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For us, there's no happy ending.

They're not gonna wake up one morning and say,

"Okay, we're gonna give you back the land."

We got our suitcases.

We're gonna go back to England or Spain or whatever,

and then somehow we're gonna bring back

all the people we murdered.

It's not gonna happen.

My name is Frank Garcia Berumen.

My mother belongs to Huichol people from Northern Mexico.

And I still have my mom.

My dad passed away,

but he was a mestizo from the center of Mexico as well.

You know, I taught history, I taught English.

And what was missing was Native history,

basically here in this country,

it's black and white perspective,

politics, you name it, so forth.

When I was growing up, I remember the stereotypes.

And then, of course, Indians always going hoo hoo like this,

and then the Native women walking with tight pants,

you know, that sort of thing.

It was kind of just insulting.

My name is Hanay Geiogomah.

I'm a member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma,

and I am a emeritus professor of theater

in the UCLA School of Theater Film and Television.

I'm a writer, director, and producer,

and all-around champion of the cause.

I grew up in Oklahoma, in southwestern Oklahoma.

And there were a number of tribes in that area

who were on the different tribes,

we were like, there, we were like here,

and then all around here was white people.

It was like being in a kind of an open space

where you're just con constricted and,

but you knew that the white people controlled everything.

They controlled the rents and the houses.

They owned the houses, they ran the schools,

they ran the businesses.

Everything was theirs.

It was all, and they controlled the land base, everything.

And we were there as the Indians. We were the Indians.

We weren't part of them.

We were there and among them, but we were not them.

And they, the only thing that they've been good for so far

for us is to be characters in the cowboy and Indian movies.

And the cowboy and Indian movies was woo, woo, woo

and all of that.

And that's how we were seen.

We were seen as those kinds of Indians

when we were growing up.

Behind the barricade!

Get ammunition and plenty of it!

My name is Irene Bedard.

Irene is the goddess of peace,

the Greek goddess of peace.

And then I am also

on my father's side French Canadian, Bedard, and Cree.

He had a, his mother was Cree.

So my Cree name means iron woman, to the core of the earth.

I even had a birthday cake one year,

I don't remember, maybe I was six or seven

where it was cowboys and Indians.

And we all wanted to be the cowboys

because the Indians were the bad guys, you know?

I remember being chased down the street

by kids with baseball bats,

and I'd have to, you know,

run home with my little brothers and sisters

and the other kids on the block.

And it was part of being a part of a culture

that was so marginalized.

But, of course, what if we've been shown

over and over again, this violence,

this idea of this savage, this, you know,

not even so many after that, so many decades

of not even Native people portraying Native people,

so there's no cultural perspective that's being shown there.

My name is Darrell Redleaf Fielder.

I am Hidatsa and Lakota.

I was born on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation

in North Dakota, on my mother's reservation.

I have to say,

I am the first Native American hairstylist and makeup artist

in the entertainment business

that has kind of risen to the heights

that I have risen to.

I think when I look back, when I was a kid

and watching movies and westerns and stuff,

and I would see Native American people,

they were always portrayed as, you know, what's the word?

The bad guy.

They were always portrayed as the bad guy.

I mean, that was always disconcerting to me,

you know, even as a child.

Tie her up.

Savages! Animal!

Apaches!

I'm Tantoo Cardinal

and I was born in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.

Well, at the time that I was born,

my mother was called a half breed,

but that's since been changed and cleaned up a little bit.

So now we're referred to as Metis people,

and now we are included in the Constitution.

I was born in 1950, and at that time, we were still illegal.

Our language was subverted.

Our religious practices, for lack of a better term,

our communication with the greater force,

creative force was unlawful.

I grew up in a time when languages were disappearing.

People were ashamed to speak the language.

They were, my grandmother spoke to me in Cree,

and she spoke to relatives in Dene,

but I was not allowed to respond in the language.

And that was her way of protecting me from

what would happen to you if you were a language speaker.

I think from the very beginning

when Europeans came, obviously they had a different culture.

We had a different culture, you know,

different language, different religion.

And so the the fact that for them we wouldn't be subdued

by them, and we resisted, then they immediately said,

"Well, these people aren't civilized.

They're primitive and so forth," compared to them.

Especially the church.

They wanted to, like I said,

kill the savage and save the man.

And so the image has always been that we're savages,

that we're primitive, we're violent, you know,

we cannot control our violence.

We cannot control our sexuality.

And of course, throughout the 1800's, the press,

the media here focused on the violent character of it.

There was never any discussion about

what we're doing is wrong.

These people are, are human beings. We need to respect them.

At the end of the Indian wars, at the end

of the 1800's, they develop a nostalgia for the Old West,

after it ended.

There was Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show

and other shows that travel around the world,

basically romanticizing the Old West.

You know, typically you had the, the Indian trying

to stop the hero

and, you know, rape the white woman and so forth.

Near the end of the 1800's,

you had the motion picture evolution.

And one of the first images was Native people.

There was a short called "Ghost Dance".

The Ghost Dance and the Lakota people were dances

that they did within the reservation.

It was part of a movement of a nostalgia

because people were depressed, sad,

hungry and so forth.

And it reawakened their sense of identity.

And so this short film of "The Ghost Dance",

was the first image that I'm aware of Native people.

And some companies, like Path actually, had Native

performers and writers and so forth.

And so they were pretty popular.

