Reel Injun (2009) Movie Script
[dramatic film score]
[gunfire]
[narrator]: Growing up
on the reservation,
the only show in town
was movie night
in the church basement.
Raised on cowboys and Indians,
we cheered for the cowboys,
never realizing
we were the Indians.
- Soon, we will be gone.
Your civilization
will have destroyed us.
But by your magic,
we will live forever.
[battle cry]
[gunfire]
- Do I have to cut your throat
to get it through your head?
I'm a white man!
[laughing]
- You fooled 'em, Chief!
You fooled 'em!
You fooled 'em all.
[loud cry]
[gunfire]
- You know the only thing more
pathetic than Indians on TV?
It's Indians
watching Indians on TV.
[laughing]
[narrator]: I'm an Indian.
A Cree who grew up
in one of the most isolated
Native communities on earth,
close to the Arctic Circle.
Up here, we don't wear
feathers or ride horses,
but because of the movies,
a lot of the world
still thinks we do.
I'm on a journey to make sense
of how Hollywood's fantasy about
Indians influenced the world,
even Natives like me.
- You got to look
like a warrior.
You got to look like
you just came back
from killing a buffalo.
- But our tribe never hunted
buffalo. We were fishermen.
[narrator]: But the myth
of the fearless,
stoic warrior lives on.
[cheering]
- We'll never be able to change
the fantasy of who
and what Indians are.
That fantasy
will always be there.
We'll always be on covers
of novels saying,
The Cheyenne Warrior!
[loud roars]
[crying]: I'm only
three and a half years old.
[narrator]:
I'm off to Hollywood,
4,000 miles through
the American West,
in the reservation Indian's
vehicle of choice, the rez car.
[engine starting]
- A rez car is probably
like a piece of luggage
or something to other people,
and you kind of
keep it together
with tape and with string.
And, you know, I have
all sorts of people telling me,
"Oh yeah, I know that story
about driving backwards,
'cause we actually did it."
I had a rez car, and, you
know, the ignition didn't work,
so we had a screwdriver
in the ignition,
and, you know,
all sorts of stuff.
Nobody said to me
that they had a car
with three wheels yet,
but that would be a rez car.
[narrator]: These
are the American Great Plains,
the setting for most
of Hollywood's Indian stories.
I'm headed West
to the sacred Black Hills,
once the domain
of Chief Sitting Bull,
and the legendary
Tashunka Witko,
otherwise known
as Crazy Horse.
- Tashunka Witko, which
does not mean Crazy Horse.
Tashunka Witko means
his horses are spirited.
He was a great horse trainer,
and all his horses had spirit.
You could just see them
prancing, yeah...
[narrator]: I've always wanted
to ride a horse
on the open plains.
I finally feel
like a real Indian.
This is where Crazy Horse
outmanoeuvred Custer
at the Battle
of the Little Big Horn.
[battle cry]
Ever since,
Hollywood has been
telling that story
over and over again,
turning the battle into legend,
and Crazy Horse,
an icon.
[fierce battle cry]
- Why you dirty, moth-eaten,
cockeyed son of a rattlesnake!
If it ain't old Crazy Horse,
chief of the Sioux! Ha! Ha! Ha!
[narrator]: Legend has it,
hekilled Custer.
[gunfire]
- There's a romanticism
in the glory to Little Big Horn,
we defeated Custer
and all this and that,
at that emotional level.
But, you know, within 15 years,
our leader Crazy Horse was dead,
Sitting Bull was dead.
You know...
And we were herded up.
[narrator]: Pine Ridge is
the poorest Indian reservation
in North America.
These are the descendants
of Crazy Horse.
Their Lakota Chief is
a direct descendant
of Chief Red Cloud,
who fought alongside
Crazy Horse.
So, this is where
it happened?
- This is where it happened.
Right here, this is where
Chief Crazy Horse
was imprisoned, here.
[narrator]: After surrendering
here to troops,
Crazy Horse
was stabbed in the back.
- So, I always think this is
sacred ground to me.
Where our ancestors
used to walk,
where they used to camp
and live. Here.
[narrator]: To Native people,
Crazy Horse
is a mystical warrior,
just like in the movies.
- It was a continuation
of the idea that Natives
were really great warriors,
that they were just
incredibly skilled at warfare,
almost unstoppable, really.
- Yah!
- I've gotta say,
Neil, you know,
I'm really glad
that you're doing this.
For once, somebody's
taking the time to let the...
to tell the... To tell
the real story of Crazy Horse.
As he says in his song,
"Whenever you look,
see the Black Hills,
"remember me.
That is our homeland,
our sacred grounds."
[narrator]: Carved out
of the sacred Black Hills
is Crazy Horse Memorial.
When complete,
it will be the largest statue
to a human anywhere.
- And there'll be
a 44-foot stone feather
on the back of his head.
It will be carved
from 11 pieces of stone.
[narrator]: An ironic tribute
to a man,
who it is said refused
to have his image captured.
Most experts agree that
every photo of him is a fake.
- Who was Crazy Horse?
Not who wasCrazy Horse:
who isCrazy Horse?
Who he is, is he's an idea,
he's an embodiment
of the human spirit,
he's an embodiment
of what can be done
when you're centered
and balanced within yourself
as a human being,
when you have a relationship
to the spiritual reality
that you are a part of.
See, to me
he's an embodiment of that.
- Shortly,
there will be a blast.
[laughter and applause]
- It's a good crowd, yeah.
It's nice doing a TV shot.
Maybe a couple more,
I'll be able to get
in the movies some day,
and maybe change some
of the movie clichs, you know,
you see everyday in the movies,
where the settlers come in,
gets the Indian loaded, and
wants his resources, you know?
"Say, Indian, which way
does this road go?"
"Hmm! Road stay!
You go!"
[laughter]
"You don't understand,
some day we want to live
together and love one another
like brothers and sisters."
[sound of gun cocking]
"We cannot love
the white eyes,
it is painful
to kiss forked tongue."
[laughter and applause]
[narrator]: Zigzagging my way
through the American Heartland,
I'm hoping to make sense of
the world's enduring love affair
with the Hollywood Indian.
[chanting]
In the movies,
we're often portrayed
as spiritual, noble, and free.
This image has captured
the world's imagination.
This fascination
with everything Native
begins with
the very first explorers.
They encountered
hundreds of nations,
rich and diverse cultures,
languages, and beliefs.
The world is hooked.
- Native Americans were among
the first subjects for films.
Thomas Edison shot silents
about Native Americans.
This is in the late 1800's.
- Thomas Edison unveiled
his Kinetoscope
in Times Square,
and it was a penny machine
that played
"The Lagoon of Pueblo,
Ceremonies and Dances."
And those were
the very first moving images.
- There were more than a hundred
silents made involving
Native Americans.
Very much 'cause this part
of American history, of course,
was really still ongoing
at the time that cinema
was really being born.
[narrator]:
With populations dwindling,
most Natives are confined
to reservations.
Then, as film is being invented,
the Seventh Cavalry,
in revenge for Little Big Horn,
opens fire on the last
free community of Natives.
Three hundred men, women,
and children
are killed at Wounded Knee,
on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
- That is a genocide that
occurred, and the culture
wanted to perpetuate
the idea that
these people are now
mythological, you know,
they don't even really exist,
they're like dinosaurs.
- The reason that Indians
were projected so heavily
into movies
was the romance
of the tragedy,
Greek, roman tragedy.
- The Western, as a form,
is a very open form.
It's a very pure kind
of American metaphor,
a kind of frame
within which
you can write or say
all kinds of things.
- I think that the cinema
was created to film
First Nations.
At the beginning,
they were really pioneers,
when they went West
with the first movie camera.
If you look at
The Iron Horse,
John Ford's film,
the promotion they did
from that film,
they are telling you
that the crew was living
like the pioneers, you know,
that they were going through
the same experience.
- I read that in early cinema,
they used to get extras
in the cowboy movies
that were real Indians,
and they'd pay them
with tobacco and firewater,
and they even used
to have armed guards
to make sure these people
didn't get up to any treachery
on the set, you know?
[inaudible]
[gunshot]
- Hey, I got brewskies.
- Excellent.
- ...taking over the lead.
They're gonna win this,
followed by Mountain Timber.
[applause]
[narrator]: In the movies, all
Natives are supreme horsemen.
At one with their horse.
But most of us can't even ride.
Perhaps that myth
was born here,
with the Crow people
of Montana.
[cheering]
The Crow are renowned riders
throughout North America.
It's like they were
born on a horse.
- The Crows,
they love horses.
Without a horse,
it's like losing a mom
or a family member.
When a horse dies,
some people cry.
[man laughing]
- There is
a spiritual connection
between the Crow
and the horse.
Because the horse came along,
and he saved a lot
of people like me, you know,
from whatever.
It heals you.
It makes you think
about something not yourself,
but even though you became
like this with them, you know?
Here was still something
that you could
open your hand to
and let go,
something you gave away.
[narrator]: Fed up with
seeing only white guys
riding in the movies,
Rod became one
of Hollywood's top stuntmen.
- I'm trying to take it
to the next level.
No longer am I just...
"How!", you know.
Now, I can drive a low-rider
and shoot you with an Uzi.
You could wrap me up
in a turban.
And I could be
your worst nightmare.
[narrator]:
He now trains young Natives
in the secrets of his craft.
- Come in,
come in toward me,
come in toward me,
now go!
Stay there, stay there.
Whoo!
You see some good
in some of these kids,
'cause you want
to bring it out in them.
I'm trying to give that back,
because I can,
because I want to.
Three hours from sundown
Jeremy flies
Hoping to keep
You got it! You got it!
The sun from his eyes
I don't just take in anybody.
If you can't ride your horse
anywhere you want,
with your hands
out to the side,
and still being in control,
that's horsemanship.
You know, I'll put
you on the edge,
I want you to feel...
[grunting]
You know?
I want you to feel that. Whoo!
Take the hit, man!
Take the hit!
[gunshot]
If you don't teach them,
they're never gonna learn.
And I take that in life,
you know,
if I don't tell people
about Indians,
they're gonna think
we're all drunks, you know.
They're gonna think
we all can ride bareback.
[narrator]: Throughout
the silent era,
the Indian becomes
not only a hero
but a Hollywood star.
- The output of the silent era
was tremendous.
People in the silent days were
going to movies every week.
So much was being produced.
So, it was natural for Native
American perspectives
to be viewed.
- The portrayal of Native people
on screen has changed
dramatically since
the silent era.
They were
a very popular character.
- Native American people
directing and acting in films,
and they were bringing their
viewpoints to the table too,
and those were being listened
to. Everything was wide open.
It was really exciting times.
[narrator]: One of the most
authentic films of its time,
featuring real Native actors,
is The Silent Enemy.
- The Silent Enemy
refers to starvation.
It's what is occurring
to Native people
who are being encroached on,
then how are they conquering
the silent enemy of starvation.
In the beginning of the film,
it talks about
the demise of
the American Indian people.
And you're talking about
a film in the 1930's,
when the population
of American Indian people
had dipped
to around 250,000.
So, the idea
of the vanishing American
was probably very real
in people's mind.
So, here we have
this chance to capture
the Indians before they vanish,
and what better way
to capture them than on film.
[narrator]: The most famous
Indian of this era
and star of
The Silent Enemy
is Chief Buffalo Child
Long-Lands.
- Buffalo Child Long-Lands,
in the movie,
becomes the ultimate warrior,
the mystic warrior, the one
who's going to help his people.
[narrator]: But Long-Lands
lived his whole life
with a dark secret.
- He disguised
his tri-racial background -
Indian, black and white -
and promoted
a new image of who he was.
So he changed his name
to Long-Lands.
So he took off from there.
What made him the darling
of the cocktail set
is that he would show up,
his hair slicked back,
dark skin,
in his beautiful tuxedo,
and everybody's looking
for the Indian to appear,
and they don't see
this very sophisticated man
in a tuxedo.
When it came out
that he was part black,
of course he was shunned.
And nobody wanted
to invite him
to any of their chic
cocktail parties.
He ended up
at a benefactor's home
in California, and ended up
committing suicide,
because it was going
to be revealed
about his true heritage.
- I was luckily enough
to grow up in a time
when Native people
were the cool thing to be.
And I remember going to parties
where white people
would come to me
and want to touch my hair,
and would describe themselves
getting an Indian name
from an elder
at some ceremony somewhere
they had managed to attend.
And it was always,
you know, Dakota.
- Ah, choosing your animal name.
First, you choose your animal,
which is your spirit,
the animal most like you.
[loud cry]
- I am the wolverine.
I am the wolverine!
[loud cry]
[narrator]: Scattered
throughout North America
are summer camps like these,
keeping Hollywood's notion
of the noble savage
alive and well.
[whistle]
[cheering]
This is the event
of the summer:
tribal games.
A time when boys become
Indian braves at war.
- What is interesting is that
with all the bad images
of the Indians,
so many people
want to be Indians.
