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[dramatic film score] [gunfire]

[narrator]: Growing up on the reservation,

the only show in town

was movie night in the church basement.

Raised on cowboys and Indians,

we cheered for the cowboys,

never realizing

we were the Indians.

- Soon, we will be gone.

Your civilization will have destroyed us.

But by your magic,

we will live forever.

[battle cry]

[gunfire]

- Do I have to cut your throat

to get it through your head? I'm a white man!

[laughing]

- You fooled 'em, Chief!

You fooled 'em! You fooled 'em all.

[loud cry] [gunfire]

- You know the only thing more pathetic than Indians on TV?

It's Indians watching Indians on TV.

[laughing]

[narrator]: I'm an Indian.

A Cree who grew up in one of the most isolated

Native communities on earth,

close to the Arctic Circle.

Up here, we don't wear feathers or ride horses,

but because of the movies,

a lot of the world still thinks we do.

I'm on a journey to make sense

of how Hollywood's fantasy about Indians influenced the world,

even Natives like me.

- You got to look like a warrior.

You got to look like

you just came back from killing a buffalo.

- But our tribe never hunted buffalo. We were fishermen.

[narrator]: But the myth of the fearless,

stoic warrior lives on.

[cheering]

- We'll never be able to change

the fantasy of who and what Indians are.

That fantasy will always be there.

We'll always be on covers of novels saying,

The Cheyenne Warrior!

[loud roars]

[crying]: I'm only three and a half years old.

[narrator]: I'm off to Hollywood,

4,000 miles through the American West,

in the reservation Indian's vehicle of choice, the rez car.

[engine starting]

- A rez car is probably

like a piece of luggage or something to other people,

and you kind of keep it together

with tape and with string.

And, you know, I have all sorts of people telling me,

"Oh yeah, I know that story about driving backwards,

'cause we actually did it."

I had a rez car, and, you know, the ignition didn't work,

so we had a screwdriver in the ignition,

and, you know, all sorts of stuff.

Nobody said to me that they had a car

with three wheels yet, but that would be a rez car.

[narrator]: These are the American Great Plains,

the setting for most of Hollywood's Indian stories.

I'm headed West

to the sacred Black Hills,

once the domain

of Chief Sitting Bull, and the legendary

Tashunka Witko,

otherwise known as Crazy Horse.

- Tashunka Witko, which does not mean Crazy Horse.

Tashunka Witko means his horses are spirited.

He was a great horse trainer,

and all his horses had spirit.

You could just see them prancing, yeah...

[narrator]: I've always wanted to ride a horse

on the open plains.

I finally feel like a real Indian.

This is where Crazy Horse outmanoeuvred Custer

at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

[battle cry]

Ever since,

Hollywood has been telling that story

over and over again, turning the battle into legend,

and Crazy Horse,

an icon. [fierce battle cry]

- Why you dirty, moth-eaten, cockeyed son of a rattlesnake!

If it ain't old Crazy Horse, chief of the Sioux! Ha! Ha! Ha!

[narrator]: Legend has it,

hekilled Custer.

[gunfire]

- There's a romanticism

in the glory to Little Big Horn, we defeated Custer

and all this and that, at that emotional level.

But, you know, within 15 years, our leader Crazy Horse was dead,

Sitting Bull was dead.

You know... And we were herded up.

[narrator]: Pine Ridge is the poorest Indian reservation

in North America.

These are the descendants of Crazy Horse.

Their Lakota Chief is

a direct descendant of Chief Red Cloud,

who fought alongside Crazy Horse.

So, this is where it happened?

- This is where it happened.

Right here, this is where Chief Crazy Horse

was imprisoned, here.

[narrator]: After surrendering here to troops,

Crazy Horse was stabbed in the back.

- So, I always think this is sacred ground to me.

Where our ancestors used to walk,

where they used to camp and live. Here.

[narrator]: To Native people, Crazy Horse

is a mystical warrior, just like in the movies.

- It was a continuation of the idea that Natives

were really great warriors,

that they were just incredibly skilled at warfare,

almost unstoppable, really.

- Yah!

- I've gotta say, Neil, you know,

I'm really glad that you're doing this.

For once, somebody's taking the time to let the...

to tell the... To tell the real story of Crazy Horse.

As he says in his song,

"Whenever you look, see the Black Hills,

"remember me.

That is our homeland, our sacred grounds."

[narrator]: Carved out of the sacred Black Hills

is Crazy Horse Memorial.

When complete,

it will be the largest statue to a human anywhere.

- And there'll be a 44-foot stone feather

on the back of his head. It will be carved

from 11 pieces of stone.

[narrator]: An ironic tribute to a man,

who it is said refused to have his image captured.

Most experts agree that every photo of him is a fake.

- Who was Crazy Horse?

Not who wasCrazy Horse:

who isCrazy Horse?

Who he is, is he's an idea,

he's an embodiment of the human spirit,

he's an embodiment of what can be done

when you're centered and balanced within yourself

as a human being, when you have a relationship

to the spiritual reality that you are a part of.

See, to me he's an embodiment of that.

- Shortly, there will be a blast.

[laughter and applause]

- It's a good crowd, yeah.

It's nice doing a TV shot. Maybe a couple more,

I'll be able to get in the movies some day,

and maybe change some of the movie clichés, you know,

you see everyday in the movies, where the settlers come in,

gets the Indian loaded, and wants his resources, you know?

"Say, Indian, which way does this road go?"

"Hmm! Road stay! You go!"

[laughter]

"You don't understand,

some day we want to live together and love one another

like brothers and sisters." [sound of gun cocking]

"We cannot love the white eyes,

it is painful to kiss forked tongue."

[laughter and applause]

[narrator]: Zigzagging my way through the American Heartland,

I'm hoping to make sense of the world's enduring love affair

with the Hollywood Indian. [chanting]

In the movies,

we're often portrayed as spiritual, noble, and free.

This image has captured the world's imagination.

This fascination with everything Native

begins with the very first explorers.

They encountered hundreds of nations,

rich and diverse cultures, languages, and beliefs.

The world is hooked.

- Native Americans were among the first subjects for films.

Thomas Edison shot silents about Native Americans.

This is in the late 1800's.

- Thomas Edison unveiled his Kinetoscope

in Times Square,

and it was a penny machine that played

"The Lagoon of Pueblo, Ceremonies and Dances."

