+ROO\ZRRG V,QGLDQ 3HWHU5ROOLQV 3XEOLVKHGE\7KH8QLYHUVLW\3UHVVRI.HQWXFN\ 5ROOLQV3 +ROO\ZRRG V,QGLDQ7KH3RUWUD\DORIWKH1DWLYH$PHULFDQLQ)LOP /H[LQJWRQ7KH8QLYHUVLW\3UHVVRI.HQWXFN\ 3URMHFW086( :HE$XJ KWWSVPXVHMKXHGX )RUDGGLWLRQDOLQIRUPDWLRQDERXWWKLVERRN KWWSVPXVHMKXHGXERRN Access provided by University of California @ Berkeley (29 Aug 2016 17:53 GMT) {( 13 / AMANDA J. COBB This Is What It Means to Say Smoke Signals Native American Cultural Sovereignty All in all, it appears that another cycle of Indian sympathy films will have to wane before Native America can claim its "own" Hollywood im­ agery. In reality, very little of what has transpired over this century is groundbreaking. Such invention can only come when a bona fide Native director or producer breaks into the ranks of Hollywood, hopefully to challenge the conventional credos ofthe industry from within. -Ted Jojola (21)P Hollywood's Indian may no longer belong solely to Hollywood. In 1998, the "bona fide Native director" that Ted Jojola prophesied finally broke into the ranks of Hollywood and did, indeed, challenge the conventional credos of the industry from within. Srrwke Signals, the first feature film written, directed, acted, and co-produced by Native Americans is a singular achievement. This may, at first, seem overstated: how can this effort of a first-time director-an eighty-nine minute, low-budget, road triplbuddy movie starring relatively un­ known Native American actors-be much ofan achievement of any kind? But when placed in the context of the long and colonizing history of American Indians and film, it is an achievement because it exists at all. As fIlmmaker Beverly Singer (Santa Clara Pueblo) states, "Until very recently whites-to the exclusion of Native people-have been the only people given the necessary support and recognition by society to tell Native stories in the medium of fIlm" (2). Film, an undeniably powerful medium, Significantly shapes what and how we think of others and ourselves. For too long Hollywood fIlmmakers have created and disseminated stereotypical and frequently racist images of American Indians. Because American Indian people have had extremely limited access to Hollywood as writers, produc­ ers, or directors, those distorted images have gone largely unchecked. This Is What It Means to Say Smoke Signals /207 Director Chris Eyre and writer Sherman Alexie on location for Smoke Signals. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive. Smoke Signals, directed by Chris Eyre (Cheyenne) and written by Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene) is a significant act of self-defini­ tion, an exercise of "cultural sovereignty." According to Singer, cultural sov­ ereignty "involves trusting the older ways and adapting them to our lives in the present. ... [Native] films and videos are helping to reconnect us with very old relationships and traditions. Native American filmmaking transmits beliefs and feelings that help revive storytelling and restore the old founda­ tion" (2). Alexie has contended that "the challenges to our sovereignty" are the greatest threats Native American societies face today (West and West 10). Sovereignty, the right of a group of people to be self-determining, cer­ tainly includes the power to determine how that group is represented (Mihelich 129). Hollywood has threatened Native sovereignty time and time again by creating dehumanizing, stereotypical images that tum Native Ameri­ cans into things to be consumed by popular culture. Although Native and non-Native scholars alike have long discussed the damaging effects of such commodification, Hollywood filmmakers have only just begun to acknowl­ edge that Native Americans are people, not objects-people who are par­ ticipants in, as well as consumers of, American popular culture. As Singer aptly states, 'What really matters to us is that we be able to tell our own stories in whatever medium we choose" (2). Srrwke Signals is a masterstroke for Eyre and Alexie because they challenge popular culture by creating popu­ lar culture, using the very medium that has arguably threatened Native 208 / Amanda J. Cobb American sovereignty the most-the Hollywood film. Smoke Signals, then, is Significant because it is the first widely distributed feature mm in which Native people tell their own story. Synops~ The story of Smoke Signals is, at least on the surface, fairly simple. Based on Alexie's short story "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" from his best-selling collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the mm is a road triplbuddy movie that weaves humor into a story of loss and redemption. In Smoke Signals, the two protagonists, Thomas Builds-the­ Fire and Victor Joseph, journey from their home on the Coeur d'Alene res­ ervation in northwestern Idaho to Phoenix, Arizona, to collect the ashes of Arnold Joseph, Victor's long-estranged, recently deceased father. Thomas (Evan Adams) is the ever-smiling, always optimistic, kind-to-his grandmother storyteller. Always in a suit, Thomas is nerdy but