CINEMA-USA: Native Americans Tell it Like it is

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Michael Keats

WASHINGTON, Jul 28 1998 (IPS) - For years, Hollywood movie-makers have had their own ideas on depicting the life of American Indians. Countless westerns have featured Indian tribes either battling “cowboys” or the U.S. cavalry.

A few films, like “Little Big Man”, “Soldier Blue” and “Dances with Wolves” tried to strike balance between the history of Native Americans and the true story of the invasion of their lands by Whites. With few exceptions, however, the role of the Indians have been taken by actors of other races.

“Smoke Signals” – which opened in cinemas throughout the United States and Canada last month – is the first full-length movie, written, directed, co-produced and performed by Native Americans.

Adapted by Sherman Alexie from his 1993 book of short stories “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” the film won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. in “Smoke Signals” novice director Chris Eyre, a 28 year-old Cheyenne/Arapho from Oregon, creates vivid images of life on Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation – “population variable”, as the entry sign reads.

It’s a bitter-sweet tale of the estrangement between Victor, an angry basketball-playing Indian (played by Adam Beach) and his father Arnold (Gary Farmer) who abandoned his wife (Tantoo Cardinal) and son after a drunken Fourth of July Party on the reservation.

Using fire as a central motif, and with a deft sequence of flashbacks, Eyre establishes a mood in which past and present are palpable. The Independence Day party ends in tragedy when the home of Arnold and his family burns to the ground. The fire kills the parents of a young baby boy, Thomas (Evan Adams), who is, however, saved by Arnold when he catches Thomas who is flung from the upper floor of the burning house.

A decade later and Victor and his mother hear that Arnold has died in a trailer camp in Arizona. Accompanied by Thomas, who has grown to be a nerd in braids and glasses, Victor sets out by bus to recover his father’s ashes.

The trip that follows bonds the two young Indians and provides some playfull mockery of the Native American stereotype. “You gotta look stoical” says Victor “You must look as though you have just been out hunting bear or buffalo.”

“But our tribe were always fishermen!” says Thomas.

Thomas’s gift for quirky story-telling Indian style raises laughs – particularly in one scene when two red-necked white men grab the best seats, forcing the two Indians to the back of the bus.

“I dont guys, like that” says “Thomas ” Reminds me of John Wayne. You ever notice how John Wayne never showed his teeth in his movies? I distrust anyone who doesnt show his teeth.”

To the fury of the whites, the two Indians immediately launch into a song about John Wayne’s teeth which asks “were they real, plastic or made of steel?)

The shifts in the film are somewhat abrupt and we learn how it was a drunken Arnold staggering about with firecrackers that started the fire that killed Thomas’s parents 10 years before. On their return journey there is another moment of drama when Victor who his driving his father’s beatup truck nearly runs into an auto that has crashed injuring a woman passenger. The driver of the other vehicle (white) is drunk and accuses Victor of being at fault.

Victor runs 20 miles to reach help, the woman survives but the driver of the other car tells the local (white) Sherriff it was Victor whio was drunk. Victor protests his innocence swearing he never has touched alcohol and the Sheriff, despite quering g “an Indian that doesn’t drink?” believes him.

The injured woman survives while her daughter greets Victor and Thomas as being like “the Lone Ranger and Tonto”

“More like Tonto and Tonto,” quips Thomas, and the pair return to the reservation where life has not changed – although the same cannot be said of Victor and Thomas.

“Smoke Singlas” may have a slight storyline, but powerful acting casts a sweetgrass spell of suprising strength.