In late August, the chic French luxury brand Christian Dior debuted an ad campaign for its fragrance referencing Native Americans. A number of American Indians decried the advertisement as racist. It was.
The company featured a video in its Twitter feed of an American Indian dancing in full regalia in the desert. A narrator can be heard saying, “An authentic journey deep into the Native American soul in a sacred, founding and secular territory.”
After a swift, negative reaction on social media, Dior pulled the ads.
But it was not so much the imagery or verbal content that elicited anger from native peoples. It was the name of the perfume: Sauvage, or, as it is pronounced by Americans, Savage.
Other than the term redskin, there is really no other word that offends native people as deeply as “savage.”
As Hanay Geiogamah, a Kiowa playwright, film producer and theater professor at UCLA, told The Washington Post, this was one of the first slurs used against American Indians.
The Declaration of Independence, penned in 1776, accuses the England’s king of creating domestic insurrections among colonists by engaging “merciless Indian Savages whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.”
I appreciate the company’s quick decision to pull the ad, but in a strange twist, I also understand the dilemma faced by American Indians attempting to pursue a career in television, movies and now social media. Indian actors are offered so few authentic roles in the business that they are forced to take stereotypical ones.
But sadly, there is often little support from those who could raise their voice for struggling Indian performers.
The advocacy organization Americans for Indian Opportunity was hired as a consultant to the Dior ad. Laura Harris, executive director of the group, said in a statement that the organization was proud to have worked with the company and that the organization’s goals are to work towards “the inclusion of paid native staff, artists, actors, writers etc., to educate the production teams on Native American contemporary realities and to create allies for indigenous peoples.”
Working to get more American Indians involved in media is an admirable goal. But Americans for Indian Opportunity and Indian performers ought to devote more time demanding an end to racist roles and stereotyping, and call for parts that accurately portray Indian people instead of participating in projects that degrade us.
Mark Anthony Rolo is a member of the Bad River Band of Ojibwe in northern Wisconsin.
