Page 16 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • April 3, 2013 mares, but he morphed into more noble or gentler Indians in subsequent movies. There were plenty of real Indians in Hollywood, but they generally played behind “Indian-looking” whites because the real Indians looked too Asian. Jay Silverheels and Rod Redwing, real Indians, both got bit speaking parts in “Key Largo” with Bogart and Bacall. Redwing played a “Gurkha” opposite Errol Flynn in “Objective Burma.” Gurkhas are members of a Rajput ethnic group from Nepal who look nothing like Rod Redwing, but in “Objective Burma the Burmese look Asian Indian and speak Hindustani. Pat Hogan, a real Indian, played villains like Red Stick and Charley Eagle. Charles Bronson played Captain Jack opposite Alan Ladd in “Drumbeat.” There were a few exceptions. Chief Thunder Bird, a real Indian -- Cheyenne -- stole the show in “Annie Oakley” in 1935 opposite Barbara Stanwyck and Preston Foster. Andre Sennwald of the New York Times reported that Chief Thunder Bird was the star of the picture, although he was on camera less than 10 minutes. John War Eagle, not just a real Indian but a real Lakota, played Red Cloud opposite Van Hefflin in “Tomahawk,” but it was a smallish part. Both these men came from warrior tribes, and both knew what an Indian looks like. Hollywood, it would seem, was uncomfortable with what Indians look like. Worse was to come. The leading intellectual expositor of Indians was once Vine Deloria Jr., a real Indian, but he was bumped by Jamake Highwater. One of my favorite Deloria quotes: “Science can tell us whatever Stephen Jay Gould wants it to, except for the fact that the supernatural might be real.” Highwater, besides being openly gay, talked a lot about myths as opposed to medicine, as in “so-and-so is bad medicine.” But extensive research done by Hank Adams, a real tribal Indian with credentials, more than suggests that Highwater was born Jack Marks to a family whose lineage was Greek, Armenian, or both, with no Indian blood whatsoever. Neither “Jamake” nor “Highwater” turns up on the rolls of the Cherokee or Blackfoot tribes Highwater claims as his. However, even after he was exposed by Jack Anderson, Highwater was able to maintain that he is an Indian to PBS, the New York Public Library, myth expert Joseph Campbell, and Fodor Press. Indians with genuine tribal affiliations, people who spoke and understood their ancestral languages and grew up partly or completely on reservations, were shunted aside while Highwater told American intellectuals what they wanted to hear: Indians were “primal” (read here primitive, as in dumb) and often racist among themselves. I am here to tell you that Indians are not “dumb.” Their cumulative IQ scores are higher than those of whites and blacks. It is not okay to shoot them or, as in the older Hollywood films, to use them as pop-up targets. The authorities in Washington or Hollywood generally decide who is an Indian and who isn’t. During the Wounded Knee II Uprising of 1973, Means was described as “more white than Indian” by the feds and “only about one-quarter Indian” by the John Birch Society. The Oglala Sioux tribal register kept on all tribal members born on the Pine Ridge Reservation listed Means as 5/16th Indian, but the registrars left out his grandmother, a full-blooded Crow, which made him slightly more half Indian on the books. I once examined him in front of several witnesses when he had his shirt off, trying to ascertain whether he had been shot in the back -- as he said -- or the belly -- as the tribal police said -during one of several attempts to make him be quiet. The entry wound, concave and about the size of a dime, was in his back on the left side of the spine and the exit wound, convex and about the size of a walnut, was in his belly left of his navel. Forensically, he was shot in the back. He also had no chest hair whatsoever, almost no armpit hair, and no ruddy flesh tones to his skin. Means had moderate facial hair potential on the upper lip and the chin, none on the sides of the face. Anthropologically, he was probably about three-quarters Indian. “I had a beard once,” he said glumly when he looked enviously at my own beard. “White men stole it.” Then he grinned. Caught in the backwash was Sacheen Littlefeather, the young actress whom Marlon Brando sent to refuse the Oscar he won for “The Godfather.” Littlefeather was booed at the Oscar ceremony when she improvised a speech citing the wrongs that Hollywood had done to the Indians. Shortly, she was caustically denounced as having no Indian blood at all. The Hollywood version was that her father was either Filipino or Mexican, and her mother was Austrian. In fact, her father turned out to be a registered White Mountain Apache with some Pueblo blood and some Mexican Indian blood. Her mother was European. Littlefeather was slightly less Indian than Means, a lot less Indian than Hogan or Silverheels or Redwing, and a whole lot more Indian than Highwater, Cody, or Karloff. Had I proposed her for the public service announcement instead of Cody, I have a hunch she wouldn’t have made it either. She had no wrinkles and her nose was too small. Once the real Indians like Graham Greene and Rodney Grant -- ushered in by Kevin Costner, who is part Delaware -- started to get speaking roles in movies -- the American public and the world audience came to recognize and respect the Indians’ humanity. Before then, the role models for Hollywood acceptance could mostly be found in cigar stores. Forty years ago, when the telephone rang at my day job, which was actually a night job, I should have heard the “Fate” theme from Wagner’s Ring thundering in the background. A nice mother and father from Teaneck were making sure their daughter kept her first job in non-profit advertising. The daughter had been assigned to find and cast an Indian for a non-profit commercial denouncing highway littering