ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Native Americans

News of the World – No Home to Go To

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“To move forward, you must first remember.”

 What does it mean to journey home when you have no home? What would The Odyssey have been about if Odysseus had no Penelope waiting for him in Ithaca? Paul Greengrass’s News of the World, based on the best selling novel by Paulette Jiles, is just that kind of story.

Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), a former Confederate soldier, travels from town to town in Texas as a news reader. Most people are too busy to bother reading newspapers (if they can read). Kidd comes to town with a collection of newspapers from around the world and serves as a non-fiction storyteller. He tells of things in Asia and Africa. He may relate sad news of a meningitis outbreak in a nearby town. He brings news of other Texas towns, or of survivors of a mine disaster in Pennsylvania. He is entertaining, but can also be serious, addressing life under the Reconstruction military occupation.

On the road one day, he comes across a wrecked wagon and finds a lynched black man hanging nearby. He also finds a young, blond, blue-eyed girl dressed in buckskins like a Native American. He finds papers that says she is Johanna Leonberger (Helena Zengel). Her parents had been killed by Kiowas. She was taken in and raised by them. She knows no English (although she may remember a little German). Johanna (who doesn’t know that name—her name is Cicada) is wary of Kidd, but more in fear of the soldiers who come along. She reluctantly goes with Kidd. The first thing she says to him (which he cannot understand) is “Home. I just want to go home.” But she has no home. Her Kiowa parents are dead. She is being sent back by the government to live with an aunt and uncle.

Kidd takes her to the next town, where he learns that the Indian agent will be back in three months. He can wait or take her to her aunt and uncle hundreds of miles away.  So these two reluctant travelers set off on a journey in which, like Odysseus, they will find those who befriend them, but many who would do them harm. But even if they overcome the obstacles of the journey, what will await them at the end of their journey?

Although the story is set in 1870, it reflects many themes that are all too familiar to today’s world. There is great bitterness among many over the loss of the Civil War and the Union occupation. At one reading, there is great anger as Kidd reads about President Grant requiring Texas to accept the new amendments to the Constitution (13, 14, and 15) before it can be readmitted. This is a world of polarization, racism (towards Native Americans and blacks), and lawlessness.

In one town they travel through, the town boss is interested in Kidd’s news reading, but only wants things from his paper read. (Hello, Fox News) That is the extreme of the sense of isolation and insularity that all the towns reflect. As a news reader, Kidd is bringing the outside world to these communities, and with it a different way of looking at things.

That different way of understanding the world plays out in the relationship between Kidd and Johanna. Raised in the Kiowa traditions, Johanna sees the world as a whole—the circle of earth and sky. Kidd explains to her that for white people, it is always a line, heading forward. But for Kidd, that line really isn’t moving forward. His itinerant life is really a way of avoiding a loss he cannot bear to confront.

The idea of home comes up frequently throughout the film, beginning with Johanna’s first words. We wonder what home she wants to go to. She has been orphaned twice. She barely remembers her birth parents (but she does find her way to the cabin they lived in). She does not know the aunt and uncle she is being sent to. When she sees a band of Kiowa across the river she calls out for them to wait for her, but they are too far away to hear her cry. So there are three homes that have or might make up her life.

Kidd on the other hand is homeless. He travels from town to town, but never back to San Antonio where his life was before the war. While Odysseus wished he could make a straight line home to Ithaca, Kidd seems to be doing all he can to avoid returning home. When he does it is filled with sorrow. But it also frees him to find a new life, a new reality.

This film asks us to see the brokenness that is so prevalent in the world around us. How will we respond to such a world? Will we focus only on ourselves and our immediate surroundings? Do we only care about what is happening to us, to our neighbors, our community? Will we hear the stories of different people near and far? Will we find our freedom in being open to those we do not know, but who will bring their world to ours?

News of the World is available digitally and on Blu-ray and DVD.

Photos courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Reporting from Slamdance – Docs of Empowerment

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Time to take a look at some of the feature length docs showing at Slamdance. I’m pulling some films together here from a couple of sections, but the films I’m looking at for this report are about community, voice, and empowerment, either as a group or individuals.

Jason Polevoi’s A Tiny Ripple of Hope is making its world premiere at Slamdance. The film follows activist Jahmal Cole as he seeks to influence the lives of high school students and bring change to Chicago through his non-profit “My Block, My Hood, My City.” The foundational idea is that for many young people in poorer sections of Chicago, they only know their immediate surroundings. By taking them other places, even within the city (but also elsewhere) it broadens their view of the world and provides hope of better life. As the film progresses we see how the task he has taken up brings a great deal of personal stress into his life: his house in in foreclosure, his marriage is in trouble, he must work through depression.

