Debunking the Myths of Columbus Day

(video can be found here)

This video, from Ian Clark Online, goes through all the myths and arguments in favor of Columbus, debunking each one in an entertaining and easy-to-understand video. Definitely a must watch.

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples, Not Columbus

All the banks near my house in Boston currently have signs on the door that say "Columbus Day is a National Holiday. This branch will be closed Monday October 12, 2010." One even has a nice little picture of a boat. It makes me so angry every time I walk by, imagining all the kids in schools all over the US reciting the 1492 rhyme, learning about the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, and coloring in pictures like those on the banks. I hate that this narrative of "discovery" has been so ingrained into our collective American consciousness.

(my friend Jenny a couple years ago in front of the same bank)

I can wax eloquent about what this means for us as Native people, or what it says about our priorities as a Nation, but the bottom line is this: Columbus Day sucks. We're celebrating a man who managed to "discover" a place that had already been inhabited by millions of people for thousands of years, who never actually set foot on the North American continent, who encouraged the raping and enslaving of Native peoples, and laid the groundwork for the ensuing centuries of imperialism and colonialism.

So basically, he didn't "discover" anything. He didn't "prove" the world was round. He was pretty dumb, actually. So why does Columbus get a National holiday?

Italian Americans have adopted the day as a holiday celebrating their heritage, and I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but Italians already have a whole MONTH of celebration. So why not use that time to celebrate some Italian-Americans or Italians who have done awesome things that have contributed to the betterment of society, rather than Columbus?

Today I've prepared a series of posts, linking to some great resources from around the internet--videos, articles, and political cartoons, that draw attention to the ridiculousness of this day and will hopefully stir some conversation and maybe even some debate about the meaning and power of this day.

So today, as you go about your lives, enjoying your day off, remember to stop and celebrate 518 years of resilience and resistance, instead of colonialism and genocide. Celebrate Indigenous Peoples, not Columbus.

Some movies I'd like to see

These are some things I've read about over the years that I'd like to see.

Silent movies made for Chinese-American audiences in the 1950s

There was someone who reported in the 1950's that, in Chinatown in San Francisco, there were locally produced silent movies in 16mm color being shown to local audiences. That's all I know about them. I haven't read anything about them anywhere else.

Pre-1970 silent Siamese movies

As I understand it, Thailand's capacity to produce sound movies was wiped out in the war. Francois Truffaut mentioned this to Alfred Hitchcock---that, in Thailand, theaters would show movies without sound with a narrator explaining the action. Truffaut and Hitchcock were discussing how a long stretch of Psycho was without dialog. Until the late '60s, the Thai movie industry produced silent movies in 16mm. The popularity of Indian musicals got them to upgrade to color 35mm.

Silent movies from Burma in the 1970s

I read this in a book published in the mid-'70s, that there were a couple of movie studios in Burma that produced silent movies. I doubt they still do. I imagine they were shown in theaters with narrators, but I don't know.

Nigerian video movies

I found a bunch of Nigerian movie posters on the internet. And I've watched a documentary about the thriving Nigerian movie industry. The movies probably aren't as interesting as I imagine.

Glen Pitre's early Cajun films

Before he directed Belizaire the Cajun, Glen Pitre directed low budget Cajun-language costume dramas in Louisiana, described on one website as "gumbo westerns". None seem to be available. I've found stuff on the internet that says he made these movies, but they don't say anything about them, what the titles are or anything else. Not even on Internet Movie Database. Maybe they weren't any good, but I'd like to watch them anyway.

Oh---maybe I found them!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTimvU-gOWA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpvjFQZMbn4

Oh no, Khloe Kardashian.

(source here)

Khloe Kardashian just posted this picture to her twitter, with the caption "I love playing dress up!"
If you can stomach it, read the comments. They're already playing the "omg get over it stop being so sensitive it's just a hat!" game.

This makes me sad. I like Khloe.

So if you still need to know why it's wrong to dress up in a warbonnet:

But Why Can't I Wear a Hipster Headdress?

I think this also drives home the point I've mentioned before of how Natives are often viewed as "fantasy characters"--something that you can dress up as, play pretend. Wizard, Princess, Indian. The problem is Natives exist, we are real, and putting Native people in the fantasy character category erases our current presence as actual human beings.

Here's the link to the photo: http://twitpic.com/2vjzgc

and Khloe's Twitter is here: http://twitter.com/KhloeKardashian

(Thanks Lanova!)

