Jordan Wright August 28, 2012 Special to Indian Country Today Media Network – Magazine feature
Long-Lost Silent Film With All-Indian Cast – Photo Credit Oklahoma Historical Society
How a silent film featuring an all-Native cast came to be made, lost (seemingly forever), discovered nearly a century later (in shambles), then restored and shown to the cast’s descendants is one of the most fascinating stories in the annals of American filmmaking. The Daughter of Dawn, which had its world premiere in June at the deadCENTER Film Festival in Oklahoma City, may be the only all-Native cast silent film ever made.
In the autumn of 1919 Norbert Myles was hired to direct a film for Richard Banks, owner of the fledgling Texas Film Company. Banks, who had written the story for his new project, was looking to make an adventure film in Oklahoma. He had met Myles a few years earlier on a California movie set and was impressed by the ambitious upstart. Myles, who had been a vaudevillian, a screen actor and sometime Shakespearean actor, had fallen out of favor in Hollywood and had turned to screenwriting and directing.
Banks drew on his 25 years of experience living among the Indians and his knowledge of what he called “an old Comanche legend,” to lend authenticity to the film. He decided to shoot on the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, a national reserve known for its mountains and grassy plains spread across 60,000 acres in southwestern Oklahoma. This was an attractive setting for several reasons, including the fact that in 1907 a program to reintroduce the nearly extinct bison to the Great Plains was launched. Under the auspices of the American Bison Society, 15 of these American icons, plucked from New York City’s Bronx Zoo, were sent by railway to grasslands in Oklahoma, and in little more than a decade, they flourished and were an enormous herd.
Banks must have also realized that shooting there would provide not only the perfect backdrop, but would also afford him an abundant source of American Indian talent. For actors Myles tapped into the local tribes—notably the Kiowa and Comanche, who were living on reservations near Lawton, Oklahoma. This wildly ambitious project had an all-Native cast, just one cameraman, no costumes, no lighting, no props and wild buffalo. The Indians, who had been on the reservation less than 50 years, brought with them their own tipis, horses and gear. Featured in the film were White Parker, Esther LeBarre, Hunting Horse, Jack Sankeydoty and Wanada Parker, daughter of Quanah Parker, a Comanche chief and one of the founders of the Native American Church movement. Among the 100 extras were Slim Tyebo, Old Man Saupitty and Oscar Yellow Wolf.
Myles ordered his cameraman to shoot buffalo chase scenes “from a pit so as to have all the buffalo…and Indians…pass directly over the top of the camera.” To add verisimilitude, Myles incorporated the tribe’s tipis, horses, personal regalia and other artifacts, and shot scenes of the Comanches using cross-tribal Plains Indian sign language. He also shot scenes of tribal dancing while the women prepared buffalo for a celebratory meal.
Comanche “raid” on Kiowa village (Courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society)
The tribes’ participation in the film did not sit well with a certain “Assistant Field Matron” assigned to the area by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to monitor the tribes’ activities. In her weekly report, filed July 31, 1920, and sent directly to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, she wrote: “Went to a camp close to headquarters where their [sic] are about 300 Kiowas and Comanches gathered dancing and having pictures taken to be used in the movies.… I talked to the manager to have the camp broken up and dances stopped.
“These dances and large gatherings week after week are ruining our Indian boys and girls as they have been going on for about three months and different places. No work done during these days.”
Her actions had little effect on the enthusiastic cast members, who Myles called “very shrewd” in their financial negotiations with him.
When the 80-minute silent film was screened in October 1920 at the College Theater in Los Angeles, it received raves, with one critic calling it “an original and breathtaking adventure…hardly duplicated before.” But despite favorable reviews, the film was, for some unknown reason, never released. And it was never shown again—that is, until June 10, 2012.
The story of the film’s unlikely return is as dramatic as the story of its making. It began in 2003 when a private investigator in North Carolina looking to collect his fee from a client was given five cans of what was originally a six-reel film. The investigator-for-hire needed to convert the rapidly decaying film into cash to cover his expenses so he contacted Brian Hearn, film curator at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. He told Hearn he believed the film was The Daughter of Dawn. At that time the museum was not in the business of collecting films so Hearn got in touch with the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS), which also operates the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City.
Moore (seated), purchased the five canisters of footage from a private investigator. (Courtesy Bil Moore/Oklahoma Historical Society)
The film was purchased by the OHS in 2006, and Bill Moore, the society’s film archivist and video production manager, took possession of the five cans of the nitrate film. “Our first concern was to protect it,” he recalls. “So after watching the footage on a Moviola and noting its fragile condition, we applied for a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation in the hopes of preserving it as soon as possible.
“In the early years of filming, producers had to provide a copy to what was called the Paper Print Collection. It was a requirement to show every frame of film and file it with the Library of Congress’s Copyright Office in order to establish the copyright of the film. The library would then shoot the films from the ‘contacts’—the individual frames—and that’s how this film survived. It took only a few months to restore the film and after the intertitles [dialogue text pages inserted into the film between cuts] were added, the footage expanded out to the full movie and the original six canisters.” The completed film has a four-way love story and includes two buffalo hunt scenes, a battle scene between the Kiowa and the Comanche, scenes of village life, tribal dances, hand-to-hand combat and a happy ending.