They focused mostly on the, on mixed marriages,

about the defects of people that were somewhat tainted

because they had Indian blood,

that we couldn't control our sexuality

and violence, that kind of scenario.

Even popular stars, like Douglas Fairbanks Senior

made some of these films to tell the stories.

And, you know, so he was like a mixed blood.

They lived in the forest,

his tribe was gone, everybody was dead.

He had no friends.

But it was interesting because Fairbanks had a lot of

Native American performers.

People like Charles Stevens, who for a long time people

thought he was the grandson of Geronimo was one of them.

And he went on,

Charles Steven went on to a long, long career.

So yeah, I mean, even big stars were fascinated

by that genre for a while.

One of my favorite American Indian theme movies

from the silent era was "The Squaw Man".

I think a lot of people respond to "The Squaw Man"

because it actually has a real human story in it.

And the interesting thing that the difference was that,

that there was no dialogue, of course, it's silent.

So you were, you were watching the faces,

you were watching the emotions,

you were watching the physical expressions.

This is what a real Indian looks like without any special

effects or sound or corny dialogue that somebody wrote

that they would never say in the first place.

For a period about 15 years.

It was, that type of movies were very popular.

It reminded people of what they had lived through,

at least the older people

and what young people were learning now in school.

And that was basically gone.

Main part of America at that time,

this was in the early 1800's,

was on the eastern side of the United States.

And they sent Louis and Clark out to explore the rest of it.

And saw all, came all the way to the Pacific coast

and saw that America was a huge, huge, huge country

with all kinds of resources and everything.

And they went back and told, told the people in the east,

this is a country, we don't have to stay just right here.

We should be moving this way.

The Indians were there,

and they knew that the Indians were there,

and that they'd have to deal with them.

So the, arrogantly, the American government

took it upon itself to say, this is our destiny.

Our destiny is to take our country all the way

to the Pacific Ocean, and that's what we're gonna do.

And nobody's gonna stop us. Nobody.

The Indians aren't gonna stop us.

Mexico's not gonna stop us. France is not gonna stop us.

England's not gonna stop us.

We're going, this is, we're gonna take this whole continent

and make it America.

And whoever gets in the way, too bad.

And the Indians were in the way.

A Manifest Destiny was a belief.

It was like, I call it the tumor

of the Doctrine of Discovery.

The Doctrine of Discovery, believe it

or not, even today is a legal term.

It's a legal doctrine.

There's been many tribes that tried to get back their land.

But because they were discovered by Europeans,

and when they discovered, as in the land belonged to them.

They've lost many in the Supreme Court.

They've lost Supreme Court cases

because the Doctrine of Discovery still exists

in the courts in this country.

And so then Manifest Destiny simply meant that the belief

that they were destined by God

to expand from sea to shining sea.

And so then anything you did on the way of doing that was,

you know, God was happy with it.

And so then by any means necessary,

and that essentially was Manifest Destiny.

You can see this from the very beginning in the speeches

and writings of George Washington, you know,

Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson,

even Lincoln believed in it.

So, and of course, today we still have the image somehow

that of American exceptionalism,

like we're unique in the world

because of all the wonderful, good things that we did.

But the reality is, it's totally different.

In the United States,

the first Indian war was in 1789.

Every single tribe in the United States was attacked

by this country in the so-called Indian Wars.

And so the policy of the United States

was essentially extinction or reservation.

Several thousand people.

And they were forced to, to like go on wagons

and walk this whole distance through the wilderness

and across rivers and everything.

And many people died.

Illnesses, just accidents, was a very,

very terrible experience for the tribe.

They called it the Trail of Tears.

It's still very graphically present in the memories

of the Cherokee people, also the Creeks

and some other tribes as well.

But primarily for the Cherokees, the Trail of Tears.

Most people think we're in the past, that we don't exist,

because most reservations were initially

established in far away places,

so that settlers could not bump into 'em

as something bad could happen.

They stopped recognizing more than a hundred tribes

and so as federal reservations.

So it meant that the land then was they could take it,

which they did, which they did.

Now sometimes people think that it was kind of

a wonderful place to be and so forth,

but there was diseases, brutality, starvation

or near starvation and so forth, and people couldn't leave.

If you left, they would track you down and either kill you

or bring you back into the reservation.

So essentially that history was romanticized in US history.

It was justified.

Genocide was justified in the fact

that they wanted the land.

And more than 600 treaties were signed

with the United States government, but all were violated.

What happens in the 1930's with the Great Depression,

some people look for scapegoats, you know,

they want a catharsis of some sort, their anger,

to raise their anger.

Some people, I think resented

Native people becoming citizens, you know,

making them equal to white people.

1925, Native people were finally given citizenship.

And so then it was a little incentive for Native people then

to be able to participate in voting and so forth.

And so then in the 1920's, you have a series of some films

"The Vanishing Americans", you know, among others

that were positive in nature.

But all these films were box office failures.

So it wasn't wise to invest in stories about us.

We became minor characters, incidental characters.

And then essentially, whenever the story

or the screenplay kind of got boring,

they had Indians screaming and attacking people, right?

Basically faceless people with no life,

no culture, nothing else.

"The Stage Coach" is a very important

western for a lot of reasons.

Unfortunately, the stereotypes were more the same.

You saw this, hundreds of Apache attacking

a stage coach, screaming and so forth.

You know, the film made Ford an important director,

and of course, was very well directed.

The characters, the script, but the Native images

just are terrible.

Totally, completely terrible.

There was another movie called "Geronimo" in 1939.