Jon Jost, Bell Diamond, again

I found a review of Bell Diamond on the New York Times website.

From the review by Vincent Canby:

...''Bell Diamond,'' the newest film by Jon Jost, described by the New Directors/New Films festival program notes as ''probably this country's most unseen film maker,'' which is possible, though even that sounds like hyperbole. The notes also praise the film's ''democratic respect for the extraordinariness of the ordinary'' and calls it ''the most public and touching work of a profoundly political film maker.''

I report these appraisals as if I had a gun pointed at my head. Movies as earnestly unconventional and aggressively boring as Jon Jost's ''Bell Diamond'' put the members of the audience on the defensive. It's supposed to be boring, and we're supposed to see beyond the boredom to the truth beyond. I can't, possibly because it's all too accessible.

I'm---well, I'm not glad, but I feel like less of a jerk knowing that Vincent Canby was bored, too.

I have liked Jost's other movies, especially Sure Fire. I suspect that if I saw Bell Diamond again, my expectations and my reaction would be different.

The thing I've never understood is film students. I've tried to discuss Jost's work with some of them. This was back in the days before digital video. Making a movie for very little money was more of a novelty back then.

But none of them were interested. I don't know how many I talked to, and maybe I shouldn't extrapolate, but they all seemed to want to be directors, but only if they could do it in Hollywood.

It made me wonder what they really wanted.

The young fellows of the French New Wave baffled Americans with their admiration for Hollywood B movies. I assumed, as others have, that they wanted to make movies themselves and realized that, to do so, they were going to have to work on very small budgets. They looked to low budget movies for inspiration.

But these film students didn't have the slightest interest. Or at least no interest in talking to me about it. For them it was all or nothing. They would be Steven Spielberg or nothing. And I don't mean an early, younger, less successful Steven Spielberg. They wanted to be full-blown, middle-aged Steven Spielbergs.

It seems like a good idea. You go to the university, you study to be a director and you presumably do some stuff after that in hopes of being a director. It would be nice to have something to show for it even if it's a very, very low budget feature. Just something more than a student film.

At that time, there was a wave of very creative film students at the University of Oregon. It was one of them who arranged for Jon Jost's movies to be shown there.

They also started weekly showings of student films which was interesting. In those days, they were working mainly in Super 8. The films were transferred to video and shown on a video projector.

There were a few that were pretty good. One was about a young fellow who carried a battery powered portable TV with him everywhere. He's completely consumed with television. I just remember one line from it:

"I met a woman. A good, television woman."

The kid who starred in it used a Super 8 sound camera and made a long short film, a narrative film, about the alcoholism and drug addiction. It was pretty good. It was sponsored in part by the drug and alcoholism treatment center where I worked. I can't remember the kid's name. I know he moved to San Francisco after that, but I don't know what became of him.

He called for people to help work on that movie. I was going to volunteer, but I chickened out. I wouldn't have been much help to him anyway.

The time I went to a filmmaking seminar with Jon Jost

Sherman's March, Bell Diamond

I don't remember if it was the workshop or the seminar.

In 1986, I attended the world premiere of Jon Jost's movie Bell Diamond at the University of Oregon. If I remember right, it was the first showing outside of the town where it was filmed. There had been a John Jost film festival. Every weekend for a few weeks, they showed Jon Jost movies. I hadn't been able to go to any. I just went to the last one.

That was just a few days after I had seen the documentary, Sherman's March, at Cinema 7, the local art theater at the time. I had been reading a lot about movie-making and the shockingly high cost of production. Then I saw Sherman's March, filmed in much the same way as Jost's films---by a fellow with a movie camera on one shoulder and a tape recorder on the other and not much else.

I had sat there in the theater thinking that it looked fine to me. Maybe you don't have to spend a fortune to make a movie after all.

So I was interested in seeing Bell Diamond. It was made for around $6,000, although, when asked about it, Jost gave a higher figure which included the value of the of the unpaid actors and his own work.

I was interested in seeing the movie, and I wanted to see Jost who was there and was going to speak at the end. But I went to this one having no idea what to expect. I hadn't seen his other movies and I didn't know what it would be like. There were a couple of very good scenes that stood out in my mind. I suspect that if I saw it again, my reaction would be different--I've liked Jost's movies I've seen since then--but I found it incredibly boring. It seemed to go on for hours and hours.

