The Bechdel Cast - Reel Injun with S.A. Lawrence-Welch

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

This week, Caitlin and Jamie are joined by special guest S.A. Lawrence-Welch for a discussion on the documentary Reel Injun! (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast Follow @lawrencewelchnw on Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. meds, but by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care. Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated Crooks Everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks

She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. on the Bechdel cast the questions asked if movies have women in them are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the Bechdel cast hi Bechdel cast listeners it's us with an exciting live show announcement in los angeles on december 10th we are covering it's a wonderful life but is it but is it we'll be examining this and uh the show is sunday

december 10th at 4 p.m it's live in la at dynasty typewriter and we're also live streaming it so if you live anywhere else you can still see the show we're going to be donating half of the proceeds from this show to anera and pcrf which are both organizations that are providing aid in gaza right now because free palestine bitch and if you don't feel that way then uh you can escort yourself off our feed. Exactly. Anyways, live show. Once again, it's Sunday, December 10th at 4 p.m. Live in LA at Dynasty Typewriter. Also, live streams are available.

So go to linktree.com or dynastytypewriter.com to grab your tickets. See you at Dynasty Typewriter, December 10th, 4 p.m. See you there. The Bechdel Cast. Hello, and welcome to The Bechdel Cast. Uh-huh. Okay, my name is Caitlin Durante. Why are you being so shy about it?

I don't know. Um, hello? Um, excuse me? Is it okay? I guess it's where Hello? Excuse me? Is it okay? I guess it's worth. Did I talk? We're coming off of our horror movie, our weekly, our annual horror movie thing. So we're kind of final girling into the show.

Being like, hello? My name is Jamie Loftus. And this is the Spectral Cast, our intersectional feminist movie podcast, where we take a look at your favorite movies using an intersectional feminist lens. Although this week, I'm excited that we are making history on the Bechdel cast by covering our first documentary. We've never done this before. I'm super, super pumped about it. So, but before we start talking about it, let's tell everyone what the show is hi everyone welcome to the show yes welcome and our show is called the Bechdel cast because it's loosely based off of the Bechdel test which we use simply as a jumping off point uh if you're not in the know it is a media metric

created by okay wait can I do that this week oh my gosh where my fun fact is okay yeah do it fun fact listeners I do read the itunes reviews and and some people would say that that's emotional self-harm and if so i do it and i uh i noticed when recently first of all some of y'all are hurting my feelings some of y'all are making me feel great and one of y'all made me think about this, of how we don't often give credit to, we say, you know, that it is a media metric created by Alice and Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. That is not quite accurate to history. So while we go back to the factory and retool our way of saying that sentence, i just wanted to do a quick shout out for the benefit of

that itunes reviewer so we usually say it is a media metric created by allison bechtel in the 80s uh in her comic strip dykes to watch out for great comic classic comic that was originally intended to point out how infrequently women specifically queer women uh speak to each other in any piece of media about anything uh that is not about a man explicitly but there i i went back and just verified uh that so allison bechtel credits while she was the first person to publish the bechtel test it makes sense that it's called the bechtdel test she credits the idea to her friend Liz Wallace which is why we sometimes call it the Bechdel-Wallace test but she also credits it to Virginia Woolf and a quote from A Room of One's Own which I have never read but I just wanted to share this quick quote from Virginia Woolf weirdly at the beginning of this episode

because Virginia Woolf does pretty clearly lay out the Bechdel test in 1929 she says uh quote and I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends they are now and then mothers and daughters but almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men it was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were until Jane Austen's day not seen the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman's life is that, unquote. So obviously, you know, very 1929 language, but I thought it was interesting. We've never shouted that out on the show before, that the Bechdel test, while understandably attributed to Alison Bechel, was a group effort over a course of 60

years. And I think that's fun. As many things are a collaborative effort. It's true. An intergenerational collaborative effort. But Caitlin, all that said, what is the Bechtel test? Oh, sure, sure, sure. So our version of it is because we've we've added some flair. We've contributed. We yeah, it is. It continues to be a collaborative effort. Our version is do two people of a marginalized gender who have names speak to each other about something other than a man. And we especially like it when it is a kind of narratively impactful conversation and not just like throwaway dialogue. All that to say it won't really even apply on this episode because we are covering a documentary.

But it's a good thing we gave a full history of the test we will not be using today at the beginning of the episode. You're welcome for that. And with that, let's make history on the Bechtel cast and discuss not just a documentary, but a really terrific documentary. And let's bring in our guest. Yes, let's do it. Our guest is a Michif and Nehiyo advocate, organizer, speaker, activist, artist, and writer, focusing on the lasting damage of residential school system, Indian boarding schools, and the 60s scoop on First Nations people. She is the founder of Tradish-ish. They are the co-host of Creepy Teepee. It's SA Lawrence Welch. Welcome. Hello and welcome. Danche. Thank you for having me.

This is so exciting. Thanks so much for coming on. I'm so excited to talk about the documentary from 2009, Real Engine. Again, this is our, we're making history here because normally we do narrative film. But I think this is a great way for us to break into documentary I think that this is like us working our way out because we on the show always say that we will never read a book but I think that documentary we got to be careful it's a gateway to books it's a gateway drug to books I mean it's it's the lazy person's read you know, like I don't do well with books either.

So team no reading right here. I just it needs to be super engaging. And I just I have a really hard time staying focused with pages. So tell me stuff, show me things, I'll retain it better. And that's why I like documentaries. And I wanted to add too um i think that the test does apply to this in some way shape or form there's a lot of narratives within this uh documentary that kind of showcase how femmes were erased secondary yes yeah secondary

to basically erased in a lot of cinematic history especially talking about the first peoples of this land so go team for sure yes this documentary i want to talk about everyone's history with it in just a second it's made yeah it came out in 2009 directed by neil diamond katherine bainbridge and jeremiah hayes it's wild how i mean i've i watched the doc twice and it's it's for a 90 minute documentary covers so much so much jam-packed yeah uh so i say what is your history with this doc when did you first see it and and how did you um what were your feelings on it yeah i saw it when it first came out i was um it it's it's been um a long road which the the film will uh highlight you know of natives and cinema but it was so amazing to see a Cree person not unlike myself. Nehiyo is the actual word for the people,

not Cree was the name that was given to us by settler colonizers, whatever. But yeah, we still identify with that name because it's how we get recognized, I guess. That's a different conversation though. But yeah, I saw it. And it's honestly, this movie means a lot to me more than most things. And even like, you know, 13 some odd years later, it's the movie I recommend for people to have even a glimpse into understanding how racism and prejudice started against native people and how narratives really hollywood can create a narrative that transforms transforms the way people think about an entire demographic of people who is unto itself completely diverse so yeah i just from the first moment seeing this movie i was um absolutely enamored by it. Yeah, it's so good. It's so good. And it's like, and it's a road story on top. Like, it's just like, yeah, so wonderful. I hadn't seen this one before. I had heard about it for years.

I think when I first tried to watch it, it wasn't streaming anywhere. anywhere now if you're watching in the u.s at least i don't know how it will cross over but uh it's streaming for free on tubi right now and i would really recommend if you haven't watched it yet pause the episode and and watch the doc it's so wonderful and uh yeah i mean i i really enjoyed it i learned a lot and I think that there was other other elements of of native cinema and and like the history of native cinema that I like had heard about and knew but didn't have like it put fully into context and this movie is incredibly I mean I know it can't be completely comprehensive in the space of 90 minutes. But I really, really, really liked it. And I also feel like I left with a list of movies that I'm really excited to watch. Like, yeah, so I, it was my first time seeing it. And I really loved it. Caitlin, what about you?