In 2008 Robert Blackburn, executive director of the OHS commissioned David Yeagley, a Comanche classical composer who is well regarded in his field, to do a new score for the movie. “I knew the music was important,” Blackburn says. “That’s why we decided to go for a full symphonic score. Yeagley’s original score is timed to each second of the movie, and he uses different styles of music for each character. Seventy Oklahoma City University Philharmonic grad students working on a Fast Track system recorded the score earlier this year.
“This film is so important to Indian people and is a rare piece of art as well, since only two percent of independent films made in this era have survived,” Blackburn says. “We plan to show it in Telluride, Denver and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in 2013. [Documentary film producer] Ken Burns has committed to assist with the film’s distribution.”
Once descendants of the Kiowa and Comanche cast members were identified, Blackburn arranged to screen The Daughter of Dawn for the families in the Oklahoma towns of Anadarko, Carnegie and Lawton. “There were tears,” he recalls. “They recognized an aunt or a grandparent, and out of that conversation came recognition of the tipi used in the film. It was very powerful for them to see family members who were pre-reservation wearing their own clothing and using family heirlooms that had been brought out of trunks. It was very emotional for them.”
Yeagley, whose works have included a commissioned symphony called The Four Horses of the Apocalypse: A Comanche Symphony and who once wrote an opera based on the life of a Holocaust survivor, calls Blackburn a visionary for choosing to score the movie with what he refers to as a high-European classical piece. “You would expect the typical drums and rattles.” He was conscious of how his music will be received—and perceived. “How do you write music that makes sense to a 21st century audience who is looking at something that is right out of history? What are other Indians going to think when they hear symphonic music? How are they going to regard me?”
Blackburn, clearly thrilled with the interest the film is drawing from audiences and historians, describes its appeal this way, “The Daughter of Dawn is all Oklahoma. Acted by Oklahoma Indians, filmed entirely in Oklahoma, in a story of Oklahoma’s Kiowa and Comanche nations, scored by a Comanche and played by the Oklahoma City University Philharmonic students, even the film was restored by an Oklahoman working in Hollywood for the Film Technology Lab.”
He believes the film has the potential to become the centerpiece for a national exhibit and wants it to be shown at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. In the meantime, the OHS is making a short film to show next spring. It will tell the story of the making of The Daughter of Dawn and Native Oklahomans talking about their ancestors, as well as an interview with Yeagley.
In June at the deadCENTER Film Festival, award-winning actor Wes Studi, Cherokee, came to view this major cinematic event that had brought together film buffs as well as descendants of the Kiowa and Comanche tribal members who had performed in the film. After the screening, Studi said, “It’s a film worth seeing for all people who are either in the business of making films or those who watch film in terms of American Indians.
“It’s really a historic film.… I would say this film proves that Indians have been acting since day one.”
Jordan Wright July 12, 2012 Special to Indian Country Today Media
A scene from “Unto These Hills”
Amid the majestic scenery of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ 56,000-acre sovereign nation known as Qualla Boundary lies the city of Cherokee, which sits at the entrance of North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The area is steeped in Cherokee history and culture and a beautiful setting for a vacation adventure.There are many ways to enjoy a visit to this region. But first determine your vacation expectations. Are you pumped by the glamour and glitz of an all-night casino and a swank suite in a luxury hotel? Or do you picture yourself luxuriating in a hot tub in a rustic cabin nestled snugly in the woods? Does the outdoor life beckon? There’s backcountry exploring along the Appalachian Trail or driving the iconic Blue Ridge Parkwayand camping beside miles of stocked trout streams where you may be visited by curious elk and wake to the chirp of the Eastern bluebird. In Qualla Boundary, or very nearby, you can choose from any one of these options and at a price to suit every budget.
What to Do
For nature lovers a good place to start is at the Oconaluftee Visitors Center and Mountain Farm Museum in the park, run by the U.S. National Park Service, where you’ll learn about the early farming history of the region. You can pick up hiking and topographical maps, light camping supplies and info on the region’s flora and fauna. Resident naturalist Ila Hatter encourages amateur botanists to get in touch with the power of the plant and shares her extensive knowledge of the area’s native plants and their use for food, medicine and crafting. “The Cherokee word adowahi means the spirit of the plant,” she explains. “You ask the power of the plant to do the healing. It keeps its strength in the plant to be your medicine. It can also mean ‘forest’ or ‘guardian spirit.’ It’s comparable to the Buddhist concept of living gratefully.”
