Tommy Lee Jones, who wrote, directed and stars in The Homesman, defended himself against accusations that his new movie unfairly portrays Native Americans.

According to IMDb, The Homesman is about a claim jumper (played by Jones) and a pioneer woman (played by Hilary Swank) who team up to escort three insane women from Nebraska to Iowa. During the journey, Jones and Swank’s characters encounter Pawnee raiding party.

Despite this tense encounter, the actor doesn’t feel that he had “stereotyped” Native Americans in his film.

“The actors were all Native Americans of Pueblo descent […] I was proud they looked like Pawnees,” Jones said at The Homesman press conference from the Cannes Film Festival competition in Cannes, France, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“I am not ashamed of the fact that they are considered by our characters to be potentially homicidal,” Jones added. “We are not bending the truth at all or stereotyping anybody. That’s the last thing we wanted to do.”

Jones also spoke about the film’s portrayal of females in the mid-1800s.

“I don’t think there’s a woman in this room that has never felt objectified or trivialized because of her gender. There’s a reason for that, there’s a history of that and I think that’s an interesting thing,” he told a room full of reporters.

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