Tag: Amanda Morris

‘The Cherokee Word for Water’: The Wilma Mankiller Story

Wilma Pearl Mankiller became the first modern female Chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985 after working with volunteers from the small rural community of Bell, Oklahoma to bring water to the town. ‘The Cherokee Word for Water’ is the story of this extraordinary woman and leader whose activism on behalf of her community continues to resonate across the Cherokee Nation today.

the-cherokee-word-for-water

This post written by staff writer Amanda Morris originally appeared at Bitch Flicks and is reposted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.

“Long before the United States existed, the Cherokee people had a society based on democratic principles,” a male voice says at the opening of The Cherokee Word for Water. A man in a cowboy hat walks toward the camera alongside a river, trees bare of their leaves, the landscape dominant. Later, we learn that this man is the real Charlie Soap (Wilma Mankiller’s husband and the film’s co-director). The voice continues, “They were guided by the spirit of balance between the self and community, elders and youth, men and women. One Cherokee community was reminded of that balance in the early 1980s.” The image transitions to a closer view of the river carrying a soft layer of mist above her surface, the sun gently touching the tops of the distant trees. The next statement from the voiceover is in the Cherokee language and subtitles read, “The Cherokee word for water is,” beckoning viewers to listen.

Wilma Pearl Mankiller became the first modern female Chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985 after working with volunteers from the small rural community of Bell, Oklahoma to bring water to the town. The Cherokee Word for Water is the story of this extraordinary woman and leader whose activism on behalf of her community continues to resonate across the Cherokee Nation today.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h5TsMBO_nQ”]

“If there is no water, many communities begin to scatter, fall apart. That’s what was happening by the 1970s,” the voiceover continues as the visual shifts to broken down equipment, abandoned wood frame homes, and the faces of enduring elders. Viewers are introduced to a vision of real people surviving years of broken treaties, neglect, and empty promises; people trying to survive in the face of a serious problem: no water. The narrator continues, “Then something happened that no one expected. It started with the return of one Cherokee woman, Wilma Mankiller.”

Kimberly Guerrero plays Mankiller in the film and after the narrator’s introduction of the community’s problem, we see Wilma (Guerrero) driving a brown station wagon loaded with suitcases and clothing, smiling at her sleeping children in the front seat. She is headed home to Cherokee territory in Oklahoma.

As she settles into her original home community, Wilma suffers the same transitional pains that any woman might face upon moving home: difficulty finding a job, an oldest daughter who doesn’t want to be there, and bureaucratic red tape that stalls the simplest tasks. However, she also suffers a terrible head-on collision that breaks her body apart, after which she has time to heal, think, and plan. Wilma’s friend, George Adair (Roger Vann) stops by with a box of chocolate and she asks for his help. “Let me go talk to the water,” he says, and the scene shifts to his ceremony by a spring in the woods. When he returns to Wilma, he holds her hands and announces, “You gonna be alright.”

Three months later, as Wilma and Charlie Soap (Moses Brings Plenty) begin to visit Bell to gather support for the waterline project, they are greeted with friendly, but aloof, skepticism. Just saying that the tribe wants to help isn’t enough for the Cherokee residents of Bell, who are used to being lied to and let down by government authorities. When words fail them, Wilma sets out to show the community that she is serious about helping them. She and Charlie start by fixing Mae Canoe’s (Cindy Soap) roof, changing out the screen door of another’s home, and other tasks around the community. It is clear that in this locale, actions speak much louder than words, especially for people who are painfully familiar with broken promises. Even after some people in the community begin to open their homes and minds to Wilma and Charlie, Mae’s daughter Elizabeth (Jamie Loy) scolds Wilma, “You might get my mom to believe your fancy talk, but you ain’t foolin’ me. … Keep your dreams to yourself, lady.”

the-cherokee-word-for-water

The film features many quiet moment of contemplation, sometimes near water and sometimes indoors, as when we see Wilma writing in her journal after her encounter with Elizabeth. We hear Guerrero’s voiceover say, “Trust. Like with Mae’s daughter. We need hers, but she needs to see we can make things better, together.”

Once the community learns to trust Wilma and seems to be getting on-board, her determination to succeed with the Bell waterline project runs into opposition from tribal politicians. Chief Ross Swimmer (Darryl Tonemah) calls Wilma into his office to alert her that her project is getting a lot of attention, that the idea of “poor Cherokees pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” is a story that the media will love. She assumes this is good news. “You and Charlie making progress out there can be seen as a threat,” Chief Swimmer says, crossing his arms across his chest, sending a strong defensive body language message that reflects a practical concern of all politicians: potential new voters who may oppose the status quo. Wilma and Charlie have many obstacles to overcome including intense and personal political pressure from tribal leaders who don’t want the project to succeed, but Wilma remains adamant in her response to the Chief, “This project will not fail.”

The Cherokee Word for Water has captured the attention of Gloria Steinem, who said, “The Cherokee Word for Water is a very rare story because it is about the empowerment of people who have been made to feel they have no power.”

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCtmZhxOK9s”]

Furthermore, in a background video for the film, Kimberly Guerrero said, “It’s a woman’s story, it’s Wilma’s story, and it’s about how a woman goes about unifying a community.” And that unification begins with truth. Charlie warns Wilma once the community commits to voluntarily digging 18 miles of waterline through rocky terrain without a firm budget yet in place, “Wilma, around here, when you say something, it better be true.”

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2d24Bj1GiQ”]

The determination of one woman to make a difference for her people against political pressure, bureaucratic red tape, and community skepticism comes to life in The Cherokee Word for Water, and serves as a necessary reminder that sovereign Indigenous nations remain a vibrant part of this land with strength, passion, stories, and experiences of their own.

For those of you interested in activism, this film was funded through The Wilma Mankiller Foundation with profits going back to the foundation “to support economic development and education throughout Indian Country,” according to the official website. The Cherokee Word for Water would make a wonderful addition to any course or community workshop in women’s studies, Indigenous studies, American studies, or politics, as it “demonstrates the positive attributes of modern Native communities and provides positive role models for Native youth in the mainstream media.”

Note: Chief Mankiller walked on in 2010, but her Foundation, spirit, and works live on.

Dr. Amanda Morris is an Associate Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

From Racist Stereotype to Fully Whitewashed: Tiger Lily Since 1904

Whatever the other problems might be with this film (and they are many), my focus for this review is the character Tiger Lily, who was originally conceived as a racist stereotype by J.M. Barrie and who has had her Native identity completely erased in this latest iteration. Is this progress? I think not.

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This post written by staff writer Amanda Morris originally appeared at Bitch Flicks and is re-posted here as part of our theme week on Indigenous Women.

Pan has a 26 percent rating based on 152 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and having just come from a matinee viewing, I must say I agree with these critics. The Peter Pan narrative that we all know has been reconstructed as a sort of prequel, and not very imaginatively, while still retaining its racist roots. The Native people are called “natives” and “savages” multiple times and retain their feathers, facepaint, fringe, dancing, and primitive clothing to emulate a stereotypical idea of Native peoples, and even the map that Peter finds guides him to “Tribal Territory.” The actor playing Hook thinks he is Clint Eastwood in a Spaghetti Western, the Neverbirds are just bigger, more threatening versions of Kevin in Up, and the main actors who appear throughout the entire film are all white.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1wRv8vTpxo”]

Whatever the other problems might be with this film (and they are many), my focus for this review is the character Tiger Lily, who was originally conceived as a racist stereotype by J.M. Barrie and who has had her Native identity completely erased in this latest iteration. Is this progress? I think not.

When J.M. Barrie’s original stage play, “Peter Pan; Or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up,” first appeared on the cultural scene, Miriam Skancke (stage name Nesbitt) played Tiger Lily. Nevermind the problem of reducing actual, living people to imaginary creatures in a fantasy land. According to Miriam’s father’s birth record, she appears to have been of Norwegian heritage. Certainly not Native American. So the fantasy creature, the “Indian princess,” Tiger Lily, started off in global imaginations as a beautiful white woman.

In 1911, Barrie published the novel version, Peter Pan, and soon more stage productions and the film industry came calling, clamoring for this children’s fantasy tale. From 1955-60, Broadway and the American TV industry brought the story to stage and TV with Sondra Lee playing Tiger Lily. Another white woman playing an offensive racist Native stereotype, with the music and dancing to match:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVPc4SuoJWE”]

The 1979 Broadway production featured Maria Pogee, an Argentine-American dancer and choreographer, in the Tiger Lily role, and the 1990 version featured Holly Irwin in the role. The characterization on-stage remained “Native American,” but still, the actors playing Tiger Lily were non-Native. No self-respecting Native woman actor would WANT to play a racist fantasy stereotype of her own culture, and that is where Pan‘s studio, director, and writer made a costly miscalculation.