It is clear that this organization has a wonderful effect on some of the lives it touches, even though it is a very limited program. The title comes from a quote from Robert Kennedy, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope…” Ripples of hope such as Jahmal Cole brings to Chicago can grow into larger waves. It’s not just about what we see happening in this film, but about what it might inspire us to do in our own block, hood, and city

End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock by Shannon Kring is also making its world premiere at the festival. In 2016, Native American peoples joined together to try to prevent the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. The film follows some of the women who were involved in leading the protests that gained national attention. The tribal complaints were about the danger of the pipeline fouling the water for the reservation (and many others downstream), as well as damage being done to sacred heritage sites. A key objection was that the process did not respect the sovereignty of the Lakota people. As the protests gain momentum, we see the pushback from the government and police. Whereas the protestors were unarmed, the police used lots of pepper spray and “non-lethal” ammunition against them.

Along with documenting the protests (which also attracted supporters from a wide range of non-Native groups, including clergy), the film chronicles the abusive way the government has treated indigenous people throughout history. It notes that it wasn’t until 1985 that native people had the right to raise their own families—not having children taken away for schooling and raised without cultural contact. Eventually, under President Trump, the pipeline was completed, but the fight of those involved continues in many ways.

What began as a once-a-week ten week program for six African-American middle school girls in East Baltimore is the focus of Anatomy of Wings, directed by Kristen D’Andrea Hollander and Nikiea Redmond. The program was run by a local arts college and taught the girls video skills. They discovered that the cameras not only recorded the world around them, it created a way for them to be heard. Through the years, the girls created a very intimate bond between themselves, their mentors, and others who joined the group.

This film was filmed over an 11 year period to show bits of the important issues they shared with each other and the ways this helped to form them as women as they entered adulthood, some becoming mothers, some going to college, others into jobs.

Photos courtesy of Slamdance Film Fesival.

Gather – More than Something to Eat

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“The Red Nation shall rise again and it shall be a blessing or a sick world, a world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separation, a world longing for light again.” (Crazy Horse)

Food is more than just physical sustenance; it is often an important part of a community’s identity and life. Gather, from director Sanjay Rawal, enters into the relationship between Native American’s and their traditional food sources. We learn not only about the food, but also what those foods meant—and still mean—in those cultures.

The film notes early on that seventy percent of all foods consumed around the world were developed by the indigenous peoples of the Americas. These include tomatoes, potatoes, corn, zucchini, and chocolate. There was a great diversity among the various nations that populated North America before European colonization. The film focuses on three very different sets of Native Americans as they seek to reconnect with the food sources of their ancestors.

Among those we meet are Chef Nephi Craig of the White Mountain Apache Nation and Twila Cassadore of the San Carlos Apache Nation. Craig is working to build a restaurant that will serve the traditional foods. Cassadore is a forager who knows the kinds of foods that the people lived off of through the years. We also meet Samuel Gensaw of the Yurok Nation. He and others have fought for native fishing rights in Northern California. Elsie Dubray of the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation comes from a family that raises bison. She has done science fair projects dealing with bison meat and with the high levels of diabetes in Native Americans.

Each of these very different perspectives create a mosaic how food continues to be an important part of the Native American culture. However, often that connection to traditional foods has been lost. Gensaw describes the area he lives in as a “food desert”. There are no stores for miles around. For many it means shopping at the gas station. But by seeking to restore the people’s connection to the river, with its salmon and eels, there can be better food available.

Throughout the film, we see ways that food is different from just meeting our physical needs. There is a certain spirituality about food and the way we relate to the environment and to one another. These people all find connection between who they are in their communities and the foods they work with and share with others.

The film also makes the point that often food was a part of the genocide against Native Americans. One of the ways Europeans sought to destroy the indigenous peoples was through cutting off their food sources. It led to starvation, dependency, and ultimately being separated from the land that had sustained them. This history leads people in the film to talk about food sovereignty. Their rights to traditional foods are not just about connecting to the past, it is a sign of their independence and separateness form the broader culture.

We often overlook the many ways food is part of our lives. Even when we offer a prayer of thanksgiving over our meals, it may be more of a routine than an actual acknowledgement of meals as part of our spiritual lives. By seeing the many ways food has import in the lives of these Native Americans, we may also want to consider the many ways our body, minds, and spirit are fed by our own eating habits.

Gather is available on iTunes and Amazon.

Photos courtesy of Illumine.

Neither Wolf Nor Dog – American Journey

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“Ýou got a lot of words, but you don’t say nothing. You gotta learn to listen before you can see. Listen to this old man here.”