And those were the very first moving images.

- There were more than a hundred

silents made involving Native Americans.

Very much 'cause this part of American history, of course,

was really still ongoing at the time that cinema

was really being born.

[narrator]: With populations dwindling,

most Natives are confined to reservations.

Then, as film is being invented,

the Seventh Cavalry, in revenge for Little Big Horn,

opens fire on the last

free community of Natives.

Three hundred men, women, and children

are killed at Wounded Knee,

on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

- That is a genocide that occurred, and the culture

wanted to perpetuate the idea that

these people are now mythological, you know,

they don't even really exist, they're like dinosaurs.

- The reason that Indians

were projected so heavily into movies

was the romance of the tragedy,

Greek, roman tragedy.

- The Western, as a form,

is a very open form.

It's a very pure kind of American metaphor,

a kind of frame

within which you can write or say

all kinds of things.

- I think that the cinema

was created to film First Nations.

At the beginning, they were really pioneers,

when they went West with the first movie camera.

If you look at The Iron Horse,

John Ford's film,

the promotion they did from that film,

they are telling you that the crew was living

like the pioneers, you know,

that they were going through the same experience.

- I read that in early cinema, they used to get extras

in the cowboy movies that were real Indians,

and they'd pay them with tobacco and firewater,

and they even used to have armed guards

to make sure these people

didn't get up to any treachery on the set, you know?

[inaudible]

[gunshot]

- Hey, I got brewskies. - Excellent.

- ...taking over the lead. They're gonna win this,

followed by Mountain Timber. [applause]

[narrator]: In the movies, all Natives are supreme horsemen.

At one with their horse.

But most of us can't even ride.

Perhaps that myth was born here,

with the Crow people of Montana.

[cheering]

The Crow are renowned riders throughout North America.

It's like they were born on a horse.

- The Crows, they love horses.

Without a horse, it's like losing a mom

or a family member.

When a horse dies,

some people cry.

[man laughing]

- There is a spiritual connection

between the Crow and the horse.

Because the horse came along,

and he saved a lot of people like me, you know,

from whatever.

It heals you. It makes you think

about something not yourself,

but even though you became like this with them, you know?

Here was still something that you could

open your hand to and let go,

something you gave away.

[narrator]: Fed up with seeing only white guys

riding in the movies,

Rod became one of Hollywood's top stuntmen.

- I'm trying to take it to the next level.

No longer am I just...

"How!", you know. Now, I can drive a low-rider

and shoot you with an Uzi.

You could wrap me up in a turban.

And I could be your worst nightmare.

[narrator]: He now trains young Natives

in the secrets of his craft.

- Come in, come in toward me,

come in toward me, now go!

Stay there, stay there. Whoo!

You see some good in some of these kids,

'cause you want to bring it out in them.

I'm trying to give that back,

because I can,

because I want to.

♪ Three hours from sundown

♪ Jeremy flies

♪ Hoping to keep You got it! You got it!

♪ The sun from his eyes

I don't just take in anybody.

If you can't ride your horse anywhere you want,

with your hands out to the side,

and still being in control, that's horsemanship.

You know, I'll put you on the edge,

I want you to feel...

[grunting] You know?

I want you to feel that. Whoo!

Take the hit, man! Take the hit!

[gunshot]

If you don't teach them,

they're never gonna learn.

And I take that in life, you know,

if I don't tell people about Indians,

they're gonna think we're all drunks, you know.

They're gonna think we all can ride bareback.

[narrator]: Throughout the silent era,

the Indian becomes not only a hero

but a Hollywood star.

- The output of the silent era was tremendous.

People in the silent days were going to movies every week.

So much was being produced.

So, it was natural for Native American perspectives

to be viewed.

- The portrayal of Native people on screen has changed

dramatically since the silent era.

They were a very popular character.

- Native American people directing and acting in films,

and they were bringing their viewpoints to the table too,

and those were being listened to. Everything was wide open.

It was really exciting times.

[narrator]: One of the most authentic films of its time,

featuring real Native actors, is The Silent Enemy.

- The Silent Enemy refers to starvation.

It's what is occurring to Native people

who are being encroached on,

then how are they conquering the silent enemy of starvation.

In the beginning of the film, it talks about

the demise of the American Indian people.

And you're talking about a film in the 1930's,

when the population of American Indian people

had dipped to around 250,000.

So, the idea of the vanishing American

was probably very real in people's mind.

So, here we have this chance to capture

the Indians before they vanish,

and what better way to capture them than on film.

[narrator]: The most famous Indian of this era

and star of The Silent Enemy

is Chief Buffalo Child Long-Lands.

- Buffalo Child Long-Lands, in the movie,

becomes the ultimate warrior,

the mystic warrior, the one who's going to help his people.

[narrator]: But Long-Lands lived his whole life

with a dark secret.

- He disguised his tri-racial background -

Indian, black and white -

and promoted a new image of who he was.

So he changed his name to Long-Lands.

So he took off from there.

What made him the darling

of the cocktail set is that he would show up,

his hair slicked back, dark skin,

in his beautiful tuxedo,

and everybody's looking for the Indian to appear,

and they don't see this very sophisticated man

in a tuxedo.

When it came out that he was part black,

of course he was shunned.

And nobody wanted to invite him

to any of their chic cocktail parties.

He ended up at a benefactor's home

in California, and ended up committing suicide,

because it was going to be revealed

about his true heritage.

- I was luckily enough to grow up in a time

when Native people were the cool thing to be.

And I remember going to parties where white people

would come to me and want to touch my hair,

and would describe themselves getting an Indian name

from an elder

at some ceremony somewhere they had managed to attend.

And it was always, you know, Dakota.

- Ah, choosing your animal name.

First, you choose your animal, which is your spirit,

the animal most like you.

[loud cry]

- I am the wolverine.

I am the wolverine!

[loud cry]

[narrator]: Scattered throughout North America

are summer camps like these,

keeping Hollywood's notion of the noble savage

alive and well.

[whistle] [cheering]

This is the event of the summer:

tribal games.

A time when boys become Indian braves at war.

- What is interesting is that

with all the bad images of the Indians,

so many people want to be Indians.

[chanting]

All the mythological apparel that the cinema

put around the Indians,

putting it in this magic land.

