Has Sam Uley lost his role? Are the Native American roles being bastardized with newly realized “Native American” actors–like Taylor Lautner–that are stretching the interpretation of their heritage so they can hitch a ride on such a huge movie? Those are the tough questions that are being brought up as casting for Native Americans begins for New Moon–

Native Americans are outraged over what they hold as deceptions in and around the production of the Hollywood film series “Twilight.”

With the commercial success of Twilight, Hollywood is abuzz with agents molding, fitting, and pushing their celebrity actors to pass as Native Americans.

“The Twilight Series is one of few commercial films, a script, and a story with Native American roles.” said Lydia Ponce. “It is a sad day to see that the big power agents are marketing Filipino and Asian celebrity actors to play Native Americans. These are such rare opportunities. When films like Twilight knowingly and willfully select non-Native American actors to play Native roles, it sends the message that we’re not good enough to represent ourselves.”

Not so long ago Old Western films hired Caucasian actors who were painted a brownish-red and wore wigs to portray Native peoples. Continued insult and injury further perpetuating bias, stereotypes, and racism, was so very wrong and evil then and now. Hollywood is using the tan spray and hair extensions again.

Twilight Vampire Movie Hollywood agents are instructing their talent to dig and find those ‘Native Roots’ and publicize their newfound Native American heritage in interviews conveniently in sync with current casting needs and trends.

Twilight’s lead actor Taylor Lautner, who allegedly just found his Native American roots, was given the extraordinary opportunity to play the lead in the film well after the “discovery” of his ethnicity.

In a recent MTV interview Lautner stated, “I am part Native American. We learned that through [preparing for] this film. I’m French, Dutch and German, and on my mother’s side, she has some Potawatomi and Ottawa Indian in her.”

However, in a film with such a strong Native American theme, only two actors of Native American decent were hired. But due to reasons unknown, Solomon Trimble (Apache) who played and established the character of Sam Uley, has suddenly lost his role.

Sam Uley’s character has been re-posted onto the Hollywood-casting breakdown, and it is obvious that Hollywood is now looking for a more marketable teen heartthrob celebrity actor to play the more substantial and very desirable part.

NativeVue adds–

Jacob is a Native American; a member of the Quileute tribe from northwest Washington. Taylor Lautner, by contrast, is not Quileute. In fact, he’s not Navajo, Cree, Lakota, Cherokee, Mohawk, Seminole, or Ojibwa. He’s not Native at all (unless you consider his recent “discovery” of a long-ago Indian ancestor lurking in the family tree).

Yet the winsome 16-year-old from Holland is Hollywood’s idea of Quileute’s werewolf teen heartthrob. Look at it this way imagine casting Kate Bosworth as Celie in The Color Purple.

The part about Sam Uley is speculation at this point, but it does seem odd that he was posted in the leaked casting notes recently. TwiCrack has two great articles about these controversies here and here.
What do you guys think? Sound off in the comments!