So Meyer acknowledged that she knew nothing of Native Americans let alone the Quilleutes prior to writing
Twilight and by the way she wrote them it doesn't seem like she knew much during. After some research I found that the real Quilleute Tribe has actually spent much of their "fame" from Twilight trying to correct misconceptions.
Quilleute elder on Quilleute stories and
Truth vs Twilight are a couple of articles/websites I found doing exactly that and always starts with the fact that their legends say nothing about werewolves.
Now it's easy to see why Meyer took creative licenses — the Quilleute were nothing more than plot devices for her so she bent their real legends around her plot (
poorly might I add).
The (Mis)Use of Jacob Black in Meyer's Twilight Series and
Smeyer's Use of Quilleute Characters are essays that point this out and where she went wrong with that by making them unbelievablable as Native Americans to people who actually are (
there are some things she did right that is pointed out in the second essay).
But that pretty much begs the question of why didn't she just make one up, in fact why didn't she just set the books in a completely fictional town because she doesn't even make Forks sound believable. If she was going to go that far removed from the actual stories why didn't she use that imagination of her and dream up something made up? As it stands now she just took these people's culture misconstrued it and now it's being applied to real people. In fact the stereotypes she has in the book such as "savage Indian" and "sexy Indians" are now being applied to real people. Granted those stereotypes in general aren't good at all and neither is the
not so subtle racism, but at least if she made a tribe up these things wouldn't be implicating real people. Also she wouldn't be profiting off of these people's culture.
Sucking the Quilleute Dry they profit off of anything beyond tourism meanwhile Meyer and the movies made/make money from using their symbols to which they can't claim and in that Truth vs Twilight link they don't seem happy about it.
Why didn't she just make up a fictional tribe up? It would have been better for those people and for Meyer herself when people try to fact check her. Saying "it's fiction" isn't a defense she can quite use because she chose to set her books in a real town near a real reservation with real people.