[chanting]
All the mythological apparel
that the cinema
put around the Indians,
putting it in this magic land.
Everybody wants to be there.
And one of the ways to be there
was to become Indian.
[narrator]: David Teufner
comes all the way from Austria.
- I am here because I'm
a counsellor in Camp Bominay.
I was chosen as a tribe leader,
as well, for the Sioux Tribe,
which was a great,
great surprise for me,
and a great honour.
Welcome to the Sioux Tribe
We've got scouts and braves
Fierce and mighty warriors
never fear defeat
Sioux Tribe
Sioux Tribe
Sioux Tribe
Sioux
Pass the peace pipe
to Crazy Horse
Pass the
peace pipe to Crazy Horse
- My knowledge is not great
about Natives. Basically,
it's from two or three movies
that I would have watched.
But through these movies,
I just got the whole mentality
of the Natives.
It gave me a very
positive perspective.
Like the unity, the family,
the unity, how they hold
together like, brotherhood.
[narrator]: I wonder
if any of these kids
have ever met
a Native person,
or if their image of us
comes only from the movies.
I hope I don't
disappoint them.
[loud banging]
- On one side, I like the
peaceful image of the Natives,
but, if necessary,
the warrior image.
I'd say it's a very brutal.
The Natives had brutal times,
but I think it was not
if it was necessary.
[loud chanting and percussions]
[chanting]
- Oh, no!
No, don't!
[narrator]: In the 1930's,
the Indian is transformed
into a brutal savage.
And America, struggling
through the Great Depression,
needs a new brand of hero.
- There were a number
of Hollywood films
that came out
in the early 1930's
that followed in the steps
of The Silent Enemy.
And the Indians were
the stars of these movies.
But the interesting thing
about that whole cycle,
they just bombed
at the box-office...
Americans are not
that interested in them.
- For the most part,
in that decade,
we're looking at films
where it's the savage,
it's the attacking marauders.
- Savage!
- That's my wife, Yakima.
My squaw.
- Yes, but she's...
She's savage.
- Si, seor. She's
a little bit savage, I think.
- People lined up in droves.
Americans loved westerns.
It's in our blood.
- Stagecoach is
the iconic western.
It's the western
that all others were
really modelled after,
and it's one of
the most damaging movies
for Native people in history.
- Hold it!
- You have white society
inside the stagecoach,
and they are besieged
on all sides by Native people,
by the wild of America.
[gunfire]
Those that are
stopping progress,
those that are backwards,
those that are vicious
and bloodthirsty.
[arrow landing on target]
[coughing]
Stagecoach summed up
and gave the opinion
of Native people for decades
to the populace in the US.
That's how they thought of us,
and it's because of John Ford
that they thought of us
like that,
and that Native people may
have even thought of themselves.
[mumbo jumbo]
- You pushin' up daisies!
- Very interesting.
Whoa!
- That's when we developed
the sort of Tonto-speak
that now, I think,
is most associated
with the portrayal of
Aboriginal people on screen.
[narrator]: But some films,
instead of using
a Native language,
well, they just ran
English backwards.
[dialogue in English
is playing backwards]
Listen for the satanic messages.
- And as for the Indians,
they're usually white guys
in red-face.
- White people
playing Native roles,
I love it,
because it's funny.
All the big stars
played Natives.
- She can chew on my moccasins
anytime she wants to.
- White guys playing Indians.
Chuck Connors as Geronimo.
It's like Adam Sandler
as Malcolm X, you know?
- I remember once,
we were on a set,
the director says,
"I want a real Native.
Up front, I want to see
the real thing."
Well, he couldn't find one.
[narrator]: Native women,
on the other hand,
are pretty much absent
in a Western.
- I knew I could count
on feminine curiosity.
[narrator]: Except, of course,
for the Indian princess,
epitomized by Pocahontas.
- Why is this woman,
the Disney Pocahontas,
such a profound image,
a mythic image
for American people? What
about children who know nothing
about Native society,
and they see this young woman,
who has this one-shoulder,
skimpy dress
that she's wearing,
and she has Miko, a raccoon,
that she communes with.
Well, the reality of Pocahontas
is that at the time
of the contact
with John Smith,
and this event,
they say she was about
nine years old.
So, we imbue in her
all of the wrong notions
of what we want to see
in a mythical princess.
And she becomes the embodiment,
not of Native society,
she becomes an embodiment
of American society,
of American desire.
- And Native men are reduced
to a mere caricature.
[narrator]: Richard Lamotte,
one of Hollywood's
biggest costume designers,
knows first hand about how
Hollywood dresses up Indians.
- Here, a finger necklace.
I don't know
what show it was,
but I'm sure somebody saw that
in the research, you know?
Where they use body parts
or wherever as trophies,
you know,
made a necklace or...
If you look at the movies
in the '30's,
Native Americans, I want to say,
much like African Americans,
were sort of props.
Rather than to try to make
them look regional,
everybody was identifiable.
So, they weren't interested
in explaining the tribes. They
said, "Well, they're Indians."
- Panello,
this Indian's no Indian.
- If he's no Indian, why is he
wearing a chicken for a hat?
[narrator]:
So to keep things simple,
every Indian becomes
a Plains Indian,
wearing the headdress,
buckskin,
and the headband.
That's not
a headband, is it?
- Yeah, it probably is
a headband. Yeah.
- And it's probably just like
the ones we were talking about.
The ones that never existed.
Headbands are
an interesting thing.
Certainly certain Americans,
Native American tribes
did use headbands,
and wear headbands,
but the Plains Indians usually
not. But working on a western,
stunt people are gonna fall off
horses. You need to keep
their wigs on.
That's the best way to do it.
So, Hollywood started putting
headbands on Plains Indians.
Then, it just became a thing
you saw in every movie.
Headband with an elastic back,
something you'd never
find on a Native.
- This is actually,
while probably not calculated,
an ingenious act of colonialism.
You are essentially
robbing Nations of an identity,
and grouping them into one.
[narrator]: And the western
forces all Indians
to live in the deserts
of the Southwest.
[narrator]: John Ford shot
so many movies here
that tourists come
by the thousands
to experience the iconic
American West.
And to pick up a memento
of America's greatest
Indian fighter.
[chanting]
- Break out the grain!
- Yes, sir!
Yes, sir!
- John Wayne is an icon
of American cinema,
one of the great action heroes
in history.
His actions, which are
remarkably violent,
seem excused, actually,
that this is
the exact appropriate behaviour
one would have.
- In The Searchers,
John Wayne literally
uncovers a grave
with an Indian person,
a dead Indian person in it.
- Jorgensen!
- Why don't you finish the job?
- And shoots him in the face.
- Ain't got no eyes,
he can't enter the spirit land.
Has to wander forever
between the winds.
You get it, Reverend!
Come on, Blankethead.
- He embodied the idea
of the unstoppable American,
that the true American
wasn't Native.
Native Americans
were the ones that stopped
real Americans from settling
their own country.
[ominous music]
[narrator]: I found
two Navajo Elders
who were extras in some
of John Ford's films.
Effie and James Etna
were teenage sweethearts
when they met on set.
They're seeing these films
for the very first time.
[laughing]
[narrator]: James can remember
how many of the Navajo actors
would go off script
in some scenes,
joking around in their language.
No one ever bothered
to translate what was said,
until now.
- If I do not return,
general Quaint will find you.
And you will be dead,
and all your people.
No! He is not a fool.
You are.
[narrator]: After playing
the bonehead savage
for so many years,
the Navajo
get their sweet revenge.
[ominous western musical theme]
Right next door to the Navajo
is a place where anybody
can be a cowboy for a day.
- You're all here on vacation.
Come on out
and have a good time.
[narrator]: Even
an Indian like me.
Here, they worship one man.
His swagger is screen legend.
His name: the Duke.
- John Wayne never did
a bad movie, okay, partner?
You got it?
All right, pilgrim.
And, now where's
the little Cowboy Room?
I've got to do a wee-wee.
Uh-huh.
- Everybody's always fantasizing
about an age when individuals
were very strong.
The lone guy travelling
across the wide landscape,
and dealing
with all the elements,
everything from rattlesnakes
to who knows what.
[rallying cries]
- Hold it there!
- There's always this kind of
John Wayne guy that is sort of
the moral standard
that represents America
and its moral values.
So it's a big hunky, white guy,
that's not real smart but
that's gonna do the right thing,
and he's gonna drive
the Indians away
and marry the school marm,
and walk off into the sunset.
- You oughtn't to go too far,
Miss Dallas.
Apaches like to sneak up
and pick off strays.
[imitating John Wayne]:
I'd like to thank you
for the use of
your mustang, lady,
and apologize for the spur
marks on the dashboard, ah-ha.
- Who's the quickest
draw here?
- Who's the quickest?
I would say maybe Windy Bill.
- Windy Bill.
- Where's Windy Bill?
- That little fella
right over there.
- I'd like to challenge
Windy Bill.
- You bring it on, cowboy.
- Oh, the gun's stuck in here.
- Oh, it's stuck in there!
[laughing]
You count.
- Okay.
On four,
one-two-three-four?
- Whatever number you want.
- Four.
[gunshot]
[narrator]: As a kid,
I didn't realize it was me
Bugs Bunny was killing off
on screen.
One little two little
three little Indians
Four little five little
six little Indians
Oh-oh! Sorry, that one
was a half-breed.
- Yes, sir, I'd sure love
to kill me an Indian.
White man came
across the sea
He brought us pain
and misery
- When we were kids, we used
to play cowboys and Indians,
I was always Gary Cooper.
Run to the hills
Run for your lives
- Those images
do shape people's opinions,
and I think they put it at odds
for me. When you're kids
and you're trying to play
cowboys and Indians.
And if you're an Indian kid,
well, doesn't that mean
you're gonna lose all the time?
Run for your lives
- When we watch the Indians
getting slaughtered
at the end of every movie,
well, my brother would
refuse to watch it.
Every time that bugle went off,
and the charge started,
my brother,
he was a year and a half
younger than me,
he'd go like this.
And he wouldn't
look, he wouldn't watch.
We'd come out
of those theatres,
after the cavalry had rescued
the white people.
All of a sudden, we'd hear,
"There's those Indians."
And we'd start fighting, we had
to fight them white kids.
Every Saturday, we knew
we was gonna get in a fight.
[chanting]
[narrator]: I'm here to find out
how Native kids today
would react to the kinds
of westerns I saw growing up.
- So, what do you understand?
I want you to listen
real carefully
and find out what
they're talking about, okay?
[narrator]: The film
is Little Big Man,
where an Indian massacre
was made graphic and real
for the very first time.
- And I am
the sole white survivor
of the battle
of Little Big Horn.
- Little Big Horn
was not representative
of encounters between
whites and Indians, Mr. Crabb.
You see, the near-genocide
of the Indian...
- The near what?
- Near-genocide.
It means
extermination.
[cavalry music]
[gunfire]
- See, when they got off
the boat,
they didn't recognize us.
They said, "Who are you?"
We said, "We're the people.
We're the human beings."
They said, "Oh, Indians,"
'cause they didn't recognize
what it meant
to be a human being.
I'm a human being.
This is the name of my tribe.
This is the name of my people.
But, I'm a human being.
But then, the predatory
mentality shows up,
and starts calling us Indians,
and committing genocide
against us and... as...
As a vehicle of erasing the
memory of being a human being.
So, they used warped
textbooks, history books,
and when film came along,
they used film.
You go in our own communities,
how many of us are fighting
to protect our identity
of being an Indian?
And 600 years ago,
that word Indian,
that sound was never made
in this hemisphere.
That sound, that noise
was never ever made.
Ever. And we're trying
to protect that as an identity.
So it affects all of us.
It's reached the point,
evolutionarily speaking,
we're starting to not recognize
ourselves as human beings.
We're too busy trying
to protect the idea
of a Native American
or an Indian.
But we're not Indians and
we're not Native Americans,
we're older
than both concepts.
We're the people,
we're the human beings.
- Thank you for making me
a human being.
Makes my heart sad.
A world without human beings
has no centre to it.
[arrow whizzing]
- Argh!
- The best part of any movie
is when you heard phhht!
Oh, I love that.
Phhht!
[arrows whizzing]
Phhht!
There's not an Indian within
miles from here. Phhht!
You know, I just love that.
And I think long ago,
when we had that,
we were never stressed out,
'cause if you see
old pictures of Indians,
we were never fat,
we weren't diabetic,
heart problems,
'cause what problems we had:
phhht! You know?
We didn't need Dr. Phil.
Phhht!
So, I say we should
bring that back.
You know, you get somebody
from the IRS come over: phhht!
[narrator]: There is one face
that has become
an American icon for all that
is good about Native people.
Hollywood's most famous
Indian actor,
Iron Eyes Cody.
- Iron Eyes Cody was
a very interesting character.
All in all, he was
probably involved
in close to 100 westerns.
- Now, when the battalion comes,
this one won't go!
- He was very much
the Plains Indian,
with the war bonnet, the paint.