Same for me. I hadn't seen it before. It was on my list of things to watch. And this episode gave me a great excuse to finally see it and yeah I think it it makes a lot of sense for us even though it is a doc and we normally don't cover them on the show because we you know examine narrative film and then discuss the representation therein this documentary also examines media from a representation standpoint, and then it's specific to how Native people and cultures are portrayed in Hollywood. So it's doing something similar to what we do on the show. So I'm really excited to talk about it and get into it in more detail. It's like this, I mean, and truly this documentary, maybe you want to, maybe you want to watch a bunch of movies, which is not unusual, but it also is and truly this documentary maybe you want to maybe you want to

watch a bunch of movies which is not unusual but it also is like oh I also want to read several books which is scary scary feeling uh but but so so cool I mean I I um I can't wait to sort of keep watching what is that I wait I'm I just lost my place in my notes i was thinking of a specific movie that i had not heard of before that i was really that i'm really excited to watch for me it was the fast runner yes that was what i was thinking of um which i just had i mean most or many of the movies that they recommend throughout the documentary i'd heard of it just not seen yet but the fast runner i had no idea existed and it seems un-fucking-believably good like i just i'm really excited to see it yeah yeah it's uh you know it's interesting to me because this uh again is you're witnessing

this this narrative that uh neil diamond puts down of you know uh watching movies through an indigenous lens, right? And how, I don't know if you guys want to just jump into it, but the thing that gets me is within the opening scenes, there's just these kids sitting in a basement watching shoot-em-up cowboy movies. And Neil says something along the lines of, we didn't realize we were the Indians, like we were the bad guys. And that's like definitely a thing I find for myself as somebody who grew up relatively isolated in the mountains of Treaty 6 territory in so-called Alberta, Canada, that that was the outlet, you know, so seeing yourself vilified on screen, but not even realizing that it's the same thing, but different, you know, like, it was such an interesting experience to grow into myself and then just be like, oh, that's absolutely not right. And that speaks to a larger narrative, which I'm sure we'll talk about today.

Let's take a quick break, and then we will be right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts

the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case.

So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health

is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Guess what, Mango? What's that, Will? So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius.

I know. That's why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion. It's about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it's called Earthquake House. Mango, I'm going to cut you off right there. Why don't we just tell people about our show instead? Yeah, that's a better idea. So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world's most important questions.

Things like, when did America start dialing 911? Is William Shatner's best acting work in Esperanto? Also, what happened to Esperanto? Plus, we cover questions like how Chinese is your Chinese food? How do dollar stores stay in business? And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese? There absolutely is. And we are risking our lives by talking about it. But if you love mind blowing facts, incredible history and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune in to Part-Time Genius. Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. So yeah, let's get into it. I will go through a recap, as I always do.

Just kind of like going through the different different beats the points the eras that this documentary covers so we meet the narrator who is also one of the directors his name is neil diamond and it's not neil diamond the musician it's neil diamond the cree canadian filmmaker i was such a doofus and completely forgot there was a different neil diamond that existed because i was telling my boyfriend that i was like i watched this incredible documentary it's so good you have to watch it it's made by this guy named neil diamond he's like am i missing something i was like what do you mean not the musician Neil Diamond. The superior Neil Diamond, as far as I'm concerned, because I forgot the other one fucking existed.

You're going to make all the middle-aged women really upset right by saying that. The Neil hive is going to come for us. okay so neil talks about how he was raised on a reservation near the arctic circle which was one of the most isolated places on earth he grew up watching movies like you were just talking about essay he grew up watching movies that depicted native people in often very negative ways. And this inspires him to embark on a journey from his reservation to Hollywood to examine Hollywood's representation of Indians and how it shaped the cultural perception of them. And of course, Indians in this context, referring to indigenous and First Nations people who were here pre-colonization of what became known as North America, specifically the US and Canada. Okay, so Neil's first stop is at the Black Hills, once the domain of Chief Sitting Bull and Tshunka Witko, aka Crazy Horse. He goes to the place where Crazy Horse outmaneuvered General Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn,

which is something that has been depicted in several Hollywood movies, and which turned Crazy Horse into a legend as far as like, white America, having a better sense of who he was. That was Yeah, as I was watching the doc, I was trying to square with like, what I had been taught in Massachusetts public schools, like how much history had I actually learned and how far away from the truth and it's about as far as you could imagine which uh but but I think Crazy Horse is one of the few indigenous figures that I do specifically remember learning about incorrectly but I I was like oh okay bad job school but but also like really good job school because you know the erasure is part of the narrative that keeps uh this like American exceptionalism you know we

deserve this land we came here we fought for it yada yada such and so forth and that's clearly displayed in some of the movies that the doc outlines that you know definitely absolutely yeah we'll get to in the in the like john ford uh section in particular but it's there's like such a great quote that perfectly well we'll get there but yeah yeah yeah there's also mention of the descendants of crazy horse and of the warriors who fought alongside him present day live in pretty extreme poverty on pine ridge reservation so um just kind of like an examination of this icon this legend and because of systemic racism and oppression the descendants living in poverty. Yeah, a system set up by design to dismantle entire nations of people is also working. And the thing behind that, that kind of speaks to, you know, even with Neil going to the Black Hills,

is interesting for me as a Cree person and seeing him as a Cree person, you know, we're told certain stories.'re not even like in school we weren't even told stories about our own people you know like we were we were this is why this movie is so amazing to me is because it really caters to this like like romanticization of like the great west right and you know all of these noble natives but we had so many within our own nations like there's so many different nations of native people across these lands and the fact that he went to go talk about this particular story because that is what the narrative is in every single hollywood movie up until that point so yeah i'm excited to to talk

with you about that because i think that like neil diamond being so forward about that and being so forward about like being connected with his history to an extent but also have to having to like unlearn and relearn in that whole process and also having like this attachment to the media you grow up with and like how do you you know unwire that and rewire so it sounds just like Herculean it's yeah for sure okay so the documentary then starts to go through era by era how hollywood represented native people starting with the silent film era and while that was happening in the late 1800s, where, you know, some of the first moving images ever to exist were of Native people, while this was happening, the U.S. Army opened fires on the last free community of Natives in revenge for Little Bighornorn and 300 Lakota people were massacred at Wounded Knee in 1890.

And this tragedy becomes fodder almost for the type of like drama and myth and mythology that Hollywood loves to romanticize and make movies about. So Ne Neil discusses how Indians, for example, in movies are always shown as expert horseback riders, even though many tribes and nations never rode horses, though there are some who were expert and are expert horse riders, such as the crow. And so Neil goes to the crow agency in Montana and meets a crow stuntman named Rod Rondeau, who is an expert horseman and one of Hollywood's top stunt people. And just like the most charismatic person on the face of the earth. That's so fucking cool. um yeah he talks just about how important horses are to crow people we go back to examining the silent film era native characters

were prominently featured in a lot of silent era movies often as the hero and many of those films were written and directed by native filmmakers. I genuinely did not know that. I wish I had been taught that in fucking film school. I know. Yeah, that's such a, that's a point of like, contempt for me, for sure. You know, you see these beautiful silent films that are depicting life and honesty. And you see these people within the film uh within these silent films being authentic and then all of a sudden another narrative needs to be written to uh back

again the american exceptionalism like i've already used that term but like to be like no no this is ours you know we need yeah this is we can't humanize the people that we need to dehumanize to maintain our our lie for lack of a better term no that's exactly what it is yeah yeah and it just like felt like such a clear i don't know like it's just such a clear example of like media representation being very nonlinear and like i mean you 50 years after these early silent films native representation is far worse and like i i don't know it was fascinating because i want to watch this watch the silent films but also discouraging to you know just see such a clear example of that. Yeah. The movie also mentions a prominent

actor of this era. His name was Chief Buffalo Child Longlands. He was a star of a film called The Silent Enemy, among others. And his life ended very tragically. he had disguised his racial background he was native black and white and when people found out he was part black he was shunned by hollywood and he died by suicide i had not heard of him before and that's just the intersectional racism in the U.S. is astonishing. Then the documentary examines Hollywood creating this magical, mystical idea of what it is to be Native and how a lot of people, especially white people, romanticize the idea of being Native. And Neil tells us about this certain type of like summer camp in north america i did not know that these existed um no i i did it's i yeah i don't i just

did not know about this where it's mostly white kids go and adopt this like perceived persona of what a native person is while they're at these camps. They play these like, quote unquote, tribal games, it's all extremely appropriative. And it keeps the idea of an Indian as a, you know, quote unquote, noble savage, alive and well. And Neil goes to one such camp. And he wonders if any of these kids have ever even met a native person, or if their image and idea of natives only comes from what they've seen in movies. And I would guess it's probably the latter for most of them. Yeah, well, you know, that lovely Austrianrian guy i think he was austrian he was like i basically learned everything i needed to know from watching two to three films about natives

i was like um oh that he got the mentality of the natives through watching those movies that they're just like i understand them yeah they're like these people who love their community but they can be savage when they need to or whatever and it's just like these people who love their community but they can be savage when they need to or whatever and it's just like super cool i love this i love this for us and you can really tell that that guy thinks he's doing something there like thinks he's being respectful i so i unfortunately i i i never um you know i think that because I grew up in Massachusetts, your trip, your like field trip is going to Plymouth Plantation. I don't know how or if it has been updated whatsoever in the, you know, like 20 plus years it's been since I took this field trip. But one of the places that you're taken is to Camp Squanto, which is very much in in step.