Everybody wants to be there.

And one of the ways to be there was to become Indian.

[narrator]: David Teufner comes all the way from Austria.

- I am here because I'm a counsellor in Camp Bominay.

I was chosen as a tribe leader, as well, for the Sioux Tribe,

which was a great, great surprise for me,

and a great honour.

♪ Welcome to the Sioux Tribe We've got scouts and braves ♪

♪ Fierce and mighty warriors never fear defeat ♪

♪ Sioux Tribe Sioux Tribe ♪

♪ Sioux Tribe Sioux ♪

♪ Pass the peace pipe to Crazy Horse ♪

♪ Pass the peace pipe to Crazy Horse ♪

- My knowledge is not great about Natives. Basically,

it's from two or three movies that I would have watched.

But through these movies,

I just got the whole mentality of the Natives.

It gave me a very positive perspective.

Like the unity, the family,

the unity, how they hold together like, brotherhood.

[narrator]: I wonder if any of these kids

have ever met a Native person,

or if their image of us comes only from the movies.

I hope I don't disappoint them.

[loud banging]

- On one side, I like the peaceful image of the Natives,

but, if necessary, the warrior image.

I'd say it's a very brutal.

The Natives had brutal times,

but I think it was not if it was necessary.

[loud chanting and percussions]

[chanting]

- Oh, no!

No, don't! [narrator]: In the 1930's,

the Indian is transformed into a brutal savage.

And America, struggling through the Great Depression,

needs a new brand of hero.

- There were a number of Hollywood films

that came out in the early 1930's

that followed in the steps of The Silent Enemy.

And the Indians were the stars of these movies.

But the interesting thing about that whole cycle,

they just bombed at the box-office...

Americans are not that interested in them.

- For the most part, in that decade,

we're looking at films where it's the savage,

it's the attacking marauders.

- Savage!

- That's my wife, Yakima. My squaw.

- Yes, but she's... She's savage.

- Si, señor. She's a little bit savage, I think.

- People lined up in droves.

Americans loved westerns. It's in our blood.

- Stagecoach is the iconic western.

It's the western

that all others were really modelled after,

and it's one of the most damaging movies

for Native people in history. - Hold it!

- You have white society inside the stagecoach,

and they are besieged on all sides by Native people,

by the wild of America.

[gunfire]

Those that are stopping progress,

those that are backwards, those that are vicious

and bloodthirsty. [arrow landing on target]

[coughing]

Stagecoach summed up and gave the opinion

of Native people for decades to the populace in the US.

That's how they thought of us, and it's because of John Ford

that they thought of us like that,

and that Native people may have even thought of themselves.

[mumbo jumbo]

- You pushin' up daisies! - Very interesting.

Whoa!

- That's when we developed the sort of Tonto-speak

that now, I think, is most associated

with the portrayal of Aboriginal people on screen.

[narrator]: But some films,

instead of using a Native language,

well, they just ran English backwards.

[dialogue in English is playing backwards]

Listen for the satanic messages.

- And as for the Indians,

they're usually white guys in red-face.

- White people playing Native roles,

I love it, because it's funny.

All the big stars played Natives.

- She can chew on my moccasins anytime she wants to.

- White guys playing Indians.

Chuck Connors as Geronimo.

It's like Adam Sandler as Malcolm X, you know?

- I remember once, we were on a set,

the director says, "I want a real Native.

Up front, I want to see the real thing."

Well, he couldn't find one.

[narrator]: Native women, on the other hand,

are pretty much absent in a Western.

- I knew I could count on feminine curiosity.

[narrator]: Except, of course,

for the Indian princess, epitomized by Pocahontas.

- Why is this woman,

the Disney Pocahontas,

such a profound image, a mythic image

for American people? What about children who know nothing

about Native society, and they see this young woman,

who has this one-shoulder,

skimpy dress that she's wearing,

and she has Miko, a raccoon, that she communes with.

Well, the reality of Pocahontas

is that at the time of the contact

with John Smith, and this event,

they say she was about nine years old.

So, we imbue in her all of the wrong notions

of what we want to see in a mythical princess.

And she becomes the embodiment, not of Native society,

she becomes an embodiment of American society,

of American desire.

- And Native men are reduced to a mere caricature.

[narrator]: Richard Lamotte,

one of Hollywood's biggest costume designers,

knows first hand about how Hollywood dresses up Indians.

- Here, a finger necklace.

I don't know what show it was,

but I'm sure somebody saw that in the research, you know?

Where they use body parts or wherever as trophies,

you know, made a necklace or...

If you look at the movies in the '30's,

Native Americans, I want to say, much like African Americans,

were sort of props.

Rather than to try to make them look regional,

everybody was identifiable. So, they weren't interested

in explaining the tribes. They said, "Well, they're Indians."

- Panello, this Indian's no Indian.

- If he's no Indian, why is he wearing a chicken for a hat?

[narrator]: So to keep things simple,

every Indian becomes a Plains Indian,

wearing the headdress, buckskin,

and the headband.

That's not a headband, is it?

- Yeah, it probably is a headband. Yeah.

- And it's probably just like the ones we were talking about.

The ones that never existed.

Headbands are an interesting thing.

Certainly certain Americans, Native American tribes

did use headbands, and wear headbands,

but the Plains Indians usually not. But working on a western,

stunt people are gonna fall off horses. You need to keep

their wigs on. That's the best way to do it.

So, Hollywood started putting headbands on Plains Indians.

Then, it just became a thing you saw in every movie.

Headband with an elastic back,

something you'd never find on a Native.

- This is actually, while probably not calculated,

an ingenious act of colonialism. You are essentially

robbing Nations of an identity,

and grouping them into one.

[narrator]: And the western forces all Indians

to live in the deserts of the Southwest.

[narrator]: John Ford shot so many movies here

that tourists come by the thousands

to experience the iconic American West.

And to pick up a memento

of America's greatest Indian fighter.

[chanting]

- Break out the grain! - Yes, sir!

Yes, sir!

- John Wayne is an icon of American cinema,

one of the great action heroes in history.

His actions, which are remarkably violent,

seem excused, actually, that this is

the exact appropriate behaviour one would have.

- In The Searchers, John Wayne literally

uncovers a grave with an Indian person,

a dead Indian person in it.

- Jorgensen!

