progress on the prairie

Foreigners have a funny idea of what an Indian is.  You can’t blame them though… it’s really the fault of Americans.  According to our popular culture, since the beginning of Indians in books and movies, Indians are supposed to be able to do things like: see into the future, disappear, talk to animals, expel ghosts, protect the earth, etc.  I do all of these, but it’s still annoying to be expected to do these things.  Think of the portrayal of medicine men and women in film… they are always crazed, mystic, and other worldy like they live in some parallel spirit world with only animal spirits to talk to.  Medicine men are real, and I assure you that they wear blue-jeans like the rest of us. 

I was in New Zealand showing one of my films when a white man in the audience asked me about a particular scene where the main character (Indian) gets punched by a big white guy.  The Indian gets punched because he grabs the white guy’s girlfriend’s ass.  Most people would punch someone for grabbing their significant other’s ass, right?  The bar is filled with both Indians and white people in the film, and for me, it was never about race.  The man in the audience in New Zealand said, “Is that how it really is where you’re from?  Is there a lot of tension between the Native Americans and the Paleface?”  And what cracks me up about this is that he assumed by using the word “paleface” to describe white people he was somehow speaking my language.  Like, I would just keep it rolling, “Well, the palefaces don’t like it when the Indian grab the ass of their women, you see, cause there is a long history of the paleface women wondering across into the reservation…”  Though, I have to say, I love it.  I’m gonna bring that word back.  Paleface.  That word has been extinct for a long time until this guy said it in New Zealand.  It wasn’t even in Dances with Wolves.  But, the world has been fed this image of what an Indian is. 

The same is true for “Native American Art”. When anyone thinks of Indian Art the first thing that pops up is the usual buffalo floating in the clouds, people floating into the spirit world. I want to go to the spirit world.  If they sell tickets I’ll buy one.  I walk down the street in Tulsa, a town founded by Creeks and there is no evidence of this, and if there is it’s an image of the past, a painting of an old style Lakota taking a journey to the spirit world, or the famous image of a sad horseman representing the Trail of tears.  As if there aren’t enough reminders that the road to Oklahoma was paved with blood and tears.  I want to tell that Indian up there on the horse, “Hey, hold your head up, guy.  We made it.  We’re here.  Let’s paint the town red.  I bet your horse is thirsty. ‘Come down off that cross, we can use the wood’.”  Cause I guarantee you that Indian up there is tired of his head hanging down.  Bet there’s a crick in his neck… I know there’s one in mine.  But, there are great contemporary artists out there. So, Natives and Palefaces and everyone else, check these artists out: New Mexican artist Rose B. Simpson, “Ode to my Nosering”

Pawhuska artist Ryan Red Corn, “Wazhashi-pod”

and Micah Wesley, Bunky Echo-Hawk, Chris Pappan, just to name a few. 

And back a few decades, there was T.C. Cannon,

It never really bothered me until I got older. There were about four years where I just wanted to fit in and didn’t think of issues as this, but after having a daughter and enjoying small successes here and there with my career as a “Native American Filmmaker” I found myself thinking about it more and more.  I was once told by a shawl-wearing white lady in Boulder, CO that she was of the “Wasi’chu” people.  She said it like it was a tribe.  It means “white person” in Lakota, and if you’ve even seen the first half of Dances With Wolves you are familiar with the word.  I’m not Lakota.  I’m Creek/Seminole, but the lady acted as if I should just roll with it.  “Oh, the Wasi’chu people… I love your cheeseburgers.” 

I think if I have one thing going on in my work its trying to kill this idea that Indians are mystical, Bigfoot, creatures from Middle Earth.  Don’t get me wrong, Indians aren’t only being put upon by society, we are guilty for pushing the idea of Indian as mystic just as much as the next person.  There’s a word for it when an Indian is doing it- it’s called being “Chiefy”.   But, fuck, being mystical pays.  I saw a guy in Santa Fe at Indian Market a couple of years ago dressed to the chin in buckskin playing the flute for old white ladies in the lobby of a hotel.  Bet he got paid good. 

There is a holy, spiritual, magical, side to being in the Native world of ceremonies and other things in that arena that most of us are told not to talk about from the time we’re young (So I won’t)…  But, this is a world that is kept hidden and quiet.  No matter how many scripts Kevin Costner writes he won’t come close to the truth…maybe it’s too simple for him.