Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Reel Injun with S.A. Lawrence-Welch
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: On the Bechdel Cast.
- 0:02Speaker 2: The questions ask if movies have women and them, are
- 0:05Speaker 2: all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they
- 0:08Speaker 2: have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zeffi Beast start changing it
- 0:14Speaker 2: with the Bechdel Cast.
- 0:16Speaker 3: Hi, Bechdel Cast listeners, it's us with an exciting live
- 0:19Speaker 3: show announcement in Los Angeles on December tenth.
- 0:23Speaker 1: We are covering It's a Wonderful life.
- 0:26Speaker 3: But is it?
- 0:27Speaker 1: But is it?
- 0:28Speaker 3: We'll be examining this.
- 0:31Speaker 1: And the show is Sunday, December tenth at four pm.
- 0:35Speaker 1: It's live in LA at Dynasty Typewriter and we're also
- 0:38Speaker 1: live streaming it, so if you live anywhere else you
- 0:42Speaker 1: can still see the show.
- 0:44Speaker 3: We're going to be donating half of the proceeds from
- 0:46Speaker 3: this show to ANARA and PCRF, which are both organizations
- 0:50Speaker 3: that are providing aid in Gaza right now. Because Free Palestine, bitch,
- 0:56Speaker 3: And if you don't feel that way, then you can
- 0:59Speaker 3: escort your self off our feed exactly. Anyways, live show.
- 1:04Speaker 1: Once again, it's Sunday, December tenth at four pm live
- 1:08Speaker 1: in La a Dynasty Typewriter. Also live streams are available,
- 1:13Speaker 1: so go to link tree slash Bechdel Cast or Dynasty
- 1:18Speaker 1: typewriter dot com to grab your tickets.
- 1:22Speaker 3: See you at Dynasty Typewriter December tenth, four pm.
- 1:25Speaker 1: See you there, the Bechdelcast. Hello and welcome to the
- 1:30Speaker 1: Bechdel Cast. Uh huh Okay, my name is Caitlin Deronte.
- 1:35Speaker 3: Why are we being so shy about it? I don't know? Hello,
- 1:40Speaker 3: excuse me. I guess we're coming off of our horror
- 1:45Speaker 3: movie air Weekly or our annual horror movie things, so
- 1:48Speaker 3: we're kind of final girling into the show being like, Hello,
- 1:52Speaker 3: my name is Jamie Laftus, and this is the Bechdel Cast,
- 1:56Speaker 3: our intersectional feminist movie podcast where we take a look
- 1:59Speaker 3: at your face movies using an intersectional feminist lens. Although
- 2:03Speaker 3: this week I'm excited that we were making history on
- 2:08Speaker 3: the Bexel Cast by covering our first documentary. We've never
- 2:11Speaker 3: done this before. I'm super super pumped about it. So,
- 2:16Speaker 3: but before we start talking about it, let's tell everyone
- 2:19Speaker 3: what the show is.
- 2:20Speaker 4: Hi.
- 2:21Speaker 3: Everyone, Welcome to the show.
- 2:23Speaker 1: Yes, welcome, And our show is called the Bechdel Cast
- 2:27Speaker 1: because it's loosely based off of the Bechdel Test, which
- 2:29Speaker 1: we use simply as a jumping off point if you're
- 2:33Speaker 1: not in the know, it is a media metric created Bible.
- 2:36Speaker 3: Well, I can I do that this week almost where
- 2:38Speaker 3: my fun fact is okay, yeah, do it fun fact listeners.
- 2:42Speaker 3: I do read the iTunes reviews. And some people would
- 2:46Speaker 3: say that that's emotional self harm, and if so, I
- 2:49Speaker 3: do it. And I noticed when recently, first of all,
- 2:53Speaker 3: some of y'all are hurting my feelings, some of y'all
- 2:56Speaker 3: are making me feel great. And one of y'all made
- 2:59Speaker 3: me think about this of how we don't often give
- 3:04Speaker 3: credit to we say you know that it is a
- 3:06Speaker 3: media metric created by Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel
- 3:10Speaker 3: Wallace test, that is not quite accurate to history. So
- 3:14Speaker 3: while we go back to the factory and retool our
- 3:18Speaker 3: way of saying that sentence, I just wanted to do
- 3:20Speaker 3: a quick shout out for the benefit of that iTunes reviewer.
- 3:25Speaker 3: So we usually say is it is a media metric
- 3:27Speaker 3: created by Alison Bechdel in the eighties in her comic
- 3:31Speaker 3: strip Dikes to Watch Out for Great Comic Classic Comic
- 3:35Speaker 3: that was originally intended to point out how infrequently women,
- 3:40Speaker 3: specifically queer women, speak to each other in any piece
- 3:43Speaker 3: of media about anything that is not about man explicitly.
- 3:49Speaker 3: But there I went back and just verified that. So
- 3:53Speaker 3: Alison Bechdel credits While she was the first person to
- 3:56Speaker 3: publish the Bechdel Test, it makes sense that it's called
- 3:58Speaker 3: the Bechdel Test, but it's the idea to her friend
- 4:02Speaker 3: Liz Wallace, which is why we sometimes call it the
- 4:04Speaker 3: Bechdel Wallace Test. But she also credits it to Virginia
- 4:08Speaker 3: Wolf and a quote from A Room of One's Own
- 4:11Speaker 3: which I have never read, but I just wanted to
- 4:15Speaker 3: share this quick quote from Virginia Wolf weirdly at the
- 4:18Speaker 3: beginning of this episode, because Virginia Wolf does pretty clearly
- 4:22Speaker 3: lay out the Bechdel Test in nineteen twenty nine. She says, quote,
- 4:27Speaker 3: and I tried to remember any case in the course
- 4:29Speaker 3: of my reading where two women are represented as friends.
- 4:32Speaker 3: They are now and then mothers and daughters, but almost
- 4:35Speaker 3: without exception, they are shown in their relation to men.
- 4:38Speaker 3: It was strained to think that all the great women
- 4:39Speaker 3: of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not seen by
- 4:42Speaker 3: the other sex, but seen only in relation to the
- 4:44Speaker 3: other sex. And how small a part of a women's
- 4:47Speaker 3: life is that unquote? So obviously, you know, very nineteen
- 4:51Speaker 3: twenty nine language, But I thought it was interesting we've
- 4:54Speaker 3: never shouted that out on the show before, that the
- 4:57Speaker 3: Bechdel Test, while understandably attributed to Alison Bechdel, was a
- 5:01Speaker 3: group effort over a course of sixty years. And I
- 5:04Speaker 3: think that's fun.
- 5:05Speaker 1: As many many things are a collaborative effort.
- 5:09Speaker 3: It's true and intergenerational collaborative effort. But Caitlyn, all that said,
- 5:14Speaker 3: what is the Bechdel test?
- 5:17Speaker 1: Oh? Short, for sure.
- 5:18Speaker 3: So our version of it is because we've added some
- 5:22Speaker 3: flair we've contributed, Well, yeah, it continues to be a
- 5:26Speaker 3: collaborative effort. Our version is do two people of a
- 5:30Speaker 3: marginalized gender who have names speak to each other about
- 5:34Speaker 3: something other than a man? And we especially like it
- 5:38Speaker 3: when it is a kind of narratively impactful conversation and
- 5:42Speaker 3: not just like throw away dialogue. All that to say,
- 5:47Speaker 3: it won't really even apply on this episode because we
- 5:50Speaker 3: are covering a documentary, but it's a good thing. We
- 5:53Speaker 3: gave a full history of the test we will not
- 5:56Speaker 3: be using today to get the episode. You're welcome for that,
- 6:00Speaker 3: And with that, let's make history on the Bechdel Cast
- 6:05Speaker 3: and discuss not just a documentary, but a really terrific documentary.
- 6:10Speaker 3: And let's bring in our guest.
- 6:12Speaker 1: Yes, let's do it. Our guest is a mitchif and
- 6:15Speaker 1: Nihio advocate, organizer, speaker, activist, artist and writer focusing on
- 6:21Speaker 1: the lasting damage of residential school system, Indian boarding schools,
- 6:27Speaker 1: and the sixties scoop on First Nations people. She's the
- 6:31Speaker 1: founder of tradish Ish. They are the co host of
- 6:35Speaker 1: Creepy Teepee. It's Essay. Lawrence Welch, Welcome, Hello, and.
- 6:40Speaker 4: Welcome Ben Shay. Thank you for having me. This is
- 6:43Speaker 4: so exciting.
- 6:45Speaker 1: I thank you so much, so excited to talk about
- 6:48Speaker 1: the documentary from two thousand and nine, Real Engine Again.
- 6:53Speaker 1: This is our We're making history here because normally we
- 6:56Speaker 1: do narrative film. But I think this is a great
- 7:00Speaker 1: way for us to break into documentary.
- 7:03Speaker 3: I think that this is like us working our way
- 7:05Speaker 3: out because we on the show always say that we
- 7:08Speaker 3: will never read a book, but I think that documentary
- 7:12Speaker 3: we got to be careful. It's a gateway to books.
- 7:14Speaker 3: It's a gateway drugs to books.
- 7:16Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's the lazy person's read, you know,
- 7:20Speaker 4: like I don't do well with books either, So team,
- 7:24Speaker 4: no reading right here. I just it needs to be
- 7:28Speaker 4: super engaging, and I just I have a really hard
- 7:31Speaker 4: time staying focused saying with pages. So tell me stuff,
- 7:37Speaker 4: show be things. I'll retain it better. And that's why
- 7:40Speaker 4: I like documentaries. And I wanted to add too, I
- 7:43Speaker 4: think that the test does apply to this in some way,
- 7:47Speaker 4: shape or form. There's a lot of narratives within this
- 7:52Speaker 4: documentary that kind of showcase how fems were erase secondary. Yes, yeah,
- 7:59Speaker 4: secondary to basically erased in a lot of cinematic history,
- 8:04Speaker 4: especially talking about the first people's of this land. So
- 8:09Speaker 4: go team for sure.
- 8:12Speaker 3: This documentary. I want to talk about everyone's history with
- 8:16Speaker 3: it in just a second. It's made. Yeah, came out
- 8:19Speaker 3: in two thousand and nine, directed by Neil Diamond, Catherine Bainbridge,
- 8:23Speaker 3: and Jeremiah Hayes. It's wild, how I mean. I've I
- 8:27Speaker 3: watched the doc twice and it's for a ninety minute
- 8:31Speaker 3: documentary covers so much.
- 8:33Speaker 4: So much jam packed.
- 8:35Speaker 3: Yeah. So I say, what is your history with this doc?
- 8:40Speaker 3: When did you first see it and how did you what?
- 8:43Speaker 3: We were your feelings on it?
- 8:44Speaker 4: Yeah? I saw it when it first came out. I
- 8:47Speaker 4: was it's been along road, which the film will highlight,
- 8:54Speaker 4: you know, of natives and cinema, But it was so
- 8:57Speaker 4: amazing to see a Cree person, not unlike myself. Neheoh
- 9:03Speaker 4: is the actual word for the people, not Cree was
- 9:08Speaker 4: the name that was given to us by settler colonizers whatever.
- 9:14Speaker 4: But yeah, we still identify with that name because it's
- 9:18Speaker 4: how we get recognized. I guess that's a different conversation though,
- 9:23Speaker 4: But yeah, I saw it, and it's honestly, this movie
- 9:26Speaker 4: means a lot to me, more than most things. And
- 9:29Speaker 4: even like you know, thirteen some odd years later, it's
- 9:32Speaker 4: the movie I recommend for people to have even a
- 9:36Speaker 4: glimpse into understanding how racism and prejudice started against Native
- 9:43Speaker 4: people and how narratives, really Hollywood can create a narrative
- 9:48Speaker 4: that transform, transforms the way people think about an entire
- 9:52Speaker 4: demographic of people who is, unto itself, completely diverse. So yeah,
- 9:57Speaker 4: I just from the first moment seeing this, I was
- 10:01Speaker 4: absolutely enamored by it.
- 10:04Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so good. It's so good, and it's like
- 10:06Speaker 3: and it's a road story on top of like it's
- 10:09Speaker 3: just like, yeah, so wonderful. I hadn't seen this one before.
- 10:13Speaker 3: I had heard about it for years. I think when
- 10:17Speaker 3: I first tried to watch it, it wasn't streaming anywhere
- 10:19Speaker 3: now if you're watching in the US at least, I
- 10:22Speaker 3: don't know how it will cross over, but it's streaming
- 10:26Speaker 3: for free on two B right now. And I would
- 10:29Speaker 3: really recommend if you haven't watched it yet, pause the
- 10:32Speaker 3: episode and watch the doc. It's so wonderful and yeah,
- 10:38Speaker 3: I mean, I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot,
- 10:41Speaker 3: and I think that there was other elements of Native
- 10:46Speaker 3: cinema and like the history of Native cinema that I
- 10:49Speaker 3: had heard about and knew but didn't have like it
- 10:52Speaker 3: put fully into context. And this movie is incredibly I mean,
- 10:56Speaker 3: I know it can't be completely comprehensive in the space
- 10:58Speaker 3: of ninety minutes, but I really, really really liked it.
- 11:01Speaker 3: And I also feel like I left with a list
- 11:04Speaker 3: of movies that I'm really excited to watch. Like, yeah,
- 11:09Speaker 3: so it was my first time seeing it and I
- 11:11Speaker 3: really loved it. Caitlyn, what about You?
- 11:12Speaker 1: Same for me. I hadn't seen it before. It was
- 11:15Speaker 1: on my list of things to watch, and this episode
- 11:19Speaker 1: gave me a great excuse to finally see it, and yeah,
- 11:23Speaker 1: I think it makes a lot of sense for us,
- 11:26Speaker 1: even though it is a doc and we normally don't
- 11:28Speaker 1: cover them on the show because we you know, examine
- 11:33Speaker 1: narrative film and then discuss the representation therein. This documentary
- 11:40Speaker 1: also examines media from a representation standpoint, and then it's
- 11:44Speaker 1: specific to how Native people and cultures are portrayed in Hollywood.
- 11:49Speaker 1: So it's doing something similar to what we do on
- 11:53Speaker 1: the show. So I'm really excited to talk about it
- 11:56Speaker 1: and get into it in more detail.
- 11:58Speaker 3: It's like this, I mean truly this documentary maybe want
- 12:02Speaker 3: to maybe want to watch a bunch of movies, which
- 12:04Speaker 3: is not unusual, but it also is like, oh, I
- 12:06Speaker 3: also want to read several books, which is scary, scary feeling,
- 12:09Speaker 3: but so so cool. I mean, I I can't wait
- 12:17Speaker 3: to sort of keep watching. What is that? I wait,
- 12:19Speaker 3: I'm I just lost my place in my notes. I
- 12:22Speaker 3: was thinking of a specific movie that I had not
- 12:25Speaker 3: heard of before that I was really that I'm really
- 12:26Speaker 3: excited to watch.
- 12:28Speaker 1: For me, it was The Fast Runner.
- 12:30Speaker 3: Yes, that was what I was thinking of, which I
- 12:33Speaker 3: just had I mean, most or many of the movies
- 12:36Speaker 3: that they recommend throughout the documentary. I'd heard of it,
- 12:39Speaker 3: just not seen yet. But the Fast Runner I had
- 12:41Speaker 3: no idea existed, and it seems unfucking believably good. Like
- 12:45Speaker 3: I just am really excited to see it.
