Tag Archives: Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

Health Care in American Indian Communities from TWN

Trailer for Don’t Get Sick After June: American Indian Healthcare

I recently watched two films on Native American health distributed by Third World Newsreel . The first is a 2000 documentary directed by Beverly Singer titled Diabetes: Notes from Indian Country. The film draws on the perspective of many people in painting a well rounded picture of this disease. It includes interviews with American Indian health professionals and their experiences engaging patients. One of the more memorable interviewees is nurse Lorelei De Cora who discusses a grant project which will examine the successfulness of the talking circle, a traditional method of education, as an educational and preventative tool. She notes the importance of taking a multifaceted (physical, mental and spiritual) approach to combating the disease. De Cora also provides an interesting oral history by noting other challenges to combating this disease. Before Housing and Urban Development (HUD) housing was introduced, she notes, her community used gardens to manage their nutrition in a healthier and self sufficient way.* HUD’s clustered housing and income-based pricing format seemed to encourage unemployment and reliance on the commodity system with all its health consequences. Other professional interviewees also provide information in an accessible format, while the community members interviewed are people living with the disease, or people who have helped loved ones combat it, or who give their impressions and anecdotes about this killer. In this sense, the film is yet another educational tool for the community to be used in conjunction with talking circles and other outreach methods. I just noticed that my posts typically end by noting that scholars or teachers or students studying a particular topic can avail themselves of one film or another. But in a recent post on diabetes, I express my interest in having American Indian communities themselves watch the films and pass them on to community members and I feel the same about this film.

The more recent 2010 documentary Don’t Get Sick After June: American Indian Healthcare, directed by Chip Richie, is an indictment of the federal government’s mismanagement of American Indian health care. While health care is a federal obligation under treaties between the U.S. government and sovereign American Indian nations, but insufficient funding has resulted in unacceptable conditions. Some reservations have healthcare only one week per month or provide outsourced ambulatory service that have in some cases arrived too late to save a life. In this very informative and integrated film, Richie attacks the issue as one of not only inadequate healthcare, but other systemic and foundational problems of the colonization project. This project ushered in several systems that have had a profoundly negative effect on these communities. One of these is the commodity system based on processed, canned, and food lacking nutritional value. Another was the boarding school system which extricated children of their traditional knowledge, spirituality, and languages and has had a negative effect on familial and community relations. The startling statistics presented in Don’t Get Sick After June – like the much higher rate of diabetes, homicide, and suicide in Native American communities – point to the negative consequences of the way that American Indians have been treated historically. Although the reality is stark, the film does point to positive changes. In some reservations, casino profits have been used to improve health care, including the re-incorporation of traditional medicine. I particularly appreciated Comanche interviewee Rodney T. Stapp (I had trouble removing the subtitles so I couldn’t tell his professional affiliation), who provided a succinct and articulate explanation of how medicine is approached in American Indian versus Western medicine. I also thought it was important that the documentary, while ensuring that the record is straight in terms of the government’s historical culpability, ends on a note of self determination. As I noted above, this film would be of interest to American Indians themselves who have a vested interest in fighting the lack of funding in their communities. This film would also be of interest principally to those studying healthcare and disease, but some segments could also be very interesting to those researching food, American Indian perceptions of the U.S. government, and women.

In a broader sense, this documentary is one that everyone in America can relate to from a nutritional perspective since the topic of obesity is regularly on the news and is being fought with such efforts as the First Lady’s Move campaign. The topic was brought home in a radio interview I recently heard with the director of A Place at the Table, a new documentary about the many millions of people in this country who suffer “food insecurity” every day. These people include those who technically eat, but they eat detrimental food void of nutritional value, which fills bellies and is cheap in the short term but has an expensive long term effect in disease and medical costs.

[*This was particularly interesting to me because in other films, like Good Meat, interviewees on the Pine Ridge Reservation refer to infertile land and their history as a hunting community as deterrents to farming. Perhaps De Cora is referring to Nebraska and not South Dakota, or perhaps in Good Meat, they were referring to pre-Contact days and not to the 20th century, as De Cora is.]

Diabetes: Notes From Indian Country trailer

Get Smokin’ and Movin’!

