The Native American Lens
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The Native American Lens - Native American Identity Visualized by Native American Directors Master’s Thesis Submitted for the degree of Master of Arts (MA) at the University of Graz Submitted by Michelle-Francine Natascha ULZ, BA at the Institute of Amerikanistik Supervisor: Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.phil. Klaus RIESER 2021 The Native American Lens – Native American Identity Visualized by Native American Directors Table of Contents 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 2 Relevance ...................................................................................................................... 2 3 A Postcolonial Approach ................................................................................................ 6 3.1 A Postcolonial Approach Towards Film ................................................................... 8 4 Native American Identity in Film - From The Vanishing American to Smoke Signals .... 10 4.1 The Hollywood Produced Indian Identity ............................................................... 10 4.2 Why On-Screen Representation Matters ............................................................... 13 4.3 Movies as a Medium of Cultural Identity ................................................................ 14 5 Main Analysis ............................................................................................................... 17 5.1 The Native Lens - Native Identity Visualized by Native Directors .......................... 17 5.1.1 Smoke Signals - A Breakthrough ................................................................... 19 5.2 Movie Introductions ............................................................................................... 20 5.2.1 RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS/2013/ dir. Jeff Barnaby ............................. 20 5.2.2 Barking Water/ 2009/ dir. Sterlin Harjo ........................................................... 22 5.2.3 MEKKO/ 2015/ dir. Sterlin Harjo .................................................................... 22 5.3 Analysis ................................................................................................................ 23 5.3.1 Native Culture, Native Gaze ........................................................................... 23 5.3.2 Give Back History .......................................................................................... 29 5.3.3 Native American Christianity .......................................................................... 33 5.3.4 Native Storytelling .......................................................................................... 40 5.3.5 Native Language ............................................................................................ 47 5.3.6 Social/Economic Situation.............................................................................. 50 5.3.7 The Resilient Native American Identity........................................................... 56 5.4 Findings ................................................................................................................ 62 6 Future Potential............................................................................................................ 63 7 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 70 8 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 73 8.1 Online Sources ..................................................................................................... 75 I The Native American Lens – Native American Identity Visualized by Native American Directors List of Figures Figure 1: Artwork - Sage Deal III Figure 2: Barking Water (1) 23 Figure 3: Barking Water (2) 24 Figure 4: Barking Water (3) 24 Figure 5: Barking Water (4) 25 Figure 6: Barking Water (5) 26 Figure 7: Barking Water (6) 27 Figure 8: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (1) 30 Figure 9: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2) 31 Figure 10: Barking Water (7) 33 Figure 11: Barking Water (8) 34 Figure 12: Barking Water (9) 34 Figure 13: Barking Water (10) 35 Figure 14: Barking Water (11) 36 Figure 15: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (3) 37 Figure 16: Mekko (1) 40 Figure 17: Mekko (2) 41 Figure 18: Mekko (3) 41 Figure 19: Mekko (4) 42 Figure 20: Mekko (5) 42 Figure 21: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (4) 44 Figure 22: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (5) 45 Figure 23: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (6) 45 Figure 24: Mekko (6) 47 Figure 25: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (7) 47 Figure 26: Barking Water (12) 48 Figure 27: Mekko (7) 50 Figure 28: Mekko (8) 50 Figure 29: Mekko (9) 51 Figure 30: Mekko (10) 51 Figure 31: Mekko (11) 52 Figure 32: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (8) 52 Figure 33: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (9) 53 Figure 34: Mekko (12) 55 Figure 35: Mekko (13) 56 Figure 36: Mekko (14) 57 Figure 37: Mekko (15) 57 Figure 38: Mekko (16) Figure 39: Rhymes for Young Ghouls (10) 59 Figure 40: TikTok - "Pass the Brush" Challenge (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsI0gFuz3Lg) 65 II The Native American Lens – Native American Identity Visualized by Native American Directors “After watching Peter Pan, I felt inspired to portray the way Native children’s perception of themselves is influenced by the content around them. I decided to draw a character inspired by myself, looking into a mirror and seeing herself as society thrusts stereotypes onto people. I wanted to use this piece to raise awareness or portray how, as a Native person, these stereotypes are harmful.” (Sage Deal) Figure 1: Artwork - Sage Deal III The Native American Lens – Native American Identity Visualized by Native American Directors 1 Introduction “One might have believed Indianness was of little relevance today. What use after all does a nation locked into a black/white model of race and racism, waging a war on terror, obsessed with Islamist outsiders, vexed by the rise of China, and panicked over porous border and the purported threat of immigration from Latin America have for American Indians - real or imagined? Beyond entertainment and the articulation of identity, indignity continues to constitute a powerful symbolic reservoir, a tool kit, valued since at least the Boston Tea Party, for the manufacture of meanings and messages?” (King, 2013:8) Indigenous culture and its portrayal in US popular media are a topic largely ignored over other race issues within the USA, but still play a vital part with respect to white supremacy and the way Western culture views the consequences of colonialism. May it be the mascots of sport teams or Disney’s Lone Ranger and Toto (2013), Indigenous culture and its heritage are still largely viewed from a white, Eurocentric perspective within mainstream cultural discourse, which means that colonialism and imperialist ideas generated by it, still impact cultural representations. Movies, as a form of identity expression, are a medium of mass culture that enhances and supports the expression of Native American identity, sovereignty, and cultural self- representation in the 21st century. For this Master thesis, I want to analyze how movies which were created by Native American directors in the 21st century and which feature Native American struggles and identity, work in terms of such self-representation and how they decolonize the Western lens and re- visualize Native American identity from a Native American lens. The main questions asked are the following: 1) Given that film is a medium of cultural identity expression, how is Native American cultural identity, collectively as well as individually, expressed and portrayed in the 21st century when in the hands of Native directors? 2) How can film as a medium of identity expression enhance the understanding of cultural identity? To answer the questions to full satisfaction and to support the thesis statement, this Master thesis will be structured as follows: 1 The Native American Lens – Native American Identity Visualized by Native American Directors First, I want to give the reader an insight into the current relevance of the topic and summarize recent research. The following two chapters and subsections will be theoretical introductions to inform the reader about the theoretical approach of the thesis. Postcolonial theory and its approach to and relevance for the study of Native American film will be introduced. Since the main aim of this thesis is an analysis of Native American identity representation in film, past images generated by the Hollywood industry will be investigated, as it was those that were most widely distributed and influenced not only Western perception of Native American culture, but also Native American self-perception. Before the main analysis, the relevance of film for the expression of cultural identity and the importance of on-screen representation for such will be explained. The main analysis will consist of a close observation of the structural and stylistic features of the following movies: 1) RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS/2013/dir. Jeff Barnaby 2) BARKING WATER/2009/dir. Sterlin Harjo 3) MEKKO/ 2015/dir. Sterlin Harjo Those three movies will then be analyzed from a postcolonial perspective to answer the questions raised above. What will be observed in the process of this analysis are content and characters as well as how, in the process of decolonizing the Western lens, stereotypical images of Native American culture are deconstructed and visualized through a Native lens. Such analysis of content and