Remember Ebonics? The concept became the talk of the town in the late 90’s when a few academic nimrods tried legitimizing what white bigots for centuries had been peddling as “black speak.” Who needs Stepin Fetchit, Little Black Sambo, The Tar Baby, and Aunt Jemima when you have Harvard professors doing your bidding! And I bet you thought Natives were being overlooked all this time, right?  

Fear no more, my friends, cuz REDphonics is here! Sound Indian so every boob in America will KNOW you’re the Real Lakota, whether or not you’re Choctaw, Cheyenne or Cree from the Cimarron, Calgary or Cleveland. But oh no no, don’t take my word for it. Read it for real, as Tara J. Ryan shares her recent experience when a national advertising campaign approached her to cast Native kids who, ahem, speakum Indian… 

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Tara J. Ryan

In this business, especially in casting for anything where a Native American is  specifically requested for   any part, role, look or  reason, casting directors and productions have some   tough decisions to make. It is not easy to be in this business, not if you care about the people, the  project, especially something of cultural importance and not if you want to get it right. Nobody gets it right every time, we make concessions; we follow our instincts and leadings as far as what we may have to put up with in the short term to make change and opportunity for the long term. With all that written, I have to write I’ve recently been made aware again of an area where something, in my own opinion, is unacceptable. Especially when it comes to children. 

A National Radio Ad Campaign is coming your way, but there’s a major catch. You, no, let me hit the point where it really hurts, CHILDREN have to “sound Native” for the radio ad!!! CHILDREN! For free, Native Children somehow have to “sound Native.” What does that mean?  We have 562 Federally Recognized Native American Tribes and Nations in the US, not including all those who’ve been waiting for decades or literally a century or more for “Federal Recognition,” etc.

All of us, and now in 2008 our children have to “sound Native?!” 

Other races have been through this; comedians have made and make huge livings off of these jokes about what it is like to sound like any particular race. What is and isn’t acceptable to sound like to be recognized as a member of your own race. African-Americans and Asians especially, and let’s absolutely not forget our other brothers and sisters of color, all of them. Frankly anyone who’s not fully “Caucasian,” whatever that’s supposed to mean (that’s a whole blog and possibly a book unto itself especially here in the US), is subject to this potential malady.

I have your answer…90 plus percent of Native Americans live off of our reservations and Nation lands. Do you want to know what a Native American child sounds like in 2008? Whatever their environment has exposed them to. If their parents or whomever is raising them speaks Spanish and English, chances are, so do they. Same goes for any language. Here’s an obvious one for you, my tribes, Chickasaw and Choctaw, if you call my Nations they sound like any other “Sooners,” Southern Oklahoma accent! Native from California, yes, you might hear the word “dude,” the Northeast, yes, I have an accent (I was raised by a Southern Mother so if I’m talking to someone from the South, my internal drawl does come out, but I digress). If the child is into hip hop or the “hip hop culture” in any part of the country, that’s right…you know what they’re going to sound like *especially if you have kids, :D!   

If you're considering casting a Native American child in 2008 and you want them to sound “Native” and “recognizably Native for radio,” try this on for size. Have the child speak in their Native Language!   

Problem solved, oh except for one little thing. This is a National ad campaign, and those who are pretending to try and “help” our community here are doing so in English and good thing they are, I don’t know a single person who knows enough of all the Native languages in the US to even say hello in each language, do you?   

So, they are (of course no Natives involved) trying to “help” our Native children, but they’re doing so by warping their minds to think there is any possible way to properly “SOUND LIKE A NATIVE.” Honestly though, there are some Natives in our own community think there is a way to “sound Native,” so unfortunately the ignorance isn’t limited to the people you would think would naturally not understand. There is no pan-Indian sounding voice! 

So I put this to the readers, what is that supposed to mean exactly? This isn’t 1950, and even then, all of what I wrote above still applied (except for the “hip hop culture” part LOL). What does a Native sound like? How far in reverse are we willing to go, in a way that frankly never existed (sounding like a Native), not ever. Our Tribes and Nations, our ancestors didn’t ever “sound like Natives,” whatever that is supposed to mean, and we certainly don’t now in 2008!  

(Let me stop anyone in their tracks before writing that the “slow speech” of a Native speaking English in the early days of learning it is what “sounding Native” means. That’s what everyone who first learns a language, especially an overly verbose language in comparison to the one they are used to speaking sounds like.)