- 12:47Speaker 4: Yeah, it's you know, it's interesting to me because this,
- 12:51Speaker 4: again is you're witnessing this narrative that Neil Diamond puts
- 12:56Speaker 4: down of you know, watching movies through an indigenous lens, right,
- 13:02Speaker 4: and how like I don't know if you guys want
- 13:07Speaker 4: to just jump into it, but like the thing that
- 13:08Speaker 4: gets me is like within the opening scenes, there's just
- 13:11Speaker 4: these kids sitting in a basement watching shoot them Up
- 13:15Speaker 4: cowboy movies and h and Neil said something along the
- 13:18Speaker 4: lines of we didn't realize we were the Indians, like
- 13:22Speaker 4: we were the bad guys. And that's like definitely a
- 13:26Speaker 4: thing I find for myself as somebody who grew up
- 13:29Speaker 4: relatively isolated in the mountains of Treaty six Territory in
- 13:35Speaker 4: so called Ilberta, Canada, that that was the outlet, you know,
- 13:39Speaker 4: So seeing yourself philified on screen but not even realizing
- 13:43Speaker 4: that it's the same thing but different, you know, Like
- 13:46Speaker 4: it was such an interesting experience to grow into myself
- 13:51Speaker 4: and then just be like, oh, that's absolutely not right,
- 13:54Speaker 4: and that speaks to a larger narrative, which I'm sure
- 13:56Speaker 4: we'll talk about today.
- 13:58Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, uh, let's take a quick break and then
- 14:02Speaker 1: we will be right back. So, yeah, let's get into it.
- 14:11Speaker 1: I will go through a recap as I as I
- 14:15Speaker 1: always do, just kind of like going through the different beats,
- 14:20Speaker 1: the points, the eras that this documentary covers. So we
- 14:25Speaker 1: meet the narrator who is also one of the directors.
- 14:30Speaker 1: His name is Neil Diamond. And it's not Neil Diamond,
- 14:34Speaker 1: the musician. It's Neil Diamond, the Cree Canadian filmmaker.
- 14:39Speaker 3: I was such a dufist and completely forgot there was
- 14:43Speaker 3: a different Neil Diamond that existed because I was telling
- 14:47Speaker 3: my boyfriend that. I was like, I watched this incredible documentary.
- 14:49Speaker 3: It's so good, you have to watch it. It's made
- 14:51Speaker 3: by this guy named Neil Diamond. He's like, am I
- 14:54Speaker 3: missing something? As like, what do you mean.
- 15:00Speaker 1: The musician Neil Diamond.
- 15:02Speaker 3: The superior Neil Diamond. As far as I'm concerned, because
- 15:05Speaker 3: I forgot the other one. Fuck it existed.
- 15:08Speaker 4: You're gonna make You're going to make all like the
- 15:10Speaker 4: middle aged women really upset rape, saying that.
- 15:14Speaker 3: Then Neil Hive is gonna come us.
- 15:19Speaker 1: Okay. So Neil talks about how he was raised on
- 15:23Speaker 1: a reservation near the Arctic Circle, which was one of
- 15:26Speaker 1: the most isolated places on Earth. He grew up watching
- 15:30Speaker 1: movies like you were just talking about essay. He grew
- 15:33Speaker 1: up watching movies that depicted Native people in often very
- 15:37Speaker 1: negative ways, and this inspires him to embark on a
- 15:43Speaker 1: journey from his reservation to Hollywood to examine Hollywood's representation
- 15:49Speaker 1: of Indians and how it shaped the cultural perception of them,
- 15:56Speaker 1: and of course Indians in this context referring to Indigits
- 16:00Speaker 1: and First Nations people who were here pre colonization of
- 16:06Speaker 1: what became known as North America, specifically the US and Canada.
- 16:12Speaker 1: Oh okay. So Neil's first stop is at the Black Hills,
- 16:18Speaker 1: once the domain of Chief Sitting Bowl and Tshunka wheat
- 16:23Speaker 1: Coo aka Crazy Horse. He goes to the place where
- 16:28Speaker 1: Crazy Horse outmaneuvered General Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn,
- 16:34Speaker 1: which is something that has been depicted in several Hollywood
- 16:37Speaker 1: movies and which turned Crazy Horse into a legend as
- 16:42Speaker 1: far as like white America having a better sense of
- 16:47Speaker 1: who he was.
- 16:49Speaker 2: That was.
- 16:49Speaker 3: Yeah. As I was watching the doc, I was trying
- 16:52Speaker 3: to square with like what I had been taught in
- 16:55Speaker 3: Massachusetts public schools, like how much history had I actually
- 17:01Speaker 3: learned and how far away from the truth. And it's
- 17:05Speaker 3: about as far as you could imagine, which but I
- 17:08Speaker 3: think Crazy Horse is one of the few indigenous figures
- 17:11Speaker 3: that I do specifically remember learning about incorrectly. But I
- 17:17Speaker 3: was like, oh, okay, bad job school, but also.
- 17:21Speaker 4: Like really good job school, because you know, the erasure
- 17:24Speaker 4: is part of the narrative that keeps this like American exceptionalism.
- 17:29Speaker 4: You know, we deserve this land, we came here, we
- 17:32Speaker 4: fought for it. Yet yea such and so forth, And
- 17:36Speaker 4: that's clearly displayed in some of the movies that the
- 17:38Speaker 4: doc outlines that you know, definitely.
- 17:41Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah, well we'll get to in the in the
- 17:44Speaker 3: like john Ford section in particular, but it's there's like
- 17:48Speaker 3: such a great quote that perfectly well we'll get.
- 17:50Speaker 1: There, yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's also a mention of the
- 17:55Speaker 1: descendants of Crazy Horse and of the warriors who fought
- 17:59Speaker 1: alongside him present day live in pretty extreme poverty on
- 18:05Speaker 1: Pine Ridge Reservation. So just kind of like an examination
- 18:10Speaker 1: of this icon, this legend, and because of systemic racism
- 18:15Speaker 1: and oppression, the descendants living in poverty.
- 18:19Speaker 4: Yeah, a system set up by designed dismantle entire nations
- 18:22Speaker 4: of people is also working and the thing behind that
- 18:27Speaker 4: that kind of speaks to you know, even with Neil
- 18:32Speaker 4: going to the Black Hills is interesting for me as
- 18:35Speaker 4: a Cree person and seeing him as a Cree person.
- 18:38Speaker 4: You know, we're told certain stories we're not even like
- 18:41Speaker 4: in school, we weren't even told stories about our own people,
- 18:43Speaker 4: you know, like we were. This is why this movie
- 18:46Speaker 4: is so amazing to me, is because it really caters
- 18:49Speaker 4: to this like like romanticization of like the Great West, right,
- 18:53Speaker 4: and you know, all of these noble natives, but we
- 18:56Speaker 4: had so many within our own nations. Like there's so
- 18:59Speaker 4: many different nations and so of Native people across these lands.
- 19:02Speaker 4: And the fact that he went to go talk about
- 19:04Speaker 4: this particular story because that is what the narrative is
- 19:07Speaker 4: in every single Hollywood movie up and to that point.
- 19:12Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm excited to talk with you about that
- 19:15Speaker 3: because I think that like Neil Diamond being so forward
- 19:19Speaker 3: about that and being so forward about like being connected
- 19:23Speaker 3: with his history to an extent, but also have to
- 19:27Speaker 3: having to like unlearn and relearn in that whole process,
- 19:30Speaker 3: and also having like this attachment to the media you
- 19:33Speaker 3: grow up with and like, how do you you know,
- 19:35Speaker 3: unwire that and rewires? It sounds just like Herculean.
- 19:39Speaker 1: It's yeah for sure, Oh okay. So the documentary then
- 19:48Speaker 1: starts to go through era by era how Hollywood represented
- 19:53Speaker 1: Native people, starting with the silent film era, and while
- 19:59Speaker 1: that was happy in the late eighteen hundreds, where you know,
- 20:03Speaker 1: some of the first moving images ever to exist were
- 20:06Speaker 1: of Native people. While this was happening, the US Army
- 20:11Speaker 1: open fires on the last free community of Natives in
- 20:15Speaker 1: revenge for Little Bighorn, and three hundred Lakota people were
- 20:20Speaker 1: massacred at Wounded NY in eighteen ninety, and this tragedy
- 20:27Speaker 1: becomes fodder almost for the type of like drama and
- 20:33Speaker 1: myth and mythology that Hollywood loves to romanticize and make
- 20:37Speaker 1: movies about. So Neil discusses how Indians, for example, in movies,
- 20:44Speaker 1: are always shown as expert horseback riders, even though many
- 20:49Speaker 1: tribes and nations never rode horses, though there are some
- 20:55Speaker 1: who were expert and are expert horse riders, such as
- 21:00Speaker 1: as the Crow. And so Neil goes to the Crow
- 21:05Speaker 1: Agency in Montana and meets a crow stuntman named Rod Ronde,
- 21:11Speaker 1: who is an expert horseman and one of Hollywood's top
- 21:14Speaker 1: stunt people.
- 21:15Speaker 3: And just like the most charismatic person on the face
- 21:18Speaker 3: of the earth. That's so fucking cool.
- 21:21Speaker 1: Yeah, he talks just about how important horses are to
- 21:25Speaker 1: Crow people. We go back to examining the silent film era.
- 21:30Speaker 1: Native characters were prominently featured in a lot of Silent
- 21:33Speaker 1: era movies, often as the hero, and many of those
- 21:37Speaker 1: films were written and directed by Native filmmakers.
- 21:41Speaker 3: I genuinely did not know that. I wish I had
- 21:43Speaker 3: been taught that in fucking film school.
- 21:46Speaker 1: I know.
- 21:46Speaker 4: Yeah, that's such a uh, that's a point of like
- 21:51Speaker 4: contempt for me for sure. You know, you see these
- 21:53Speaker 4: beautiful silent films that are depicting life and honesty, and
- 22:00Speaker 4: you see these people within the film, within these silent
- 22:03Speaker 4: films being authentic, and then all of a sudden, another
- 22:08Speaker 4: narrative needs to be written to back again the American exceptionalism,
- 22:15Speaker 4: like some already used that term, but like to be
- 22:18Speaker 4: like no, no, this is ours, you know, we need yeah,
- 22:21Speaker 4: this so we can't humanize the people that we need
- 22:23Speaker 4: to dehumanize to maintain our lie for the lack of a.
- 22:29Speaker 1: Better term, No, that's exactly what it is.
- 22:32Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, And it just like felt like such a
- 22:34Speaker 3: clear I don't know, like it's just such a clear
- 22:37Speaker 3: example of like media representation being very nonlinear and like,
- 22:42Speaker 3: I mean, you, fifty years after these early silent films,
- 22:46Speaker 3: native representation is far worse, and like, I don't know,
- 22:51Speaker 3: it was fascinating because I want to watch the watch
- 22:54Speaker 3: the silent films, but also discouraging to you know, just
- 22:58Speaker 3: see such a clear example of that.
- 23:00Speaker 1: Yeah. The movie also mentions a prominent actor of this era.
- 23:07Speaker 1: His name was Chief Buffalo Child Longlands. He was the
- 23:10Speaker 1: star of a film called The Silent Enemy, among others,
- 23:14Speaker 1: and his life ended very tragically. He had disguised his
- 23:21Speaker 1: racial background. He was Native black and white, and when
- 23:26Speaker 1: people found out he was part black, he was shunned
- 23:30Speaker 1: by Hollywood and he died by suicide.
- 23:34Speaker 3: I had not heard of him before, and that's just
- 23:36Speaker 3: the intersectional racism in.
- 23:40Speaker 1: The US is astonishing. Then the documentary examines Hollywood creating
- 23:47Speaker 1: this magical, mystical idea of what it is to be native,
- 23:53Speaker 1: and how a lot of people, especially white people, romanticize
- 23:57Speaker 1: the idea of being native. And Neil tells us about
- 24:01Speaker 1: this certain type of like summer camp in North America.
- 24:05Speaker 1: I did not know that these existed, Oh I did,
- 24:10Speaker 1: It's I yeah, I don't. I just did not know
- 24:13Speaker 1: about this where it's mostly white kids go and adopt
- 24:19Speaker 1: this like perceived persona of what a native person is.
- 24:23Speaker 1: While they're at these camps, they play these like quote
- 24:27Speaker 1: unquote tribal games. It's all extremely appropriative, and it keeps
- 24:33Speaker 1: the idea of an Indian as a you know, quote
- 24:36Speaker 1: unquote noble savage alive and well. And Neil goes to
- 24:41Speaker 1: one such camp and he wonders if any of these
- 24:44Speaker 1: kids have ever even met a Native person, or if
- 24:48Speaker 1: their image and idea of natives only comes from what
- 24:52Speaker 1: they've seen in movies. And I would guess it's probably
- 24:56Speaker 1: the latter for most of them.
- 24:57Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know that lovely Austrian guy, I thank
- 25:01Speaker 4: you was Austrian. He was like, I basically learned everything
- 25:05Speaker 4: I needed to know from watching two to three films
- 25:08Speaker 4: about natives. I was like, oh that he got the
- 25:12Speaker 4: mentality of the natives through watching those movies, that they're
- 25:16Speaker 4: just like I understand them. Yeah, they're like these people
- 25:19Speaker 4: who love their community, but they can be savage when
- 25:22Speaker 4: they need to or whatever. And it's just like super cool.
- 25:24Speaker 4: I love this.
- 25:25Speaker 3: I love this for us And you can really tell
- 25:28Speaker 3: that that guy thinks he's doing something. Yeah, like thinks
- 25:32Speaker 3: he's being respectful. So I unfortunately, I never you know,
- 25:39Speaker 3: I think that because I grew up in Massachusetts. Your trip,
- 25:43Speaker 3: your like field trip is going to Plymouth Plantation. I
- 25:47Speaker 3: don't know how or if it has been updated whatsoever
- 25:51Speaker 3: in the you know, like twenty plus years it's been
- 25:54Speaker 3: since I took this field trip. But one of the
- 25:57Speaker 3: places that you're taken is to Camp Squanto, which is
- 26:02Speaker 3: very much in step. I don't because we were only
- 26:06Speaker 3: there for a day. I don't. The extremeness that you
- 26:10Speaker 3: see in the dock was not something that I experienced.
- 26:12Speaker 3: But I'm sure that that is the model that that's
- 26:15Speaker 3: built on.
- 26:16Speaker 4: There's so many too, and like I attribute that fully
- 26:19Speaker 4: to like the boy Scouts. You know, there's actually so
- 26:22Speaker 4: like the Kansas City Chiefs. The chiefs are actually named
- 26:25Speaker 4: after a man who Now I can't remember the name
- 26:28Speaker 4: of the tribe because I've like blocked this out of
- 26:30Speaker 4: my brain, but it's like a camp and it's a
- 26:34Speaker 4: tribe of Indians. I'll probably think of it later on
- 26:36Speaker 4: as we're talking about something completely different, but basically, it's
- 26:41Speaker 4: people who dress up and like non natives who dress
- 26:44Speaker 4: up and wear headdresses and go through all of these
- 26:47Speaker 4: protocols because they just revere our natives so much, right,
- 26:51Speaker 4: And it's so is there. I don't know if there's
- 26:57Speaker 4: a word for it, but like barfinduce is the term
- 27:01Speaker 4: that I'm going to go for. Yeah, fucking gross, it's gross.
