Hearing native voices in the media

The history of Native Americans has been marked by continuous crisis, an ongoing struggle for survival against forces that have resulted in the destruction of culture, identity and human dignity. The Third Annual Native Voices Film Festival, held last Friday at the Ethnic Cultural Center Theater, was a reminder that the struggle goes on.

Consisting of three documentaries by students in the Native Voices Graduate Program for Documentary Filmmaking, the festival blew the dust off history and explored contemporary Native American issues.

Jonathan Tomhave's Half of Anything explored Native American identity by asking four people of Native ancestry the question, "What is a real Indian?" In an interview, Tomhave said the question was purposely "loaded," and activist John Trudell took the bait, replying, "Real Indians live in India. There aren't Indians here...."

The film was captivating because all four of its subjects -- including a UW communication graduate student, a lawyer and Seattle-based writer Sherman Alexie -- didn't always know what to say. Alexie, after listing off a few pat answers such as "being federally enrolled" and "a basic cultural knowledge test," contemplated the mullet.

"I wore a mullet to fight against elitists," Alexie said of his old hairstyle. He explained, "The mullet was a last grasp ... at trying to maintain reservation identity."

By focusing on hair, Alexie implied something about the absurdity of the question. After he cut it short, he noted that he could pass as Mexican, Italian or Middle Eastern.

Trudell's commented that before Columbus, "the Indians of this continent didn't have a history." Even the name "America" comes from an Italian explorer, not from the people who lived on the continent he visited. The word "American" is a product of colonialism.

Teresa Brownwolf Powers' A Legacy of Pride chronicled the history of the Seattle Indian Center through interviews with women who had worked there and been served by it. The center, which was founded after World War II by Pearl Warren, a local native woman, provided outreach and social services to other members of the native community. The American Indian Women's Service League, which ran the center, specialized in seeking out natives who had just moved to the city to help them adjust to urban life.

"There's nothing about native women in any history books," said Powers. "It's very difficult to see American native women in the public eye ... I wanted to show something really positive and strong, not just for the outside world but for native people too."

Powers' includes still photos of Seattle businesses displaying signs saying "No Dogs/No Indians" and "No Beer Served to Indians." Footage of police beating Nisqually tribesmen and dragging them from their boats as they clutch their fishing nets is a reminder of the social climate in which the Women's Service League was working in the last century.

The only flaw in the film was that the interview segments could have been edited down. They went on too long, and the subjects began to repeat themselves. Interviewers often become loyal to their subjects, and they don't want to cut their words. Powers could have made a more succinct film if she had not succumbed to this temptation.

The Border Crossed Us, directed by Rachael Nez, addressed the impact of political borders on Native Americans. The Tohono O'odham Nation, which inhabits a reservation second only to that of the Navajos in size, overlaps from Arizona into Mexico. It has been this way "from time immemorial," according to the nation's former vice chairman, the wizened Henry Ramon, but without a U.S. birth certificate, members of the tribe can be deported, detained and imprisoned by the border patrol.

Tohono O'odham Mary Narcho recalls her childhood, when her family would freely travel back and forth between Mexico and the United States for funerals, pilgrimages and to visit relatives. But in the 1950s, when the U.S. government began requiring tribe members to have birth certificates, people like Narcho suddenly became "illegals."

Since hospitals on the reservation aren't easily accessible, many Tohono O'odham are born at home, without proper documentation.

In one of the poignant scenes of the film, Ramon recalls being drafted into the Korean War. After he completed his service and went to collect on his benefits, Ramon had suddenly become a "non-entity."

"When I got out of the service, I thought I was a U.S. citizen," said Ramon.

But without a birth certificate, Ramon had neither citizenship nor eligibility for benefits.

The nation has tried twice to get a federal law passed that would allow its members to move freely between the two countries, but in both cases the bills never got a hearing. Ramon, who was at the screening, said that the Tohono O'odham plan to try again in the upcoming legislative season.