He fit the image
of what people thought
American Indians should be.
So he became a symbol,
an icon for American Indians
in this country
and all over the world.
- Some people have
a deep abiding respect
for the natural beauty
that was once this country.
And some people don't.
People start pollution.
People can stop it.
[narrator]: But Iron Eyes,
like many heroes,
had a secret identity.
- He was actually born
Oscar de Corti, around 1904,
in Louisiana. His parents
were immigrants
from Sicily and
Southern Italy.
Back then, at the turn
of the century in Louisiana,
Italians were not welcome.
There was a lynching by
the Irish against the Italians,
so he grew up amongst
all sorts of prejudice
against Italians.
He always loved
American Indians very much,
and wanted to be part of them,
even though he was Sicilian,
so he took on another identity.
He always wanted
to be in pictures,
so he eventually
joined Hollywood.
[narrator]: That's Iron Eyes,
behind James Cagney,
waiting to be spray-painted
Indian red.
- Behind the camera,
he was very much involved.
His wife was Native American,
he had the whole image
in his real life
as well as in Hollywood.
- What is it you want,
Sitting Bull?
Put on the war paint.
[men screaming]
- So, when the camera stopped,
he kept his identity
and he became
what his image was.
He really believed it, and
he lived it and he breathed it.
- You used a bow and arrow.
You were pretty good with that.
- I'm an expert.
- DeMille used you
in all of his pictures.
- Yeah, I did all of his stuff
with the shooting
with the bow and arrow into
the bodies and things like that.
I hunt with a bow and arrow.
- The older he got,
the more he believed it.
I remember visiting his house,
and at that time,
it was after his stroke.
His whole house was just
full of photographs,
with celebrities,
of himself as an Indian.
And he had a number
of videos going simultaneously.
I counted about seven,
where he would be playing
his own movies constantly,
all the time.
He believed he was
what he saw on the screen.
[narrator]: Iron Eyes Cody
died on January 4th, 1999.
Today, I'm meeting the eldest
of his two adopted sons,
Robert Tree Cody.
[knocking on door]
Robert Tree Cody?
- Oh yes.
How are you? Neil?
- Neil.
- Yes, good morning.
[Native language]
- Kill!
- There he is.
[battle cries]
[laughing]
That scene cracks me up
where he gets mad.
[narrator]: To this day, Robert
celebrates his father as Native.
- He was a man
with a good heart.
He raised us to know
the Indian way of life,
through our dancing and songs.
And our language, too.
[soft melody on flute]
But, like I said,
I'll always stick to my guns,
I will defend
my father's honour.
I will always defend that.
I lived with this man.
This man was a great man.
My father was of Indian people.
[narrator]: In the sixties,
everything is turned
on its head.
[police siren]
The western was out of style,
and the hippies
become Indians.
- The sixties, man,
my daughter said,
"Well, how come you listen
to people..."
The groups were Vanilla Fudge,
Cream, Strawberry Alarm Clock.
Well, we had the munchies
for 15 years, that's why.
We always tolerated them too,
because they always
had the best smoke,
so you had to put up...
[inhaling]
[ragged voice]: You know, like,
I was like hippie man,
you know, like, pfft!
I was like, Indian, you know,
in a previous life.
Cherokee people
Cherokee tribe
So proud to live
So proud to die
[narrator]:
I've come to San Francisco,
birthplace of the hippie.
It's during the Summer of Love
that the Indian is
at his grooviest.
Sacheen Littlefeather
was there.
So, Haight-Ashbury.
- Brings back
a lot of memories.
A lot of people have stolen
the street signs over the years,
so it must have cost them a
fortune to keep replacing them.
My first visit
to Haight-Ashbury, here,
was in 1966.
People were dancing
in the streets,
some of them were nude.
[laughing]
[narrator]: Sacheen
was raised Native,
but when she moved
to Haight-Ashbury,
people's reactions to the way
she dressed surprised her.
- People asked me, "What are
you? Are you a hippie?"
And I said, "No,
I'm an Indian. What's a hippie?"
So, I went to a place
where the hippies lived,
to see what a hippie
looked like.
And I said,
"I don't look like that!"
I did some modelling
at that time,
and they put me
in these outfits.
- Really.
- People emulated the American
Indian as a free spirit.
They always said,
"Oh, my great-grandmother
is a Cherokee princess."
- One of the ways
you could honour Native people
was to dress
like a Native person.
So you have this, you know,
extension of the headband,
and Native people were saying,
"Well, we actually
don't dress like that."
They also created
this fictionalized notion
of Native society,
and it was supported
by the films they were seeing.
- They don't understand us.
So we do the best we can.
At least, we stay alive.
- Are you alive?
- They were, in a way,
trying to imitate us,
but in another way,
they were trying
to remember who they were.
Every human being
is a descendant of a tribe.
So these white people, they're
the descendants of tribes,
there was a time
in their ancestry
when they wore feathers,
all right?
And they wore beads,
and shells.
There was a time
in their ancestry, all right,
before this colonizing
mentality came and did to them,
to turn them into
the white people they are,
and then it came and did it
to us. The very same thing
that happened to us
happened to them.
- What's bothering you,
lieutenant?
- Just human compassion,
general.
I know who I'm fighting.
I'm not sure I understand why.
- It's emblematic
of one of the ways
that people in the sixties,
Hollywood particularly,
were now trying to deal
with their own legacy, which,
I think, at this point,
was sort of hard to deny.
And they were coming
to some sort
of reconciliation about it.
- Bloodthirsty savages
on the loose!
Burning, killing,
violating beautiful
white women!
It's not news anymore!
We're gonna take
a different tack.
From now on, we're going
to grieve for the noble red man.
- Native American people
became a great allegorical tool
to stand in for virtually
any oppressed people.
- Savages! Animals!
- Apaches!
- So, you had Native Americans
really standing in
for the civil rights movement,
which was going on at the time.
- And I see
the promised land.
- It was a moment when
Native Americans began
to assert themselves more
politically, more forcefully.
- It was more than five months
ago that a determined band
of American Indians
seized Alcatraz island
in San Francisco Bay,
in their own demonstration
for a better life.
Today, they're still there.
- This is a country where
all men are created equal.
And it's the land of the free,
the home of truth and justice
and liberty for all.
But we want to know why
that doesn't apply to us.
From the time
I went to Alcatraz,
I had been out of the
non-Native world for six years,
trying to find a place,
and there was just no place
that I really felt like I fit.
That's when
Alcatraz happened.
We want to be treated
as human beings.
We want to be looked upon
with respect, as equals.
[present day John Trudell]:
The main accomplishment
is that it rekindled
the spirit of the people.
The spirit that is the people,
it was diminishing,
because Indians
were ashamed,
because just the hostility
of the non-Native communities
around Native communities,
and in its own way,
the hostility of the media,
through the film, because
these are subtle hostilities
if they're not
blatant hostilities.
So something was
diminishing the spirit,
and I think this activist period
of time rekindled the spirit.
- That presented
a new opportunity
to see Native people
in a different light,
and you began to see filmmakers
portray Native people
in a completely
different manner.
- When policemen break the law,
then there isn't any law.
Just a fight for survival.
- Billy Jack was sort of
an action hero.
He was really representative
of something we saw emerge
in the seventies, which was
a Native-style hero,
who would use physical
violence to enact justice.
- I'm gonna take
this right foot...
And I'm gonna whop you
on that side of your face.
And you wanna know something?
There's not a damn thing
you're gonna be able
to do about it.
- Really?
Kill that Indian
son of a bitch!
- It's got a little vengeance
in this or something,
the right kind of vengeance.
- Now I'm an Indian,
remember?
And we're sneaky. We know
how to strike silently,
in the dark.
- You couldn't help but
just root for this guy
and what he stood for.
- Indian bastard!
[screaming]
[moaning in pain]
- In that one character,
you have embodied
pretty much all of
the seventies angst and anger
that one could in America.
- You worked with King,
didn't you?
- Yes.
- Where is he?
- Dead.
- Bob and Jack Kennedy?
- Dead.
- Not dead, brains blown out.
- So, he would come back
and fight off injustice
using his feet and fists
through kung fu and -
one of the most
amusing character traits -
would remove
his shoe and sock
before kicking the heck
out of someone.
[narrator]: The Indians
start to fight back,
not just in the movies
but in real life as well.
This is Wounded Knee.
For me and many Natives,
it's sacred ground.
What happened here in 1973
would change the image
of Natives in Hollywood forever.
It all started when
the American Indian movement
faced-off against the FBI.
- Inside Wounded Knee,
the Indians are prepared.
They have weapons
and Molotov cocktails
to handle the armoured vehicle
which federal agents
have moved into position.
[plane roaring by]
- The American government
fought a war against us.
From the tanks that they used
at Wounded Knee
to the way they used
the FBI's paramilitary
and National Guards, we were
fighting for our lives.
Our death casualty
went quite high.
- We've bet our lives.
That's something meaningful.
And the course of history
and Indian Affairs
has been changed.
We were prepared to die.
We were in Wounded Knee,
surrounded by the military might
of the United States of America.
Their field of fire...
It was very precise.
The Feds...
- They had a sniper zone.
- And automatic. I mean,
they had 50-calibres.
They meant business.
[gunfire]
[narrator]: Help would come
from the most
unexpected source...
Hollywood.
- I was sitting at home one day,
and I got a phone call
from Marlon Brando.
He was up for an award
for Best Actor
for The Godfather.
And he asked me,
would I go up
and represent him
at the Academy Awards.
He said this would be an
opportunity to explain to people
about the stereotype
of Native Americans in film,
and also because
of the Indian occupation
at Wounded Knee
in South Dakota.
- We were inside Wounded Knee.
They're shooting at us
everyday and night.
And there was quite
a few people inside watching,
in the trading post,
the Academy Awards.
[applause and cheering]
- The ceremony
was due to start
about six o'clock
in the evening.
That's when they rolled out
the red carpet.
And I got dressed in
my traditional Indian regalia,
but there was a man, he was
the producer of the whole show.
He took that speech
away from me
and he warned me very sternly.
"I'll give you
60 seconds or less.
"And if you go over
that 60 seconds,
"I'll have you arrested,
I'll have you put in handcuffs."
- Marlon Brando
in The Godfather.
[applause]
[The Godfather theme music]
- Accepting the award for
Marlon Brando in The Godfather,
Miss Sacheen Littlefeather.
- All of a sudden,
we get a call.
They start yelling, "Hey!
There's an Indian."
And so, I rushed in there
and saw Sacheen Littlefeather
just get to the microphone.
And she starts
making this speech.
- I'm representing
Marlon Brando this evening.
And he has asked me to
tell you in a very long speech,
which I cannot share
with you presently
because of time,
but I will be glad to share
with the press afterwards,
that he very regretfully
cannot accept
this very generous award.
And the reasons for this being
are the treatment
of American Indians today
by the film industry...
Excuse me.
[boos and applause]
There was a round of confusion
in the whole audience.
Everybody's mouths flung open.
Everybody was in chaos.
...and also with recent
happenings at Wounded Knee.
I beg at this time
that I have not intruded
upon this evening
and that we will,
in the future, our hearts
and our understandings
will meet with love
and generosity.
Thank you on behalf
of Marlon Brando.
[applause]
- And it was really
an experience for me,
being lied about
in the media,
people saying
that I wasn't Indian,
people saying
that I rented my dress.
It was a very tough time.
There were many
death threats at that time.
- But it was to personally
discredit her,
and at the same time,
discredit the message
that she was trying to deliver
about the depiction
of Native people in film.
But she was also talking
about the atrocities
against Native people
that were continuing.
- We don't believe we're gonna
get out of there alive.
And the morale is down low.
And Marlon Brando
and Sacheen Littlefeather
totally uplifted
our lives.
And maybe Marlon Brando
Will be there by the fire
We'll sit and talk
about Hollywood
And the good things
there for hire
Like the Astrodome
And the first tepee
Marlon Brando
Pocahontas and me
- I just have a dream
that some day
I will get into the movies.
And then I will win
an Academy Award.
And then I'll refuse it
because of the mistreatment
of Marlon Brando.
[laughter]
Thank you!
- How!
[chanting loudly]
- Will Sampson, in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,
is one of those
great performances
that is completely memorable.
- Raise your hands up.
Up. That's it!
Up! All the way up.
- Everyone talks
about Nicholson,
but you couldn't have that movie
without Will Sampson.
He's the stoic Indian who
really is silent for the movie,
but there's something
about the way he portrays him.
It has a dignity.
- Ah, Juicy Fruit...
- Well, you sly
son of a bitch, Chief!
God!
You hear me, too?
- Yeah, you bet.
- Well, I'll be goddamned,
Chief!
And they all... They all think
you're deaf and dumb.
Jesus Christ!
[laughing]
You fooled 'em, Chief!
You fooled 'em.
You fooled 'em all!
- There was a beginning
to see an ownership
over these very stereotypes.