Here is where we need to be more critical of Warner Brothers, director Joe Wright, writer Jason Fuchs, and the casting staff responsible for adamantly refusing to re-conceive this problematic character into something more culturally appropriate and honorable. They DID take the time, energy, and money to construct a new narrative that explains how Peter Pan came to be; they reconstructed this narrative in myriad ways so as to make it clearly different from Barrie’s original, except where it concerns the “Natives.” Instead, they took the cowardly way out and completely whitewashed the character (while still retaining feathers, costuming, and even an Aboriginal actor as Tiger Lily’s father).

Bottom line here, Hollywood is lazy and greedy. They saw an opportunity to re-envision this narrative from stem to stern, possibly giving us a truly creative and compelling new story, but instead of also eliminating the racist stereotypes from the original, they chose to whitewash because that is the easier choice. From their perspective, it would have been too hard to reconstruct this “Indian princess” into a strong, brave, Native woman. Especially one who seems to be developing feelings for the future Captain Hook, who is white. Instead, they chose white actor Rooney Mara to portray a strong, brave, Native woman who wears beaded and feathered attire, long and dark braided hair, and colorful tribal makeup.

Pan movie Tiger Lily

Who exactly do they think is fooled by this? Certainly none of us trying to encourage more respectful representations of Indigenous peoples. Plenty of reviewers, including one at Bitch Flicks, has pointed out the immense problems with the company and crew’s voluntary obtuseness to their heinous choices. In fact, director Joe Wright defended his choice.

So, Joe, you understand our criticisms, but were unable to find a Native woman to play a “badass” Native woman character?

Are you fucking kidding me?!

Here are some of the amazing Native actors you should have considered casting: Devery Jacobs, Cara Gee, Tanaya Beatty, Jamie Loy, Amber Midthunder, Taysha Fuller, or Crystle Lightning. That list is by no means complete, but the reason none of these women were chosen is because they are not considered bankable money makers by the Hollywood machine.

Warner Brothers would rather hire a known white woman (as usual) and to completely whitewash the character than to spend a few minutes asking the writer to re-conceive this character to be more respectful of real, living, Native peoples, and then hiring a talented Native woman to play her. Because with all of the white racist fear out there in the viewing audience, they knew this whitewashed version of J.M. Barrie’s original would make them money. They know their audience.

Thankfully, at 26 percent approval rating, Pan will not be in theatres very long. I predict that Warner Brothers could have made a lot more money doing what I and others have suggested — re-writing Tiger Lily to be a more relevant and vibrant representation of a Native American woman with a family that doesn’t look like the ridiculous, primitive stereotypes of Barrie’s imagination, and then casting a terrific Native actor into that role. The amount of positive publicity and curiosity alone would have driven people to want to see this film. Critics and viewers would be introduced in a big way to a talented Native actor, and all of the negative (and well-deserved) criticism that follows this film might have been reduced. Talk about a missed opportunity and a bad business decision.

Pan is just another in a long line of disappointing versions of this childhood tale. Barrie wrote in a time (1904) when the general populace had accepted the disappearance and death of Native peoples. Everything they read told them that these peoples no longer existed.

That we are still in that same headspace, imagining Native peoples as either racist stereotypes or as long-gone peoples of the past, is pathetic. Shame on you, Warner Brothers, Joe Wright, Jason Fuchs, Rooney Mara, and all of us who accept Hollywood’s standard practice of erasing Native peoples, cultures, and identities.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

On Racism, Erasure, and Pan
Violence Against Indigenous Women: Fun, Sexy, and No Big Deal on the Big Screen

Dr. Amanda Morris is an Associate Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

From Racist Stereotype to Fully Whitewashed: Tiger Lily Since 1904

Whatever the other problems might be with this film (and they are many), my focus for this review is the character Tiger Lily, who was originally conceived as a racist stereotype by J.M. Barrie and who has had her Native identity completely erased in this latest iteration. Is this progress? I think not.

Written by Amanda Morris.

Pan has a 26 percent rating based on 152 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and having just come from a matinee viewing, I must say I agree with these critics. The Peter Pan narrative that we all know has been reconstructed as a sort of prequel, and not very imaginatively, while still retaining its racist roots. The Natives are called “natives” and “savages” multiple times and retain their feathers, facepaint, fringe, dancing, and primitive clothing to emulate a stereotypical idea of Native peoples, and even the map that Peter finds guides him to “Tribal Territory.” The actor playing Hook thinks he is Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western, the Neverbirds are just bigger, more threatening versions of Kevin in Up, and the main actors who appear throughout the entire film are all white.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1wRv8vTpxo”]

Whatever the other problems might be with this film (and they are many), my focus for this review is the character Tiger Lily, who was originally conceived as a racist stereotype by J.M. Barrie and who has had her Native identity completely erased in this latest iteration. Is this progress? I think not.

When J.M. Barrie’s original stage play, Peter Pan; Or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, first appeared on the cultural scene, Miriam Skancke (stage name Nesbitt) played Tiger Lily. Never mind the problem of reducing an actual, living people to imaginary creatures in a fantasy land. According to Miram’s father’s birth record, she appears to have been of Norwegian heritage. Certainly not Native American. So the fantasy creature, the “indian princess,” Tiger Lily, started off in global imaginations as a beautiful white woman.

getimage.exe

Miriam Nesbitt plays “Tiger Lily” in J.M. Barrie’s original stage play, Peter Pan, in 1904

In 1911, Barrie published the novel version, Peter Pan, and soon, more stage productions and the film industry came calling, clamoring for this children’s fantasy tale. From 1955-60, Broadway and the American TV industry brought the story to stage and TV with Sondra Lee playing Tiger Lily. Another white woman playing an offensive racist Native stereotype, with the music and dancing to match:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVPc4SuoJWE”]

The 1979 Broadway production featured an Argentine-American dancer and choreographer in the Tiger Lily role, and the 1990 version featured Holly Irwin in the role. The characterization on stage remained “Native American,” but still, the actors playing Tiger Lily were non-Native. No self-respecting Native woman actor would WANT to play a racist fantasy stereotype of her own culture, and that is where Pan’s studio, director, and writer made a costly miscalculation.

Here is where we need to be more critical of Warner Brothers, Director Joe Wright, writer Jason Fuchs, and the casting staff responsible for adamantly refusing to re-conceive this problematic character into something more culturally appropriate and honorable. They DID take the time, energy, and money to construct a new narrative that explains how Peter Pan came to be; they reconstructed this narrative in myriad ways so as to make it clearly different from Barrie’s original, except where it concerns the “Natives.” Instead, they took the cowardly way out and completely whitewashed the character (while still retaining feathers, costuming, and even an Aboriginal actor as Tiger Lily’s father).

Bottom line here, Hollywood is lazy and greedy. They saw an opportunity to re-envision this narrative from stem to stern, possibly giving us a truly creative and compelling new story, but instead of also eliminating the racist stereotypes from the original, they chose to whitewash because that is the easier choice. From their perspective, it would have been too hard to reconstruct this “indian princess” into a strong, brave, Native woman. Especially one who seems to be developing feelings for the future Captain Hook, who is white. Instead, they chose white actor Rooney Mara to portray a strong, brave, Native woman who wears beaded and feathered attire, long and dark braided hair, and colorful tribal makeup.

hugh-jackman

Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in Pan

Who exactly do they think is fooled by this? Certainly none of us trying to encourage more respectful representations of indigenous peoples. Plenty of reviewers, including one on this site, has pointed out the immense problems with the company and crew’s voluntary blindness to their heinous choices. In fact, director Joe Wright defended his choice.

So, Joe, you understand our criticisms, but were unable to find a Native woman to play a “badass” Native woman character?

Are you fucking kidding me?!

Here are some of the amazing Native actors you should have considered casting: Devery Jacobs, Cara Gee, Tanaya Beatty, Jamie Loy, Amber Midthunder, Taysha Fuller, or Crystle Lightning. That list is by no means complete, but the reason none of these women were chosen is because they are not considered bankable money makers by the Hollywood machine.

Warner Brothers would rather hire a known white woman (as usual) and to completely whitewash the character than to spend a few minutes asking the writer to re-conceive this character to be more respectful of real, living, Native peoples, and then hiring a talented Native woman to play her. Because with all of the white racist fear out there in the viewing audience, they knew this whitewashed version of J.M. Barrie’s original would make them money. They know their audience.

