The Truth Versus Twilight - Misrepresentations Gone Wild 

huh...?

oh well even the Eskimo get angry/disagree when you ask if they all live in igloo..

"oh well even the Eskimo get angry/disagree when you ask if they all live in igloo.. "

Are you saying they shouldn't?

Also, if you look at the site, it's a whole lot more to it than just that.

Interesting. Although I'm little confused: why did they have to negotiate their rights?

I agree with a lot of this (or, at least understand where they are coming from), but there's still a few things I don't agree with. The first and foremost being the implication that Bella is weak because she decided to wait for marriage before having sex. Beyond that sending a message that "waiting for sex is stupid" there's also the message that "Bella should have pushed Edward for sex. That would have made her a strong character." I don't understand how Bella pushing Edward for something that he didn't want and wasn't comfortable doing can possibly be depicted as strong, or even morally right. Especially when people are out there fighting to stop men from doing that exact same thing to women. A woman doing it to a man isn't any better.

I'd also like to point out (in regards to Edward "forcing" Bella to get married) Bella wanted to get married. She says so at the end of Eclipse -- which was why so agreed to the compromise, unlike in the beginning of Eclipse. Edward didn't want sex while she was human, but wanted to get married. Bella didn't want to get married, but wanted sex while she was human. After the incident with the newborns (where everyone could have potentially died), Bella decided getting married wasn't that bad, and said "Hey, I'll marry you, but I want sex on our honeymoon." I'm not entirely sure what the sticking point is.

Stuck in the Domestic Zone
While I agree that many women were "domestics" in the books, I don't see how that's a bad thing. For starters, they were happy that way. Bella liked cooking and cleaning, and had no problem taking that up. It's the double standard that gets me again: it's not okay to imply that women should not be anything other than a housewife, but it's okay to imply that women shouldn't be housewives if they want to?

Women Defined by Their Men
This is more a problem with the generalized statement, more than anything. I'd hardly consider Alice, Rosalie, and Leah 'defined by their men' (especially considering Leah doesn't even have one). Emmett hardly plays any role beyond comedic relief, but Rosalie actually becomes a pretty integral player. Alice and Jasper both play important roles intermittently throughout the series, but Alice hardly does anything because of Jasper. There are actually several times where she goes against him, or does something that would put him in danger (i.e: going to Volterra).

Lastly, Leah wasn't depressed and bitter because she was without Sam. She was depressed and bitter because they were happy with each other, they loved each other, but that was taken away from them against their will (by Leah's cousin, no less). And Leah didn't get a break: she was a part of Sam's pack and, through their mental bond, was forced to see him be happy with another girl.

the women villains are cruel.
Erm, shouldn't villains be cruel? I mean, they're the villains, not the heroes.

Emily Young is the most prominently featured Native female character in Twilight
Leah...? She was a Native female. And she had way more of a part than Emily did. She was also the complete opposite of "passive."

Since none of the Cullens are scarred in this way, the image of domestic violence as an accepted part of Native relationships is a possible interpretation.
Except that the Cullens can't scar...

I understand what they're trying to say here, but the reasons they give don't make very much sense. Domestic violence is accepted because the vampires with rock hard, unbreakable skin aren't scarred?

Edited to fix formatting.

@cinders
no, i'm just comparing.
i said even the Eskimo can get angry over misinterpretation, so this is understandable.

"I'm little confused: why did they have to negotiate their rights?"

Bri-marie, it looks like you focused on the "Girl Power" segment of the site. The "Twilight Misconceptions" and "Imaginary Indians" show how the books reinforce negative stereotypes about the Quileute and Native Americans in general. I found the "Race and Class" segment, which compared the overly sexualized and super masculine "lower class" Wolf Pack to the classier Cullens very accurate.

But also, the section "Cultural Theft" discusses how Meyer rewrites the Quileute origin story, and passes off other supposedly authentic Quileute stories (See link). While I concede that authors have poetic license when it comes to rewriting and creating things based on historical fact, to take a real tribe and rewrite their culture just feels wrong. As they put it on the site, it's "tantamount to altering the creation story of the Judeo-Christian world, and unlike the common knowledge of Genesis, it is a further affront in this instance because the Quileute origin story is relatively unknown." [link]

That same page talks about the misappropriation and misrepresentation of Quileute art in the form of the tattoos.

I haven't had time to peruse the "Girl Power" segment quite fully, but when I do I'll respond to your comments on that subject.

Lastly, @ClaireVoyant - But by saying "Even the Eskimo" it sounds like this is a surprising or unexpected thing. That's all I meant. Everyone gets irritated when their culture is misrepresented, whether they're Quileute, Inuit, Asian American, Hispanic American, African American, Euro-American, or otherwise.

I looked through the whole site. My second sentence was "
I agree with a lot of this (or, at least understand where they are coming from)". I listed the things I didn't agree with. Listing the things I did agree with seemed sort of redundant.

But I still don't see why they have to negotiate anything. Meyer never claimed that her Quileutes were historically accurate, she admitted she got her ideas from the Quileutes (link) which means that they came first. So I don't understand why they have to "negotiate the rights to their own oral histories, ancient regalia and mask designs, and even the sanctity of their cemetery." I don't understand why Meyer portraying something a certain way means they have to negotiate.

If someone wrote a book using Christian elements like angels and demons (which has been done several times), but completely rewrote the book of Genesis to better fit the story, or even claimed that Genesis got it wrong and it was actually (for example) Adam who ate the apple first, you better believe Christians would be up in arms about that.

But because the Judeo-Christian history is so well-known in our culture, it would be impossible to rewrite it without people realizing that there's been a mistake. It would also be impossible to rewrite it without backlash (as mentioned). But with the oral histories and stories of Native peoples, it's easy to rewrite it in our society because we don't know what the original story was, and the only people who could be offended by it is a small minority. There's a great book that talks about the "theft" of Native American stories and literature and the portrayal of such stories as mystical and exotic and "other" - It's called link, and though it's also about a hell of a lot more than that, the first few chapters talk about this at length. It's a great book on the whole, I highly recommend.

And while Meyer never claimed that it was historically accurate, she never claimed that it wasn't either (to the best of my knowledge). In fact, her response in the source you linked talks about "research" and her fascination with native "histories," implying that her origin stories are based in truth. It would be easy for a casual reader to assume that maybe this is a legitimate Quileute story, which it isn't.

^I'd say especially with the verisimilitude with Bella buying a book from a Native-run store in the movie.

I understand why the Quileute's are upset about Meyer twisting things. That's not my dilemma.

The site just says "negotiating their rights." I don't understand what they're negotiating. Are the negotiating their rights to have these practices, regalia, histories, ect.? Are they negotiating their rights to change these; to educate people; to keep these from the public? I don't understand what exactly they're negotiating or why.