- 27:05Speaker 4: But it's just like it's like it just turns my
- 27:08Speaker 4: stomach to see people dressing up and creating this narrative
- 27:12Speaker 4: of again, like this concept of what they want natives
- 27:15Speaker 4: to be and they want to play that, you know,
- 27:18Speaker 4: and it's just so vile, like.
- 27:22Speaker 1: Yeah, refusing to learn anything about actual Native people and
- 27:27Speaker 1: culture and just like assuming some stuff and being like, well,
- 27:31Speaker 1: I'm probably right about that.
- 27:32Speaker 4: Well, I mean again, you know, like every native is
- 27:35Speaker 4: a plain's native wearing a headdress in the great Southwest
- 27:39Speaker 4: of this noble country.
- 27:42Speaker 3: I know, and to see that like still pretty uncritically
- 27:46Speaker 3: presented to children who, to your point essay very well
- 27:51Speaker 3: may have never met a Native child before, and being
- 27:54Speaker 3: taught that this is what Native culture was, and not
- 27:56Speaker 3: just that, but the fact that like it felt like
- 27:59Speaker 3: especially in at the camp where Neil went to and
- 28:02Speaker 3: I'm sure where I went to on that field trip,
- 28:06Speaker 3: like you're taught that this is a very respectful thing
- 28:09Speaker 3: that is being done. And meanwhile they're like this camp
- 28:12Speaker 3: Squanto exists in the middle of the miles standish you know,
- 28:16Speaker 3: state forest, and you're like, you know, I'm it's just
- 28:19Speaker 3: so clear what is happening. But like growing up, you know,
- 28:23Speaker 3: indoctrinated in that it the amount of unlearning is it's ridiculous.
- 28:27Speaker 4: But and it's just attaching a name. And that's the
- 28:29Speaker 4: thing that really gets me. It's like even the history
- 28:31Speaker 4: of Squanto, you know, the people don't take the time
- 28:33Speaker 4: to actually understand anything. They just want the culture without
- 28:37Speaker 4: the struggle, right, absolutely, whatever it's worth.
- 28:41Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, Let's take a quick break and then we'll
- 28:46Speaker 1: come back and go through the rest of the film. Okay,
- 28:57Speaker 1: so we left off talking about out these type of
- 29:01Speaker 1: summer camp then The doc examines films of like the thirties, forties, fifties,
- 29:08Speaker 1: where representation of Natives shifts from what it was in
- 29:14Speaker 1: the Silent era, where the movies where the Natives were
- 29:19Speaker 1: heroes were not box office successes. Generally, white audiences were
- 29:25Speaker 1: not interested in those stories. The stories they were interested
- 29:29Speaker 1: in were westerns where white men playing cowboys were the
- 29:34Speaker 1: heroes and Natives were portrayed as quote unquote savages, marauders,
- 29:40Speaker 1: you know, the enemy. So movies like Stagecoach starring John Wayne,
- 29:47Speaker 1: directed by John Ford.
- 29:50Speaker 3: Food to both these John's.
- 29:52Speaker 1: Yeah, a movie that was incredibly damaging for Native people,
- 29:57Speaker 1: but like Hollywood used it as a blueprint more or
- 30:01Speaker 1: less for what a Western movie should be for years
- 30:05Speaker 1: and years to come. And so there's a discussion of
- 30:09Speaker 1: these movies representing Native people as uncivilized, you know, bloodthirsty killers.
- 30:18Speaker 1: It had people not speaking real languages. Often it was
- 30:24Speaker 1: English ran backwards. Clothing that the Native characters were wearing
- 30:30Speaker 1: was extremely inaccurate, not regionally or culturally specific.
- 30:35Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm I'm interested to talk about the side quest
- 30:38Speaker 3: that Neil Diamond takes to talk to I think his
- 30:40Speaker 3: name is Richard LaMotte. The costume designer who is sort
- 30:44Speaker 3: of tasked with, yeah, with presenting presenting Native people over
- 30:50Speaker 3: the years and being like, yeah, this is like a
- 30:53Speaker 3: load of shit. The way that we that sequence was fascinating.
- 30:57Speaker 4: Again, it comes down to like this fetter cessation of
- 31:00Speaker 4: the plains India and the Indian and like the last
- 31:03Speaker 4: real conquest for like America, right, so like this is
- 31:07Speaker 4: the last true effort towards genocide. Like I mean, we
- 31:12Speaker 4: still are dealing with an ongoing genocide as Native people.
- 31:14Speaker 4: You know, racure is still very much a real thing.
- 31:16Speaker 4: And but I think about, like with some of the
- 31:20Speaker 4: filming by one of them, John's, both of them, John's
- 31:23Speaker 4: in the Southwest, I'm like, that's the home of like
- 31:25Speaker 4: the din people, the Navajos or like you know, Hope people,
- 31:29Speaker 4: and like they're all wearing headdresses and you know, to
- 31:33Speaker 4: your point, Caitlin, like it makes me l L because
- 31:37Speaker 4: there's these elder Navajo people talking about how they didn't
- 31:42Speaker 4: they would go off script and say things in the movie.
- 31:45Speaker 4: I like, I like live for this. I'm like, because
- 31:48Speaker 4: again I don't speak every language, I like barely speak
- 31:52Speaker 4: three four, but like I barely speak four. I'm really
- 31:57Speaker 4: trying you guys, but yeah, it's uh, it's one of
- 32:05Speaker 4: my favorite like delicious nuggets to just think, like in
- 32:08Speaker 4: some of those movies, how they were responding to these
- 32:13Speaker 4: white actors that were so serious about their craft.
- 32:17Speaker 3: That was such a wonderful sequence when yeah, when Neil
- 32:21Speaker 3: Diamond goes to visit two actors who had been in
- 32:24Speaker 3: John Wayne movies but had never seen the movies, and
- 32:26Speaker 3: we're telling him, you know, the behind the scenes details
- 32:29Speaker 3: of like how poorly they were treated, how dismissively their
- 32:31Speaker 3: culture was treated, but then translating what the native actors
- 32:37Speaker 3: were saying, You're a snake crawling in your own shit.
- 32:40Speaker 4: I love it so much like a sixern.
- 32:45Speaker 3: And then cut back to the white actor being like, no,
- 32:48Speaker 3: we will not Yeah.
- 32:51Speaker 4: You are wrong, We are not great. Can I tell
- 32:57Speaker 4: you guys a story, like just to kind of a
- 32:59Speaker 4: side off of that, just so people think I'm a
- 33:01Speaker 4: really nice person or a main person either way.
- 33:04Speaker 3: Perfect.
- 33:04Speaker 4: People ask me all the time, how do you say
- 33:06Speaker 4: this in your language? Or like how do you how
- 33:08Speaker 4: do you say that in your language? Like so, how
- 33:09Speaker 4: do you say hello? Or how do you say the
- 33:11Speaker 4: color blue? Right? So people will ask me and I'd
- 33:14Speaker 4: be like I always say like namulia and patakoa, and
- 33:17Speaker 4: they're like, okay, cool, cool, right, that's how you say hello.
- 33:19Speaker 4: And then somebody would be like, hey, how do you
- 33:21Speaker 4: say frog Namulia and pataka wa? Or like how do
- 33:25Speaker 4: you say thank you? Oh na mulia and patacoa? And
- 33:30Speaker 4: this is an on running bit I just have for
- 33:31Speaker 4: myself to bring me joy because I just have a
- 33:36Speaker 4: feeling that one day one of these like well meaning
- 33:38Speaker 4: white people will go to like a neheio cree elder
- 33:42Speaker 4: or like a machif may tea elder and say namulia
- 33:45Speaker 4: and pataka wa and that translates to that is not
- 33:49Speaker 4: a potato. And I just really like, I know that
- 33:54Speaker 4: that elder is gonna laugh, like I know that the
- 33:56Speaker 4: person they're saying it to you is just gonna laugh.
- 33:58Speaker 4: And I'm like, this is me too, my part to
- 34:00Speaker 4: help with language resurgents that that's technically in machif, but
- 34:04Speaker 4: like machiff is a makeup of like nehioiwin on a
- 34:12Speaker 4: Shanabic Scottish slang in French, because it's like our people
- 34:16Speaker 4: were an amalgamation of these fur traders and the indigenous
- 34:20Speaker 4: people coming together and creating our own language and protocols,
- 34:23Speaker 4: and it's a beautiful thing to me. But I also
- 34:26Speaker 4: like the idea of just somebody walking around saying that
- 34:28Speaker 4: is not a potato.
- 34:30Speaker 1: It's a great bit.
- 34:31Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 34:32Speaker 3: It's just also like the perfect like a perfect amount
- 34:35Speaker 3: of disarming as it's.
- 34:38Speaker 4: Like, I'm not it's not mean, like.
- 34:39Speaker 3: It's so stupid.
- 34:44Speaker 4: Language is important, you guys. Yeah, that's a.
- 34:48Speaker 3: Top shelf bit. That's great.
- 34:53Speaker 1: Okay. So the documentary is also exploring how in a
- 34:58Speaker 1: lot of these Westerns from this era of like thirties, forties, fifties,
- 35:03Speaker 1: you had white actors playing native characters. Often their skin
- 35:09Speaker 1: was painted.
- 35:10Speaker 4: Full brown face.
- 35:11Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 35:13Speaker 4: I like when the whites of the eyes are so white.
- 35:16Speaker 4: Oh my god, my favorite.
- 35:18Speaker 3: It's it's disgusting. And I also appreciated when someone's like
- 35:22Speaker 3: it's just like you have to laugh.
- 35:25Speaker 4: Yeah, You're like, you're like, this is what they did.
- 35:27Speaker 4: This is the best they could do, and good for them.
- 35:30Speaker 4: They tried so hard.
- 35:32Speaker 1: Embarrassing.
- 35:33Speaker 3: I was on the fact that Clint Eastwood shows up
- 35:36Speaker 3: in this documentary and like sort of like sir, I.
- 35:39Speaker 1: Found that surprising, wo, because his politics are.
- 35:43Speaker 4: I think this is like this, Well, given this is
- 35:45Speaker 4: thirteen years ago, this is pre Hymn thinking. I think
- 35:49Speaker 4: there's a certain era in the last decade that we
- 35:52Speaker 4: can all kind of lean to that allowed all of
- 35:55Speaker 4: these really cool people to have their really cool opinions
- 35:58Speaker 4: out loud.
- 36:01Speaker 3: True, it's true. A lot of people have been really
- 36:04Speaker 3: laid bare, not gonna lie it was. It is a
- 36:07Speaker 3: jump scare to see Clint Eastwood in a documentary where
- 36:11Speaker 3: you're not prepared. I mean, I'm just never prepared to
- 36:13Speaker 3: see him.
- 36:14Speaker 1: But right, you also have you know, white characters, cowboys
- 36:20Speaker 1: killing Native characters being glorified and celebrated in these movies.
- 36:26Speaker 1: Native women are more or less absent in westerns and
- 36:31Speaker 1: Hollywood cinema in general, with the exception of the you know,
- 36:35Speaker 1: young Indigenous princess epitomized by Pocahontas. Then the documentary talks
- 36:43Speaker 1: about one of Hollywood's most famous Native actors, Ironized Cody,
- 36:49Speaker 1: who turns out was not Native. His parents were immigrants
- 36:54Speaker 1: from Sicily, but he adopted a Native persona both on
- 36:59Speaker 1: and off screen, and lived his entire life like that,
- 37:02Speaker 1: and adopted Native children as well.
- 37:06Speaker 4: He was married to a Native woman and had adopted
- 37:10Speaker 4: her children. I believe I don't know a lot about
- 37:12Speaker 4: him other than you know, our protocols are really different
- 37:16Speaker 4: in each community, and so like you know, if he
- 37:19Speaker 4: was adopted into whatever tribe whatever by those people, those
- 37:24Speaker 4: are their protocols. That's their sovereignty, sovereigntry, it's their sovereign right. Sorry,
- 37:30Speaker 4: it's hard for me say that, to break him in
- 37:33Speaker 4: and adopt him as one of their own. For me,
- 37:36Speaker 4: I have a really hard time wrapping my head around
- 37:38Speaker 4: these things, just because a lot of Native people aren't
- 37:42Speaker 4: given that same proximity. And he was an actor, and
- 37:46Speaker 4: he was acting Indian. But you know, to be that
- 37:49Speaker 4: obtuse to believe that you are that. You know, he
- 37:52Speaker 4: sought out the he sought out the trauma as much
- 37:55Speaker 4: as he sought out the victories that he received in
- 37:59Speaker 4: his career. I was actually just in la and I
- 38:02Speaker 4: went to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and I saw that
- 38:04Speaker 4: he was buried there, and I was just not, Yeah,
- 38:08Speaker 4: it's a point of anger for me personally, because while
- 38:13Speaker 4: I want to respect the protocols of the people that
- 38:17Speaker 4: may have adopted him in or believe him to be
- 38:20Speaker 4: one of them, his son included who's featured in the documentary.
- 38:24Speaker 4: It's something that you know, is a very nuanced topic
- 38:29Speaker 4: when it comes to cultural protocols and who is an
- 38:33Speaker 4: indigenous based on our individual communities and our sovereignty. So
- 38:40Speaker 4: but I still don't like him. So I just you know,
- 38:43Speaker 4: that's my prerogative. And I might get hate for that
- 38:45Speaker 4: from some people, but I don't really care about that
- 38:48Speaker 4: because I'm just like super frustrated the fact that it
- 38:52Speaker 4: does still take away opportunities from people. And he also
- 38:57Speaker 4: catered to the fetishization and the romance cessation of this
- 39:01Speaker 4: specific type of Indian And I mean, I understand it
- 39:06Speaker 4: certain eras in history of this nation that Italian Americans
- 39:09Speaker 4: were treated very poorly, but they got Columbus Day.
- 39:12Speaker 5: So it's like you, I think it's like you can
- 39:17Speaker 5: hold the discrimination that he experienced as a Sicilian and
- 39:22Speaker 5: be like it doesn't make anything he did afterwards.
- 39:26Speaker 3: Like especially because to your to your point essay, like
- 39:29Speaker 3: I think one of the at least for like my parents' generation,
- 39:33Speaker 3: one of the most you know, iconically false images of
- 39:38Speaker 3: indigenous people they have is Ironized Cody, the single tier.
- 39:41Speaker 4: Commercial And I mean I cry every time I see
- 39:44Speaker 4: someone litter, so.
- 39:46Speaker 3: Like, oh my fucking like getting into twenty thousand stereotypes
- 39:52Speaker 3: all at once, and then on top of that, for
- 39:54Speaker 3: the actor to have not been native at all, Like.
- 39:58Speaker 4: It's a bit of a gut punch. But again, like
- 40:02Speaker 4: that's the thing with like being native and being from
- 40:05Speaker 4: particular nations. You know, we have our own protocols when
- 40:08Speaker 4: it comes to adoption or recognition. And I mean, my
- 40:13Speaker 4: people didn't adopt him, so I don't really like I
- 40:16Speaker 4: still get to have my my free space to be like, well,
- 40:19Speaker 4: I believe in their sovereignty, but I respect native protocol
- 40:23Speaker 4: and native law. I don't respect people who take advantage
- 40:27Speaker 4: of it. Put it that way.