A white writer is summoned by a Lakota elder to visit him on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The elder wants him to take his various notes about life and make a book out of them. But the task seems impossible. Neither Wolf Nor Dog is the journey of discovery of a new way of understanding the life of Native Americans, their history, and their wisdom.

Writer Kent Nerburn (Christopher Sweeney) is a typical white do-good liberal. (Note: The novel the film is based on was written by Kent Nerburn, so we can expect that some autobiography is involved.) He has worked with Native American youth to get their stories on paper. When he gets the call to come to Pine Ridge, he doesn’t know what is expected of him, but he makes the 400 mile trip to meet with the 95 year old Dan (Dave Bald Eagle). Dan has a box of sayings and thoughts he wants made into a book. After trying briefly, he sees he’s over his head. While Dan seems to think Nerburn is the man for the job, Dan’s friend Grover (Richard Ray Whitman) is of the opinion that “White people who work on the rez are mostly full of bullshit.” He is openly disdainful of Nerburn and his Project.

After Nerburn’s car breaks down after he tries to quit, he ends up on a road trip with Dan and Grover as they meet a range of people that portray the various woes that have befallen Native Americans—by church, government, armies. They eventually end up at Wounded Knee, the site of the 1890 genocidal massacre. Along the way Nerburn gets an understanding of what Dan has been through in his life and what his people have been through over a long history. From all that adversity Dan still finds blessing in the world around him.

The scene at Wounded Knee is the highlight of the film, in part because at that point director Steven Lewis Simpson let Bald Eagle improvise with his own thoughts about that place and its meaning. It should be noted that Bald Eagle lost family in that massacre, so this is a very intimate and personal experience for him and for the film. (Also of interest, Richard Ray Whitman took part in the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973.)

This film has been around for a while. (I first saw it at the Greater Good [formerly Whitehead] International Film Festival in 2017.) It is a self-distributed film that has done well in a very limited distribution in places with Native American populations.

The film is an earnest attempt to show a culture that we may not have seen before. To be sure, the depiction of Native Americans by Hollywood has been wanting, and at times scandalous. That being said, I am left wondering to what extent this is an adequate picture of the Native American experience. Grover’s attitude about whites who come to the reservation echoes in my head when I remember that the author (who also adapted) and director are both white. Have they in fact captured the kinds of things that Native Americans want us to know? For all the insight the film provides (and it does a good job of giving a historical background), what I’d really like (and haven’t found) is a review of the film by a Native American. Perhaps that is just a reflection on my own discomfort at trying to review the film from a white perspective.

Photos courtesy of InYo Entertainment

Hostiles – Journey Between Life and Death

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“When we lay our heads down out here, we’re all prisoners.”

In Scott Cooper’s new western Hostiles, the cowboy-and-Indian genre is used to consider the power that prejudices hold over us. But it also gives a glimpse of the possibility of reconciliation that can overcome even lifelong animosities.

Cavalry Captain Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale) is a former war hero. He now spends his day chasing down renegade bands of Comanches and bringing them to jail. He’s due to retire, but instead he is assigned a public relations mission—to escort a dying Comanche chief to his ancestral lands in Montana. Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) has been imprisoned in New Mexico for decades. Now dying of cancer, he is granted permission from the President to return to Montana with his family (who will again be imprisoned after his death).

Blocker wants nothing to do with this. Yellow Hawk has killed many of his friends through the years. But when threatened with a court-martial and loss of his pension, he reluctantly agrees. Blocker and a small detachment set out on the journey that will be a bit like The Odyssey with various trials and dangers on the way.

Soon after they leave, they come across a homestead that has recently been attacked by a band of Comanches. Only the wife/mother, Rosalee Quinn (Rosamund Pike), survived the attack. She is near catatonic watching over her “sleeping” children. Blocker brings her along on the way to the next fort. The women of Yellow Hawk’s family share their clothes with Rosalee, the first act of compassion by either side. As the journey progresses there will be much that gives those on each side insight into the life of the others.

The most obvious theme of the film is the way racism and prejudice have been central in our national understanding. The attitudes with which Blocker and his cohort, and Yellow Hawk and his family view each other is not really as persons but rather as stereotypes. It is only as they slowly see each other’s strengths and weaknesses that they begin to see the common humanity. But even with racism so front and center, the film also subverts our ideas. One of Blocker’s party is African-American, a buffalo soldier with whom Blocker has served for some time.