- Why don't you finish the job?

- And shoots him in the face.

- Ain't got no eyes, he can't enter the spirit land.

Has to wander forever between the winds.

You get it, Reverend! Come on, Blankethead.

- He embodied the idea of the unstoppable American,

that the true American wasn't Native.

Native Americans were the ones that stopped

real Americans from settling their own country.

[ominous music]

[narrator]: I found two Navajo Elders

who were extras in some of John Ford's films.

Effie and James Etna were teenage sweethearts

when they met on set.

They're seeing these films for the very first time.

[laughing]

[narrator]: James can remember

how many of the Navajo actors

would go off script in some scenes,

joking around in their language.

No one ever bothered to translate what was said,

until now.

- If I do not return, general Quaint will find you.

And you will be dead, and all your people.

No! He is not a fool. You are.

[narrator]: After playing the bonehead savage

for so many years,

the Navajo get their sweet revenge.

[ominous western musical theme]

Right next door to the Navajo is a place where anybody

can be a cowboy for a day.

- You're all here on vacation. Come on out

and have a good time.

[narrator]: Even an Indian like me.

Here, they worship one man.

His swagger is screen legend.

His name: the Duke.

- John Wayne never did a bad movie, okay, partner?

You got it? All right, pilgrim.

And, now where's the little Cowboy Room?

I've got to do a wee-wee. Uh-huh.

- Everybody's always fantasizing

about an age when individuals were very strong.

The lone guy travelling across the wide landscape,

and dealing with all the elements,

everything from rattlesnakes to who knows what.

[rallying cries]

- Hold it there!

- There's always this kind of John Wayne guy that is sort of

the moral standard that represents America

and its moral values.

So it's a big hunky, white guy,

that's not real smart but that's gonna do the right thing,

and he's gonna drive the Indians away

and marry the school marm, and walk off into the sunset.

- You oughtn't to go too far, Miss Dallas.

Apaches like to sneak up and pick off strays.

[imitating John Wayne]: I'd like to thank you

for the use of your mustang, lady,

and apologize for the spur marks on the dashboard, ah-ha.

- Who's the quickest draw here?

- Who's the quickest? I would say maybe Windy Bill.

- Windy Bill. - Where's Windy Bill?

- That little fella right over there.

- I'd like to challenge Windy Bill.

- You bring it on, cowboy.

- Oh, the gun's stuck in here.

- Oh, it's stuck in there! [laughing]

You count. - Okay.

On four, one-two-three-four?

- Whatever number you want. - Four.

[gunshot]

[narrator]: As a kid, I didn't realize it was me

Bugs Bunny was killing off on screen.

♪ One little two little three little Indians ♪

♪ Four little five little six little Indians ♪

Oh-oh! Sorry, that one was a half-breed.

- Yes, sir, I'd sure love to kill me an Indian.

♪ White man came across the sea ♪

♪ He brought us pain and misery ♪

- When we were kids, we used to play cowboys and Indians,

I was always Gary Cooper.

♪ Run to the hills

♪ Run for your lives

- Those images do shape people's opinions,

and I think they put it at odds for me. When you're kids

and you're trying to play cowboys and Indians.

And if you're an Indian kid,

well, doesn't that mean you're gonna lose all the time?

♪ Run for your lives

- When we watch the Indians getting slaughtered

at the end of every movie,

well, my brother would refuse to watch it.

Every time that bugle went off,

and the charge started, my brother,

he was a year and a half younger than me,

he'd go like this.

And he wouldn't look, he wouldn't watch.

We'd come out of those theatres,

after the cavalry had rescued the white people.

All of a sudden, we'd hear, "There's those Indians."

And we'd start fighting, we had to fight them white kids.

Every Saturday, we knew we was gonna get in a fight.

[chanting]

[narrator]: I'm here to find out how Native kids today

would react to the kinds of westerns I saw growing up.

- So, what do you understand?

I want you to listen real carefully

and find out what they're talking about, okay?

[narrator]: The film is Little Big Man,

where an Indian massacre was made graphic and real

for the very first time.

- And I am the sole white survivor

of the battle of Little Big Horn.

- Little Big Horn was not representative

of encounters between whites and Indians, Mr. Crabb.

You see, the near-genocide

of the Indian...

- The near what? - Near-genocide.

It means

extermination.

[cavalry music] [gunfire]

- See, when they got off the boat,

they didn't recognize us.

They said, "Who are you?"

We said, "We're the people. We're the human beings."

They said, "Oh, Indians," 'cause they didn't recognize

what it meant to be a human being.

I'm a human being. This is the name of my tribe.

This is the name of my people. But, I'm a human being.

But then, the predatory mentality shows up,

and starts calling us Indians,

and committing genocide against us and... as...

As a vehicle of erasing the memory of being a human being.

So, they used warped textbooks, history books,

and when film came along, they used film.

You go in our own communities,

how many of us are fighting to protect our identity

of being an Indian? And 600 years ago,

that word Indian, that sound was never made

in this hemisphere. That sound, that noise

was never ever made.

Ever. And we're trying to protect that as an identity.

So it affects all of us.

It's reached the point, evolutionarily speaking,

we're starting to not recognize ourselves as human beings.

We're too busy trying to protect the idea

of a Native American or an Indian.

But we're not Indians and we're not Native Americans,

we're older than both concepts.

We're the people, we're the human beings.

- Thank you for making me a human being.

Makes my heart sad.

A world without human beings has no centre to it.

[arrow whizzing]

- Argh!

- The best part of any movie is when you heard phhht!

Oh, I love that. Phhht!

[arrows whizzing]

Phhht!

There's not an Indian within miles from here. Phhht!

You know, I just love that.

And I think long ago, when we had that,

we were never stressed out,

'cause if you see old pictures of Indians,

we were never fat, we weren't diabetic,

heart problems, 'cause what problems we had:

phhht! You know? We didn't need Dr. Phil.

Phhht!

So, I say we should bring that back.

You know, you get somebody from the IRS come over: phhht!

[narrator]: There is one face that has become

an American icon for all that is good about Native people.

Hollywood's most famous Indian actor,

Iron Eyes Cody.

- Iron Eyes Cody was a very interesting character.

All in all, he was probably involved

in close to 100 westerns.

- Now, when the battalion comes, this one won't go!