- 40:28Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's very.
- 40:30Speaker 4: Fair, especially for monetary purposes. And yeah, the fact that
- 40:35Speaker 4: in the documentary they even say that, you know, in
- 40:37Speaker 4: his home it was all just pictures of him dressed
- 40:39Speaker 4: up as an Indian and watching his own films, and
- 40:42Speaker 4: like that's a certain type of narcissist and like yeah,
- 40:46Speaker 4: and like that's to the level of like that's that
- 40:48Speaker 4: I think there might be like I'm not diagnosing, but
- 40:50Speaker 4: there might be some like mental health needs that aren't
- 40:53Speaker 4: being met there either. When you want to believe that's
- 40:56Speaker 4: so bad that you surround yourself by it, right.
- 40:59Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and we it started to feel I
- 41:02Speaker 3: don't know. I was reading his he passed in ninety nine, Yeah,
- 41:08Speaker 3: and I just wanted to read how he was represented
- 41:11Speaker 3: in you know, big public. What's the article they write
- 41:15Speaker 3: when you die?
- 41:16Speaker 4: Obituary?
- 41:19Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it. Anyways, fuck the New York Times. But
- 41:23Speaker 3: the New York Times wrote what felt like kind of
- 41:25Speaker 3: a shady headline ironized code ninety four an actor and
- 41:30Speaker 3: tearful anti littering icon So no mention of indigenous lineage,
- 41:36Speaker 3: because that was not true. I don't know that was Yeah,
- 41:41Speaker 3: I did not know.
- 41:43Speaker 4: I was.
- 41:44Speaker 3: I knew his again. I think like speaks to why
- 41:47Speaker 3: this documentary is so valuable, Like I knew his image
- 41:51Speaker 3: and I didn't know that story.
- 41:54Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, speaking of non native people, appropriate iconography and culture,
- 42:03Speaker 1: perfect transition, Thank you so much. The documentary then moves
- 42:07Speaker 1: into the nineteen sixties and seventies, where the idea of
- 42:13Speaker 1: Native people became a symbol in the hippie movement, where
- 42:18Speaker 1: there was lots of appropriation by mostly white people dressing
- 42:23Speaker 1: like Native people, adopting the kind of like perceived free
- 42:28Speaker 1: spirit quote unquote mentality, but of course doing all of
- 42:33Speaker 1: that very inaccurately. And then also around this time, some
- 42:39Speaker 1: movies that were coming out seemed to be more sympathetic
- 42:45Speaker 1: to the plight of the Native people. In some movies
- 42:50Speaker 1: we see Indians fight back against injustice, which was also
- 42:55Speaker 1: happening in the real world. Where at Wounded KNY in
- 42:59Speaker 1: nineteen seven three, the American Indian Movement faced off against
- 43:04Speaker 1: the FBI and help came from an unexpected source, Hollywood.
- 43:13Speaker 1: And then Neil meets Sashine Little Feather. We hear the
- 43:17Speaker 1: story of how Marlon Brando arranged to have her accept
- 43:22Speaker 1: his Academy Award for The Godfather as a statement to say,
- 43:28Speaker 1: look at all the harm Hollywood has done against Native people.
- 43:33Speaker 1: And so Sashine received this award on stage, she was
- 43:37Speaker 1: planning to give a longer speech. The producer of the
- 43:41Speaker 1: Academy Awards prohibited it and said, like, if you go,
- 43:44Speaker 1: if you talk for longer than a minute, you will
- 43:46Speaker 1: be arrested and taken away in handcuffs.
- 43:50Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
- 43:51Speaker 4: So fun fact about that is it took years, years
- 43:56Speaker 4: and years, decades for Sashin to be apologized to for
- 43:58Speaker 4: being put in that situation. The amount of hate that
- 44:02Speaker 4: that woman received in her years of life is astronomically high,
- 44:06Speaker 4: and I couldn't imagine having to carry that for so long.
- 44:11Speaker 4: But the rumor is that John Wayne was so pissed
- 44:15Speaker 4: off when she was up there that he went to
- 44:18Speaker 4: rush the stage and people had to hold him back.
- 44:21Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I also read that, which is just like,
- 44:26Speaker 3: I don't know.
- 44:27Speaker 4: It's jarring, you know. And the thing is, she did
- 44:31Speaker 4: refuse the award on behalf of Marlon Brando. That's the
- 44:33Speaker 4: other side of things, right, So it's such an insult
- 44:35Speaker 4: to this very prestigious community of Hollywood, you know, actors
- 44:42Speaker 4: and elitists.
- 44:43Speaker 3: It's I mean, it's it's fucking disgusting. Though I don't
- 44:47Speaker 3: know everything I've heard about John I had no attachment
- 44:51Speaker 3: to John Wayne whatsoever, because I think that was one
- 44:54Speaker 3: of the rare points my parents were like, no, these
- 44:56Speaker 3: movies don't just fucking suck. They're also really boring and
- 45:01Speaker 3: we're not watching them. But I mean, just everything attached
- 45:04Speaker 3: to his image feels entrenched in hatred and violence, like
- 45:10Speaker 3: just a really vile icon.
- 45:12Speaker 4: Even the clip that they showed of one of the
- 45:15Speaker 4: movies and he refers to a man and like, I
- 45:17Speaker 4: don't even repeat it because it's so vulgar, but like
- 45:20Speaker 4: he he refers to another brown man as a blanket head,
- 45:25Speaker 4: like it just made it makes me sick, like you know,
- 45:28Speaker 4: and I'm just like, and this was this was normal?
- 45:31Speaker 4: Like when did this? When was this normal? Like why
- 45:33Speaker 4: is this normal? And again it was vilifying into humanizing
- 45:38Speaker 4: entire demographics of people to ensure that white Americans were
- 45:43Speaker 4: deserving of this.
- 45:45Speaker 3: Land absolutely vile, fucking gross, and then seeing the I
- 45:50Speaker 3: thought it was really smart in that it just makes
- 45:54Speaker 3: this community look so foolish. When Neil Diamond stops off
- 45:58Speaker 3: at like whatever the John Wayne fan club, oh group,
- 46:03Speaker 3: because there's like all the userstic old men being like
- 46:08Speaker 3: there's no such thing as a bad John Wait, You're like,
- 46:10Speaker 3: oh my god.
- 46:11Speaker 4: And they're all doing their impression and the walk, and
- 46:14Speaker 4: I'm just like like, if that's your hero, like I'm losers.
- 46:22Speaker 3: It really is, like it was a really spectacular display
- 46:25Speaker 3: of fucking losers with no critical thinking skills.
- 46:29Speaker 4: So though I did really enjoy when Neil like just
- 46:32Speaker 4: real hard cut for this documentary, When Neil Diamond was like, yeah,
- 46:36Speaker 4: I'll take the draw with the fastest shooter and he's
- 46:38Speaker 4: like count to four and Neil just had four. I'm like,
- 46:44Speaker 4: that's my guy right there.
- 46:46Speaker 3: He's not going rocks. I really. I just love when like,
- 46:50Speaker 3: communities that are so removed for reality are I'm just like,
- 46:53Speaker 3: I'm not even going to provoke them. Let's just let
- 46:55Speaker 3: them talk and they will incriminate themselves just by being themselves.
- 47:00Speaker 3: Gross gross, gross loser shit.
- 47:02Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, So also around this time in history, the
- 47:09Speaker 1: documentary examined that some movies portray Native characters as being
- 47:15Speaker 1: more multi dimensional than they had been previously represented. Some
- 47:20Speaker 1: of them even start to dismantle some of the stereotypes.
- 47:25Speaker 1: Some of them show the humor of Native people. Some
- 47:29Speaker 1: examples include Will Sampson as the character of Chief in
- 47:33Speaker 1: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chief Dan George in
- 47:38Speaker 1: The Outlaw Josie Wales. There's discussion of how humor kept
- 47:44Speaker 1: Indians alive, and you know, just levity and being able
- 47:50Speaker 1: to laugh and experience joy that help them keep going.
- 47:54Speaker 4: Yeah, that's honestly one thing that I think is synonymous
- 47:57Speaker 4: with Again, you know, I don't know everything about every
- 48:00Speaker 4: Native nation on these lands. But one thing I know
- 48:03Speaker 4: that brings us all together is laughing. And there's no
- 48:06Speaker 4: better sound than making an auntie or an uncle just
- 48:10Speaker 4: gut laugh.
- 48:11Speaker 1: You know.
- 48:11Speaker 4: And that's what we strive to do. It's just tease
- 48:14Speaker 4: and make fun and all of that and finding humor
- 48:17Speaker 4: and things is like honestly paramount to our thrival as people.
- 48:22Speaker 4: It's the one thing that's pulled us out of the
- 48:24Speaker 4: darkest times, you know, and seeing that conveyed on screen
- 48:29Speaker 4: is such an incredible thing.
- 48:31Speaker 3: Yeah, I really loved I'd seen his the set that
- 48:36Speaker 3: they show of Charlie Hills from the seventies at the beginning.
- 48:39Speaker 3: I'd seen it before, and like, I just I really,
- 48:42Speaker 3: he's so cool. And it also it like is feels
- 48:45Speaker 3: like demonstrative of all of this prejudice against Native people
- 48:49Speaker 3: that he didn't have a fucking gigantic career and like
- 48:53Speaker 3: it wasn't you know, like Eddie Murphy, like Steve Martin
- 48:57Speaker 3: Lovel's of famous because he's so talented, but just like
- 48:59Speaker 3: the you of his work and then also in like
- 49:02Speaker 3: clips of him at the time throughout or just like
- 49:05Speaker 3: he's just so funny. He's such a good comic.
- 49:09Speaker 4: And it's it feels gentle too. Like that's the other
- 49:12Speaker 4: thing too, it's like gentle humor where it's like silly
- 49:15Speaker 4: but also like a little like pokey. But still you
- 49:18Speaker 4: know it's in jest. It's good, like it's not you know,
- 49:22Speaker 4: I think that's special. Wasn't it on the Richard Pryor
- 49:25Speaker 4: Show or something?
- 49:26Speaker 3: I believe?
- 49:26Speaker 4: So, yeah, yeah, he gave him that space to be
- 49:30Speaker 4: able to come and do that. I love that so much.
- 49:32Speaker 3: I thought, yeah, God, I want to learn more about Charliehill.
- 49:36Speaker 3: But yeah he did. He Richard Pryor sort of put
- 49:38Speaker 3: him on for the first time, and then he went
- 49:40Speaker 3: on to do SATs on Carson and then Letterman and like,
- 49:43Speaker 3: but Richard Pryor got and started, which I was like,
- 49:46Speaker 3: fuck yeah, Richard.
- 49:47Speaker 1: Love it. Thanks. Then the documentary is like, now it's
- 49:51Speaker 1: time to talk about Dances with Wolves.
- 49:55Speaker 3: Come to to the table. Children. I still have not
- 50:00Speaker 3: seen Dances with Wolves.
- 50:02Speaker 4: You only need to see it for the incredible force
- 50:06Speaker 4: that is Graham Green, absolute childhood hero. He's touched every
- 50:11Speaker 4: level of entertainment that I enjoy. He's hosted like Cold
- 50:16Speaker 4: Case File shows like he's done all sorts of stuff,
- 50:19Speaker 4: and I'm just like, I could just listen to that
- 50:20Speaker 4: man talk forever and also look at him because he's
- 50:22Speaker 4: a cutie.
- 50:24Speaker 3: He's so damn handsome, relious. He's real, he's real handsome. Yeah,
- 50:30Speaker 3: Dove Charger. I think I first saw Graham Green and
- 50:33Speaker 3: die Hard with a vengeance question Mark.
- 50:36Speaker 1: Oh so pride that you have seen that movie, Jamie.
- 50:41Speaker 3: I think it was on TNT and I was sick
- 50:43Speaker 3: or something. I don't know how else Diehard this is happening,
- 50:50Speaker 3: but that was that was my intro to Green.
- 50:54Speaker 4: Oh so good? Yeah, no, that is it's for Dances
- 50:56Speaker 4: as Wolves, like definitely worth the Graham greenism so there
- 51:00Speaker 4: at his facial acting and just how talented he is.
- 51:05Speaker 1: The doc talks about how this was a movie told
- 51:10Speaker 1: from a white lens about a white man, where Native
- 51:14Speaker 1: characters are still you know, mostly like periphery backdrop characters,
- 51:20Speaker 1: but those characters being more nuanced and fleshed out than
- 51:25Speaker 1: had previously been seen in Hollywood, and again calling particular
- 51:30Speaker 1: attention to Graham Green's performance, and because Dances with Wolves
- 51:35Speaker 1: was a box office success, from that came similar movies
- 51:40Speaker 1: that kind of ushered in more positive representation of Indigenous
- 51:47Speaker 1: people on screen, followed by a renaissance where the voices
- 51:55Speaker 1: of Native filmmakers and artists were finally allowed to be
- 51:58Speaker 1: seen and heard in Hollywood. So this is where you
- 52:02Speaker 1: have movies like Smoke Signals, directed by Chris Ayre. We
- 52:06Speaker 1: covered it on the podcast Not Long Ago. And then
- 52:11Speaker 1: Neil Diamond arrives in Hollywood. He meets with actor Adam Beach,
- 52:18Speaker 1: who was one of the stars of Smoke Signals.
- 52:20Speaker 3: What a fun final destination too, right, And then I
- 52:23Speaker 3: went to Adam Beach's house, right, Hell, yeah, that sounds.
- 52:26Speaker 4: Great, Like just like, and I can tell you the future,
- 52:29Speaker 4: you will be slipknot in the really really bad Suicide
- 52:32Speaker 4: Squad movie for five seconds.
- 52:34Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that was him.
- 52:36Speaker 4: No. I was so bummed because like he hit a
- 52:40Speaker 4: woman in that and I was like, ah, we can't
- 52:42Speaker 4: have anything. Like. I was just so upset.
- 52:44Speaker 3: I didn't know that was him. Oh no, it was
- 52:49Speaker 3: my god. I still haven't seen the Power of the Dog,
- 52:52Speaker 3: but I know that was that the last big thing
- 52:53Speaker 3: he was in. I still haven't seen it. I'm bad
- 52:56Speaker 3: at watching movies, So you guys.
- 53:00Speaker 1: It's okay. And then Neil Diamond returns to Igluluk in
- 53:07Speaker 1: Northern Canada, talks about a revolutionary Inuit movie called The
- 53:12Speaker 1: Fast Runner from two thousand and one, which was very
- 53:16Speaker 1: much a Native movie told from a Native perspective. Neil
- 53:21Speaker 1: meets with the director, Zacharias Kunik, and there's a discussion
- 53:26Speaker 1: about how that movie ushered in a new wave of
- 53:31Speaker 1: film where the gaze and perspective was fully indigenous. And
- 53:37Speaker 1: that's pretty much where the movie ends, where it's just
- 53:40Speaker 1: basically ending on a positive note of like things are
- 53:44Speaker 1: looking up and representation continues to be more and more
- 53:50Speaker 1: meaningful and prevalent and positive and.
