What typifies most westerns, from the early silent films to today, has always been the white man becoming an Indian.  And by doing so, Natives are further led toward extinction while promoting this new amalgam as the American identity.  A white that becomes a better Indian than the Indian has occurred in numerous western movies.

While Dances with Wolves  saw a more accurate Native American representation it was still, in the end, a movie about a white man’s experience among a “vanishing race.”   Yet again, a white man “becomes” Indian only to see the Indians vanishing as Dances with Wolves  rides on, new identity intact.  Armando Prats illustrates this in his book when he writes, “Such an authorization of the hero’s Indianness functions not to establish the Indian’s humanity, or to reveal something like the autochthonous wisdom that recognizes a common bond with the white man.  Instead, it tends to announce the almost obligatory moment of perspicacity …whereby the Indian, conceding his imminent doom, defers to this privileged white man.” 

The idea of assuming a Native Identity goes back to the earliest westerns, including the much-loved Little Big Man.   Prats examines a scene where Jack Cabbe (Dustin Hoffman) returns to the Cheyenne and enters the lodge of Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George), now blinded, and hears of the numerous deaths at the hand of the white man.   Jack cries out against the white man. While it shows Crabbe’s sympathy for the Cheyenne and his being a part of the tribe, as Prats writes, “It is in part his censure of the white man that empowers Jack to become …the narrator.   But such denunciations also exonerate him from any possible blame for the actions of his race.”    

I believe it still continues to this day.  The idea that to lay sympathy at the Native’s door exonerates one from the continued Native cultural death their race caused.  Yet, throughout the history of the movies, this has been happening.  In the early films like Allegheny Uprising  wherein John Wayne becomes the most powerful Indian fighter for having lived among them, it is for a much different reason than that of Dances with Wolves,  that of the destruction of the Indian.  Even using laughable “Indian Techniques” to fight and kill more Indians with such tricks as painting himself black and wearing a bandana while swinging out of trees to attack the war parties from above. 

Aramnado Prats writes, and this could also include the characters of Little Big Man,  Dances with Wolves,  Jeremiah Johnson and even Billy Jack, “He embraces—and becomes—all that is Indian—all of it, without exception or condition; yet somehow he must never be the native’s own authenticity.  He must disclaim his whiteness, but he must never quite abrogate it.” 

For no matter how “Indian” the white man becomes, he can never be fully Native American.   No matter how much “Indian knowledge” he proclaims, it will never erase what has happened to Native peoples.   Yet, so many are willing to trade off their heritage to be noticed as a willing participant in the “Indian Experience” and being such Experts of Indian-ness, this has led to a collective distrust for Native Americans to tell their own stories. 

It’s as if the taking of a Native Identity serves two ends—the first, to exonerate the white man for the actions of his race, and secondly to assert a form of expertise about Native Americans which can only be attained from taking their identity In the  end neither serves no purpose for Natives and serves, once again, to de-power their voice and attempts at self-representation. 

-o- 

I have only been asked once to teach a film making course.  My experiences and expertise in the medium can be called questionable, though I do look forward to speaking with classes about current Native American Cinema.  My experience is at once similar and drastically different from other Native movie makers but our goal should be a common one; more Native American self-representation and first-voice in film and media. 

That means taking control of those stereotypes, but be not afraid to take on the genre work.  All this serves to raise the visibility of Native Americans in film and mainstream media.  Which is the first step.           

As the current coordinator of  Chicago’s First Nations Film and Video Festival, I have personally seen hundreds of films and videos that lead me to believe that no one can tell the Native American experience better than a Native American.  Native moviemakers have tackled a number of issues in contemporary society, attempted numerous different genres.  But that paternalistic attitude still seems to exist.  Many are unaccustomed to seeing Native Americans interact with modern society. 

For example, when we screened Chris Eyre’s A Thousand Roads,  there is a segment about a young Inupiat girl returning to Baro, Alaska to live with relatives she has just met while her mother serves overseas.   I noticed the same reaction every time one particular scene comes on screen.  The scene shows the girl’s cousins playing a Star Wars  video game and every time the movie showed the kids playing the game, with the too-familiar music and light-saber sound effects, there was an audible chuckle that roiled through the audience. 

Phillip Deloria’s book, Indians in Unexpected Places,  examines what he terms “The Chuckle” when he shows a photograph titled “Red Woman at the Salon.”   The photograph depicts an Indian woman in full buckskin dress regalia and wrapped braids sitting under a chrome, fifties-style hair dryer, getting her fingernails buffed.   Deloria points out that every time the photo is shown to the class in which he speaks it is greeted with a chuckle. 

Deloria goes on to explain that most people are still not used to seeing Indians interact with such modern conveniences and, rather than appear to be racist, they stifle their reaction with a chuckle.  I have seen this chuckle happen a lot with audiences that have seen that particular scene from A Thousand Roads. 

Indian kids are not supposed to play video games, or watch standard Hollywood fare, read comic books, or watch too much television.  They are not supposed to think that every kid in America grows up in the splendor that they do.  To believe they are no different from the kids they see on TV and in movies.  Indians are supposed to be mystical, and mythical, and at the same time violent and warlike and unable to grasp modern technology, such as making movies about their lives.  That is the perception we have had to endure for so long.

 -o- 

Authorship of Expertise is an idea that I have come up with which examines how a person justifies their expertise on a topic by knowingly accepting a situation and sometimes contributing to the perpetuation of that situation.  It is this justification of expertise that keeps them from being culpable in that situation.  And how this idea pertains to Native Cinema is the on-going acceptance of non-Native film makers creating movies about Native Americans.  That, more awareness on Native society is raised because Spielberg makes Into the West  than by a young Northern Arapaho man wanting to make an action film.  And we all seem to accept that. 

The industry, first and foremost a business, tends to not trust Native Americans to deal honestly with Native American imagery and motifs.  It is this paternalistic attitude which continues the trend of the Costners and the Spielbergs and Ted Turners in continual rendering of Native American history while never dealing with the contemporary society. 

I feel that the best way to bypass this is by more Native Control over their movies and imagery.  For once, let Native Americans speak on their own behalf, much like African-American and Latino movie makers do.  It seems that the Native Experience is ruled out in favor of a non-Native “expertise” about Native America.  As noted author Sherman Alexie expressed about Schindler’s List  in an interview on the website, Toxic Universe.com, “Steven Spielberg was not in Germany.  Schindler was a metaphor for something else entirely, and I think it was a fraud of a movie.  I think E.T. is a much more honest movie …than Schindler’s List.  E.T. is much closer to Steven Spielberg than Schindler’s List.” 

When an author creates a movie, he or she should be as close to the source as possible, as Alexie points out.  Natives should make movies about the Native experience.  No who we were but who we are now.  That is the experience we live.  Because obviously, Spielberg was never in Germany during WWII, and Natives today never lived through Manifest Destiny in the late 1800's.  Which is why there seems to be no demand for more Native Americans to make more movies in Hollywood, because we would have to deman that same authenticity and expertise from all other movie makers. 

Aramnado Prat once again writes; “The Indian Western, …would keep the Indian all but invisible, yet it must still ‘present’ him somehow-and with a purpose.  It makes him present so that it may render him absent.   More over, the conqueror must produce an Other whose destruction is not only assured but justified.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Coming later this week…

Part Four: "The Prestige"
We've got the power…now's the time to use it

Part One: No One Ever Sees Indians: The Pledge
Part Two: No One Ever Sees Indians: “The Turn”