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