- 53:54Speaker 3: The last I mean. According to scholarly journal Wikipedia, Neil
- 53:58Speaker 3: Diamond and Zacharias Kunuk hit it off to the extent
- 54:02Speaker 3: that I'm like, I don't know if it's going to happen,
- 54:04Speaker 3: because it says as of April twenty eleven, Diamond is
- 54:08Speaker 3: developing a project with Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kanok about the
- 54:12Speaker 3: eighteenth century conflict between create an Inuit which lasted almost
- 54:15Speaker 3: a century, which I hope comes out someday. I would
- 54:20Speaker 3: really like to see that. Yeah, But I like that
- 54:22Speaker 3: they connected and are collaborating.
- 54:24Speaker 4: Yeah, that also like speaks to something that you know,
- 54:28Speaker 4: as Native people, like we probably hear more often than not,
- 54:32Speaker 4: like with when it comes to war or like taking
- 54:36Speaker 4: the land. Right when people were coming here that weren't
- 54:39Speaker 4: from these lands, It's like, well, the Native people fought
- 54:41Speaker 4: with each other. I'm like, yeah, we did, Like we
- 54:42Speaker 4: weren't these like peaceful beings just wandering around, you know,
- 54:45Speaker 4: doing whatever. But I really appreciate that, you know, even
- 54:50Speaker 4: the stories of our nations are being shared to where
- 54:55Speaker 4: we are now. Like you know, I have a cousin
- 54:56Speaker 4: who's Blackfoot and Korean Blackfoot. We had a few battles
- 54:59Speaker 4: kick their one time, real good. But like, you know,
- 55:01Speaker 4: other than that, I'm like, it's like these these are
- 55:05Speaker 4: formative to our relationships now. And that also draws a
- 55:11Speaker 4: point for me that I kind of wanted to bring
- 55:13Speaker 4: up today, is I love history. I love history of
- 55:16Speaker 4: Native people. I love people understand I love non natives
- 55:19Speaker 4: and natives of course, learning the history of these lands
- 55:23Speaker 4: and how the people interact with them. But I crave
- 55:26Speaker 4: and pine for contemporary cinema. I'm so tired of the
- 55:32Speaker 4: rhetoric of like natives as a thing of the past,
- 55:35Speaker 4: like I have not yet seen Killers of the Flower Moon.
- 55:38Speaker 4: I don't know if I'm going to see it. I'm
- 55:40Speaker 4: so glad that the Osage had to say in that movie,
- 55:42Speaker 4: and from what I've read, you know, like the actors
- 55:46Speaker 4: did such a phenomenal job in it, and it is
- 55:49Speaker 4: what it was supposed to be for a movie directed
- 55:52Speaker 4: by Scorsese. That that being said, it's a history lesson.
- 55:57Speaker 4: Where's the modern day lesson of why Native people or
- 56:00Speaker 4: in the situations therein? Why are they still living on
- 56:03Speaker 4: reservations or reserves? Why are they still experiencing poverty? Why
- 56:07Speaker 4: is there a reservation in Canada that's decades in of
- 56:09Speaker 4: not having clean water? You know, like there needs to
- 56:12Speaker 4: be something modern to tell our story, not.
- 56:16Speaker 3: Just the history, which seems like is being done more
- 56:19Speaker 3: in the TV space absolutely then in film. Right now,
- 56:23Speaker 3: it would be like that should be represented across mediums.
- 56:29Speaker 3: I think that there is. I don't remember if it
- 56:31Speaker 3: was like Chris Ayir talking about his own movie, but
- 56:35Speaker 3: like Smoke Signals being successful felt like such a huge
- 56:39Speaker 3: deal because there were so few movies about contemporary Native
- 56:43Speaker 3: life that actually became national successes.
- 56:49Speaker 1: There's a chunk in the documentary where because again it's
- 56:52Speaker 1: going through sort of like decade by decade of like
- 56:55Speaker 1: here were the trends of Native representation in Hollywood in
- 57:00Speaker 1: each decade there's voiceover where it's like in the nineteen eighties,
- 57:05Speaker 1: Westerns went out of style, and so it wasn't until
- 57:09Speaker 1: the nineties again when with Dances of Wolves the Western
- 57:12Speaker 1: came back, and it's just like, oh, Hollywood just couldn't
- 57:15Speaker 1: think of any other genres that Native people could be
- 57:19Speaker 1: in because Westerns went out of style for a decade
- 57:22Speaker 1: or so that they just Native people were not included
- 57:26Speaker 1: in like Hollywood movies, and it's like.
- 57:31Speaker 3: The eighties, you're just like what I was.
- 57:34Speaker 4: Born in the I was born in the eighties, and
- 57:40Speaker 4: Natives were still there in the eighties.
- 57:44Speaker 1: I mean, this is actually something I had to unlearn
- 57:47Speaker 1: because every Native person I saw depicted in a movie,
- 57:54Speaker 1: like when I was watching them as a kid, even
- 57:57Speaker 1: into my teen years and stuff like that were movies
- 58:00Speaker 1: either about first contact, the settlers coming in making first contact,
- 58:06Speaker 1: or like westward expansion times. Either way, it was like
- 58:11Speaker 1: centuries ago, nothing in the modern era, which like does
- 58:15Speaker 1: so much to erase Native people from the modern world
- 58:19Speaker 1: to the point where I was like, Native people exist
- 58:24Speaker 1: alongside me right now, and like for a long time,
- 58:27Speaker 1: like growing up in a very like homogeneous white, like
- 58:32Speaker 1: conservative small town area not being around or seeing any
- 58:36Speaker 1: Native people, I was like, Oh, they must be a
- 58:40Speaker 1: thing of the past.
- 58:41Speaker 3: Which, weirdly, Jim Jarmush made that point, Okay, I was like,
- 58:46Speaker 3: why is Jim Jarmush here? It wasn't clear on it,
- 58:49Speaker 3: but I was like, I like what he's saying. But
- 58:52Speaker 3: who invited him?
- 58:54Speaker 4: He just shows up? He's just like he's.
- 58:57Speaker 3: Ready, did he just wander in? Like what? But he
- 59:01Speaker 3: had like a kind of a good quote that when
- 59:05Speaker 3: he was but he was talking about the coming out
- 59:08Speaker 3: of the Silent era of how particularly once native directors, writers,
- 59:14Speaker 3: actors who were portraying their own stories, once that was
- 59:18Speaker 3: phased out pretty effectively during the Great Depression, that there
- 59:21Speaker 3: was this distinct sort of cultural shift moving into the
- 59:25Speaker 3: John Wayne years of portraying Native people as if they
- 59:28Speaker 3: no longer existed, and that that was like a distinct moment.
- 59:32Speaker 4: Or if they were in the way, they were in
- 59:34Speaker 4: the way of progression. And that's really like what I
- 59:38Speaker 4: think most of the John Wayne era movies just did
- 59:44Speaker 4: or they had to fulfill a trope. That's the other thing,
- 59:47Speaker 4: you know that really gets me is like we can
- 59:50Speaker 4: kind of dissect some of these two, but like everything
- 59:51Speaker 4: from Pocahontas to like billy Jack. Still have such a
- 59:55Speaker 4: week I have, like I have such a soft spot
- 59:57Speaker 4: for that movie, and I need.
- 59:59Speaker 3: Someone to explain billy Jack to me.
- 1:00:01Speaker 4: It's a cool kung fu Indian. Okay, where's some really
- 1:00:05Speaker 4: big hat with a great cat band and that's all
- 1:00:07Speaker 4: you need to know.
- 1:00:08Speaker 3: I don't understand billy Jack conceptually.
- 1:00:12Speaker 4: But it's I don't know why I love that movie
- 1:00:15Speaker 4: so much. I'm just like, it's because it's so terrible
- 1:00:17Speaker 4: that I'm like, Okay, this can pass, Like this passes
- 1:00:19Speaker 4: my checklist of like just ridiculousness. But the thing is
- 1:00:24Speaker 4: natives always have to fulfill a trope, right because if
- 1:00:28Speaker 4: we aren't performing the way that people want us to perform, act,
- 1:00:32Speaker 4: look speak And that even goes back to like they
- 1:00:36Speaker 4: talked about the Tanto speech like talk them speech that
- 1:00:39Speaker 4: stuff like I still can't remember. It's like on the
- 1:00:42Speaker 4: tip of my Miko s tribe. If y'all want to
- 1:00:45Speaker 4: do a Google search at some point, yeah, it's run
- 1:00:48Speaker 4: by like it's an offshoot of the Boy Scouts and
- 1:00:51Speaker 4: they actually have a podcast called like Talcum or something
- 1:00:54Speaker 4: like that where it's like we make them talk like
- 1:00:57Speaker 4: they do that type of garbage, Like that type of
- 1:01:00Speaker 4: speech is like if we're not fulfilling these compartments of
- 1:01:04Speaker 4: what people think natives should be, and it's like so
- 1:01:08Speaker 4: difficult to differentiate tribes or it's so difficult to whatever.
- 1:01:13Speaker 4: We don't exist to you, right, And that's the part
- 1:01:16Speaker 4: that makes me really sad, is like it's too much work,
- 1:01:22Speaker 4: I think part of it. And not to get super
- 1:01:24Speaker 4: deep on y'all today, but like the acknowledgment by Hollywood,
- 1:01:30Speaker 4: that's why all of the movies made by white directors
- 1:01:33Speaker 4: are still things of the past, is because the moment
- 1:01:37Speaker 4: that that acknowledgment happens, that we were genocided, continued to
- 1:01:43Speaker 4: be victims of genocide, modern day genocide, with erasure and
- 1:01:47Speaker 4: disclusion in so many things. The moment that any powerful entity,
- 1:01:53Speaker 4: even Hollywood, acknowledges who we are as people outside of
- 1:02:00Speaker 4: their lens is that we exist today, acknowledges all the
- 1:02:05Speaker 4: atrocities they committed against us, and then completely severs their
- 1:02:12Speaker 4: their self appointed right to land. What do they call it? Resources?
- 1:02:20Speaker 4: Like people? Like again people, and that goes back to
- 1:02:24Speaker 4: even like Pocahontas, Like you know, her name wasn't even Pocahontas.
- 1:02:28Speaker 4: It was like as starts with the ms like Matoka, Makota,
- 1:02:32Speaker 4: like I can't say again, I don't speak all the
- 1:02:34Speaker 4: other languages, but you know, it's it's expected that she
- 1:02:36Speaker 4: was between nine and eleven years old. She died twenty one.
- 1:02:41Speaker 3: Yeah, like after being essentially kidnapped like yes.
- 1:02:45Speaker 4: And human trafficked, you know, Like but again this concept
- 1:02:50Speaker 4: I'll never forget actually talking about cinema with my Like
- 1:02:54Speaker 4: my dad he had picked me up after your's personal
- 1:02:59Speaker 4: stuf after a visitation right with my mom when I
- 1:03:01Speaker 4: was a kid. She lived in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and
- 1:03:04Speaker 4: we lived in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Canada. And my
- 1:03:08Speaker 4: dad had picked me up and he took me to
- 1:03:10Speaker 4: what task go in? Also crea name there you go.
- 1:03:13Speaker 4: He took me to Task go in after he picked
- 1:03:14Speaker 4: me up to go take me to the movies because
- 1:03:16Speaker 4: like I always had a hard time leaving my mom's
- 1:03:18Speaker 4: and it was always very interesting dynamic growing up. But
- 1:03:22Speaker 4: we went to go see Poconnas. And I will tell
- 1:03:25Speaker 4: you my dad was like a BFI, which I actually
- 1:03:30Speaker 4: call a big fucking Indian. Like he was just big
- 1:03:32Speaker 4: and brown and he was when you got a BFI angry.
- 1:03:36Speaker 4: It was hilarious. But he he was so mad. He
- 1:03:40Speaker 4: was mad. He's like, she they made it seem like
- 1:03:42Speaker 4: she was a trader to the people, and they made
- 1:03:43Speaker 4: her sexy and all of these things, and he was
- 1:03:45Speaker 4: all upset about it. And I'm just like, go home
- 1:03:48Speaker 4: and mad. Did I get a lecture on the way home?
- 1:03:50Speaker 4: Like not to be like that? Wow, it was pretty surreal.
- 1:03:56Speaker 3: That's fine. I'm twelve, Like, but I mean, I I
- 1:04:03Speaker 3: that movie. God, that movie came out when I think
- 1:04:06Speaker 3: I was like two or three years old, with the
- 1:04:07Speaker 3: first movie I remember seeing, and I was fucking obsessed
- 1:04:12Speaker 3: with it, and it like in a formative way that
- 1:04:16Speaker 3: like certainly was not challenged in the way that I
- 1:04:19Speaker 3: was schooled or grew up. I didn't grow up knowing
- 1:04:23Speaker 3: Native kids or Native families. And that movie. I think
- 1:04:27Speaker 3: that that movie, I think it's interesting. It seems like
- 1:04:29Speaker 3: every generation there is a hugely successful movie that wildly
- 1:04:36Speaker 3: misrepresents and insults Native history that has a huge, huge
- 1:04:41Speaker 3: impact on just media in general, and Pocahontas was certainly
- 1:04:47Speaker 3: that movie for me. And so then when I think
- 1:04:50Speaker 3: I was in high school, when I had a great
- 1:04:55Speaker 3: history teacher who sort of spoke to all of the
- 1:05:00Speaker 3: wild historical inaccuracies that are presented in at that point
- 1:05:04Speaker 3: extremely famous movie, that was sort of my first indication
- 1:05:10Speaker 3: that you know, this story that I literally was like
- 1:05:13Speaker 3: one of my first conscious memories was completely false and
- 1:05:17Speaker 3: not just and falls in a dangerous way.
- 1:05:20Speaker 4: There's like a I think there's a level of discomfort
- 1:05:23Speaker 4: too with again, like these these movies being portrayed the
- 1:05:26Speaker 4: way that people want us to be or want to
- 1:05:29Speaker 4: see us as natives. And I have a lot of
- 1:05:32Speaker 4: empathy considering the things I've experienced in my life, but
- 1:05:36Speaker 4: one of them is like I can't imagine what it
- 1:05:39Speaker 4: feels like to know that everything you believed is bullshit.
- 1:05:43Speaker 4: And that must be really difficult because you're like, wow,
- 1:05:47Speaker 4: like starting from ground zero to learn things. And while
- 1:05:51Speaker 4: it's a super beautiful process, there's a lot of people
- 1:05:54Speaker 4: that get stunted in that and decide that they don't
- 1:05:56Speaker 4: want to actually put in work or listen or change
- 1:06:01Speaker 4: that narrative shifted even a little bit in their brains
- 1:06:04Speaker 4: because there's discomfort associated with that and the discomfort that
- 1:06:08Speaker 4: people feel from realizing that. And again I'll just talk about.
- 1:06:13Speaker 4: What we're talking about is movies that the way that
- 1:06:14Speaker 4: natives have been betrayed is not true or not necessarily true.