It's kind of bloodthirsty image of Geronimo.

Geronimo has always been the most hated Indian

in the United States then, yesterday and today.

And so then it was, you know, a sensationalist,

violent prone film.

It had, it didn't have much of a plot

other than these blood thirsty

savages attacking stage coaches,

burning buildings, that sort of thing.

Geronimo's the most hated Indian ever,

because he was a leader of the last tribe

that resisted Manifest Destiny.

And not only that, there's a period also

where the last six months

of the war against the United States,

where the United States had 5,000 troops on the border,

and they didn't catch a single Apache,

didn't kill a single Apache.

So it was the fact that this Indian,

this savage could outwit West Point graduates, you know,

Civil War generals, which is incredible.

So it humiliated them in front of their own people.

And I think they never forgave 'em for that.

I think that part of the reason that the Apache,

not only Geronimo and the warriors, but the women

and the children were given 27 years in prison, you know,

is unprecedented, even for Native people, is part

of the reason they wanted to completely wipe 'em out

and move 'em away from any media or anything else.

And so I think essentially that's the reason,

and that's never gonna change I think.

That group of films,

you know, are very important.

But it also perpetuated basically some of the worst images

of indigenous people.

Presents for my brothers, the Cheyenne, the red hyenas.

"The Plainsman" was 1936.

There's a scene where they put on the women's clothing

and this, the brassieres

and whatnot, it is kind of comical, tragic comic.

Oh.

It was an attempt to undermine a community

that clearly was here before them.

And so the idea was to denigrate him,

and he did that by making him look foolish, childlike.

And stupid as well.

And bumbling, unable to understand

what the world was like at that time.

And of course, I mean the permanent stereotype of

that Indian males lusted after white women

and wanted to seduce them and rape him and the whole thing.

And so then that scene is troubling and shocking.

And, you know, and it's what makes it even worse is that

you start by ridiculing them

and then they commit this horrible, you know, crime.

All the policy kind of perpetuated

that attitude that, you know, Native people were primitive.

They weren't civilized, even the institution

that you think would be supportive, the churches,

they wanted to civilize you.

The boarding schools developed in the early 1800's

precisely to, you know, what they called

to kill the savage, but save the man.

And so then kids in reservations were taken

by force from the parents, sent to boarding schools

where many of them died of diseases and so forth.

And this went on into the early 1900's.

On the one hand, we have a Navajo

as we find him in the desert.

Few of these boys

and girls have ever seen a white man.

Yet, through the agencies of the government,

they are being rapidly brought from their state

of comparative savagery

and barbarism to one of civilization.

My mom went to the boarding school

and it really harmed her in so many ways.

And also, you know, in that way harmed all of us.

Its intent was to rip families apart.

And it worked, you know,

and it, we, even though we stayed together as a family,

there was a lot of harm that came out of

that multi-generational trauma.

I have a picture of her

and her twin sister, Ruth, my Auntie Ruth, you know,

and they're in their parkas

and they look like they, how they looked, you know

how we all probably looked for tens

of thousands of years.

And they're so cute.

You know, they're, they were little.

And they were plucked, taken away, far away to a village

and separately because they didn't want them to be together.

That was part of it, is separating families

and abuse, all, physical, mental, emotional,

spiritual, sexual abuse.

My mother went to boarding school

and my aunts went to boarding school.

I didn't, luckily.

You were humiliated.

And in the boarding schools, severely punished.

I spoke with an old woman

who told me that she was caught speaking her language.

So the nun made her kneel in front of the class

and put a brand new clothes pin on her tongue,

so that the students would see what happens

to you when you speak that devil language.

My father was, went to boarding schools in,

when he grew up in the '20's and '30's,

they were all sent to boarding schools.

So he was traumatized in his life by that, where he had

to cut his hair, he couldn't speak his language,

and the nuns would beat them if they spoke their language.

And now it's coming to light in the stories

that we're seeing exactly what was happening and the trauma

and the abuse and the murder

and everything that has gone on.

But this has been going on for 500 years.

It's kind of ironic that people came here

for religious freedom being one of them,

and the first thing they do is get rid of our systems

and outlaw our relationship with Creator.

We had to be Christians,

and that was the intent of the residential schools.

Get rid of the red and leave the man.

Didn't even mention women, you know.

I think that World War II was, more than World War I

an opportunity for the US armed forces, essentially to,

to recruit high numbers of Native people,

emphasizing that they were warriors.

And so that was a huge attraction.

It was also a way to get out of the reservation, you know,

with poverty and alcoholism and whatnot.

And so then many of them did,

and many of them became highly decorated soldiers.

That experience definitely changed

them at the Native community.

They saw the world, they saw, you know, good

and bad white people.

They saw the Nazis,

they saw people that were not like them.

They saw good people, bad people, you know,

different geographies, different countries, languages.

And so then that made a huge, huge difference, you know,

and when they went back home, you know, they were honored

by their tribes for fighting for the medals and so forth.

And also I think that it, very instrumental

in developing a Native identity within

the United States of America.

Because before it was,

you belong to your tribe in the reservation,

but most of them had never left.

So you had huge numbers

of Native males join the armed forces

in all theaters of war.

Ira Hayes was a Pima, a small tribe in Arizona.

And he is famous, of course, for being one of the Marines

that raised the flag in Iwo Jima,

who were battle in the Pacific in World War II.

During his service, he suffered a lot

of discrimination and racism.

He was often called chief, you know, they did the tomahawk,

you know, kind of shined.