endearing. An orphan raised by his grandmother (Monique Mojica), Thomas takes great pleasure in tell­ ing stories about Arnold Joseph (Gary Farmer), the father figure who res­ cued him from the same fire that killed his parents. Victor (Adam Beach), a jock, is much tougher than Thomas. He has unresolved feelings about his father and is unwilling to waste time fondly reminiscing about the alcoholic man who abused and abandoned him. Mter they arrive in Phoenix, Victor and Thomas meet Suzy Song (Irene Bedard), a friend of Arnold Joseph's with her own memories of him to share. By the end of their journey together, Victor makes peace with his father and is able to release much of the anger that defines his character. Significantly, the overarching narrative of the mm is literally "told," i.e., voiced-over by Thomas, who ritualistically closes his eyes when he tells a story. Eyre and Alexie use flashbacks, frequently woven into the plot as sto­ ries Thomas tells, to portray the very different relationships Arnold had with Thomas and Victor when they were children. Thomas and Victor remember Arnold Joseph so differently that the flashbacks call into question the nature of stories and storytelling by blurring the line between truth and lies. Conse­ quently, the film is both "stories within a story" and a "story about stories." Indians as Indians Some critics may see Smoke Signals as a souped-up version ofJonathan Wack's independent mm Powwow Highway (1989), and indeed the two have many similarities. Both are about two contemporary Native Americans who leave their respective reservations for a journey involving a family member. Both This Is What It Means to Say Smoke Signals / 209 Suzy Song (Irene Bedard) finally shares Arnold Joseph's secret with his son, Victor Joseph (Adam Beach). Courtesy of the Museum of Modem ArtlFilm Stills Archive. fIlms have an angry protagonist around whom most of the dramatic action revolves, and a more endearing "traditional" protagonist used primarily for comedic effect. Both make use of flashbacks. And interestingly, both fIlms won Sundance's coveted Filmmaker's Trophy in their respective years. How­ ever, that is where the similarities end. Powwow Highway and Smoke Sig­ nals are no more versions of the same movie than the revisionist westerns Little Big Man and Dances With Wolves or the female road trip movies Thelma and Louise and Boys on the Side. The two raise very different issues. The primary plot of Powwow Highway deals with obvious political issues, such as racism, poverty, and Red Power activism, as well as the loss of cultural iden­ tity, while Smoke Signals, on the other hand, takes family relationships and more speciflcally father/son issues as its focus. However, Powwow Highway is an extremely signiflcant film, and Smoke Signals certainly follows in its footsteps, particularly in the area of casting. Wacks broke new ground by directing a fIlm with Native protagonists rather than Native enemies, sidekicks, or love interests (all accepted Hollywood formulas and stereotypes) and by actually casting a Native actor (Gary Farmer) as one of the leads. Furthermore, Powwow Highway actually depicted Na­ tive Americans as three-dimensional, complex individuals, a very important feat considering the historical context of Native Americans and Hollywood. According to scholar Ward Churchill, "During the near half·century ... 210/ Amanda J. Cobb the studios cranked about something in the order of 2000 films dealing with what are called 'Indian themes'" (2). Yet, as Native author Paul Chaat Smith, contends "those films aren't really about Indians in the first place" (Singer viii). Smith makes his point well; those films are not about Indians-they are much more about white Americans' search for a uniquely "American" iden­ tity, a national identity distinct from its European origins, as exemplified by Hawkeye in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last ofthe Mohicans. Even later countercultural uses of Indians in films-for example, the Billy Jack mov­ ies-say more about white Americans coming to terms with their feelings about the Vietnam conflict than they do about the lives, experiences, or feel­ ings of actual Native American people. These images have contributed to the conceptualization of American Indians not as distinct nations of people or as distinct individuals or even, in fact, as people at all, but rather as a Singular character or idea, "the Indian"-an idea that helps whites under­ stand themselves through "play." According to Berkhofer, "Since ... the Indian as image and person were and are inextricably combined in White minds, the scholarly understanding of past and present White images be­ comes but the latest phase of a centuries-old White effort to understand themselves through understanding Native America and vice versa" (xvi). Using the idea of the Indian, espeCially in terms of "playing Indian," time and time again is an act of cultural appropriation-an act that threatens the continu­ ance of Native cultures and Native sovereignty.