The movie was about a Vietnam veteran whose wife leaves him because he was rendered sterile, by exposure to Agent Orange.

There was one shot that went on for several minutes. The shot started with a painting. We could see the entire painting. As the shot progresses, the camera zooms out very, very slowly. When the shot ends, the camera has zoomed out enough that we can also see the picture frame. There's a conversation going on as we watch this.

Several people walked out. I thought it was rude since the filmmaker was sitting in the back of the room. I still wanted to see him. I sat there. My body hurt. My muscles were aching. I've never suffered physical effects of boredom before.

When the movie ended, the lights came on and Jon Jost, white haired, came trotting down to the front of the room. He discussed his belief, which I mentioned elsewhere in this blog, that Hollywood movies were brutalizing, making people feel bad about their own lives. They sit in a theater watching people who are better looking, richer and more powerful than they are.

There were a lot of film students there. They seemed very enthusiastic.

One thing about Jon Jost is that he laughs a lot. So the film student were laughing, too, as they asked their questions.

There was one shot where the camera looks over the edge of a building. A film student noted that the movement wasn't completely smooth and, at first, he thought this was a subjective shot from the point of view of one of the characters. Jost laughed that next time he would pay $200 a day to rent a steadicam.

Another person noted that a clock in the kitchen where the movie was filmed stopped working after the first scene. Did this symbolize how the character's life had come to a halt when his wife left? No, the clock broke. He had hoped no one would notice.

One person asked about the long takes. The scenes were all shot in long takes. Jost replied that he happened to like long takes and that he was working with non-actors who had little concept of film continuity. He pointed out a continuity error. When they cut to a close up of a guy smoking, the cigarette was suddenly much shorter.

Okay---but then....

The anarchist

There was an old anarchist in the crowd. Keep in mind that this was 1986. Anarchists are everywhere now, but they were a rare breed in those days. The anarchist in this case was in his 50s. He would attend meetings of local radical political groups and, being an anarchist, call on them to disband as soon as they had served their immediate purpose.

Jost had said that he considered the film a success. The anarchist asked what he based that on.

Jost replied that he was in the back of the room watching and only ten people walked out during the movie. And it was a free showing. There was nothing keeping anyone there.

The anarchist said that he found himself falling asleep. He added that he was trying to be positive. He wasn't trying to tear Jost down.

Jost laughed. The film students laughed, too.

The anarchist seemed slightly annoyed. He stayed another few minutes and left.

But, anyway, the person who had organized the Jon Jost festival asked Jost if he could stay and put on a workshop and a seminar on extreme-low-budget filmmaking the next day and said he would pull together the money to pay him.

The seminar. Or the workshop.

I had to work that day. I couldn't attend the workshop that went on for several hours. I did, however, attend the seminar. Or I missed the seminar and went to the workshop. I'm not sure which was which.

Jost sat at the head of a table. It was a small room and was fairly crowded. Someone went out and brought back some beer.

Jost discussed movie lighting---how Hollywood would spend a fortune to blot out all existing light so they could artifically light a scene. He mentioned how, in the movies, there was always enough light from the dashboard to illuminate the actors riding in cars. He also discussed financing a movie applying for grants. Some people wanted detailed budgets, but no one does a detailed budget on a $6,000 movie. He used a Sony Walkman Professional which cost about the same as a day's rental for a Nagra recorder.

Video 8

Remember, this was 1986. We didn't even have Hi8 yet, or digital video. We had VHS and 8mm. Sony had just given up on Beta.

Jost said that, if he were starting out in movie-making at that point, he wouldn't use film. He would use 8mm video.

The 8mm camcorders were the first to come with flying eraser heads. This made for clean cuts between shots. Before that, there would be a big glitch on the videotape between each shot.

He said he would film the movie in sequence. If you had to shoot a retake, rewind and record over the bad shot. Do all the editing in camera. And when you're done, just push eject and there it is---he held up his hand like he was holding a cassette tape---your finished movie, a $10 cassette. If you want to add music, transfer it to one inch tape so you won't lose quality.

Someone said something about a tape-to-film transfer, but Jost said there was no need. Just view it on video tape.

The film students were aghast. Back in those days, the idea of a direct-to-video movie was entirely alien. Everyone wanted a theatrical release.

"If it's your first movie, it probably won't be any good anyway," Jost assured them.

And, well, he was probably right.

