0:01

On the Bechdel Cast.

0:02

The questions ask if movies have women

0:04

and them, are all their discussions

0:06

just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism?

0:10

It's the patriarchy, Zeffi Beast

0:12

start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

0:16

Hi, Bechdel Cast listeners, it's us

0:18

with an exciting live show announcement

0:21

in Los Angeles on December tenth.

0:23

We are covering It's a Wonderful

0:26

life.

0:26

But is it?

0:27

But is it?

0:28

We'll be examining this.

0:31

And the show is Sunday,

0:33

December tenth at four pm. It's

0:36

live in LA at Dynasty Typewriter

0:38

and we're also live streaming it, so if

0:40

you live anywhere else you

0:42

can still see the show.

0:44

We're going to be donating half of the proceeds from

0:46

this show to ANARA and PCRF,

0:48

which are both organizations that are

0:51

providing aid in Gaza

0:53

right now. Because Free Palestine,

0:55

bitch, And if you don't feel that way,

0:57

then you can escort

0:59

your self off our feed exactly. Anyways,

1:02

live show.

1:04

Once again, it's Sunday, December

1:06

tenth at four pm live in La

1:09

a Dynasty Typewriter. Also live

1:12

streams are available, so go to

1:15

link tree slash Bechdel Cast or

1:18

Dynasty typewriter dot com to

1:20

grab your tickets.

1:22

See you at Dynasty Typewriter December tenth,

1:24

four pm.

1:25

See you there, the Bechdelcast.

1:28

Hello and welcome to the Bechdel

1:30

Cast. Uh huh Okay,

1:33

my name is Caitlin Deronte.

1:35

Why are we being so shy about it? I

1:37

don't know? Hello, excuse

1:40

me. I guess

1:43

we're coming off of our horror movie

1:45

air Weekly or our annual horror movie

1:48

things, so we're kind of final girling into

1:50

the show being like, Hello, my

1:52

name is Jamie Laftus, and this

1:55

is the Bechdel Cast, our intersectional feminist

1:57

movie podcast where we take a look at

1:59

your face movies using an intersectional

2:02

feminist lens. Although this week

2:04

I'm excited that we were making history

2:08

on the Bexel Cast by covering our first

2:10

documentary. We've never done this before.

2:12

I'm super super pumped about it.

2:15

So, but before we start talking

2:17

about it, let's tell everyone

2:19

what the show is.

2:20

Hi.

2:21

Everyone, Welcome to the show.

2:23

Yes, welcome, And our

2:25

show is called the Bechdel Cast because it's

2:27

loosely based off of the Bechdel Test, which

2:29

we use simply as a jumping

2:31

off point if you're not in the

2:33

know, it is a media metric created

2:36

Bible.

2:36

Well, I can I do that this week almost where

2:38

my fun fact is okay, yeah, do it

2:40

fun fact listeners. I do read

2:43

the iTunes reviews. And some

2:45

people would say that that's emotional self harm,

2:48

and if so, I do it. And I

2:51

noticed when recently, first of all, some

2:53

of y'all are hurting my feelings, some

2:56

of y'all are making me feel great.

2:58

And one of y'all made me think about this

3:01

of how we don't often give

3:04

credit to we say you know that it

3:06

is a media metric created by

3:08

Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace

3:10

test, that is not quite accurate

3:12

to history. So while

3:15

we go back to the factory and retool

3:17

our way of saying that sentence, I just

3:19

wanted to do a quick shout out for the benefit

3:22

of that iTunes reviewer. So

3:25

we usually say is it is a media metric created

3:27

by Alison Bechdel in the eighties

3:30

in her comic strip Dikes to Watch Out

3:32

for Great Comic Classic Comic

3:35

that was originally intended to

3:37

point out how infrequently women,

3:40

specifically queer women, speak

3:42

to each other in any piece of media

3:44

about anything that is not

3:46

about man explicitly. But

3:49

there I went back and just

3:51

verified that. So Alison

3:54

Bechdel credits While she was the first

3:56

person to publish the Bechdel Test, it makes sense

3:58

that it's called the Bechdel Test, but it's the

4:00

idea to her friend Liz Wallace,

4:02

which is why we sometimes call it the Bechdel Wallace

4:04

Test. But she also credits

4:07

it to Virginia Wolf and

4:09

a quote from A Room of

4:11

One's Own which I have never read,

4:13

but I just wanted to share this quick quote

4:16

from Virginia Wolf weirdly at the beginning

4:18

of this episode, because

4:20

Virginia Wolf does pretty clearly lay out

4:22

the Bechdel Test in nineteen twenty nine.

4:25

She says, quote, and I tried

4:27

to remember any case in the course of my reading where

4:30

two women are represented as friends. They

4:32

are now and then mothers and daughters, but

4:34

almost without exception, they are shown in their relation

4:37

to men. It was strained to think that all

4:39

the great women of fiction were, until Jane

4:41

Austen's day, not seen by the other sex, but seen

4:43

only in relation to the other sex. And

4:45

how small a part of a women's life is

4:47

that unquote? So obviously,

4:49

you know, very nineteen twenty nine language,

4:52

But I thought it was interesting we've

4:54

never shouted that out on the show before, that

4:56

the Bechdel Test, while understandably

4:59

attributed to Alison Bechdel, was

5:01

a group effort over a course of sixty

5:03

years. And I think that's fun.

5:05

As many many things are a

5:08

collaborative effort.

5:09

It's true and intergenerational

5:11

collaborative effort. But Caitlyn,

5:14

all that said, what is the Bechdel

5:16

test?

5:17

Oh? Short, for sure.

5:18

So our version of it is because

5:20

we've added some flair

5:22

we've contributed, Well, yeah, it continues

5:26

to be a collaborative effort. Our version

5:28

is do two people of a marginalized

5:31

gender who have names

5:33

speak to each other about something other

5:35

than a man? And we especially

5:38

like it when it is a kind of narratively

5:40

impactful conversation and

5:42

not just like throw away dialogue.

5:46

All that to say, it won't really

5:48

even apply on this episode because

5:50

we are covering a documentary,

5:52

but it's a good thing. We gave a full history

5:55

of the test we will not be using today to

5:57

get the episode. You're welcome for that,

6:00

And with that, let's make

6:02

history on the Bechdel Cast

6:05

and discuss not

6:07

just a documentary, but a really terrific documentary.

6:10

And let's bring in our guest.

6:12

Yes, let's do it. Our guest is

6:14

a mitchif and Nihio

6:16

advocate, organizer, speaker, activist,

6:19

artist and writer focusing on

6:21

the lasting damage of residential

6:24

school system, Indian boarding

6:26

schools, and the sixties scoop

6:29

on First Nations people. She's

6:31

the founder of tradish Ish. They

6:34

are the co host of Creepy Teepee.

6:37

It's Essay. Lawrence Welch, Welcome,

6:39

Hello, and.

6:40

Welcome Ben Shay. Thank

6:42

you for having me. This is so exciting.

6:45

I thank you so much, so excited

6:48

to talk about the documentary from two

6:50

thousand and nine, Real Engine

6:52

Again. This is our We're making history

6:55

here because normally we do narrative

6:57

film. But I think this is a

7:00

great way for us to break into documentary.

7:03

I think that this is like us working our way

7:05

out because we on the show always say

7:07

that we will never read a book, but

7:10

I think that documentary we got

7:12

to be careful. It's a gateway to books. It's

7:14

a gateway drugs to books.

7:16

I mean, it's it's the lazy

7:18

person's read, you know, like

7:20

I don't do well with books either, So

7:23

team, no reading right here.

7:27

I just it needs to be super engaging, and

7:30

I just I have a really hard time staying focused

7:33

saying with pages. So

7:36

tell me stuff, show be things. I'll

7:38

retain it better. And that's why I like documentaries.

7:41

And I wanted to add too, I think

7:43

that the test does apply

7:46

to this in some way, shape or form.

7:49

There's a lot of narratives within this

7:52

documentary that kind of showcase

7:54

how fems were erase

7:57

secondary. Yes, yeah, secondary

8:00

to basically erased in a

8:02

lot of cinematic history, especially

8:05

talking about the first people's of

8:07

this land. So go

8:09

team for sure.

8:12

This documentary. I want to talk

8:15

about everyone's history with it in

8:17

just a second. It's made. Yeah, came out in

8:19

two thousand and nine, directed by Neil

8:21

Diamond, Catherine Bainbridge, and Jeremiah

8:24

Hayes. It's wild,

8:26

how I mean. I've I watched the

8:28

doc twice and it's for a

8:30

ninety minute documentary covers

8:33

so much.

8:33

So much jam packed.

8:35

Yeah. So I say, what

8:38

is your history with this doc?

8:40

When did you first see it and how

8:42

did you what? We were your feelings

8:44

on it?

8:44

Yeah? I saw it when it first came out.

8:47

I was it's

8:50

been along road, which the film

8:53

will highlight, you know, of natives

8:56

and cinema, But it was so amazing

8:58

to see a Cree person,

9:00

not unlike myself. Neheoh

9:03

is the

9:06

actual word for the people, not Cree

9:08

was the name that was given to us by settler

9:12

colonizers whatever. But

9:14

yeah, we still identify with that name

9:16

because it's how we get recognized.

9:19

I guess that's a different

9:21

conversation though, But yeah,

9:23

I saw it, and it's honestly, this

9:26

movie means a lot to me, more than most

9:28

things. And even like you know, thirteen some odd

9:31

years later, it's the movie I

9:33

recommend for people to have

9:35

even a glimpse into understanding

9:39

how racism and prejudice

9:42

started against Native people and

9:44

how narratives, really Hollywood

9:47

can create a narrative that transform, transforms

9:50

the way people think about an entire

9:52

demographic of people who is, unto

9:54

itself, completely diverse. So

9:56

yeah, I just from the

9:59

first moment seeing this, I was absolutely

10:02

enamored by it.

10:04

Yeah, it's so good. It's so good,

10:06

and it's like and it's a road story

10:08

on top of like it's just like, yeah, so wonderful.

10:12

I hadn't seen this one before. I had

10:14

heard about it for years. I

10:16

think when I first tried to watch it, it wasn't streaming

10:18

anywhere now if you're watching in

10:20

the US at least, I don't know

10:22

how it will cross over, but it's

10:25

streaming for free on two B right now. And

10:28

I would really recommend if you haven't watched

10:31

it yet, pause the episode and watch

10:34

the doc. It's so wonderful

10:36

and yeah, I mean,

10:38

I really enjoyed it. I learned a

10:41

lot, and I think that there was other elements

10:44

of Native cinema and like

10:47

the history of Native cinema that I had

10:49

heard about and knew but didn't have like it

10:52

put fully into context. And this

10:54

movie is incredibly I mean, I

10:56

know it can't be completely comprehensive in the

10:58

space of ninety minutes, but I really,

11:00

really really liked it. And I also feel like I

11:02

left with a list of

11:05

movies that I'm really excited to

11:07

watch. Like, yeah, so

11:09

it was my first time seeing it and I really loved it. Caitlyn,

11:12

what about You?

11:12

Same for me. I hadn't seen it before.

11:15

It was on my list of things to watch,

11:18

and this episode gave me a great excuse to

11:20

finally see it, and yeah,

11:23

I think it makes a lot of

11:25

sense for us, even though it is a doc and

11:27

we normally don't cover them on

11:30

the show because we you know,

11:32

examine narrative film and

11:34

then discuss the representation therein.