When he came back, basically he started drinking.

He had trauma and also, you know, survival guilt.

So he drank himself to death.

And also the fact that of course many were traumatized like

Ira Hayes, you know, that never got the proper attention

or the proper opportunities because of racism and so forth.

It made us stronger.

And it made 'em, you know, give 'em a real sense that

they were part of this country.

And now that they were citizens

and veterans, they had the right to demand things

and they had representatives

and that they had to hold 'em accountable.

That also did a lot in the sense

of public relations in the media.

They began to cover us more

and see us as human beings rather than the screaming guy on

the horse kidnapping women and children and so forth.

So sociological factors were instrumental in Hollywood

also becoming more conscientious about

how they portrayed us as well.

And so then what happened with, I think

how Ford changed his attitude about Native people

was the fact he served in the Pacific

with a camera unit, and he saw himself the heroism

and contributions of Native soldiers,

especially the Navajo.

And so I think that really softened

and informed him to have a different attitude

about Native people.

And there's numerous stories about when he went

to Monument Valley to film, he would use

as many Navajo for the film.

And oftentimes he would also was very generous,

you know, would contribute to charitable organizations,

to housing, to clothing and so forth.

So it really changed him, I think,

profoundly the World War II.

And I think from that point onward,

he looked for a script that would make, be an apology.

It wasn't until "Cheyenne Autumn", he was able to do that.

You made one of the most heroic marches in history.

You deserve to go back to your own homeland

and stay there in peace.

I'm sure that the people of this country will understand

and will agree when they hear the facts.

Now, will you take the gamble?

The people, who will tell them?

Who will tell the people about Fort Robinson?

I will.

I promise you.

That Ford was romanticizing the soldiers.

I'm not saying that all of 'em were a 100% evil,

but I mean, they did what they did.

And so then, but the reality is it's much worse than that.

There was just so many massacres that everything from,

you know, opening the stomachs and scalping

and so forth.

For each son, I take many.

Scalps.

And that's the other misconception

that Native people did not scalp until the English came,

because the English used that against the Irish first.

And then when they came here, they perpetuated.

There's documents or speeches about the fact that

they have scalping of Indians in their policy

because they refused to obey the king.

I mean, who, you know, they had no idea who that guy was.

So anyway, but, but yeah, no,

the difference between history

and reality is totally different, totally different.

And of course, Hollywood perpetuated

the romanticized perspective of this.

Of course.

So here they are,

the dog faced soldiers, the regulars,

the 50 cents a day professionals riding the outposts

of a nation.

From Fort Reno to Fort Apache,

from Sheridan to Stark, they were all the same.

Men in dirty shirt blue

and only a cold page in the history

books to mark their passing.

But wherever they rode and whatever they fought for,

that place became the United States.

Basically, you know,

perpetuating the same thing.

So it isn't until like the late '40's after the war,

and some of the, you know, people realizing inhumanity

of man to each other

and some of the newer directors and Anthony Mann,

Donald Davis, people like that, you know, who are younger,

a little bit more to the left

and radical, who then begin to, you know, create this body

of film, beginning with "The Devil's Doorway", Anthony Mann.

The boys outnumber us, Father.

The war's over, all the wars, even yours.

The country's growing up.

They gave me these stripes without testing my blood.

I led a squad of white men, slept in the same blankets

with 'em, ate outta the same pan,

held their heads when they died.

Why should it be any different now?

You are home, you are again an Indian.

But it's a film without hope.

You know, I think it's a, in a lot of ways a truer film

because it is, it was hopeless, you know, by the end

of the 1800's, you know, Native people were broken,

they're totally broken.

You know, alcoholism taking its toll, suicide.

We didn't know what to do.

And so then it's a film that is, it's hard to watch,

at least for me, it's heartbreaking.

Where are the others?

We're all gone.

The major challenge

in Native American made films are several.

One of them is the money. Where's the money coming from?

If you're making a film that's gonna be critiquing,

you know, the US government

or the armed forces, you know,

some studios will not fund that at all.

Another thing is that if you don't have a big star,

you can't green light it.

And so that at that point, is white actors took over,

and so then they had to have the red face

to make them some somewhat believable.

Obviously the racism against Native people working in film.

It was the fact that the always, the excuse was

that these people can sell tickets.

These people are stars.

So we get some unknown Native actor,

it's not gonna be a success.

And so that was part another logic

of the Hollywood studios at that time.

Well, I think that Hollywood, in the beginning,

in the '30's, '40's and '50's, they were just doing

what they thought they needed to do in order

to depict the indigenous people.

I mean, they didn't hire indigenous actors,

so they would use Caucasian actors

and paint them, their faces red

and put bad wigs on them and stuff.

A lot of times Hollywood romanticizes Native Americans,

because there's something noble about us.

So maybe there's a little bit of,

kind of white guilt in there a little bit.

There's some anecdote that some actors had told me.

I mean, older actors that, you know, live way back,

that a lot of this dialogue that they said

was in a sense, like a catharsis for them,

they were cussing out white people, right?

Or threatening them.

And for them, after all they had lived through,

was something that they initially didn't want to do,

but for a moment, they had some sense of power.

If I do not return, general Quake will find you

and you will be dead and all your people.

No, he is not a fool. You are.

And I think that what also is important along the way when

it comes to looking at Hollywood

and indigenous people in Hollywood,

there was an actor in the '60's,

his name was Eddie Little Sky.

