It's family day at the Mercedes Benz Factory outlet in Rastatt, Germany. Three real North American Indians and three Mexican Aztec Indians are in attendance: the latter three provide the dancing show.

I am showing my film Pow Wow whereas the other two were hired to help sell crafts at the German owned Indian craft tables.

Three thousand people walk past the craft tables, watch my film, and attend the Aztec fire dance presentation. Taking up the largest area is a roped off museum style display with mannequins dressed like plains Indians, and inside the tipi is Berndt Briefs (not his real name).

He turns to me, beats his chest and says something in what sounds like Klingon. He quickly translates, "my name" he says, "is Apple Inside Out." A quick thought runs through my mind of what an apple really is, it's an Indian who is white on the inside and … well, I think you get the picture.

He reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a laminated Indian Name Certificate from the Muskogee Creek Nation, he was named by Chief Larry Nichols of the Blackwater Band of Lower Muskogee(Heilbronn), Germany. David Redbird Baker, an Ojibway living in Germany because he can get the better medicine for his heart condition, says that Apple Inside Out is a classic example of the hobbyist here in Germany, "trying to be something he's not."

Earlier in the day, Apple Inside Out was in the tipi displaying to school children how to make a fire with two sticks, then he showed the kids how to make a fire with only a stone and a dry chunk of buffalo poo.

When David Redbird attends the German hobby pow wows he feels a bit like a cigar store Indian. "If they didn't rub my belly for good luck then they would at  least get my opinion about it." He adds with a laugh, "I just close my eyes  until I get my money."

David is invited to dance at the German pow wows as an incentive for the locals to attend. "Because, he quips, "who really wants to pay 8 or 12 euro to see only Germans dance pow wow?"

Inside another tipi, sits another hobbyist. "My name is Spirit Walker, Ich bin immer nicht ganz da,  I am not always there, my spirit travels," he said. The way in which he spoke reminded me of Ten Bears, from Dances with Wolves.

Here in Germany the sun sets in the western sky like anywhere else, but almost deliberately. Germany is a land of ordnung, to do something here, one must do it well. Since being here, I hitch-hike differently, I go to an official German hitch-hiking website.

A German soldier I caught a ride with from Mannheim to Dortmund, on the way to visit David Baker, said "when the world thinks of Germany, they think heil Hitler,  but not today, not us. We think, that we make it better."

Identity is one of the issues on the German pow wow trail—what's your Indian name they ask each other? What does your design mean? And from which Indian Nation does it come from? Identitifying with an Indian Nation gives them some separation to their own nation and nation's history. "But look at America and Canada," they say, "what they did to the Indians." I nod.

Larry Nichols is Muskogee Creek and makes it his job to fight the Indian cliches and those who promote it.

Spirit Walker shows me his knife, something he made when he was 15 years old. "I have been in the Indianer hobby for 30 years," he says. The knife he shows me is made with a badger's jaw for the handle, and the blade is sharpened down metal. "I saw it in a photograph of the Cheyenne dog soldiers." He holds it high. Smiles.

When David speaks to the crowds in Germany, he speaks candidly about his experiences at boarding School. "Some people look at me and can hardly believe that I had my mouth washed out with soap if I spoke my own language. It's unbelieveable but true, that's hatred, unbelievavle but true."

"Questions about our Indian identity are always very sincere in Germany," Davids continues. "We had our worlds flipped upside down, and when the so-called Apple Inside Out called me and wanted me to speak at his natural history museum, I gladly went."

Spirit Walker points to a bow, quiver and arrows he made from photos he took at the Linden Museum in Stuttgart. "This is the exact replica of the Lakota bow, quiver and arrow, from around 1870." The quillwork design is geometric and with it's natural plant dye stain, it's immaculate. I am quickly carried away in my mind to a rider on the high open plains, chasing down a Buffalo, reaching back for an arrow.

In my mind's eye, the rider gives chase through a distant dusty sunset. The Buffalo slides to a halt, past my cameraman mind.

He points proudly at his chest, "A Lakota man, came to me and he took my hands and said that I had the power in my hands for art and he encouraged me to continue. He told me if the Indian ways could bring me peace and purpose then, my heart was in the right place."

"What else can an Indian say?" David grins, "but that their heart is in the right place, and that they're walking in beauty."

Identification with North American Indian culture is not really offensive but only questionable.

"For reasons," David explains, "of self promotion. Apple Inside Out hired me for his museum, but then when we started to have a few beer, he wanted to talk me down in price for the workshop. Our people have been taken advantage of too many times, and this was an all too familiar of a fashion. So I walked out, called my wife and I went home. He wants to identify, but can't identify with our cultural sensitivity."

Chief Larry Nichols says this character never earned the name, "he wanted the name because he felt like his heart was red."

Germans are genuinely interested in the Indian culture, so much so that they even taken to learning Indian languages. Larry teaches Creek if there is enough interest.

There have even been people who look Indian but are not Indian, and still claim to be Indian, even so far as to claim to be descendants of Geronimo.

"Some fall for the imposter here." Larry says, "we have caught several imposters. They have their stories worked out right down to the name of their fictional Indian grandparents, and their story is believable and on track with our experiences in residential school, up to the contemporary racism against Indians."

The German people's only real interest in Indians is the clichè, Indian on horseback. A real Indian is not accepted until he looks like something he's not, a part of the cliché.

In the movie Thunderheart,  the FBI character "Cooch" says that we are a conquered people. But we're not. We're a treatied people, with rights like any independent nation. For co-operation, collaboration and co-existence. Instead we have been intimidated, interferred with, interned and institutionalized.

Chief Nichols says, "There is alot of opportunity for our North American Indian youth, the possibilities are endless."

I recall an elder who spoke at a treaty governance gathering on my reserve. He said, "we are not the descendants of a once proud race of people, we are the same people."

"So," Chief Nichols says. "The struggle continues, for respect. The opportunity is there for us to represent ourselves as who we are."