11:38

This documentary also examines

11:41

media from a representation standpoint,

11:43

and then it's specific to how Native

11:46

people and cultures are portrayed

11:49

in Hollywood. So it's doing something

11:51

similar to what we do on the show.

11:53

So I'm really excited to talk about

11:55

it and get into it in more detail.

11:58

It's like this, I mean truly this

12:00

documentary maybe want to maybe

12:02

want to watch a bunch of movies, which is not unusual,

12:05

but it also is like, oh, I also want to read several

12:07

books, which is scary, scary

12:09

feeling, but so

12:13

so cool. I mean, I I

12:16

can't wait to sort of keep watching.

12:18

What is that? I wait, I'm I just lost

12:21

my place in my notes. I was thinking of a specific

12:24

movie that I had not heard of before that I was

12:26

really that I'm really excited to watch.

12:28

For me, it was The Fast Runner.

12:30

Yes, that was what I was thinking of, which

12:33

I just had I mean, most

12:35

or many of the movies that they recommend throughout

12:38

the documentary. I'd heard of it, just not seen yet.

12:40

But the Fast Runner I had no idea existed,

12:42

and it seems unfucking believably

12:44

good. Like I just am really excited to see

12:46

it.

12:47

Yeah, it's you know, it's interesting

12:49

to me because this, again is you're

12:52

witnessing this narrative

12:55

that Neil Diamond puts down of

12:57

you know, watching

13:00

movies through an indigenous lens, right,

13:02

and how

13:05

like I don't know if you guys want to just jump into

13:07

it, but like the thing that gets me is like within the opening

13:10

scenes, there's just these kids sitting

13:12

in a basement watching shoot

13:14

them Up cowboy movies and

13:17

h and Neil said something along the lines of we

13:20

didn't realize we were the Indians,

13:22

like we were the bad guys. And

13:24

that's like definitely a thing

13:26

I find for myself as somebody who grew up relatively

13:29

isolated in the mountains

13:31

of Treaty six Territory in so

13:35

called Ilberta, Canada, that

13:38

that was the outlet, you know, So seeing yourself

13:40

philified on screen but not even

13:42

realizing that it's the same thing but

13:45

different, you know, Like it

13:47

was such an interesting experience

13:49

to grow into myself

13:51

and then just be like, oh, that's absolutely

13:54

not right, and that speaks to a larger narrative, which I'm

13:56

sure we'll talk about today.

13:58

Yeah. Yeah, uh, let's take

14:01

a quick break and then we will be right back.

14:10

So, yeah, let's get into it. I will

14:12

go through a recap

14:14

as I as I always do, just

14:17

kind of like going through the different

14:19

beats, the points, the eras

14:22

that this documentary covers. So

14:25

we meet the narrator

14:28

who is also one of the directors.

14:30

His name is Neil Diamond. And it's

14:33

not Neil Diamond, the musician.

14:36

It's Neil Diamond, the Cree

14:38

Canadian filmmaker.

14:39

I was such a dufist and completely

14:42

forgot there was a different

14:44

Neil Diamond that existed because

14:46

I was telling my boyfriend that. I was like, I watched

14:48

this incredible documentary. It's so good, you have to watch

14:50

it. It's made by this guy named Neil Diamond. He's

14:52

like, am I missing something?

14:56

As like, what do you mean.

15:00

The musician Neil Diamond.

15:02

The superior Neil Diamond. As far as I'm concerned,

15:05

because I forgot the other one. Fuck it existed.

15:08

You're gonna make You're going to make all

15:10

like the middle aged women really upset rape, saying that.

15:14

Then Neil Hive is gonna come us.

15:19

Okay. So Neil talks about how

15:21

he was raised on a

15:23

reservation near the Arctic Circle,

15:26

which was one of the most isolated places

15:28

on Earth. He grew up

15:30

watching movies like you were just talking about

15:32

essay. He grew up watching movies that depicted

15:35

Native people in often very

15:37

negative ways, and this

15:39

inspires him to embark

15:42

on a journey from

15:44

his reservation to Hollywood

15:46

to examine Hollywood's representation

15:49

of Indians and how it

15:52

shaped the cultural perception

15:55

of them, and of course Indians

15:57

in this context referring to Indigits

16:00

and First Nations people who were

16:03

here pre colonization of

16:06

what became known as North

16:08

America, specifically the US and Canada.

16:12

Oh okay. So Neil's first

16:14

stop is at the Black

16:16

Hills, once the

16:18

domain of Chief Sitting Bowl

16:21

and Tshunka wheat Coo

16:23

aka Crazy Horse. He

16:26

goes to the place where

16:28

Crazy Horse outmaneuvered General

16:30

Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn,

16:34

which is something that has been

16:36

depicted in several Hollywood movies and

16:39

which turned Crazy Horse into

16:42

a legend as far as like white

16:44

America having a better sense

16:46

of who he was.

16:49

That was.

16:49

Yeah. As I was watching the doc,

16:51

I was trying to square with like what

16:54

I had been taught in Massachusetts

16:56

public schools, like how much

16:59

history had I actually learned

17:01

and how far

17:04

away from the truth. And it's about as

17:06

far as you could imagine, which but I

17:08

think Crazy Horse is one of the few indigenous

17:11

figures that I do specifically remember

17:13

learning about incorrectly. But

17:17

I was like, oh, okay, bad job

17:19

school, but also.

17:21

Like really good job school, because you

17:23

know, the erasure is part of the narrative

17:26

that keeps this like

17:28

American exceptionalism. You know, we

17:30

deserve this land, we came here, we fought

17:32

for it. Yet yea such and so forth,

17:34

And that's clearly

17:36

displayed in some of the movies that the doc

17:39

outlines that you know, definitely.

17:41

Absolutely yeah, well we'll get to in the

17:43

in the like john Ford section

17:46

in particular, but it's there's

17:48

like such a great quote that perfectly well

17:50

we'll get.

17:50

There, yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's

17:53

also a mention of the descendants

17:55

of Crazy Horse and of

17:58

the warriors who fought alongside

18:00

him present day live

18:02

in pretty extreme poverty on

18:05

Pine Ridge Reservation. So just

18:08

kind of like an examination of this icon,

18:11

this legend, and

18:14

because of systemic racism and oppression,

18:17

the descendants living in poverty.

18:19

Yeah, a system set up by designed dismantle

18:21

entire nations of people is also

18:23

working and the thing

18:26

behind that that kind of speaks

18:29

to you know, even with

18:31

Neil going to the Black Hills

18:34

is interesting for me as a Cree person and

18:36

seeing him as a Cree person. You know, we're told certain

18:39

stories we're not even like in

18:41

school, we weren't even told stories about our own people,

18:43

you know, like we were. This

18:46

is why this movie is so amazing to me, is because

18:48

it really caters to this like

18:50

like romanticization of like the Great

18:52

West, right, and you know, all

18:55

of these noble natives, but we had so many

18:57

within our own nations. Like there's so many

18:59

different nations and so of Native people across

19:01

these lands. And the fact that he went

19:03

to go talk about this particular story because

19:06

that is what the narrative is in every

19:08

single Hollywood movie up

19:11

and to that point.

19:12

So yeah, I'm excited to talk

19:15

with you about that because I think that like

19:17

Neil Diamond being so forward about that and

19:20

being so forward about like being

19:22

connected with his history

19:24

to an extent, but also have

19:26

to having to like unlearn and relearn

19:29

in that whole process, and also having

19:31

like this attachment to the media you grow

19:33

up with and like, how do you you know, unwire

19:36

that and rewires? It sounds just

19:38

like Herculean.

19:39

It's yeah

19:42

for sure, Oh okay.

19:45

So the documentary

19:47

then starts to go

19:49

through era by era how

19:52

Hollywood represented Native people,

19:55

starting with the silent film era,

19:58

and while that was happy in

20:00

the late eighteen hundreds, where

20:02

you know, some of the first moving images

20:05

ever to exist were of Native people.

20:08

While this was happening, the US Army

20:11

open fires on the last

20:13

free community of Natives in

20:15

revenge for Little Bighorn, and

20:18

three hundred Lakota people were

20:20

massacred at Wounded NY in

20:22

eighteen ninety, and this

20:26

tragedy becomes

20:29

fodder almost for the type of like

20:31

drama and myth

20:33

and mythology that Hollywood

20:36

loves to romanticize and make movies about.

20:38

So Neil discusses

20:41

how Indians, for example,

20:44

in movies, are always shown as expert

20:46

horseback riders, even though

20:48

many tribes and nations never

20:52

rode horses, though there

20:54

are some who

20:56

were expert and are expert horse

20:58

riders, such as as the

21:01

Crow. And so Neil

21:03

goes to the Crow Agency

21:05

in Montana and meets a

21:07

crow stuntman named Rod

21:10

Ronde, who is an expert

21:12

horseman and one of Hollywood's top stunt

21:14

people.

21:15

And just like the most charismatic person

21:17

on the face of the earth. That's so fucking

21:20

cool.

21:21

Yeah, he talks just about how important

21:23

horses are to Crow people.

21:26

We go back to examining

21:28

the silent film era. Native characters

21:31

were prominently featured in a lot of Silent

21:33

era movies, often as the hero,

21:36

and many of those films were written

21:39

and directed by Native filmmakers.

21:41

I genuinely did not know that. I

21:43

wish I had been taught that in fucking film

21:45

school.

21:46

I know.

21:46

Yeah, that's such a uh,

21:49

that's a point of like contempt for me

21:52

for sure. You know, you see these beautiful

21:54

silent films that are depicting

21:58

life and honesty, and you see

22:00

these people within the film, within

22:02

these silent films being

22:05

authentic, and then all of a

22:07

sudden, another narrative needs

22:09

to be written to back

22:12

again the American exceptionalism,

22:15

like some already used that term, but like

22:17

to be like no, no, this is ours, you

22:20

know, we need yeah, this so we can't

22:22

humanize the people that we need to dehumanize

22:24

to maintain our lie

22:28

for the lack of a.

22:29

Better term, No, that's exactly

22:31

what it is.

22:32

Yeah, Yeah, And it just like felt like such a

22:34

clear I don't know, like it's

22:36

just such a clear example of like media

22:38

representation being very nonlinear

22:41

and like, I mean, you, fifty

22:44

years after these early silent films,

22:46

native representation is far worse,

22:49

and like, I don't know, it

22:51

was fascinating because I want to watch

22:53

the watch the silent films, but also

22:56

discouraging to you know, just see

22:58

such a clear example of that.

23:00

Yeah. The movie

23:02

also mentions a prominent

23:05

actor of this era. His

23:07

name was Chief Buffalo Child Longlands.

23:10

He was the star of a film called The Silent

23:12

Enemy, among others, and

23:14

his life ended very

23:17

tragically. He had disguised

23:20

his racial background. He

23:23

was Native black and white,

23:26

and when people found out he was part

23:28

black, he was shunned

23:30

by Hollywood and

23:32

he died by suicide.

23:34

I had not heard of him before, and that's

23:36

just the intersectional racism

23:39

in.

23:40

The US is astonishing.

23:43

Then the documentary examines

23:46

Hollywood creating this magical,

23:49

mystical idea of what

23:52

it is to be native, and how

23:54

a lot of people, especially white people, romanticize

23:57

the idea of being native. And

24:00

Neil tells us about this certain type

24:02

of like summer camp in North

24:04

America. I did not know that

24:07

these existed, Oh I

24:09

did, It's I yeah, I don't.

