/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-U.S.: ‘Seventh Generation’ of Native Americans Rides Again

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gabriel Packard

NEW YORK, Dec 16 2003 (IPS) - Chief Sitting Bull, probably the most famous Native American leader, did not die in battle. He was shot dead by U.S. government authorities in December 1890 while resisting arrest. The crime: promoting a type of religion called the Ghost Dance.

Chief Big Foote, a Lakota leader, immediately realised he would suffer the same fate, so he led his people to try to meet Chief Red Cloud. They were intercepted by the U.S. cavalry, which massacred almost all 300 of them at Wounded Knee. This was just 15 days after Sitting Bull’s death.

At the time, and ever since, Wounded Knee was seen as the end of Native resistance to the U.S. military. But a Lakota medicine man called Black Elk had vision that the Native people would weep for seven generations and then the tears would be wiped away and the Sacred Hoop, a spiritual state of harmony based on natural cycles, would be mended.

The seventh generation is now alive. And whether or not it is a fulfillment of the prophesy, these descendants are increasingly using film to highlight how the Sacred Hoop is being mended, as well as where the Natives Americans, from North and South, are still oppressed by governments.

There are now 16 regular Native American film festivals in the United States, and numerous other projects in Canada and Latin America, including video letters between villages, regular television slots, and mobile screens that travel to remote villages.

The first weekend of December saw one of the biggest and longest-established festivals in the United States.

The Native American Film and Video Festival showed 85 films – feature length, shorts, animation and documentaries, television shows and videos. It is run by the Smithsonian Museum for the American Indian in New York City, and has taken place about every two years since 1979.

“For the first few festivals, about five percent of the work was actually by Native directors,” says the festival’s organiser, Elizabeth Weatherford. “Now it’s about 90 percent.”

Native directors have an advantage, Weatherford says, because they usually check tribal protocol with elders. There are certain rites that only Native Americans may witness. This may prevent them showing certain ceremonies, but the benefits outweigh the costs.

“If you are a Native American – even from a different community – (Native) people are more likely to open up to you and to trust how their stories will be told,” she says.

V. Blackhawk Aamodt (descended from the Blackfoot, Lakota and Mexican tribes) presented the world premiere of his film ‘The Ghost Riders’ at the New York Festival.

It is a documentary that tells the story of the Big Foote Memorial Ride, an annual horseback journey that follows the 300-mile route taken by Chief Big Foote from what is now Sitting Bull Camp in the state of South Dakota, down to Wounded Knee Creek, the site of the massacre.

Initially, there were just five rides planned, from 1986 to 1990, to mark the 100-year anniversary of the massacre and as a fulfillment of Black Elk’s prophesy, a symbolic act of wiping away the tears.

“However, after seeing the positive impact the ride was having on the children of the Seventh Generation,” Blackhawk says, “youth leaders sought to continue the ride indefinitely. The spiritual focus of the ride began to shift from past to future.”

So the ride was re-established in 1992 as the Future Generation Ride and has been held annually since for Lakota from around North America.

‘The Ghost Riders’ focuses on a South Dakota reservation called Pine Ridge, where the adolescent suicide rate is three times higher than the national average, alcoholism is rife, and unemployment is 90 percent.

“I was 11 years old when I had my first drink – my first drink of hard liquor,” says Jonathan Little Thunder, a Pine Ridge teenager shown going on the ride. He urges other Lakota youth to take the journey, and says, “I’m positive that I’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for (my) horse.”

The journey to Wounded Knee Creek is no easy ride. It lasts two weeks and the riders have to camp outdoors in the South Dakota winter, when snow is frequent and temperatures can drop below minus 20 F. Several horses and riders are injured and have to drop out during the course of the film.

There are a few comforts, however. A convoy of support vehicles drives ahead to prepare hot meals at the campgrounds. Also, there is food for the soul in the form of traditional prayers and motivational talk from elders and youth leaders.

There was a full house of about 500 attendees for ‘The Ghost Riders’ premiere and a line of people waiting for no-show tickets, even though a blizzard dropped 14 inches of snow on New York that weekend.

“You didn’t know this film would be in Sense-O-Vision! This snow came in from the Dakotas,” joked Blackhawk, a maverick director who funded the film out of his own pocket and only finished editing it at 4 a.m. that same morning.

Like many Native Americans, Blackhawk feels that his people are still portrayed stereotypically in the mainstream media – something his film and the festival are trying to combat.

Rachel Forte, assistant producer of ‘The Ghost Riders’, says that in the 1960s, the dominant media image switched from “cowboys-and-Indians savages who killed women and babies” to “spiritual protectors of the earth.”

But although the stereotype is now positive, “it still detracts from the obvious problems Native people face today – alcohol, drugs, gangs, suicide,” says Forte, a Lakota and California-mission Native from Miami.

Another, more constructive, change has also taken place since the 1960s, in the past generation.

“In the last 25 to 30 years, there has been a big reconciliation of Native Americans with their roots.” says Terry “Coyote” Murphey, a Cherokee actor who grew up in a middle-class home in Florida.

This is another trend that could be considered a sign that the Sacred Hoop is being mended.

“When I was a kid, my parents didn’t want anything to do with Native America. It was almost like a secret,” says Murphey. “But now, I’m starting to re-discover my roots.”