I don't because we were only there for a day. I don't the extremeness that you see in the dock was not something that I experienced, but I'm sure that it that is the model that that's built on. There's so many, too. And like I attribute that fully to like the Boy Scouts, you know, there's actually, so like the Kansas City Chiefs, the Chiefs are actually named after a man who, now I can't remember the name of the tribe, because I've like blocked this out of my brain. But it's like a camp, and it's a tribe of Indians, I'll probably think of it later on, as we're talking about something completely different. uh basically it's people who dress up and like non-natives who dress up and wear headdresses and go through all of these protocols because they just revere our natives so much right and it's it's so um is there i don't know if there's a

word for it but like barf inducing is the term that I'm gonna go for. Yeah, gross. It's gross. But it's just like, it's like, it just turns my stomach to see people dressing up and creating this narrative of again, like this concept of what they want natives to be. And they want to play that, you know, and it's just so vile. Like, yeah. Refusing to learn anything about actual Native people and culture and just like assuming some stuff and being like, well, I'm probably right about that. Well, I mean, again, you know, like every Native is a Plains Native wearing a headdress in the great southwest of this noble country you know so and to see that like still pretty uncritically presented to children who to your point as a very well may have never met a native child before and being taught that this is what native culture was and

not just that but the fact that like it felt like especially in at the camp where Neil went to and I'm sure where I went to on that field trip, like you're taught that this is a very respectful thing that is being done. And meanwhile, they're like that Camp Squanto exists in the middle of the Miles Standish, you know, state forest. And you're like, you know, it's just so clear what is happening but like growing up you know indoctrinated in that it the amount of unlearning is it's ridiculous but and it's just attaching a name and that's the thing that really gets me it's like even the history of squanto you know the people don't take the time to actually understand anything they just want the culture without the the struggle right for For whatever it's worth. Yeah, definitely.

Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and go through the rest of the film. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

To listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad-free, subscribe to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable.

It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you.

And it will call you a basket case. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Guess what, Mango? What's that, Will? So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius.

I know. That's why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion. It's about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it's called Earthquake House. Mango, I'm going to cut you off right there. Why don't we just tell people about our show instead? Yeah, that's a better idea. So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world's most

important questions. Things like, when did America start dialing 911? Is William Shatner's best acting work in Esperanto? Also, what happened to Esperanto? Plus, we cover questions like, how Chinese is your Chinese food? How do dollar stores stay in business? And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese? There absolutely is. And we are risking our lives by talking about it. But if you love mind blowing facts, incredible history and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune into part time genius. Listen to part time genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so we left off talking about this type of summer camp.

Then the doc examines films of like the 30s, 40s, 50s, where representation of natives shifts from what it was in the silent era, where the movies where the natives were heroes were not box office successes. Generally, white audiences were not interested in those stories. The stories they were interested in were Westerns, where white men playing cowboys were the heroes and natives were portrayed as quote unquote savages, marauders, you know, the enemy. So movies like Stagecoach starring John Wayne, directed by John Ford. Food to both these Johns. Yeah. A movie that was incredibly damaging for Native people, but like Hollywood used it as a blueprint, more or less, for what a Western movie should be for years and years to come. And so there's discussion of these movies,

representing Native people as uncivilized, you know, bloodthirsty killers. It had people not speaking real languages. Often it was English ran backwards. Clothing that the native characters were wearing was extremely inaccurate, not regionally or culturally specific. Yeah, I'm interested to talk about the side quest that Neil Diamond takes to talk to I think his name is Richard Lamont the costume designer who was sort of tasked with yeah with presenting uh presenting Native people over the years and being like yeah this is like a load of shit the way that we yeah that sequence was fascinating again it comes down to like this fetishization of the Plains, India and Indian and like the last real conquest for like America. Right. So like this is the last true effort towards genocide.

Like, I mean, we still are dealing with an ongoing genocide as Native people. You know, erasure is still very much a real thing. And but I think about like with some of the filming by one of them johns both of them johns in uh the southwest i'm like that's the home of like the uh danae people the navajos or like you know hopi people and like they're all wearing headdresses and you know uh to your point caitlin like it makes me lol because there's these uh elder navajo people talking about how they didn't they would go off script and say things in the movie i like i like live for this i'm like because again i don't speak every language i like barely speak three uh four but like i barely speak only four i'm really trying you guys um but uh yeah it's uh it's one of my favorite like delicious nuggets

to just think like in some of those movies how they were responding to these white actors that were so serious about their craft that was such a wonderful sequence when um yeah when neil diamond goes to visit two actors who had been in john wayne movies but had never seen the movies and we're telling him you know the behind the scenes details of like how poorly they were treated how dismissively their culture was treated but then translating what the native actors were saying you're a snake crawling in your own shit i love it so much like what a sick burn like and then cut back to the white actor being like no we will not go yeah you are wrong we are not right um can i tell you guys a story um like just a kind of a side off of that just so people think i'm a really nice person or a mean person either way.

Perfect. People ask me all the time, how do you say this in your language? Or like, how do you, how do you say that in your language? Like, so how do you say hello? Or how do you say the color blue? Right. So people will ask me and I'd be like, I'll always say like, Namulya and Patakawa. And they're like, okay, cool, cool. Right. That's how you say hello and then somebody would be like hey how do you say frog or like how do you say thank you and this is an on-running bit I just have for myself to bring me joy because um I just have a feeling that one day one of these like well-meaning white people will go to like a nehiyo crete elder or like a machif metis elder and say the mulia and patakawa and it translates

to that is not a potato and i just really like i know that that elder is gonna laugh like i know that the person they're saying that to is just gonna laugh and i'm like this is me doing my part to help with the language resurgence that that's technically in machif but like machif is um a makeup of like uh nehi oiwin uh anishinabek uh scottish slang and french because it's like our people were an amalgamation of these like fur traders and the indigenous people coming together and creating our own language and protocols and it's a beautiful thing to me but i also like the idea of just somebody walking around saying that is not a potato it's a great bit yeah it's not mean like it's just so stupid like which is important you guys uh that's really what yeah that's a top shelf bit that's great

oh i love it um okay so the documentary is also exploring how in a lot of these westerns from this era of like 30s 40s 50s you had uh white actors playing native characters often their skin was painted full brown face yeah yeah yeah um i like when the whites of the eyes are so white oh my god my favorite thing it's creepy it's disgusting and i also appreciate it when someone's like it's just like you have to laugh yeah you're like you're like this is what they did this is the best they could do and good for them they they tried so hard embarrassing yes i was on the fact that clint eastwood shows up in this documentary i'm like sort of like sir I found that surprising too because his politics are

I think this is like this well given this is 13 years ago this is pre him thinking I think there's a certain era in the last decade that we can all kind of lean to that allowed all of these really cool people to have their really cool opinions out loud

true it's true a lot of people have their really cool opinions out loud. True. It's true. A lot of people have been really laid bare. Yeah. Not going to lie. It was, it is a jump scare to see Clint Eastwood in a documentary where you're not prepared.

I mean, I'm just never prepared to see him, but right. You also have, you know, white characters, cowboys killing native characters being glorified and celebrated in these movies. Native women are more or less absent in Westerns and Hollywood cinema in general, with the exception of the, you know, young indigenous princess epitomized by pocahontas then the documentary talks about

one of hollywood's most famous native actors iron eyes cody who turns out was not native his parents were immigrants from sicily but he adopted a native persona both on and off screen and lived his entire life like that. And adopted Native children as well. He was married to a Native woman and had adopted her children, I believe. I don't know a lot about him other than, you know, our protocols are really different in each community and so like you know if he was adopted into whatever tribe whatever by those people those are their protocols that's their sovereignty sovereignty it's their sovereign right sorry it's hard for me to say that um to bring him in and adopt him as one of their own uh for me i have a really hard time wrapping my head around these things just because a lot of Native people aren't given that same proximity.