Thankfully, at 26 percent approval rating, Pan will not be in theatres very long. I predict that Warner Brothers could have made a lot more money doing what I and others have suggested – re-writing Tiger Lily to be a more relevant and vibrant representation of a Native American woman with a family that doesn’t look like the ridiculous, primitive stereotypes of Barrie’s imagination, and then casting a terrific Native actor into that role. The amount of positive publicity and curiousity alone would have driven people to want to see this film. Critics and viewers would be introduced in a big way to a talented Native actor, and all of the negative (and well-deserved) criticism that dogs this film might have been reduced. Talk about a missed opportunity and a bad business decision.

Pan is just another in a long line of disappointing versions of this childhood tale. Barrie wrote in a time (1904) when the general populace had accepted the disappearance and death of Native peoples. Everything they read told them that these peoples no longer existed.

That we are still in that same headspace, imagining Native peoples as either racist stereotypes or as long-gone peoples of the past, is pathetic. Shame on you, #Warner Brothers, Joe Wright, Jason Fuchs, Rooney Mara, and all of us who accept Hollywood’s standard practice of erasing Native peoples, cultures, and identities.

 

Dr. Amanda Morris is an Associate Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

 

 

Complicating Indigenous Feminism: Shayla’s Story in ‘Imprint’

And the story imprinted is the story of colonization and domination, a story that has seduced Shayla in her role as an attorney. But another story is also imprinted in this woman, a story of tradition, memory, family, and the foundational principles of her Indigenous culture. As the film progress, Shayla starts putting the broken pieces of her experiences in Denver together with the visions and experiences of home in order to remember.

Written by Amanda Morris.

One of our biggest complaints as feminists is the absurd lack of smart, independent, savvy women as lead characters in films. You know, women characters who have lives and complications and thoughts that don’t constantly depend on a man’s validation or involvement. Well, have I got the film for you! In fact, I moved this one up in my queue because it not only passes the Bechdel test, it also presents a complicated view of Native American women that we rarely (if ever) see in mainstream Hollywood films. Plus, it is billed as a “supernatural thriller” or “ghost story,” which is perfect for the month that ends in Halloween.

I give you Imprint, produced by critically-acclaimed Cheyenne/Arapaho director Chris Eyre, directed by Michael Linn, and starring the confident and talented Tonantzin Carmelo (Tongva/Kumeyaay) and Carla-Rae Holland (Seneca/Mohawk), who both won awards for their performances.

Imprint Trailer:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saYPpujKK8U”]

Imprint opens with a fast-paced, montage-style of images, views, and movement through a house, field, and barn; ostensibly the ghost’s point of view, which is immediately followed by a hard blackout cut to a protest outside a Denver courthouse. Signs that read “Our voices will be heard” and  “Stonefeather is a traitor” dot the crowd as they chant “He’s a good boy, help him!” This is our first introduction to the story that sets this film in motion, and its lead character, Shayla Stonefeather, a Lakota attorney rising in prominence within the American legal system who is successfully prosecuting a young Native American man for murder inside this courthouse. The protesters label her a traitor who has turned her back on her Lakota culture and fellow Native Americans. Shayla’s inner inner turmoil is evident on her face as she closes her case.

Tonantzin Carmelo as Shayla Stonefeather in Imprint.

Shayla is a cultural minority achieving great success in the American colonialist machine, but seems to understand the trade-off; her spirit and her culture suffer next to her American ambitions. She has a job to do and she does it, but clearly feels the toll. Shayla flies back to her childhood home on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota where she must reconnect with her past, re-embrace her culture, and confront her ghosts. Her mother, Rebecca Stonefeather, played by Carla-Rae Holland, welcomes her home with a hug and the warm sentiment, “Beautiful daughter,” in the Lakota language.

Soon after she arrives to find her father dying, Shayla begins having visions and encounters that are suggestively supernatural. The film unfolds in a somewhat non-linear fashion, melding past with present in a way that causes Shayla to question herself and her place in the community and the world. “What happened to you? What happened to the little girl who wanted to come back and help our people?” her mother asks, and Shayla says that she grew up, responding, “Our biggest problems are self-inflicted.” The conversation between mother and daughter about reservation realities is abruptly interrupted when Shayla’s father suffers an outburst, followed by one of Shayla’s visions that draws her outside to the barn with a loaded shotgun.

Dr. Kim Anderson (Cree-Metis) argues that “there are many kinds of feminism,” including her idea that “Indigenous feminism is linked to a foundational principle in Indigenous societies – that is, the profound reverence for life” (In Indigenous Women and Feminism, 81). In particular, Anderson suggests that “Indigenous feminism is about creating a new world out of the best of the old. Indigenous feminism is about honouring creation in all its forms, while also fostering the kind of critical thinking that will allow us to stay true to our traditional reverence for life. . .We especially need to learn about the feminist elements of our various Indigenous traditions and begin to celebrate and practice them” (Indigenous Women, 89).

This type of feminism that Anderson writes about is represented in Imprint. Shayla learns to listen and the medicine man, played by David Bald Eagle, tells her that the earth and its creatures, plants, rocks, and trees, “remember when we forget. The story forever imprinted on this land.” And the story imprinted is the story of colonization and domination, a story that has seduced Shayla in her role as an attorney. But another story is also imprinted in this woman, a story of tradition, memory, family, and the foundational principles of her Indigenous culture. As the film progress, Shayla starts putting the broken pieces of her experiences in Denver together with the visions and experiences of home in order to remember.

Variety called this film “an old-fashioned ghost story with a Native American twist.” All due respect to Variety, but that is a simplistic and colonialist view of Imprint, a film in which a Native American woman character remains center stage the entire 85 minutes. Yes, there are ghosts. And a great twist at the end. But this is so much more than a ghost story. It is Shayla’s story–a story that complicates our assumptions about representations of  Indigenous women, in films and in American culture.

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Awards for Imprint include the following:

American Indian Film Festival (2007), won Best Film, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress

Cherokee International Film Festival (2007), won Best Feature

South Dakota Film Festival (2008), won Best Feature

Hoboken International Film Festival (2008), won Best Cinematography

South by Southwest FF (2007), Official Selection.

This film is available to stream on Netflix and as a DVD from Amazon.

 

Dr. Amanda Morris is an Associate Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

 

 

 

 

 

Courage and Consequences in ‘Rhymes for Young Ghouls’

The refreshing part about this dark story is the calm confidence and self-assurance of an unapologetic Native female protagonist who is unafraid to take risks and clearly provides leadership to her friends and family.

Written by Amanda Morris.

How much courage must one young Mi’g Maq girl possess in order to endure and survive her mother’s suicide, her father’s imprisonment, and her own quest for vengeance? Rhymes for Young Ghouls answers this question in satisfying ways through layered storytelling, poetic cinematography, dark humor, pain, and a touch of the supernatural. All of this AND it passes the Bechdel Test!

Although the cliché of alcohol and drug abuse on the reservation plays a central role in the plot, the film rises above the expectations that this cliché sets up in surprising ways, drawing the viewer in with dialogue, artistry, strong acting, a truly heinous bad guy in Popper, the violent and vindictive Indian agent played by Mark Antony Krupa, and a soundtrack that enhances both active and quiet moments. Plus, it introduces viewers to one potential negative experience of Indian residential schools, which is a subject not covered in most K-12 classrooms.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81JcYmXLcXo” title=”Rhymes%20for%20Young%20Ghouls%20official%20trailer”]

In Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences, Margaret Connell Szasz writes about power, position, and knowledge through these boarding schools in “Through a Wide-Angle Lens,” beginning with this statement: “Boarding schools go against the grain of human experience. By substituting an institutional setting for the traditional family, they intervene in the educational nurturing historically provided by home, kin group, and community . . . In Indian country, the subject of boarding schools always evokes an emotional response” (187-88). In Rhymes for Young Ghouls, this idea of interference and the breakdown of family, as well as a risky and brazen solution to this intervention is brought to life. Szasz continues, “The federal boarding schools, alongside the Residential Schools of Canada, left a decidedly mixed legacy, one that remains alive in Native communities across North America” (Boarding School Blues, 196). If you want a good idea about the horrific side of this legacy, Rhymes is the film to watch.

The film starts simply enough, with the following historical text in white on a black background, privileging the words and asking the viewer to consider this premise as the foundation of the story to come:

“The law in the Kingdom decreed that every child between the age of 5 and 16 who is physically able must attend Indian Residential School.