Smokin’ Fish trailer

For those of you in Sitka (AK), Whitehorse (Canada), Plymouth and Palm Springs, there’s a new documentary called Smokin’ Fish coming to a theater near you. The film revolves around Cory Mann, a Tlingit man, who returns to Alaska to smoke salmon the Tlingit way and it sounds like it covers a lot more besides. Tickets at the Plimouth Museum in Plymouth MA include a tasting, are $25 or $40 for couples. If you go, let me know how you like it! (It may be a while before I get a chance to see it since I missed the NYC screening in November and don’t see one on the upcoming screening list.)

I also just noticed that @nativemedia tweeted that Good Meat will be playing on air in Alaska this Sunday at 8pm. Good Meat follows an Oglala Lakota man as he returns to a traditional Lakota diet as a way to regain his health. Let me know what you think about both. If you are interested in more Native American books and films about diabetes and health, check out my recent tweets about the Eagle Series (also an animated series) and RezRobics!

 

Good Meat trailer

Imprint

Imprint Trailer

I just watched Imprint, a 2007 thriller directed by Chris Eyre that is set on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It tells the story of Shayla Stonefeather, a Lakota prosecutor, who, along with her white partner and boyfriend, takes a case against a Lakota teenager who is found guilty of murder. Soon after the case is over, she returns to the reservation and we learn that her father is in a vegetable state which came on soon after the disappearance of her brother, who had problems with meth. The rest of the story involves Shayla trying to understand the meaning behind the strange voices and spirits she sees in her parents’ home, partly with the guidance of a medicine man, and with some help from an old flame named Tom.

I thought the film was suspenseful, had cool effects, and beautiful landscapes. If you are interested in more Native thrillers, you may want to check out two films that are adapted from Tony Hillerman novels. These are Skinwalkers and A Thief of Time, which were incidentally both also directed by Chris Eyre, but are both set on Navajo territory. (I haven’t yet seen Coyote Waits.) Although Shayla is a strong female lead, I hadn’t considered, as does this reviewer, that this is something out of the ordinary for Native films. While some feature films like Smoke Signals or Skins center on men, I think of strong female protagonists in movies like Edge of America, Older than America, or the documentary On the Rez. So, while I think having a strong female lead is great, I had already felt like Indian women are shown as strong, substantial characters or people in quite a few films. I also did not understand what the reviewer meant when she says that this is not a conventionally Indian movie, since the many Native films I’ve seen show that Indian directors, like directors from all over, produce innovative, surprising material that shows they are thinking outside of the box. Which is why I was annoyed to see (spoiler alert) the white boyfriend cast as the villain. I liked that the film countered some stereotypical views, like the  fact that it centers around a middle class family as opposed to a poor Lakota family. Pine Ridge tends to be portrayed as very downtrodden (Skins and Children of the Plains are two examples). And I was glad that although you could see Shayla and Tom getting back together, they didn’t actually have a romantic scene. But why do the parents have to instinctually dislike the white boyfriend? Actually, he turns out to be a jerk, so that’s fine. But why does the jerk have to be white? As the reviewer above points out, why not make him another ethnicity and really surprise us?

The other theme that I think is important but doesn’t get thoughtfully developed is the whole idea of “selling out.” Shayla is depicted as having “sold out” just because she took a case against a Lakota. Her car is vandalized and her mother also equates her cold-heartedness as being an identity issue; of not “knowing who she is.” It seems like the conflicts that I think many Indians must face regarding identity and assimilation and culture deserve to leave the viewer questioning to what degree or in what ways can one can assimilate another culture and still maintain one’s own? In other words, it’s a pretty complex, messy, and controversial topic that deserves more. Rather, in this film, I felt like the issue is too neatly tied up. The story develops in such a way that serving as prosecutor against your own kind seems to be equated with selling out and once Shayla realizes the error of her ways, she seems to be almost cleansed and becomes good again. I should point out that had the racially biased nature of the trial been developed more, I may have felt less strongly about this point. Also, one can’t fault Eyre too much for possibly wanting to make a good thriller and leave it at that. Every movie can’t deal with all societal concerns.

So, it’s a good thriller with an interesting story that is beautifully shot, but the cliche character and the simplistic treatment of the issue of identity left me wanting more. In terms of using this in the classroom, I would think it might be of interest to film students because of the special effects, cinematography, and plot twist. Also, the medicine man speaks in Lakota and this may be of interest to people studying the language. Those teaching about the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation may also be interested in its depiction in this film.

Students Rebut 20/20 Special


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?