A Reflection on Native Cinema and Manifesto for My own Works (Conclusion)

By Ernest M. Whiteman III

"We Have Become God's Madmen"   

Some while back, I made a short film titled, “Angel in Flight” about a hit man living in the city. It was more a character study done in the documentary “self-portrait” style. I had my classmates and film school friends play roles in the short.  They played the targets of this hit man. I always feel a touch of shyness when the short is screened as I played the hit man. (The image for this article is a screen capture from that movie.) The imagery of angels has always fascinated me. Most people tend not to get that angels are very much like the samurai of ancient Japan. They served their master to the fullest. This includes, at times, doing the killing. So, what would it take for a man to justify his killing for a boss? This idea has helped me finish screenplays based on this Invincible Arapaho Hit Man.

I am sure that there have been, and will continue to be, movies based on the near-supernatural abilities of the hit man; one so good at what he does, he can almost disappear and reappear at will.  His skill with the multiple tools of the trade are unmatched.  The only trait that makes my character unique is that he is Northern Arapaho.  Before I can achieve the hallmark status of an artistic movie creature, I need to go through the birthing pains of fantasy and fiction.  Which brings me to my aim of becoming the first “Indian Sell Out”.

The friends and classmates that played the victims were of that “film is art/film is so important” pretense. I always feel, when I screen the short again, that I am subconsciously clearing the path for my movie making ideology. My Arapaho character, my idea of what a Native in a film should be right now, is blasting away those preconceived notions of art and expectation, with a well-placed bullet between the eyes. 

No one wants a modern Native American. No one even wants a fantastical Indian. The industry keeps slipping back to the portrayals of the beads and feathers and tee pees because in all honesty, that is what they prefer.  Dealing with the “dead” Indian is easier than dealing with the living Natives.  The historical Indian does not protest stereotypical imagery, they do not assert their rights as contemporary human beings. But we are not those Indians.  They do not see the Arapaho, the Navajo, the Lakota, the Shawnee, the Cherokee, nor any of the over three hundred still living  tribes in North American today.  No one ever sees Indians.

If the power to represent ourselves is gone or taken, the industry is then free to indulge in Indian imagery without guilt or defiance. They could speak freely about the ancient culture as if they are the experts since the public consciousness accepts there is no living Native culture, no one to object or dispute. They can plaster war-bonneted Chiefs on the walls and there will be no protest.  People all over the U.S. could speak for Natives because now, they are indeed viewed as an extinct civilization in these movies.  That will be the final accomplishment.

With all Indians gone there will be a void left by the absence. It is a void that they will gladly fill.  But they can only try.  The Indians they imagined were better than the actual Natives that still live.  These “Indians” do not talk back or demand rights or to be treated as a living, breathing, evolving, contemporary society.  The Indians of those old film are constructs meant to keep Native peoples from expressing a voice, taking control, or taking power. Constructs that need to continually be defeated to raise the American identity. As with all myths that are conjured to replace this vanishing race, this also conjures the wrong myths, of the silent and deadly Indians that wait and attack without warning.  And in those western movies, even today, no one ever sees Indians.

I recently watched Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man again and had to wonder if these non-Native directors think they are doing us Natives some kind of favor?  While being non-Native does not necessarily exclude one from participating in the production of Native movies, it does however exclude one from speaking  for Natives.  Which is a hard line to stand.  Because on one hand, when Natives begin to speak for themselves in film, where does that leave the non-Native?  On the other we never presume  a Native American can speak for the African-American experience of slavery in American, nor the Jewish experience of the Holocaust.  Which surprises me when people presume they can speak for the Native American experience and it passes, by being couched in “accurate and respectful” portrayals.  Chief Illinewek is a “accurate and respectful” portrayal, remember?  I guess I am just tired of my Native heritage and history being the providence of non-Natives.

So, there you have it. The sum of all my wisdom on the topic.  So now, I feel I have escaped from the artistic trappings of film.  As a result, I have more freedom as a movie-maker.  I do not bury my heritage but neither do I exploit it.  I can tackle all kinds of topics and stories without feeling the pressure to conform to rigid artistic restriction nor do I have to couch it in Indian constructs.  I also feel that I am not leaving my heritage behind because my Northern Arapaho blood is in me and that is something no one  can take away.

People constantly ask me what kind of film director I want to be; I have no pat answer.  In short, I simply tell them that I want to become the first Indian Sellout.  The one Native director that happily makes the studio product, if only to continue working.  Which goes back to that idea of self-representation by not providing them with the Indian imagery they want, but representing myself as a movie director.  While other Native directors may say they want that too, no one ever really means it. No one want to be considered the “sellout”, especially when it comes to Native American Cinema, when it comes to “art.”  It seems insulting almost to consider it.  I happily accept it.  I want success in my movie making or it hardly seems worth doing it if you cannot reach as far as you can.  Some how, to succeed in Native Cinema has suddenly come to mean turning “non-Indian.”