24:12

I just did not know about this

24:14

where it's mostly white

24:16

kids go and adopt

24:19

this like perceived persona of

24:22

what a native person is. While they're at

24:24

these camps, they play these

24:26

like quote unquote tribal games. It's

24:28

all extremely appropriative, and

24:32

it keeps the idea of

24:34

an Indian as a you know, quote

24:36

unquote noble savage alive

24:39

and well. And Neil goes to

24:41

one such camp and he wonders

24:43

if any of these kids have ever even met

24:46

a Native person, or if

24:48

their image and idea of

24:51

natives only comes from what they've seen

24:53

in movies. And I would guess it's

24:55

probably the latter for most of them.

24:57

Yeah, well, you know that lovely

25:00

Austrian guy, I thank you was Austrian.

25:03

He was like, I basically learned

25:05

everything I needed to know from watching two

25:07

to three films about natives.

25:09

I was like, oh

25:11

that he got the mentality of the natives

25:14

through watching those movies, that they're just like I

25:16

understand them. Yeah, they're like these

25:19

people who love their community, but they can be savage

25:21

when they need to or whatever. And it's just like super

25:24

cool. I love this.

25:25

I love this for us And you

25:27

can really tell that that guy thinks

25:30

he's doing something. Yeah, like

25:32

thinks he's being respectful.

25:35

So I unfortunately, I never

25:39

you know, I think that because I grew up in

25:41

Massachusetts. Your trip, your

25:43

like field trip is going to Plymouth

25:46

Plantation. I don't

25:48

know how or if it has been updated

25:50

whatsoever in the you know, like twenty

25:53

plus years it's been since I took this field

25:55

trip. But one of the places

25:58

that you're taken is to Camp

26:01

Squanto, which is very much in

26:04

step. I don't because we were only there

26:06

for a day. I don't. The extremeness

26:09

that you see in the dock was not something

26:11

that I experienced. But I'm sure that

26:14

that is the model that that's built on.

26:16

There's so many too, and like I attribute

26:18

that fully to like the boy Scouts. You know, there's

26:20

actually so like the Kansas City

26:23

Chiefs. The chiefs are actually named

26:25

after a man who Now

26:27

I can't remember the name of the tribe because I've like blocked

26:29

this out of my brain, but it's

26:32

like a camp and it's

26:34

a tribe of Indians. I'll probably think of it later on as we're

26:36

talking about something completely different, but

26:39

basically, it's people who

26:42

dress up and like non natives who dress

26:44

up and wear headdresses and go through

26:46

all of these protocols because they

26:49

just revere our natives so much, right,

26:51

And it's

26:53

so is there.

26:57

I don't know if there's a word for it, but like barfinduce

27:00

is the term that I'm going to go for. Yeah,

27:02

fucking gross, it's gross.

27:05

But it's just like it's like it

27:07

just turns my stomach to see people

27:10

dressing up and creating this narrative of

27:12

again, like this concept of what

27:14

they want natives to be and

27:16

they want to play that, you know, and

27:18

it's just so vile,

27:21

like.

27:22

Yeah, refusing to learn anything

27:24

about actual Native people

27:27

and culture and just like assuming

27:29

some stuff and being like, well, I'm probably right

27:31

about that.

27:32

Well, I mean again, you know, like every

27:34

native is a plain's native wearing

27:36

a headdress in the great Southwest

27:39

of this noble

27:41

country.

27:42

I know, and to see that

27:44

like still pretty uncritically

27:46

presented to children who,

27:48

to your point essay very well

27:51

may have never met a Native

27:53

child before, and being taught that this

27:55

is what Native culture was, and not just that, but the fact

27:57

that like it felt like especially

28:00

in at the camp where Neil went to

28:02

and I'm sure where I went to on

28:05

that field trip, like you're taught that

28:07

this is a very respectful thing that

28:10

is being done. And meanwhile they're like

28:12

this camp Squanto exists in the middle

28:14

of the miles standish you know, state

28:16

forest, and you're like, you know, I'm it's

28:19

just so clear what is

28:21

happening. But like growing up, you know, indoctrinated

28:23

in that it the amount of unlearning is

28:26

it's ridiculous.

28:27

But and it's just attaching a name. And that's

28:29

the thing that really gets me. It's like even the history of

28:31

Squanto, you know, the people don't take the

28:33

time to actually understand anything. They just want

28:36

the culture without the struggle, right,

28:39

absolutely, whatever it's worth.

28:41

Yeah, definitely, Let's

28:43

take a quick break and then we'll

28:46

come back and go

28:48

through the rest of the film.

28:57

Okay, so we left off

28:59

talking about out these type of summer

29:01

camp then The doc

29:03

examines films of like the

29:05

thirties, forties, fifties, where

29:09

representation of Natives shifts

29:12

from what it was in the Silent

29:14

era, where the

29:16

movies where the Natives were heroes

29:20

were not box office successes.

29:22

Generally, white audiences

29:25

were not interested in those stories.

29:27

The stories they were interested in were

29:30

westerns where white

29:32

men playing cowboys were the heroes

29:34

and Natives were

29:37

portrayed as quote unquote savages,

29:39

marauders, you know, the enemy. So

29:42

movies like Stagecoach

29:45

starring John Wayne, directed

29:47

by John Ford.

29:50

Food to both these John's.

29:52

Yeah, a movie that was incredibly

29:55

damaging for Native people,

29:57

but like Hollywood used it as a blueprint

30:00

more or less for what a Western

30:03

movie should be for

30:05

years and years to come. And

30:07

so there's a discussion of

30:09

these movies representing

30:12

Native people as uncivilized,

30:15

you know, bloodthirsty killers. It

30:18

had people not speaking

30:21

real languages. Often

30:23

it was English ran backwards.

30:27

Clothing that the Native characters were

30:29

wearing was extremely inaccurate,

30:32

not regionally or culturally specific.

30:35

Yeah, I'm I'm interested to talk about

30:37

the side quest that Neil Diamond takes

30:39

to talk to I think his name is Richard LaMotte. The

30:43

costume designer who is sort of tasked

30:45

with, yeah, with presenting

30:49

presenting Native people over the years and being

30:51

like, yeah, this is like a load of

30:53

shit. The way that we that

30:56

sequence was fascinating.

30:57

Again, it comes down to like this

30:59

fetter cessation of the plains India

31:01

and the Indian and like the last real

31:04

conquest for like America,

31:06

right, so like this is the last

31:08

true effort towards genocide.

31:11

Like I mean, we still are dealing with an ongoing genocide

31:13

as Native people. You know, racure is still very

31:15

much a real thing. And but

31:18

I think about, like with some of the filming

31:20

by one of them, John's, both of them, John's in

31:24

the Southwest, I'm like, that's the home of like the

31:26

din people, the Navajos or like you

31:28

know, Hope people, and like they're all wearing

31:31

headdresses and you know, to

31:33

your point, Caitlin, like it makes

31:35

me l L because

31:37

there's these elder Navajo

31:40

people talking about how they

31:42

didn't they would go off script and say

31:44

things in the movie. I like, I

31:47

like live for this. I'm like, because again I

31:49

don't speak every language, I like

31:51

barely speak three four, but

31:54

like I barely speak four. I'm

31:57

really trying you guys, but

32:03

yeah, it's uh, it's

32:05

one of my favorite like delicious

32:07

nuggets to just think, like in some of those movies,

32:10

how they were responding to

32:13

these white actors that were so

32:15

serious about their craft.

32:17

That was such a wonderful sequence

32:19

when yeah, when Neil Diamond

32:21

goes to visit two actors who had been

32:23

in John Wayne movies but had never seen the movies,

32:26

and we're telling him, you know, the behind the scenes

32:29

details of like how poorly they were treated, how

32:31

dismissively their culture was treated,

32:33

but then translating what

32:36

the native actors were saying, You're a snake

32:38

crawling in your own shit.

32:40

I love it so much like

32:42

a sixern.

32:45

And then cut back to the white actor being

32:47

like, no, we will

32:49

not Yeah.

32:51

You are wrong, We are not great.

32:56

Can I tell you guys a story, like just

32:59

to kind of a side off of that, just so people think

33:01

I'm a really nice person or a main person

33:03

either way.

33:04

Perfect.

33:04

People ask me all the time, how do you say this in your

33:06

language? Or like how do you how do you say that in

33:08

your language? Like so, how do you say hello? Or how

33:11

do you say the color blue? Right? So people

33:13

will ask me and I'd be like I always say like namulia

33:16

and patakoa, and they're like, okay, cool,

33:18

cool, right, that's how you say hello. And then somebody would be like,

33:20

hey, how do you say frog

33:23

Namulia and pataka wa? Or

33:25

like how do you say thank you? Oh na mulia

33:27

and patacoa? And this

33:30

is an on running bit I just have for myself to

33:32

bring me joy because I

33:35

just have a feeling that one day one

33:37

of these like well meaning white people will go to

33:40

like a neheio cree elder or like a machif

33:43

may tea elder and say namulia

33:45

and pataka wa and that

33:47

translates to that is not a potato.

33:53

And I just really like, I know that that elder

33:55

is gonna laugh, like I know that the person they're

33:57

saying it to you is just gonna laugh. And I'm like,

33:59

this is me too, my part to help with language

34:01

resurgents that that's technically in machif,

34:04

but like machiff is a

34:07

makeup of like nehioiwin

34:12

on a Shanabic Scottish

34:14

slang in French, because it's like our people

34:16

were an amalgamation of these

34:19

fur traders and the indigenous people

34:21

coming together and creating our own language and protocols,

34:23

and it's a beautiful thing to me. But I

34:25

also like the idea of just somebody walking around saying

34:28

that is not a potato.

34:30

It's a great bit.

34:31

Yeah.

34:32

It's just also like the perfect like a

34:34

perfect amount of disarming as

34:36

it's.

34:38

Like, I'm not it's not mean, like.

34:39

It's so stupid.

34:44

Language is important, you guys. Yeah,

34:47

that's a.

34:48

Top shelf bit. That's great.

34:53

Okay. So the documentary is also

34:56

exploring how in a lot

34:58

of these Westerns from this

35:00

era of like thirties, forties, fifties,

35:03

you had white actors

35:05

playing native characters.

35:08

Often their skin was painted.

35:10

Full brown face.

35:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

35:13

I like when the whites of the eyes are so white.

35:16

Oh my god, my favorite.

35:18

It's it's disgusting.

35:20

And I also appreciated when someone's like it's

35:23

just like you have to laugh.

35:25

Yeah, You're like, you're like, this is what they did.

35:27

This is the best they could do, and good

35:29

for them. They tried so hard.

35:32

Embarrassing.

35:33

I was on the fact that Clint

35:35

Eastwood shows up in this documentary and

35:37

like sort of like sir, I.

35:39

Found that surprising, wo, because

35:41

his politics are.

35:43

I think this is like this, Well, given

35:45

this is thirteen years ago, this is pre Hymn

35:47

thinking. I think there's a certain

35:50

era in the last decade that

35:52

we can all kind of lean to that allowed

35:55

all of these really cool people

35:57

to have their really cool opinions out loud.