He was Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

And he was in every sitcom, in every,

he was on "Gilligan's Island", on "F Troop".

He was, anytime there was a Native person

or Polynesian person, they called him.

And he never gets a lot of talk

because he was, he was from, he was Lakota,

he's from my people, but he was very prominent

in the '60's and '70's.

He was in "Soldier Blue", he was in

"A Man Called Horse" with Richard Harris.

And so there's a lot of, few people

that were prominent back then

that have not been really given their due, I feel.

Also one movie that really impacted me

as a child was "Billy Jack".

That movie showed the protagonist, which was Billy Jack,

as this ass-kicking, like martial artist

that was gonna kick your ass if you messed with him.

Morning, Billy.

You're illegally on Indian land.

And when that movie came out, it, for Native people,

it was the first time that we saw ourselves as being a hero.

Drop it or die.

And during that time, in 1971, when that movie came out,

that was when the American Indian movement was happening

and Alcatraz was being taken over by AIM and stuff.

So there was a lot of social change happening

for indigenous people then.

And there was a lot of unrest in America,

especially with the government and Native people.

It would be fitting and symbolic

that ships from all over the world entering Golden Gates

would first see Indian land

and thus be reminded the true history of this nation.

Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay was a major media event

because it was Alcatraz, known all over the world,

a prison island and the Indians occupied it.

There were, the Indian community in, the activist Indian

community in the Bay Area got together, said,

"Let's do something that will get people's attention"

and that, they got out in the boats

and went out and occupied Alcatraz

and the World Media came there

and filmed it and told the story.

And people all over the world became aware

that there were Indians that had issues, that had concerns,

that had protest reality happening.

Hollywood's impervious to whatever it doesn't want

to get in its way, and it can just ignore something.

And something as enormous

as the Black Civil Rights Movement can,

Hollywood can just keep going forward

and not let it affect them,

but what it did for the American Indian,

is that it galvanized the attitudes

of like my generation saying,

"No, I am not as dumb as you think I am.

No, I've become educated and I know how to write

and I know how to think and I know what's right

and I know what I see and I know what's wrong

and I can, I'm starting to understand

how y'all are doing this and the way you're doing it."

My first place that I lived

in the States was Atlanta, Georgia.

And because my husband at the time

was a, was an organizer in the Selma

and the Montgomery March.

So that was my first inspiration about fighting

for our humanity.

That was my first influence being in the States

and hearing about the people.

And there certainly was a need for us.

And it seemed like it was an energy

on the planet at the time.

It was everywhere that, it was the,

the planet was just scrambling and moving for change.

And so were my people.

But my first foray in into the world of justice

and change was with the Black Civil Rights Movement.

A lot of had been done

to American Indian people in this country

and also to African Americans as well.

The Vietnam conflict started happening

and civil rights started happening.

And so some sense of, we've gotten some of this wrong,

we're gonna have to make some adjustments here

to this reality, not because we have to, because we should.

There was a sense that that came into some

of the storytellers, awarenesses that the Indians had

had a very bad deal, that they had been wrongly portrayed.

For me, the movie that I think did the most for me

to really open up a vision of

what Indian reality could be in a movie

was "Little Big Man".

I don't understand it, Grandfather,

why would they kill women and children?

Because they are strange.

They do not seem to know where the center

of the earth, these.

In "Little Big Man", there was

a character named Little Horse

and Little Horse wore woman's dress

and did woman's things.

And that is considered two-spirit, you know, the balance

between men and woman in one person.

Don't you remember me?

This hurts me in my heart.

I'm two-spirit.

People don't understand what that is,

that what a two-spirit person is,

is it's, you're called gay.

And traditionally two-spirit people

before colonization, before the Spanish came

and everything, two spirit people were very,

very important in the tribe.

They held a high place in the society and in the clans

and in the rituals and in the ceremonies,

because they were, we were thought of a person

that was a spirit in transition,

going from masculine to feminine or feminine to masculine.

And the idea at that time, you know, in,

when "Little Big Man" came out, that was a really big deal.

I think that that "Little Big Man" was a good,

good reflection at that time, 1971 of that,

because Vietnam had happened and all of this.

And it was starting to see.

it wasn't because there was a sudden awareness in Hollywood

that, oh, we've really been, done a bad job to the Indians.

We must do whatever we can to correct that

and make it better.

The interesting thing about the movie,

it was the Wounded Knee Massacre, essentially.

The Wounded Knee Massacre took place in 1890 in

South Dakota in a place called Pine Ridge,

which now is part of the Pine Ridge Oglala Reservation.

And what happened there, there was a group of Oglala

or Lakota who went to

where the Seventh Calvary was stationed.

They were going to surrender.

There's even photos of some of the Oglala

with the white flag, dead in the ice.

And so what happened, the Seventh Calvary,

that's Custer's old outfit,

massacred them, more than 250 men, women and children.

And 19 soldiers were given the Congressional Medal of Honor,

which is the highest medal

of valor you can get in the United States.

And so today, Wounded Knee, the site is,

in the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

And it's a place of, you know, a sacred place

of mourning and commemoration as well.

I think most people didn't quite remember that

because it's not taught in school.

I taught for many years in high school

before I taught in college

and in the history books,

at least in California, they call it a battle.

I think most of my people, especially at that point,

late '60's, '70's,

were probably been completely ignorant.

They might have thought simply it was just

a massacre that was created for the film.

So I think that if people had known better

or more about Native history, they would've been able

to connect both events.