- He was very much the Plains Indian,

with the war bonnet, the paint.

He fit the image of what people thought

American Indians should be. So he became a symbol,

an icon for American Indians in this country

and all over the world.

- Some people have a deep abiding respect

for the natural beauty that was once this country.

And some people don't.

People start pollution. People can stop it.

[narrator]: But Iron Eyes, like many heroes,

had a secret identity.

- He was actually born Oscar de Corti, around 1904,

in Louisiana. His parents were immigrants

from Sicily and Southern Italy.

Back then, at the turn of the century in Louisiana,

Italians were not welcome.

There was a lynching by the Irish against the Italians,

so he grew up amongst all sorts of prejudice

against Italians.

He always loved American Indians very much,

and wanted to be part of them, even though he was Sicilian,

so he took on another identity.

He always wanted to be in pictures,

so he eventually joined Hollywood.

[narrator]: That's Iron Eyes, behind James Cagney,

waiting to be spray-painted Indian red.

- Behind the camera, he was very much involved.

His wife was Native American,

he had the whole image in his real life

as well as in Hollywood.

- What is it you want, Sitting Bull?

Put on the war paint. [men screaming]

- So, when the camera stopped,

he kept his identity and he became

what his image was.

He really believed it, and he lived it and he breathed it.

- You used a bow and arrow. You were pretty good with that.

- I'm an expert.

- DeMille used you in all of his pictures.

- Yeah, I did all of his stuff with the shooting

with the bow and arrow into the bodies and things like that.

I hunt with a bow and arrow.

- The older he got, the more he believed it.

I remember visiting his house,

and at that time, it was after his stroke.

His whole house was just

full of photographs, with celebrities,

of himself as an Indian. And he had a number

of videos going simultaneously.

I counted about seven, where he would be playing

his own movies constantly, all the time.

He believed he was what he saw on the screen.

[narrator]: Iron Eyes Cody died on January 4th, 1999.

Today, I'm meeting the eldest of his two adopted sons,

Robert Tree Cody. [knocking on door]

Robert Tree Cody? - Oh yes.

How are you? Neil? - Neil.

- Yes, good morning. [Native language]

- Kill! - There he is.

[battle cries]

[laughing]

That scene cracks me up where he gets mad.

[narrator]: To this day, Robert celebrates his father as Native.

- He was a man with a good heart.

He raised us to know the Indian way of life,

through our dancing and songs. And our language, too.

[soft melody on flute]

But, like I said,

I'll always stick to my guns,

I will defend my father's honour.

I will always defend that.

I lived with this man. This man was a great man.

My father was of Indian people.

[narrator]: In the sixties, everything is turned

on its head. [police siren]

The western was out of style,

and the hippies become Indians.

- The sixties, man, my daughter said,

"Well, how come you listen to people..."

The groups were Vanilla Fudge, Cream, Strawberry Alarm Clock.

Well, we had the munchies for 15 years, that's why.

We always tolerated them too,

because they always had the best smoke,

so you had to put up... [inhaling]

[ragged voice]: You know, like, I was like hippie man,

you know, like, pfft! I was like, Indian, you know,

in a previous life.

♪ Cherokee people

♪ Cherokee tribe

♪ So proud to live

♪ So proud to die

[narrator]: I've come to San Francisco,

birthplace of the hippie.

It's during the Summer of Love

that the Indian is at his grooviest.

Sacheen Littlefeather was there.

So, Haight-Ashbury.

- Brings back a lot of memories.

A lot of people have stolen the street signs over the years,

so it must have cost them a fortune to keep replacing them.

My first visit to Haight-Ashbury, here,

was in 1966.

People were dancing in the streets,

some of them were nude. [laughing]

[narrator]: Sacheen was raised Native,

but when she moved to Haight-Ashbury,

people's reactions to the way she dressed surprised her.

- People asked me, "What are you? Are you a hippie?"

And I said, "No, I'm an Indian. What's a hippie?"

So, I went to a place where the hippies lived,

to see what a hippie looked like.

And I said, "I don't look like that!"

I did some modelling at that time,

and they put me in these outfits.

- Really.

- People emulated the American Indian as a free spirit.

They always said,

"Oh, my great-grandmother is a Cherokee princess."

- One of the ways you could honour Native people

was to dress like a Native person.

So you have this, you know, extension of the headband,

and Native people were saying,

"Well, we actually don't dress like that."

They also created this fictionalized notion

of Native society, and it was supported

by the films they were seeing.

- They don't understand us.

So we do the best we can.

At least, we stay alive.

- Are you alive?

- They were, in a way, trying to imitate us,

but in another way, they were trying

to remember who they were.

Every human being is a descendant of a tribe.

So these white people, they're the descendants of tribes,

there was a time in their ancestry

when they wore feathers, all right?

And they wore beads, and shells.

There was a time in their ancestry, all right,

before this colonizing mentality came and did to them,

to turn them into the white people they are,

and then it came and did it to us. The very same thing

that happened to us happened to them.

- What's bothering you, lieutenant?

- Just human compassion, general.

I know who I'm fighting.

I'm not sure I understand why.

- It's emblematic

of one of the ways that people in the sixties,

Hollywood particularly, were now trying to deal

with their own legacy, which, I think, at this point,

was sort of hard to deny.

And they were coming to some sort

of reconciliation about it.

- Bloodthirsty savages on the loose!

Burning, killing,

violating beautiful white women!

It's not news anymore!

We're gonna take a different tack.

From now on, we're going to grieve for the noble red man.

- Native American people

became a great allegorical tool

to stand in for virtually any oppressed people.

- Savages! Animals!

- Apaches!

- So, you had Native Americans really standing in

for the civil rights movement, which was going on at the time.

- And I see

the promised land.

- It was a moment when Native Americans began

to assert themselves more politically, more forcefully.

- It was more than five months ago that a determined band

of American Indians seized Alcatraz island

in San Francisco Bay,

in their own demonstration for a better life.

Today, they're still there.

- This is a country where all men are created equal.

And it's the land of the free,

the home of truth and justice and liberty for all.

But we want to know why that doesn't apply to us.

From the time I went to Alcatraz,

I had been out of the non-Native world for six years,

trying to find a place, and there was just no place

that I really felt like I fit.

That's when Alcatraz happened.

We want to be treated as human beings.

