100% american

lillian st cyr

Refusing to fade

Acrylic, oil and charcoal on paper

70 x 90 cm

Lillian St. Cyr a.k.a. Red Wing was the first Native American woman to star in a major Hollywood film.

They cast her for her “realness.” Identifying as Ho-Chunk, she gave them defiance, presence, and power — in full color. Born on the Winnebago Reservation and educated at the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial School — a place designed to erase Native identity through forced assimilation — she moved through a world that wanted her silent, symbolic, and gone.

Instead, she stood center-frame. She advised. Designed. Performed. Spoke. And when they underpaid her — then praised the white actor beside her — she reminded the world she was home: “What about him? He’s working with a one hundred percent American.”

This portrait reframes her not as decoration, but declaration. A strong Native woman — bearing witness, shaping image, promoting legacy. Cowboy films were part of the air I breathed as a kid — stereotypes included. This work is part tribute, part correction. A way to confront what I once absorbed.

Lillian. Icon. Maker.

Portrait of a woman with an expressive, colorful abstract painting style, featuring a pink background and vibrant brushstrokes in blues, greens, and purples.
Abstract painting with vibrant pink, teal, purple, green, and black brushstrokes.
A colorful abstract portrait of a woman's face with prominent eyes, painted with vibrant shades of pink, green, blue, purple, and yellow.

Echoes from the Silent Reel

Lillian St. Cyr was prolific, but the survival rate for early films is brutally low. What we can see today is a sliver — one important preserved short (White Fawn’s Devotion) and a few rare items (Cheyenne’s Bride).