So, suddenly,
the fact that Will Sampson
plays the stoic Indian
in the way he did
in that movie, in some ways,
reclaims that character
for our people.
It says, I will take it
within me, and I will own it,
and I will give it a grace.
[groaning]
- The character
in Cuckoo's Nest started out
as the stereotypical Indian.
And it rose
to a level of humanity
as the picture unfolds.
He has to become
the symbol of freedom
for America, really.
- You didn't see
any soldiers in your dream!
And that means that...
That they can't see you now!
- You think so?
- Yes! Yes! What else
did your dream mean?
- I've never been
invisible before!
- What we began to see
in a film like Little Big Man,
was an attempt to portray
Aboriginal people
as non-stereotypes,
or at least attempt
to flesh out the characters that
they could portray on screens.
- We're cut off!
- It doesn't matter!
We're invisible!
- It played a lot with satire,
and sending up a lot
of the stereotypes,
and it was also home to an
absolutely brilliant performance
by Chief Dan George,
who played
the elder in the film
with a sly, comic wit that
I'm not sure we'd ever seen.
- Take care of my son here.
See that he doesn't go crazy.
- In The Outlaw Josey Wales,
Eastwood in the film,
encounters this Native man,
played by Chief Dan George,
and he's hilarious
in the movie.
- I'm glad you stopped me
when you did.
I might have killed her.
- Oh, I noticed that.
[Clint Eastwood]: He had most
of the humour in the film.
So that's what attracted me to
the script in the first place,
is that the Indians
were treated as people
with all different kinds
of shadings.
- I guess you were right.
I ain't that old after all.
- He was an elder, but he
wasn't pseudo-wise, you know.
He wasn't the clich
of the wise tribal leader.
He was kind of a guy
who is adrift,
just like Josey Wales was.
- I'm getting better sneaking up
on you like this.
Only an Indian
can do something like this.
- Only an Indian could do
something like that.
[gun cocking]
- He was the key that brought
that warmth and authenticity
of who Native people really are,
because he had
that sense of humour.
One of the things that I think
is a very vital part
in our community, what has
kept us alive, is humour.
Our ability to laugh at just,
you know,
and it gets ugly sometimes,
and our ability to laugh
at the ugly...
- Couple of horses, far off,
moving fast.
- I don't hear nothin'.
- Gotta be an Indian
to know those things.
- Humour is the thread
that we weave our lives around
as Native people, because
the humour has saved us.
Great spirit and humour,
that's what's saved us.
- Comedy, the ability
to make light
throughout this, was one
of his great, great skills.
And it's Clint Eastwood
at his violent best,
and yet, in the middle
of that film,
there's Chief Dan George
undoing a lot of the problems
that had been done before him
in a single role.
[chanting]
- Usually have problems
doing my act, you know,
because I know
a lot of you white people
never seen an Indian
do stand-up comedy before,
you know? Like, for so long,
you probably thought that
Indians never had a sense
of humour, you know?
We never thought
you were too funny either.
[laughter and applause]
[narrator]: In the eighties,
the Western goes out of style.
It wasn't until the nineties
that the Indian comes back big.
- The nineties began as a decade
with theiconic movie
that started it all,
Dances With Wolves.
[screaming]
- It was a box-office hit,
it picked up several Oscars,
including Best Picture,
and people lined up in droves
because it was a western,
and a very good one at that.
- The Native were fleshed out
as characters,
allowed to be seen
as more complete people.
They weren't just warriors,
they weren't just peaceful.
- You there!
- So, it is a very sensitive
and sympathetic approach.
It doesn't erase the fact
that at its core,
the film is not a Native movie.
It is still
a movie made
from the outside of us,
and is about us,
and is meant to be
sympathetic towards us,
but it isn't us.
- It's a story about
a white guy.
And the Indians are
the T and A,
but it gets promoted as being
about Native people or Indians,
but it's not really.
We're just backdrop.
- I thought, okay,
here's a guy with a mullet,
and he conveniently finds a
white woman in the Indian camp,
and when they show her
portrayal in it... If she lived
with these Native people, she
would have been well-groomed
and dressed like them.
They had her dressed
like Wilma Flintstone,
with mud on her,
and dishevelled, and lost.
- And then, to treat my nation
like we don't know
how to fight.
[gunfire]
- Shoot the gun!
- We, the Lakota,
who are responsible,
the first nation
to ever militarily defeat
the United States of America
on the field of battle.
And Lawrence of the Plains
has to teach us how to fight?
[crying]
[gunfire]
[cheering]
- Tatanka.
- But it's a brilliant
performance by Graham Greene.
I think that beginning
with that performance
that Graham Greene
becomes legend.
- I had to learn Lakota.
[speaking Lakota]
I worked eight hours
a day on it,
'till I was fluent in what
I was saying.
I can't even speak
my own language.
The only language I speak
is English, and not very well.
- He expanded what it was meant
to be a Native on screen.
And for us to see ourselves
is very empowering. And to see
ourselves presented in the way
Graham Greene did it
is especially empowering.
In many ways,
I think that performance
is what has informed
so many of the films
that have followed.
[narrator]: With the huge
success of Dances With Wolves,
playing Indian meant
box-office hits for Hollywood
and its stars.
Scenes, stories, and roles,
designed to cash in
on the new popularity.
Being Indian was lucrative
and cool again.
Half-breed
That's all I ever heard
Half-breed how I
learned to hate the word
[narrator]: Oddly enough,
this resurgence of the western
bankrolls the birth of
independent Native cinema,
and for the first time,
I hear my own language
in the movies.
[Native language]
Even the leaders of
the American Indian movement,
Russell Means and John Trudell,
go Hollywood.
Cast in films
like Thunderheart,
for a touch of
Native street cred.
- It all gets real simple
real fast, you know?
Subject resisted.
Subject is dead. Get it?
- The government wiped out
the political movement
by the eighties.
But what is emerging
out of that is a cultural,
artistic voice.
And I see it coming,
there's more Native
filmmakers, songwriters.
Out of all that Native
creativity that's coming out,
we will find our voice.
- It's a good day
to be indigenous.
It's 45 degrees in the sun.
It's 8 a.m. Indian time.
- Smoke Signals was another
of the films that came
at the end of the nineties,
that started the golden age
of Aboriginal cinema.
This was a movie made
by a Native guy,
Chris Eyre,
starring Native people,
and not about
what occurred 120 years ago.
It was a movie about
nativeness now,
and that was
a big breakthrough.
- You're leaving the rez,
going into a bold,
different country, cousin!
- But it's the United States.
- Damn right it is!
That's as foreign as it gets!
Hope you two
got your vaccinations.
[laughing]
- Maybe all we need
is a good laugh.
Maybe that's all we need
as a people,
is a good laugh.
And I think Evan Adams,
you know, was really
the centre of that.
- Nobody can help us.
No Superman, no Batman,
no Wonder Woman.
[laughing]
Not even Charles Bronson, man!
- I was watching Evan perform,
and I said,
"Evan, what are you doing?"
I go,
"What are you playing?"
Because I could never place it.
He had this Indian humour
and goodness to him,
and he kept it the whole time
we were shooting.
I said to Evan,
"What's going on,
what are you doing here?"
You know? And he told me
he was playing his grandma.
[narrator]: After crisscrossing
North America,
I finally arrive...
Hollywood.
Living in the Hollywood Hills
is one of today's most
successful Native actors,
Adam Beach.
- The perception
of who we are in Hollywood,
that has a lot of respect,
because they are still
fascinated with who we are
as a culture, as a people,
throughout history,
and stories they tell
through film.
Which is great, because it
really teaches a lot of people
that, you know, we have
something to offer to the world.
[gunfire and explosions]
[narrator]: In his starring role
in Clint Eastwood's
Flags of Our Fathers,
Adam Beach puts a human face
to the stereotype,
the drunken Indian.
- Stay down, son!
- Settle down, Ira!
- Settle down?!
[screaming]
Ira Hayes was consumed
by alcohol.
I myself,
I can't even attempt
to drink when in a crowd,
because, "There's another
drunk Indian."
[vomiting]
I've always called myself
a child of an alcoholic,
so throughout that film,
when you watch it, that's me,
it's not acting.
- Jesus Christ! He's drunk!
Goddamn Indians...
- Adam, I know
he's very conscious
of the problems in
the community of alcoholism,
and he'd been
on the reservations,
and had done work
in this area.
And that made him
play it very well.
- Think I could see my mom
before they ship me off?
Think I could do that?
[Adam]: Here's a human being
shedding human emotion.
No stereotypes,
no stoic Indian.
It's just a young boy
that wants to see his mom,
who lost a lot of his friends.
[narrator]: I'm at the end
of my quest.
Back up north,
in the high Arctic
community of Iglulik.
After travelling across America,
the answers were here all along.
[laughing]
[screaming]
It's an unlikely place
to give birth to a film
that has revolutionized
Native cinema,
and gone on to win
at the Cannes Film Festival.
Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner,
captures one of the Inuits'
most cherished legends,
and brings it to the world.
- Atanarjuat, to me,
was that point
where cinema was being altered
to tell our stories our way.
And gone were
the stereotypes of past,
really, in that one movie.
There's none of that nonsense.
It's a gloriously sexy film
set in the Arctic.
[chanting]
- Wow, I've never seen
anything like this before.
This is so pure in its soul.
- I always say that that's
the most Indian movie ever made.
It's much more Indian
than Smoke Signals.
Smoke Signals
was made for Indian people,
but certainly
for the overculture.
When you get a movie
like The Fast Runner,
you're watching this movie
and you're saying to yourself,
this is an inside job.
[narrator]: Outside of town,
in his hunting cabin,
I meet the director
of The Fast Runner,
Zacharias Kunuk.
I ask him why he makes films.
- I see it as talking back.
You pick up the camera
and you start recording
our own history.
[grunting]
The stories that we used to hear
when we were children,
what do we believe
and why we are here.
[screaming]
[narrator]:
As his elders pass on,
so does their knowledge.
Zach is in a race
against time.
- I had a problem.
I went into a romantic scene,
where two people are kissing,
and French necking,
but French necking
is not our culture.
So we're making this story,
I'm sitting down with elders,
asking them,
"How did you get married?
What is Inuit kiss like?"
That's what we'll be using
the camera for,
how much trouble they went
through to get us here.
To capture it now, because
10 years down the road,
most of the elders
will be gone.
[narrator]: The most
compelling moment of this film
is when the fast runner runs.
- The enemy arrives
and with lances,
tries to kill everybody
under the tent,
and you have blood all over.
So, you have
a metaphoric "naissance",
when out of this blood patch,
this bare man arrives,
and runs freely in the sun.
That's the new cinema.
That's the image
of the new
Aboriginal North America.
- You have a Native guy
running across the ice, naked,
through the water,
in the snow,
and as a director, I'm sitting
there and I'm saying,
"That's not an actor, 'cause
an actor wouldn't do that."
- Attar Ungulak,
who plays Atanarjuat,
he knows the story.
He knows that he's gonna have
to run naked across the ice
in this movie.
That's the iconic image.
There might be all kinds
of other things
we can change in this film,
but we can't change that thing.
He had a props genius
make up fake feet.
The fake feet tore up
right away.
Running on ice,
it's not smooth,
it's very abrasive.
So you've got to film
that maybe 50 times.
The actor was so committed,
responsible to
the requirement of his role,
which is an iconic legend
in his culture,
that he was willing
to do things that,
you know, most people,
even if they were willing to do,
maybe couldn't do.
- Argh!
[panting]
[narrator]: A new age
of Native cinema is born.
These films revolutionize
the Native image for the world.
[chanting]
- Those movies, the movies
made in the North,
are incredibly special.
And they are progress,
they're finally
an Aboriginal cinema
that isn't someone else's.
The gaze is ours.
But, at the same time,
you have a whole
Aboriginal cinematic movement
springing up all over the world,
where you have filmmakers
in New Zealand, in Australia,
and filmmakers in North America
and South America
making truly Aboriginal movies.
- You don't always
have to make
great representations
of Native people.
We're not asking for that.
We're not asking to be,
you know, nobles
or righteous or
good all the time.
We're asking to be human.
- Indians aren't dead.
We're here, we're vital,
we've got something to say,
we've got something to play.
- To see it come in my lifetime
is very empowering
for our culture. We can't
describe the importance now.
That'll be described
years from now,
by critics probably
far more important than me.
They will talk about, I think,
what those movies meant.
[laughing]
- We're creative Natives,
and we're like
the Energizer Bunny.
The mightiest nation
in the world
tried to exterminate us,
Anglicize us, Christianize us,
Americanize us, but we just
keep going and going.
And I think that Energizer Bunny
must be Indian -
he's got that little water drum
he plays.
And I always say,
next time you have a powwow,
have the Energizer Bunny
lead the grand entry.
And after a few rounds,
then we can get together
and eat him, because
we never waste anything.
We share everything.
[laughing]
It's all right, I don't mind
laughs in the show, I mean...