Successful Native directors and actors owe me nothing but their generosity, helpfulness, and their talents, if I ever get lucky enough to work with the Graham Greene’s or the Sheila Tousey’s.  We owe each other humility and compassion because it has been a long struggle to get us all to this place.  Nothing more, nothing less.  It remains up to each Native actor, director, writer, or producer to best decide for themselves on how to give back, not to berate others for not doing so, or slighting one another because a film is not art.  If it means casting off the beads and feathers to keep working, then God bless them.  That is what we all wanted to begin with.

I am a movie-maker. Which in itself is a very difficult vocation.  Worse yet, I am a Native Movie Maker, that moniker alone nearly renders me invisible.  In this industry, no one ever really  sees Indians.

Besides, no matter my argument, I can never win this or prevail in convincing you, the reader, that film is not art.  You will think what you want regardless of my success or failure in the movie making business.  Yet, it is my ideas that do serve to keep me grounded in this business that recycles better than any environmentally conscious person can hope to.  I wear my influences on my sleeve because in the end that is what influenced me, my dreams, and ambitions, that I made the choice to pursue this first, best destiny. 

Some people still ask, what kind of director do I want to be?  It is hard to explain and make clear other than telling you what I want to do  with my movies; this is the kind of director I want to be:

What Orson Welles did with Citizen Kane and F For Fake;
What Kurt Wimmer did with Equilibrium;
What Wim Wenders did with Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas, The Buena Vista Social Club and Until the End of the World;
What Julie Taymor did with Titus;
What Scorsese did with Goodfellas, The Color of Money, and The Last Temptation of Christ;
What M. Night Shyamalan did with Unbreakable;
What Steven Soderberg did with Out of Sight, The Limey and Bubble;
What Ridley Scott did with Alien and Blade Runner;
What Michael Mann did with Manhunter, Heat, and Collateral;
What Francis Ford Coppola did with The Godfather Saga; 

What Niki Caro did with Whale Rider;
What Luc Besson did with Leon: The Professional;
What Jodie Foster did with Little Man Tate;
What Sofia Coppola did with Lost in Translation;
What George P. Cosmatos did with Tombstone;
What John Carpenter did with Elvis, The Thing, Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China;
What Sergio Leone  did with The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Morricone did with The Ecstacy of Gold;
What Jean-Pierre Melville did with Le Samoürai;
What Akira Kurosawa did with Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Red Beard, Ikiru, Ran and Rashomon;
What Ang Lee did with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain, and yes, Hulk;
What Christopher Nolan did with Memento, Batman Begins, and The Prestige;
What John Woo did with The Killer, Hard Boiled, Face/Off and what he will do with The Battle of Red Cliffs;
What Zhang Yimou did with The Road Home, Raise the Red Lantern, Hero, Not One Less, House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower;

What Robert Rodriguez did with Sin City and Once Upon a Time in Mexico, that is what I want to be;

What George Lucas did with Revenge of the Sith, that is what I want to be; 

What Rodriguez did with El Mariachi and Desperado, what Lucas did with Star Wars: A New Hope, that is what I want to be; 

What Kenneth Branagh did with Henry V, Hamlet, a Midwinter’s Tale, and The Magic Flute, that is the kind of director I want to be.

What they did with movies goes beyond ethnicity and connects to that part of me that just gets giddy all over again and excited about making movies.  And in the end, after I have put out five or six good features, I know that it will all have been worth it.  Then, people will not be calling me an Indian Director, or even a Native Director.  I will simply be Ernest M. Whiteman III, Director.  Because Native Americans are changing in film and no one ever sees Indians.    

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Sources and Recommend Reading:
“Invisible Natives: Myth & Identity in the American Western”  Armando José Prats, Cornell University Press, 2002

“Indians in Unexpected Places,”  Phillip J. Deloria, University Press of Kansas, 2004 

“Independent Filmmaking with Sherman Alexie (Interview)  by John Nesbit, Toxic Universe.Com, 10/17/2002
www.culturedose.net/review.php?aid=1000346 

“Three or More Reasons Why Independent Filmmaking Will Survive”  by Sherman Alexie, Movie Maker Magazine #49, Winter 2003
http://www.moviemaker.com/magazine/editorial.php?id=393 

Robert Rodriguez’s New Toy”  by Mel Rodriguez, Movie Maker Magazine, #51, Summer 2003 http://www.moviemaker.com/magazine/editorial.php?id=124 

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Read the entire series…

Part One:  No One Ever Sees Indians: The Pledge
Part Two:  No One Ever Sees Indians: “The Turn”
Part Three:  No One Ever Sees Indians: "On Stealing a Native Identity"
Part Four: No One Ever Sees Indians: “The Prestige”