And he was an actor and he was acting Indian. But, you know, to be that obtuse, to believe that you are that, you know, he sought out the trauma as much as he sought out the victories that he received in his career. I was actually just in L.A. and I went to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and I saw that he was buried there and I was just not. Yeah, it's a point of like anger for me personally, because while I want to respect the protocols of the people that may have adopted him in or believe him to be one of them his son included who's featured in the documentary yeah it's something that you know is a very nuanced topic when it comes to cultural protocols and who is and isn't indigenous based on our individual communities and our and and our sovereignty so but i still don't like him so i

just you know that's my prerogative and i might get hate for that from some people but i don't really care about that because i'm just like super frustrated at the fact that it does still take away opportunities from people and he he also catered to the fetishization and the romanticization of this specific type of indian right and i mean i understand at certain eras in history of this nation that italian americans were treated very poorly but they got columbus day so right it's like you i i think it's like you can hold the discrimination that he he experienced as a Sicilian and be like it doesn't make anything he did afterwards like especially because to your to your point I say like I think one of the at least for like my parents generation one of the most you know

iconically false images of indigenous people they have is ironized cody the single tear commercial and i mean i cry every time i see someone litter so right you're just like oh my fucking god like playing into 20 000 stereotypes all at once and then on top of that for the actor to have not been native at all like it's a bit of a gut punch but again like that's the thing with like being native and being from particular nations you know we have our own protocols when it comes to adoption or recognition and I mean my people didn't adopt him so I don't really like I still get to have my my free space to be like well i believe in their sovereignty but i i respect native protocol and native law i don't respect people who take advantage of it put it

that way yeah and that's very fair especially for monetary purposes and yeah the fact that in the documentary they even say that you know in his home it was all just pictures of him dressed up as an indian and watching his own films i'm like that's a certain type of narcissist and like yeah and like that's to the level of like that's I think there might be like I'm not diagnosing but there might be some like mental health uh needs that aren't being met there either when you want to believe that's so bad that you surround yourself by it right yeah i mean and we it started to feel i don't know i i was reading his um he passed in 99 yeah and i just wanted to read how he was represented in you know big public um what's the article they write when you die oh no obituary

yeah that's it uh anyways fuck the new york times but the new york times wrote what felt like kind of a shady headline iron eyes cody 94 an actor and tearful anti-littering icon so no mention of um indigenous lineage because that was not true. I don't know. That was, yeah, I did not know. I was, I knew his, again, I think like speaks to why this documentary is so valuable. Like I knew his image and I didn't know that story. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, speaking of non-native people appropriating iconography and culture. Perfect transition. Thank you so much. The documentary then moves into the 1960s and 70s, where the idea of Native people became a symbol in the hippie movement, where there was lots of appropriation by mostly white people, dressing like native people, adopting the kind of like perceived free spirit, quote unquote, mentality, but of course, doing all of that very inaccurately. And then also around this time, some movies that were coming out seemed to be more sympathetic to the plight of the Native people. in the real world where at Wounded Knee in 1973, the American Indian movement faced off against the FBI and help came from an unexpected source, Hollywood. And then Neil meets

Sashene Littlefeather. We hear the story of how Marlon Brando arranged to have her accept his Academy Award for The Godfather as a statement to say, look at all the harm Hollywood has done against Native people. And so Sashene received this award on stage, she was planning to give a longer speech. The producer of the academy awards prohibited it and said like if you go if you talk for longer than a minute you will be arrested and like taken away in handcuffs absurd so so fun fact about that is uh it took years years and years decades for sashin to be apologized to for being put in that situation. The amount of hate that that woman received in her years of life is astronomically high. And I couldn't imagine having to carry that for so long. But the rumor is that John Wayne was so

pissed off when she was up there that he went to go rush the stage and people had to hold him back whoa yeah i also read that which is just like i don't know it's jarring you know and the thing is she did refuse the award on behalf of marlon brando that's the other side of things right so it's such an insult to this very prestigious community of um, you know, actors and elitists. It's, I mean, it's, it's fucking disgusting, though. I don't know, everything I've heard about John, I had no attachment to John Wayne whatsoever. Because I think that was one of the rare points my parents were like, No, these movies don't just fucking suck they're also really boring uh and we're not watching them but i mean just everything attached to his image feels entrenched in hatred

and violence like just a really vile icon even the clip that they showed of one of the movies and he refers to a man and like i don't even repeat it because it's so vulgar but like he he he refers to another brown man as a blanket head like it just made it makes me sick like you know and i'm just like and this was this was normal like when did this when was this normal like why is this normal and again it was vilifying and dehumanizing entire demographics of people to ensure that white Americans were deserving of this land. Absolutely. Fucking gross. And then seeing the,

I thought it was really smart in that it just makes this community look so foolish. When Neil Diamond stops off at like, whatever the John Wayne fan club oh group guys are such all these pathetic old men being like there's no such thing as a bad John Wayne you're like oh my god and they're all doing their impression and the walk and I'm just like uh like if that's your hero like i'm not losers you it really is like it was a really spectacular display of fucking losers with no critical thinking skills so although i did really enjoy when neil does like just a real hard cut for this uh documentary when neil diamond was like yeah i'll

take the draw with the fastest shooter and he's like count to four and neil just said four and pulled me drew on him they're like ah that's my guy right there he fucking rocks i really i i just love when like communities that are so removed from reality are i'm just like i'm not even going to provoke them let's just let them talk and they will incriminate themselves just by being themselves yeah gross gross gross loser shit yeah um okay so um also around this time in history the documentary examines that some movies portray native characters as being more multi-dimensional than they had been previously represented. Some of them even start to dismantle some of the stereotypes. Some of them show the humor of Native people. Some examples include Will Sampson as the character of Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chief Dan George in The Outlaw Josie Wales. There's discussion of how humor kept Indians alive and, you know, I don't know everything about every Native nation

on these lands, but one thing I know that brings us all together is laughing. And there's no better sound than making an auntie or an uncle just gut laugh, you know, and that's what we strive to do is just tease and make fun and all of that. And finding humor in things is like, honestly, paramount to our thrival as people it's the one thing that's pulled us out of the the darkest times you know and seeing that conveyed on screen is such an incredible thing yeah I really loved um I'd seen his the the set that they show of Charlie Hills from the 70s at the beginning I'd seen it before and like I just I really he's so cool and it also it like is feels like demonstrative of all of this

prejudice against Native people that he didn't have a fucking gigantic career and like it wasn't you know like Eddie Murphy like Steve Martin levels of famous he's so talented but just like the use of his work and then also in like clips of him at the time throughout are just like he's just so funny he's such a good comic and it's it's it feels gentle too like that's the other thing too it's like gentle humor where it's like silly but also like a little like pokey but still you know it's in jest it's good like it's not you know i think that's special wasn't it on the richard pryor show or something i believe so yeah yeah he gave him that space to to be able to come and do that i love that so much i thought yeah god i i i want

to learn more about charlie hill but yeah he did he uh richard pryor sort of put him on for the first time and then he went on to do sets on carson and then letter he did he uh richard pryor sort of put him on for the first time and then he went on to do sets on carson and then letterman and like but richard pryor got him started which i was like fuck yeah richard pryor yeah love it thanks then the documentary is like now it's time to talk about dances with wolves because come to the table. I still have not seen Dances with Wolves. You only need to see it for the incredible force that is Graham Greene. Absolute childhood hero. He's touched every level of entertainment that I enjoy.

