Guide to Indian Country - June, 2000 Cultural ecotourism - Ktunaxa style Take in Alberta's southwest Powwow - a healing experience The do's and don'ts of powwow Powwow etiquette dictates respect for tradition Painter believes "art is us" Experience the people of a time long ago Generations recorded Can't travel? Try Native film Summer solstice celebrated in far North Law student crowned Miss Indian World Escape to nature Gathering of Nations powwow biggest yet

WINDSPEAKER'S ABORIGINAL TOURISM SUPPLEMENT Phone: (780) 455-2700Fax (780) 455-7639 Email: edwind@ammsa.com There's more to Indian films than tipis and buffalo hide. Today's film-makers are demanding realistic, human portrayals. Can't travel? Try Native film By Jackie Bissley Windspeaker Contributor For as long as there have been Cowboys and Indians-going back to the first Wild West shows and the silent Westerns of the 1920s-Native Americans have been in showbiz. Although Indians supplied the main drama and background for the Western film genre, until now Native Americans have had few opportunities to participate in Hollywood's lucrative film industry. In the past, Indians-predominantly played by non-Native stuntmen-were portrayed as one-dimensional, one-line sidekicks reduced to falling off horses and hurling blood-curdling screams, but that is about to change. Armed with their own voice and vision, Native filmmakers like Chris Eyre and writers Sherman Alexie and Greg Sarris are carving out a niche for themselves inside Hollywood. They exemplify a new Native filmmaker. With stories both compelling and accessible, writers Alexie (Smoke Signals) and Sarris (Grand Avenue, an HBO television miniseries) pull audiences into a world defined more by emotional and spiritual borders than by the obvious cultural ones. Their stories reflect a part of the American landscape not often captured. Building on a flurry of positive reviews and word-of-mouth ever since it was screened at the Sundance Film Festival (where the picture won the Filmmaker's Trophy and Audience Award in 1998), Smoke Signals has scored impressive numbers at the box office and now in video stores. But why was Smoke Signals so successful? After all, it was a story coming out of a community that mainstream audiences have had little exposure to or empathy for, and it certainly didn't play into the romantic myth of how the West was won. For the first time on the big screen, Native Americans were the ones articulating and defining their reality. It is a portrayal that is contemporary, whimsical and poignantly honest. And where non-Native filmmakers (even those with the best intentions) have tried to address the injustices of the past by using "whites" as the whipping posts, Alexie and other writers offer a view of the Native community that is much more provocative. Their portrayals embody the sensibilities and nuances that can only come from an insider-a perspective that has been lacking in other so-called Indian films (Thunderheart, War Party and Dances with Wolves come quickly to mind). But to talk about Native cinema today, one has to understand where it has come from. It's been a long road from those Wild West shows and early Westerns. Along the way there have been courageous individuals like Pauline Johnson in the1890s and Mollie Spotted Elk in the 1930s who ventured out alone onto stages across North America and Europe and challenged (as much as they could at the time) the misconceptions and stereotypes that defined Native people. Later on, in the 1960s and '70s, actors like Eddie Little Sky, Jay Silverheels, Wil Sampson, Chief Dan George, Mahata Jo Miller, Dusty Iron Wing, Betty Ann Carr and many others played pivotal roles in the evolution of Native cinema. And in the 1990s we've seen another generation of multitalented actors emerge. But as Sarris (a professor of American Literature at UCLA, as well as Chairman of the Miwok Tribe of northern California) comments, empowerment has been a slow process. "In the broadest sense, what we're [writers] doing is expanding the public's notion of what it means to be Indian. With Grand Avenue for television and Smoke Signals for cinema, we got a more complicated picture of what it means to be American Indian. We got new images-images we had not seen before," Sarris says. "Grand Avenue stretched the public's perception of the American Indian closer to reality. No one had seen such extensive portrayals of Native women before; most of the historic movies are about fierce and noble male warriors. But, in fact, women are the anchors of many Native communities. Second, in Grand Avenue viewers were exposed to the urban Indian-another reality. Almost 65 per cent of Native people live in urban areas. Audiences also saw California Indians, which again breaks the stereotype of the Plains Indian on horseback with the long braids. Last, but most important, viewers saw Indians interacting with other people-Hispanics and African Americans-rather than living in isolation." Sarris says such realistic portrayals are necessary if Native cinema is to have a future. Native filmmakers must battle internalized and deep stereotypes. Marjorie Tanin, an L.A.