Mountain Farm Museum
Whether roughing it or living the luxe life, you’ll want to experience Cherokee culture. Spend time in the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, which has an astonishing collection of Cherokee and Paleo artifacts dating from 10,000 years ago. Here interpretive dioramas of early life mesh with dramatic videos depicting ancient myths and legends. Among carved basswood tribal masks and stone gorgets is the rifle used to execute Cherokee hero Tsali in 1838. Ask for museum interpreter (and well-known stickball expert) Jerry Wolfe, who happily shares his extensive knowledge of traditional recipes and local lore.
Directly across the road is the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, an artisans’ cooperative with more than 250 members. The modern studio-like space, which houses exquisite early and contemporary pottery, beadwork, dolls and museum-quality white oak splint basketry, is a marketplace for authentic Cherokee crafts.
The Eternal Flame greets visitors at the 18th century Oconaluftee Indian Village and Living History Museum. Cherokee demonstrators encourage hands-on participation in weaving, carving, pottery, flint knapping and other traditional crafts. A guided tour of the Cherokee Botanical Garden and Nature Trail is also offered. It is part of the North Carolina Birding Trail System, and features more than 150 native plants through a half-mile loop along the slopes of Mount Noble. Be sure to pre-purchase tickets to the spectacular outdoor evening performances of Unto These Hills at Mountainside Theater. This moving portrayal of the Cherokees and the Trail of Tears told through dance, music and drama is held in a vast amphitheater. During the day special “Step-On” bus tours led by guides in traditional dress can be arranged by contacting the museum in advance.
At the Oconoluftee Village – photo credit Jordan Wright
Master woodcarver, tribal culture bearer and gifted storyteller Davy Arch is the village’s manager and one of the lifeways guides well versed in Cherokee lore. Call the Cherokee Historical Association in advance to arrange traditional suppers or guided trips to Mingo Falls or Soco Falls with its mountaintop observation deck overlooking Maggie Valley.
Just outside of town in a valley along the Tuckasegee River lies the Kituhwa Mound, the center of what is considered the “Mother Town.” The site, established 11,000 years ago, was once an ancient village considered by the Cherokee the center of the universe. Arch brings groups here to talk about the site’s importance as the first Cherokee village and the spot where the sacred fire was kept burning.
Sporting activities in the area include fly-fishing with Rivers Edge Outfitters guides (in Spruce Pine, North Carolina), zip-lining with Adventure America’s Nantahala Gorge Canopy Tours in nearby Bryson City, where you can also ride the rails in restored vintage railroad cars at the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad. Or spend a few hours tubing and kayaking on the Oconaluftee River from Big Cove. A spectacular view of Clingmans Dome, at more than 6,600 feet the highest peak in the Smokies, can be yours on horseback with Cherokee guide Goodlow Bark, owner of End of the Trail Riding Stables.
Where to Eat
Restaurants abound and there are four plus a food court inside Harrah’s Cherokee Casino & Hotel, but more traditional fare can be found at Paul’s Family Restaurant on Tsali Boulevard. The stream-side cottage with outdoor deck features blueberry frybread, buffalo rib-eyes and burgers, pheasant, rabbit, mountain trout, Indian chili tacos, fried green tomatoes and homemade coconut cake.
Since 1977 Cooper’s Roadside Stand, has been boiling peanuts in giant iron cauldrons on the side of Paint Town Road. Be sure to pick up some “rat” cheese (a sharp cheddar), locally grown produce, country ham and some unique jams and jellies like kudzu or wild dewberry.
View of the Great Smoky Mountains from the Sequoyah National Golf Course – photo credit Jordan Wright
Where to Stay
Luxury—The 21-story Harrah’s Cherokee has the most luxurious accommodations including four restaurants, a food court and a casino, currently under a major expansion. Book ahead if you want to hit the greens at the nearby Robert Trent Jones II–designed Sequoyah National Golf Course. The hotel is proud to be a participant in Harrah’s award-winning CodeGreen environmental sustainability and energy conservation program and recently installed 150,000 square feet of sedum on their new porte-cochère roof.
At Harrah’s Cherokee in the Rotunda – photo credit Jordan Wright
Comfortable Adventuring—A 45-minute drive from Cherokee on the western side of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the Fontana Village Resort on the 30-mile-long Fontana Lake. The 400-acre property has a large marina and features a great lodge, private cabins or riverside tent camping. With plenty of planned activities throughout the day, it’s like summer camp for the whole family. Free concerts are held on weekends and evenings are for gathering around the fire pit, karaoke contests, sunset pontoon boat cruises, ghost tours and Indian storytelling. While there plan to visit Fontana Dam. At 480 feet high and 2,365-feet across, it’s the tallest concrete dam east of the Rocky Mountains.
The Lodge at Fontana Village Resort
The Outdoor Life—Tents, cabins and RV campgrounds are in every nook and cranny. Within walking distance from town is the Cherokee Campground & Craig’s Cabins where you can put your fishing pole in Soco Creek right outside your cabin door. For camping with a pool and plenty of kid’s activities try the local KOA campground or the Adventure Trail Campground.