We want to be looked upon with respect, as equals.

[present day John Trudell]: The main accomplishment

is that it rekindled the spirit of the people.

The spirit that is the people,

it was diminishing,

because Indians were ashamed,

because just the hostility

of the non-Native communities around Native communities,

and in its own way, the hostility of the media,

through the film, because these are subtle hostilities

if they're not blatant hostilities.

So something was diminishing the spirit,

and I think this activist period of time rekindled the spirit.

- That presented a new opportunity

to see Native people in a different light,

and you began to see filmmakers portray Native people

in a completely different manner.

- When policemen break the law, then there isn't any law.

Just a fight for survival.

- Billy Jack was sort of an action hero.

He was really representative of something we saw emerge

in the seventies, which was

a Native-style hero,

who would use physical violence to enact justice.

- I'm gonna take this right foot...

And I'm gonna whop you on that side of your face.

And you wanna know something?

There's not a damn thing

you're gonna be able to do about it.

- Really?

Kill that Indian son of a bitch!

- It's got a little vengeance in this or something,

the right kind of vengeance.

- Now I'm an Indian, remember?

And we're sneaky. We know how to strike silently,

in the dark.

- You couldn't help but just root for this guy

and what he stood for.

- Indian bastard!

[screaming]

[moaning in pain]

- In that one character, you have embodied

pretty much all of the seventies angst and anger

that one could in America.

- You worked with King, didn't you?

- Yes. - Where is he?

- Dead. - Bob and Jack Kennedy?

- Dead. - Not dead, brains blown out.

- So, he would come back and fight off injustice

using his feet and fists through kung fu and -

one of the most amusing character traits -

would remove his shoe and sock

before kicking the heck out of someone.

[narrator]: The Indians start to fight back,

not just in the movies

but in real life as well.

This is Wounded Knee.

For me and many Natives, it's sacred ground.

What happened here in 1973

would change the image of Natives in Hollywood forever.

It all started when the American Indian movement

faced-off against the FBI.

- Inside Wounded Knee, the Indians are prepared.

They have weapons and Molotov cocktails

to handle the armoured vehicle which federal agents

have moved into position.

[plane roaring by]

- The American government fought a war against us.

From the tanks that they used at Wounded Knee

to the way they used the FBI's paramilitary

and National Guards, we were fighting for our lives.

Our death casualty went quite high.

- We've bet our lives. That's something meaningful.

And the course of history and Indian Affairs

has been changed.

We were prepared to die.

We were in Wounded Knee,

surrounded by the military might of the United States of America.

Their field of fire...

It was very precise. The Feds...

- They had a sniper zone.

- And automatic. I mean, they had 50-calibres.

They meant business.

[gunfire]

[narrator]: Help would come

from the most unexpected source...

Hollywood.

- I was sitting at home one day,

and I got a phone call from Marlon Brando.

He was up for an award

for Best Actor for The Godfather.

And he asked me, would I go up

and represent him at the Academy Awards.

He said this would be an opportunity to explain to people

about the stereotype of Native Americans in film,

and also because of the Indian occupation

at Wounded Knee in South Dakota.

- We were inside Wounded Knee.

They're shooting at us everyday and night.

And there was quite a few people inside watching,

in the trading post, the Academy Awards.

[applause and cheering]

- The ceremony was due to start

about six o'clock in the evening.

That's when they rolled out the red carpet.

And I got dressed in my traditional Indian regalia,

but there was a man, he was the producer of the whole show.

He took that speech away from me

and he warned me very sternly.

"I'll give you 60 seconds or less.

"And if you go over that 60 seconds,

"I'll have you arrested,

I'll have you put in handcuffs."

- Marlon Brando in The Godfather.

[applause]

[The Godfather theme music]

- Accepting the award for Marlon Brando in The Godfather,

Miss Sacheen Littlefeather.

- All of a sudden, we get a call.

They start yelling, "Hey!

There's an Indian."

And so, I rushed in there

and saw Sacheen Littlefeather just get to the microphone.

And she starts making this speech.

- I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening.

And he has asked me to tell you in a very long speech,

which I cannot share with you presently

because of time,

but I will be glad to share with the press afterwards,

that he very regretfully cannot accept

this very generous award.

And the reasons for this being are the treatment

of American Indians today by the film industry...

Excuse me.

[boos and applause]

There was a round of confusion in the whole audience.

Everybody's mouths flung open.

Everybody was in chaos.

...and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.

I beg at this time that I have not intruded

upon this evening and that we will,

in the future, our hearts and our understandings

will meet with love and generosity.

Thank you on behalf of Marlon Brando.

[applause]

- And it was really an experience for me,

being lied about in the media,

people saying that I wasn't Indian,

people saying that I rented my dress.

It was a very tough time.

There were many death threats at that time.

- But it was to personally discredit her,

and at the same time, discredit the message

that she was trying to deliver

about the depiction of Native people in film.

But she was also talking about the atrocities

against Native people that were continuing.

- We don't believe we're gonna get out of there alive.

And the morale is down low.

And Marlon Brando and Sacheen Littlefeather

totally uplifted

our lives.

♪ And maybe Marlon Brando

♪ Will be there by the fire

♪ We'll sit and talk about Hollywood ♪

♪ And the good things there for hire ♪

♪ Like the Astrodome

♪ And the first tepee

♪ Marlon Brando

♪ Pocahontas and me

- I just have a dream that some day

I will get into the movies.

And then I will win an Academy Award.

And then I'll refuse it

because of the mistreatment of Marlon Brando.

[laughter] Thank you!

- How!

[chanting loudly]

- Will Sampson, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,

is one of those great performances

that is completely memorable.

- Raise your hands up. Up. That's it!

Up! All the way up.

- Everyone talks about Nicholson,

but you couldn't have that movie without Will Sampson.

He's the stoic Indian who really is silent for the movie,

but there's something about the way he portrays him.

It has a dignity.

- Ah, Juicy Fruit...

- Well, you sly son of a bitch, Chief!

God!

You hear me, too?

- Yeah, you bet.

- Well, I'll be goddamned, Chief!

And they all... They all think you're deaf and dumb.

Jesus Christ!

[laughing]

You fooled 'em, Chief!

You fooled 'em. You fooled 'em all!