36:01

True, it's true. A lot of people have been

36:04

really laid bare, not

36:06

gonna lie it was. It is a jump scare

36:08

to see Clint Eastwood in a

36:10

documentary where you're not prepared. I mean, I'm just never

36:12

prepared to see him.

36:14

But right, you also

36:17

have you know, white characters,

36:19

cowboys killing Native characters

36:22

being glorified and celebrated

36:24

in these movies. Native women

36:27

are more or less absent

36:29

in westerns and Hollywood

36:32

cinema in general, with the exception of

36:34

the you know, young Indigenous

36:36

princess epitomized by

36:39

Pocahontas. Then

36:41

the documentary talks about

36:43

one of Hollywood's most

36:45

famous Native actors, Ironized

36:48

Cody, who turns out was

36:51

not Native. His parents

36:53

were immigrants from Sicily, but he

36:56

adopted a Native persona

36:58

both on and off screen, and

37:00

lived his entire life like that, and

37:03

adopted Native children as well.

37:06

He was married to a Native

37:08

woman and had adopted her

37:10

children. I believe I don't know a lot about him

37:12

other than you know, our

37:15

protocols are really different in each community,

37:17

and so like you know, if he

37:19

was adopted into whatever

37:22

tribe whatever by those people,

37:24

those are their protocols. That's their sovereignty, sovereigntry,

37:28

it's their sovereign right. Sorry, it's hard for

37:30

me say that, to

37:33

break him in and adopt him as one of their

37:35

own. For me, I have a really hard time wrapping

37:37

my head around these things, just

37:39

because a lot of Native

37:42

people aren't given that same proximity. And

37:45

he was an actor, and he was acting Indian.

37:48

But you know, to be that obtuse to believe

37:50

that you are that. You know, he

37:52

sought out the he sought

37:54

out the trauma as much as he sought out the victories

37:57

that he received in his career.

38:00

I was actually just in la and I went to the Hollywood

38:03

Forever Cemetery and I saw that he was buried there, and I

38:05

was just not,

38:08

Yeah, it's a point

38:10

of anger for me personally,

38:13

because while I want to respect the protocols

38:15

of the people that may have adopted him

38:18

in or believe him to be one

38:20

of them, his son included who's featured

38:22

in the documentary. It's something

38:24

that you know, is

38:26

a very nuanced topic

38:29

when it comes to cultural

38:31

protocols and who is an indigenous

38:33

based on our individual

38:36

communities and our sovereignty.

38:40

So but I still don't like him. So I

38:42

just you know, that's my prerogative. And I

38:44

might get hate for that from some people, but I

38:47

don't really care about that because I'm

38:49

just like super frustrated the fact that

38:52

it does still take away opportunities

38:55

from people. And he also

38:57

catered to the fetishization and the romance

39:00

cessation of this specific

39:02

type of Indian And I

39:04

mean, I understand it certain eras

39:06

in history of this nation that Italian

39:08

Americans were treated very poorly, but

39:10

they got Columbus Day.

39:12

So it's

39:15

like you, I think it's

39:17

like you can hold the discrimination

39:19

that he experienced as a Sicilian

39:22

and be like it doesn't make anything

39:25

he did afterwards.

39:26

Like especially because to your to your

39:28

point essay, like I think one of the at

39:30

least for like my parents'

39:33

generation, one of the most you

39:35

know, iconically false images

39:37

of indigenous people they have is Ironized

39:39

Cody, the single tier.

39:41

Commercial And I mean I cry

39:43

every time I see someone litter, so.

39:46

Like, oh my fucking

39:49

like getting into twenty

39:51

thousand stereotypes all at once, and then

39:53

on top of that, for the actor to have

39:56

not been native at all, Like.

39:58

It's a bit of a gut punch. But again,

40:00

like that's the thing with like

40:03

being native and being from

40:05

particular nations. You know, we have our

40:08

own protocols when it comes to adoption or recognition.

40:10

And I mean, my

40:13

people didn't adopt him, so I

40:15

don't really like I still get to have

40:17

my my free space to be like, well, I believe

40:19

in their sovereignty, but I respect

40:22

native protocol and native

40:24

law. I don't respect people who take advantage

40:27

of it. Put it that way.

40:28

Yeah, and that's very.

40:30

Fair, especially for monetary purposes.

40:32

And yeah,

40:34

the fact that in the documentary they even say

40:37

that, you know, in his home it was all just pictures

40:39

of him dressed up as an Indian and

40:41

watching his own films, and like that's a certain

40:43

type of narcissist and like yeah,

40:46

and like that's to the level of like that's that I

40:48

think there might be like I'm not diagnosing,

40:50

but there might be some like mental health needs

40:53

that aren't being met there either. When you want

40:55

to believe that's so bad that you surround

40:57

yourself by it, right.

40:59

Yeah, I mean, and we it

41:01

started to feel I don't know. I was reading

41:04

his he passed in

41:06

ninety nine, Yeah, and I

41:08

just wanted to read how he was represented

41:11

in you know, big public. What's

41:14

the article they write when you die?

41:16

Obituary?

41:19

Yeah, that's it. Anyways,

41:22

fuck the New York Times. But the New York Times wrote what

41:24

felt like kind of a shady headline

41:27

ironized code ninety four an actor

41:30

and tearful anti littering icon

41:33

So no mention of indigenous

41:36

lineage, because that was not true.

41:40

I don't know that was Yeah, I did

41:42

not know.

41:43

I was.

41:44

I knew his again. I think like speaks

41:46

to why this documentary is so valuable,

41:49

Like I knew his image and I didn't

41:51

know that story.

41:54

Yeah. Well, speaking

41:56

of non native people,

41:59

appropriate iconography

42:02

and culture, perfect transition, Thank

42:04

you so much. The documentary

42:06

then moves into the nineteen

42:08

sixties and seventies, where the

42:11

idea of Native people

42:14

became a symbol in

42:16

the hippie movement, where

42:18

there was lots of appropriation by

42:21

mostly white people dressing

42:23

like Native people, adopting

42:26

the kind of like perceived free

42:28

spirit quote unquote mentality,

42:32

but of course doing all of that very

42:34

inaccurately. And

42:36

then also around

42:38

this time, some movies that

42:41

were coming out seemed to be

42:43

more sympathetic to the

42:45

plight of the Native

42:48

people. In some movies we

42:50

see Indians fight back against

42:53

injustice, which was also

42:55

happening in the real world. Where

42:57

at Wounded KNY in nineteen seven three,

43:01

the American Indian Movement faced

43:03

off against the FBI and

43:07

help came from an

43:09

unexpected source, Hollywood.

43:13

And then Neil meets Sashine

43:15

Little Feather. We hear the story

43:18

of how Marlon Brando arranged

43:20

to have her accept his

43:23

Academy Award for The Godfather as

43:25

a statement to say, look

43:28

at all the harm Hollywood has

43:30

done against Native people. And

43:33

so Sashine received

43:35

this award on stage, she was planning

43:38

to give a longer speech. The

43:40

producer of the Academy Awards prohibited

43:42

it and said, like, if you go, if you talk

43:45

for longer than a minute, you will be arrested

43:47

and taken away in handcuffs.

43:50

I'm sorry.

43:51

So fun fact about that is

43:54

it took years, years and years,

43:56

decades for Sashin to be apologized to

43:58

for being put in that situation. The

44:01

amount of hate that that woman received

44:03

in her years of life is astronomically

44:06

high, and I couldn't imagine

44:09

having to carry that for so long. But the

44:13

rumor is that John Wayne was so pissed

44:15

off when she was up there that he went to

44:18

rush the stage and people had to hold

44:20

him back.

44:21

Oh yeah, I also

44:24

read that, which is just like, I

44:27

don't know.

44:27

It's jarring, you

44:29

know. And the thing is, she did refuse the award

44:31

on behalf of Marlon Brando. That's the other side

44:34

of things, right, So it's such an insult to this

44:36

very prestigious community of Hollywood,

44:41

you know, actors and elitists.

44:43

It's I mean, it's

44:45

it's fucking disgusting. Though I don't know everything

44:47

I've heard about John I had no

44:50

attachment to John Wayne whatsoever, because

44:53

I think that was one of the rare points my

44:55

parents were like, no, these movies don't

44:57

just fucking suck. They're also really

45:00

boring and we're not watching them.

45:02

But I mean, just everything attached

45:04

to his image

45:07

feels entrenched in hatred

45:09

and violence, like just a really vile icon.

45:12

Even the clip that they showed

45:14

of one of the movies and he refers to a

45:17

man and like, I don't even repeat it because it's

45:19

so vulgar, but like he

45:22

he refers to another brown man as a

45:24

blanket head, like it just made it

45:26

makes me sick, like you know, and I'm

45:28

just like, and this was this was

45:30

normal? Like when did this? When was this

45:33

normal? Like why is this normal? And again

45:35

it was vilifying into

45:37

humanizing entire demographics of people

45:40

to ensure that white Americans

45:43

were deserving of this.

45:45

Land absolutely vile, fucking

45:48

gross, and then seeing the I

45:50

thought it was really smart

45:53

in that it just makes this community look so

45:55

foolish. When Neil

45:57

Diamond stops off at like whatever the

45:59

John Wayne fan club, oh

46:03

group, because there's like all the userstic

46:06

old men being like there's

46:08

no such thing as a bad John Wait, You're

46:10

like, oh my god.

46:11

And they're all doing their impression and the walk,

46:14

and I'm just like like, if

46:16

that's your hero, like I'm

46:20

losers.

46:22

It really is, like it was a really

46:24

spectacular display of fucking losers

46:26

with no critical thinking skills.

46:29

So though I did really enjoy when Neil

46:32

like just real hard cut for this documentary,

46:35

When Neil Diamond was like, yeah, I'll take the draw

46:37

with the fastest shooter and he's like count to

46:39

four and Neil just had four. I'm

46:43

like, that's my guy right there.

46:46

He's not going rocks. I really. I

46:48

just love when like, communities

46:51

that are so removed for reality are

46:53

I'm just like, I'm not even going to provoke them. Let's just

46:55

let them talk and they will incriminate themselves

46:58

just by being themselves. Gross

47:00

gross, gross loser shit.

47:02

Yeah. Okay,

47:04

So also around

47:07

this time in history, the

47:09

documentary examined that some

47:12

movies portray Native characters

47:14

as being more multi

47:16

dimensional than they had been previously

47:19

represented. Some of them even

47:21

start to dismantle some of the

47:23

stereotypes. Some of them show

47:26

the humor of Native people.

47:28

Some examples include Will Sampson

47:31

as the character of Chief in One

47:34

Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chief

47:36

Dan George in The Outlaw

47:38

Josie Wales. There's discussion

47:41

of how humor kept

47:44

Indians alive, and you

47:47

know, just levity and being

47:50

able to laugh and experience joy

47:52

that help them keep going.

47:54

Yeah, that's honestly one thing that I think

47:56

is synonymous with Again, you

47:58

know, I don't know everything about every

48:00

Native nation on these lands. But one

48:03

thing I know that brings us all together is laughing.

48:05

And there's no better sound than

48:07

making an auntie or an uncle

48:10

just gut laugh.

48:11

You know.

48:11

And that's what we strive to do. It's just tease

48:14

and make fun and all of that and

48:16

finding humor and things is like honestly

48:20

paramount to our thrival as people. It's

48:22

the one thing that's pulled us out of the darkest

48:24

times, you know, and seeing

48:27

that conveyed on screen is such

48:29

an incredible thing.

