The Revenant and the Dark History of Scalping
Sure, everyone scalped. But there were those who were compensated for the bloody act and those who have to carry the stereotypical legacy.
Twentieth Century Fox
Through a Native Lens is a column from film critic and citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma Shea Vassar, who will dive into the nuance of cinema’s best and worst cases of Indigenous representation. This entry looks at the truth about scalping and how that’s depicted in The Revenant.
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s
The Revenant(2015) is a brutal look at survival in the 19th-century Western wilderness. Set in 1823, the film focuses on the tough Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), who survives a near-fatal bear attack and is left for dead by the man who murdered his Pawnee son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck). While the conversation around the release focused on DiCaprio’s performance, which finally landed him an Oscar win, as well as the cinematography by the talented Em