After Twilight, some fans ᴀssumed that Taylor Lautner had Native American ancestry considering his character’s ethnicity. Lautner rode the mᴀssive pop culture wave that was the Twilight franchise, which began in 2005 with the first of Stephenie Meyer’s novels. It didn’t take long for a movie adaptation to come around, considering Harry Potter was in the middle of its run of fantasy book-to-movie productions. Casting decisions were highly anticipated, and Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black felt like the perfect choice for the high school boy next door/werewolf.
Lautner was only known for one thing before Twilight — his starring role in The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D as Sharkboy, a film that was entirely aimed at children. Twilight signaled a gradation to more adult performances, not least because of the franchise’s concern with the werewolves’ physiques. Lautner’s post-Twilight career has been respectable if slightly hard to determine. What has stuck with Lautner all these years is the idea that he has Native ancestry, a claim based on Jacob and the werewolves’ Quileute ancestry in Twilight.
Taylor Lautner Is Not Native American (But He Claims To Have “Distant” Ancestry)
Lautner Has Distant Potawatomi And Ottawa Indian Heritage
Jacob Black and the other werewolves in Twilight are all of the Quileute tribe, a real-life Native American people centralized in the western portion of Washington state. It’s not hard to understand why casual fans made the leap to ᴀssume that Taylor Lautner himself was Native American, but the actor never claimed he was, nor did the filmmakers. However, during his research for the movie, Lautner did discover he had some distant Native American ancestry (via MTV),
“And actually, 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.”
The Potawatomi are a Native American people of the Great Lakes region (via Potawatomi Heritage), and the Ottawa are another Great Lakes region Indian tribe (via Ottawa Tribe). However, like many American Indian tribes, they were displaced from their homelands and onto reservations where the majority of their people now reside.
Jacob is descended from a long line of shape-shifters and the franchise does not make a clear delineation between being a Quileute and being a shape-shifter, implying that most of the tribe members are also shape-shifters. In the Twilight saga, the Quileute have a fierce and mortal rivalry with the vampires, particularly with the Cullens.
How Twilight Caused Controversy With The Real Quileute
Stephanie Meyers Took Some Liberties With Quileute History
The presence of the Quileute in Twilight has not gone unremarked, and their depiction in the franchise has come under fire over the years. A New York Times op-ed piece noted,
“To millions of ‘Twilight’ fans, the Quileute are Indians whose (fictional) ancient treaty transforms young males of the tribe into vampire-fighting wolves. To the nearly 700 remaining Quileute Indians, ‘Twilight’ is the reason they are suddenly drawing extraordinary attention from the outside while they themselves remain largely excluded from the vampire series’ vast commercial empire.”
Meyers used some of the tribe’s history for Jacob’s family in her series, making some alterations to history along the way. While skin-walkers are a feature of Native American myth, “cold ones”, which is used to refer to vampires, do not appear in Quileute mythology.
There is a legend about the first two members of the Quileute tribe being transformed from wolves into humans, but there is no reference to werewolf-like creatures.
There is a legend about the first two members of the Quileute tribe being transformed from wolves into humans, but there is no reference to werewolf-like creatures. However, the werewolves in Twilight are much more akin to skin-changers than the Universal Monsters’ idea of werewolves. Problematically, the tattoo Jacob shares with the other members of the tribe is based on the art style of a different tribe, the Haida nation, and was done by a non-Native artist.
Breaking Dawn does reference “old-world” Children of the Moon (“true werewolves”) as separate from the shape-shifting Quileute tribe, with the Children of the Moon being closer to the horror movie icons.
The depiction of Jacob and his tribe being over-Sєxualized strong men with animalistic tendencies is a racist stereotype about Native Americans that has its roots throughout all modern American history. Meyers likely did not mean to draw that connection, but it’s there nevertheless. Taylor Lautner playing a Native American is certainly not the worst case of whitewashing in Hollywood history, but it’s good to understand that even unintentional mistakes can be harmful.
How The Twilight TV Show Can Fix This Controversy
Casting An Actual Native American Actor As Jacob Is A Good Start
While the Twilight Saga movie series is long-finished, fans of Stephenie Meyer’s franchise have a very exciting project to look forward to with Netflix’s animated TV series adaptation of her 2020 novel Midnight Sun. Midnight Sun covers the events of the first Twilight book, only from Edward Cullen’s perspective instead of Bella Swan’s.
With Edward as the protagonist, it’s very unlikely that Jacob and his tribe will play a large role in the Netflix series, but that doesn’t mean the Midnight Sun adaptation can’t fix the Twilight movies’ mistakes. For starters, the show can cast an actual Native American actor to play Jacob Black. If this animated Jacob has a tattoo, Midnight Sun should make sure that it is authentic to the actual Quileute tribe and designed by a Native American artist. The show can also due its due diligence in hiring Native American crew, given how much the culture plays a role in this franchise.
There’s also the future of the Twilight books, which has room to write some of the franchise’s wrongs. When Meyer was giving interviews promoting the Midnight Sun book, she divulged that she planned on writing two more Twilight books, though not any time soon (via The Guardian):
“There are two more books I think in the world that I want to write. I have got them outlined and a chapter written I think of the first one, so I know it’s there. I am not ready to do that right now, I want to do something brand new.”
This opens the door for Meyer to explore Jacob and the Quileute tribe further in the Twilight universe, and ensure that their depictions are authentic and don’t lean into problematic stereotypes. This would best be done by consulting with actual members of the tribe, of course. In a world where this novel does get published, any film or TV adaptation would be an excellent opportunity for Native American cast and crew to be hired, thus ending the franchise on a strong note.