48:31

Yeah, I really loved

48:33

I'd seen his the set

48:36

that they show of Charlie Hills from the seventies

48:38

at the beginning. I'd seen it before, and

48:40

like, I just I really, he's so cool.

48:43

And it also it like is feels

48:45

like demonstrative of all of this prejudice

48:48

against Native people that he didn't have a fucking

48:50

gigantic career and like

48:53

it wasn't you know, like Eddie

48:55

Murphy, like Steve Martin Lovel's

48:57

of famous because he's so talented, but just

48:59

like the you of his work and then

49:01

also in like clips of him at the time

49:04

throughout or just like he's just so

49:07

funny. He's such a good comic.

49:09

And it's it feels gentle too.

49:11

Like that's the other thing too, it's like gentle humor

49:13

where it's like silly but also like a

49:16

little like pokey. But still

49:18

you know it's in jest. It's good, like it's

49:21

not you know, I think that's

49:23

special. Wasn't it on the Richard Pryor

49:25

Show or something?

49:26

I believe?

49:26

So, yeah, yeah, he gave him that space

49:28

to be able to come and do that.

49:31

I love that so much.

49:32

I thought, yeah, God, I want

49:34

to learn more about Charliehill. But yeah he did. He

49:37

Richard Pryor sort of put him on for the first

49:39

time, and then he went on to do SATs on Carson

49:42

and then Letterman and like, but Richard

49:44

Pryor got and started, which I was like, fuck

49:46

yeah, Richard.

49:47

Love it. Thanks. Then the

49:49

documentary is like, now it's time

49:51

to talk about Dances with Wolves.

49:55

Come to to the table. Children.

50:00

I still have not seen Dances with Wolves.

50:02

You only need to see it for the incredible

50:05

force that is Graham Green, absolute

50:08

childhood hero. He's touched

50:11

every level of entertainment

50:13

that I enjoy. He's hosted like Cold

50:16

Case File shows like he's done

50:18

all sorts of stuff, and I'm just like, I could just listen to that man

50:20

talk forever and also look at him because

50:22

he's a cutie.

50:24

He's so damn handsome,

50:26

relious. He's

50:28

real, he's real handsome. Yeah, Dove

50:30

Charger. I think I first saw Graham

50:33

Green and die Hard with a vengeance

50:35

question Mark.

50:36

Oh so pride

50:38

that you have seen that movie, Jamie.

50:41

I think it was on TNT and I

50:43

was sick or something. I don't know how else

50:46

Diehard this

50:49

is happening, but that was

50:51

that was my intro to Green.

50:54

Oh so good? Yeah, no, that is

50:56

it's for Dances as Wolves, like definitely worth

50:58

the Graham greenism so there at his

51:00

facial acting and just

51:03

how talented he is.

51:05

The doc talks

51:07

about how this was a movie told

51:10

from a white lens about a white man,

51:13

where Native characters are

51:15

still you know, mostly like periphery

51:18

backdrop characters, but

51:21

those characters being more nuanced

51:24

and fleshed out than had

51:26

previously been seen in Hollywood, and

51:29

again calling particular attention to Graham

51:31

Green's performance, and because

51:34

Dances with Wolves was a box

51:36

office success, from

51:38

that came similar movies

51:40

that kind of ushered in more

51:44

positive representation of Indigenous

51:47

people on screen, followed

51:49

by a renaissance

51:52

where the voices

51:55

of Native filmmakers and artists

51:57

were finally allowed to be seen and

51:59

heard in Hollywood. So

52:01

this is where you have movies like Smoke

52:03

Signals, directed by Chris Ayre. We

52:06

covered it on the podcast Not

52:08

Long Ago. And

52:11

then Neil Diamond arrives in

52:13

Hollywood. He meets

52:15

with actor Adam Beach,

52:18

who was one of the stars of Smoke Signals.

52:20

What a fun final destination too, right,

52:23

And then I went to Adam Beach's house, right, Hell,

52:25

yeah, that sounds.

52:26

Great, Like just like, and I

52:28

can tell you the future, you will be slipknot

52:30

in the really really bad Suicide Squad

52:32

movie for five seconds.

52:34

Oh my gosh, that was him.

52:36

No. I was so

52:38

bummed because like he hit a woman

52:40

in that and I was like, ah, we can't have anything. Like.

52:43

I was just so upset.

52:44

I didn't know that was him. Oh no,

52:47

it was my

52:49

god. I still haven't seen the Power of the Dog,

52:52

but I know that was that the last big thing he

52:54

was in. I still haven't seen it. I'm

52:56

bad at watching movies, So

52:59

you guys.

53:00

It's okay. And

53:02

then Neil Diamond returns

53:05

to Igluluk in Northern

53:07

Canada, talks about a

53:10

revolutionary Inuit movie

53:12

called The Fast Runner from two thousand and one,

53:14

which was very much

53:17

a Native movie told from a

53:19

Native perspective. Neil meets

53:21

with the director, Zacharias

53:24

Kunik, and there's a discussion

53:26

about how that movie ushered

53:29

in a new wave of film

53:31

where the gaze and perspective

53:34

was fully indigenous. And

53:37

that's pretty much where the movie

53:39

ends, where it's just basically ending

53:41

on a positive note of like things

53:44

are looking up and representation

53:47

continues to be more

53:49

and more meaningful and prevalent

53:52

and positive and.

53:54

The last I mean. According to scholarly journal

53:57

Wikipedia, Neil Diamond

53:59

and Zacharias Kunuk hit it

54:01

off to the extent that I'm like, I don't

54:03

know if it's going to happen, because it says as of April twenty

54:06

eleven, Diamond

54:08

is developing a project with Inuit

54:10

filmmaker Zacharias Kanok about the

54:12

eighteenth century conflict between create an

54:14

Inuit which lasted almost a century, which

54:17

I hope comes out someday.

54:19

I would really like to see that. Yeah,

54:22

But I like that they connected and are collaborating.

54:24

Yeah, that also like speaks to something

54:27

that you know, as Native people, like

54:30

we probably hear more often than not, like

54:33

with when

54:35

it comes to war or like taking the land. Right when

54:37

people were coming here that weren't from these

54:39

lands, It's like, well, the Native people fought with each other.

54:41

I'm like, yeah, we did, Like we weren't these like peaceful

54:44

beings just wandering around, you know, doing

54:46

whatever. But I really

54:49

appreciate that, you know, even the stories of

54:51

our nations are being shared to

54:54

where we are now. Like you know, I have a cousin who's

54:56

Blackfoot and Korean Blackfoot. We had

54:58

a few battles kick their one time, real good.

55:01

But like, you know, other than that, I'm like, it's

55:04

like these these are formative to our

55:06

relationships now. And that

55:10

also draws a point for me that I kind of wanted

55:12

to bring up today, is I

55:15

love history. I love history of Native people.

55:17

I love people understand I love non natives

55:19

and natives of course, learning the history

55:22

of these lands and how the people interact with them.

55:24

But I crave and

55:27

pine for contemporary

55:29

cinema. I'm so tired

55:32

of the rhetoric of like natives as

55:34

a thing of the past, like I

55:36

have not yet seen Killers of the Flower Moon. I

55:38

don't know if I'm going to see it. I'm so glad

55:40

that the Osage had to say in that movie, and

55:43

from what I've read, you know, like the

55:45

actors did such a phenomenal job

55:48

in it, and it is what it was supposed

55:50

to be for a movie directed by Scorsese.

55:53

That that being said, it's

55:55

a history lesson. Where's the

55:57

modern day lesson of why

56:00

Native people or in the situations therein?

56:02

Why are they still living on reservations or reserves?

56:04

Why are they still experiencing poverty?

56:06

Why is there a reservation in Canada that's

56:09

decades in of not having clean water? You

56:11

know, like there needs to be something

56:14

modern to tell our story, not.

56:16

Just the history, which

56:18

seems like is being done more in the TV

56:20

space absolutely then in

56:22

film. Right now, it would be like

56:25

that should be represented across

56:28

mediums. I think

56:30

that there is. I don't remember if it was like Chris

56:32

Ayir talking about his

56:34

own movie, but like Smoke Signals being

56:36

successful felt like such a huge deal

56:39

because there were so few movies

56:41

about contemporary Native life

56:44

that actually became

56:47

national successes.

56:49

There's a chunk in the documentary where because

56:51

again it's going through sort of like decade

56:54

by decade of like here were the trends

56:57

of Native representation in Hollywood

57:00

in each decade there's voiceover

57:03

where it's like in the nineteen eighties,

57:05

Westerns went out of style, and

57:08

so it wasn't until the nineties again when

57:10

with Dances of Wolves the Western

57:12

came back, and it's just like, oh, Hollywood

57:15

just couldn't think of any other genres

57:18

that Native people could be in because Westerns

57:20

went out of style for a decade

57:22

or so that they just Native

57:25

people were not included in

57:27

like Hollywood movies, and it's like.

57:31

The eighties, you're just like what

57:34

I was.

57:34

Born in the I was born in the

57:36

eighties, and Natives

57:40

were still there in the eighties.

57:44

I mean, this is actually something I

57:46

had to unlearn because every

57:49

Native person I saw depicted

57:52

in a movie, like when

57:54

I was watching them as a kid, even

57:57

into my teen years and stuff like that were

58:00

movies either about first

58:02

contact, the settlers coming

58:04

in making first contact, or

58:07

like westward expansion times.

58:10

Either way, it was like centuries

58:12

ago, nothing in the modern era, which

58:14

like does so much to erase

58:17

Native people from the modern world to

58:19

the point where I was like, Native

58:22

people exist alongside

58:24

me right now, and like for a long time,

58:27

like growing up in a very like homogeneous

58:30

white, like conservative

58:33

small town area not

58:35

being around or seeing any Native people,

58:38

I was like, Oh, they must be a thing

58:40

of the past.

58:41

Which, weirdly, Jim Jarmush

58:43

made that point, Okay, I was

58:46

like, why is Jim Jarmush here? It

58:48

wasn't clear on it, but I was like, I

58:51

like what he's saying. But who invited him?

58:54

He just shows up? He's just like he's.

58:57

Ready, did he just wander in? Like

58:59

what? But he

59:01

had like a kind of a good quote

59:04

that when he was but he was

59:06

talking about the coming out

59:08

of the Silent era of how

59:10

particularly once native

59:13

directors, writers, actors who were portraying

59:15

their own stories, once that was phased

59:18

out pretty effectively during the Great Depression,

59:21

that there was this distinct sort

59:23

of cultural shift moving into the John

59:25

Wayne years of portraying

59:27

Native people as if they no longer existed,

59:30

and that that was like a distinct moment.

59:32

Or if they were in the way, they were in the way

59:34

of progression. And that's really

59:37

like what I think most of the John

59:39

Wayne era movies just did

59:44

or they had to fulfill a trope. That's the other

59:46

thing, you know that really gets me is

59:48

like we can kind of dissect some

59:50

of these two, but like everything from Pocahontas

59:52

to like billy Jack. Still have

59:55

such a week I have, like I have such a

59:57

soft spot for that movie, and I need.

59:59

Someone to explain billy Jack to me.

1:00:01

It's a cool kung fu Indian. Okay,

1:00:04

where's some really big hat with a great

1:00:06

cat band and that's all you need to know.

1:00:08

I don't understand billy Jack conceptually.