-based Native casting agent, has seen the industry norm of having non-Indians "darkened up" to look Indian evolve to where now there's a real effort by directors to hire Native Americans to play themselves. But changes, she says, don't come easily. "Hollywood goes through phases. There was the Dances with Wolves stage, and then Westerns made a comeback, and now it seems that action films are the current trend," Tanin says. "I think that slowly, writers, producers and directors are changing their perception of Indian people, and more so with independent films. We need to have our people cast as professionals - lawyers and doctors - like everyone else. There are so few roles specifically written for an Indian person, and then it's usually for a period piece. I think overcoming a lot of our struggles is done by educating Hollywood that we don't all look the same, that America is made up of a lot of different Indian tribes." Nevertheless, Tanin says American film actors who live and dress in their traditional cultural ways face a Catch-22: if they try to be themselves, movie directors will cast them in stereotypical roles. If they try and blend into mainstream non-Indian society in order to break the stereotypes, movie directors may not want to use them. "It can be really hard, because directors limit them to the roles that fit the stereotype image-dark skin, long black hair and brown eyes. Unfortunately, a lot of Indian people, the men especially, have had to deal with this 'hair' issue," Tanin says. "And then if they do cut it, you're having people saying that you're not really Indian." As Native Cinema goes through growing pains, Sonny Skyhawk, a producer and the CEO of Amerind Entertainment Group (a Native film production company in Los Angeles) points out that Native filmmakers are having to play catch-up at an accelerated pace. Acting is just one small part of a much larger and complex business, Skyhawk says. Now, more than ever, Native filmmakers need to learn all the ins and outs of moviemaking. And there will have to be more than one success story before studio confidence translates to bigger movie-making budgets. Up to now, it's been lone independent filmmakers who have struggled to get their films made and find venues to screen their work. Largely supported by the Native community and forums like the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco (now going into its 25th year) and, more recently, the Sundance Film Festival's Native American Program, Native filmmakers have had little exposure to outside expertise and Hollywood studios. In a town where keeping creative control over a project is a battle often lost-even by the Steven Spielbergs and Quincy Joneses-Smoke Signals seems to have sidestepped some of those Hollywood barriers that can detour projects and storylines. One way it did so was by having Native Americans (as much as possible) in control behind the camera, as well as in front of the camera. Since directing Smoke Signals, Chris Eyre has been signed to William Morris's new independent film department, and upcoming projects include working with Wynona Ryder (currently in production) and producing Randy Red Road's much-anticipated movie The Doe Boy. As he looks towards to the future, Eyre is optimistic. He understands the balancing act that comes with juggling what he needs as a filmmaker and the reality of what Hollywood wants from the box office. "What I need as a filmmaker is what we all need, voices-Native writers," Eyre says. "I think the wonderful thing about our filmmakers and actors is that we all come from different tribes and experiences. We all come from tradition and dislocation, and it's a mosaic that most Hollywood producers can't put their finger on. It's hard enough for us as Indians to put our finger on what Native America is. We just accept it. I would hate for America to ever feel they knew Indians." Eyre doesn't blame movie studios for the stereotypes or for the lack of movies that realistically portray Native Americans. Studios are simply responding to the market demands of the movie-going public, he says. "The studios are in the supply-and-demand business. If Middle America - people in Iowa and Nebraska - wanted to pay eight bucks to see a movie about Indians, the studios would be making those kinds of movies. Just because you have a great idea, it doesn't mean the marketplace can absorb it. I don't find the problem with the studios; I find the problem is America's intolerance for any other perspective but theirs." Nevertheless, there is a growing demand for realistic, human portrayals of Native Americans he says. The challenge Native filmmakers face is being able to meet the viewing public's demands for quality within the small budgets set for independent films by the industry. "Smoke Signals breathed a new breath of air on a fire already lit," says Eyre. "I'm going to make movies about and with Indians because this film opened up a certain window, and there's going to be a Second Coming. And," he adds, "I'm not talking about kicking the door open. I think, collectively, we'll take it off its hinges!" For Native filmmakers, Smoke Signals is the first step in getting Hollywood to look beyond the stereotype of the American Indian. Eyre, along with other emerging filmmakers, is demonstrating that the collaborative spirit and collective vision that put Smoke Signals on Hollywood's map is a winning formula. But maybe the most valuable contribution Smoke Signals has made is to give the Native film community a new infusion of self-confidence. As Canadian-based actor Tina Keeper (who played the lead role in the Canadian hit drama series North of 60) says enthusiastically, "These are exciting times right now....There's going to be a new genre of film developed where we are the ones interpreting our own reality-and other people will have to get used to it."