But he did warn about one problem with video. The tape was practically free. It meant you might shoot too much footage and have it come out boring----and he mentioned the anarchist who had said he was bored the night before.

"It probably won't be any good anyway."

I decided to make those words my motto.

A Reminder of Why This Blog Exists: One Reader's Experience

 

AK note: I wanted to share this email I received last week from a fellow Stanford alum, who let me know how this blog changed his thinking about Indian mascots and Indian issues. As might have been clear in my post about activist fatigue, it's sometimes hard to keep fighting this battle day in and day out, but hearing from Ted (his email is printed with permission) gave me such a renewed sense of purpose and an excitement that there is space for change. Sometimes we all need a reminder.

Dear Adrienne,

I hope it is okay to write you directly at this email address, I don’t really have a question or a tip or anything, I just wanted to write and tell you what I’ve been thinking about for the past month or so and how you directly affected it.

It all started last month when I took my 12 year old daughter to a Stanford football game. A quick background, I was a Stanford faculty brat growing up on campus in the late 60’s and early ‘70’s. I went to the games as early as I can remember and continued going even after I graduated from Paly and moved to San Francisco to go to USF. So my memories, as a kid, were always of the Stanford Indians. I remember when the mascot was retired, I think I was 14 or so and while I always liked the mascot and “Chief Lightfoot”, I really didn’t care much either way on the issue. My dad told me that some students objected to the mascot and we had to respect their feelings. I always remembered the mascot fondly as a part of my childhood and never really gave much thought about why the mascot was retired.

So at the football game against Sacramento State last month I felt a wave of childhood nostalgia when I saw a tailgate party decked out top to bottom in the old mascot. My daughter wanted to know why the team wasn’t the “Indians” anymore, and not really knowing the history, I told her I wasn’t sure, but that I thought a small group of students in the politically active 70’s had it removed for not depicting the image of Native Americans appropriately. She asked about professional teams that still had mascots and I explained that businesses could make decisions about things that institutions, even private ones like Stanford, couldn’t. She didn’t think that was fair, and we tried to think of any other college examples, and came up with quite a few. We both kinda scratched our heads and shrugged our shoulders and went in to the stadium and enjoyed the game. I suppose I just chalked the whole issue up to some overly PC students raining on everyone’s parade.

After coming back home (we live in LA – ugh), I wanted to see if I could still buy a t-shirt with the old mascot on it so I Googled it and found a whole bunch of places where they were available. I also saw a link to your blog and thought I should see, from the other side’s (I wasn’t really aware there were “sides” until that moment) point of view, what the objection to the issue really was. (wasn’t really aware it was a big “issue” either!).

Before I go on, I should point out that I am the kind of person who doesn’t mind offending people as a general rule. I don’t really care what other people think about my personal views on things like religion or politics. I enjoy rubbing people the wrong way sometimes, especially if it can make them think for a second instead of just going along with the pack. I own t shirts like “Your Favorite Band Sucks”, “Are Your Cats Old Enough to Learn About Jesus?” even some with four letter words (but that’s about as far as I go, I mean I don’t ever really want to be offensive just for the sake of being offensive, offending-sure, offensive – no). Anyway, I was fully expecting to reject your argument with a shrug of my shoulders and a “screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke”.

But I couldn’t.

Partly because of your persuasive writing (I’m sure thanks in part to that awesome Stanford education!), partly because of the dialogue I read in the comments of many of your posts and perhaps just a little bit of a mutual distain for the current version of the hipster, I have really come to a very different point of view. Don’t get me wrong, I will never fall into the politically correct camp, but what I did come away from all of this is: haven’t we done enough to Native people, not only here, but everywhere, yet? I’m pretty sure we have. So childhood memory be damned, innocent as it may have been, I did buy a t shirt today… the t shirt from a link in your blog that says “Retire Indian Mascots”. And I’m gonna wear it when we go to the USC game next week (thank goodness it’s red and not gold!), and I’m looking forward to pissing off some alumni.

I’m certainly not looking for a pat on the back, I just wanted you to know that your writing has really changed the way at least one person thinks about this. This experience has caused our whole family to have a discussion of not only Native issues, but genocide and slavery in general and I think it is something we are better as a family for doing.

So I wanted to thank you Adrienne, for your insight, your bravery and your honesty.

Sincerely,

Ted

Earlier: Robin Lopez Wore a Stanford Indian Shirt, and 15,000 People Saw

(Thanks Ted!)