“Her Majesty’s attendants, to be called truant officers, will take into custody a child whom they believe to be absent from school using as much force as the circumstance requires.

“–Indian Act, by will of Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada”

The first image is a closeup of marijuana with blues music playing as the scene opens to reveal a woman and two men in a kitchen getting drunk and high on the Red Crow Indian Reservation in 1969. They are relaxed and counting up product to sell while getting drunk and then the couple, the parents of the film’s main character, Aila (Kawennahere Devery Jacobs), decide to drive away. Aila and her younger brother, Ty, are sitting and talking on the hood of the car when their parents stagger out of the house. Aila’s uncle, Burner, suggests that Aila, who is a little girl, be the one to drive. What happens next sets the rest of the film’s events in motion.

Kawennahere Devery Jacobs as Aila
Kawennahere Devery Jacobs as Aila

 

The next scene shows Aila’s father being arrested as he shouts to her, “Don’t look, Aila! Don’t look!” Of course Aila looks and sees her mother’s body hanging from a porch rafter as her voiceover says, “The day I saw my mother dead, I aged by a thousand years.”

This instant maturity might be the reason Aila decides to take over the marijuana business in order to pay Popper a “truant tax” so that she and her friends can stay out of the Residential School that he controls.

Mark Antony Krupa as "Popper" in Rhymes for Young Ghouls
Mark Antony Krupa as “Popper” in Rhymes for Young Ghouls

 

The refreshing part about this dark story is the calm confidence and self-assurance of an unapologetic Native female protagonist who is unafraid to take risks and clearly provides leadership to her friends and family. When her father returns from prison and finds her in charge instead of his brother, he says that they are supposed to take care of her, not the other way around. And he affirms this idea several times when he refers to Aila as a little girl. But the inexperienced and immature concept of a little girl is not the character that Jacobs portrays in Aila. In fact, this character is quite the opposite – worldwise, smart, practical, and sensitive. When it comes time to confront the domineering and violent Residential School truant officer, Popper, Aila and her friends execute a daring revenge plot that ends this sadistic man’s rein over the reservation community.

Glen Gould ("Joseph"), Brandon Oakes ("Burner"), and Kawennahere Devery Jacobs ("Aila")
Glen Gould (“Joseph”), Brandon Oakes (“Burner”), and Kawennahere Devery Jacobs (“Aila”)

 

Winning such awards as Best Director at the American Indian Film Festival in 2014, Best Canadian Feature Film at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2013, and Outstanding Actress in a Supporting Role (Roseanne Supernault) at the Red Nation Film Festival in 2014, Rhymes for Young Ghouls is a Native American film that challenges stereotypes of indigenous peoples while also telling a compelling story accessible to all. Originally released in May 2014, this film runs 88 minutes and can be streamed online via Amazon (free with Prime), or on Vudu (rental or purchase).

In the preface to Boarding School Blues, the editors warn against accepting any single interpretation of the Indian boarding school experience because there were a wide variety of experiences, both positive and negative. So I will similarly caution that this film does not represent ALL indigenous peoples’ experiences with the Indian boarding school or residential school systems, but it IS a good film to start the conversation about a subject that most people know nothing about. Incorporating such a film into a brief unit about the Indian boarding school experience would provide that dramatic and artistic touch that students enjoy, but a chapter from Boarding School Blues would also provide a balanced perspective.

 

Dr. Amanda Morris is an Associate Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

 

 

Exposing Real Lies: ‘Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian’

What does an “Indian” look like? If you are like most Americans, your answer will fall somewhere between Disney’s Pocahontas character, Johnny Depp’s depiction of Tonto, and the Washington NFL team logo. That’s because your education, family, friends, and society have no idea what actual, living Native peoples look like thanks in large part to Hollywood film representations. The 89-minute documentary ‘Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian’ (2009) will begin to correct some of those misrepresentations floating around in your brainpan.

What does an “Indian” look like? If you are like most Americans, your answer will fall somewhere between Disney’s Pocahontas character, Johnny Depp’s depiction of Tonto, and the Washington NFL team logo. That’s because your education, family, friends, and society have no idea what actual, living Native peoples look like thanks in large part to Hollywood film representations. The 89-minute documentary Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian (2009) will begin to correct some of those misrepresentations floating around in your brainpan.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbDvteUUrm4″]

What will really blow your mind is when I say that “Indians” don’t exist. “Indian” was the term Columbus labeled the indigenous peoples of this land because he thought he was in India. So this mistake has become the generic name for all 500+ nations that still remain in this land. Charming. And in Hollywood films, Native peoples exist only as stereotypes. Thomas King (Cherokee) writes in his latest tome, The Inconvenient Indian, “Indians were made for film. Indians were exotic and erotic. All those feathers, all that face paint, the breast plates, the bone chokers, the skimpy loincloths. . .The only thing film had to do was to collect such materials and cobble them together into a series of functioning cliches. Film dispensed with any errant subtleties and colorings, and crafted three basic Indian types. There was the bloodthirsty savage, the noble savage, and the dying savage.”

The history of this practice is laid bare in Reel Injun and will shock and amaze you. Director Neil Diamond (Cree), and co-directors Catherine Bainbridge, and Jeremiah Hayes craft an alternative narrative to the one you think you know. For instance, did you know that the most famous “Indian” actor, Iron Eyes Cody, was Sicilian, not Native?

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65PpeJkix5g”]

Did you know that the story you think you know about Crazy Horse and Custer isn’t true? Or that in many “classic” Hollywood westerns where Native actors are speaking a Native language, they are making fun of the scene or their fellow white actors instead of saying the lines presented in English on screen? Or that in the 1930s, Native Americans directed and acted in films from their own perspectives? Or that the headband seen so often on Native characters in westerns was because of the costume department and has absolutely nothing to do with real Plains cultures?

After a scene in a Hollywood costume vault, Ojibway film critic Jesse Wente says, “This is actually, while probably not calculated, an ingenious act of colonialism. You are essentially robbing nations of an identity and grouping them into one.”

Ojibway film critic, Jesse Wente.

Reel Injun starts off by reminding viewers that Hollywood has represented “Indians” in over 4,000 films for over 100 years before launching into a film clip smorgasbord that washes you with image after image that reinforces Thomas King’s statement.

The director/narrator, Neil Diamond, does a simple voiceover as the camera captures young Native kids watching one of those ubiquitous Hollywood westerns where “Indians” are the enemy. His voiceover: “Growing up on the reservation, the only show in town was movie night in the church basement. Raised on cowboys and indians, we cheered for the cowboys, never realizing we were the indians.”

Diamond’s stated goal is to “make sense of the world’s enduring love affair with the Hollywood indian. . .this image has captured the world’s imagination.” From the silent era when Native Americans were directing and acting in films to the twentieth century when representations of Native peoples remained wildly inaccurate and fantastical.

Cree director of Reel Injun, Neil Diamond.

Adam Beach, John Trudell, Russell Means, and Chris Eyre are among an impressive list of interviewees in the film and their comments are dispersed among historic photographs, film clips, and images of iconic American landscapes. About 13 minutes in, Chris Eyre explains, “The reason that indians were projected so heavily into movies was the romance of the tragedy, Greek-Roman tragedy.”

Philip J. Deloria addresses the representation of Native peoples in film in his book, Indians in Unexpected Places, writing, “Films, of course, never repudiated the sensibility of Indian violence found in the Wild West. Indeed, they were key to the shifting of Indian violence from nineteenth-century possibility to twentieth-century titillation and metaphor” (55).

At one point, director Diamond visits one of the many summer camps held in America every year that keep “Hollywood’s notion of the noble savage alive and well,” where little white boys romp and play and fight dressed in face and body paint and grunt and shout and vocalize the Atlanta Braves’ “tomahawk chop” tune under the watchful eye of their white leaders. Before he meets this group of campers, Diamond says, “I wonder if any of these kids have ever met a Native person. Or if their image of us comes only from the movies. I hope I don’t disappoint them.”

In The Inconvenient Indian, King provides a guiding perspective with which to consider the documentary Reel Injun, as well as any representations of Native peoples you may see on film or TV: “The good news is that none of these Indians was a threat. To the White heroes in particular and to North America in general. None of them ever prevailed. What we watched on the screen over and over was the implicit and inevitable acquiescence of Native people to Christianity and Commerce. No matter what happened, the question that was asked again and again on the silver screen was: Can Indians survive in a modern world? And the answer, even in sympathetic films such as Broken Arrow, Little Big Man, and Dances with Wolves, was always: No.”

