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documentary, shorts, television

Students Rebut 20/20 Special

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More Than That by Todd County High School students

Fellow AILA member, Debbie Reese, recently blogged about the ABC 20/20 special, A Hidden America: Children of the Plains, on her American Indians in Children’s Literature blog. I missed the special but caught it thanks to her post. While I actually thought it was good to see something – anything – on Native Americans on mainstream television, the topics were predictable ones. Yes, Diane Sawyer did preface the piece by noting that it was part of a series on the “poorest populations in the country” and I agree with the first commentator on Debbie’s post that these subjects – alcoholism, unemployment, teen pregnancy, suicide – are important to discuss and tackle. But, it’s just that the one time you see Indians get that much time on mainstream T.V., you somehow want that coverage to be more inclusive of other tribes and experiences. And that they wouldn’t fade the teenage athlete and top student Robert Looks Twice’s face onto historical Indian figures or see a group of Pine Ridge residents inexplicably riding horses toward the camera.

Reese notes that students at Todd County High School created a rebuttal to the special entitled “More than That.” While I think that some of the qualities that the students highlight in the video were reflected by the youth in the special, the point is taken that people who have the power to bring portrayals of Native people to others via books and other media need to aim for more inclusivity. When a community (here I am talking more broadly in terms of Native Americans as a minority) doesn’t get all that much air time and you are taking the time to cover it, do it right. Don’t get me wrong. It was definitely a positive to hear Looks Twice say he aims to be the first Native American president or hear the kindergardeners speaking Lakota and yelling out the same future careers that any American kindergardener would call out when Sawyer asks them what they want to be when they grow up. But, don’t just show the problem issues and what may seem like the few exceptions who are overcoming their situations. Like the students say: show more than that. It’s probably impossible to cover an entire people to anyone’s satisfaction (I vaguely remember watching specials on Latinos and Blacks on other channels that were also somehow lacking), but ABC could probably afford to try a little harder. Series topic suggestions, anyone?

 

Online, shorts

Smiling and Howling

Smiling Indians

 

 

 

I just watched a short called Smiling Indians, made by directors Sterlin Harjo (who I’ve written about before) and Ryan Red Corn, who collaborated with Harjo in Barking Water. Here’s a short interview with Red Corn describing the impetus behind this short, which is dedicated to Edward Curtis, the famous photographer whose images of 19th century Native Americans occupies a stronghold in the popular imagination on Native peoples. Many if not most of these photographs show serious, and probably broadly perceived as stoic, faces of a people who were thought to be vanishing. In this sense, Smiling Indians demonstrates how the palimpsest of Native American history is being partly rewritten by Native filmmakers.

Red Corn is part of a video production group called the 1491s, which presently counts the following people among its members: Sterlin Harjo, Dallas Goldtooth, Migizi Pensoneau, Bobby Wilson, Garrett Drapeau, Elizabeth Day, and Sedelta Oosawhee. You can watch the 1491s’s videos here. Besides comedies and shorts, such as their first group project New Moon Wolf Pack Auditions, they have worked on more educational documentary style shorts and plan on working on features in the future. (Although the New Moon Wolf Pack Auditions were funny, I really cracked up after watching outtakes of “cultural adviser” Garret Drapeau.) Among the shorts with more political messages are Geronimo E-KIA and Bad Indians and among the more comedic ones are Singing Lessons by the 1491s and Slapping Medicine Man. I like the fact that the collective is using both serious poetry and comedy as expressions of Native culture (or cultures) and to effect changes in the ways Indians are perceived by the general public.
 

 

Singing Lessons by the 1491s