He's hosted, like, cold case file shows. Like, he's done all sorts of stuff. And I'm just like, I could just listen to that man talk forever and also look at him because he's a cutie he's so damn handsome he really is he's real he's real handsome uh yeah no i've tried to i think i first saw graham green and die hard with a vengeance question mark oh um surprised that you have seen that movie jamie i think it was on tnt and i was sick or something i don't know how else do you die hard for the vengeance this is happening but that was that was my intro to graham green oh so good yeah no that is it's for dances with wolves like

definitely worth um the the graham green isms in there and his facial acting and just how talented he is. The doc talks about how this was a movie told from a white lens about a white man where native characters are still, you know, mostly like periphery backdrop characters, but those characters being more nuanced and fleshed out than had previously been seen in Hollywood. And again, calling particular attention to Graham Greene's performance. And because Dances with Wolves was a box office success. From that came similar movies that kind of ushered in more positive representation of indigenous people on screen, followed by a renaissance where the voices of native filmmakers and artists were finally allowed to be seen and heard in Hollywood. So this is where you have movies like Smoke Signals, directed by Chris Ayer. We covered it on the podcast not long ago.

And then Neil Diamond arrives in Hollywood. He meets with actor Adam Beach, who is one of the stars of smoke signals what a fun final destination too to write and then i went to adam beach's house you're like hell yeah that sounds great i'd like he's like and i can tell you the future you will be slipknot in the really really bad suicide squad movie for five seconds oh my gosh that was him like no it was him i was so bummed because like he hit a woman in that and i was like ah we can't have anything like i was just so upset i didn't know that was him oh no no it was my god i still haven't seen the power of the dog but i know that was that the last big thing he

was in i had i still haven't seen it i'm bad at watching movie sorry you guys it's okay and then neil diamond returns to igloolik in northern canada talks about a revolutionary inuit movie called the fast runner from 2001 which was very much a native movie told from a native perspective. Neil meets with the director, Zacharias Kunik, and there's a discussion about how that movie ushered in a new wave of film where the gaze and perspective was fully indigenous. And that's pretty much where the movie ends, where it's just basically ending on a positive note of like things are looking up and representation continues to be more and more meaningful and

prevalent and positive and the last i mean according to scholarly journal wikipedia neil diamond and and Zacharias Kunuk hit it off to the extent that, I'm like, I don't know if it's going to happen because it says as of April 2011, Diamond is developing a project with Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk about the 18th century conflict

between Cree and Inuit, which lasted almost a century, which I hope comes out someday. I would really like to see that yeah but i like that they connected and are collaborating yeah that also like speaks to the uh something that you know as native people like uh we probably hear more often than not like with the when it comes to war or like taking the land right when people were coming here uh that weren't from these lands it's like well the native people fought with each other i'm like yeah we did like we weren't these

like peaceful beings just wandering around you know doing whatever but i i really appreciate that you know even the stories of our nations are being shared um to where we are now like you know i have a cousin who's blackfoot and korean blackfoot we had a few battles kicked their ass one time real good but like you know other than that i'm like it's like these these are formative to our relationships now and um i that also draws a point for me that i kind of wanted to bring up today is um i love history i love history of native people i love people understand i love non-natives and natives of course learning the history of Native people. I love people understand. I love non-Natives and Natives, of course, learning the history of these lands and how the people interact with them. But I crave and pine for contemporary cinema. I'm so tired of the rhetoric of like Natives as a thing of the past. Like, I have not yet seen Killers of the Flower Moon. I don't know if I'm going to see it. I'm so glad that Theo Sage had a say in that movie. And from what I've read, you know, like, the actors did such a phenomenal job in it.

And it is what it was supposed to be for a movie directed by Scorsese. That being said, it's a history lesson. Where's the modern day lesson of why Native people are in the situations they're in? Why are they still living on reservations or reserves? Why are they still experiencing poverty? Why is there a reservation in Canada that's decades in of not having clean water? You know, like there needs to be something modern to tell our story, not just the history. Which seems like it's being done more in the tv space absolutely than in film right now and it would be like that should be represented across mediums um i think i think

that there is i don't remember if it was like chris air talking about his own movie but like smoke signals being successful felt like such a huge deal because there were so few movies about contemporary Native life that actually became national successes. There's a chunk in the documentary where, because again, it's going through sort of like decade by decade of like, here were the trends of Native representation in Hollywood in each decade. There's voiceover where it's like, in the 1980s, Westerns went out of style. And so it wasn't until the 90s again with Dances of Wolves that the Western came back. And it's just like, oh, Hollywood just couldn't think of any other genres that Native people could be in because westerns went out of style for

a decade or so that they just native people were not included in like hollywood movies and it's like storytelling at all the 80s you're just like what i was born in the i was born in the 80s and natives were still there in the 80s. I mean, this is actually something I had to unlearn because every native person I saw depicted in a movie, like when I was watching them as a kid, even into my teen years and stuff like that were movies either about first contact the settlers coming in making first contact or like westward expansion times either way it was like centuries ago nothing in the modern era which like does so much to erase native people from the modern world to the point where i was like they're a thing of the past native people exist alongside me right now and like for a long time like growing up in a very like homogenous white like conservative small town area not being around or seeing any

native people i was like oh they must be a thing of the past yeah which weirdly jim jarmusch made that point okay i was like why is jim jarmusch here i wasn't clear on it but i was like i like what he's saying but who invited him he just shows up he's just like he's ready did he just wander in like what happened um but he had like a kind of a good quote that uh when he was but he was talking about the um coming out of the silent era of how particularly once native directors writers actors who were portraying their own stories once that was phased out pretty effectively during the great depression that there was this distinct sort of cultural shift moving into the john wayne years of portraying native people as if they no longer existed and that that was like a distinct

moment or they were in the way they were in the way of progression and that's really like what I think most of the John Wayne era movies just did. Or they had to fulfill a trope. That's the other thing, you know, that really gets me is like, we can kind of dissect some of these two, but like everything from Pocahontas to like, Billy Jack still have such a weak. I have like, I have such a soft spot for that movie. I need someone to explain billy jack to me he's a cool kung fu indian okay he wears a really big hat with a great hat band and that's all you need to know i don't understand billy jack conceptually like but it's i don't know why i love that movie so much i'm just like it's because it's so terrible that i'm like okay this can pass

like this passes my checklist of like just ridiculousness um but the thing is is natives always have to fulfill a trope right because if we aren't performing the way that people want us to perform act look speak um and that even goes back to like they talked about the tanto speech like talkum speech that stuff like um I can i'm still can't remember it's like on the tip of my miko say tribe if y'all want to do a google search at some point uh yeah it's run by uh like it's an offshoot of the boy scouts and they actually have a podcast called like talkum or something like that where it's like we make them talk like they do that type of garbage like that type of speech it's like if we're talk like they do that type of garbage. Like that type of speech.

It's like if we're not fulfilling these like compartments of what people think natives should be. And it's like so difficult to differentiate tribes or it's so difficult to whatever. We don't exist to you. Right. And that's the part that makes me really sad is like, it's too much work. I think part of it and not to get super deep on y'all today, but like the acknowledgement by Hollywood, that's why all of the movies made by white directors are still things of the past is because the moment that that acknowledgement happens that we exist today

acknowledges all the atrocities they committed against us and then completely severs their um their self-appointed right to land um what do they call it? Resources. Like, people, like, again, people, and that goes back to even like Pocahontas, like, you know, her name wasn't even Pocahontas. It was like, I was like, Matoca, Makota, like, I can't say again, I don't speak all the other languages. But you know, it's expected that she was between nine and 11 years old yeah she died at 21 yeah like after being essentially kidnapped like yeah and human trafficked you know like but again this concept um i'll never forget actually talking about cinema with my like my dad uh he had picked me up uh after here's personal stuff after a visitation right with my mom when

i was a kid uh she lived in edmonton alberta canada and we lived in rocky mountain house alberta canada and my dad had picked me up and he took me to wataskwin also cree name there we go uh he took me to wataskwin after he picked me up to go take me to the movies because like i always had a hard time leaving my mom's and it was always very interesting dynamic growing up but we went to go see pocahontas and i will tell you uh my dad was like a bfi which i actually call a big fucking indian like he was just big and brown and uh he was when he when he got a bfi angry it was hilarious but he uh he was so mad he was mad he's like, she,

they made it seem like she was a traitor to the people and they made her sexy and all of these things. And he was all upset about it. And I'm just like, go home. And man, did I get a lecture on the way home? Like not to be like that.