But there are also deeper conversations to be drawn from the film. This is a story that is permeated with death. Yellow Hawk is dying. Rosalee’s family is already dead. Death can come upon them in many forms at any moment. The soldiers (as well as Yellow Hawk and his son Black Hawk (Adam Beach)) are all trained in killing. Death is seen as loss, as tragedy, as inevitable, as fulfillment, as an escape, and as punishment at various points of the film. Killing may happen as a necessity, as desperation, or as an act of anger and revenge.

As we study the various characters in the film, we may well see signs of what is now recognized as Post Traumatic Stress and Moral Injury. After an early encounter, a young Lieutenant (Jesse Plemons) is disturbed because this was his first time to kill a man. Master Sergeant Metz (Rory Cochrane) tells him that after enough killing, you don’t feel anything. The lieutenant responds, “That’s what I’m afraid of.” MSgt Metz and Blocker, both long time Cavalry soldiers exhibit signs of “melancholia”—they are weary of all the killing and of all the men that they have lost.

The paradox of the film is that it simultaneously is a journey from life to death and a journey from death to life. Yellow Hawk grows more ill as the journey progresses. There are various deaths along the way from a variety of reasons. Few of those who set out will make it to the end. But there is also movement in the other direction. Those who are dead on the inside find a chance for new life if they are willing to seek it. It is this hope that makes Hostiles more than just a rehash of the exploitive history of the American West. It allows the story to reflect the conflicts that continue to fill our culture and if we will choose to see them as journeys of death or towards life and fullness.

Photos courtesy Yellow Hawk, Inc.

Wind River – Hunting for Justice

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The modern American frontier has been a subject that Taylor Sheridan has been coming to from different angles in recent films. Wind River represents his “conclusion of a thematic trilogy” that includes Sicario and Hell or High Water. Three very different films, but each considers the discrepancies between the myth of the American West and the realities of modern America. In Wind River he confronts us with what he calls “America’s greatest failure—the Native American reservation.”

When professional hunter/tracker Cody Lambert (Jeremy Renner) discovers a young Native American woman’s body in the snow, he becomes involved along with the Reservation police chief (Graham Greene) and rookie FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) in the murder investigation. Cody has personal connections on the reservation and a history of a murdered daughter that haunts him. He is not the law. His interest is not so much an arrest as justice—perhaps even personal satisfaction and revenge.

The film concentrates on the dark side of life on the reservation: drug addiction, hopelessness, poverty, exploitation by corporations and whites. Yet it also points to the humanity that is seen even amidst the suffering. That is especially true with Cody’s interactions with the victim’s father (Gil Birmingham) as they share the pain of grieving.

But it is also heavy with the dark side of humanity. This is a film that is filled with flawed men and women. That is not to say there is no nobility demonstrated, but even when that appears, it is tinged with anger and revenge. The film seems to see humanity as basically deprived, that only rarely rises about our animal nature to act more virtuously.

Since this is part of Sheridan’s American Frontier trilogy, what does this film say about his view of the modern American life and the underlying myth of the American Dream? All three of the films deal with different aspects of the flaws in our society: violence, the inequality of wealth and power, exploitation and victimization. There is something of a prophetic voice in the films that calls us to pay attention to the sinfulness of our culture—not so much in our actions as in what we are willing to overlook all around us.

Yet, taken as a whole, they do offer a glimpse of hope that perhaps we can overcome these flaws that the films show as systemic to our culture. There are people who are not satisfied with society’s problems going unaddressed. Perhaps the ways they choose to address those issues may be equally as flawed, but they still are working toward an ideal of justice. It is that absence of justice which represents the trilogy’s greatest indictment against American culture.

Photos courtesy of The Weinstein Company

Saints and Strangers: We Must Learn From the Past

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The Pilgrims
(photo credit: National Geographic Channels/David Bloomer)

Thanksgiving is finally upon us, which means that we’ll gather with family and friends to enjoy a sumptuous feast involving a turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce.  A game of football will be watched on television (or played in the backyard), followed by a slice of pumpkin pie and a nice nap. Hopefully, there will also be time to consider the many things we’re thankful for in life. But for many of us, thoughts of the Mayflower, pilgrims, and the native inhabitants of this country will be far removed from our minds. That’s a real shame—one that the National Geographic Channel is attempting to remedy with a film called Saints and Strangers. It’s a challenging and gritty look at a unique period in American history and is well worth a viewing. Hopefully, the lessons learned from the movie will keep us from repeating their mistakes in today’s society.

