#not one of them related to supporting the Quileutes or educating the viewer

[twilightrocksfanfic]

Sometimes I leave this site to see what is out there, the only other social media I am on is YouTube and occasionally I will stumble upon a piece of twilight related content there.

Now when I am out in the wild like that I try to be as chill and normal about twilight as possible and one thing that always baffles me about finding twilight content out there is how little mention of the Quileute tribe there is.

Be it reading vlogs of the books, movie commentaries, memorabilia collections etc. unless it's like an in depth video essay on why twilight is problematic barely anyone takes care to mention the tribe, acknowledge the harm twilight has done to them or remind viewers that there are opportunities to donate. It baffles me.

I don't know how much of a bubble thing this is, but if I go on tumblr all the twilight blogs I follow will regularly mention the Quileutes, they will reblog donation links and own voices accounts of the damage twilight has done to the community. I regularly see posts breaking down reproduced stereotypes of Native Americans in twilight and so on.

That is what being a fan of twilight should entail in my opinion and when I spend a lot of time in this small corner of the internet it makes me feel like this fandom has grown quite a lot. It's sometimes feels defeating going out there and seeing videos with tens of thousands of views that never utilize that platform to help support a community that is in large parts responsible for the success of twilight in the first place.

I don't know where I am going with this. Donate to the Quileute tribe and don't encourage people to give money to Stephenie Meyer anymore.

[its-the-fluorescence]

Hey I’m new to the twilight renaissance

What’s the tea with 1 poc character is played by non poc

hello & welcome dear one

i was just replying to someone’s ask regarding the general lack of poc representation in media, and how we generally still see poc characters played by a non poc actor

separately, in regards to twilight, (sorry it’s a bit of a long read, so i’m putting it under the ‘keep reading’ below). There’s also a lot more discussion within the twilight renaissance community if you’d like to look around.

This is an excerpt from this article

“Meyer’s narrative use of a treaty between the Cullens and the Quileutes is a device that had so much potential for good, but instead only furthers the harmful Indigenous representation. Treaties are a major part of Indigenous law that are commonly misunderstood by a majority of lawmakers, politicians, judges, and non-Natives. (In fact, a majority of the treaties signed by governments are currently being disregarded.) But instead of utilizing a treaty between a group of pale bloodsuckers and a federally recognized tribe to educate on the realities of Indigenous people, it becomes instead a superfluous plot device — presumed, instead, as fiction by readers and viewers across the world.

All of this is not just to critique the source material, though, as the same disregard for Indigenous people is evident across all five films. While there were admittedly some Indigenous actors cast in supporting roles, the big kicker comes in the casting of the main man himself: Jacob Black. Taylor Lautner, a non-Native man, was cast as Jacob. At the time, Lautner was not aware of any Indigenous biology or ancestry, and he definitely was not culturally tied to any group or tribe.

Such racebending is not exactly uncommon in the 100-plus-year history of cinema, and so this aspect of Lautner’s casting didn’t get much mainstream attention in 2007. Conveniently, in 2008, Lautner began to state in interviews that he did have some Native American heritage — later telling MTV that his mother had ethnic ties to the Potawatomi and Ottawa people — but this still does not solve the lack of personal ties that create community within Indigenous cultures. It will never be surprising for a citizen of a country that is based on the complete oppression and genocide of Indigenous people to find out they are “genetically 0.02% Native American.” But if you do not have ties to a specific community who will claim you when you claim them, then you are not Native. 

The convenience in Lautner’s casting indicates that the higher powers-that-be (those behind the public relations and marketing of the Twilight films) knew that the source material they were adapting was anti-Indigenous. Rather than fixing that, or finding an original story created by an actual Indigenous person, they continued in the same oppressive vein until they got caught — attempting to remedy their purposeful decision by having Lautner then claim a sacred culture that will not claim him back.

Lastly, one more show of ignorance. As of 2010, Meyer had failed to financially compensate the Quileute Nation, and even failed to ask their permission to use their culture as part of the series’ marketing. And while this may well have been remedied in the 10 years since, Twilight in 2010 was at its cultural peak. The popularity of both its books and movies had been influencing fashion trends and merchandise in huge retail chains, making financial gain easy for everyone except the Quileutes. Of course, the fandom did create a good amount of tourism to La Push — ultimately stimulating areas of the local economy through some Twilight enthusiasts also advocating for Quileute issues — but the overarching message of the narrative seems to go unnoticed. “