The Indian, as a subject matter, the Indian

as a human being, was considered

to be like, just available.

We could do what we want to with this storyline, this image.

"Soldier Blue" was, that was around the time

of the My Lai Massacres in Vietnam, you know,

when the army was just going in

and killing innocent people in villages.

That was the metaphor, I think,

that the same thing had been done to Indians,

the same atrocities and tragedies.

And it was a way to actually show that.

They couldn't show footage of My Lai

and make that into a movie.

But they could do it with the Indians

because they'd always done with Indians

what they wanted to do with Indians.

And that was a battle,

and people became aware of it,

you know, and there was a court martial and, you know,

and the media, you know, all over the place.

Big, big scandal.

And of course, you know, raping, killing,

desecration of bodies, all that stuff.

Of course, the top brass was never touched.

The real blame was the people on the top.

They had done this for many years in Vietnam and elsewhere.

And this country had done that

for the last century and a half.

During the '70's, there was kind of an awakening.

A lot of civil liberties

were being questioned by a gen,

a whole entire generation coming out of Martin Luther King,

seeing that there was this generation that could understand

that equality was not what was truly happening.

And that had to do with women, it had to do

with people of color.

You know, there was also the two-spirited movement.

There was a lot going on in terms of social justice,

economic justice, environmental justice.

One of the experiences of that was Wounded Knee.

In 1973, there were hundreds of people that went there

to make a stand, you know, about

what was happening on the reservations.

The American Indian Movement came up with Russell Means,

who was the leader of the American Indian Movement,

Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt,

and many others who went to Wounded Knee and made a stand

and the FBI and then the military moved in.

The leadership of the Oglala

Sioux here present in Wounded Knee, have declared

Wounded Knee an independent country.

From here further, if any spy

from the United States of America is found within our

borders, they will be dealt with as any spy in a time of war

to be shot before a firing squad.

It called attention to that, to land issues,

to cultural issues, to spiritual issues.

That too became a worldwide media event.

And it brought enormous attention to the cause. Enormous.

But it also at the same time,

generated in my generation energy and positivity.

And we can do it. And we're, we don't have to be afraid.

We don't have to hold back.

We don't have to give in all the time, we can be heard.

We have to be intelligent

and smart to do it in a way that they will listen,

but they can, we could get through to them,

and that they can't just ignore us.

The Wounded Knee incident, which was a shootout,

and then subsequently, subsequently, there was

of course the trials of all these activists.

And then Marlon Brando had been nominated for an Oscar.

So he asked a friend of his Sacheen Littlefeather to come up

and refuse the Oscar

and make a speech about the racist treatment

of Hollywood towards Native people.

And of course she was booed.

Hello, my name is Sacheen Littlefeather.

I'm Apache and I'm president

of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee.

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.

She shined a light, an international light on

what was happening out there.

And I think she saved people's lives. I really do.

She was also black balled from

Hollywood for the rest of her life.

She had a very difficult time after that.

No one wanted to work with her.

And then basically the media kind of lost interest.

It just kinda went on.

And so I think part of the problem is

that we, you know,

our story doesn't have a happy ending

and the land will never be back, given back.

And like I mentioned, even reservation line

is under trust ship of the federal government.

So that's part of the issue. It's a sad story.

And not too many people want to read, hear about sad story.

They wanna read about success stories.

So that's part of the problem I think.

I think it scared the heck outta

Hollywood for a while at least.

And I think that they felt compelled somehow

to do something, otherwise they're going to be, you know,

besieged by protestors or whatever it may be.

And so I think that the, some doors began to open.

The 1970's when things like,

like "Cuckoo's Nest" came along, '75 I think it was.

Will Samson had been, was out here already.

And he had done some small parts.

- Get the guy. - Get around chief.

The Hollywood community,

they said, oh, that big Indian, that big Indian,

we need a big strong Indian, get Will.

It was Will Sampson himself that made

that moment important

because he was who he said he was.

And he was from the people.

The language was all through his body and culture.

And that's who he was. That's who he came from.

Somebody else stepping into that role,

same script, everything.

It wouldn't have had the impact.

It was his integrity that made the impact.

Son of a bitch, Chief.

Can you hear me too?

I hear you good.

Well, I'll be god damned, Chief.

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

So right there, we had a role model right there,

somebody to look up to.

And the the other guys that wanted

to be actors had Will Sampson as the role model.

There he was. Will can do it, I can do it.

And so slowly, slowly the, the process

of Indians themselves learning how to better, better do it

to get cast besides just being cast,

because you could ride a horse nicely and you got long hair.

But to act, to actually have a role, to play a part.

It all begins with the stories, right?

Who writes the stories?

You know, who's gonna direct the movie?

You know, are they gonna finance a film about us

when there's no big star?

You know?

And so those are kind of the,

some of the challenges that we face.

"Dances" was, people liked that movie

because it had a real Indian cast.

It had, those were real Indians.

So it was a whole,

almost a sensual difference in seeing these real Indians

talking and doing things

and interacting with a white man

who was intelligently clever enough to be simpatico

with the Indians and to get along with them.

And they weren't his enemy, per se so there was

a feel good experience.

And that was one of the first major Hollywood movies

that portrayed us as human beings.

It had huge impact.

Lot of people watched that movie

and they watch it over and over again.

We come far, you and me.

I will not forget you.

Native people are storytellers.

That's how we pass down all of our history

and all of our knowledge is through storytelling.