- 1:06:19Speaker 4: Like it's just a fragment of the discomfort we have
- 1:06:22Speaker 4: felt as people since the onset of colonization. So like,
- 1:06:29Speaker 4: I mean not that you know, tit for tad. I
- 1:06:31Speaker 4: would never wish real negative things on anybody because I
- 1:06:34Speaker 4: don't want to put that out into the universe. But
- 1:06:36Speaker 4: what I would say is with discomfort comes growth, right,
- 1:06:42Speaker 4: and so like reevaluating our lens, no pun intended, as
- 1:06:47Speaker 4: we see people through this like talking box, like there's
- 1:06:52Speaker 4: my Indians speak for the day talking box Like so
- 1:06:56Speaker 4: I'm gonna be I'm gonna be blacklisted for that one.
- 1:06:59Speaker 4: But like, but no, like through any talking box, whether
- 1:07:01Speaker 4: it be your phone, whether it be your TV, whether
- 1:07:03Speaker 4: it be your computer, how we see things portrayed is
- 1:07:07Speaker 4: somebody's narrative. If they haven't experienced it, how genuine can
- 1:07:11Speaker 4: it be? You know? And so that's why I'm so
- 1:07:13Speaker 4: glad with this, like again regaissance that they're talking about
- 1:07:16Speaker 4: thirteen years ago. At the end of this documentary, we're
- 1:07:20Speaker 4: seeing it happen slowly but surely, Like a great film
- 1:07:23Speaker 4: came out recently called Slashback, and I'm obsessed with it.
- 1:07:27Speaker 4: I will watch that movie like so often because it
- 1:07:30Speaker 4: touches on everything that I would want it to touch on.
- 1:07:35Speaker 4: And I'm not like a knook. I'm not from there.
- 1:07:38Speaker 4: I don't experience those things. But to see like syllabics
- 1:07:42Speaker 4: and to see language and to see face markings, it
- 1:07:46Speaker 4: all like just makes sense to me, Like they went
- 1:07:48Speaker 4: to that village and they taught kids how to act.
- 1:07:53Speaker 4: Like that's so great, you know. I'm so glad that
- 1:07:56Speaker 4: things like this are happening now that we get to
- 1:07:58Speaker 4: tell authentic versions of ourselves. And it might make people uncomfortable,
- 1:08:03Speaker 4: they might not understand it, but that's okay too, because
- 1:08:07Speaker 4: again it doesn't have to be for everyone. But it's
- 1:08:09Speaker 4: also going back to what I said, like there's going
- 1:08:12Speaker 4: to be discomfort and knowing the things that you believe
- 1:08:15Speaker 4: to be true.
- 1:08:16Speaker 1: Aren't and I mean speaking more to that. This episode
- 1:08:20Speaker 1: is coming out the week of Thanksgiving, if not on
- 1:08:25Speaker 1: the day, and the narrative that I learned in history
- 1:08:29Speaker 1: class in elementary school about what Thanksgiving was just being
- 1:08:35Speaker 1: so bogus and so rewritten to favor the colonizer's side
- 1:08:42Speaker 1: of the story and to say, oh, no, there wasn't
- 1:08:46Speaker 1: a genocide. It was us all getting along and that's
- 1:08:50Speaker 1: there was a feast and it was nice.
- 1:08:53Speaker 4: But then the Indians turned on us.
- 1:08:55Speaker 3: Right, literally what I learned and right that myth includes
- 1:09:00Speaker 3: like five different popular stereotypes around Native people, Like in
- 1:09:05Speaker 3: one story that a lot of kids learn when they're
- 1:09:09Speaker 3: two three years old, it's fucking ridiculous, And I like,
- 1:09:14Speaker 3: just like conditions you into a colonizer mindset when you're
- 1:09:18Speaker 3: too young to even realize what that is or what
- 1:09:20Speaker 3: that means. And I feel it is like especially because
- 1:09:25Speaker 3: the I mean, the Internet is fucking evil, has great
- 1:09:28Speaker 3: potential for you know, it like has surely ruined our
- 1:09:32Speaker 3: mental health forever. However, it is like I feel like
- 1:09:37Speaker 3: speaking to your point essay about like it's like your
- 1:09:40Speaker 3: responsive I don't know, like if if you were brought
- 1:09:43Speaker 3: up with a colonizer mindset, you have the tools to
- 1:09:46Speaker 3: unlearn it in a way that like no other generation
- 1:09:50Speaker 3: or point in history that has it been more true
- 1:09:53Speaker 3: that you have the tools to be able to unlearn it.
- 1:09:56Speaker 3: And it's I feel like it's like your responsibility to
- 1:09:58Speaker 3: do it, even even if it's uncomfortable. Who gives a shit?
- 1:10:01Speaker 4: Like it's and I think too. And one of the
- 1:10:04Speaker 4: things that I've come up against in a lot of
- 1:10:05Speaker 4: my like whether I'm doing like community work or supporting
- 1:10:10Speaker 4: people or I don't know, like get it. Like I
- 1:10:12Speaker 4: hate to say what I do is work because like
- 1:10:14Speaker 4: I don't consider it work. But in education, like I
- 1:10:19Speaker 4: feel really bad sometimes when people are like, you know,
- 1:10:21Speaker 4: I want to talk to Native people, I want to
- 1:10:23Speaker 4: find things out, and they're very apprehensive to talk to me.
- 1:10:25Speaker 4: I'm like, well, rightfully, so, you know. But at the
- 1:10:28Speaker 4: same time, I'm like, there's got to be a level
- 1:10:30Speaker 4: of like, I don't mind talking to people about my experiences.
- 1:10:35Speaker 4: I can only speak to my own experiences. And that's why,
- 1:10:38Speaker 4: you know, I specialize in very specific areas of Native
- 1:10:42Speaker 4: history and then how that affects us in modern times
- 1:10:45Speaker 4: with you know, residential schools and the scoop and all
- 1:10:49Speaker 4: of that. Actually that reminds me just to go back.
- 1:10:52Speaker 4: There was one of those Thomas Edison Films was Indian
- 1:10:54Speaker 4: Day School and it was like in right before nineteen hundred,
- 1:10:58Speaker 4: and it was about Natives being taken away from their
- 1:11:01Speaker 4: families and like you know and being forced assimilated. You know.
- 1:11:05Speaker 4: So I can only speak to those experiences. But what
- 1:11:07Speaker 4: I like to do is still makes space that I'm
- 1:11:10Speaker 4: capable of to tell people about the hurt that we've
- 1:11:15Speaker 4: experienced and still experienced by methods of TV and movies.
- 1:11:22Speaker 4: But it's going to take time. We can't undo what's
- 1:11:26Speaker 4: been done, but we can learn new ways of being.
- 1:11:29Speaker 4: And so yeah, I like to make space for people
- 1:11:32Speaker 4: to educate, just again from my experiences and in hopes
- 1:11:37Speaker 4: that they're not just seeking out like I guess, like
- 1:11:43Speaker 4: would it be a trauma bonding or like trying to
- 1:11:45Speaker 4: live vicariously through the trauma, right, so they could feel
- 1:11:47Speaker 4: some proximity to it without experiencing it. But yeah, like
- 1:11:51Speaker 4: I think that the more we can share and the
- 1:11:55Speaker 4: more that people realize that they have access to information,
- 1:11:59Speaker 4: you know, like there's going to be stuff online that's
- 1:12:02Speaker 4: going to support either opinion, right, and that's that's part
- 1:12:06Speaker 4: of the problem with people not having a direction to
- 1:12:10Speaker 4: go in So like a little bit of compassion. If
- 1:12:13Speaker 4: somebody doesn't want to talk to you, don't force it
- 1:12:14Speaker 4: out of them because you know you'll get you'll get
- 1:12:18Speaker 4: an earful I'm sure. But there's got to be space
- 1:12:22Speaker 4: for education, and there's got to be space for Native
- 1:12:25Speaker 4: people to be able to tell their own stories, for
- 1:12:27Speaker 4: people to participate in that by even just watching m Absolutely,
- 1:12:34Speaker 4: I'm trying to think there's so much that we could
- 1:12:36Speaker 4: talk this This documentary is so like wonderfully dense.
- 1:12:42Speaker 3: Say, are there specific movies or points covered in the
- 1:12:44Speaker 3: doc that you wanted to cover? I mean, I feel
- 1:12:48Speaker 3: like I wrote down a million quotes of speaking to
- 1:12:52Speaker 3: There was one I wanted to share about Pocahontas. I
- 1:12:56Speaker 3: didn't write down who said it. I believe it was
- 1:12:59Speaker 3: Jesse Windy, who's in Ojibway film critic, who said about
- 1:13:04Speaker 3: Pocahontas in a way that again, just at many points,
- 1:13:07Speaker 3: this documentary just like really clearly distills what the issue
- 1:13:12Speaker 3: is with a tremendously famous movie that misrepresents Native people,
- 1:13:16Speaker 3: and this one was we imbue in her all of
- 1:13:19Speaker 3: the wrong notions about what we want to see in
- 1:13:20Speaker 3: a mythical princess, and she becomes the embodiment of what
- 1:13:23Speaker 3: we want to see, not in Native society, she becomes
- 1:13:26Speaker 3: an embodiment of what we see in American society and
- 1:13:29Speaker 3: of American desire. And that's I mean, that's the white
- 1:13:36Speaker 3: millennial's journey With the movie Pocahontas. I think that one
- 1:13:41Speaker 3: of the first things that I recognize outside of the
- 1:13:44Speaker 3: wild historical inaccuracy then you know, going into film school
- 1:13:49Speaker 3: and media, you know where there's all these issues of
- 1:13:52Speaker 3: erasure in academia as well, but just finding how much
- 1:13:57Speaker 3: more significantly sexualized Pocahonta was. Not only is she aged
- 1:14:01Speaker 3: up to seem to be an appropriate romantic interest, not
- 1:14:06Speaker 3: only is there all of this implied consent, not only
- 1:14:09Speaker 3: is there this implied betrayal of her own people, all
- 1:14:13Speaker 3: of which is untrue, but the way that she's physically
- 1:14:15Speaker 3: presented is as far more sexual than any of the
- 1:14:20Speaker 3: white Disney princesses that you would see. And the historical
- 1:14:23Speaker 3: context that comes with that of overtly sexualizing and you know,
- 1:14:29Speaker 3: alternatively sexualizing and erasing Native women from media entirely.
- 1:14:34Speaker 4: That that makes me think about some of those old
- 1:14:36Speaker 4: westerns and like when the women would be in brown face,
- 1:14:39Speaker 4: you know, it was always like the white man would
- 1:14:41Speaker 4: be seeking out you know this I cat like it's
- 1:14:46Speaker 4: such a it's a slur, so I can't even say it.
- 1:14:48Speaker 4: But like the sq word, right, and like if anyone
- 1:14:52Speaker 4: wants a piece of homework, go look at what the
- 1:14:55Speaker 4: actual origin of that meaning is. It's incredibly vulgar. But
- 1:14:59Speaker 4: I think about it's always about like and going in
- 1:15:03Speaker 4: theme with the podcast here, it's all about like being
- 1:15:06Speaker 4: available to men, right, It's the use use of buying men, right,
- 1:15:11Speaker 4: even you know, not to like go off too far
- 1:15:15Speaker 4: off course here, but like even with like the school marm, right,
- 1:15:18Speaker 4: like the white women in it are just there to
- 1:15:19Speaker 4: be of use for the men and to take care
- 1:15:22Speaker 4: of the children and that sort of thing. Like there's
- 1:15:24Speaker 4: no dimension, right, So when you see these native women
- 1:15:29Speaker 4: in whether it be Westerns or even like the contemporary
- 1:15:33Speaker 4: Western like Dances with Wolves, her purpose was to serve
- 1:15:36Speaker 4: the man, right and be this like caricature of indigenity,
- 1:15:44Speaker 4: when like ol stands with a fist was actually just
- 1:15:47Speaker 4: a white woman, you know, who was stolen by these
- 1:15:50Speaker 4: savages but then raised by them, you know, and it's
- 1:15:52Speaker 4: this whole story and I really like that it was
- 1:15:55Speaker 4: brought up that she looked like she was disheveled, and
- 1:15:57Speaker 4: she looked all these ways, and like if she was
- 1:15:59Speaker 4: actually living with them, she would have commune. Like so
- 1:16:01Speaker 4: they had to make her look savage, right and like,
- 1:16:03Speaker 4: and it was the white man that saved her from
- 1:16:06Speaker 4: you know whatever. It's just because like, also, heaven forbid
- 1:16:10Speaker 4: this white man end up with a It's like she
- 1:16:13Speaker 4: had like two she was a two dimensional character. Like
- 1:16:15Speaker 4: she wasn't one dimension, she had two dimensions because she
- 1:16:17Speaker 4: lived with natives but was still white. You know that
- 1:16:20Speaker 4: heaven forbid he would have ended up with a Native
- 1:16:22Speaker 4: woman at all, you know, Like and so there's still
- 1:16:26Speaker 4: a level of like, what's the word for it. It's
- 1:16:29Speaker 4: like just if it's like misogyny, racism, and again back
- 1:16:34Speaker 4: to the fetish station of like what women are worth, right,
- 1:16:38Speaker 4: and then you add, you know, add in that she's
- 1:16:42Speaker 4: native or brown or anything, you know, and that's adds
- 1:16:45Speaker 4: another level of like just utter dismissal of any any worth.
- 1:16:51Speaker 1: For sure. Actually, if I had one criticism of this
- 1:16:55Speaker 1: documentary is that I would have loved to hear more
- 1:16:59Speaker 1: Native women, Yeah, talk about what they've experienced, what they've seen,
- 1:17:04Speaker 1: as far as the representation of Native women and fems
- 1:17:10Speaker 1: in Hollywood and just their thoughts on it, because we
- 1:17:14Speaker 1: have a there's a few women who were interviewed, but
- 1:17:18Speaker 1: definitely more men.
- 1:17:20Speaker 4: I mean. And that's that's the other thing too, Like
- 1:17:22Speaker 4: I look at timeframe, and I look at like, you know,
- 1:17:27Speaker 4: we always have to take an account of when things
- 1:17:29Speaker 4: are made, right, because like A, I don't believe in
- 1:17:31Speaker 4: the thing that people didn't know any better. They just
- 1:17:33Speaker 4: choose not to expand, right, you know, or have like
- 1:17:39Speaker 4: like the time frame can explain it, it doesn't necessarily
- 1:17:42Speaker 4: excuse it, right, Does that make sense?
- 1:17:45Speaker 5: Right?
- 1:17:45Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
- 1:17:46Speaker 4: But I look at the timeframe move when this was made,
- 1:17:48Speaker 4: and there weren't a lot of major motion pictures being wow,
- 1:17:54Speaker 4: just said the words major motion pictures, the brave, I
- 1:17:59Speaker 4: thank you, it's nice to be here. But there weren't
- 1:18:06Speaker 4: a vast amount of major motion pictures being made with
- 1:18:10Speaker 4: Native actresses, right, like in roles that weren't like, you know,
- 1:18:14Speaker 4: freaking like Legends of the Fall, like one woman for
- 1:18:17Speaker 4: a few minutes, and of course, oh what she was
- 1:18:20Speaker 4: serving Brad Pitt's character, you know. Like, so, I mean
- 1:18:24Speaker 4: I think that this documentary like kind of subtly without
- 1:18:29Speaker 4: maybe knowing, really helped shed light on that because yeah,
- 1:18:32Speaker 4: there wasn't any even in something that was so progressive
- 1:18:37Speaker 4: at its time. You know, we're at the point where
- 1:18:40Speaker 4: we could have Real Engine part two and like, look
- 1:18:43Speaker 4: at where we are now, you know, and what we've learned.