Reel Injun won Gemini Awards for Best Direction and Best Visual Research and was nominated for Best Original Score in a Documentary Program. Available to stream on Amazon and Netflix, this documentary would make a wise and balanced addition to any classroom studying film, film history, Native Americans past and present, as well as issues of representation or identity.

 

 

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Dr. Amanda Morris is an Assistant Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

Turning Poison into Medicine: ‘On and Off the Res w/Charlie Hill’

Normally, I would now insert a trailer, but this small independent documentary from Upstream Productions has no trailer or clips to share. It has an IMDB listing, but there is barely any information on it. To find anything out about Oneida Nation member Charlie Hill or this documentary, you have to search. Not only that, you have to know in advance what you are searching for. That puts you, kind reader, at a serious disadvantage if you didn’t even know Native Americans still exist, much less participate in the stand-up comedy circuit.

Charlie Hill is the most well-known Native American stand-up comedian that you’ve never heard of because his mainstream appearances on The Tonight Show and Richard Pryor’s TV show happened back in the 70s and 80s. He was a ground-breaking comic, the first American Indian on The Tonight Show, and considered by many contemporary Native comics to be the “godfather” of Native stand-up. On and Off the Res w/Charlie Hill (1999) is a one-hour documentary that uses humor to challenge the racism about Native peoples that is so pervasive in America, while also sharing the biography and story of Hill’s life and rise as a stand-up comic.

Normally, I would now insert a trailer, but this small independent documentary from Upstream Productions has no trailer or clips to share. It has an IMDB listing, but there is barely any information on it. To find anything out about Oneida Nation member Charlie Hill or this documentary, you have to search. Not only that, you have to know in advance what you are searching for. That puts you, kind reader, at a serious disadvantage if you didn’t even know Native Americans still exist, much less participate in the stand-up comedy circuit. This absence of information, the silence about real, living, Native peoples perpetuated by the American entertainment industry is indicative not only of American mainstream racism, but also of our shared ignorance. We don’t know, so when we are confronted by such a comic as Charlie Hill, we don’t know how to react. Surely, not with laughter?

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=545t5SvcyDo”]

Hill’s accessible humor is on display in On and Off the Res, as well as his more serious commentary about stereotypical representations of Native Americans in mainstream American venues. The film includes interviews with his family, Dennis Banks, and Vine Deloria, who says early in the film, “Charlie’s valuable to the Indian community as a person out there on the edge, acting as a bridge between cultures.”

One moment included in this documentary is Hill’s presentation to the National Indian Education Convention in Tacoma, Wash. (1997) where he says,

“But America, it’s not really America, it’s Europe Junior when you really think about it. You know, when they start honoring the treaties and respecting the ladies in this nation, we get rid of sexism and racism, maybe we can call it America. But when you think about the history of this country, it never started ‘til 1492. We were here like billions of years like we was all on hold, like in freeze-frame or somethin’, like we weren’t movin’ (Hill freezes in place on stage), hup, it’s October 12, the white man’s here we better move (Hill starts a powwow chant).”

When Hill talks about his time in Catholic schools and being beaten by nuns, as he says they all were, he says, “We’re all reverberating from that. I learned to convert that into humor. I try to turn poison into medicine.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh6eCALFohY”]

As the film shows, many of HIll’s televised appearances were on Canadian TV, which is sad. Here we had this wonderful comic in our midst making us laugh at our own racist tendencies and he wasn’t a fixture on American television. Think about that.

One clip from a Hill set includes one of my favorite Hill jokes that turns racist assumption on its own head. He relates the story of a man who yells out, “I don’t want to hear that crap, Injun, I’m an Amuurican, why don’t you go back where you came from!” Hill pauses for a second and then says, “So I camped in his backyard.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOf-3TShBio”]

Vine Deloria explains, “What you do is a quick reverse of whatever the person says to you. You can find that in treaty records. Red Cloud at one point says, why don’t you put us on wheels? Then every time we make a treaty you can wheel us around. You get reports by treaty commissioners, you know these Indians know exactly what we’re after, we can’t deal with them. Gotta have someone else come in because they turned that thing quick. That’s a universal trait that you found all over the continent. Those people negotiating treaties had a sense of humor, a greater sense of irony, like some of the stand-ups, Rickles and others, just slice all day long. So you had that kind of humor Indian chiefs and diplomats used when they were negotiating.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK6TKLImrkg”]

Negotiating with the American government or the American people about Native peoples and their sovereignty and right to a non-stereotyped identity has been a challenge for these Nations since Europeans first arrived on these shores, and the challenge continues today. Unfortunately, Charlie Hill’s presence and voice exists now only in the record, for he walked on in Dec. 2013, a great loss to the comedy community and to us. Fortunately, we still have access to Hill’s sharp wit and comedic stylings through this documentary, on the American Indian Comedy Slam DVD, and on YouTube.

Deloria states toward the end of the documentary, “What I’ve tried to do, what Floyd and Charlie have tried to do, is kind of get the flavor of being an Indian in an Indian community out to a larger audience.”

For anyone interested in exploring other Native American stand-up comics, I encourage you to check out the following comedians and challenge your own assumptions through laughter.

Jim Ruel

Anjelah Johnson

JR Redwater

Howie Miller

Charlie Ballard

Marc Yaffee

Vaughn Eaglebear

Larry Omaha

Charlie Hill, Oneida, stand-up comic (1951-2013). You are missed.

 

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Dr. Amanda Morris is an Assistant Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

Facing Down the Devil in ‘The Lesser Blessed’

Dreamlike images of a body immersed in bathwater intermingle with images of fire and shadowy figures running. The camera settles clearly on the deeply scarred back of the young man in the tub as the opening sequence to ‘The Lesser Blessed’ comes to a close and the camera travels across a remote landscape split by a single road.

Dreamlike images of a body immersed in bathwater intermingle with images of fire and shadowy figures running. The camera settles clearly on the deeply scarred back of the young man in the tub as the opening sequence to The Lesser Blessed comes to a close and the camera travels across a remote landscape split by a single road. The narrator, also the protagonist, tells us we are in Fort Simmer, Northwest Territories where “there’s not much to do if you’re not into booze or sports.” Hero and protagonist Larry Sole (Joel Evans), a kid from the Dagrib (Tlicho) First Nation in Canada, “has to face down the devil right in the eyeball before he can set free his romantic heart,” according to director Anita Doran.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdQhOFAxpAQ”]

Based on Richard Van Camp’s (Tlicho) novel of the same name, the dramatic film tells the story of a kid who runs when threatened by a bully, who dreams of a girl who doesn’t love him back, and who quietly lives with his past and his stories until Johnny Beck (Kiowa Gordon) comes to town and suddenly Larry’s past explodes into his present. When Larry tells Jed the story of his tapeworm with complete deadpan delivery, Jed chuckles and says, “Larry Sole, the most interesting thing in this shit town.”

Joel Evans is Larry Sole in The Lesser Blessed

Soon after, Larry’s dream girl, Juliet (Chloe Rose) pays $200 for Jed at a charity slave auction that is raising money for the school dance. Larry closes his eyes and thinks, “I bet she would have paid more.”

Chloe Rose plays Juliet Hope in The Lesser Blessed

 

The devil that Larry must face is the story of why he burned his dad. After Larry punches his tormenter, Darcy McManus (Adam Butcher), at a party, Darcy tells everyone at school that Larry set his father on fire. The entire school shuns him and Larry must face his past, his truth, his story. No matter how painful, Larry must confront his truth. When his mother’s boyfriend, Jed (Benjamin Bratt) finds him in the wilderness, Larry says, “We both burned to death that night. Except I’m still alive.”

Benjamin Bratt plays Jed in The Lesser Blessed

This story is as much about compassion for self as it is for reconciling the past. Larry’s journey is moving and relatable for anyone who has suffered a traumatic experience, especially sexual abuse, and found a way to survive it. On the surface, the friendship and love triangle of three teenagers is as serious and angst-filled as any teen movie, but The Lesser Blessed offers something more. It offers the viewer a glimpse at redemption on a very human level.

The Canadian Film Review spotlighted this film in 2013, interviewing the cast and Richard Van Camp, and providing some insights about the making of the picture:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNtgsT5JjPk”]

Winner of the Best Picture and Best Lead Actor at the Red Nation Film Festival, winner of the Best Supporting Actor at the American Indian Film Festival, and an Official Selection for the Native Cinema Showcase at the National Museum of the American Indian, The Lesser Blessed would be an excellent addition to any classroom discussing film, contemporary Native peoples, sexual abuse, or teenage experiences. The film handles its serious subject matter with honesty and lyricism; it is poignant and a joy to watch.