and other forms of pollution. The mother and father admitted, with a certain degree of ambient guilt, that none of their best friends were Indians and somebody had told them that some of my best friends were. I suggested Russell Means, then about 32 and not yet a Hollywood Indian, and Trudy Tenaya, about 25, who later became famous as “the Mazola girl.” (I always told her she should get the “Land O’Lakes Butter” emblem job, particularly after she jibed me about a “Koster’s Pumpernickel” truck she once spotted.) The callers were looking for someone else. They wanted the Indian stereotype: an aging chieftain with a large nose and wrinkles and a dignified but sad demeanor. “Go with Iron Eyes Cody,” I said. “He’s the image you want.” They did. Cody ended up with the most durable gig of his career. For the next decade, Cody was seen in the “Keep America Beautiful” public service announcement on TV weeping every time someone threw trash out of a car or dumped automobile tires or waste engine oil into a river. Biography, as Samuel Johnson told us, has lent new terrors to death. (Under Anglo-Saxon law, only living persons can sue for libel, as one of Winston Churchill’s descendents noted with regret when Colin Simpson published his devastating (and substantially, but not completely, accurate) 1972 book about the sinking of the Lusitania as Churchill’s purported handiwork. The terrors of biography also engulfed me some years later when the world discovered what some Indians already knew but kept hidden: Cody was not a biological Indian. Cody had been honored by the American Indian community in 1995 for his advocacy of Indian problems and his assistance to young Indians trying to crack Hollywood. The next year, word got out that Cody was born Espera Oscar de Corti in Louisiana to a husband and wife who were Sicilian immigrants. The marriage broke up, the father headed for Texas, later for California, and the three sons followed him and eventually changed their family name to Cody. Corti, later Cody, wanted to be an Indian. He married a tribal Indian woman and they adopted two Indian kids and treated them with concern and kindness. His screen portrayals of Indians varied. He played opposite John Wayne (born Marion Morrison) in “The Big Trail.” In “Unconquered,” he reported to Guyasuta, chief of the Senecas, played by Boris Karloff (born William Henry Pratt). Cody daunted Paulette Goddard (born Paula Levy, not playing an Indian) by laying a heated lance-head against a tree and watching it sizzle. Gary Cooper helped Goddard escape by treating the movie Senecas as if they were retarded. Katherine DeMille, the producer’s daughter, also played a tragic but somewhat sympathetic Indian in “Unconquered.” Katherine DeMille was adopted, and presumed to be Irish. Hollywood is a land of dreams, and Cody’s earlier dreams may have been night- Fake real Indians Park Windmill Budget presentation is April 8 The Midland Park Parent-Teacher Associations will sponsor a presentation on the 2013-14 school budget on Monday, April 8. The program will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Highland School media center. Board of education trustees and district administrators will review details of the budget and answer questions. All are invited. Republicans welcome new members The Midland Park United Republican Club will meet on April 8 at the Midland Park VFW Hall located at 28 Faner Road. The meeting will begin at 8:15 p.m. The club welcomes new members. Civic-minded individuals interested in politics and making a contribution to the community are encouraged to attend. The club meets the second Monday of the month. For details, visit MP.RepublicanLeadership@hotmail.com. Club to host Beefsteak Dinner The Midland Park United Republican Club will sponsor its third annual all-you-can-eat Beefsteak Dinner on Thursday, May 16 at 7 p.m. in the Midland Park Firehouse on Witte Drive. The event will be catered by Nightingale. Attendees may bring their own beverages. All members of the community are welcome. Tickets are $40 per person. To purchase tickets, contact Club President John Meeks at mp.republicanleadership@h otmail.com. Register for children’s programs Registration for Spring Story Time at the Midland Park Library is now under way. The program will begin on April 15 and run through the week of June 4. Story Time for children ages four through six will meet on Tuesdays. Two- and three-year-olds will meet on Thursdays. Both programs begin at 10:30 a.m. and include a craft. Baby Time for tots six through 24 months old will be held April 3, 10, 17 and 24, and May 1. The program includes stories, music, rhymes, and play time. Older siblings are welcome. Baby Time does not require registration. To register, call (201)444-2390 or visit the library at 250 Godwin Avenue. Town-wide Garage Sale slated The first Midland Park Town-wide Garage Sale will be held April 20. Residents are invited to participate. Maps indicating the locations of all participants and the items available at each location, will be distributed throughout the town and on the website two days in advance of the sale. The registration form is available at www.mpnj.com under the Recreation section. For additional information, contact the recreation department at (201) 652-2747 or mprec@optonline.net. Local students honored The following students from Midland Park have been named to the Dean’s List for the fall 2012 semester: Robert Peterson, Bentley University; Lauren Digenova, Berkeley College; Kevin Bartlam and Shaina Plowman, Felician College; Jennifer Pike, Ithaca College; Brad Kutch, Moravian College; Nicholas M. Abballe, Lauren N. Gormley, Christopher James Milkamp, Erin M. Moran, Victoria Helen Ragusa, Ellen M. Saranovic, Jordan R. Vadala, and Taylor M. May, Ramapo College; Stephanie L. Cohen and Jenna N. Van Lenten, Rowen University; Daniela Lissandrello, Smith College; and Sean Farrell, Syracuse University.