1:00:12

But it's I don't know why I love that

1:00:14

movie so much. I'm just like, it's because it's so terrible

1:00:17

that I'm like, Okay, this can pass, Like this passes

1:00:19

my checklist of like just ridiculousness.

1:00:24

But the thing is natives always have to fulfill a

1:00:26

trope, right because if

1:00:28

we aren't performing the way that people

1:00:30

want us to perform, act, look

1:00:33

speak And that even goes back to like

1:00:35

they talked about the Tanto speech like talk

1:00:37

them speech that stuff like I

1:00:41

still can't remember. It's like on the tip

1:00:43

of my Miko s tribe. If

1:00:45

y'all want to do a Google search at some point, yeah,

1:00:48

it's run by like it's an offshoot

1:00:50

of the Boy Scouts and they actually have a podcast

1:00:52

called like Talcum or something

1:00:54

like that where it's like we make them

1:00:56

talk like they do that type of garbage,

1:01:00

Like that type of speech is like if we're not fulfilling

1:01:02

these compartments of what

1:01:05

people think natives should be, and

1:01:07

it's like so difficult to differentiate

1:01:10

tribes or it's so difficult to whatever.

1:01:13

We don't exist to you, right,

1:01:15

And that's the part that makes me really sad,

1:01:18

is like it's too

1:01:20

much work, I think

1:01:22

part of it. And not to get super deep

1:01:25

on y'all today, but like the

1:01:28

acknowledgment by Hollywood,

1:01:30

that's why all of the movies made by

1:01:32

white directors are still things of the past,

1:01:35

is because the moment that

1:01:38

that acknowledgment happens, that

1:01:40

we were genocided, continued

1:01:43

to be victims of genocide,

1:01:45

modern day genocide, with erasure and

1:01:47

disclusion in so many things. The

1:01:50

moment that any powerful

1:01:53

entity, even Hollywood, acknowledges

1:01:57

who we are as people outside

1:02:00

of their lens is that

1:02:02

we exist today, acknowledges all

1:02:05

the atrocities they committed against us, and

1:02:08

then completely severs their

1:02:12

their self appointed right to land.

1:02:16

What do they call it? Resources?

1:02:20

Like people? Like

1:02:23

again people, and that goes back to even like

1:02:25

Pocahontas, Like you know, her name

1:02:27

wasn't even Pocahontas. It was like as

1:02:30

starts with the ms like Matoka, Makota,

1:02:32

like I can't say again, I don't speak all the other languages,

1:02:35

but you know, it's it's expected that she was between

1:02:37

nine and eleven years old. She

1:02:39

died twenty one.

1:02:41

Yeah, like after being essentially

1:02:44

kidnapped like yes.

1:02:45

And human trafficked, you know, Like but

1:02:48

again this concept I'll

1:02:50

never forget actually talking about cinema

1:02:53

with my Like my dad he

1:02:56

had picked me up after your's

1:02:59

personal stuf after a visitation right with my mom

1:03:01

when I was a kid. She lived in Edmonton, Alberta,

1:03:04

Canada, and we lived in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Canada.

1:03:07

And my dad had picked me up and he took me

1:03:09

to what task go in? Also crea name

1:03:11

there you go. He took me to Task

1:03:14

go in after he picked me up to go take me to the movies because

1:03:16

like I always had a hard time leaving my mom's and it was always

1:03:19

very interesting dynamic growing up. But

1:03:22

we went to go see Poconnas. And

1:03:24

I will tell you my dad

1:03:27

was like a BFI, which

1:03:29

I actually call a big fucking Indian. Like

1:03:31

he was just big and brown and

1:03:34

he was when you got a BFI angry.

1:03:36

It was hilarious. But he

1:03:39

he was so mad. He was mad. He's like, she they

1:03:41

made it seem like she was a trader to the people, and they made

1:03:43

her sexy and all of these things, and he

1:03:45

was all upset about it. And I'm just like, go

1:03:48

home and mad. Did I get a lecture on the way home?

1:03:50

Like not to be like that? Wow,

1:03:54

it was pretty surreal.

1:03:56

That's fine. I'm twelve, Like, but

1:04:01

I mean, I I that

1:04:03

movie. God, that movie came out when I

1:04:06

think I was like two or three years old, with the first movie I

1:04:08

remember seeing, and I

1:04:10

was fucking obsessed with it,

1:04:12

and it like in a formative

1:04:15

way that like certainly was not challenged

1:04:18

in the way that I was schooled or grew

1:04:20

up. I didn't grow up knowing

1:04:23

Native kids or Native families. And

1:04:26

that movie. I think that that movie, I think it's

1:04:28

interesting. It seems like every generation there

1:04:31

is a hugely successful

1:04:33

movie that wildly

1:04:36

misrepresents and insults Native

1:04:38

history that has

1:04:41

a huge, huge impact on just

1:04:43

media in general, and

1:04:46

Pocahontas was certainly that movie

1:04:48

for me. And so then when I think I was in

1:04:51

high school, when I

1:04:53

had a great history teacher

1:04:57

who sort of spoke to all

1:04:59

of the wild historical inaccuracies

1:05:01

that are presented in at that point extremely

1:05:05

famous movie, that was

1:05:07

sort of my first indication

1:05:10

that you know, this story that I

1:05:12

literally was like one of my first conscious memories

1:05:14

was completely false and

1:05:17

not just and falls in a dangerous way.

1:05:20

There's like a I think there's a level of discomfort

1:05:23

too with again, like these these movies

1:05:25

being portrayed the way that people

1:05:27

want us to be or want to see us as

1:05:30

natives. And I

1:05:32

have a lot of empathy considering the

1:05:34

things I've experienced in my life, but

1:05:36

one of them is like I can't imagine

1:05:38

what it feels like to know that everything

1:05:41

you believed is bullshit. And

1:05:45

that must be really difficult because you're like, wow,

1:05:47

like starting from ground zero

1:05:49

to learn things. And while it's a super

1:05:52

beautiful process, there's a lot of people that

1:05:54

get stunted in that and decide that they don't

1:05:56

want to actually

1:05:58

put in work or listen or change

1:06:01

that narrative shifted even a little

1:06:03

bit in their brains because there's

1:06:05

discomfort associated with that and the discomfort

1:06:08

that people feel from

1:06:10

realizing that. And again I'll just talk about.

1:06:13

What we're talking about is movies that the way that natives

1:06:15

have been betrayed is not true or

1:06:17

not necessarily true. Like

1:06:20

it's just a fragment of the discomfort we

1:06:22

have felt as people since

1:06:25

the onset of colonization. So

1:06:28

like, I mean not that

1:06:30

you know, tit for tad. I would never wish real

1:06:33

negative things on anybody because I don't want to put

1:06:35

that out into the universe. But what I would say

1:06:37

is with discomfort

1:06:40

comes growth, right, and

1:06:42

so like reevaluating our

1:06:45

lens, no pun intended, as we see

1:06:47

people through this like talking

1:06:50

box, like there's

1:06:52

my Indians speak for the day talking box

1:06:55

Like so I'm gonna be I'm

1:06:57

gonna be blacklisted for that one. But

1:06:59

like, but no, like through any talking box,

1:07:01

whether it be your phone, whether it be your TV, whether it be your

1:07:03

computer, how we see things portrayed

1:07:07

is somebody's narrative. If they haven't

1:07:09

experienced it, how genuine can

1:07:11

it be? You know? And so that's why I'm

1:07:13

so glad with this, like again regaissance

1:07:15

that they're talking about thirteen years ago.

1:07:17

At the end of this documentary, we're

1:07:20

seeing it happen slowly but surely, Like

1:07:22

a great film came out recently called

1:07:25

Slashback, and I'm obsessed with it. I will watch that

1:07:27

movie like so often because

1:07:30

it touches on everything that

1:07:33

I would want it to touch

1:07:35

on. And I'm not like a knook. I'm

1:07:37

not from there. I don't experience those things.

1:07:39

But to see like syllabics

1:07:42

and to see language and to see

1:07:44

face markings, it all like just makes

1:07:47

sense to me, Like they went to that village

1:07:50

and they taught kids how to act. Like

1:07:53

that's so great, you know. I'm so glad

1:07:55

that things like this are happening now that we

1:07:58

get to tell authentic versions of

1:08:00

ourselves. And it might

1:08:02

make people uncomfortable, they might not understand

1:08:04

it, but that's okay too,

1:08:06

because again it doesn't have to be for everyone. But

1:08:09

it's also going back to what I said,

1:08:11

like there's going to be discomfort and knowing

1:08:13

the things that you believe to

1:08:15

be true.

1:08:16

Aren't and I mean speaking

1:08:18

more to that. This episode is

1:08:21

coming out the week of Thanksgiving,

1:08:24

if not on the day, and

1:08:27

the narrative that I learned in history

1:08:29

class in elementary school about

1:08:32

what Thanksgiving was just

1:08:34

being so bogus and so rewritten

1:08:39

to favor the colonizer's

1:08:41

side of the story and to

1:08:44

say, oh, no, there wasn't a genocide.

1:08:48

It was us all getting along and

1:08:50

that's there was a feast and it was nice.

1:08:53

But then the Indians turned on us.

1:08:55

Right, literally what I learned and right

1:08:58

that myth includes

1:09:00

like five different popular stereotypes

1:09:03

around Native people, Like in

1:09:05

one story that a lot of

1:09:07

kids learn when they're two three

1:09:10

years old, it's fucking ridiculous,

1:09:12

And I like, just like

1:09:14

conditions you into a colonizer mindset

1:09:17

when you're too young to even realize what

1:09:19

that is or what that means.

1:09:22

And I feel it is like especially

1:09:24

because the I mean, the Internet is fucking

1:09:28

evil, has great potential for you know,

1:09:30

it like has surely ruined

1:09:32

our mental health forever. However, it

1:09:36

is like I feel like speaking

1:09:38

to your point essay about like it's like

1:09:40

your responsive I don't know, like if if

1:09:42

you were brought up with a colonizer mindset,

1:09:44

you have the tools to unlearn it

1:09:47

in a way that like no other

1:09:50

generation or point in history that has it

1:09:52

been more true that you have the tools

1:09:55

to be able to unlearn it. And it's I feel

1:09:57

like it's like your responsibility to do it, even

1:09:59

even if it's uncomfortable. Who gives a shit?

1:10:01

Like it's and I think too.

1:10:03

And one of the things that I've come up against in a lot

1:10:05

of my like

1:10:08

whether I'm doing like community work or supporting

1:10:10

people or I don't know, like get it. Like

1:10:12

I hate to say what I do is work because like I

1:10:14

don't consider it work. But in

1:10:17

education, like I feel really

1:10:19

bad sometimes when people are like, you know, I

1:10:21

want to talk to Native people, I want to find things out, and

1:10:23

they're very apprehensive to talk to me. I'm like, well, rightfully,

1:10:26

so, you know. But at the same

1:10:28

time, I'm like, there's got to be a

1:10:30

level of like, I

1:10:32

don't mind talking to people about my

1:10:34

experiences. I can only speak to my own experiences.

1:10:37

And that's why, you know, I specialize in

1:10:39

very specific areas of Native

1:10:42

history and then how that affects us in

1:10:44

modern times with you know, residential

1:10:46

schools and the scoop

1:10:48

and all of that. Actually that reminds

1:10:50

me just to go back. There was one of those

1:10:53

Thomas Edison Films was Indian Day

1:10:55

School and it was like in right

1:10:57

before nineteen hundred, and it was about

1:11:00

Natives being taken away from their families and

1:11:02

like you know and being forced assimilated.

