Films show struggles for culture and rights

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In Home of the Brave, Navajo matriarch Katherine Smith laments the fact that "there is no traditional prayer, there is not traditional song" that remain of her people.

"All the kids today don't understand Navajo. The young kids believe in Christianity. It's going to be the end of the world," says Smith, the keeper of the sacred bundle that protects her land.

Smith may well be among the last of the traditional Navajos left after a century-old struggle that has pitted her tribe against the U.S. Government and mining companies.

The struggle of the North and South American Indian to survive is the theme of films presented at the ninth annual Third World Film Festival, held March 3-5 at the University of Alberta.

In the film, the Navahos and other tribes speak out against the industrial development of their land.

The film opens with the hoopla of a Columbus Day celebration in mid-Western America.

"Columbus Day to me is a day of national mourning. By the time the federal government was created in this country, three-quarters of my people were dead. It means the rape and desecration of my mother, Mother Earth," one Native American tells viewers.

The film is a passionate look at Natives in Ecuador, Bolivia and in Brazil's Amazon River basin who are being displaced and, in some cases, exterminated to make way for environmentally-hazardous industrial projects.

Focussing on the American Indian, it explores what happened in 1973 at Wounded Knee, North Dakota when Indians seized the town to let America know "Indians still exist outside Hollywood movies and picture books."

Although the protest was quashed by federal troops, it provided the American Indian with a renewed sense of pride and a rebirth of spiritualism.

The film profiles the four Means brothers, Russell, Bill, Dale and Ted, American Indians activists who are proud of their heritage. Declares Russell Means: "I'm a born-again primitive."

It has an excellent soundtrack, featuring the music of Tom Bee and the American Indian group XLT, Grupo Aymara and rare archival recordings.

The effects of America's relocation policy for Natives and strip mining for oil and uranium are voiced in In the Heart of Big Mountain, a video documentary by Native filmmaker Sandra Sunrising Osawa.

The film also focuses on Katherine Smith, who in 1986 was among 10,000 Navajo and Hopi Indians relocated off the sacred Big Mountain in Arizona.

The land dispute triggered a complex court case that resulted in thousands of miles of fences criss-crossing Indian land.

Introducing the film at the festival was Smith's daughter, Marie Gladue.

"At Big Mountain, there is a problem of suicide and alcoholism, and nevertheless, the (United States) government is still trying very hard to remove the people from their ancestral land," Gladue said.

Our Land, Our Life is a video documentary exploring the Lubicon's landclaim fight, narrated by Chief Bernard Ominayak.

Canadian award-winning documentary-maker Judith Doyle's Neguagon-Lac La Croix examines what is at stake for Aboriginal people in their battle for treaty rights, focusing on the Lac La Croix Ojibway band.