doesthendnlive:

Emily Young (Tinsel Korey) from The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn Part 1 and Part 2 (2009 - 2012) 

DOES THE NDN LIVE? : YES

—

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:

First and foremost, Tinsel Korey is not Native American and is not only playing a Native character, but one that was the target of domestic violence, something that Native women suffer at almost epidemic levels in the United States and Canada to this day. Stephenie Meyer, the author of the Twilight Saga, is also a non-Native white Mormon woman who wrote this abusive relationship as a “love story.” Both women profited off of romanticizing a dangerous and deadly situation that gets Native women killed every single day for the past several centuries.

As stated before in the Leah Clearwater post, Emily Young is Leah’s cousin who comes to visit her, only to have Leah’s boyfriend Sam Uley imprint on her. He tells Emily he wants to be with her, to which Emily rejects him. This angers him, causing him to shift into a werewolf and nearly kill her. Her injuries were so severe that the tribe lies to the police saying it was a bear attack in order to keep the werewolves a secret. 

Lying to the authorities to “protect your own kind” even when you were the target of abuse by a man within your own culture / race is a situation MANY Native women and non-native women of color face EVERY DAY.

Emily survives, but is left disfigured. She forgives Sam and they become a couple. She spends most of the story baking muffins for Sam and his friends. Jacob mentions in New Moon how “Sam has to look at what he did to Emily every single day because he lost control” as if Sam’s guilt is the real tragedy of the situation, and not the woman who was nearly killed for rejecting the advances of a violent man. 

Despite all of the controversy surrounding domestic violence in Twilight, Sam and Emily’s relationship was completely overlooked or ignored by the otherwise vocal (and usually white) feminists whose outraged was more focused on Edward and Bella’s toxic relationship and the pedophilia and grooming that takes place between Jacob and Renesmee. Even in the midst of the “Twilight renaissance” where fans of the series argue that the backlash was rooted in misogyny towards (white) teenage girls, this specific detail and the way that Native characters are treated in Twilight continues to go ignored or overlooked.