- 1:18:46Speaker 1: I mean, there's a there are five Twilight movies that
- 1:18:49Speaker 1: came out since okay, progress is not linear all the
- 1:18:57Speaker 1: time and moving forward, and because like you know, the
- 1:19:00Speaker 1: movie ends on this like really you know, positive note
- 1:19:03Speaker 1: of like representations seems to be getting better. But then
- 1:19:07Speaker 1: all these Twilight movies came out.
- 1:19:09Speaker 4: But also like just another fun you probably already know this,
- 1:19:12Speaker 4: but like fun movie fact is that Taylor Latner improvised
- 1:19:16Speaker 4: Loca and they just kept it in there. So that
- 1:19:19Speaker 4: wasn't even no.
- 1:19:20Speaker 3: I did not know that.
- 1:19:22Speaker 4: Yeah, that that is. That is one of the only
- 1:19:25Speaker 4: parts of those movies I've ever watched, And I just
- 1:19:27Speaker 4: enjoy it because I'm just like him in his big
- 1:19:29Speaker 4: white teeth just saying Loka just does it for me.
- 1:19:33Speaker 3: Those Loatner veneers, nothing like them, spark sparkle just yeah,
- 1:19:42Speaker 3: I would be that was I would love to see
- 1:19:45Speaker 3: a sort of an update. I guess I don't know,
- 1:19:48Speaker 3: I as someone that is always frustrated by like the
- 1:19:50Speaker 3: idea of being like, oh that thing you did a
- 1:19:52Speaker 3: long time ago, do it again for me? But I
- 1:19:57Speaker 3: but I would love to see sort of an update
- 1:20:00Speaker 3: in this format. Maybe it exists and I just don't
- 1:20:02Speaker 3: know about.
- 1:20:03Speaker 4: It, but maybe if it does, I hope I didn't
- 1:20:07Speaker 4: miss it, you know. Like again, not to dismiss Neil
- 1:20:10Speaker 4: Diamond like I and this is going to sound really
- 1:20:14Speaker 4: silly to say it out loud, but like people like
- 1:20:15Speaker 4: him make me proud to be free because it is
- 1:20:19Speaker 4: something that is so authentically indigenous to who he was
- 1:20:24Speaker 4: and the environment he grew up in what he saw right.
- 1:20:27Speaker 4: He wasn't pretending to be a type of native that
- 1:20:30Speaker 4: he wasn't. Right, So I appreciate everything he's done with
- 1:20:36Speaker 4: that film and how he narrated it and how he
- 1:20:38Speaker 4: story told through it. And again, like I said at
- 1:20:42Speaker 4: the beginning, you know, when I was kind of talking
- 1:20:43Speaker 4: about my experience with the film, it's it's literally the
- 1:20:47Speaker 4: movie that I give for people as a stepping stone
- 1:20:50Speaker 4: to understanding why their perceptions are the way they are
- 1:20:54Speaker 4: of us. Bite size breakdown, you know. Yeah, it's a
- 1:20:58Speaker 4: positive catalyst movie. That's what I think of.
- 1:21:01Speaker 3: Yeah, ooh ooh, that's a great description for like a
- 1:21:05Speaker 3: genre of movie.
- 1:21:06Speaker 4: That's cool, Like I love things that are thought provoking,
- 1:21:08Speaker 4: but it's a positive catalyst to Like again, both of
- 1:21:10Speaker 4: you said, like, oh, we have to watch these movies
- 1:21:12Speaker 4: from it or whatever. This is like thirteen years ago.
- 1:21:15Speaker 4: There's so much since then, but like those movies are
- 1:21:17Speaker 4: your little snack of Maronis on your way to understanding
- 1:21:23Speaker 4: Native people through cinema.
- 1:21:24Speaker 3: Yeah, so absolutely, Yeah, is there anything else that you
- 1:21:30Speaker 3: both wanted to touch on?
- 1:21:32Speaker 4: I mean, we're at the point now where we realize
- 1:21:36Speaker 4: that we're all a Native land, right, and the best
- 1:21:40Speaker 4: way to understand where people are now is by understanding history,
- 1:21:44Speaker 4: and so knowing where you are is a really good
- 1:21:47Speaker 4: step forward. You don't know any like I encourage people
- 1:21:50Speaker 4: to not feel overwhelmed when it comes to understanding where
- 1:21:54Speaker 4: they are. So, like, you know, you live somewhere they're
- 1:21:58Speaker 4: like native land. You can find out who's laned you're on.
- 1:22:01Speaker 4: Start doing some research, you know, just find out where
- 1:22:05Speaker 4: you are and find out who's laned you're on. Find
- 1:22:07Speaker 4: out if that tribe is doing anything, find out how
- 1:22:10Speaker 4: you and support is such a broad word, but encourage
- 1:22:13Speaker 4: other people to learn, understand the initiatives being taken, support
- 1:22:16Speaker 4: them when they're trying to change legislation, get land back,
- 1:22:20Speaker 4: et cetera. You know, it can be very overwhelming. Again,
- 1:22:24Speaker 4: like I said, to find out that most of your
- 1:22:27Speaker 4: existence in knowledge is built on lies about people and
- 1:22:34Speaker 4: this false sense of security in what the United States
- 1:22:39Speaker 4: and Canada stand on. But I mean, I promise it's
- 1:22:44Speaker 4: worth it's worth learning about, definitely. So that's that's all
- 1:22:49Speaker 4: I got. Oh and not every Indians and planes Indian
- 1:22:51Speaker 4: we don't all where headdresses and war bonnets, I mean
- 1:22:54Speaker 4: like by people do.
- 1:22:54Speaker 3: But you know that was that was the last thing
- 1:22:58Speaker 3: I wanted to actually because we started talking about the
- 1:23:01Speaker 3: costume design. But just how there was a great quote
- 1:23:06Speaker 3: I think also from Oh my gosh, I have so
- 1:23:10Speaker 3: many does Jesse WENTI? Yeah, for you know how the
- 1:23:14Speaker 3: use of the what am I thinking of? Around the neck?
- 1:23:19Speaker 4: Are you talking about breastplates or the finger necklace or
- 1:23:22Speaker 4: the finger It was like the headband.
- 1:23:26Speaker 3: Sorry, my brain no longer works. No, the use of
- 1:23:30Speaker 3: the choker being strictly practical to hide like wires and
- 1:23:35Speaker 3: different things where they're like, yeah, we completely manufactured the
- 1:23:39Speaker 3: image of native people to the point where it was
- 1:23:42Speaker 3: to hide ship. That was just movie shit.
- 1:23:45Speaker 4: Yeah, the headband to hold on, the wigs and stuff
- 1:23:47Speaker 4: like that. Yeah, yeah, I think that that's one of
- 1:23:51Speaker 4: the biggest like takeaways for this movie. The first time
- 1:23:54Speaker 4: I saw it as as somebody who is a Plane's Indian?
- 1:23:57Speaker 4: You know, I I was like, yeah, I was like this,
- 1:24:00Speaker 4: they need the identifiers. So like suddenly everyone's wearing a headdress,
- 1:24:03Speaker 4: everyone has a breastplate on, everyone has these long braids
- 1:24:08Speaker 4: or whatever, and it's just it was so it's so lazy,
- 1:24:12Speaker 4: Like it's just feels so lazy. But the thing is
- 1:24:15Speaker 4: they just needed this like identifier, and like, while I
- 1:24:20Speaker 4: get it, like I think planes natives are beautiful, and
- 1:24:23Speaker 4: there's so many tribes, Like there's so many tribes that
- 1:24:26Speaker 4: live in the Great Plains, I mean, like why them,
- 1:24:30Speaker 4: you know, like again like they're like but I again,
- 1:24:33Speaker 4: I wouldn't wish that fetishization on any other group, you know.
- 1:24:37Speaker 4: So it's just it's it's very interesting to see that
- 1:24:40Speaker 4: that was it was it's a caricature of indigenoity. You know.
- 1:24:46Speaker 1: Yeah, And what that does is just lumps all Native
- 1:24:52Speaker 1: people into one monolith culturally, and they're in Hollywood. For
- 1:24:58Speaker 1: most of these films made no attempt to include any
- 1:25:03Speaker 1: like specific cultural signifiers for different tribes and nations, and
- 1:25:09Speaker 1: it also just strips natives of specific cultural identity. And
- 1:25:14Speaker 1: Hollywood was just doing that for decades, and white audiences
- 1:25:20Speaker 1: were none the wiser. They were just like, oh, this
- 1:25:23Speaker 1: is on screen, this just must be it, right, yeah,
- 1:25:28Speaker 1: And then that just brings us back to the point
- 1:25:30Speaker 1: of like taking the initiative to learn and actually do
- 1:25:35Speaker 1: the work, put in the effort.
- 1:25:37Speaker 3: To You may have to read a book.
- 1:25:39Speaker 4: Or you can do you can do the other thing
- 1:25:41Speaker 4: that I do, because again, reading is not my friend.
- 1:25:44Speaker 4: I just can't focus in, so I just like use
- 1:25:46Speaker 4: my delicious little apps on my phone or even highlight
- 1:25:49Speaker 4: text on my contutor. Yes, they said contutor and I
- 1:25:54Speaker 4: and I haven't read it to me, you know, yeah, exactly.
- 1:25:58Speaker 4: Everyone learns different ways and there's so many applications to
- 1:26:01Speaker 4: be able to facilitate that now.
- 1:26:03Speaker 3: Yeah, which is yeah, just like another of all the
- 1:26:05Speaker 3: elements of being alive right now that are fucking awful.
- 1:26:08Speaker 3: That is a good thing, take advantage of the few
- 1:26:10Speaker 3: good things we have. Yeah, Yeah, I just wanted to
- 1:26:14Speaker 3: share those quotes from Richard Lamont because I feel like,
- 1:26:17Speaker 3: I mean, it's very much what our show is about,
- 1:26:21Speaker 3: or has become increasingly more about over the years, which
- 1:26:24Speaker 3: is that, like I think it's very easy to you know,
- 1:26:27Speaker 3: like I don't know argue that, Like, I mean, I
- 1:26:31Speaker 3: just think we still I still see this among people
- 1:26:33Speaker 3: that I like, know and like and respect and all
- 1:26:36Speaker 3: this stuff. But they're like, it's just a movie. It's
- 1:26:38Speaker 3: not that serious. It's just a movie. Which it's it's
- 1:26:42Speaker 3: very rarely just a movie, especially when you're talking about
- 1:26:47Speaker 3: or erasing entirely communities who are rarely have ever given
- 1:26:52Speaker 3: the opportunity to represent themselves with the same budgets, with
- 1:26:56Speaker 3: the same sort of institutional support, and all of this shit.
- 1:26:59Speaker 1: It's it.
- 1:27:00Speaker 3: It is as goofy as so much of it is.
- 1:27:03Speaker 3: It is like extraordinarily important, and.
- 1:27:07Speaker 1: Whether we notice it or not, it is altering our perceptions.
- 1:27:11Speaker 3: And that Jesse went to quote that I really really
- 1:27:15Speaker 3: kind of stuck with me during the costuming segment, was
- 1:27:18Speaker 3: that the way that you know, all of indigenous culture
- 1:27:24Speaker 3: was just sort of turned into this also false representation
- 1:27:28Speaker 3: of a plane's native. He says, it's an ingenious act
- 1:27:32Speaker 3: of colonialism, robbing nations of their identity and grouping them.
- 1:27:36Speaker 3: And that just feels like this story, even when it's
- 1:27:40Speaker 3: you know, seemingly well intentioned, you have this like brief
- 1:27:43Speaker 3: moment in the seventies, but even so it's majority by
- 1:27:46Speaker 3: white directors who are showing Native characters in a more
- 1:27:51Speaker 3: empathetic light than film has in many years, but through
- 1:27:56Speaker 3: the white character's lens.
- 1:27:57Speaker 4: Always well, it's the outward racism. For me, that is
- 1:28:02Speaker 4: just like portraying John Wayne as the real American, right,
- 1:28:07Speaker 4: and you know, natives not being right, and that's just
- 1:28:12Speaker 4: so yeah, yeah, that's something that still like it's I
- 1:28:22Speaker 4: think it was like John Trudell actually who said the
- 1:28:26Speaker 4: words in that even he's an incredible poet, but he
- 1:28:32Speaker 4: in the documentary he talked about how like when they
- 1:28:34Speaker 4: got off the boat, they didn't recognize us, you know,
- 1:28:36Speaker 4: and I think that that is still the rhetoric that
- 1:28:39Speaker 4: you know, came through in cinema over the last hundred years.
- 1:28:43Speaker 1: Yeah. Something also that he said that really stuck with
- 1:28:47Speaker 1: me was the word Indian had never been.
- 1:28:50Speaker 4: Uttered a sound had never been made yet.
- 1:28:52Speaker 1: In this hemisphere pre Subtler colonialism, and like the idea
- 1:28:59Speaker 1: of name of American in the sense that like America
- 1:29:03Speaker 1: was a concept that was also brought over. And he's like,
- 1:29:08Speaker 1: my people are older than both concepts. Yeah, but we're
- 1:29:11Speaker 1: still fighting so hard to defend that identity.
- 1:29:16Speaker 4: And that's the thing, Like even the word Indian, there's
- 1:29:18Speaker 4: a lot of like I'm indifferent to it, and everyone
- 1:29:22Speaker 4: is entitled to their own standard with it, Like I
- 1:29:25Speaker 4: don't really like I identify as Indian slang now as letters
- 1:29:30Speaker 4: and d end, you know. And it's just like a
- 1:29:33Speaker 4: cute way of kind of like like you know, vernacular
- 1:29:36Speaker 4: changes in certain demographics and groups of people. You know,
- 1:29:42Speaker 4: there's something that's like he said, like we're the people
- 1:29:44Speaker 4: and this is really cool, just as like a kind
- 1:29:46Speaker 4: of a nugget is I have a lot of friends
- 1:29:49Speaker 4: of a lot of different tribes, and like most of
- 1:29:51Speaker 4: the time their names just translate to the people right
- 1:29:56Speaker 4: or something about the people of right, like so it's
- 1:29:59Speaker 4: always just people, and so like same thing with Nichio.
- 1:30:02Speaker 4: It's we're people, right. And it's interesting because I don't like,
- 1:30:07Speaker 4: unless I'm hanging out with like my Nie Cheese, which
- 1:30:09Speaker 4: are like my friends and stuff like that. Like, you know,
- 1:30:12Speaker 4: using the word Indian isn't really a thing that I do,
- 1:30:15Speaker 4: because it's a point of like both, Like I just
- 1:30:21Speaker 4: I'm appalled by it. By the same time, I'm like,
- 1:30:23Speaker 4: it's how I identify. It's a really weird too true
- 1:30:28Speaker 4: truths can exist at the same time, for like how
- 1:30:30Speaker 4: I feel about being an Indian because I don't want
- 1:30:33Speaker 4: to be a Native American again, Like America is not
- 1:30:36Speaker 4: what I want to be a part of.
- 1:30:38Speaker 5: You know.