- There was a beginning to see an ownership

over these very stereotypes. So, suddenly,

the fact that Will Sampson plays the stoic Indian

in the way he did in that movie, in some ways,

reclaims that character for our people.

It says, I will take it within me, and I will own it,

and I will give it a grace.

[groaning]

- The character in Cuckoo's Nest started out

as the stereotypical Indian.

And it rose to a level of humanity

as the picture unfolds.

He has to become the symbol of freedom

for America, really.

- You didn't see any soldiers in your dream!

And that means that...

That they can't see you now! - You think so?

- Yes! Yes! What else did your dream mean?

- I've never been invisible before!

- What we began to see in a film like Little Big Man,

was an attempt to portray Aboriginal people

as non-stereotypes, or at least attempt

to flesh out the characters that they could portray on screens.

- We're cut off!

- It doesn't matter! We're invisible!

- It played a lot with satire,

and sending up a lot of the stereotypes,

and it was also home to an absolutely brilliant performance

by Chief Dan George,

who played the elder in the film

with a sly, comic wit that I'm not sure we'd ever seen.

- Take care of my son here.

See that he doesn't go crazy.

- In The Outlaw Josey Wales, Eastwood in the film,

encounters this Native man, played by Chief Dan George,

and he's hilarious in the movie.

- I'm glad you stopped me when you did.

I might have killed her. - Oh, I noticed that.

[Clint Eastwood]: He had most of the humour in the film.

So that's what attracted me to the script in the first place,

is that the Indians were treated as people

with all different kinds of shadings.

- I guess you were right.

I ain't that old after all.

- He was an elder, but he wasn't pseudo-wise, you know.

He wasn't the cliché of the wise tribal leader.

He was kind of a guy who is adrift,

just like Josey Wales was.

- I'm getting better sneaking up on you like this.

Only an Indian can do something like this.

- Only an Indian could do something like that.

[gun cocking]

- He was the key that brought that warmth and authenticity

of who Native people really are,

because he had that sense of humour.

One of the things that I think is a very vital part

in our community, what has kept us alive, is humour.

Our ability to laugh at just, you know,

and it gets ugly sometimes,

and our ability to laugh at the ugly...

- Couple of horses, far off, moving fast.

- I don't hear nothin'.

- Gotta be an Indian to know those things.

- Humour is the thread that we weave our lives around

as Native people, because the humour has saved us.

Great spirit and humour, that's what's saved us.

- Comedy, the ability to make light

throughout this, was one of his great, great skills.

And it's Clint Eastwood at his violent best,

and yet, in the middle of that film,

there's Chief Dan George undoing a lot of the problems

that had been done before him in a single role.

[chanting]

- Usually have problems doing my act, you know,

because I know a lot of you white people

never seen an Indian do stand-up comedy before,

you know? Like, for so long, you probably thought that

Indians never had a sense of humour, you know?

We never thought you were too funny either.

[laughter and applause]

[narrator]: In the eighties, the Western goes out of style.

It wasn't until the nineties that the Indian comes back big.

- The nineties began as a decade

with theiconic movie that started it all,

Dances With Wolves.

[screaming]

- It was a box-office hit,

it picked up several Oscars, including Best Picture,

and people lined up in droves because it was a western,

and a very good one at that.

- The Native were fleshed out as characters,

allowed to be seen as more complete people.

They weren't just warriors, they weren't just peaceful.

- You there!

- So, it is a very sensitive and sympathetic approach.

It doesn't erase the fact that at its core,

the film is not a Native movie. It is still

a movie made from the outside of us,

and is about us,

and is meant to be sympathetic towards us,

but it isn't us.

- It's a story about a white guy.

And the Indians are the T and A,

but it gets promoted as being about Native people or Indians,

but it's not really. We're just backdrop.

- I thought, okay, here's a guy with a mullet,

and he conveniently finds a white woman in the Indian camp,

and when they show her portrayal in it... If she lived

with these Native people, she would have been well-groomed

and dressed like them.

They had her dressed like Wilma Flintstone,

with mud on her, and dishevelled, and lost.

- And then, to treat my nation

like we don't know how to fight.

[gunfire]

- Shoot the gun!

- We, the Lakota,

who are responsible, the first nation

to ever militarily defeat the United States of America

on the field of battle.

And Lawrence of the Plains has to teach us how to fight?

[crying]

[gunfire]

[cheering]

- Tatanka.

- But it's a brilliant performance by Graham Greene.

I think that beginning with that performance

that Graham Greene becomes legend.

- I had to learn Lakota.

[speaking Lakota]

I worked eight hours a day on it,

'till I was fluent in what I was saying.

I can't even speak my own language.

The only language I speak is English, and not very well.

- He expanded what it was meant to be a Native on screen.

And for us to see ourselves

is very empowering. And to see ourselves presented in the way

Graham Greene did it is especially empowering.

In many ways,

I think that performance is what has informed

so many of the films that have followed.

[narrator]: With the huge success of Dances With Wolves,

playing Indian meant box-office hits for Hollywood

and its stars.

Scenes, stories, and roles, designed to cash in

on the new popularity.

Being Indian was lucrative and cool again.

♪ Half-breed That's all I ever heard ♪

♪ Half-breed how I learned to hate the word ♪

[narrator]: Oddly enough, this resurgence of the western

bankrolls the birth of independent Native cinema,

and for the first time,

I hear my own language in the movies.

[Native language]

Even the leaders of the American Indian movement,

Russell Means and John Trudell, go Hollywood.

Cast in films like Thunderheart,

for a touch of Native street cred.

- It all gets real simple real fast, you know?

Subject resisted. Subject is dead. Get it?

- The government wiped out the political movement

by the eighties.

But what is emerging out of that is a cultural,

artistic voice.

And I see it coming,

there's more Native filmmakers, songwriters.

Out of all that Native creativity that's coming out,

we will find our voice.

- It's a good day to be indigenous.

It's 45 degrees in the sun. It's 8 a.m. Indian time.

- Smoke Signals was another of the films that came

at the end of the nineties,

that started the golden age of Aboriginal cinema.

This was a movie made by a Native guy,

Chris Eyre, starring Native people,

and not about what occurred 120 years ago.

It was a movie about nativeness now,

and that was a big breakthrough.

- You're leaving the rez,

going into a bold, different country, cousin!

- But it's the United States. - Damn right it is!