Wow. It was pretty surreal. That's fine. I'm 12. Like, but I mean, I, that movie god that movie came out when i think i was like two or three years old with the first movie i remember seeing and i was fucking obsessed with it and it like in in a formative way that like certainly was not challenged in the way that I was schooled or grew up I didn't grow

up knowing Native kids or Native families and that move I think that that movie I think it's interesting it seems like every generation there is a hugely successful movie that wildly misrepresents and insults Native history that has a huge huge impact on just media in general and Pocahontas was I certainly that movie for me and so then when I think I was in high school when I had a great history teacher who sort of spoke to all of the wild historical inaccuracies that are presented in at that point extremely famous movie that was sort of my first indication that you know this this story that i literally was like one of my first conscious memories was completely false and not just but falls in a dangerous way there's like a i think there's a

level of discomfort too with again like these these movies being portrayed the way that people want us to be or want to see us as as natives and i have a lot of empathy considering the things i've experienced in my life but one of them is like i can't imagine what it feels like to know that everything work or listen or change their that narrative shifted even a little bit in their brains because there's discomfort associated with that and the discomfort that people feel from realizing that and again i'll just talk about what we're talking about movies that the way that natives have been betrayed is not true or not necessarily true like it's just a fragment of the discomfort we have felt as people since the onset of colonization so like i mean not that you know tit for tat i would never wish real negative things on anybody because i don't want to put that out into the universe but what i would say is with discomfort comes growth right and so like

re-evaluating our lens no pun intended as we see people through this like talking box like there there's my indian speak for the day talking box like uh so i'm gonna be uh i'm gonna be blacklisted for that one um but like but no like through any talking box whether it be your phone whether it be your tv whether it be your computer how we see things portrayed is somebody's narrative if they haven't experienced it how how genuine can it be you know and so that's why I'm so glad with this like again resistance that they're talking about 13 years ago at the end of this documentary. We're seeing it happen slowly but surely. Like a great film came out recently called Slashback.

And I'm obsessed with it. I will watch that movie like so often. Because it touches on everything that I would want it to touch on. And I'm not like a nook. I'm not from there. I don't experience those things. But to see like syllabics and to see language and to see face markings, it all like just makes sense to me. Like they went to that like village and they taught kids how to act. Like that's so great. You know, I'm so glad that

things like this are happening now that we get to tell authentic versions of ourselves. And it might make people uncomfortable, they might not understand it. But that's okay, too. Because again, it doesn't have to be for everyone. But it's also going back to what I said, like, there's going to be discomfort and knowing the things that you believe to be true, aren't. And I mean, speaking more to that, this episode is coming out the week of Thanksgiving, if not on the day. And the narrative that I learned in history class in elementary school about what Thanksgiving was just being so bogus and so rewritten to favor the colonizer side of the story and to say oh no there wasn't a genocide we it was us all getting along and that's there was a feast and it was nice but then the Indians turned on us right literally what I learned and right that that that myth includes like five different

popular stereotypes around native people like in one story that that a lot of kids learn when they're two three years old it's fucking ridiculous and i like just like conditions you into a colonizer mindset when you're too young to even realize what that is or what that means and i feel like it is like especially because the i mean the internet is fucking evil has great potential for you know it's like has surely ruined our mental health forever however it is like i i feel like speaking to your point i say about about like, it's like your responsive, I don't know, like if you were brought up with a colonizer mindset, you have the tools to unlearn it in a way that like, no other generation or point in history that has it been more true that

you have the tools to be able to unlearn it. And it's I feel like it's like your responsibility to do it, even even if it's uncomfortable, who gives a it and it's I feel like it's like your responsibility to do it even even if it's uncomfortable who gives a shit like it's and I I think too and one of the things that I've come up against in a lot of my um like whether I'm doing like community work or supporting people or I don't know like I like I hate to say what I do is work because like I don't consider it work but in education like I feel really bad sometimes when people are like you know I want to talk to Native people I want to find things out and they're very apprehensive to talk to me I'm like well rightfully so you know but at the same time I'm like there's got to be a level of like I don't mind talking to people about my experiences I can only speak to my own experiences

and that's why you know I specialize in very specific areas of Native history and then how that affects us in modern times with, you know, residential schools and the scoop and all of that. Actually, that reminds me, just to go back, there was one of those Thomas Edison films was Indian Day School. And it was like right before 1900. And it was about Natives being taken away from their families and like, you know, and being forced assimilated, you know, so I can only speak to those experiences. But what I like to do is still make space that I'm capable of to tell people about the hurt that we've experienced and still experienced by methods of TV and, and, uh, and movies, but it just, it's, it's going to take time. We can't undo what's been done, but we can learn new ways

of being. And so, yeah, I, I like to make space for people to educate, um, just again, from my experiences and in hopes that they're not just seeking out, like, I guess, like, would it be a trauma bonding or like trying to live vicariously through the trauma, right? So they could feel some proximity to it without experiencing it. But yeah, like, I think that the more we can share and the more that people realize

that they have access to information, you know, like there's going to be stuff online that's going to support either opinion, right? And that's, that's part of the problem with people not having a direction to go in. So like a little bit of compassion, if somebody doesn't want to talk to you, don't force it out of them. Because, you know, you'll get, you'll get an earful, I'm sure but um there's got to be space for for education and there's got to be space for native people to be able to tell their own stories for people to participate in that by even just watching absolutely i'm trying to think there's

there's so much that we could talk this this documentary is so like wonderfully dense essay are there specific movies or points covered in the doc that you wanted to cover i i mean i feel like i wrote down a million quotes of speaking to i i there was one i wanted to share about pocahontas um i didn't write down who said it i believe it was jesse winty, who's an Ojibwe film critic, who said about Pocahontas in a way that, again, just at many points, this documentary just really clearly distills what the issue is with a tremendously famous movie

that misrepresents Native people. And this one was, we imbue in her all of the wrong notions about what we want to see in a mythical princess. And all of the wrong notions about what we want to see in a mythical princess. And she becomes the embodiment of what we want to see, not in Native society, she becomes an embodiment of what we see in American society and of American desire. And that's, I mean, that's the white millennial's journey with the movie Pocahontas. I think that one of the first things that I recognize outside of the wild historical inaccuracy, then going into film school and media where there's all these issues of erasure in academia as well,

but just finding how much more significantly sexualized Pocahontas was. Not only has she aged up to seem to be an appropriate romantic interest, not only is there all of this implied consent, not only is there this implied betrayal of her own people, all of which is untrue, but the way that she's physically presented is as far more sexual than any of the white Disney princesses that you would see. And the historical context that comes with that of overtly sexualizing and, you know, alternatively sexualizing and erasing Native women from media entirely.

That makes me think about some of those old Westerns and like when the women would be in brownface, you know, it was always like the white man would be seeking out you know this uh i can't like i it's such a it's a slur so i can't even say it but like the sq word right um and like if anyone wants a piece of homework go look at what the actual origin of that meaning is it's incredibly vulgar but i think about it's always about like um and going in theme with the podcast here it's all about like being available to men right it's the use a use of by men right um even you know not to like go off too far off course here but like even with like the school marm right like the white women in it are just there to be of use for the men and to take care of the children and that sort of thing like there's no dimension right so when you see these native women in whether it be westerns or even like the

contemporary western like dances with wolves her her purpose was to serve the man right and be this like caricature of of indigeneity when like all stands with a fist was actually just a white woman you know who was stolen by these savages but then raised by them you know and it's this whole story and i really like that it was brought up that she looked like she was disheveled and she looked all these ways and like if she was actually living with them she would have communed like so they had to make her look savage right and like and it was the white man that saved her from you know whatever it's just because like also heaven forbid this white man end up with a it's like she had like two she was a two-dimensional character like she wasn't one dimension she had two dimensions because she lived with natives but

was still white you know that heaven forbid he would have ended up with a native woman at all you know like and so there's still a level of like um what's the word for it it's like just if it's like misogyny racism and again back to the fetishization of like what women are worth right and then you add you know add in that she's native or brown or anything you know and that's adds another level of like just utter dismissal of any any worth for sure actually if i had one criticism of this documentary is that i would have loved to hear more native women talk about what they've experienced, what they've seen as far as the representation of native women and