- 1:30:38Speaker 4: I prefer to be referred to as First Nations because
- 1:30:41Speaker 4: my people were of the first nations here. But I
- 1:30:44Speaker 4: am like when I introduce myself, you know, I'm not
- 1:30:47Speaker 4: an Indian. I'm Mitchif and I'm Nechio and I'm German.
- 1:30:51Speaker 4: Thanks Dad for having a thing for skinny white women.
- 1:30:54Speaker 4: But you know, like just what it is. That's the
- 1:30:58Speaker 4: other thing too, is like because I'm like I acknowledge
- 1:31:01Speaker 4: all parts of myself and like I got to grow
- 1:31:03Speaker 4: up with some pretty rich German heritage too, and that
- 1:31:06Speaker 4: was pretty neat. And that's the other thing that was
- 1:31:09Speaker 4: touched on the movie, which actually is really important, is
- 1:31:12Speaker 4: that John Tredell said, He's like, you know, they're just
- 1:31:14Speaker 4: trying to find themselves, these hippies, right, because you know,
- 1:31:16Speaker 4: they were part of tribes, they were part of nations
- 1:31:19Speaker 4: at one point, and they're just searching for that piece
- 1:31:21Speaker 4: of them that's lost. That's why they latch on. And
- 1:31:24Speaker 4: I felt that because colonization has done a number on everybody,
- 1:31:31Speaker 4: and just because we're the most recent, you know, we're
- 1:31:34Speaker 4: feeling it in such a drastic way. I feel bad
- 1:31:37Speaker 4: for people who appropriate Native people here because I know
- 1:31:42Speaker 4: that they're just searching for something in themselves that they
- 1:31:44Speaker 4: don't have an answer to and probably never will. So
- 1:31:49Speaker 4: not excusing what they're doing, but again explains the behavior,
- 1:31:53Speaker 4: doesn't excuse it exactly.
- 1:31:57Speaker 5: So much.
- 1:31:58Speaker 4: There's so many nuggets in that.
- 1:32:00Speaker 3: I feel like we keep being like, okay, the episode
- 1:32:02Speaker 3: ever time.
- 1:32:05Speaker 4: But yeah, people watch the movie if you haven't, and
- 1:32:09Speaker 4: ask questions, and ask questions about where you are, and
- 1:32:13Speaker 4: ask questions if those people have made films or have
- 1:32:16Speaker 4: been in TV shows, or have participated in anything to
- 1:32:22Speaker 4: do storytelling. That's what Native people are known for. We're storytellers,
- 1:32:25Speaker 4: you know, like every Native nation has their stories of
- 1:32:28Speaker 4: how we got to be here why we shouldn't do
- 1:32:31Speaker 4: certain things, and there's protocols around that too, which I
- 1:32:36Speaker 4: guess also varied by nation, because again, not an infallible
- 1:32:39Speaker 4: fount of all things indigenous. But yeah, take time, learn
- 1:32:43Speaker 4: and explore, and it's gonna make us better as people
- 1:32:48Speaker 4: understand where folks are coming from, because we can undo
- 1:32:50Speaker 4: what's happened, but we can always learn new ways of
- 1:32:52Speaker 4: being absolute.
- 1:32:54Speaker 1: You mentioned slash Back. Are there any other movies you
- 1:32:58Speaker 1: would recommend people check out by indigenous filmmakers.
- 1:33:03Speaker 4: I mean there's just there's so there's so many, Like
- 1:33:06Speaker 4: just as a side note, there's so many incredible like
- 1:33:10Speaker 4: short films like the Gosh what it was It? Like
- 1:33:12Speaker 4: the Native American there's one that I gotta look it
- 1:33:16Speaker 4: up right now. It's gonna it's gonna kill me. But
- 1:33:19Speaker 4: there's these like short films that I've been seeing recently
- 1:33:24Speaker 4: and they're pretty amazing. Did I delete it? I deleted
- 1:33:31Speaker 4: that of course. But like the Native American like Film Festival,
- 1:33:39Speaker 4: they have so many up and coming Native artists doing
- 1:33:43Speaker 4: like five minute films, you know, like just to see
- 1:33:47Speaker 4: things again through an indigenous lens is so important. There's
- 1:33:50Speaker 4: so many talented native musicians and I know, like the
- 1:33:55Speaker 4: dirty word like TV shows, but there's so many TV
- 1:33:58Speaker 4: shows now that authorated bite sized pieces for lack of
- 1:34:02Speaker 4: a better term, you know, like where you can just
- 1:34:06Speaker 4: step away for thirty minutes and just experience proximity to
- 1:34:09Speaker 4: somebody else, you know, through their language and their their
- 1:34:13Speaker 4: their lens.
- 1:34:16Speaker 1: Yeah beautiful. Well, I say thank you so much for
- 1:34:21Speaker 1: joining us, for discussing this movie with us, and for
- 1:34:24Speaker 1: helping us make history on this show. Yeah, covering a
- 1:34:28Speaker 1: documentary for the first time, Who's history? But it was
- 1:34:32Speaker 1: such an enlightening conversation, And yeah, I loved this discussion.
- 1:34:39Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm so glad that you encourage us to cover
- 1:34:43Speaker 3: this one specifically because I just I feel like I
- 1:34:47Speaker 3: have like a list of wonderful movies to watch. I'm
- 1:34:50Speaker 3: so excited, and.
- 1:34:52Speaker 4: Honestly, I appreciate it because for me, again, I don't
- 1:34:55Speaker 4: want to speak as anyone other than like a mature
- 1:34:57Speaker 4: for Nahio person to not really talk about like a
- 1:35:01Speaker 4: film that you know wasn't created or through the lens
- 1:35:04Speaker 4: of like these people. It's hard for me to speak
- 1:35:08Speaker 4: to that because I haven't had their lived experience and
- 1:35:10Speaker 4: I don't speak their language, and I don't know their stories,
- 1:35:13Speaker 4: so I can't speak to like the beauty that's behind
- 1:35:16Speaker 4: some of these films and TV shows and even music
- 1:35:18Speaker 4: that's coming out. So to talk about something that I
- 1:35:21Speaker 4: feel comfortable speaking on, which is how natives have been portrayed,
- 1:35:25Speaker 4: I really appreciate and value the space to be able
- 1:35:29Speaker 4: to do that, and for you guys to bend your
- 1:35:31Speaker 4: rules a little bit and make space for somebody that's
- 1:35:35Speaker 4: so important. And not a lot of places do that,
- 1:35:38Speaker 4: even though we'd like to think we're progressive. So thank
- 1:35:40Speaker 4: you for making space for me. I really appreciate it.
- 1:35:42Speaker 1: Gosh happy to do it.
- 1:35:44Speaker 3: Come back and cover any movie like drop Dead fread
- 1:35:50Speaker 3: Hell yeah, truly like whatever that's it. I can't imagine
- 1:35:54Speaker 3: the rich feminist discussion around Drop Dead Friend.
- 1:35:58Speaker 4: I turned out fine shod all the time.
- 1:36:03Speaker 1: You know what's mild. I always get the title of
- 1:36:05Speaker 1: that movie confused with Freddy got fingered because they both
- 1:36:08Speaker 1: have fred in it.
- 1:36:10Speaker 3: Oh my god, I'm realizing that I was doing the
- 1:36:12Speaker 3: same thing.
- 1:36:13Speaker 4: No, No, that that is a different one. That's the
- 1:36:15Speaker 4: Tom Green one that the dropped Dead fred is the
- 1:36:18Speaker 4: like special Friend. I don't what are they called imaginary
- 1:36:22Speaker 4: fan that's way too creepy.
- 1:36:27Speaker 3: God, is there any movie with starring a character named
- 1:36:30Speaker 3: Fred who is not scared? Five Nights Five Nights of.
- 1:36:35Speaker 1: Freddy's Wish Finger. I had a reservation to go see
- 1:36:40Speaker 1: it on my amc A list stubs and uh then
- 1:36:44Speaker 1: I looked up it's rotten Tomato score and I was like, oh,
- 1:36:48Speaker 1: it's low.
- 1:36:49Speaker 3: I don't think that anyone should ever trust a Rotten
- 1:36:53Speaker 3: Tomatoes score, especially a movie of a horror movie, especially
- 1:36:57Speaker 3: I have a horror movie directed by a woman. I
- 1:36:59Speaker 3: was really I was really stoked to see. This is
- 1:37:03Speaker 3: the biggest goofiest thing to start talking about the at
- 1:37:06Speaker 3: the end of this episode. But it's yeah, directed by
- 1:37:10Speaker 3: a woman named Emma Tammy who I haven't seen her
- 1:37:13Speaker 3: work before, but she negotiated in a percentage of profits.
- 1:37:18Speaker 3: Then the movie has made over two hundred million dollars.
- 1:37:20Speaker 3: I was like, you know, I just like, well, so,
- 1:37:26Speaker 3: even though it very well may fucking suck, everyone's seeing
- 1:37:30Speaker 3: five Nights at Fred Dropped Dead Fred.
- 1:37:32Speaker 4: Five Nights at Freddy Krueger's Justice for Fred's No John's
- 1:37:43Speaker 4: and Fred's are out. I'm sorry, true, It's twenty twenty
- 1:37:46Speaker 4: three almost twenty twenty four, I'm like, are.
- 1:37:49Speaker 3: We if and ultimately this is this very well may
- 1:37:54Speaker 3: revive Josh Hodgerson's career, And how do we feel about that?
- 1:37:57Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know.
- 1:37:58Speaker 4: Fine with me?
- 1:38:00Speaker 3: Are we? Do we in two twenty twenty three need
- 1:38:03Speaker 3: to revive Josh Hunterson's career? A fair question.
- 1:38:07Speaker 4: Let's ponder that one and then get back to each
- 1:38:11Speaker 4: other through yes.
- 1:38:12Speaker 3: Email as I thank you so so much for joining us.
- 1:38:19Speaker 1: Does the Bechdel test and the nipple scale even apply here?
- 1:38:25Speaker 5: Well?
- 1:38:26Speaker 3: I think, I like, like you were saying earlier, essay,
- 1:38:29Speaker 3: it does app I mean, I don't think we can
- 1:38:31Speaker 3: really do a nipple scale for this because it's like you,
- 1:38:35Speaker 3: but all three of us have kind of alluded to
- 1:38:37Speaker 3: the fact that this documentary is incredibly valuable. I'd never
- 1:38:41Speaker 3: seen anything like it. I learned a ton, and I
- 1:38:45Speaker 3: think we all sort of seem to feel that women
- 1:38:47Speaker 3: were not the way that Native women are portrayed, and
- 1:38:52Speaker 3: the number of women included in the documentary left something
- 1:38:56Speaker 3: to be desired.
- 1:38:57Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, I mean, there's always room for provement. We
- 1:39:00Speaker 4: can never think that the thing we do is finite
- 1:39:03Speaker 4: and perfect. You know, so again catalyst. Right, Let's take
- 1:39:07Speaker 4: it as a catalyst and think about if any of
- 1:39:12Speaker 4: the young Native female directors out there saw this at
- 1:39:16Speaker 4: some point and said, hey, I want to I want
- 1:39:19Speaker 4: to change things up. You know, That's that's all we
- 1:39:22Speaker 4: can hope for for a film like this to educate
- 1:39:25Speaker 4: and inspire.
- 1:39:26Speaker 3: Definitely.
- 1:39:27Speaker 4: Yeah, so no nippies, but not yet.
- 1:39:32Speaker 3: Yeah, this is this is a this is a this
- 1:39:35Speaker 3: is an n slash a as far as I con
- 1:39:37Speaker 3: certainly not applicable.
- 1:39:40Speaker 4: Although there are I will say that it's uh, there
- 1:39:43Speaker 4: are some graphic scenes, especially with the photos and stuff
- 1:39:46Speaker 4: like that, that are quite triggering or agitating. With some
- 1:39:49Speaker 4: of the imagery of natives being harmed or like from
- 1:39:53Speaker 4: both film and then the photos that were shown that
- 1:39:57Speaker 4: those always can be jarring.
- 1:40:00Speaker 1: Yes, yes, indeed, Yeah.
- 1:40:02Speaker 4: Jenna Side is daring y'all.
- 1:40:06Speaker 1: Where can people check you out on social media? Check
- 1:40:12Speaker 1: out your work, et cetera.
- 1:40:15Speaker 4: On the interwebs. You can find me on Instagram at
- 1:40:20Speaker 4: at Lawrence Welch and w And then I have one
- 1:40:24Speaker 4: of those invaluable link trees with all of the other
- 1:40:27Speaker 4: things on them that you can find stuff about creepy
- 1:40:31Speaker 4: teepee which is.
- 1:40:34Speaker 1: Yeah, tell us more about it.
- 1:40:35Speaker 4: Yeah, creepy Tepe is kind of amazing. Talk about native storytelling.
- 1:40:39Speaker 4: So my friend I Vana yellow Back, and I get
- 1:40:44Speaker 4: together through the Internet and do live streams where we
- 1:40:48Speaker 4: tell spooky stories from our nation. We're both Cree, so
- 1:40:52Speaker 4: we'll still tell stories of our people and the spooky
- 1:40:54Speaker 4: stuff that goes bump in the night, and then our
- 1:40:57Speaker 4: own personal experiences. And we're looking to do a series
- 1:41:00Speaker 4: next where we have guests on that we'll be telling
- 1:41:03Speaker 4: spooky stories from their nations, keeping it creepy, putting the
- 1:41:09Speaker 4: Kree and creepy, I guess.
- 1:41:12Speaker 1: Perfect.
- 1:41:13Speaker 4: And then yeah, and that's a lot of fun, and
- 1:41:17Speaker 4: we're building that up slowly but surely. And then yeah,
- 1:41:21Speaker 4: with traditions. Again, I've said a few times that I'm
- 1:41:25Speaker 4: not an infallible fountable things indigenous. I don't really like
- 1:41:28Speaker 4: pen indigenity. As we've seen from the way I've spoke today,
- 1:41:32Speaker 4: not all natives are the same. We're not a modelith
- 1:41:35Speaker 4: and so I created this art project to really showcase
- 1:41:40Speaker 4: the differences in tribal nations through art as the outlet.
- 1:41:45Speaker 4: And so yeah, be doing shows and different events with
- 1:41:50Speaker 4: that to just kind of celebrate the diversity of indigenity
- 1:41:54Speaker 4: on this land mass. So that's pretty cool. But yeah,
- 1:41:59Speaker 4: you find me on Instagram, I'm at Lawrence Welsh Northwest
- 1:42:03Speaker 4: NW and then online at tradish Hyphenish dot com and yeah,
- 1:42:11Speaker 4: that's that's where I'm at.
- 1:42:12Speaker 1: Amazing. Thank you again so much.
- 1:42:15Speaker 3: This has been We'll see you on the drop Dead Fred.
- 1:42:20Speaker 4: It's like we just did just do like snippets of
- 1:42:23Speaker 4: like every Fred movie ever, like just include Fred.
- 1:42:30Speaker 1: Fred Molina.
- 1:42:32Speaker 3: Okay, oh that's true. Who goes by Freddy? Sometimes it's complicated.
- 1:42:37Speaker 3: You can find us on Instagram, still on Twitter sometimes
- 1:42:43Speaker 3: when we remember to post there. At Bechtel Cast, you
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- 1:42:56Speaker 3: and fifty episodes. And so yeah you can. You can
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