Dalton Walker
ICT
SANTA FE, New Mexico — A roughly hourlong discussion on the actors and writers strike in Hollywood reached an engaged audience during the Santa Fe Indian Market weekend.
ICT, a division of IndiJ Public Media, hosted a Newsmaker event on Saturday that examined the strike in Hollywood and how it affects Native representation.
In mid-July, the Screen Actors Guild went on strike, joining the two-months-long strike by the Writers Guild of America and marking the first joint strike in more than 60 years. A higher wage rate, revenue sharing and artificial intelligence protections are key to any potential agreement to end the strike.
ICT Editor Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, Diné, interviewed author and historian Liza Black and actor and writer DeLanna Studi. Both Black and Studi are Cherokee creatives.
“To have this happen so quickly after Covid, just when we started to get back on our feet, has been really devastating for them,” Studi said. “The truth is, they are not asking for more than they should be getting paid.”
Studi is the chair of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA, National Native Americans Committee. She stressed that her opinion shared on Saturday was from her perspective as an actor and playwright and not as a guild representative.
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Studi is also a playwright. She said Native actors have turned to theater for work during the strike.
Black is an assistant professor of history and Native American and Indigenous Studies at Indiana University. Her book, “Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941-1960,” explains the complicated experiences of Native actors on the sets of mid-century Hollywood Westerns.
“As a historian, we are living in an unprecedented moment of worker awareness and consciousness,” Black said. “There are all kinds of strikes going on. This is a pretty historic moment in which there is a general upwelling of refusal to work for these wages and under these conditions.”
Saturday’s discussion was held at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts on the plaza where the popular art market was taking place. The audience included Native actors and others with connections to Hollywood and included a number of audience questions.
Studi said she wants to see more Native people in contemporary roles.
“I would know that we made it in Hollywood when I see a McDonald’s commercial and the clerk is Native. When I see a Native woman selling Pine Sol, I will know that we have made it. And that’s what I’m hoping for. We shouldn’t be called in just for Native work.”
Related:
— Writers strike hits home for Indigenous TV shows, films
— Actors Guild strike brings Hollywood to a halt
The discussion touched on the dangers of artificial intelligence in film. Studi said it’s disappointing to hear that background actors are being pushed to work only one day but sell the rights of their body, image and voice for a lifetime.
“My story is I started out as a background actor,” Studi said. “That’s how I earned my vouchers, that’s how I became a member of SAG-AFTRA and honestly that’s what put groceries on my table when I first moved to Los Angeles.”
Black added that an agent or an attorney would help protect actors against AI, but many can’t afford either.
“Many, many people working in this industry don’t have that and that includes Native people,” she said.
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