The Lesser Blessed is available to stream on Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, and Vudu.

 

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Dr. Amanda Morris is an Assistant Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

 

 

 

‘Our Spirits Don’t Speak English: Indian Boarding School’

Time for a serious interlude. ‘Our Spirits Don’t Speak English: Indian Boarding School’ is an 80-minute documentary that tells a story about the Indian boarding school experience from the Native American perspective. The dark history of Indian boarding schools sanctioned by U.S. government policy is a stain on this nation, but one that very few people know about. This film provides an emotional and logical overview of these boarding schools and the continuing effects on today’s Indigenous populations.

Time for a serious interlude. Our Spirits Don’t Speak English: Indian Boarding School is an 80-minute documentary that tells a story about the Indian boarding school experience from the Native American perspective. The dark history of Indian boarding schools sanctioned by U.S. government policy is a stain on this nation, but one that very few people know about. This film provides an emotional and logical overview of these boarding schools and the continuing effects on today’s Indigenous populations.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1TCQf2NTFc”]

The film begins with a voiceover by August Schellenberg as white text punctuates a black screen to emphasize certain words and phrases. Interviews with Native peoples who survived the boarding schools and those who had parents or grandparents who survived them provide some of the most compelling information – the first-person story. Produced by Rich-Heape Films, a Native American owned company, Our Spirits Don’t Speak English weaves interviews, narration by Gayle Ross, a Cherokee historian and storyteller, historical photographs, and contemporary stories of experience for the Indigenous peoples who continue to be affected by the cultural, emotional, and spiritual damage done by these boarding schools.

Cherokee historian and storyteller, Gayle Ross

Gayle Ross explains after the opening segment, “In the beginning, going to school for Indian children meant listening to stories. These tales were metaphors for life experience, often involving heroes and monsters, conquest and survival. It’s not unlike the story we’re here to tell today, for one of the most formidable challenges in our past was the Indian boarding school experience.”

Dr. Clifford Trafzer, professor of American Indian history, director of public history, and director of graduate studies at the University of California, Riverside, provides some historical perspective: “Columbus, and those who came in his wake, expected Indian people to become European-like. That has been the educational system of Europeans and Americans from the start, to try and destroy that which was Indian.”

Dr. Clifford Trafzer

This perspective leads into a personal story told by Rose Prince Prince (Yupik, Wrangell Institute). Her anger and emotions are held in check, but clearly bubbling beneath the surface of her words and eyes: “I want to tell you where I came from. A safe, warm, loving home. I was never hungry, I was never cold. My parents took good care of me. I was well-dressed, had all that I needed, I was loved. And I was taken from that and put in a cold institutional environment, made to strip. My identity was taken away. Who I was was gone.”

One of many Indian boarding schools: Carlisle, 1885

These stories and perspectives continue throughout the film, deepening the viewer’s understanding of the cultural genocide that occurred here not that long ago. In 1819, the American Congress pass the Indian Civilization Act, designed to “civilize the Indians and, indirectly, Christianize them” (Boarding School Blues 10). Established in 1879 by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, the Carlisle Indian Boarding School in Pennsylvania was a “living experiment” in which to “destroy the cultural foundation of Native Americans so that they could enjoy full citizenship” (Boarding School Blues 14 and 101). If any of this surprises or shocks you, or if it is new information, you should spend the 80 minutes to watch Our Spirits Don’t Speak English. Begin your education anew and while watching this film, remember that it presents a decidedly negative view of the boarding school experience.

There are Indigenous peoples for whom the experience was more positive. However, most scholars accept that the over-arching experience was ultimately a negative one for most who lived through it. The range of stories and perspectives on this cannot be contained by one 80-minute documentary, but it is a good start.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDshQTBh5d4″ title=”Interview%20excerpts%20with%20Andrew%20Windy%20Boy”]

Recommended reading for anyone interested in the subject and history of Indian boarding schools:

Boarding School Blues (2006), edited by Clifford Trafzer, Jean Keller, and Lorene Sisquoc
They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School (1994) by K. Tsianina Lomawaima
Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience 1875-1928 (1995) by David Wallace Adams

Our Spirits Don’t Speak English is available from Rich-Heape Films for home or public viewing use and can also be purchased from such retailers as Amazon, but is not available to stream. This film would make an excellent addition to any curriculum discussion of American education, Native American experiences, American history, or government treatment of citizens.

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Dr. Amanda Morris is an Assistant Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’: Racism, Kidnapping, and Forced Education Down Under

‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’ (2002), directed by Phillip Noyce, is a powerful and assertive film version of this tragedy. Based on three real-life indigenous survivors of this era, known collectively as the Stolen Generation, the film is set in 1931 and tells the story of three young girls who were kidnapped on the government’s authority, forced into an “aboriginal integration” program 1,200 miles from home, and who are determined to run away and make it home on their own by following the fence. Unfortunately, the school’s director hunts them with the veracity of an early 1800s US slavemaster. He is relentless and determined, but the girls are as well.

In the United States, there were Indian Boarding Schools that coerced and invited Native American parents to release their children into the system that would transform them into good little American citizens with such useful vocations as domestic and farm labor. Sometimes, school officials resorted to kidnapping when parents obstinately refused to hand over their children. From the government’s and schools’ perspectives, this was a tremendously good deal for those pesky Indigenous creatures, but for the Native children who suffered and survived the experience, it was anything but beneficial in many circumstances. Across the ocean, in Australia, the government and like-minded citizens did much the same thing to their aboriginal population from 1869 through 1970.

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), directed by Phillip Noyce, is a powerful and assertive film version of this tragedy. Based on three real-life indigenous survivors of this era, known collectively as the Stolen Generation, the film is set in 1931 and tells the story of three young girls who were kidnapped on the government’s authority, forced into an “aboriginal integration” program 1,200 miles from home, and who are determined to run away and make it home on their own by following the fence. Unfortunately, the school’s director hunts them with the veracity of an early 1800s US slavemaster. He is relentless and determined, but the girls are as well.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbnk8wSVMaM&feature=kp”]

The film opens with a narrative voiceover in Aboriginal language by the real Molly Craig, describing what she sees from her perspective in the future: “This is a true story. Story of me, my sister Daisy and my cousin Gracie when we were little. Our people, the Jigalong mob, we were desert people then…walking all over our land. My mum told me about how the white people came to our country. They made a storehouse here at Jigalong…brought clothes and other things: flour, tobacco, tea. Gave them to us on ration day. We came there, made a camp nearby. They were building a long fence.”

The girls peer out the back window as the soldier drives them away from their family.

The voiceover accompanies cinematic views of the desert landscape, bright sun, open land, and sky. These opening two minutes set the stage, the scene, and the perspective of the film. It is clearly the director’s intention for viewers to see this moment in history from the Indigenous peoples’ perspective and to understand that this type of thing really did happen. For anyone who dislikes boldly polemical films, this approach might be a turn-off, but I encourage you to stick with it. The story itself is moving and well-acted by all players. You will end up hating Neville, the government official granted guardianship of all Aboriginal peoples by the Aborigines Act, played by Kenneth Branagh, and you will root for the girls to succeed in their quest to return home. The villain in this film, and in reality, is the government and its racist policies.

 

Kenneth Branagh as Neville (on right), with David Gulpilil as Moodoo (on left)

 

Molly Craig (Everlyn Sampi), Daisy Craig Kadibill (Tianna Sansbury), and Gracie Fields (Laura Monaghan), are considered by the government to be “half-castes,” because they have white fathers. In the opening scene where the girls and their female elders are hunting iguana, the idyllic family scene is overshadowed by the presence of a white soldier and a white tracker, who identify the girls and ride past their outback home. The viewer is meant to feel the discomfort of being watched and cataloged. The scene then shifts to a neat, wooden-cabinet-lined government office where Neville calmly and dispassionately writes out the kidnap orders for Molly, Gracie, and Daisy.

With a bold stamp on the papers, Neville explains to his secretary these new orders:

“Now this report from Constable Riggs about the three little half-caste girls at the Jigalong. . .Molly, Gracie, and Daisy, the youngest is of particular concern, she’s been promised to a full-blood. I’m authorizing their removal. They’re to be taken to Moore River as soon as possible.”

And just like that, three girls’ lives are changed in abominable ways. Constable Riggs (Jason Clarke) arrives on ration day and chases the panicked and running girls with their mother with a car, threatening to lock the mother up if the girls don’t come with him. He forcefully pulls the fighting girls away from their screaming mother and pushes them into the back seat of his car. The girls and mother wail and scream as the solder drives the car away, leaving the older women moaning on the desert land. Affecting doesn’t begin to describe this scene, especially for any woman who is a mother. Just imagine your government coming after your child in this manner.