That's as foreign as it gets!

Hope you two got your vaccinations.

[laughing]

- Maybe all we need is a good laugh.

Maybe that's all we need as a people,

is a good laugh.

And I think Evan Adams, you know, was really

the centre of that.

- Nobody can help us.

No Superman, no Batman,

no Wonder Woman.

[laughing]

Not even Charles Bronson, man!

- I was watching Evan perform,

and I said, "Evan, what are you doing?"

I go, "What are you playing?"

Because I could never place it.

He had this Indian humour and goodness to him,

and he kept it the whole time we were shooting.

I said to Evan,

"What's going on, what are you doing here?"

You know? And he told me he was playing his grandma.

[narrator]: After crisscrossing North America,

I finally arrive...

Hollywood.

Living in the Hollywood Hills

is one of today's most successful Native actors,

Adam Beach.

- The perception of who we are in Hollywood,

that has a lot of respect,

because they are still fascinated with who we are

as a culture, as a people, throughout history,

and stories they tell through film.

Which is great, because it really teaches a lot of people

that, you know, we have something to offer to the world.

[gunfire and explosions]

[narrator]: In his starring role

in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers,

Adam Beach puts a human face to the stereotype,

the drunken Indian.

- Stay down, son! - Settle down, Ira!

- Settle down?! [screaming]

Ira Hayes was consumed by alcohol.

I myself,

I can't even attempt to drink when in a crowd,

because, "There's another drunk Indian."

[vomiting]

I've always called myself a child of an alcoholic,

so throughout that film, when you watch it, that's me,

it's not acting.

- Jesus Christ! He's drunk!

Goddamn Indians...

- Adam, I know he's very conscious

of the problems in the community of alcoholism,

and he'd been on the reservations,

and had done work in this area.

And that made him play it very well.

- Think I could see my mom before they ship me off?

Think I could do that?

[Adam]: Here's a human being

shedding human emotion.

No stereotypes, no stoic Indian.

It's just a young boy that wants to see his mom,

who lost a lot of his friends.

[narrator]: I'm at the end of my quest.

Back up north,

in the high Arctic community of Iglulik.

After travelling across America, the answers were here all along.

[laughing]

[screaming]

It's an unlikely place to give birth to a film

that has revolutionized Native cinema,

and gone on to win at the Cannes Film Festival.

Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner,

captures one of the Inuits' most cherished legends,

and brings it to the world.

- Atanarjuat, to me, was that point

where cinema was being altered to tell our stories our way.

And gone were the stereotypes of past,

really, in that one movie. There's none of that nonsense.

It's a gloriously sexy film

set in the Arctic.

[chanting]

- Wow, I've never seen anything like this before.

This is so pure in its soul.

- I always say that that's the most Indian movie ever made.

It's much more Indian than Smoke Signals.

Smoke Signals was made for Indian people,

but certainly for the overculture.

When you get a movie like The Fast Runner,

you're watching this movie and you're saying to yourself,

this is an inside job.

[narrator]: Outside of town, in his hunting cabin,

I meet the director of The Fast Runner,

Zacharias Kunuk.

I ask him why he makes films.

- I see it as talking back.

You pick up the camera and you start recording

our own history.

[grunting]

The stories that we used to hear when we were children,

what do we believe

and why we are here.

[screaming]

[narrator]: As his elders pass on,

so does their knowledge.

Zach is in a race against time.

- I had a problem.

I went into a romantic scene,

where two people are kissing,

and French necking,

but French necking is not our culture.

So we're making this story, I'm sitting down with elders,

asking them, "How did you get married?

What is Inuit kiss like?"

That's what we'll be using the camera for,

how much trouble they went through to get us here.

To capture it now, because 10 years down the road,

most of the elders will be gone.

[narrator]: The most compelling moment of this film

is when the fast runner runs.

- The enemy arrives and with lances,

tries to kill everybody under the tent,

and you have blood all over.

So, you have a metaphoric "naissance",

when out of this blood patch, this bare man arrives,

and runs freely in the sun.

That's the new cinema. That's the image

of the new Aboriginal North America.

- You have a Native guy

running across the ice, naked,

through the water, in the snow,

and as a director, I'm sitting there and I'm saying,

"That's not an actor, 'cause an actor wouldn't do that."

- Attar Ungulak, who plays Atanarjuat,

he knows the story.

He knows that he's gonna have to run naked across the ice

in this movie.

That's the iconic image.

There might be all kinds of other things

we can change in this film, but we can't change that thing.

He had a props genius

make up fake feet.

The fake feet tore up right away.

Running on ice,

it's not smooth, it's very abrasive.

So you've got to film that maybe 50 times.

The actor was so committed,

responsible to the requirement of his role,

which is an iconic legend in his culture,

that he was willing to do things that,

you know, most people,

even if they were willing to do, maybe couldn't do.

- Argh!

[panting]

[narrator]: A new age of Native cinema is born.

These films revolutionize the Native image for the world.

[chanting]

- Those movies, the movies made in the North,

are incredibly special.

And they are progress,

they're finally an Aboriginal cinema

that isn't someone else's. The gaze is ours.

But, at the same time, you have a whole

Aboriginal cinematic movement springing up all over the world,

where you have filmmakers in New Zealand, in Australia,

and filmmakers in North America and South America

making truly Aboriginal movies.

- You don't always have to make

great representations of Native people.

We're not asking for that. We're not asking to be,

you know, nobles or righteous or

good all the time. We're asking to be human.

- Indians aren't dead.

We're here, we're vital,

we've got something to say, we've got something to play.

- To see it come in my lifetime is very empowering

for our culture. We can't describe the importance now.

That'll be described years from now,

by critics probably far more important than me.

They will talk about, I think, what those movies meant.

[laughing]

- We're creative Natives,

and we're like the Energizer Bunny.

The mightiest nation in the world

tried to exterminate us, Anglicize us, Christianize us,

Americanize us, but we just keep going and going.

And I think that Energizer Bunny must be Indian -

he's got that little water drum he plays.

And I always say, next time you have a powwow,

have the Energizer Bunny lead the grand entry.

And after a few rounds, then we can get together

and eat him, because we never waste anything.

We share everything. [laughing]

It's all right, I don't mind laughs in the show, I mean...

Closed Captioning: CNST, Montreal