Upcoming Festivals Eighth Annual Festival of Native Peoples—July 13 and 14
Cherokee Blueberry Festival—August 11
Southeastern Tribes Festival—September 14 and 15
Centennial Cherokee Indian Fair—October 2 through 6
Jordan Wright July 2, 2012 Special to Indian Country Today Media
TOTEM – Cirque de Soleil
Christian Laveau keeps to his roots – both literally and culturally. As an herbalist he stays grounded by following the ways of his people working for several years at the First Nations Garden at the Montreal Botanical Garden sharing his knowledge of native plants and traditional medicines passed down to him by his Huron-Wendat elders. As a cultural ambassador he is a well-known Canadian performer, TV host, comedian, singer, songwriter, television producer and musician. His award-winning children’s show Chic Chocfocuses on inspiring stories directed towards Canadian youth.
Painted bear symbol on Christian Laveau’s drum face – photo credit Jordan Wright
His most recent role is as the lead singer in Cirque de Soleil’s latest production TOTEM, a fascinating tale of the evolution of man from its original amphibian state to its ultimate desire to fly. Illustrated through a visual and acrobatic language, it falls somewhere between science and legend. Laveau was discovered by the iconic Canadian company while performing at a pow wow on his reservation.
Beaded wolf symbol on Christian Laveau’s drum – photo credit Jordan Wright
He enters the room filled with coiled energy and childlike excitement, carrying a drum and stick. He seems self-possessed and contained, but eager to let loose. His impish smile is warm and infectious and his arms envelop his well-worn drum like a proud father. As he speaks he toys with a small smooth stone.
Christian Laveau – photo credit Jordan Wright
Jordan Wright – Is that the drum you use in the show?
Laveau – Yes, I play my own drum. This one is 25 years old and made of caribou hide, and these are partridge feathers. The beaded part is the symbol of the wolf. I use the wolf, as my symbol. For me it is very important because he is a warrior. He represents strength and courage. It’s a kind of keeper. The painted part is the bear, my spiritual animal, because I am in the Bear Clan. This symbol is the sun – wenta’ye yändicha’ in my mother language.
Wright – What was your childhood like on the reservation?
Laveau – We call it a reserve. It’s in the Northwest part of Quebec. It’s very small – around 2,000 Wendat live there. Wendat means human being. When the government made the national park they took my grandfather out of the bush. He was a trapper. My mother was just six years old then. That’s when she saw electricity for the first time.
I grew up on the reservation with my sisters, mother, father and cousins who still live there. It’s a matriarchal society in my culture. If you remain there you have no other choice but to work for the Band Council or for the Chief or make crafts. But I had a dream to leave and go to acting school. So I went to the indigenous theatre company, Ondinnok, at the National Theatre School of Canada for three years to study my aboriginal roots.
Wright – What did that experience mean to you?
Laveau – I left my reservation and went to Montreal. At the institute we studied native culture and spirituality. We used songs, instruments and dance as a way to discover our real spirit.
It was more than a school. I studied with Yves Sioui Durand. He’s very intense and made us go very deep inside of ourselves to feel the pain and the joy, and the peace and the war of our ancestors. In my blood I have all those memories. We tried to experience those emotions, to have respect for them and to explore them, to make us stronger. And we will continue to fight.
My grandfather is one of my idols because he spent his life in the bush and my great-grandfather also was in the territory all his life, protecting and preserving the area and its traditions – hunting, fishing and gathering. I learned that it’s important to balance the forest.
My grandfather said if we go to the lake and find two beaver families, and if we leave them there, they will destroy everything around. But we need to eat, to make hats from the fur and tools from the bones. Where we live we cannot be vegetarians because it’s too cold! We use the kidneys to make a tea for when you have a cold. It is the animal that comes to us. We always put tobacco at the place where we hunt the animal. It’s to thank Mother Earth for giving us food. It shows we are grateful so that the spirit of the animal can go in peace.
Wright – I noticed you wrote and recorded an album mixing traditional Native songs with folk and New Age.
Laveau – It’s called “Sondakwa”, which is my first name in my mother language. It means ‘eagle’. In the video I made for the album I worked with Gilles Sioui, a bluesman and an elder with the native spirit. I’ve been a fan of his since I was a child. He’s been my inspiration. One day he heard me singing at a pow wow and I said to him, “You don’t know how much I would like to work with you,” and he said, “I’m your man!”
Wright – How do you reach young people with your message?
Laveau – I have a TV show called Chic Choc on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN). In native language it means, “Go over the mountain.” It’s for the youngsters that I do this TV show. It’s difficult for them. There are not a lot of things to do in the area and there are problems with alcohol and drugs. They don’t even allow glue in the classrooms. But because the children are the keepers of our culture we have to show them and use what our grandparents gave us. My grandmother always spoke to me about the importance of the “Seventh Generation” and continuing our traditions.
Wright – Where is your stone from?
Laveau – Well, they come from everywhere because whenever we have a pow wow we always exchange stones. It’s my talisman. This one is from a friend from the Atikamekw Nation in Quebec. I’ll eventually exchange it for another.
