mar 2, 1939 - Stagecoach

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Released in the supposed best year for Hollywood cinema, Stagecoach is credited with the revitalization of the Western genre and the elevation of John Wayne to stardom. Says Ojibway film critic Jesse Wente, Stagecoach is “the iconic western, it's the western that all others were really modeled after, and it's one of the most damaging movies for Native people in history” (Reel Injun, 27:27-27:40). In search of a new hero, the American populus turned to the cowboy. Unlike so many in the Great Depression, the cowboy could seize his own destiny, carve his own path, and make his own just way in the world. At the expense, it seems, of the lives and dignities of hundreds of Indigenous people. John Ford’s westerns paved the way for public perception of Indigenous people for the next several decades and spurred an era in which Indigenous people were perceived as “savage” and “vicious”. Such a depiction did an insurmountable amount of damage to Indigenous people and their portrayal in media, as westerns stripped away their personhood and identities. Through its inaccurate portrayal of Indigenous culture and the refusal to acknowledge current-day Indigenous presence, cinema effectively operated as a modern-day extension of earlier settler colonial means of erasing Indigenous presence. Stagecoach represents a reinvigoration of damaging stereotypes which perpetuate Indigenous dispossession and erasure.

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