King, as trickster, transcends these literary and celluloid stereotypes through his own alternative construction of a Native community and direct engagements with the cinematic realities Karen sees reflected in the Sun Dance. One incident where he exposes such romanticised, simplified images of Indians is when Portland Looking Bear changes his name to "Iron Eyes Screeching Eagle" to attain the ‘authenticity’ demanded of Indian actors within the Hollywood film industry. Portland becomes an actor "back before they had any Indian heroes" (166). He is always given the role of the Indian but eventually begins to lose parts because his nose is deemed to be "not Indian enough". Indeed, he only begins to get more work when he agrees to wear a fake, rubber nose that barely allows him to breathe.
To challenge the illusory definitions maintained by years of misrepresentations of Native people in Canada, King reforms a classic Hollywood Western: The Mysterious Warrior. Initially, the pervasiveness of the stereotypes associated with this movie is highlighted, as the movie is shown on television and, for various reasons, most of the main characters end up watching it. In addition, Eli’s book, discussed above, has a banner across the front cover that proclaims, "based on the award-winning movie" (178), again, The Mysterious Warrior. Thus, stereotypes reach us through various genres, and King is able to explore the ways in which people react to these generic stereotypes.
The site of The Mysterious Warrior’s reformation is set in Bill Bursum’s electronics store where Bursum’s control as a contemporary coloniser is undermined by the four Old Indian tricksters who are on a mission "to fix up the world" (133). They stand in his shop and "fix" his favourite Western so that the Indians, instead of the cowboys, win for a change:
There at full charge, hundreds of soldiers in bright blue uniforms with gold buttons and sashes and stripes, blue-eyed and rosy-cheeked, came over the last rise.
And disappeared.
Just like that
"What the hell," said Bursum, and he stabbed at the remote.
Everywhere was color [in the previously black and white movie].
Portland (renamed Iron-Eyes-Screeching-Eagle) turned and looked at [John] Wayne and [Richard] Widmark, who had stopped shouting and waving their hats and were standing around looking confused and dumb.
Without a word, he started his horse forward through the water, and behind him his men rose out the river, a great swirl of motion and colors—red, white, black, blue. (357)
John Wayne and Richard Widmark are so accustomed to the Indians playing the villainous savages, while they play the heroes, that they are immobilised when the battle is no longer scripted. The colours of Iron-Eyes-Screeching-Eagle’s men, emerging to challenge the assumptions of the soldiers, allude to the four Old Indians who are known as "Mr. Red, Mr. White, Mr. Black, and Mr. Blue" (54) These men, who are actually women, have the tricksterish ability to revolutionise stereotyped Western cinema through their transformative powers. As creator/destroyers, the Old Indians have the power, as King does, to create a space that rises up in living colour to challenge and transform the Eurocentricism that governs North America’s past and present.