Wright – It seems in your career you do it all.
Laveau – It’s natural for me. It’s in my blood. It’s not complicated for me. My mother is a singer and I began singing with her when I was five years old. My father was a dancer so I studied traditional dance, after that he was a chief. But that’s not for me. I’m not political. I’m too sensitive. I prefer to share my culture. I don’t have the strength of my father to be a chief.
In the show I sing in my mother language. Guy Laliberté [founder of Cirque de Soleil] said, “You are a realculture, you are alive, so you will sing in your mother language.” For me it’s really an honor. Every night I use my own drums and other personal items.
Tim Smith, Artistic Director of Cirque de Soleil’s TOTEM – photo credit Jordan Wright
Tim Smith, who has been TOTEM’s Artistic Director through its inception, was there to answer additional questions about the production.
Wright – Tell me something about the show.
Smith – We concentrate on the human instinct. In us we have every origin of species all the way through to man’s wanting to fly, which is why the totem pole reflects the many faces of man and why we have an eagle on top. It’s man’s constant need to progress forward and often upward that’s why a lot of our images are aerial and constantly moving artists from the ground to the air.
Wright – Are there other Native performers in the cast?
Smith – The show is truly multicultural. We have 53 artists from 17 different countries speaking 9 different languages on stage every night. Two are American Indian dancers performing traditional dance – Shandien Larance (Hopi) and Eric Hernandez (Hopi) from New Mexico and California. They are authentic hoop dancers. The hoop shapes describe evolution from frog to thunderbird. We don’t teach them, we go out and find the real thing. We use a lot of traditional images and Christian (Laveau) has written a lot of original music for the show in collaboration with the composers of Cirque. That’s how authentic TOTEMis, and how important it is for the company to embrace that voice and that spirit.
Jordan Wright May 24, 2012
Special to Indian Country Today Media Network
Red Earth Festival in Oklahoma City, OK
Before the doors open at the Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City to more than 30,000 visitors, before the drum keeper touches stick to hide and dancers twirl their four-foot buckskin fringe and minutes before the first handwoven basket is purchased or warm fry bread tasted, the day will begin with the ritual smudging of sage leaves.
From Friday, June 8th through Sunday, June 10th, American Indian art and culture will be on display at this year’s 26th Annual Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival where more than 1200 artists and over 500 of the country’s finest dancers come together to compete in one venue and visitors will witness one of the country’s leading cultural events.
Thirty-nine sovereign tribes are headquartered in Oklahoma, each with their own language. Combine that with over a hundred tribes that will be represented here plus journalists and visitors from places as far-flung as Japan, Great Britain and Germany, you can expect to hear more languages spoken here than throughout all of Europe. National Geographic and Good Morning Americahave covered Red Earth, and last yearUSA Today named it one of 10 Great Places to Celebrate American Indian Culture by.
Partnering with the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, which houses a permanent collection of about 1700 historical artifacts and contemporary art, the Red Earth Master Artist Show will display the festival’s winning artwork from the previous 25 years. In addition the highly selective juried show and separate art market will exhibit works from celebrated artists along with beadwork, basketry, jewelry, pottery, sculpture, paintings and cultural attire, allowing visitors to purchase both contemporary and traditional examples of American Indian arts and crafts.
“Over the past five years we have seen about a 20% growth each year in our event,” reports festival spokesperson Eric Oesch. “I think it shows that it appeals to people from every walk of life. Red Earth is for the purpose of sharing cultures and so we attract people, both Indian and non-Indian, from not only Oklahoma and all over the United States but also from around the globe to experience our unique cultures.”
On Friday morning amid 50-story skyscrapers the Grand Parade will kick off the weekend with an explosion of tribal culture featuring dancers, floats, Indian princesses, a football field-sized flag, honor guards, Indian firefighters, horse-drawn stagecoaches and brilliant regalia. This year the Navaho Nation Marching Band from Window Rock, Arizona will perform.
During the all-indoor festival children’s activities will be sponsored by a different tribal museum each day. Lots of hands-on activities as well as beadwork, keepsake boxes, musical performances and storytelling will be conducted by the Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center in Lawton OK, the Citizen Potawatomi Museum in Shawnee, and the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization.
Two other exciting events will take place in Oklahoma City over the same weekend. The seven-acre Myriad Botanical Gardens, which recently underwent a $43 million dollar renovation, will be the backdrop for the first Red Earth Invitational Sculpture Show featuring 12 monumental sculptures of bronze, glass and water. The pieces are designed by some of the nation’s most reknowned Native sculptors including Janice Albro, Denny Haskew, John Free, Bill Glass, Jr., and former Oklahoma Senator and former Chief of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, Enoch Kelly Haney.
