Native American Film outside the Margins of Filmmaking

Abstract

Native American Film outside the Margins of Filmmaking Beverly R. Singer (Tewa-Diné) Smoke Signals: Native Cinema Rising. By Joanna Hearne. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012. xxxiv + 242 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $30.00 paper. Seeing Red: Hollywood’s Pixeled Skins: American Indians and Film. Edited by LeAnne Howe, Harvey Markowitz, and Denise K. Cummings. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013. xix + 225 pp. Illustrations, notes, references. $29.95 paper. A momentum that began over forty years ago in Canada and shortly thereafter in the United States changed filmmaking history and film practice when Abenaki, Makah, Métis Cree, Inland Tlingit, Inuit, Blackfeet, and Diné/Navajo peoples began filming their own stories. Among the filmmakers who became known after participating in varied film and television production programs1 are Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki), Sandra Sunrising Osawa (Makah), Gil Cardinal (Métis-Cree), David Poisey (Inuit), Carol Geddes (Inland Tlingit), George Burdeau (Blackfeet), Lena Carr (Diné/Navajo), Phil Lucas (Choctaw), and Victor Masayesva Jr. (Hopi). Their inaugural films used nonfiction storytelling methods as an opportunity to challenge the master narratives of fictional films produced for colonial American audiences featuring “the Native savage.” The current trend of Native American production is a migration to fiction narrative filmmaking, advanced by Native film directors Randy Redroad (Cherokee), Shelley Niro (Mohawk), Chris Eyre (Cheyenne-Arapaho), Sherman Alexie (Spokane-Coeur d’Alene), Sterlin Harjo (Seminole-Muscogee Creek), Blackhorse Lowe (Diné/Navajo), Zacharias Kunuk (Inuit), and Sydney Freeland (Diné/Navajo). Entrance to the feature film market has been a daring pursuit, requiring independent financial support earned on the basis of their film scripts. In spite of the obstacles thwarting access to the commercial marketplace for their films’ theatrical releases, the filmmakers persevere. Nonfiction productions did not stop being made; in fact, greater attention is being given to contemporary stories focused on community, such as Water-buster (2006) by J. Carlos Pienado (Mandan-Hidatsa), [End Page 387] who returns to his ancestral homeland in the upper Missouri River basin in North Dakota and documents the devastating impact of the Garrison Dam project, constructed in the 1950s, that submerged 156,000 acres of fertile Mandan-Hidatsa land. This essay is a response to and reflection on the evolving practice of Native filmmaking discourse inspired by two relatively recent publications concerning American Indians and film and Native American filmmaking: Smoke Signals: Native Cinema Rising (2012), by Joanna Hearne, and Seeing Red: Hollywood’s Pixeled Skins (2013), edited by LeAnne Howe, Harvey Markowitz, and Denise K. Cummings. To manifest oneself as a filmmaker evokes such traditional professional titles as lawyer, doctor, engineer, writer, teacher, and plumber, where established institutional access is built on hierarchy and where acceptance into the profession opens opportunities for employment. One of those doors of access to filmmaking was opened to Native Americans in an exchange that took place at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997. Along with other Native filmmakers, including actor and producer Gary Farmer (Cayuga), I was invited that year to the festival to screen our productions.2 While there, we were invited to a consultation with the Sundance Institute executive staff to discuss how to enhance and improve the production of Native-made films to make them competitive with any film in the program. Robert Redford, founder of the Sundance Institute and Sundance Film Festival, was not present at that meeting, but we were told he was aware of it. When asked how the Sundance Institute could help improve the participation of Native American films at the Sundance Festival, we found the conversation wavering from helping to fund filmmakers, to the need for professional training and support for distribution of films. Of most interest to me during the meeting was the discussion of the quality of films produced by Native American filmmakers. In evidence was a demonstration of the power held by the Sundance Festival to promote films that fit specific aesthetic preferences and expectations by festival audiences comprised of film critics, entrepreneurs, and Hollywood “types.” To that end, Native American films had not yet achieved that appeal, but executive staff members thought it was possible. Hearing the familiar phrase “We really do want Native American participation,” I instinctively sensed that...