations in a racialized way as well, rather than understanding that connection to place, rather than understanding those kinship relationships.” Chris Anderson (2016).
Do you have another good example of mixedness not diminishing identity in movies, film, or comic-books? Tell me about it in the comments!
MixedMedia is a blog series Tom is writing based on explorations of his identity as a Métis person, a mixed person, and an avid consumer of pop culture.
Sources
Chow, Kat (2018, February 17). The Difficult Math Of Being Native American. Code Switch. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/02/07/583665568/love-and-blood-quantum-buy-in-or-die-out
Perdue, Theda. “Mixed Blood” Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South. University of Georgia Press, 2003.
Stalberg, Allison (November 3, 2021). “Assassin’s Creed 3’s Treatment of Native American Representation Got A Lot Right”. Game Rant. Retrieved April 30,2024.
Schilling, Vincent. “NativeNerd review: Alaqua Cox crushes it as Marvel’s ‘Echo’” https://nativeviewpoint.com/nativenerd-review-alaqua-cox-crushes-it-as-marvels-echo/ Retrieved January 9, 2024.
Stirling, Bridget (2016, March 07) Who’s Métis? Native studies professor traces an Indigenous identity outside the confines of mixed race. Folio. https://www.ualberta.ca/en/folio/2016/03/whos-metis.html
MixedMedia Chapters
North Wind Heritage Consulting 
7 thoughts on “MixedMedia Pt 2: An Undiminished Identity”