femmes in Hollywood and just their thoughts on it. Cause we have a, there's a few women who are interviewed, but definitely more men. I mean, and that's, that's the other thing too like i look at time frame and i look at like you know we always have to take an account of when things are made right because like a i don't believe in the thing that people didn't know any better they just choose not to um expand right you know or how like yeah um like the time frame can explain it it doesn't necessarily excuse it right does that make sense right yeah for sure um but i look at the time frame of when

this was made and there weren't a vast amount of major motion pictures being made with uh native uh actresses right like in in roles that weren't like you know freaking like legends of the fall like one woman for a few minutes. And of course, oh, what? She was serving Brad Pitt's character, you know? So, I mean, I think that this documentary, like kind of subtly without maybe knowing really helped shed light on that because yeah, there wasn't any, even in something that was so progressive at its time,

you know, we're at the point where we could have real engine part two and like look at where we are now time you know we're at the point where we could have real engine part two and like look at where we are now you know and what we've learned i mean there's a there are five twilight movies that came out since okay progress is not linear all the time and moving forward and because like you know the movie ends on this like really you know positive note of like representation seems to be getting better but then all these Twilight

movies came out but also like just another fun you probably already know this but like fun movie fact is that Taylor Lautner improvised Loca and they just kept it in there so that wasn't even no I did not know that. Yeah,

that, that is, that is one of the only parts of those movies I've ever watched. And I just enjoy it because I'm just like him and his big white teeth, just saying Loka does it for me. Those Lottner veneers. Nothing like them. Sparkle,

sparkle. Just, yeah, I would be that that was um i would love to see sort of an update i guess i don't know i i as someone that is always frustrated by like the idea of being like oh that thing you did a long time ago do it again for me uh but i but i would love to see sort of um an update in update in this format maybe it exists and I just don't know about it but maybe if it does I hope I didn't miss it you know like again not to dismiss Neil

Diamond like I and this is going to sound really silly to say it out loud but like people like him make me proud to be Cree because it is something that is so authentically indigenous to who he was and the environment he grew up in what he saw right he wasn't pretending to be a type of native that he wasn't right so like I appreciate everything he's done with with

that film and how he narrated it and how he story told through it. And again, like I said at the beginning, you know, when I was kind of talking about my experience with the film, it's literally the movie that I give for people as a stepping stone to understanding why their perceptions are the way they are of us. It's a bite-sized breakdown, you know? It's a positive catalyst movie that's what i i think of yeah oh oh that's a great description for like a genre of movie that's cool like i love things that are thought-provoking but it's a positive catalyst to like again both of you said like oh

we have to watch these movies from it or whatever this is like 13 years ago there's so much since then but like those movies are your little snack of maronis on your way to understanding Native people through cinema. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Is there anything else that you both wanted to touch on? I mean, we're at the point now where we realize that we're all on Native land, right? And the best way to understand where people are now is by understanding history. And so knowing where you are is a really good step forward. You don't

know any, like, I encourage people to not feel overwhelmed when it comes to understanding where they are. So like, you know, you live somewhere, they're like nativeland..ca you can find out whose land you're on start doing some research you know just find out where you are and find out whose land you're on find out if that tribe is doing anything find out how you and support is such a broad word but encourage other people to learn understand the initiatives being taken support them when they're trying to change legislation get land back, etc. You know, it can be very overwhelming, again, like I said, to find out that most of your existence and knowledge is built on lies about people and this false sense of security in

what the United States and Canada stand on. But, um, I mean, I promise it's worth, uh, it's worth learning about. Definitely. So that's, that's all I got. Oh, and not every Indian is a Plains Indian. We don't all wear headdresses and wear bonnets. I mean like my people do, but you know, that was, that was the last thing I wanted to actually, cause, uh, we we we started talking about the uh the costume design but just how um there there was a great quote i think also from oh my gosh i have so many notes jesse wenty yeah for you know how the uh the use of the um what am i thinking of around the neck um are you talking about breastplates or the finger necklace?

Yeah, the finger. Okay, I was like the headband, which one? Sorry, my brain no longer works. No, the use of the choker being strictly practical to hide like wires and different things where they're like, yeah, we completely manufactured the image of native people to the point where it was to hide shit that was just movie shit yeah the headband to hold on the wigs

and stuff like that yeah yeah i um i think that that's one of the biggest like takeaways to this movie the first time i saw it as a as a somebody who is a plains indian you know i i was like yeah i was like this this this, they need the identifier. So like, suddenly, everyone's wearing a headdress, everyone has a breastplate on, everyone has these long braids or whatever. And it's just, it was so it's so lazy. Like, it's just feels so lazy. But the thing is, is they just needed this, like, identifier. And like, while I get it, i think plains natives are beautiful and there's so many tribes like there's so many tribes that live in the in the great plains

i mean like why them you know like again like they're like but i again i wouldn't wish that fetishization on any other group you know so it's just it's it's very interesting to see that that was it was it's a caricature of indigeneity you know yeah and and what that does is just lumps all native people into one monolith culturally and they're in hollywood for most of these films made no attempt to include any like specific cultural signifiers for different tribes and nations and it also just strips natives of specific cultural identity and hollywood was just doing that for decades and white audiences were none the wiser they were just like oh this is this if I'm seeing it on screen this just must be it right yeah and then that just brings us

back to the point of like taking the initiative to learn and actually do the work put in the effort to you may have to read a book or you can Or you can do the other thing that I do, because again, reading is not my... I just can't focus in. So I just use my delicious little apps on my phone or even highlight text on my contutor. Yes, I said contutor. And I have it read it to me. Yeah, exactly. Everyone learns different ways, and there's so many applications to be able to facilitate that now yeah which is yeah just like another of all the elements of being alive right now that are fucking awful that is a good thing take advantage of the few good things we have yeah um yeah i just wanted to share that those quotes from richard lamont because i feel

like i mean it's very much what our show is about or has become increasingly more about over the years which is that like I think it's very easy to you know like I don't know argue that like I mean I think we still I still see this among people that I like know and like and respect and all this stuff but they're like it's just a movie it's not that serious it's just a movie which it's it's very rarely just a movie especially when you're talking about or erasing entirely communities who are rarely if ever given the opportunity to represent themselves with the same budgets with the same sort of institutional support and all of this shit it's it it is as goofy as so much of it is it is like extraordinarily important and whether we notice it or not it is altering our perceptions and that that jesse wenty quote that i uh really

they really kind of stuck with me during the costuming segment was that um the way that you know all of indigenous culture was just sort of turned into this also false representation of a plains native he says it's an ingenious act of colonialism robbing nations of their identity and grouping them and that just feels like this story even when it's you know seemingly well-intentioned you have this like brief moment in the 70s but even so it's majority by white directors who are showing native characters in a more empathetic light than film has in many years but through the white characters lens always well it's the outward racism for me that is just like portraying john wayne as the real american right and you know natives not being right and that's

just so yeah yeah something that still like it's I think it was like John Trudell, actually, who said the words in that he's an incredible poet. But he in the documentary, he talked about how like when they got off the boat, they didn't recognize us, you know, and I think that that is still the rhetoric that, you know, came through in cinema over the last hundred years. Yeah. Something also that he said that really stuck with me was the word Indian had never been uttered. The sound had never been made. Yeah. In this hemisphere, pre-settler colonialism, and like the idea of Native American in the sense that like America was a concept that was also brought over and he's like my people are older than both concepts yeah but we're still fighting so hard to defend that identity yeah and that's the thing like even the word Indian there's a lot of like um i'm indifferent

to it and everyone is entitled to their own uh standard with it like i don't really like i identify as indian uh slang now is letters and the end you know and it's just like a cute way of kind of like like you know vernacular changes in in certain demographics and groups of people you know i there's something always like he he said, like, we're the people. And this is really cool, just as like a kind of a nugget is, I have a lot of friends from a lot of different tribes. And like, most of the time, their names just translate to the people, right? Or something about the people of, right?