From June 6th through the 10th film buffs will flock to the deadCENTER Film Festival to see more than 150 films. Known as one of the “20 Coolest Film Festivals in the World” by MovieMaker Magazine, the avant garde festival will screen two important American Indian films including the world premiere of the 1920 historic filmDaughter of Dawn, a recently restored film with an all-Native cast. Screenings for this film will be held at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s Noble Theatre. The Dome of Heaven, an indie film by Oklahoman Diane Glancy (Cherokee) starring actor Wes Studi (Cherokee), will be shown at the Harkins Bricktown Cinemas. Visit www.Deadcenterfilm.org for screening times and places.
Beginning Sunday, June 10th the weeklong Nike N7-sponsored Jim Thorpe Native American Games will be held at sporting venues throughout Oklahoma City, where teams participate in the All-Star Native American High School Football and Basketball Tournaments, as well as in nine other sports categories from golf, swimming and wrestling to stickball, martial arts and track and field. The Olympic-style Games will play host to 3,000 student athletes representing 70 different tribes throughout Canada and the United States.
This year’s Games will commemorate the 100th anniversary of Thorpe’s gold medal-winning performances at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Thorpe (Sac and Fox) who played both Major League baseball, basketball and professional football, was voted “The Greatest Athlete of the 20th Century” by the Associated Press and was the first president of the National Football League (NFL).
Executive Director, Annetta Abbott told ICTMN, “This will be our largest event ever and will have a Parade of Nations, Indian dancers and fireworks.” For additional info and event schedules visit www.jimthorpegames.org.
Jordan Wright April 18, 2012
Special to Indian Country Today Media Network.
A good surfer must be in complete harmony with the vagaries of nature. Surfing is a unique sport in that its skilled athletes must alternately strive to conquer and surrender and must be emboldened and yet chastened by the force and changeability of both wind and water. Those requirements are non-negotiable. To succeed on a big wave a surfer must strike a perfect balance between physical strength and humility.
The business of modern surfing has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry, Surfboards, wet suits, fashionable surfwear and more fuel an increasingly powerful market. Upping the ante, niche travel agencies now offer hardcore surfers vacations to exotic oceanside destinations around the globe. And though prices average $1,000 for a starter longboard, one New Zealander handcrafts paulownia wood boards that sell for over half a million dollars. But it has not always been a dollar-driven pastime.
Around 2000 B.C. indigenous populations began migrating out of Asia and into the Eastern Pacific. During that period ancient Polynesians journeyed to the area defined by New Zealand (Aotearoa) at the southernmost point, Tonga and Samoa along the western boundary, and the Marquesas to the east, eventually making their way to Hawai’i in the fourth century A. D.
Evidence contained in Captain James Cook’s log of his third trip to Hawai’i in 1778 record the existence of standup surfboard riding as practiced by Hawaiian kings at Kealakekua Bay on the Kona Coast of the Big Island where they rode standup olo boards. But for Papua New Guineans who had been riding the waves on their stomachs and referred to their belly boards as “splinters”, surfing took on a bold new dynamic in the 1980’s when an Australian pilot came there on holiday in search of the perfect wave. It was then that “Crazy Taz”, as he was known, left his surfboard behind and the cultural landscape was forever altered.
For Californian Adam Pesce who honed his passion for surfing on the legendary Rincon Beach in his hometown of Santa Barbara, a proposed trip to Papua New Guinea (PNG) was the dream of a lifetime. Inspired by an article in a surfing magazine, he took off with friends in 2004 to Papua New Guinea (PNG) part of a string of islands off the east of the Malay Archipelago in the South Pacific. He had taken a simple documentary film course and was eager to shoot the local surfing scene for a film he planned to make while hitting the waves along the island’s famous sea breaks.
After three months of research shooting he returned to California and seeing the video he had shot, he realized the travelogue-style footage did not have the makings of a film. He abandoned the project until 2008 when he got a call from Andrew Abel, President of the Surfing Association of Papua New Guinea. Abel told him they were planning their first national surfing championships in PNG and the trials would determine who would represent the country at the world surfing games in Australia. When Pesce heard this he realized the upcoming event could be the center of his movie and he returned to PNG in 2009 to begin shooting.
Armed with nothing but camera gear, a few surfboards and a degree in diplomacy from Occidental College in L.A., Pesce lived among the natives for seven months where he would become director, producer, editor and cinematographer on his first film, Splinters.
Of the 850 languages spoken throughout this Indonesian island chain of 5 million people, the most common is Melanesian Pidgin (Tok Pisin). Pesce began his stay by learning the language without a translator. He moved into an old shack with one of the local surfers who planned to compete in the surfing championship, and started shooting between bouts of malaria. His goal wasn’t to make a “surf movie” –- he wanted to tell the story of how one surfboard changed a culture.
The seaside community of Vanimo in Papua New Guinea where Pesce set up production is not as idyllic as it appears at first glance. The small village and surrounding country are a shape-shifting and complex culture clinging desperately to a primitive past. Up until recently, cannibalism and “cargo cults” were still practiced in the more remote outposts and today its citizens maintain a strict patriarchal society even as it becomes increasingly westernized through mining and fishing.
