POW WOW HIGHWAY

1989

A few words about background information.

Indigenous peoples of what are now called the Americas were labeled, incorrectly, "Indians" by Europeans believing that had reached the East Indies. None the less the term caught on and is in general use by most Indians including many politically active ones like Wes Studi and Russell Means It is more common for politically correct Anglos (a term used by many American Indians to denote "whites") to use the term "Native American" (which is clearly easily confused with the idea of someone born in the Americas as opposed to being an immigrant)

Problems are more complicated when one considers that much of the Americas does not speak English, but Spanish or Portuguese among other languages, so "Native American" is used only by a small percentage of the people - mostly those in power however. The terms indio mestizo and other terms designating "classes" or "classifications" of people in Spanish is well beyond this course.

Worse still, the United States includes places like Hawaii and American Samoa so we would have to conclude that Hawaiians and Samoans are equally "Native Americans". In this sense, the term makes perhaps, a bit more sense, with "Indians" referring to the indigenous populations of the continental Americas. In addition, the term Eskimo, which refers to a specific native population has been used for a number of groups who have adapted to a very specific kind of environment. The term Eskimo has been replaced generally by Inuit although many people called Eskimos are not Inuit.

Of course, there are no native groups which have words that designate this concept at all, so in a sense some Indians feel that the concept of all indigenous native groups having something in common pre-contact with Europe is a European idea. Many of the words for specific groups here imply "people" or "people of this kind" but are not used for Europeans. In a sense, the unity of Indians comes from the fact that the various groups were treated as though they were all of a kind.

Indians are commonly classified by one of three kinds of classifications:

There are several thousand indigenous languages and dialects spoke in the Americas. Languages are thought of as different if they are mutually unintelligible. Dialects are usually generally intelligible to one another.

In classifying languages we recognize that there are relationships between languages that have common ancestors. French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian are examples of languages which have evolved from Latin and are called Romance languages.

Romance languages are related more distantly to Germanic languages. Slavic languages, Celtic languages and so on. These language families are in a larger group called Indo-European, a huge grouping of languages which includes languages as diverse as Gaelic and Russian

Similarly, American Indian languages have been grouped together in the same ways and there are 6 major "phyla" (singular "phylum") of languages in the U.S. and Canada, although the classification is not always agreed upon by all linguists. These are:

Another way to classify people has been by "culture area". This is a way of looking at people by the kinds of foods they use, material goods they make, and ecology of the area in which they live. These are generally divided as follows:

The basic idea is that the geographical area begins to affect the way in which the people live. People on the Plains, depending largely on the buffalo, tended to be nomadic and had a material culture which was rather portable.

Levels of Socio-cultural Organization

This method of classification deals with the ways in which different societies are organized. There are several approaches that have been made; the easiest is by Elman Service who divides people into:

At the "chiefdom level" the group recognizes itself as a formal body - i.e. the "state" appears.

INDIAN MOVIES

"Indian movies" has a double meaning. It can mean films made about Indians or by Indians. The earliest "Indian movies" are made by non-Indians. In some cases the writer, directors, photographer actors, and even "technical experts" are non-Indians. Probably in the earliest films some actual Indians appear as actors (although usually in the background).

The appearance of American Indian film makers in commercial films occurs rather later in the history of movies. This means that Indians serve as topics in films, often more as symbols for a film maker's needs. In many early films the Indians appear as something which along with vast distances, high mountains and inclement weather, gets in the way of the Anglos discovery and "conquest" of the New World.

Later Indians serve as symbols of a variety of things - the "close to nature, mystic", the symbol of the oppressed in general (often as the result of the McCarthy period witch hunts), the terrible treatment of the Vietnamese by the US government and so on. Indian films makers, and to a large degree playwrights and novelists were among the missing until M. Scott Momaday and Hanay Geiogamah - both Kiowas began to receive some notice in the form of International prizes (Momaday's House Made of Dawn - an interesting title from a Navaho chant used by a Kiowa) and Geigomah's Body Indian presented at LaMama Theater in New York.

