Skagit Valley Herald
January 17, 2008
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At first, three teens from the Swinomish Reservation thought making  a movie with Longhouse Media’s Native Lens project  was a great ploy to get out of drug court.

But as they delved deeper into the project, Travis Tom and Cody Cayou, both 16, and Nick Clark, 17, began to learn about the history of the Swinomish and March Point, land that was once part of the Swinomish Reservation and now is home to two refineries.

“We all grew up on the Swinomish Reservation, but we didn’t know a thing about March Point,” said Cayou, narrating the teens’ documentary, March Point.

March Point  and five other short films created by native youth will be shown Saturday as part of the Native Experience in Film Festival at the Swinomish Reservation. The teens are from the Swinomish, Lummi, Muckleshoot, Suquamish and Tulalip tribes.

The festival is sponsored by the Skagit County Historical Museum. It also will feature professional actors, writers and directors, including Elaine Miles, famous for acting in the Emmy-winning television show Northern Exposure; award-winning actor Robert Guthrie; and writer and director Rick Stevenson of the feature-length film Expiration Date.

“This is the greatest opportunity to see new ideas and meet the people doing them,” said Brian Young, an independent filmmaker based in Skagit County, who will be moderating the panel discussions at the festival. “And you don’t even have to leave the county.”

Stevenson’s film Expiration Date,  which received the American Indian Film Festival’s 2006 awards for Best Film and Best Actor, also will be shown at the festival.

In addition, professional performers, filmmakers and teens will discuss their films and the role that indigenous filmmakers and actors play in mainstream and independent movies. The discussions are aimed at shining a light on what goes on behind the cameras and in the minds of filmmakers and actors, organizers say.

“They are going to see the up-and-coming filmmakers and who knows where they are going to go,” Young said.

Many films created by Native Americans tell stories about journeys, with themes that are connected in some way to their characters’ environments, said Tracy Rector, executive director and co-founder of Longhouse Media’s Native Lens program.

In Stevenson’s quirky comedic drama Expiration Date, Guthrie’s character, Charlie Silvercloud, struggles with a stark perception of his destiny and tries to face down his fears.

Actress Dee Wallace, known for her role in the 1982 Steven Spielberg film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, plays Charlie’s mother.

“Charlie is detached from his culture but haunted by it nonetheless,” Guthrie said in a prepared statement from the film’s press kit. “His mother allows him to be Indian and in that sense of Indian, Charlie finally becomes a man.”

Inaccurate Stereotypes
Historians and moviemakers say stories that accurately portray Native Americans are the exception, not the rule. Throughout the history of film, moviemakers have either misrepresented natives or stereotyped them as stoic Indians, drunken buffoons or blood-thirsty villains on the warpath.

Most of those actors weren’t even Indian, he said.

“Originally, you had your white guys in red makeup or a Hispanic guy,” Young said.

Only in the past 20 years have Native American actors and filmmakers found roles and projects that portray their cultures honestly and respectfully, Young said.

Some of those stereotypes still exist and are opposite of what Rector said she sees in the many cultures she interacts with as part of Longhouse Media’s Native Lens project.

In 2003, Rector and Annie Silverstein partnered with the Swinomish Tribal Community and founded Native Lens. The women’s organization, Longhouse Media, encourages indigenous people to use film for self-expression, preserve their culture and prompt social change. The goal for Native Lens is to bring filmmaking to Native youth.

So far, they’ve worked with 25 Swinomish teens and a total of 550 teens from indigenous cultures from Washington to New Mexico.

Miles, who worked with writers and directors on Northern Exposure  to make her character Marilyn Whirlwind more consistently Tlingit, has been working with Native Lens for at least three years. Filmmaker Sherman Alexie, who is not expected to attend Saturday, is on the group’s board of directors.

Honest Teens
The short films presented by Native Lens and Longhouse Media include: Storyteller, Fish, Rez Life, Fish Out of Water and Giving Thanks, as well as March Point. All are between one and five minutes long except the hourlong March Point.

The films show all sides of the teens who make them — the good, the bad, the humorous, Rector said.

“The kids are pretty honest,” Rector said.

In March Point, Nick, Travis and Cody try to understand how March Point, once part of the Swinomish Reservation under the Treaty of Point Elliot, was taken away from the Swinomish in 1873 by President Ulysses S. Grant and given to homesteaders.

The Swinomish Tribal Community asserts that the land was illegally taken from them. In the 1950s, two oil companies purchased much of the point and later built refineries on the land. Two refineries, the Tesoro Refinery and Shell Oil Company’s Puget Sound Refinery, are still on that land.

The Swinomish used to harvest shellfish along the shoreline of March Point. But for more than 100 years, toxins from boat building, lumber mills and other industries have polluted the two bays and the shorelines surrounding March Point. Those waters and tidal lands are among the sites in Puget Sound that the state Department of Ecology considers top priorities for toxic cleanup.

In the film, Nick, Travis and Cody interview tribal elders about the importance of seafood in their culture. They speak with leaders about the legalities behind the tribe’s claim to the land. They also dig clams and oysters with scientists who are studying the levels of pollution in shellfish, a dietary mainstay for many of the tribal groups in the Northwest.

The results of those tests reveal that the shellfish harvested by tribal members, who eat more seafood than the average American, contain high levels of toxins linked to cancer and other illnesses.

The film moves from the shoreline of March Point to a community shellfish feed to Olympia to talk to state leaders and then on to Washington, D.C., to speak with national leaders.

As part of the filming process, the teens also learn about failure and success. They couldn’t get an interview with Gov. Chris Gregoire and neither state Rep. Rick Larsen or U.S. Sen. Patty Murray agreed to speak on camera about the March Point issue. However, at the first screening of the documentary, the audience cheered the teens’ effort.

Rector said that in many ways, March Point  is a coming-of-age story.

“There are not many films that give a (sense) of what it means to be native, especially from the view point of teenage boys,” she said.

• Reporter Marta Murvosh can be reached at 360-416-2149 or mmurvosh@skagitvalleyherald.com.