Closed Captioning:
CNST, Montreal
[gunfire]
[narrator]: Growing up
on the reservation,
the only show in town
was movie night
in the church basement.
Raised on cowboys and Indians,
we cheered for the cowboys,
never realizing
we were the Indians.
- Soon, we will be gone.
Your civilization
will have destroyed us.
But by your magic,
we will live forever.
[battle cry]
[gunfire]
- Do I have to cut your throat
to get it through your head?
I'm a white man!
[laughing]
- You fooled 'em, Chief!
You fooled 'em!
You fooled 'em all.
[loud cry]
[gunfire]
- You know the only thing more
pathetic than Indians on TV?
It's Indians
watching Indians on TV.
[laughing]
[narrator]: I'm an Indian.
A Cree who grew up
in one of the most isolated
Native communities on earth,
close to the Arctic Circle.
Up here, we don't wear
feathers or ride horses,
but because of the movies,
a lot of the world
still thinks we do.
I'm on a journey to make sense
of how Hollywood's fantasy about
Indians influenced the world,
even Natives like me.
- You got to look
like a warrior.
You got to look like
you just came back
from killing a buffalo.
- But our tribe never hunted
buffalo. We were fishermen.
[narrator]: But the myth
of the fearless,
stoic warrior lives on.
[cheering]
- We'll never be able to change
the fantasy of who
and what Indians are.
That fantasy
will always be there.
We'll always be on covers
of novels saying,
The Cheyenne Warrior!
[loud roars]
[crying]: I'm only
three and a half years old.
[narrator]:
I'm off to Hollywood,
4,000 miles through
the American West,
in the reservation Indian's
vehicle of choice, the rez car.
[engine starting]
- A rez car is probably
like a piece of luggage
or something to other people,
and you kind of
keep it together
with tape and with string.
And, you know, I have
all sorts of people telling me,
"Oh yeah, I know that story
about driving backwards,
'cause we actually did it."
I had a rez car, and, you
know, the ignition didn't work,
so we had a screwdriver
in the ignition,
and, you know,
all sorts of stuff.
Nobody said to me
that they had a car
with three wheels yet,
but that would be a rez car.
[narrator]: These
are the American Great Plains,
the setting for most
of Hollywood's Indian stories.
I'm headed West
to the sacred Black Hills,
once the domain
of Chief Sitting Bull,
and the legendary
Tashunka Witko,
otherwise known
as Crazy Horse.
- Tashunka Witko, which
does not mean Crazy Horse.
Tashunka Witko means
his horses are spirited.
He was a great horse trainer,
and all his horses had spirit.
You could just see them
prancing, yeah...
[narrator]: I've always wanted
to ride a horse
on the open plains.
I finally feel
like a real Indian.
This is where Crazy Horse
outmanoeuvred Custer
at the Battle
of the Little Big Horn.
[battle cry]
Ever since,
Hollywood has been
telling that story
over and over again,
turning the battle into legend,
and Crazy Horse,
an icon.
[fierce battle cry]
- Why you dirty, moth-eaten,
cockeyed son of a rattlesnake!
If it ain't old Crazy Horse,
chief of the Sioux! Ha! Ha! Ha!
[narrator]: Legend has it,
hekilled Custer.
[gunfire]
- There's a romanticism
in the glory to Little Big Horn,
we defeated Custer
and all this and that,
at that emotional level.
But, you know, within 15 years,
our leader Crazy Horse was dead,
Sitting Bull was dead.
You know...
And we were herded up.
[narrator]: Pine Ridge is
the poorest Indian reservation
in North America.
These are the descendants
of Crazy Horse.
Their Lakota Chief is
a direct descendant
of Chief Red Cloud,
who fought alongside
Crazy Horse.
So, this is where
it happened?
- This is where it happened.
Right here, this is where
Chief Crazy Horse
was imprisoned, here.
[narrator]: After surrendering
here to troops,
Crazy Horse
was stabbed in the back.
- So, I always think this is
sacred ground to me.
Where our ancestors
used to walk,
where they used to camp
and live. Here.
[narrator]: To Native people,
Crazy Horse
is a mystical warrior,
just like in the movies.
- It was a continuation
of the idea that Natives
were really great warriors,
that they were just
incredibly skilled at warfare,
almost unstoppable, really.
- Yah!
- I've gotta say,
Neil, you know,
I'm really glad
that you're doing this.
For once, somebody's
taking the time to let the...
to tell the... To tell
the real story of Crazy Horse.
As he says in his song,
"Whenever you look,
see the Black Hills,
"remember me.
That is our homeland,
our sacred grounds."
[narrator]: Carved out
of the sacred Black Hills
is Crazy Horse Memorial.
When complete,
it will be the largest statue
to a human anywhere.
- And there'll be
a 44-foot stone feather
on the back of his head.
It will be carved
from 11 pieces of stone.
[narrator]: An ironic tribute
to a man,
who it is said refused
to have his image captured.
Most experts agree that
every photo of him is a fake.
- Who was Crazy Horse?
Not who wasCrazy Horse:
who isCrazy Horse?
Who he is, is he's an idea,
he's an embodiment
of the human spirit,
he's an embodiment
of what can be done
when you're centered
and balanced within yourself
as a human being,
when you have a relationship
to the spiritual reality
that you are a part of.
See, to me
he's an embodiment of that.
- Shortly,
there will be a blast.
[laughter and applause]
- It's a good crowd, yeah.
It's nice doing a TV shot.
Maybe a couple more,
I'll be able to get
in the movies some day,
and maybe change some
of the movie clichs, you know,
you see everyday in the movies,
where the settlers come in,
gets the Indian loaded, and
wants his resources, you know?
"Say, Indian, which way
does this road go?"
"Hmm! Road stay!
You go!"
[laughter]
"You don't understand,
some day we want to live
together and love one another
like brothers and sisters."
[sound of gun cocking]
"We cannot love
the white eyes,
it is painful
to kiss forked tongue."
[laughter and applause]
[narrator]: Zigzagging my way
through the American Heartland,
I'm hoping to make sense of
the world's enduring love affair
with the Hollywood Indian.
[chanting]
In the movies,
we're often portrayed
as spiritual, noble, and free.
This image has captured
the world's imagination.
This fascination
with everything Native
begins with
the very first explorers.
They encountered
hundreds of nations,
rich and diverse cultures,
languages, and beliefs.
The world is hooked.
- Native Americans were among
the first subjects for films.
Thomas Edison shot silents
about Native Americans.
This is in the late 1800's.
- Thomas Edison unveiled
his Kinetoscope
in Times Square,
and it was a penny machine
that played
"The Lagoon of Pueblo,
Ceremonies and Dances."
And those were
the very first moving images.
- There were more than a hundred
silents made involving
Native Americans.
Very much 'cause this part
of American history, of course,
was really still ongoing
at the time that cinema
was really being born.
[narrator]:
With populations dwindling,
most Natives are confined
to reservations.
Then, as film is being invented,
the Seventh Cavalry,
in revenge for Little Big Horn,
opens fire on the last
free community of Natives.
Three hundred men, women,
and children
are killed at Wounded Knee,
on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
- That is a genocide that
occurred, and the culture
wanted to perpetuate
the idea that
these people are now
mythological, you know,
they don't even really exist,
they're like dinosaurs.
- The reason that Indians
were projected so heavily
into movies
was the romance
of the tragedy,
Greek, roman tragedy.
- The Western, as a form,
is a very open form.
It's a very pure kind
of American metaphor,
a kind of frame
within which
you can write or say
all kinds of things.
- I think that the cinema
was created to film
First Nations.
At the beginning,
they were really pioneers,
when they went West
with the first movie camera.
If you look at
The Iron Horse,
John Ford's film,
the promotion they did
from that film,
they are telling you
that the crew was living
like the pioneers, you know,
that they were going through
the same experience.
- I read that in early cinema,
they used to get extras
in the cowboy movies
that were real Indians,
and they'd pay them
with tobacco and firewater,
and they even used
to have armed guards
to make sure these people
didn't get up to any treachery
on the set, you know?
[inaudible]
[gunshot]
- Hey, I got brewskies.
- Excellent.
- ...taking over the lead.
They're gonna win this,
followed by Mountain Timber.
[applause]
[narrator]: In the movies, all
Natives are supreme horsemen.
At one with their horse.
But most of us can't even ride.
Perhaps that myth
was born here,
with the Crow people
of Montana.
[cheering]
The Crow are renowned riders
throughout North America.
It's like they were
born on a horse.
- The Crows,
they love horses.
Without a horse,
it's like losing a mom
or a family member.
When a horse dies,
some people cry.
[man laughing]
- There is
a spiritual connection
between the Crow
and the horse.
Because the horse came along,
and he saved a lot
of people like me, you know,
from whatever.
It heals you.
It makes you think
about something not yourself,
but even though you became
like this with them, you know?
Here was still something
that you could
open your hand to
and let go,
something you gave away.
[narrator]: Fed up with
seeing only white guys
riding in the movies,
Rod became one
of Hollywood's top stuntmen.
- I'm trying to take it
to the next level.
No longer am I just...
"How!", you know.
Now, I can drive a low-rider
and shoot you with an Uzi.
You could wrap me up
in a turban.
And I could be
your worst nightmare.
[narrator]:
He now trains young Natives
in the secrets of his craft.
- Come in,
come in toward me,
come in toward me,
now go!
Stay there, stay there.
Whoo!
You see some good
in some of these kids,
'cause you want
to bring it out in them.
I'm trying to give that back,
because I can,
because I want to.
Three hours from sundown
Jeremy flies
Hoping to keep
You got it! You got it!
The sun from his eyes
I don't just take in anybody.
If you can't ride your horse
anywhere you want,
with your hands
out to the side,
and still being in control,
that's horsemanship.
You know, I'll put
you on the edge,
I want you to feel...
[grunting]
You know?
I want you to feel that. Whoo!
Take the hit, man!
Take the hit!
[gunshot]
If you don't teach them,
they're never gonna learn.
And I take that in life,
you know,
if I don't tell people
about Indians,
they're gonna think
we're all drunks, you know.
They're gonna think
we all can ride bareback.
[narrator]: Throughout
the silent era,
the Indian becomes
not only a hero
but a Hollywood star.
- The output of the silent era
was tremendous.
People in the silent days were
going to movies every week.
So much was being produced.
So, it was natural for Native
American perspectives
to be viewed.
- The portrayal of Native people
on screen has changed
dramatically since
the silent era.
They were
a very popular character.
- Native American people
directing and acting in films,
and they were bringing their
viewpoints to the table too,
and those were being listened
to. Everything was wide open.
It was really exciting times.
[narrator]: One of the most
authentic films of its time,
featuring real Native actors,
is The Silent Enemy.
- The Silent Enemy
refers to starvation.
It's what is occurring
to Native people
who are being encroached on,
then how are they conquering
the silent enemy of starvation.
In the beginning of the film,
it talks about
the demise of
the American Indian people.
And you're talking about
a film in the 1930's,
when the population
of American Indian people
had dipped
to around 250,000.
So, the idea
of the vanishing American
was probably very real
in people's mind.
So, here we have
this chance to capture
the Indians before they vanish,
and what better way
to capture them than on film.
[narrator]: The most famous
Indian of this era
and star of
The Silent Enemy
is Chief Buffalo Child
Long-Lands.
- Buffalo Child Long-Lands,
in the movie,
becomes the ultimate warrior,
the mystic warrior, the one
who's going to help his people.
[narrator]: But Long-Lands
lived his whole life
with a dark secret.
- He disguised
his tri-racial background -
Indian, black and white -
and promoted
a new image of who he was.
So he changed his name
to Long-Lands.
So he took off from there.
What made him the darling
of the cocktail set
is that he would show up,
his hair slicked back,
dark skin,
in his beautiful tuxedo,
and everybody's looking
for the Indian to appear,
and they don't see
this very sophisticated man
in a tuxedo.
When it came out
that he was part black,
of course he was shunned.
And nobody wanted
to invite him
to any of their chic
cocktail parties.
He ended up
at a benefactor's home
in California, and ended up
committing suicide,
because it was going
to be revealed
about his true heritage.
- I was luckily enough
to grow up in a time
when Native people
were the cool thing to be.
And I remember going to parties
where white people
would come to me
and want to touch my hair,
and would describe themselves
getting an Indian name
from an elder
at some ceremony somewhere
they had managed to attend.
And it was always,
you know, Dakota.
- Ah, choosing your animal name.
First, you choose your animal,
which is your spirit,
the animal most like you.
[loud cry]
- I am the wolverine.
I am the wolverine!
[loud cry]
[narrator]: Scattered
throughout North America
are summer camps like these,
keeping Hollywood's notion
of the noble savage
alive and well.
[whistle]
[cheering]
This is the event
of the summer:
tribal games.
A time when boys become
Indian braves at war.
- What is interesting is that
with all the bad images
of the Indians,
so many people
want to be Indians.