In the summer of 1966 Sol Worth and John Adair went to the Navaho reservation and taught several Navajo how to use a motion picture camera and splice film. The idea was not so much to teach them what to shoot or how to shoot and edit, but the basics of loading the camera, exposing films and so in. The idea was to see how Navahos would make films - would they "see" the world differently and if so how?

A number of differences occurred in their films that were unexpected. For example, an enormous amount of time is devoted to people walking. Walking as an event in Navaho culture is significant. Myths frequently refer to people walking, going, coming traveling and so on. In one of the Navajo chants the lines go:

Navahos avoided almost totally full face close ups. Navahos tend not to look directly into other people's eyes as this is something of an invasion of privacy. Close-ups of hands and feet are not a problem.

This is not something which it typical of all Indians, but may be characteristic of NAVAHO films. This leads to a question of whether there actually can be an "American Indian" cinema or whether or not there are likely to be strong differences between the tribes themselves as to what one should or should not shoot.

The book by Worth and Adair called Through Navaho Eyes published by Indiana University Press in 1972 is well worth looking at, although none of the films made by the Navahos at that time would have constituted anything resembling a commercially released film of the type we will see in the course. This itself raises the question of economics and whether or not it is possible to make a truly "Indian" film (whatever that means) for commercial release. There has been little success with Indian plays or American Indian Dance groups possibly because the actual cultures would be sufficiently alien and so divorced from the stereotypes that they would be difficult for a non-Indian audience to follow. After all even between members of different tribes there are often cultural misunderstandings. Kiowas, for example have no tabu against saying the name of someone who is deceased, whereas their neighbors, the Kiowa-Apache have a strong avoidance in this area. As a result, Kiowa ministers at funerals often say the name of the deceased much to the tension of the Kiowa-Apache.

The word Powwow refers meeting with or by Indians and comes from a Narragansett word for "shaman" - a religious practitioner involved with curing (often referred to as "Medicine man") It currently refers more generally to a gathering where people often camp out and there will be traditional dances and often games and food. Powwows occur regularly all around the country and many people will travel between them to enjoy the event and perhaps more importantly meeting people (friends both old and new) as they travel. People may travel distances are as great as halfway across the country. It does for some, produce an almost nomadic way of life.

AFTER THE FILM

What makes a film an "American Indian film"? The writer? The director? The actors? the cinematographer? In this case the writer of the novel is David Seals a Huron living in N. Dakota) he director and the cinematographer are not. Some of the performers are Indians. A. Martinez is not. Does this matter?

Having Indians on the set who may make comments is not always enough. Many Indians have worked as actors and been thoroughly confused by the scripts, costumes etc., and told the directors how dopey these things were, but to no avail. The film has been classified as a comedy, thriller, Western, an action film "buddy" movie, a "road movie" and a mystical film

The treatment of the characters who are Indians in the film is rather different than in say John Ford films.

Characters still have trajectories. What are they? Who changes? How? Who appears to "pushing" or "using" whom. Is this the case?

Who is more "Indian"? Red Bow or Phil? Why?

How is Red Bow's identity symbolized in his choker at the dance?

What is the relevance of Red Bow's statement about the dance and Jimmy's comment about it? "You got mean"

What do you need to know about the Incident at Pine Ridge? Who is Leonard Peltier?

Is Chief Joseph a wise old chief of the old movies?

Who sees the destination as important?

Who sees the trip as important?

Things like a spirit quest, acquisition of power. The film is very much a Plains Indian film and is situated to some degree against the events at Wounded Knee in recent times.

What kinds of visuals are there?

There are "in jokes" which some Anglos don't get. Consider the discussion with Dan George when he recognizes the name Light Cloud as a prophet.

Is the story anti-Anglo the way many Anglo films are anti-Indian? That is - is there misrepresentation on all the Indian side too?

One of the themes of the film is about balancing "Indian" ways against "Anglo" ways. How can an Indian remain Indian in modern America and be functional? This is a theme that is like to come up again and again.

American Dream is not necessarily the American Indian dream.

American law does not always work for Indians either.