Caught between ancient taboos and emerging cultural changes, the country’s struggles are often more sociological than economic. For example brides are still bought by men through a “bribe price” or dowry, in which payment to the bride’s family allows the husband to physically abuse his wife. Domestic abuse is part of the film’s portrayal of family life on PNG, which includes strong scenes of men abusing their wives and even children in full view of the other villagers.
Splinters is the first feature-length documentary about the evolution of indigenous surfing in the South Pacific and the near fanatical obsession of the island’s surfers. But it is also a highly compelling story filmed in cinema verité style and told by the subjects themselves. It is their personal struggles and triumphs set against the backdrop of a lush tropical paradise that is at the heart of the film.
The film focuses on surfers from two competing surf clubs – the Sunset Surf Club and Vanimo Surf Club. Angelus, the son of the first native surfer in Vanimo, and Ezekiel, his protégé, are surfing rivals in the remote seaside community of Vanimo Village, where nearly everyone is related by birth or marriage. They dream of achieving prestige in their village by competing in the local surfing championships and ultimately competing against world-renowned surfers in Australia. For both the men and women, it’s their only ticket off the island and a chance to see the world.
The film also follows two of the island’s most accomplished female surfers, Lesley and Susan, who are sisters. Both need to gain acceptance into one of the all-male surf clubs in order to enter the competition. Lesley is the bolder of the two women. Alternately capitulating to the men or standing her ground, she cannily walks a social tightrope, using maneuvering techniques as deft as those she excels in when riding a wave. Susan on the other hand is more conventional and accepts the subservient role women are taught to assume. Yet each becomes instrumental in altering the current culture’s groupthink.
In a pivotal scene Abel tells the men that in order to compete nationally the women must be accepted into the clubs. Despite centuries of culturally sanctioned male dominance, the men must learn to sublimate their egos and accept the women as equal participants. For the men an even greater challenge than compromising ancient societal rules, is the simple act of getting along with one another as old clan rivalries flare up and threaten their chances of entering the contest. It is only when the teams begin to work together and the women are included that they begin to see what they can achieve.
Interspersed with the surfing and breathtaking scenery are flashes of violence. In one incident a woman is severely beaten by her husband to the encouragement of his neighbors, in another the men threaten each other in a drunken nighttime road rage incident. The scenes are brutal and graphic, but Pesce felt it vital to portray the reality of life in PNG.
Splinters brings to the screen an intimate and emotional portrait of a culture tragically trapped in a violent past. By showing how surfing can serve as a catalyst for social change and gender equality, the film attempts to prove the axiom that society can only advance when each and every citizen is inherently invested in its future success.
Last month ICTMN spoke with Adam Pesce by phone from his home in Santa Barbara, California.
ICTMN: How long ago had the people of Papua New Guinea been surfing?
Adam Pesce: The elders told me that as long as they can remember they were belly surfing on broken pieces of their dugout canoes. When that surfboard was left behind in PNG on the 1980’s, they first transitioned from belly-boarding to standing up.
What attracted you to make a film on surfing involving indigenous people?
It was a mix of several interests. I grew up surfing in California where I was studying international relations and had an interest in travel. I decided to go explore in Vanimo. I was definitely interested in the Western values associated with the surfboard and how they would mesh with local traditions.
When you began shooting in PNG were you surprised by the harsh traditions still practiced there?
I didn’t know how ingrained these traditions were going to be and once I was on the ground there were these walls they put up. I saw women butting up against them and these women were definitely the trailblazers.
Were you ever afraid?
I definitely was afraid for myself. The threat of violence was always there. Things can always turn on a dime.
Have you gone back to show the film yet?
I’m looking forward to bringing the film to Vanimo and showing it to the people and planning an event around it. There’s talk of bringing it to the championship [World Qualifying Series] surfing event in Vanimo in 2013. However Andy and Ezekiel [one of the surfers in the film] were able to come to New York and to see it at the Tribeca Film Festival this spring.
How did it affect them?
It was an overwhelming experience for Ezekiel who ended up in New York doing a press event at the screening of a film he had starred in but never seen. I was very concerned that he might not like the film or how he was being portrayed or that it would be inaccurate in his mind. In PNG men will hold hands as they talk or walk around the village, so we held hands throughout the screening and after the credits he turned to me and said, “Thank you”. It was a very special moment for me — knowing that he enjoyed the film.
Did you ever speak with him about male to female relationships on PNG and how their society might evolve as a result of the surfing competition?
I didn’t have that conversation with Ezekiel, but I did speak to Andy at length following the screening of the film and he was really taken aback with the seriousness of the way surfing could really elevate the status of women in PNG. And I know he is doing his best to make sure that women have access to surfboards and have opportunities to compete and travel.
I would like to add that I’m looking to collaborate with a domestic violence shelter in Vanimo, where people will be able to contribute to a place for women seeking legal aid and physical refuge, and that the film will be screening at the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival this spring in Melbourne, Australia.