[chanting]
All the mythological apparel
that the cinema
put around the Indians,
putting it in this magic land.
Everybody wants to be there.
And one of the ways to be there
was to become Indian.
[narrator]: David Teufner
comes all the way from Austria.
- I am here because I'm
a counsellor in Camp Bominay.
I was chosen as a tribe leader,
as well, for the Sioux Tribe,
which was a great,
great surprise for me,
and a great honour.
Welcome to the Sioux Tribe
We've got scouts and braves
Fierce and mighty warriors
never fear defeat
Sioux Tribe
Sioux Tribe
Sioux Tribe
Sioux
Pass the peace pipe
to Crazy Horse
Pass the
peace pipe to Crazy Horse
- My knowledge is not great
about Natives. Basically,
it's from two or three movies
that I would have watched.
But through these movies,
I just got the whole mentality
of the Natives.
It gave me a very
positive perspective.
Like the unity, the family,
the unity, how they hold
together like, brotherhood.
[narrator]: I wonder
if any of these kids
have ever met
a Native person,
or if their image of us
comes only from the movies.
I hope I don't
disappoint them.
[loud banging]
- On one side, I like the
peaceful image of the Natives,
but, if necessary,
the warrior image.
I'd say it's a very brutal.
The Natives had brutal times,
but I think it was not
if it was necessary.
[loud chanting and percussions]
[chanting]
- Oh, no!
No, don't!
[narrator]: In the 1930's,
the Indian is transformed
into a brutal savage.
And America, struggling
through the Great Depression,
needs a new brand of hero.
- There were a number
of Hollywood films
that came out
in the early 1930's
that followed in the steps
of The Silent Enemy.
And the Indians were
the stars of these movies.
But the interesting thing
about that whole cycle,
they just bombed
at the box-office...
Americans are not
that interested in them.
- For the most part,
in that decade,
we're looking at films
where it's the savage,
it's the attacking marauders.
- Savage!
- That's my wife, Yakima.
My squaw.
- Yes, but she's...
She's savage.
- Si, seor. She's
a little bit savage, I think.
- People lined up in droves.
Americans loved westerns.
It's in our blood.
- Stagecoach is
the iconic western.
It's the western
that all others were
really modelled after,
and it's one of
the most damaging movies
for Native people in history.
- Hold it!
- You have white society
inside the stagecoach,
and they are besieged
on all sides by Native people,
by the wild of America.
[gunfire]
Those that are
stopping progress,
those that are backwards,
those that are vicious
and bloodthirsty.
[arrow landing on target]
[coughing]
Stagecoach summed up
and gave the opinion
of Native people for decades
to the populace in the US.
That's how they thought of us,
and it's because of John Ford
that they thought of us
like that,
and that Native people may
have even thought of themselves.
[mumbo jumbo]
- You pushin' up daisies!
- Very interesting.
Whoa!
- That's when we developed
the sort of Tonto-speak
that now, I think,
is most associated
with the portrayal of
Aboriginal people on screen.
[narrator]: But some films,
instead of using
a Native language,
well, they just ran
English backwards.
[dialogue in English
is playing backwards]
Listen for the satanic messages.
- And as for the Indians,
they're usually white guys
in red-face.
- White people
playing Native roles,
I love it,
because it's funny.
All the big stars
played Natives.
- She can chew on my moccasins
anytime she wants to.
- White guys playing Indians.
Chuck Connors as Geronimo.
It's like Adam Sandler
as Malcolm X, you know?
- I remember once,
we were on a set,
the director says,
"I want a real Native.
Up front, I want to see
the real thing."
Well, he couldn't find one.
[narrator]: Native women,
on the other hand,
are pretty much absent
in a Western.
- I knew I could count
on feminine curiosity.
[narrator]: Except, of course,
for the Indian princess,
epitomized by Pocahontas.
- Why is this woman,
the Disney Pocahontas,
such a profound image,
a mythic image
for American people? What
about children who know nothing
about Native society,
and they see this young woman,
who has this one-shoulder,
skimpy dress
that she's wearing,
and she has Miko, a raccoon,
that she communes with.
Well, the reality of Pocahontas
is that at the time
of the contact
with John Smith,
and this event,
they say she was about
nine years old.
So, we imbue in her
all of the wrong notions
of what we want to see
in a mythical princess.
And she becomes the embodiment,
not of Native society,
she becomes an embodiment
of American society,
of American desire.
- And Native men are reduced
to a mere caricature.
[narrator]: Richard Lamotte,
one of Hollywood's
biggest costume designers,
knows first hand about how
Hollywood dresses up Indians.
- Here, a finger necklace.
I don't know
what show it was,
but I'm sure somebody saw that
in the research, you know?
Where they use body parts
or wherever as trophies,
you know,
made a necklace or...
If you look at the movies
in the '30's,
Native Americans, I want to say,
much like African Americans,
were sort of props.
Rather than to try to make
them look regional,
everybody was identifiable.
So, they weren't interested
in explaining the tribes. They
said, "Well, they're Indians."
- Panello,
this Indian's no Indian.
- If he's no Indian, why is he
wearing a chicken for a hat?
[narrator]:
So to keep things simple,
every Indian becomes
a Plains Indian,
wearing the headdress,
buckskin,
and the headband.
That's not
a headband, is it?
- Yeah, it probably is
a headband. Yeah.
- And it's probably just like
the ones we were talking about.
The ones that never existed.
Headbands are
an interesting thing.
Certainly certain Americans,
Native American tribes
did use headbands,
and wear headbands,
but the Plains Indians usually
not. But working on a western,
stunt people are gonna fall off
horses. You need to keep
their wigs on.
That's the best way to do it.
So, Hollywood started putting
headbands on Plains Indians.
Then, it just became a thing
you saw in every movie.
Headband with an elastic back,
something you'd never
find on a Native.
- This is actually,
while probably not calculated,
an ingenious act of colonialism.
You are essentially
robbing Nations of an identity,
and grouping them into one.
[narrator]: And the western
forces all Indians
to live in the deserts
of the Southwest.
[narrator]: John Ford shot
so many movies here
that tourists come
by the thousands
to experience the iconic
American West.
And to pick up a memento
of America's greatest
Indian fighter.
[chanting]
- Break out the grain!
- Yes, sir!
Yes, sir!
- John Wayne is an icon
of American cinema,
one of the great action heroes
in history.
His actions, which are
remarkably violent,
seem excused, actually,
that this is
the exact appropriate behaviour
one would have.
- In The Searchers,
John Wayne literally
uncovers a grave
with an Indian person,
a dead Indian person in it.
- Jorgensen!
- Why don't you finish the job?
- And shoots him in the face.
- Ain't got no eyes,
he can't enter the spirit land.
Has to wander forever
between the winds.
You get it, Reverend!
Come on, Blankethead.
- He embodied the idea
of the unstoppable American,
that the true American
wasn't Native.
Native Americans
were the ones that stopped
real Americans from settling
their own country.
[ominous music]
[narrator]: I found
two Navajo Elders
who were extras in some
of John Ford's films.
Effie and James Etna
were teenage sweethearts
when they met on set.
They're seeing these films
for the very first time.
[laughing]
[narrator]: James can remember
how many of the Navajo actors
would go off script
in some scenes,
joking around in their language.
No one ever bothered
to translate what was said,
until now.
- If I do not return,
general Quaint will find you.
And you will be dead,
and all your people.
No! He is not a fool.
You are.
[narrator]: After playing
the bonehead savage
for so many years,
the Navajo
get their sweet revenge.
[ominous western musical theme]
Right next door to the Navajo
is a place where anybody
can be a cowboy for a day.
- You're all here on vacation.
Come on out
and have a good time.
[narrator]: Even
an Indian like me.
Here, they worship one man.
His swagger is screen legend.
His name: the Duke.
- John Wayne never did
a bad movie, okay, partner?
You got it?
All right, pilgrim.
And, now where's
the little Cowboy Room?
I've got to do a wee-wee.
Uh-huh.
- Everybody's always fantasizing
about an age when individuals
were very strong.
The lone guy travelling
across the wide landscape,
and dealing
with all the elements,
everything from rattlesnakes
to who knows what.
[rallying cries]
- Hold it there!
- There's always this kind of
John Wayne guy that is sort of
the moral standard
that represents America
and its moral values.
So it's a big hunky, white guy,
that's not real smart but
that's gonna do the right thing,
and he's gonna drive
the Indians away
and marry the school marm,
and walk off into the sunset.
- You oughtn't to go too far,
Miss Dallas.
Apaches like to sneak up
and pick off strays.
[imitating John Wayne]:
I'd like to thank you
for the use of
your mustang, lady,
and apologize for the spur
marks on the dashboard, ah-ha.
- Who's the quickest
draw here?
- Who's the quickest?
I would say maybe Windy Bill.
- Windy Bill.
- Where's Windy Bill?
- That little fella
right over there.
- I'd like to challenge
Windy Bill.
- You bring it on, cowboy.
- Oh, the gun's stuck in here.
- Oh, it's stuck in there!
[laughing]
You count.
- Okay.
On four,
one-two-three-four?
- Whatever number you want.
- Four.
[gunshot]
[narrator]: As a kid,
I didn't realize it was me
Bugs Bunny was killing off
on screen.
One little two little
three little Indians
Four little five little
six little Indians
Oh-oh! Sorry, that one
was a half-breed.
- Yes, sir, I'd sure love
to kill me an Indian.
White man came
across the sea
He brought us pain
and misery
- When we were kids, we used
to play cowboys and Indians,
I was always Gary Cooper.
Run to the hills
Run for your lives
- Those images
do shape people's opinions,
and I think they put it at odds
for me. When you're kids
and you're trying to play
cowboys and Indians.
And if you're an Indian kid,
well, doesn't that mean
you're gonna lose all the time?
Run for your lives
- When we watch the Indians
getting slaughtered
at the end of every movie,
well, my brother would
refuse to watch it.
Every time that bugle went off,
and the charge started,
my brother,
he was a year and a half
younger than me,
he'd go like this.
And he wouldn't
look, he wouldn't watch.
We'd come out
of those theatres,
after the cavalry had rescued
the white people.
All of a sudden, we'd hear,
"There's those Indians."
And we'd start fighting, we had
to fight them white kids.
Every Saturday, we knew
we was gonna get in a fight.
[chanting]
[narrator]: I'm here to find out
how Native kids today
would react to the kinds
of westerns I saw growing up.
- So, what do you understand?
I want you to listen
real carefully
and find out what
they're talking about, okay?
[narrator]: The film
is Little Big Man,
where an Indian massacre
was made graphic and real
for the very first time.
- And I am
the sole white survivor
of the battle
of Little Big Horn.
- Little Big Horn
was not representative
of encounters between
whites and Indians, Mr. Crabb.
You see, the near-genocide
of the Indian...
- The near what?
- Near-genocide.
It means
extermination.
[cavalry music]
[gunfire]
- See, when they got off
the boat,
they didn't recognize us.
They said, "Who are you?"
We said, "We're the people.
We're the human beings."
They said, "Oh, Indians,"
'cause they didn't recognize
what it meant
to be a human being.
I'm a human being.
This is the name of my tribe.
This is the name of my people.
But, I'm a human being.
But then, the predatory
mentality shows up,
and starts calling us Indians,
and committing genocide
against us and... as...
As a vehicle of erasing the
memory of being a human being.
So, they used warped
textbooks, history books,
and when film came along,
they used film.
You go in our own communities,
how many of us are fighting
to protect our identity
of being an Indian?
And 600 years ago,
that word Indian,
that sound was never made
in this hemisphere.
That sound, that noise
was never ever made.
Ever. And we're trying
to protect that as an identity.
So it affects all of us.
It's reached the point,
evolutionarily speaking,
we're starting to not recognize
ourselves as human beings.
We're too busy trying
to protect the idea
of a Native American
or an Indian.
But we're not Indians and
we're not Native Americans,
we're older
than both concepts.
We're the people,
we're the human beings.
- Thank you for making me
a human being.
Makes my heart sad.
A world without human beings
has no centre to it.
[arrow whizzing]
- Argh!
- The best part of any movie
is when you heard phhht!
Oh, I love that.
Phhht!
[arrows whizzing]
Phhht!
There's not an Indian within
miles from here. Phhht!
You know, I just love that.
And I think long ago,
when we had that,
we were never stressed out,
'cause if you see
old pictures of Indians,
we were never fat,
we weren't diabetic,
heart problems,
'cause what problems we had:
phhht! You know?
We didn't need Dr. Phil.
Phhht!
So, I say we should
bring that back.
You know, you get somebody
from the IRS come over: phhht!
[narrator]: There is one face
that has become
an American icon for all that
is good about Native people.
Hollywood's most famous
Indian actor,
Iron Eyes Cody.
- Iron Eyes Cody was
a very interesting character.
All in all, he was
probably involved
in close to 100 westerns.
- Now, when the battalion comes,
this one won't go!
- He was very much
the Plains Indian,
with the war bonnet, the paint.