It's only natural that Native people tell our own stories.

It's time for us to tell our own stories.

And I'm happy to see it happening in Hollywood

and to be a part of it.

When I think about a Native film,

I think the first Native film that came out that was really

a seminal piece was "Smoke Signals".

It was from our perspective

and it was a really touching, beautiful story.

- Hello? - Hello?

My name is Susie Song. I've got bad news.

Arnold Joseph passed away.

- Oh. - I'm his neighbor

here in Phoenix.

His stuff is still in his trailer and his pickup's here.

I think somebody should come get it.

I'm making arrangements for him. I'll call again.

Thank you for phoning.

In "Smoke Signals",

it was so beautiful to be able to go

and do this with a Native American director

and, you know, produced and directed and written

and a full Native cast who were the protagonists.

And this was a first

and it was wonderful to be a part of it.

And it was wonderful to portray

this different kind of woman, you know,

she was strong and powerful.

Hey Victor, you ever hear the Gathering

of Nations powwow in New Mexico?

No? Well, your dad and I, we went to check it out last year.

All sorts of Indians there, thousands of them,

more Indians than I've ever seen in one place.

I kept thinking, I wish we'd been this organized

when Columbus landed.

"Smoke Signals" is kind of a cult movie

and it, people have their own copies

and you know, people are stealing their copies.

And it is, it's a very much loved movie

and it was kind of essential

to come along at the time that it did.

You gotta look mean or people won't respect you.

White people will run all over you if you don't look mean.

You gotta look like a warrior.

You gotta look like you just came back

from killing a buffalo.

But our tribe never hunted buffalo. We were a fisherman.

What?

You wanna look like you just came back from catching a fish?

This ain't dances with salmon, you know.

Thomas, you gotta look like a warrior.

There.

That's better.

And so during that time, there was a,

again, another rising expectation that, you know,

wonderful things were down the road for us.

But, and they had some talent.

We had talented actors, actresses, you know, directors,

Chris Eyre and so forth.

I believe that America is big enough.

It's powerful enough, it's rich enough, you know,

to really deal with the American

Indian in a way it should be done.

A movie like "Skins" was initiated

by Chris Eyre director, producer.

So he had the funding,

personal and otherwise to make the movie.

And I think it had been a movie that had been

long in the waiting to be made.

I think that there's a general consistence

among Native actors all over of what needs to take place.

You know, the, for a real film about us, by us and so forth.

And that was a one.

At that time, all Indian religious ceremonies were banned

by white men because they were afraid of them.

Now up on the western end of the Cheyenne River,

Sitting Bull resisted.

So they shot him.

And Bigfoot knew that he

and his people had to flee the area immediately.

So they came to Pine Ridge

and when they camped out,

the Wounded Knee troopers of the Seventh Calvary-

That's Custer's old command.

Seventh Cavalry was called in

to escort into the reservation.

There the soldiers disarmed 'em.

The Knee was nothing but a damn

massacre of women and children.

And of course you had that Graham Greene character,

a Vietnam vet

who suffers trauma and also survival guilt.

Well, maybe there is one thing you could do for me.

What?

Help me blow the nose off George Washington at

Rushmore, you know, for people.

Just give 'em a good laugh. Maybe that's all we need.

Where do you get these ideas?

Why he wants to smear George Washington

and Mount Rushmore is

because the Mount Rushmore is in the Black Hills,

which according to the treaty of Fort Laramie,

was going to be belonging to the Lakota forever

and ever in perpetuity.

But of course they took it.

And of course, you know,

they built the monument

and I think that ever go to Pine Ridge,

you could see the monument from there.

And so it's like you have this four presidents watch,

and Jefferson, who were the, the planners, you know,

who sit there, the policies of genocide for Native people.

They had Lincoln who was considered the greatest president,

you know, and did great things

for African Americans and commendable.

But for Native people it was just the opposite.

You would've thought that he would help people

who need the most help.

But he didn't, you know, during his presidency

there was continuous wars.

You know, we had the largest mass hanging, you know,

in history of, of Native people.

And of course, you know, Teddy Roosevelt, who again is kind

of bigger than life,

but if you look at the national parks he set aside,

he kicked out the Native people from there first.

And so then, and he used to brag that, you know,

the only good Indian is a dead Indian.

But of course this is part of it of the male education

that we get in this country.

And public education at least, that we're not taught

or people are not taught about us, the true history.

And so the, the obsession of the Graham Greene character is

that he need, he wants to do something to those people,

especially the founder.

And that's part of obsession.

All our ancestors are waiting

for you up there, Chia.

It's a heartbreaking film.

When I went to see it, I went to see it

with mostly Native people and most of us were crying

'cause it was just so vivid, so real.

We come from a very resilient culture.

We're still here and we are making our mark now,

and we're doing it clear minded and clear spirited.

It was predestined many, many years,

many, many, hundreds of years ago

that the seventh generation, which is they're born now,

are the ones that are going to lead the way for us

with a clear mind, a clear heart, and a clear spirit.

So it's important for us,

and I'm an elder now, to help them

and uplift them in order for them to lead the way.

We all came from drums and songs and stories

and relationships to the earth.

And we used to all sit around fires

and tell stories to our children.

It's just now that I do it on film and television.

And that I even gave Pocahontas 13-year-old voice?

Because she was only 13 when she threw herself upon

John Smith and stopped the war from happening.

♪ Is the death of all I love ♪

♪ Carried in the drumming of ♪

♪ War ♪ No.