The white soldier kidnaps Molly, Gracie, and Daisy, on official orders from Neville,
the Chief Protector of Aborigines.

 

Immediately following this scene, Neville is once again in a well-appointed room, showing photos to a group of white women who support the efforts of government-run Aboriginal integration schools such as Moore River, and explaining the rationale for the government’s racist policy of forced removal and education:

“As you know, every Aborigine born in this state comes under my control. Notice, if you will, the half-caste child. and there are ever-increasing numbers of them. Now, what is to happen to them? Are we to allow the creation of an unwanted third race? Should the coloreds be encouraged to go back to the black? Or should they be advanced to white status and be absorbed in the white population? Now time and again, I’m asked by some white men, if I marry this colored person, will our children be black? And as chief protector of Aborigines, it is my responsibility to accept or reject these marriages.” At this point in his speech, Neville changes the slide to an image of two women and a young boy before continuing.

Neville (Kenneth Branagh) explains how the Native is bred out.

“Here is the answer. Three generations. Half-blood grandmother, quadroon daughter, octoroon grandson. Now as you can see in the third generation, or third cross, no trace of Native origin is apparent. The continuing infiltration of white blood finally stamps out the black color. The Aboriginal has simply been bred out.. . .In spite of himself, the Native must be helped.”

Therein lies the reasoning behind Aboriginal integration in Australia.

At the Moore River school, where the girls are sent by Neville, the goals are integration into white society as domestic workers and farm laborers, removal of all Aboriginal language and culture from the children, and physical abuse to reinforce these goals.

Molly, Daisy, and Gracie experience their first morning at
the Moore River Native Settlement.

After the girls are fed and washed, they are given clothes. Gracie says to Molly in their own language, “New clothes!” The white female teacher leans down and says, “This is your new home. We don’t use that jabber here. You speak English.”

Downloadable clip from Australian Screen: Neville inspects Molly at Moore River.

After seeing a girl returned and punished for trying to escape, Molly lays awake at night thinking about how these people make her sick, and then she dreams of the spirit bird that her mother told her would always guide her. The next day, while everyone is at church, Molly watches from the dormitory doorway as a thunderstorm growls on the horizon. In this moment, she makes a decision. She turns back to Gracie and Daisy, who are on the bed, and says, “Come on. Get your things. We’re going.”

Gracie asks, “Where we going?”

Molly responds, “We’re going home, to mother.”

Daisy looks down at her lap and then looks up to Molly. “How we gonna get there?”

Molly ties up her small bag and says, “Walk.”

Gracie is skeptical and Daisy fears that the tracker, Moodoo, will catch them. But Molly is an experienced hunter at 14 years old and knows that the rain will cover their tracks. This is the moment.

Their absence is not discovered until bed check that night and the hunt is on.

After escaping Moore River Settlement, the girls try to make it home by following the fence
that bisects the continent to keep the rabbits on one side and farms on the other.

One of the most refreshing surprises in this story is the kindness the girls receive from both Aboriginal and white strangers whom they encounter along the way. The food and guidance they receive assists Molly’s considerable survival skills as the girls make their way North to an unknown conclusion, especially as they enter the most unforgiving and dangerous terrain of the desert. This is compelling cinema for anyone with a sympathetic heart and a mind inclined toward justice.

 

Rabbit-Proof Fence promotional poster

 

Rabbit-Proof Fence is available to stream on Netflix, Amazon, and Google Play. This film would make an excellent addition to any curriculum or class dealing with racism, government oppression, global history, indigenous peoples, family bonds, or individual powerlessness in the face of centralized power. Government oppression of indigenous peoples has been going on as long as there have been powerful central governments that want to control people, and this is worthy of acknowledgment and study because it continues today. One way to break down acceptance of such offensive and damaging control practices by governments is to watch films like Rabbit-Proof Fence, or read stories by the real people who survived such oppression, and widen our view of the world; see racism and other nefarious governmental practices for what they are and then perhaps speak out against those practices, possibly by sharing such stories with others. The more the average citizen truly knows and understands, the less likely she is to just blindly accept what the government claims is good for her. And isn’t that one of the more noble and beneficial goals of education?

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Dr. Amanda Morris is an Assistant Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

 

‘American Indian Comedy Slam’: “Fighting hundreds of years of stereotypes”

While these Native American comedians are trained and practiced in Western stand-up forms, they are adept at mediating between the worlds of indigenous experiences and Euramerican ignorance of the mess, mayhem, and trauma of our shared histories. Native American stand-up comedy performances of today are commissioned and composed for a public purpose, as well as sharing an outsider status as simply entertainment rather than powerful and convincing forms of discourse that can create social and cultural change.

“Being around Indian people, there’s always laughter even in times of stress, sorrow, sadness, there’s always that undercurrent of humor. There’s something spiritual. There’s always something funny about it because joviality, lightness, laughter, they say laughter is the language of God. . . We’re fighting hundreds of years of stereotypes just by the fact that we’re up here.”

— Charlie Hill (intro to American Indian Comedy Slam)

 

Charlie Hill (Oneida), the “godfather” of Native American stand-up comedy

In 2009, for the first time ever, six Indigenous stand-up comedians gathered for a 90-minute performance, hosted and filmed by Showtime for their LOL Comedy Series. The American Indian Comedy Slam was a groundbreaking effort on the part of these Native comics to widen their audience and appeal. I’m still waiting for a second Slam that will hopefully feature some Indigenous women comics, but this initial show was an important first step toward decolonizing American minds about the existence and humor of living Indigenous peoples of the North American continent.

[youtube_sc url=” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWW28eY5Du4″]

Native American stand-up comedy teases the audience, relies on self-deprecation for much of its humor, incorporates stories “built on the oral tradition,” and as a form of public discourse goes beyond entertainment into the persuasive realm by arguing for Native peoples’ inherent right to survival and sovereignty in the 21st century. As a result, Native American stand-up comedy potentially functions as a resistance strategy for cultural survival and as a criticism of mainstream culture, politics, and beliefs about First Nations peoples. Implicit in this resistance and criticism is praise for the living realities experienced by indigenous peoples. In fact, sometimes the praise and blame are explicit in Native American stand-up, as Howie Miller, Jim Ruel, Charlie Hill, Vaughn Eaglebear, JR Redwater, and Marc Yaffee show in their Comedy Slam performances.

The comics from left: Larry Omaha, JR Redwater, Jim Ruel Charlie Hill, Marc Yaffee, Vaughn Eaglebear, Howie Miller

 

While these Native American comedians are trained and practiced in Western stand-up forms, they are adept at mediating between the worlds of indigenous experiences and Euramerican ignorance of the mess, mayhem, and trauma of our shared histories. Native American stand-up comedy performances of today are commissioned and composed for a public purpose, as well as sharing an outsider status as simply entertainment rather than powerful and convincing forms of discourse that can create social and cultural change. These comedians are enacting more than just a superficial performance for entertainment, although that is certainly one of the objectives—to make people laugh.

At one point, Vaughn Eaglebear (Colville) comes onstage and says, “When I was in college, I took a Native American Studies class. . .I was the only Native American in the class. . .(long pause). . .I got a C.” At this point, the audience laughs sympathetically, to which Vaughn follows up with, “I should’ve cheated off that little Asian girl.”

Vaughn Eaglebear (Colville)

Right after Vaughn, JR Redwater (Hunkpapa Lakota) first explains heyokas in his individual video interview introduction: “We have these special individuals in my culture that are called heyokas and they’re sacred clowns. We don’t have to take life so seriously, it’s okay to laugh and it’s okay to joke around, and so these people were revered in our culture to that level and so, I always believed that like, I’m a modern day heyoka.”

JR Redwater (Lakota)

Each comic has his own video introduction during which he shares some personal history and background, as well as addressing the problem of stereotypes and the importance of comedy in reversing those ideas.