He fit the image
of what people thought
American Indians should be.
So he became a symbol,
an icon for American Indians
in this country
and all over the world.
- Some people have
a deep abiding respect
for the natural beauty
that was once this country.
And some people don't.
People start pollution.
People can stop it.
[narrator]: But Iron Eyes,
like many heroes,
had a secret identity.
- He was actually born
Oscar de Corti, around 1904,
in Louisiana. His parents
were immigrants
from Sicily and
Southern Italy.
Back then, at the turn
of the century in Louisiana,
Italians were not welcome.
There was a lynching by
the Irish against the Italians,
so he grew up amongst
all sorts of prejudice
against Italians.
He always loved
American Indians very much,
and wanted to be part of them,
even though he was Sicilian,
so he took on another identity.
He always wanted
to be in pictures,
so he eventually
joined Hollywood.
[narrator]: That's Iron Eyes,
behind James Cagney,
waiting to be spray-painted
Indian red.
- Behind the camera,
he was very much involved.
His wife was Native American,
he had the whole image
in his real life
as well as in Hollywood.
- What is it you want,
Sitting Bull?
Put on the war paint.
[men screaming]
- So, when the camera stopped,
he kept his identity
and he became
what his image was.
He really believed it, and
he lived it and he breathed it.
- You used a bow and arrow.
You were pretty good with that.
- I'm an expert.
- DeMille used you
in all of his pictures.
- Yeah, I did all of his stuff
with the shooting
with the bow and arrow into
the bodies and things like that.
I hunt with a bow and arrow.
- The older he got,
the more he believed it.
I remember visiting his house,
and at that time,
it was after his stroke.
His whole house was just
full of photographs,
with celebrities,
of himself as an Indian.
And he had a number
of videos going simultaneously.
I counted about seven,
where he would be playing
his own movies constantly,
all the time.
He believed he was
what he saw on the screen.
[narrator]: Iron Eyes Cody
died on January 4th, 1999.
Today, I'm meeting the eldest
of his two adopted sons,
Robert Tree Cody.
[knocking on door]
Robert Tree Cody?
- Oh yes.
How are you? Neil?
- Neil.
- Yes, good morning.
[Native language]
- Kill!
- There he is.
[battle cries]
[laughing]
That scene cracks me up
where he gets mad.
[narrator]: To this day, Robert
celebrates his father as Native.
- He was a man
with a good heart.
He raised us to know
the Indian way of life,
through our dancing and songs.
And our language, too.
[soft melody on flute]
But, like I said,
I'll always stick to my guns,
I will defend
my father's honour.
I will always defend that.
I lived with this man.
This man was a great man.
My father was of Indian people.
[narrator]: In the sixties,
everything is turned
on its head.
[police siren]
The western was out of style,
and the hippies
become Indians.
- The sixties, man,
my daughter said,
"Well, how come you listen
to people..."
The groups were Vanilla Fudge,
Cream, Strawberry Alarm Clock.
Well, we had the munchies
for 15 years, that's why.
We always tolerated them too,
because they always
had the best smoke,
so you had to put up...
[inhaling]
[ragged voice]: You know, like,
I was like hippie man,
you know, like, pfft!
I was like, Indian, you know,
in a previous life.
Cherokee people
Cherokee tribe
So proud to live
So proud to die
[narrator]:
I've come to San Francisco,
birthplace of the hippie.
It's during the Summer of Love
that the Indian is
at his grooviest.
Sacheen Littlefeather
was there.
So, Haight-Ashbury.
- Brings back
a lot of memories.
A lot of people have stolen
the street signs over the years,
so it must have cost them a
fortune to keep replacing them.
My first visit
to Haight-Ashbury, here,
was in 1966.
People were dancing
in the streets,
some of them were nude.
[laughing]
[narrator]: Sacheen
was raised Native,
but when she moved
to Haight-Ashbury,
people's reactions to the way
she dressed surprised her.
- People asked me, "What are
you? Are you a hippie?"
And I said, "No,
I'm an Indian. What's a hippie?"
So, I went to a place
where the hippies lived,
to see what a hippie
looked like.
And I said,
"I don't look like that!"
I did some modelling
at that time,
and they put me
in these outfits.
- Really.
- People emulated the American
Indian as a free spirit.
They always said,
"Oh, my great-grandmother
is a Cherokee princess."
- One of the ways
you could honour Native people
was to dress
like a Native person.
So you have this, you know,
extension of the headband,
and Native people were saying,
"Well, we actually
don't dress like that."
They also created
this fictionalized notion
of Native society,
and it was supported
by the films they were seeing.
- They don't understand us.
So we do the best we can.
At least, we stay alive.
- Are you alive?
- They were, in a way,
trying to imitate us,
but in another way,
they were trying
to remember who they were.
Every human being
is a descendant of a tribe.
So these white people, they're
the descendants of tribes,
there was a time
in their ancestry
when they wore feathers,
all right?
And they wore beads,
and shells.
There was a time
in their ancestry, all right,
before this colonizing
mentality came and did to them,
to turn them into
the white people they are,
and then it came and did it
to us. The very same thing
that happened to us
happened to them.
- What's bothering you,
lieutenant?
- Just human compassion,
general.
I know who I'm fighting.
I'm not sure I understand why.
- It's emblematic
of one of the ways
that people in the sixties,
Hollywood particularly,
were now trying to deal
with their own legacy, which,
I think, at this point,
was sort of hard to deny.
And they were coming
to some sort
of reconciliation about it.
- Bloodthirsty savages
on the loose!
Burning, killing,
violating beautiful
white women!
It's not news anymore!
We're gonna take
a different tack.
From now on, we're going
to grieve for the noble red man.
- Native American people
became a great allegorical tool
to stand in for virtually
any oppressed people.
- Savages! Animals!
- Apaches!
- So, you had Native Americans
really standing in
for the civil rights movement,
which was going on at the time.
- And I see
the promised land.
- It was a moment when
Native Americans began
to assert themselves more
politically, more forcefully.
- It was more than five months
ago that a determined band
of American Indians
seized Alcatraz island
in San Francisco Bay,
in their own demonstration
for a better life.
Today, they're still there.
- This is a country where
all men are created equal.
And it's the land of the free,
the home of truth and justice
and liberty for all.
But we want to know why
that doesn't apply to us.
From the time
I went to Alcatraz,
I had been out of the
non-Native world for six years,
trying to find a place,
and there was just no place
that I really felt like I fit.
That's when
Alcatraz happened.
We want to be treated
as human beings.
We want to be looked upon
with respect, as equals.
[present day John Trudell]:
The main accomplishment
is that it rekindled
the spirit of the people.
The spirit that is the people,
it was diminishing,
because Indians
were ashamed,
because just the hostility
of the non-Native communities
around Native communities,
and in its own way,
the hostility of the media,
through the film, because
these are subtle hostilities
if they're not
blatant hostilities.
So something was
diminishing the spirit,
and I think this activist period
of time rekindled the spirit.
- That presented
a new opportunity
to see Native people
in a different light,
and you began to see filmmakers
portray Native people
in a completely
different manner.
- When policemen break the law,
then there isn't any law.
Just a fight for survival.
- Billy Jack was sort of
an action hero.
He was really representative
of something we saw emerge
in the seventies, which was
a Native-style hero,
who would use physical
violence to enact justice.
- I'm gonna take
this right foot...
And I'm gonna whop you
on that side of your face.
And you wanna know something?
There's not a damn thing
you're gonna be able
to do about it.
- Really?
Kill that Indian
son of a bitch!
- It's got a little vengeance
in this or something,
the right kind of vengeance.
- Now I'm an Indian,
remember?
And we're sneaky. We know
how to strike silently,
in the dark.
- You couldn't help but
just root for this guy
and what he stood for.
- Indian bastard!
[screaming]
[moaning in pain]
- In that one character,
you have embodied
pretty much all of
the seventies angst and anger
that one could in America.
- You worked with King,
didn't you?
- Yes.
- Where is he?
- Dead.
- Bob and Jack Kennedy?
- Dead.
- Not dead, brains blown out.
- So, he would come back
and fight off injustice
using his feet and fists
through kung fu and -
one of the most
amusing character traits -
would remove
his shoe and sock
before kicking the heck
out of someone.
[narrator]: The Indians
start to fight back,
not just in the movies
but in real life as well.
This is Wounded Knee.
For me and many Natives,
it's sacred ground.
What happened here in 1973
would change the image
of Natives in Hollywood forever.
It all started when
the American Indian movement
faced-off against the FBI.
- Inside Wounded Knee,
the Indians are prepared.
They have weapons
and Molotov cocktails
to handle the armoured vehicle
which federal agents
have moved into position.
[plane roaring by]
- The American government
fought a war against us.
From the tanks that they used
at Wounded Knee
to the way they used
the FBI's paramilitary
and National Guards, we were
fighting for our lives.
Our death casualty
went quite high.
- We've bet our lives.
That's something meaningful.
And the course of history
and Indian Affairs
has been changed.
We were prepared to die.
We were in Wounded Knee,
surrounded by the military might
of the United States of America.
Their field of fire...
It was very precise.
The Feds...
- They had a sniper zone.
- And automatic. I mean,
they had 50-calibres.
They meant business.
[gunfire]
[narrator]: Help would come
from the most
unexpected source...
Hollywood.
- I was sitting at home one day,
and I got a phone call
from Marlon Brando.
He was up for an award
for Best Actor
for The Godfather.
And he asked me,
would I go up
and represent him
at the Academy Awards.
He said this would be an
opportunity to explain to people
about the stereotype
of Native Americans in film,
and also because
of the Indian occupation
at Wounded Knee
in South Dakota.
- We were inside Wounded Knee.
They're shooting at us
everyday and night.
And there was quite
a few people inside watching,
in the trading post,
the Academy Awards.
[applause and cheering]
- The ceremony
was due to start
about six o'clock
in the evening.
That's when they rolled out
the red carpet.
And I got dressed in
my traditional Indian regalia,
but there was a man, he was
the producer of the whole show.
He took that speech
away from me
and he warned me very sternly.
"I'll give you
60 seconds or less.
"And if you go over
that 60 seconds,
"I'll have you arrested,
I'll have you put in handcuffs."
- Marlon Brando
in The Godfather.
[applause]
[The Godfather theme music]
- Accepting the award for
Marlon Brando in The Godfather,
Miss Sacheen Littlefeather.
- All of a sudden,
we get a call.
They start yelling, "Hey!
There's an Indian."
And so, I rushed in there
and saw Sacheen Littlefeather
just get to the microphone.
And she starts
making this speech.
- I'm representing
Marlon Brando this evening.
And he has asked me to
tell you in a very long speech,
which I cannot share
with you presently
because of time,
but I will be glad to share
with the press afterwards,
that he very regretfully
cannot accept
this very generous award.
And the reasons for this being
are the treatment
of American Indians today
by the film industry...
Excuse me.
[boos and applause]
There was a round of confusion
in the whole audience.
Everybody's mouths flung open.
Everybody was in chaos.
...and also with recent
happenings at Wounded Knee.
I beg at this time
that I have not intruded
upon this evening
and that we will,
in the future, our hearts
and our understandings
will meet with love
and generosity.
Thank you on behalf
of Marlon Brando.
[applause]
- And it was really
an experience for me,
being lied about
in the media,
people saying
that I wasn't Indian,
people saying
that I rented my dress.
It was a very tough time.
There were many
death threats at that time.
- But it was to personally
discredit her,
and at the same time,
discredit the message
that she was trying to deliver
about the depiction
of Native people in film.
But she was also talking
about the atrocities
against Native people
that were continuing.
- We don't believe we're gonna
get out of there alive.
And the morale is down low.
And Marlon Brando
and Sacheen Littlefeather
totally uplifted
our lives.
And maybe Marlon Brando
Will be there by the fire
We'll sit and talk
about Hollywood
And the good things
there for hire
Like the Astrodome
And the first tepee
Marlon Brando
Pocahontas and me
- I just have a dream
that some day
I will get into the movies.
And then I will win
an Academy Award.
And then I'll refuse it
because of the mistreatment
of Marlon Brando.
[laughter]
Thank you!
- How!
[chanting loudly]
- Will Sampson, in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,
is one of those
great performances
that is completely memorable.
- Raise your hands up.
Up. That's it!
Up! All the way up.
- Everyone talks
about Nicholson,
but you couldn't have that movie
without Will Sampson.
He's the stoic Indian who
really is silent for the movie,
but there's something
about the way he portrays him.
It has a dignity.
- Ah, Juicy Fruit...
- Well, you sly
son of a bitch, Chief!
God!
You hear me, too?
- Yeah, you bet.
- Well, I'll be goddamned,
Chief!
And they all... They all think
you're deaf and dumb.
Jesus Christ!
[laughing]
You fooled 'em, Chief!
You fooled 'em.
You fooled 'em all!
- There was a beginning
to see an ownership
over these very stereotypes.
