Minority Casting

I have an audition on Wednesday, for a touring show in BC (British Columbia) from April to June. It's been quite a while since I auditioned for anything, and they're also expecting a bit of movement, so I'm not really sure how it's going to go.

What gives me pause, though, is the fact that the play is based on a Native American legend - the legend of Raven stealing the sun, moon and stars, and I'm auditioning for Raven.

I mean, that's fine and all (the myth is neat, and I've always had an affinity for trickster gods, from Raven to the Monkey King to Loki to Anansi - come to think of it, isn't it neat how the motif of the trickster god is repeated so often, all across the world? I wonder what, if any, similarities exist between the various cultures which believed in trickster gods), but it is, to my mind, mildly (to say the least) insulting to cast anything other than a Native American in that sort of role. From a production perspective, I'm sure it's many times more difficult to find a young Native American actor than any other visible minority, simply because they have it so much worse than any other minority in North America, and grinding, institutionalized poverty tends to create more disaffected substance abusers than actor-types. But then, wouldn't that make it all the more important to find them?

It's silly, but it's important to me. Since minorities are given so few chances to share their stories with others, it makes it all the more important that those stories are presented properly. Granted, I'm closer to Native American-looking than someone descended from European stock, but still, there's something about it that makes me vaguely uneasy.