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WEEK TWELVE

BLACK ROBE

Terms

Indians/Native Americans: Aboriginals of the New World. The term American Indian indicates aboriginals of the continental Americans and nearby islands. Eskimo often refers to a specific group who are the only peoples whose language, culture and physical type coincide in the Americas. The term means “raw fish eater”, and the Inuit is now commonly used, although there are different dialects of this and for some Inuit is a specific group of people as opposed to Yaput etc. Other “Native Americans” include Samoans, Hawaiians etc. For more info on Indians click “Indians”

Algonkin: A language family spoken largely, but not exclusively in the NE Woodlands

Iroquoian: A language family related to Siouan and Caddoan, spoken largely, but not exclusively in the NE Woodlands. The members of the League are all Iroquoian speaking as are the Huron, Nottaway, Eire, Tiontonati. Southern Iroquoian is represented largely by Cherokee.

League of the Iroquois: A league of originally five, and later six Iroquoian speaking tribes (peoples, nations) namely the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk. Later they are joined by the Tuscarora.

Huron: Another Iroquoian speaking tribe

Jesuits: A group of scholarly missionaries, whose reports (The Jesuit Relations) of the Iroquois and Algonkin speaking Indians in the NE constitute the first solid reports of the Natives.

Intercultural Communication: Communication between peoples of different cultural backgrounds, whose differing beliefs etc. complicate the communication

Black Robe: Name given by the some of the indigenous peoples in the NE to the Jesuits because of the color of the robes.

Before the Film Black Robe appears between two other films released a year on either side of it.

Dances with Wolves 1990 and The Last of the Mohicans(1992). In historical time, Black Robe is the earliest (1600’s), followed by Last of the Mohicans and finally Dances with Wolves, hence the three films reveal almost 300 hundred years of contact between the incoming European civilizations and the established indigenous peoples.

The three films take place in different parts of North America. Black Robe is in S.E. Canada, Last of the Mohicans is in the N.E. part of the United States (slightly south of where Black Robe takes place, although some of the different peoples are represented in both (Hurons, for example). And Dances with Wolves takes place on the Plains (the area between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi).

The initial contacts between Europeans (usually referred to as “Anglos” by Indians) varied in time and place. The east coast was contacted by French and English in the North and Spanish in the south. The NW coast was contacted by Russians. The Plains had Spanish contact in the south and “American settlers (often going to California) in the more northerly parts. The earliest recorded contact is probably about 1100 when the Vikings make contact in Greenland and Newfoundland, although the contact was not lasting.

People came from Europe for different purposes: French were trappers, English settlers and the Spanish were looking for gold and the missionaries who came with them were seeking conversions.

Indians vary dramatically from one part of the country to the other, speaking several hundred languages which can be as different as English and Chinese. These are divided into families, super families and stocks and phyla.

Dialect	Mexican Spanish	Kahnawage Mohawk	Kiowa-Apache
Language	Spanish	Mohawk	Apache
Family	Romance	N. Iroquoian	Southern Athabascan
Super family	European	Iroquoian	Athabascan
Phylum	Indo-European	Macro Siouan	Nadene

The film, Black Robe deals with the contact between the Jesuits and the Indians in the Eastern Woodlands, who speak languages from two major groups: Iroquoian and Algonkin. The Huron and Mohawk are the Iroquoian speakers, while all the others Indians in the film speak Algonkin.

Interesting that the director is Bruce Beresford, an Australian. He is also known for stage productions of both plays and operas around the world.

After the film

How are the missionaries and the Indians depicted?
Human or caricatures?
Priests? Well meaning, beliefs are real, desire to “save” lost souls; the flesh is sinful and needs mortification
Indians? Physically oriented, lack idea that biology is sinful or that body needs mortification (Compare mortification with torture). Recognition of superiority of some things from the west (mostly technological – weapons, writing) but also somewhat split on what to make of it. Good thing or demon.

Use of native language: Authenticity. Languages are correct. Subtitled (usually when Anglos understand them)

Comparison of several cultures: parallels and diversities. Most commonly between French and Indians

How is this accomplished?
Parallel editing
Form cuts

Parallel Edits

Indians sing	French sing
Indians dance	French dance
Indians put on symbols	French put on symbols

Form Cuts
Trees in forest to columns in church

People in Nature
Europe is heavily constructed. NE is wooded. People are scarce – always appear small in the landscape. Impact of the setting – isolated self reliant typical of “frontier movies” Watch for similar things in Shane next week

Setting
Why set in fall and winter? What parallels does this have for the cultures concerned?

Mysticism
Role of dreams in Native cultures as opposed to French.
Dreams significant in ways never thought of in the West until Freud. (Iroquois dream guessing)
Disparity between ideas of the afterlife (both have one)

Differences between cultures
Idea of afterlife
Ideas of the body
Meaning of torture/suffering in different cultures (compare Christ, missionaries and Indians all of whom approve of specific kinds of torture)

Ending
Huron convert and are exterminated.
What does this say about contact and conversion?
What questions (if any) does the film leave you with about imposing some way of life on another people? Need it be religious?

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