So, suddenly,
the fact that Will Sampson
plays the stoic Indian
in the way he did
in that movie, in some ways,
reclaims that character
for our people.
It says, I will take it
within me, and I will own it,
and I will give it a grace.
[groaning]
- The character
in Cuckoo's Nest started out
as the stereotypical Indian.
And it rose
to a level of humanity
as the picture unfolds.
He has to become
the symbol of freedom
for America, really.
- You didn't see
any soldiers in your dream!
And that means that...
That they can't see you now!
- You think so?
- Yes! Yes! What else
did your dream mean?
- I've never been
invisible before!
- What we began to see
in a film like Little Big Man,
was an attempt to portray
Aboriginal people
as non-stereotypes,
or at least attempt
to flesh out the characters that
they could portray on screens.
- We're cut off!
- It doesn't matter!
We're invisible!
- It played a lot with satire,
and sending up a lot
of the stereotypes,
and it was also home to an
absolutely brilliant performance
by Chief Dan George,
who played
the elder in the film
with a sly, comic wit that
I'm not sure we'd ever seen.
- Take care of my son here.
See that he doesn't go crazy.
- In The Outlaw Josey Wales,
Eastwood in the film,
encounters this Native man,
played by Chief Dan George,
and he's hilarious
in the movie.
- I'm glad you stopped me
when you did.
I might have killed her.
- Oh, I noticed that.
[Clint Eastwood]: He had most
of the humour in the film.
So that's what attracted me to
the script in the first place,
is that the Indians
were treated as people
with all different kinds
of shadings.
- I guess you were right.
I ain't that old after all.
- He was an elder, but he
wasn't pseudo-wise, you know.
He wasn't the clich
of the wise tribal leader.
He was kind of a guy
who is adrift,
just like Josey Wales was.
- I'm getting better sneaking up
on you like this.
Only an Indian
can do something like this.
- Only an Indian could do
something like that.
[gun cocking]
- He was the key that brought
that warmth and authenticity
of who Native people really are,
because he had
that sense of humour.
One of the things that I think
is a very vital part
in our community, what has
kept us alive, is humour.
Our ability to laugh at just,
you know,
and it gets ugly sometimes,
and our ability to laugh
at the ugly...
- Couple of horses, far off,
moving fast.
- I don't hear nothin'.
- Gotta be an Indian
to know those things.
- Humour is the thread
that we weave our lives around
as Native people, because
the humour has saved us.
Great spirit and humour,
that's what's saved us.
- Comedy, the ability
to make light
throughout this, was one
of his great, great skills.
And it's Clint Eastwood
at his violent best,
and yet, in the middle
of that film,
there's Chief Dan George
undoing a lot of the problems
that had been done before him
in a single role.
[chanting]
- Usually have problems
doing my act, you know,
because I know
a lot of you white people
never seen an Indian
do stand-up comedy before,
you know? Like, for so long,
you probably thought that
Indians never had a sense
of humour, you know?
We never thought
you were too funny either.
[laughter and applause]
[narrator]: In the eighties,
the Western goes out of style.
It wasn't until the nineties
that the Indian comes back big.
- The nineties began as a decade
with theiconic movie
that started it all,
Dances With Wolves.
[screaming]
- It was a box-office hit,
it picked up several Oscars,
including Best Picture,
and people lined up in droves
because it was a western,
and a very good one at that.
- The Native were fleshed out
as characters,
allowed to be seen
as more complete people.
They weren't just warriors,
they weren't just peaceful.
- You there!
- So, it is a very sensitive
and sympathetic approach.
It doesn't erase the fact
that at its core,
the film is not a Native movie.
It is still
a movie made
from the outside of us,
and is about us,
and is meant to be
sympathetic towards us,
but it isn't us.
- It's a story about
a white guy.
And the Indians are
the T and A,
but it gets promoted as being
about Native people or Indians,
but it's not really.
We're just backdrop.
- I thought, okay,
here's a guy with a mullet,
and he conveniently finds a
white woman in the Indian camp,
and when they show her
portrayal in it... If she lived
with these Native people, she
would have been well-groomed
and dressed like them.
They had her dressed
like Wilma Flintstone,
with mud on her,
and dishevelled, and lost.
- And then, to treat my nation
like we don't know
how to fight.
[gunfire]
- Shoot the gun!
- We, the Lakota,
who are responsible,
the first nation
to ever militarily defeat
the United States of America
on the field of battle.
And Lawrence of the Plains
has to teach us how to fight?
[crying]
[gunfire]
[cheering]
- Tatanka.
- But it's a brilliant
performance by Graham Greene.
I think that beginning
with that performance
that Graham Greene
becomes legend.
- I had to learn Lakota.
[speaking Lakota]
I worked eight hours
a day on it,
'till I was fluent in what
I was saying.
I can't even speak
my own language.
The only language I speak
is English, and not very well.
- He expanded what it was meant
to be a Native on screen.
And for us to see ourselves
is very empowering. And to see
ourselves presented in the way
Graham Greene did it
is especially empowering.
In many ways,
I think that performance
is what has informed
so many of the films
that have followed.
[narrator]: With the huge
success of Dances With Wolves,
playing Indian meant
box-office hits for Hollywood
and its stars.
Scenes, stories, and roles,
designed to cash in
on the new popularity.
Being Indian was lucrative
and cool again.
Half-breed
That's all I ever heard
Half-breed how I
learned to hate the word
[narrator]: Oddly enough,
this resurgence of the western
bankrolls the birth of
independent Native cinema,
and for the first time,
I hear my own language
in the movies.
[Native language]
Even the leaders of
the American Indian movement,
Russell Means and John Trudell,
go Hollywood.
Cast in films
like Thunderheart,
for a touch of
Native street cred.
- It all gets real simple
real fast, you know?
Subject resisted.
Subject is dead. Get it?
- The government wiped out
the political movement
by the eighties.
But what is emerging
out of that is a cultural,
artistic voice.
And I see it coming,
there's more Native
filmmakers, songwriters.
Out of all that Native
creativity that's coming out,
we will find our voice.
- It's a good day
to be indigenous.
It's 45 degrees in the sun.
It's 8 a.m. Indian time.
- Smoke Signals was another
of the films that came
at the end of the nineties,
that started the golden age
of Aboriginal cinema.
This was a movie made
by a Native guy,
Chris Eyre,
starring Native people,
and not about
what occurred 120 years ago.
It was a movie about
nativeness now,
and that was
a big breakthrough.
- You're leaving the rez,
going into a bold,
different country, cousin!
- But it's the United States.
- Damn right it is!
That's as foreign as it gets!
Hope you two
got your vaccinations.
[laughing]
- Maybe all we need
is a good laugh.
Maybe that's all we need
as a people,
is a good laugh.
And I think Evan Adams,
you know, was really
the centre of that.
- Nobody can help us.
No Superman, no Batman,
no Wonder Woman.
[laughing]
Not even Charles Bronson, man!
- I was watching Evan perform,
and I said,
"Evan, what are you doing?"
I go,
"What are you playing?"
Because I could never place it.
He had this Indian humour
and goodness to him,
and he kept it the whole time
we were shooting.
I said to Evan,
"What's going on,
what are you doing here?"
You know? And he told me
he was playing his grandma.
[narrator]: After crisscrossing
North America,
I finally arrive...
Hollywood.
Living in the Hollywood Hills
is one of today's most
successful Native actors,
Adam Beach.
- The perception
of who we are in Hollywood,
that has a lot of respect,
because they are still
fascinated with who we are
as a culture, as a people,
throughout history,
and stories they tell
through film.
Which is great, because it
really teaches a lot of people
that, you know, we have
something to offer to the world.
[gunfire and explosions]
[narrator]: In his starring role
in Clint Eastwood's
Flags of Our Fathers,
Adam Beach puts a human face
to the stereotype,
the drunken Indian.
- Stay down, son!
- Settle down, Ira!
- Settle down?!
[screaming]
Ira Hayes was consumed
by alcohol.
I myself,
I can't even attempt
to drink when in a crowd,
because, "There's another
drunk Indian."
[vomiting]
I've always called myself
a child of an alcoholic,
so throughout that film,
when you watch it, that's me,
it's not acting.
- Jesus Christ! He's drunk!
Goddamn Indians...
- Adam, I know
he's very conscious
of the problems in
the community of alcoholism,
and he'd been
on the reservations,
and had done work
in this area.
And that made him
play it very well.
- Think I could see my mom
before they ship me off?
Think I could do that?
[Adam]: Here's a human being
shedding human emotion.
No stereotypes,
no stoic Indian.
It's just a young boy
that wants to see his mom,
who lost a lot of his friends.
[narrator]: I'm at the end
of my quest.
Back up north,
in the high Arctic
community of Iglulik.
After travelling across America,
the answers were here all along.
[laughing]
[screaming]
It's an unlikely place
to give birth to a film
that has revolutionized
Native cinema,
and gone on to win
at the Cannes Film Festival.
Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner,
captures one of the Inuits'
most cherished legends,
and brings it to the world.
- Atanarjuat, to me,
was that point
where cinema was being altered
to tell our stories our way.
And gone were
the stereotypes of past,
really, in that one movie.
There's none of that nonsense.
It's a gloriously sexy film
set in the Arctic.
[chanting]
- Wow, I've never seen
anything like this before.
This is so pure in its soul.
- I always say that that's
the most Indian movie ever made.
It's much more Indian
than Smoke Signals.
Smoke Signals
was made for Indian people,
but certainly
for the overculture.
When you get a movie
like The Fast Runner,
you're watching this movie
and you're saying to yourself,
this is an inside job.
[narrator]: Outside of town,
in his hunting cabin,
I meet the director
of The Fast Runner,
Zacharias Kunuk.
I ask him why he makes films.
- I see it as talking back.
You pick up the camera
and you start recording
our own history.
[grunting]
The stories that we used to hear
when we were children,
what do we believe
and why we are here.
[screaming]
[narrator]:
As his elders pass on,
so does their knowledge.
Zach is in a race
against time.
- I had a problem.
I went into a romantic scene,
where two people are kissing,
and French necking,
but French necking
is not our culture.
So we're making this story,
I'm sitting down with elders,
asking them,
"How did you get married?
What is Inuit kiss like?"
That's what we'll be using
the camera for,
how much trouble they went
through to get us here.
To capture it now, because
10 years down the road,
most of the elders
will be gone.
[narrator]: The most
compelling moment of this film
is when the fast runner runs.
- The enemy arrives
and with lances,
tries to kill everybody
under the tent,
and you have blood all over.
So, you have
a metaphoric "naissance",
when out of this blood patch,
this bare man arrives,
and runs freely in the sun.
That's the new cinema.
That's the image
of the new
Aboriginal North America.
- You have a Native guy
running across the ice, naked,
through the water,
in the snow,
and as a director, I'm sitting
there and I'm saying,
"That's not an actor, 'cause
an actor wouldn't do that."
- Attar Ungulak,
who plays Atanarjuat,
he knows the story.
He knows that he's gonna have
to run naked across the ice
in this movie.
That's the iconic image.
There might be all kinds
of other things
we can change in this film,
but we can't change that thing.
He had a props genius
make up fake feet.
The fake feet tore up
right away.
Running on ice,
it's not smooth,
it's very abrasive.
So you've got to film
that maybe 50 times.
The actor was so committed,
responsible to
the requirement of his role,
which is an iconic legend
in his culture,
that he was willing
to do things that,
you know, most people,
even if they were willing to do,
maybe couldn't do.
- Argh!
[panting]
[narrator]: A new age
of Native cinema is born.
These films revolutionize
the Native image for the world.
[chanting]
- Those movies, the movies
made in the North,
are incredibly special.
And they are progress,
they're finally
an Aboriginal cinema
that isn't someone else's.
The gaze is ours.
But, at the same time,
you have a whole
Aboriginal cinematic movement
springing up all over the world,
where you have filmmakers
in New Zealand, in Australia,
and filmmakers in North America
and South America
making truly Aboriginal movies.
- You don't always
have to make
great representations
of Native people.
We're not asking for that.
We're not asking to be,
you know, nobles
or righteous or
good all the time.
We're asking to be human.
- Indians aren't dead.
We're here, we're vital,
we've got something to say,
we've got something to play.
- To see it come in my lifetime
is very empowering
for our culture. We can't
describe the importance now.
That'll be described
years from now,
by critics probably
far more important than me.
They will talk about, I think,
what those movies meant.
[laughing]
- We're creative Natives,
and we're like
the Energizer Bunny.
The mightiest nation
in the world
tried to exterminate us,
Anglicize us, Christianize us,
Americanize us, but we just
keep going and going.
And I think that Energizer Bunny
must be Indian -
he's got that little water drum
he plays.
And I always say,
next time you have a powwow,
have the Energizer Bunny
lead the grand entry.
And after a few rounds,
then we can get together
and eat him, because
we never waste anything.
We share everything.
[laughing]
It's all right, I don't mind
laughs in the show, I mean...
Closed Captioning:
CNST, Montreal