1:11:04

You know. So I can only speak to those experiences.

1:11:06

But what I like to do is still makes space

1:11:09

that I'm capable of to tell people

1:11:12

about the hurt that we've

1:11:15

experienced and still experienced

1:11:18

by methods of TV and

1:11:22

movies. But it's

1:11:24

going to take time. We can't undo what's been

1:11:26

done, but we can learn new ways of being.

1:11:29

And so yeah, I like

1:11:31

to make space for people to educate, just

1:11:34

again from my experiences and

1:11:36

in hopes that they're not

1:11:39

just seeking out like

1:11:42

I guess, like would it be a trauma bonding or

1:11:44

like trying to live vicariously through the trauma, right,

1:11:46

so they could feel some proximity to it without

1:11:48

experiencing it. But yeah,

1:11:51

like I think that the more

1:11:53

we can share and the

1:11:55

more that people realize

1:11:57

that they have access to information, you know,

1:11:59

like there's going to be stuff online

1:12:01

that's going to support either opinion, right,

1:12:04

and that's that's part of the problem

1:12:07

with people not having

1:12:10

a direction to go in So like a

1:12:12

little bit of compassion. If somebody doesn't want to talk to you,

1:12:14

don't force it out of them because you know you'll

1:12:17

get you'll get an earful

1:12:19

I'm sure. But there's

1:12:21

got to be space for education, and

1:12:24

there's got to be space for Native people to be able to

1:12:26

tell their own stories, for people to participate

1:12:29

in that by even just watching m

1:12:32

Absolutely, I'm trying to think there's

1:12:35

so much that we could talk this

1:12:37

This documentary is so like wonderfully

1:12:40

dense.

1:12:42

Say, are there specific movies or points

1:12:44

covered in the doc that you wanted

1:12:46

to cover? I mean, I feel like I wrote

1:12:48

down a million quotes of speaking

1:12:51

to There was one I wanted to share about

1:12:53

Pocahontas. I

1:12:56

didn't write down who said it.

1:12:58

I believe it was Jesse Windy, who's

1:13:00

in Ojibway film critic, who

1:13:03

said about Pocahontas in a way

1:13:05

that again, just at many points,

1:13:07

this documentary just like really clearly

1:13:10

distills what the issue is

1:13:12

with a tremendously famous movie

1:13:14

that misrepresents Native people, and

1:13:16

this one was we imbue in her all

1:13:18

of the wrong notions about what we want to see in a

1:13:21

mythical princess, and she becomes the

1:13:23

embodiment of what we want to see, not

1:13:25

in Native society, she becomes an embodiment

1:13:27

of what we see in American society

1:13:29

and of American desire. And

1:13:33

that's I mean, that's the

1:13:36

white millennial's journey With the movie

1:13:38

Pocahontas. I

1:13:40

think that one of the first things that

1:13:42

I recognize outside of the

1:13:44

wild historical inaccuracy then

1:13:47

you know, going into film school and media,

1:13:49

you know where there's all these issues

1:13:52

of erasure in academia as

1:13:54

well, but just finding how

1:13:57

much more significantly sexualized Pocahonta

1:14:00

was. Not only is she aged up to

1:14:03

seem to be an appropriate romantic

1:14:05

interest, not only is there all of

1:14:07

this implied consent, not only is there this

1:14:10

implied betrayal of her

1:14:12

own people, all of which is untrue, but the way

1:14:14

that she's physically presented is

1:14:16

as far more sexual

1:14:19

than any of the white Disney princesses

1:14:21

that you would see. And the historical context

1:14:24

that comes with that of overtly

1:14:26

sexualizing and you

1:14:29

know, alternatively sexualizing and erasing Native

1:14:32

women from media entirely.

1:14:34

That that makes me think about some of those old westerns

1:14:37

and like when the women would be in brown face,

1:14:39

you know, it was always like the white man

1:14:41

would be seeking out you know this I

1:14:45

cat like it's such a it's a slur, so I can't

1:14:47

even say it. But like the sq word, right,

1:14:51

and like if anyone wants a

1:14:53

piece of homework, go look at what the actual origin

1:14:55

of that meaning is. It's incredibly vulgar.

1:14:58

But I think about it's always

1:15:00

about like and going in

1:15:03

theme with the podcast here, it's all about

1:15:06

like being available to men, right, It's

1:15:08

the use use of buying men, right,

1:15:11

even you know, not to like go

1:15:14

off too far off course here, but like even

1:15:16

with like the school marm, right, like the white women in

1:15:18

it are just there to be of use for

1:15:21

the men and to take care of the children

1:15:23

and that sort of thing. Like there's no dimension,

1:15:26

right, So when you see these

1:15:28

native women in whether

1:15:31

it be Westerns or even like the contemporary

1:15:33

Western like Dances with Wolves,

1:15:34

her purpose was to serve the man,

1:15:37

right and be

1:15:40

this like caricature of

1:15:43

indigenity, when like ol

1:15:45

stands with a fist was actually just a white woman,

1:15:47

you know, who was stolen

1:15:50

by these savages but then raised by them,

1:15:52

you know, and it's this whole story and I really like

1:15:54

that it was brought up that she looked

1:15:56

like she was disheveled, and she looked all these ways,

1:15:58

and like if she was actually living with them, she would have commune.

1:16:00

Like so they had to make her look savage, right

1:16:02

and like, and it was the white man that saved

1:16:05

her from you know whatever.

1:16:07

It's just because like, also, heaven

1:16:10

forbid this white man end

1:16:12

up with a It's like she had like two she

1:16:14

was a two dimensional character. Like she wasn't one dimension,

1:16:16

she had two dimensions because she lived with natives

1:16:18

but was still white. You know that heaven

1:16:20

forbid he would have ended up with a Native woman at

1:16:22

all, you know, Like and so

1:16:25

there's still a level of like, what's

1:16:29

the word for it. It's like just if

1:16:31

it's like misogyny, racism, and

1:16:33

again back to the fetish station of

1:16:36

like what women are worth, right,

1:16:38

and then you add, you

1:16:40

know, add in that she's native or

1:16:42

brown or anything, you know, and that's adds

1:16:45

another level of like just utter dismissal

1:16:48

of any any worth.

1:16:51

For sure. Actually, if I had one

1:16:54

criticism of this documentary

1:16:56

is that I would have loved to hear more

1:16:59

Native women, Yeah, talk about

1:17:01

what they've experienced, what they've seen,

1:17:04

as far as the representation

1:17:06

of Native women and

1:17:08

fems in Hollywood

1:17:11

and just their thoughts on it, because

1:17:13

we have a there's a few women who were

1:17:16

interviewed, but definitely

1:17:18

more men.

1:17:20

I mean. And that's that's the other thing too, Like I

1:17:22

look at timeframe, and I look at

1:17:26

like, you know, we always have to take an account

1:17:28

of when things are made, right, because like A, I

1:17:30

don't believe in the thing that people didn't know any

1:17:32

better. They just choose not to

1:17:35

expand, right, you know, or have like

1:17:39

like the time frame can explain

1:17:41

it, it doesn't necessarily excuse it, right,

1:17:43

Does that make sense?

1:17:45

Right?

1:17:45

Yeah, for sure.

1:17:46

But I look at the timeframe move when this was made, and

1:17:49

there weren't a lot of major

1:17:52

motion pictures being wow, just

1:17:54

said the words major motion pictures, the

1:17:57

brave, I

1:17:59

thank you, it's nice

1:18:01

to be here. But

1:18:04

there weren't a vast

1:18:07

amount of major motion pictures being made with Native

1:18:10

actresses, right, like in roles

1:18:13

that weren't like, you know, freaking like Legends

1:18:15

of the Fall, like one woman for a

1:18:18

few minutes, and of course, oh what she

1:18:20

was serving Brad Pitt's character, you know. Like,

1:18:23

so, I mean I think that this

1:18:26

documentary like kind of subtly

1:18:29

without maybe knowing, really helped

1:18:31

shed light on that because yeah, there wasn't any

1:18:34

even in something that was so progressive

1:18:37

at its time. You know, we're at

1:18:39

the point where we could have Real Engine part

1:18:41

two and like, look at where

1:18:43

we are now, you know, and what we've learned.

1:18:46

I mean, there's a there are five

1:18:48

Twilight movies that came out since okay,

1:18:54

progress is not linear

1:18:57

all the time and moving forward, and because

1:18:59

like you know, the movie ends on this like really you

1:19:02

know, positive note of like representations

1:19:04

seems to be getting better. But

1:19:07

then all these Twilight movies came

1:19:09

out.

1:19:09

But also like just another fun

1:19:11

you probably already know this, but like fun movie fact

1:19:13

is that Taylor Latner improvised

1:19:16

Loca and they just kept it in there. So

1:19:19

that wasn't even no.

1:19:20

I did not know that.

1:19:22

Yeah, that that is. That

1:19:24

is one of the only parts of those movies I've ever watched,

1:19:27

And I just enjoy it because I'm just like him

1:19:29

in his big white teeth just saying Loka just

1:19:32

does it for me.

1:19:33

Those Loatner veneers, nothing

1:19:36

like them, spark sparkle just

1:19:42

yeah, I would be that was I

1:19:44

would love to see a sort of an update.

1:19:47

I guess I don't know, I as someone

1:19:49

that is always frustrated by like the idea of

1:19:51

being like, oh that thing you did a long time

1:19:53

ago, do it again for me?

1:19:56

But I but I would love to see sort of an

1:19:59

update in this format. Maybe it exists

1:20:02

and I just don't know about.

1:20:03

It, but maybe if

1:20:06

it does, I hope I didn't miss it, you

1:20:08

know. Like again, not to dismiss Neil

1:20:10

Diamond like I

1:20:12

and this is going to sound really silly to

1:20:14

say it out loud, but like people like him make

1:20:16

me proud to be free because

1:20:19

it is something that is so authentically indigenous

1:20:23

to who he was and the environment

1:20:25

he grew up in what he saw right. He

1:20:27

wasn't pretending to be a type

1:20:29

of native that he wasn't. Right,

1:20:32

So I appreciate

1:20:34

everything he's done with that

1:20:36

film and how he narrated it and how he story

1:20:38

told through it. And

1:20:41

again, like I said at the beginning, you know, when I was kind

1:20:43

of talking about my experience with the film, it's

1:20:45

it's literally the movie that

1:20:47

I give for people as a stepping

1:20:50

stone to understanding why

1:20:52

their perceptions are the way they are of us. Bite

1:20:55

size breakdown, you know. Yeah,

1:20:57

it's a positive catalyst movie. That's

1:21:00

what I think of.

1:21:01

Yeah, ooh ooh, that's a great

1:21:03

description for like a genre of

1:21:06

movie.

1:21:06

That's cool, Like I love things that are thought provoking,

1:21:08

but it's a positive catalyst to Like again, both

1:21:10

of you said, like, oh, we have to watch these movies

1:21:12

from it or whatever. This is like thirteen

1:21:15

years ago. There's so much since then, but like those

1:21:17

movies are your little snack of

1:21:19

Maronis on your way to understanding

1:21:23

Native people through cinema.