In Drew Hayden Taylor’s Me Funny (2005), Ian Ferguson writes, “The most surprising thing for most non-Natives is that Indians are funny in the first place” (127). Darby Li Po Price pre-dates Feguson’s sentiments in “Laughing Without Reservation: Indian Standup Comedians” (1998) from his very first line: “Contrary to the dominant conception of Indians as humorless, stoic, and tragic, humor and comedy have always been central to Native American cultures” (American Indian Culture and Research Journal 255). Cherokee intellectual Jace Weaver takes up the existence of Native peoples, writing in his introduction to That the People Might Live, “It is important that Native cultures be seen as living, dynamic cultures” (8) as opposed to the colonialist assumptions of cultural stasis and death: “It is a vision of the ‘Indian as corpse,’ and the stasis box is only a thinly disguised coffin. An extinct people do not change. Their story is complete” (18). In America especially, we have become disturbingly comfortable with this idea and perhaps this might be one of the reasons why, when we are confronted with Native American comedians exploring issues that touch on this sacred assumption, that we’re not quite sure how to react. Surely, not with laughter?! Thomas King actually offers a wise perspective on this, writing, “There are probably cultural differences in humour, but I suspect what makes Native people laugh is pretty much what makes all people laugh. . .We are at our best when we laugh at ourselves” (Me Funny 181).

Jim Ruel (Ojibwe) can be followed on Twitter @nativecomedian

If more people experience the comic stories of American Indian comedians where serious ideas are planted through the back door and not the frontal lobe, then over time American conceptions of Native peoples may change. For instance, one outcome might be that more people realize that indigenous peoples are still present and visible and are not vanished relics of the past. And quite frankly, getting these ideas through stand-up comedy is a lot more fun than reading a history textbook. Laughter opens up the brain and unlocks the back door, but even when laughter isn’t front and center, the ideas still penetrate.

Please consider watching the American Indian Comedy Slam, sharing the performances with friends and colleagues, and if you teach, incorporating this 90-minute movie into your class. My students love these comedians because they are accessible, even when they are giving us that spiritual spanking that they say we Americans deserve.

Watch the entire show for free: http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi278898969?ref_=tt_pv_vi_1

Note: Charlie Hill of the Oneida Nation, considered by many of today’s Native American stand-up comics to be the “godfather” of Native American stand-up comedy, walked on in December 2013.  Read Vaughn Eaglebear’s thank you letter to Charlie Hill at Indian Country Today Media Network.

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Dr. Amanda Morris is an Assistant Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.

“How do we forgive our fathers?”: Forgiveness and Healing in ‘Smoke Signals’

After the film’s opening fire aftermath scene, viewers are introduced more thoroughly to Arnold Joseph, who cut his hair in mourning after the fire and eventually disappeared, and to Thomas and Victor as young men: “Me and Victor? We were children born of flame and ash,” Thomas narrates. Scenes of reservation life also unfold with a quiet humor, punctuated by music: parallel scenes of Victor eating frybread with his mother, Arlene (Tantoo Cardinal, Metis), and Thomas eating dinner with his grandmother (Monique Mojica, Kuna and Rappahannock); flashback scenes of Victor and Thomas as kids and of Victor with Arnold before he disappeared; the ubiquitous rez traffic and weather reporter, Lester Falls Apart; and two women driving a car in reverse down a paved rez road.

Known as the first full-length feature film to be almost entirely written, directed, co-produced, and acted by Native Americans, Smoke Signals (1998) is a quintessential road movie that attempts to investigate the complex nature of Indigenous relationships, cultures, and contemporary realities, especially the relationship between Native American fathers and sons. On its surface, this is a story about Victor Joseph (Adam Beach, Saulteaux) a young Native man from the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation in Idaho who has hated his father almost all his life and is trying to forgive him. When Victor finds out early in the film that his father, Arnold, has died, he and his childhood friend, Thomas Builds-the-Fire (Evan Adams, Sliammon First Nation) embark on a journey to collect his father’s ashes. As the journey progresses, the two young men grapple with the limitations of forgiveness, even as Victor begins to heal.

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At the opening of the film, Thomas (Adams) narrates over the image of a burning house: “On the 4th of July, 1976, my mother and father celebrated white people’s independence by holding the largest house party in C’oeur d’Alene tribal history. I mean every Indian in the world was there. And then at three in the mornin’, after everyone had passed out or fallen asleep on couches, on chairs, on beds, on the floor, a fire rose up like General George Armstrong Custer and swallowed up my mother and father. I don’t remember that fire, I only have the stories. And in every one of those stories, I could fly.” This last statement is said over the image of a wrapped baby being thrown out of a second story window.

As the drums and chanting rise in the background, the camera shifts to a long-haired man running and diving to catch the falling baby.  Thomas’ narration continues as we see the man gaze down at the infant: “I was just a baby when Arnold Joseph saved me from that fire and delivered me into the hands of my grandmother.”

The morning after the fire. From left: Monique Mojica, Gary Farmer, Tantoo Cardinal

In the morning, the families are gathered around the pile of ash that used to be Thomas’ house and parents and his grandmother says to Arnold, Victor’s father, “You saved my grandson’s life. . .you did a good thing.” Arnold (Gary Farmer, Cayuga) responds with tears in his eyes, “I didn’t mean to.”

This moment of tension and the sad levity brought on by Arnold’s admission that he didn’t mean to do good sets the tone for the entire film. Humor is always dancing around the edges of anger, sadness, and despair in Smoke Signals, directed by Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho). Ten years after the release of the film, Eyre sat down for an interview with David Hofstede for Cowboys and Indians magazine. Hofstede notes that this is still his best known film. Eyre responds:

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” he says, with a mix of pride and resignation. “On the good side it’s a wonderful story about forgiveness, and I think in 20 years it will hold up. I’ve made several more movies since then, and I think I’ve done some better work, but Smoke Signals is still the one everyone remembers best. I wonder if I’ll be known better for a movie after that, but either way, I’m fine.”

Director Chris Eyre

As the winner of several major films awards including a Filmmaker’s Award and Audience Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and winner of the Best Debut Performance from the Independent Spirit Awards, Smoke Signals has become a well-recognized, almost canonical, Native American film. It is most likely the film you have seen if you have seen a Native American film featuring the perspective, storytelling, and humor of contemporary Native peoples.

After the film’s opening fire aftermath scene, viewers are introduced more thoroughly to Arnold Joseph, who cut his hair in mourning after the fire and eventually disappeared, and to Thomas and Victor as young men: “Me and Victor? We were children born of flame and ash,” Thomas narrates. Scenes of reservation life also unfold with a quiet humor, punctuated by music: parallel scenes of Victor eating frybread with his mother, Arlene (Tantoo Cardinal, Metis), and Thomas eating dinner with his grandmother (Monique Mojica, Kuna and Rappahannock); flashback scenes of Victor and Thomas as kids and of Victor with Arnold before he disappeared; the ubiquitous rez traffic and weather reporter, Lester Falls Apart; and two women driving a car in reverse down a paved rez road.

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On the bus to Arizona, Victor admonishes Thomas for being too nice and gullible, saying, “Just remember Thomas, you can’t trust anybody.” Victor’s hard edges are softened over the course of the film by Thomas’ stories, which are primarily about Arnold. Unfortunately, Thomas’ stories mostly irritate and upset Victor, bringing on hurtful memories from childhood such as the morning that Victor witnessed Arnold hit Arlene and leave. But in the end, it is Thomas’ stories and Victor’s acceptance of his father’s shortcomings that opens the space for forgiveness and healing.

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Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval writes about fatherhood and forgiveness in his Spring 2008 Wicazo-sa Review article, “Teaching Smoke Signals: Fatherhood, Forgiveness, and ‘Freedom’”: “Forgiveness is not a magical panacea and those who forgive are not morally or ethically superior to those who do not. Forgiveness can potentially transform or free people from anger, hate, and rage, however. . .Victor exemplifies this process” (125).

Victor (Adam Beach) and Thomas (Evan Adams)

The moment Victor finds out from Suzy Song (Irene Bedard, Inupiat/Inuit/Metis) why that fire started all those years ago, the one that Arnold saved Thomas from, is the moment his hate begins to wither. Facts muddle memories for him and he begins to see his father in a new and more complicated light. Learning the truth eventually frees Victor from his unending grudge toward his father and his irritation with Thomas.

If you have seen this film before, consider watching it again with new eyes. It has aged well and remains relevant as a story and as an insightful piece about contemporary Native Americans. Smoke Signals is a particularly useful film to incorporate into any class where Native peoples and cultures are being discussed – students respond well to the humor and the central theme of forgiveness. The film is available for streaming on Netflix and Amazon.com.

Thomas recites Dick Lourie’s poem, “Forgiving Our Fathers,” at the end of the film and those words seem appropriate to end this review:

“How do we forgive our fathers?

Maybe in a dream

Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often or

forever when we were little?

. . .

Do we forgive our fathers in our age or in theirs or in their

deaths, saying it to them, or not saying it?

If we forgive our fathers, what else is left?”

 

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Dr. Amanda Morris is an Assistant Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.