The title of the film originates from the fact that there were two groups of individuals on board the Mayflower—saints (those coming to the New World to start a new life and worship free of persecution) and strangers (those from the Merchant Adventure Company looking for fortune and prosperity). Obviously, conditions were less than ideal, and numerous individuals perished along the way. What was an attempt to settle in Virginia soon became an attempt to survive in the cold reaches of Massachusetts. It’s pretty easy to see the numerous and potentially overwhelming difficulties this group of 102 individuals would face–find a place to settle; build houses; develop a system of order; stay healthy; and keep the natives at bay.

Massasoit and Hobbamock
(photo credit: National Geographic Channels/David Bloomer)

These Native Americans (known to the Pilgrims as savages) are obviously leery of their new neighbors and begin planning what they need to do—especially in the light of discovering their stored corn has been stolen from the Nauset tribe. The leader of the local Pokanoket sachem (or tribe) is Massasoit (Raulo Trujillo), a wise leader who is flanked by his main warrior Hobbamock (Tatanka Means). He gathers other groups together to discuss the situation and learns that there’s a lot of uncertainty—will they be taken over by the new arrivals from across the sea?  Canonicus from Narragansset (Michael Greyeyes) has a huge tribe and wants to increase his own power and standing and have no problem stating such.  Masaasoit’s response paves the way for the rest of the film—and a particularly interesting character named Squanto.  He’s a Native American but speaks English as well—this proves to be quite beneficial for the Pilgrims, but are his translating skills helping or hurting the cause?

The Pilgrims learn a lot that first year and celebrate Thanksgiving in a pretty grand manner. But as time progresses, tensions begin to develop–tribe against tribe, saint against stranger, tribe against Pilgrim colony, Pilgrim colony against new folks arriving from England, and everyone against Squanto (Kalani Queypo)–except for Governor William Bradford (Vincent Kartheiser). The result of these frictions brings about the true beginnings of America—and it’s not always pleasant to see. We have to be thankful for it, however, because it brought about the country we now know and love.

Thanksgiving
(photo credit: National Geographic Channels/David Bloomer)

Saints and Strangers is a two-part film, to be shown this Sunday and Monday (November 22 and 23) at 9 PM (8 PM Central). The first part ends just before the first Thanksgiving, so you’ll have to wait a day to see what that looks and sound like.  As for the film itself, it’s done quite well and director Paul Edwards provides a gritty, earthy view of what life was like in those early days. The acting is, for the most part, top-notch and doesn’t jar one back into the modern day with colloquialisms and such. The Native Americans all speak Algonquin, but are thankfully subtitled.  This is used to nice effect as Squanto tries to translate between the two groups of people (producing some humorous moments).

There’s character development throughout, including some really fascinating changes to Massasoit, Bradford, and Stephen Hopkins (Ray Stevenson).  Oh, and composer Hans Zimmer does the music—a nice touch. The early faith of the Pilgrims is put on display quite noticeably and even includes a few passages from the Bible (including a portion of 1 Corinthians 13). With that said, I think the treatment of Christian faith in Saints and Strangers is impressive and pretty even-handed, making sense in the context of the time and situation.  National Geographic even went so far as to include a study guide for the film (downloadable here in PDF format).

So what does Saints and Strangers have to offer in the form of lessons for today? Well, the main thing to  consider when watching is the attitude of all the groups involved—saints, sinners, and savages. They convey one specific word—fear:

  • The Pilgrims were afraid of the unknown and the natives.
  • The natives were afraid the Pilgrims were going to run them out of town and take over.
  • The saints were afraid the strangers would keep them from worshiping God.
  • The strangers were afraid they would be converted and change them for the worst.

Fear kept them all from making the situation in front of them better.  If this sounds vaguely like the whole situation with the discussion in the US regarding Syrian refugees, it’s because it is.  We have to take a look at the past in order to keep from preventing the same thing from occurring in the present.  Sure, not everyone in the Pilgrim colony was on the same page, but the fear of a few poisoned the whole group to the point where their attitudes gave way to actions that threatened everyone. It’s interesting to note that within fifty years of the Pilgrims reaching Plymouth, there was a major war that turned out to be one of the costliest in US history—all because of fear leading people to not get along with each other.  If God has things in control, then why do so many people ignore the words “Do not be afraid” that are peppered throughout the Bible? It’s something to consider, as life is too short to be a prisoner of fear.

This is the time of year when we sit back and watch Snoopy battle a lawn chair and Charlie Brown serve popcorn to a bunch of confused individuals. Perhaps it would be wise to add Saints and Strangers to your must-see schedule this Thanksgiving. Those Pilgrims and Native Americans have much to teach—and we still have much to learn.

Saints and Strangers airs on the National Geographic Channel this Sunday and Monday, November 22/23, at 9 PM (8 PM Central).