So it's always just people. And so like, same thing with Nehiyo, it's we're people, right? Or something about the people of, right? Like, so it's always just people. And so like, same thing with Nehiyo, it's we're people, right? And it's interesting, because I don't like, unless I'm hanging out with like, my Nichis, which are like my friends and stuff like that, you know, using the word Indian isn't really a thing that I do, because it's a point of like, both. Like, I just, I'm appalled by it. But at the same time, I'm like, it's a point of like both uh like i just i'm appalled by it but at the same time i'm like it's how i identify i it's a really weird uh two two truths can re exist at the same time for like how i feel about being an indian yeah because i don't want to be a native american again like america is not what i want to be a part of, you know, I prefer to be referred to as First Nations,

because my people were some of the First Nations here. But I am, like, when I introduce myself, you know, I'm not an Indian, I'm Machief, and I'm Mejio, and I'm German, thanks, Dad, for having a thing for skinny white women. But you know, like, it is what it is. That's the other thing, too, is like, I I laugh because I'm like, I acknowledge all parts of myself. And, like, I got to grow up with some pretty rich German heritage, too. And that was pretty neat. And that's the other thing that was touched on the movie, which actually is really important, is that John Trudell said he's like, you know, they're just trying to find themselves, these hippies, right? Because, you know, they were part of tribes. They were part of nations at one point.

And they're just searching for that piece of them that's lost that's why they latch on and i felt that because colonization has done a number on everybody yeah and uh just because we're the most recent you know we're feeling it in such a drastic way i feel bad for people who appropriate uh native people here because i know that they're just searching for something in themselves that they don't have an answer to and probably never will so not excusing what they're doing but again uh explains the behavior doesn't excuse it exactly yeah totally oh so so much there's so many nuggets in that still like i feel like we keep being like okay the episodes ever but yeah people watch the movie if you haven't and ask questions and ask questions about where you are and ask questions if those people have made films or have been in tv shows

or have participated in anything to do storytelling. That's what Native people are known for. We're storytellers. You know, like every Native nation has their stories of how we got to be here, why we shouldn't do certain things. And there's protocols around that too, which I guess is also varied by nation because, again, not an infallible fount of all things Indigenous. But, yeah, take time learn and explore and it's gonna make us better as people um to understand where folks are coming from because we can't undo what's happened but we can always learn new ways

of being absolutely you mentioned slashback are there any other movies you would recommend people check out by indigenous filmmakers i mean there's just there's so there's so many like just as a side note there's so many incredible like short films like the oh gosh what it was like the native american there's one that i gotta look it up right now it's gonna it's gonna kill me um but there's these like short films that i've been seeing um recently and they're pretty amazing um did i delete it i deleted it of course um but like the native american like film festival they have so many up-and- offer it in bite-sized pieces for lack of a better term, you know, like where you can just step away for 30 minutes and just experience proximity to somebody else, you know, through their language and their lens.

Beautiful. Well, Essay, thank you so much for joining us for discussing this movie with us and for helping us make history on this show. Yeah, covering a documentary for the first time history. But it was such an enlightening conversation. And yeah, I loved this discussion yeah I'm I'm so glad that you encouraged us to to cover this one specifically because I just I I feel like I have like a list of wonderful movies to watch I'm so excited yeah I and honestly I appreciate it because uh for me again I don't want to speak as anyone other than like a Machiavelli person uh so to not really talk about like a film that, you know, wasn't created or through the lens of like these people. It's hard for me to speak to that because I haven't had their lived experience and I don't speak their language and I don't know their stories. So I can't speak to like the beauty that's behind some of these films and TV shows and even music that's coming out. So to talk about something that I feel comfortable speaking on,

which is how Natives have been portrayed, I really appreciate and value the space to be able to do that and for you guys to bend your rules a little bit and make space for somebody. That's so important, and not a lot of places do that, even though we'd like to think we're progressive. So thank you for making space for me. really appreciate it gosh happy to do it come back and cover any movie you like drop dead friend okay hell yeah truly like whatever you that's

i can't imagine the rich feminist discussion to be had around drop dead i turned out fine i watched it all the time you know it's wild i always get the title of that movie confused with freddie got fingered because they both have fred in it oh my god i'm realizing that i was doing the same thing no no that that is a different one that's the tom green one the uh yeah drop dead fred is the like uh special friend i don't what are they called imaginary friends that's way too creepy god is there any movie with starring a character named fred who is not scary no five nights at i was just gonna say five nights of freddy's which i had a reservation to go see it on my amc a list stubs and uh then i looked up it's rotten tomato score and i was like oh it's low i i i don't think that anyone should

ever trust a rotten tomato score especially of a move of a horror movie especially of a horror movie directed by a woman i was really i was really stoked to see this is the biggest goofiest thing to start talking about the at the end of this episode but it's yeah directed by a woman named emma tammy who i haven't seen her work before but she negotiated in a percentage of profits then the movie has made over 200 million dollars i was like you know i i just i'm like well so even though it very well may fucking suck everyone's seeing five nights at fred drop dead fred five nights at freddy krueger's palace uh justice for Fred's no John's and Fred's are out I'm sorry

that's true it's 2023 almost 2024 I'm like are we what if and ultimately this is this very well may revive Josh Hutcherson's career and how do we feel about that I don't know I don't know fine with me I mean

do we in 2023 need i don't know i don't know fine with me i mean are we do we in 2023 need to revive josh hudson's career a fair question let's ponder that one and then uh get back to each other through yes email um okay as i thank you so so much for joining us. Hi, Marce. Does the Bechdel test and the nipple scale even apply here? Well, I think, like you were saying earlier, Essay, it does apply. I mean, I don't think we can really do a nipple scale for this because it's like you can't. But all three of us have kind of alluded to the fact that this documentary is incredibly valuable I'd never seen anything like it I learned a ton and I think we all sort of seem to feel that women were not the way that Native women are portrayed and the number of women included in the documentary

left something to be desired yeah yes I mean. I mean, there's always room for improvement. We can never think that the thing we do is finite and perfect, you know? So again, catalyst, right? Let's take it as a catalyst and think about if any of the young native female directors out there saw this at some point and said, hey, to i want to change things up you know that's that's all we can hope for for a film like this to educate and inspire definitely yeah so no nippies but not yet yeah this is this is a this is a this is an n slash a as far as i'm concerned yeah not applicable yeah although there are i will say that it's uh there are some graphic scenes especially with the photos and stuff like that that are quite

triggering or agitating with some of the the imagery of natives being harmed or like from both film and then the photos that were shown that those always um can be jarring yes yes indeed yeah genocide is jarring y'all um where can people check you out on social media check out your work etc on the interwebs, you can find me on Instagram at at Lawrence Welch NW. And then I have one of those invaluable link trees with all of the other things on them that you can find stuff about Creepy Tepe, which is... Yeah, tell us more about it. Yeah, Creepy Tepe is kind of amazing. Talking about Native storytelling. So my friend Ivana Yellowback and I get together through the internet and do live streams where we tell spooky stories from our nation.

We're both Cree. So we'll still tell stories of our people and the spooky stuff that goes bump in the night. And then our own personal experiences. And we're looking to do a series next uh where we have guests on that will be telling spooky stories from their nations uh keeping it creepy um putting the the korean creepy i guess oh perfect switch and then uh yeah and that's that's a lot of fun and we're building that up uh slowly but surely And then, yeah, with Tradition, again, I've said a few times that I'm not an infallible

fount of all things Indigenous. I don't really like pan-Indigeneity, as we've seen from the way I've spoke today. Not all Natives are the same. We're not a monolith. And so I created this art project to really showcase the differences in tribal nations through art as the outlet and so yeah be doing shows and different events with that to just kind of celebrate the diversity of indigeneity on this landmass so that's pretty cool but yeah um you can find me on instagram at lawrence welsh northwest uh nw and then uh online at turdish-ish.com and yeah that's that's where

i'm at amazing thank you again so much this has been wonderful we'll see you on the drop dead fred yeah it's like that. We just did just do like snippets of like every Fred movie ever. Like just include Fred Astaire in there too. Oh my God. And then Fred Molina. Okay. Oh, that's true.

Who goes by Freddy sometimes. It's complicated. You can find us on Instagram. Still on Twitter. it's complicated you can find us on instagram uh still on twitter sometimes we remember to post there at bechtel cast you can join our patreon aka matreon where for five bucks a month you can get two bonus episodes as well as access to our back catalog of about 150 episodes. And so, yeah, you can find us there. And you can also grab our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast. Grab some, you know, T-shirts, pillows, etc.

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