Splinters has been a huge hit on the indie film circuit and has been the Official Selection in film festivals from London to Warsaw to Newport Beach and was voted “best Documentary” by Surfer Magazine. It is available for rent or purchase on iTunes or go to www.splinters.com for 2012 screenings in your area.
Jordan Wright
Special to Indian Country Today Media Network April 15, 2012
A mess of ramps ready for the pan - photo credit Jordan Wright
In Qualla Boundary, high up in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, springtime means foraging for emergent greens. The Eastern Band of Cherokee has always used the tender shoots, chockfull of minerals and Vitamins A and C, as both tonic and food source – an antidote for winter’s ailments as well as sustenance.
Some of the earliest wild edibles are sochan (a relative of the green-headed coneflower), watercress, branch lettuce, creasy greens and ramps – the most treasured of all. Big Cove tribal council member Bo Taylor gives the Cherokee word “anitse” for all spring greens and “wast” to refer to ramps.
A small adaptable plant that grows only at elevations of 3,000 feet or higher, the noble ramp (Allium Tricoccum – Liliacae) is venerated by the southeastern Cherokee who passed down its virtues to the early settlers. “According to our tradition we use ramps to cleanse the blood from toxins built up over the winter months,” Cherokee tribal elder Don Rose explained.
Throughout local communities there is a movement afoot to preserve, protect and propagate the plant that has a brief season in the deciduous woods before the tree canopy reappears. Horticulturalist and ethnobotanist Kevin Welch, who heads up the Center for Cherokee Plants, has created a project in Qualla called “The Backyard Ramp Patch”. “Each spring we distribute small bags of ramps filled with around 50 bulbs for home gardening.”
His wife and collaborator, Sarah McClellan, who is the Project Director and Educator at the Cherokee Reservation Cooperative Extension Center and coordinator of the Cherokee Native Plant Study Group is enthusiastic about the program. “We have distributed over 70,000 bulbs so far. It’s our ninth year and we are supplying to 150-200 families each year.” They are not taken from the forest. McClellan buys the ramp bulbs and seeds from Ramp Farm Specialties in Richwood, West Virginia.
Harvesting Ramps - Photo credit Jordan Wright
Welch talks about the proper way Indians harvest them in the wild. “The best method allows ramps to grow back from its roots. Rather than pull up the entire plant, they loosen the soil around it, then reach down into the soil with a knife and cut off a ¼ inch or so of the bulb just above the roots, leaving the roots in the soil to grow a new plant. Thus ramps continue to flourish. When pulled up by the roots, like onions from the garden, whole stands of ramps disappear,” he cautions.
Each year the community hosts “Rainbows and Ramps” in April. Janice Wildcatt, who runs the early spring event and acted as my guide during a recent trip to Cherokee, NC, explains, “The festival has been going on for 30 years. It’s a celebration for the tribal elders, who can no longer get into the woods to pick their ramps. Before the visitors arrive we give them a free meal of ramps and local trout and other traditional foods. It’s comfort food. Way back it was more like a simple pot luck, but it has grown in popularity and for the past two years we have served over 700 visitors a year.” Entertainment is part of the experience and this year’s festivities included the Head Start Traditional Dancers along with the Old Antioch Gospel Singers and the Mountain Traditional Cloggers.
Blackberry dumplings - photo credit Jordan Wright
During my stay I was invited by several tribal members to join them in a dinner showcasing traditional Cherokee foods. The women who are generous in the community with their time and culinary talents laid out a splendid buffet of their delicious dishes. Nikki Nations, a local landscape artist, cooked up fatback, blackberry dumplings, fried potatoes and lye dumplings; Alice Kekahbah, who lived and worked for the BIA for 30 years, prepared her fried sweet potatoes and sochan; Bessie Wallace, President of the North American Indian Women’s Association (NAIWA) Cherokee Chapter, brought sweet tea; Hattie Panther made bean dumplings; and my tourism guru, Janice Wildcatt, sautéed up a mess of ramps with scrambled eggs. It was a convivial evening among the ladies who caught up on local happenings. After supper we drove over to Big Cove where we spotted two of the recently reintroduced elk herd peacefully grazing alongside the road.
Elk in Big Cove, Cherokee, NC - photo credit Jordan Wright
Ramps are frequently described as having an acquired taste akin to onions mixed with garlic, and are often referred to as “wild leeks”. At some ramp fests they even hand out mouthwash, called the “Scope cure”, to counter what they say is the lingering odor.
Returning from Cherokee we spent a few days at our family homestead along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Appalachian mountains of southwestern Virginia. Beside a small spring I located a stand of ramps that had been planted over 30 years ago. Bearing in mind the Cherokee way of sustainability, I harvested a small bunch, carefully leaving the bulbs intact underground for next year’s crop. After rinsing the dirt off the leaves and drying them, a quick chop and sauté in butter revealed them to be even milder than scallions and with a delicate aroma of garlic. The only thing missing was the trout.
