The producers of a Steven Spielberg TV western are being sued by an Apache couple because a stylist on the New Mexico film set cut their eight-year-old daughter’s hair in violation of tribal customs.
The lawsuit alleges that her hair was cut because the mini-series Into the West was short of male Native American extras, and called the act ”intentional, outrageous and reckless conduct”. Turner Films, which is broadcasting the series and is the target of the lawsuit, made no comment.
The Mescalero Apache, who live in southern New Mexico, forbid the cutting of a girl’s hair until a coming-of-age ceremony at puberty. The suit alleges that no one on the set asked the parents’ permission. Her father, Danny Ponce, said her hair was halfway down her back and was cut back above the shoulder.
”It was like a boy. She looked like a boy,” Ponce told the Albuquerque Tribune newspaper. ”They took that away from her and made her feel hurt and afraid and ashamed … It feels something like they abused my child, something like someone’s been inside my house, like we’ve been violated.”
Into the West is about the 19th-century American frontier as seen by a white settler family and a Native American family. Spielberg is listed as an executive producer but it is Turner Films and the unnamed stylist who are being sued. The parents want $250 000 for emotional distress and $75 000 damages.
Centuries ago, a Mescalero Apache prophecy warned that ”only white men with blue eyes” would live in the New Mexico mountains and that ”when there are only a few Indians left, then they will become white men”. When that time arrived the world would end. – Guardian Unlimited Â