If you kill him, you'll have to kill me too.

The Disney people said from the beginning

that they were going with the popular,

romantic version of it.

Not they, they knew what the actual story was

and they knew that there was no love story.

That there was no real love story

with John Smith and Pocahontas.

They knew that, but they said that,

that's not the movie that we are going to make.

We're going make this movie from this version

of the Pocahontas story.

♪ Listen with your heart ♪

♪ You will understand ♪

In so many ways she was also a pawn that was sexualized

and raped from the very beginning.

But what was important about this project

for me, was it was a moment in time when

kids around the world could see a positive,

strong, young woman who stopped a war from happening.

♪ And we are all connected to each other ♪

♪ In a circle ♪

♪ In a hoop that never ends ♪

Part of our, how would you say, character

as Native people is that, you know, I don't mean to,

and this is not a vain statement, we're very humble.

We're not into like, making a lot of noise.

And I think that, not that it's not that we're passive,

it's just that we're beaten down so often, so much,

for so long that,

and as much as we try to get beyond a certain point,

we just are prevented from doing that.

That's why I got into it in the first place,

because I didn't appreciate how we're being presented

to the world.

And I wanted to tell the truth

and I wanted to change the stories that were being told.

Abandoned 102 years ago.

It's all dead.

For 102 years.

Private property. That's our people's land.

It's not theirs to claim, never was,

but the mess is theirs.

When they abandoned the mine,

they didn't clean it up properly.

The tailings are old and the creek runs into the river

and the arsenic levels are rising.

And then Darlene came up with a script

and to shoot in her own community with her cousins

and her family

and people in the community that are involved.

It's time to warrior up.

This is our land, this is our home,

This is our land.

And the character herself was so much of

my world, so much of

what was going on in my world at the time.

I would've loved to have been able to have a place to go.

We need our home to be good for our children.

Yeah.

That's what it felt like.

Finishing that movie and having the opportunity to

have played in a movie, a whole movie

where I didn't have to watch my back.

I didn't have to worry about wardrobe.

We had an indigenous woman doing wardrobe,

we, and hair

and makeup with these twin girls

who are indigenous and everywhere I looked, there we were,

and there we are.

You think you can get everything?

This is our property.

And I liked the direction that she was going

and she caught me right at a time when I was so tired

of everything, I was tired of the roles

that were coming my way.

I was tired of people and the way that they were behaving.

I was tired of my life in so many different ways.

And so I appreciated what Darlene

was talking about and wanting to do.

And we shared ideas.

And then it took so long to get the movie going,

because money doesn't fall towards us.

Now we've progressed, now with these new,

it's like the new cinema,

which is all the indigenous projects that are coming.

And during that time in, right, in 2018,

there was a lot of, you know,

talk of like an indigenous series.

And that's when, when "Rutherford Falls" began

and then "Reservation Dogs".

So I could tell and I could see that

something was coming and I could feel it.

It's hard to be a warrior with dignity.

Remember that.

In my time we gave everything.

We died for our people. We died for our land.

What are you gonna do? What are you gonna fight for?

Ah, I'm just fucking with you.

But for real though, listen to what I said.

Marinate on that. Aho.

Let's go, yah.

Wasn't until Martin Scorsese

did "Killers of the Flower Moon"

that it brought it to a global audience.

You know, I mean that, that really did put

indigenous people on the map.

And even with Lily Gladstone getting nominated

for best actress, that was a pretty

important moment for indigenous people.

You want dinner?

Yeah.

"Killers" tell us a very important story

in what was done to them.

Once it was realized

that they were the richest people in the world,

white people couldn't stand it.

The mother, Lizzie.

She's not in good shape.

She won't last.

Most those says don't let past 50.

Well, these women die with hollow seek suffer from illness,

you have to make it the head rats come to you, you see?

Yeah.

Minnie's gone now and after her, that leaves Rita.

- Mm. - Hannah.

And then of course there's Mollie.

- But- - Yeah.

It has a weakness in that the importance

of those pipes being buried

is that the church rises

and how this, this, I don't even know what to call it.

This world, this society, this government

were effective with genocide.

And their colonialism is that it was business and politics

and church that all ganged up together

and worked together to suppress the people

and do the, the killer buzz on everyone.

And so that's what I felt was a weakness in this movie,

in that it didn't tell the truth about

who those men were.

They were like, Ernest's character.

He was a philander, he was a woman beater.

He was a carouser, he was a murderer.

He did two times in jail over his behaviors.

And where was that?

It was wasted. It was wasted space in that movie.

I am glad that at the same time all over the world,

people were impacted.

Like, oh my God, all those women,

those people were being killed.

But there's so much more to the story.

I, and I also want us to move on from our trauma.

I think it's important to get the healing.

I am, I'm tired of holding this baggage

of anger over my shoulder because of what happened.

It's not, I'm not trying to discount what happened,

but I think it's really time for all of us

to be responsible and the government to be responsible

and at least acknowledge what happened.

Now they talk about the fact, well you're only 2%,

you know, so why should you be, you know,

covered and so forth?

Native people have been reduced to anonymity.

And I think that's why people like Geronimo

and Sitting Bull, they continue to inspire us, you know?

When the worst of times, we survived.

And if those are the worst of times,

we have it a lot easier now because of them.

We're here.

And that's crucial.

That's crucial.

So we'll be here, you know, we'll be here.

We're not gonna disappear. We're not the vanishing American.