1:21:24

Yeah, so absolutely, Yeah,

1:21:27

is there anything else that you

1:21:30

both wanted to touch on?

1:21:32

I mean, we're at the point now where we

1:21:35

realize that we're all a Native

1:21:37

land, right, and the best

1:21:40

way to understand

1:21:42

where people are now is by understanding

1:21:44

history, and so knowing where you are is

1:21:46

a really good step forward. You don't know any like

1:21:49

I encourage people to not

1:21:51

feel overwhelmed when it comes to

1:21:53

understanding where they are. So, like, you know, you

1:21:55

live somewhere they're like

1:21:59

native land. You can find out

1:22:01

who's laned you're on. Start doing some research,

1:22:03

you know, just find out where you

1:22:05

are and find out who's laned you're on. Find

1:22:07

out if that tribe is doing anything, find

1:22:09

out how you and support is such a broad

1:22:11

word, but encourage other people

1:22:13

to learn, understand the initiatives being taken,

1:22:16

support them when they're trying to change legislation,

1:22:19

get land back, et cetera. You know, it

1:22:22

can be very overwhelming. Again, like I said,

1:22:25

to find out that most of your existence

1:22:29

in knowledge is built on lies

1:22:32

about people and this

1:22:36

false sense of security in what the

1:22:38

United States and Canada stand on.

1:22:41

But I mean,

1:22:44

I promise it's worth it's

1:22:46

worth learning about, definitely. So

1:22:48

that's that's all I got. Oh and not every Indians

1:22:51

and planes Indian we don't all where headdresses

1:22:53

and war bonnets, I mean like by people do.

1:22:54

But you know that was

1:22:57

that was the last thing I wanted to actually because we

1:23:00

started talking about the costume

1:23:02

design. But just how there

1:23:05

was a great quote I think also from

1:23:08

Oh my gosh, I have so many does Jesse

1:23:11

WENTI? Yeah, for you

1:23:13

know how the use of the

1:23:16

what am I thinking of? Around the neck?

1:23:19

Are you talking about breastplates or the finger necklace

1:23:21

or the finger It

1:23:23

was like the headband.

1:23:26

Sorry, my brain no

1:23:28

longer works. No, the use of the

1:23:30

choker being strictly practical

1:23:32

to hide like wires

1:23:34

and different things where they're like, yeah, we completely

1:23:37

manufactured the image

1:23:40

of native people to the point where it

1:23:42

was to hide ship. That was just movie

1:23:44

shit.

1:23:45

Yeah, the headband to hold on, the wigs and stuff

1:23:47

like that. Yeah, yeah,

1:23:49

I think that that's one of the

1:23:51

biggest like takeaways for this

1:23:53

movie. The first time I saw it as as somebody

1:23:55

who is a Plane's Indian? You know, I

1:23:58

I was like, yeah, I was like this, they

1:24:01

need the identifiers. So like suddenly everyone's

1:24:03

wearing a headdress, everyone has a breastplate on, everyone

1:24:05

has these long braids

1:24:08

or whatever, and it's just it

1:24:10

was so it's so lazy, Like it's

1:24:12

just feels so lazy. But the thing is

1:24:15

they just needed this like identifier,

1:24:19

and like, while I get it, like I

1:24:21

think planes natives are beautiful, and

1:24:23

there's so many tribes, Like there's

1:24:25

so many tribes that live in the Great Plains,

1:24:28

I mean, like why them, you know, like

1:24:30

again like they're like but

1:24:33

I again, I wouldn't wish that fetishization

1:24:35

on any other group, you know. So it's

1:24:38

just it's it's very interesting to see

1:24:40

that that was it was

1:24:42

it's a caricature of indigenoity.

1:24:46

You know.

1:24:46

Yeah, And what that does

1:24:49

is just lumps all

1:24:51

Native people into one monolith

1:24:55

culturally, and they're in

1:24:57

Hollywood. For most of these films

1:25:01

made no attempt to include

1:25:03

any like specific cultural

1:25:05

signifiers for different tribes

1:25:08

and nations, and it also just strips

1:25:11

natives of specific cultural

1:25:13

identity. And Hollywood was just

1:25:15

doing that for decades, and

1:25:19

white audiences were none

1:25:21

the wiser. They were just like, oh, this is

1:25:24

on screen, this just must be it,

1:25:27

right, yeah, And then that just

1:25:29

brings us back to the point of like taking

1:25:31

the initiative to learn

1:25:34

and actually do the work, put

1:25:36

in the effort.

1:25:37

To You may have to read a book.

1:25:39

Or you can do you can do the other thing that

1:25:41

I do, because again, reading is not my friend. I

1:25:44

just can't focus in, so I just like use

1:25:46

my delicious little apps on my phone or

1:25:48

even highlight text on my contutor. Yes,

1:25:50

they said contutor and I

1:25:54

and I haven't read it to me, you know, yeah,

1:25:57

exactly. Everyone learns different

1:25:59

ways and there's so many applications to be able

1:26:01

to facilitate that now.

1:26:03

Yeah, which is yeah, just like another of

1:26:05

all the elements of being alive right now

1:26:07

that are fucking awful. That is a

1:26:09

good thing, take advantage of the few good things

1:26:11

we have. Yeah, Yeah, I just wanted

1:26:13

to share those quotes from

1:26:15

Richard Lamont because I feel like, I mean, it's

1:26:18

very much what our show is

1:26:20

about, or has become increasingly more about

1:26:23

over the years, which is that, like I think

1:26:25

it's very easy to you

1:26:27

know, like I don't know argue

1:26:30

that, Like, I mean, I just think we still I

1:26:32

still see this among people that I like, know

1:26:34

and like and respect and all this stuff. But they're

1:26:36

like, it's just a movie. It's not that serious. It's

1:26:39

just a movie. Which it's

1:26:41

it's very rarely just a movie,

1:26:43

especially when you're talking

1:26:46

about or erasing entirely

1:26:49

communities who are rarely

1:26:51

have ever given the opportunity to

1:26:53

represent themselves with the same

1:26:55

budgets, with the same sort of institutional

1:26:57

support, and all of this shit.

1:26:59

It's it.

1:27:00

It is as goofy

1:27:02

as so much of it is. It is like extraordinarily

1:27:05

important, and.

1:27:07

Whether we notice it or not, it

1:27:09

is altering our perceptions.

1:27:11

And that Jesse went to quote that I

1:27:14

really really kind of stuck with me during the costuming

1:27:17

segment, was that the

1:27:20

way that you know, all

1:27:22

of indigenous culture was just

1:27:24

sort of turned into this also

1:27:26

false representation of a plane's

1:27:29

native. He says, it's

1:27:31

an ingenious act of colonialism, robbing

1:27:33

nations of their identity and grouping them.

1:27:36

And that just feels like this story,

1:27:39

even when it's you know, seemingly

1:27:41

well intentioned, you have this like brief moment in

1:27:43

the seventies, but even so it's

1:27:46

majority by white directors who are

1:27:48

showing Native characters in a more

1:27:51

empathetic light than film

1:27:53

has in many years, but through

1:27:56

the white character's lens.

1:27:57

Always well, it's the

1:28:00

outward racism. For me, that is just

1:28:02

like portraying John

1:28:04

Wayne as the real American, right,

1:28:07

and you know, natives not

1:28:10

being right, and that's just

1:28:12

so yeah,

1:28:17

yeah, that's something that still

1:28:19

like it's I

1:28:22

think it was like John Trudell actually who

1:28:26

said the words in that even he's

1:28:29

an incredible poet, but he

1:28:32

in the documentary he talked about how like when

1:28:34

they got off the boat, they didn't recognize us, you

1:28:36

know, and I think that that is still the rhetoric

1:28:39

that you know, came through in cinema

1:28:41

over the last hundred years.

1:28:43

Yeah. Something also that he said

1:28:45

that really stuck with me was

1:28:49

the word Indian had never been.

1:28:50

Uttered a sound had never been made yet.

1:28:52

In this hemisphere pre Subtler

1:28:55

colonialism, and like

1:28:58

the idea of name of American

1:29:01

in the sense that like America was

1:29:03

a concept that was also brought over.

1:29:06

And he's like, my people

1:29:08

are older than both concepts. Yeah,

1:29:11

but we're still fighting so hard to

1:29:13

defend that identity.

1:29:16

And that's the thing, Like even the word Indian, there's

1:29:18

a lot of like I'm

1:29:20

indifferent to it, and everyone is entitled

1:29:22

to their own standard with it,

1:29:24

Like I don't really like I identify

1:29:27

as Indian slang now

1:29:29

as letters and d end, you

1:29:31

know. And it's just like a cute way of kind

1:29:34

of like like you know, vernacular

1:29:36

changes in certain demographics and groups

1:29:38

of people. You know, there's

1:29:42

something that's like he said, like we're the people

1:29:44

and this is really cool, just as like a kind

1:29:46

of a nugget is I

1:29:48

have a lot of friends of a lot of different tribes, and like

1:29:50

most of the time their names just

1:29:53

translate to the people right

1:29:56

or something about the people of right, like

1:29:58

so it's always just people, and

1:30:01

so like same thing with Nichio. It's

1:30:03

we're people, right. And

1:30:05

it's interesting because I don't like,

1:30:07

unless I'm hanging out with like my Nie Cheese, which

1:30:09

are like my friends and stuff like that. Like, you

1:30:11

know, using the word Indian isn't really a

1:30:13

thing that I do, because

1:30:16

it's a point of like both,

1:30:21

Like I just I'm appalled by it. By the

1:30:23

same time, I'm like, it's how I identify. It's

1:30:25

a really weird too true

1:30:28

truths can exist at the same time, for

1:30:30

like how I feel about being an Indian because

1:30:33

I don't want to be a Native American again, Like

1:30:35

America is not what I want to

1:30:37

be a part of.

1:30:38

You know.

1:30:38

I prefer to be referred to as First Nations

1:30:40

because my people were of the first nations

1:30:42

here. But I am

1:30:45

like when I introduce myself, you know, I'm not an

1:30:47

Indian. I'm Mitchif and I'm

1:30:49

Nechio and I'm German. Thanks Dad

1:30:51

for having a thing for skinny white women. But

1:30:54

you know, like just what it

1:30:56

is. That's the other

1:30:58

thing too, is like because I'm like I

1:31:00

acknowledge all parts of myself and like I got

1:31:02

to grow up with some pretty rich German

1:31:05

heritage too, and that was pretty

1:31:07

neat. And that's the other thing that was touched

1:31:09

on the movie, which actually is really important, is

1:31:12

that John Tredell said, He's like, you know, they're

1:31:14

just trying to find themselves, these hippies, right, because

1:31:16

you know, they were part of tribes, they were part

1:31:18

of nations at one point, and they're just searching

1:31:20

for that piece of them that's lost. That's why they

1:31:22

latch on. And I felt

1:31:25

that because colonization

1:31:28

has done a number on everybody,

1:31:31

and just because we're the most

1:31:33

recent, you know, we're feeling it in such a drastic

1:31:36

way. I feel bad for people

1:31:38

who appropriate Native

1:31:40

people here because I know that

1:31:42

they're just searching for something in themselves

1:31:44

that they don't have an answer to and probably

1:31:46

never will. So

1:31:49

not excusing what they're doing, but again

1:31:52

explains the behavior, doesn't excuse it exactly.

1:31:57

So much.

1:31:58

There's so many nuggets in that.

1:32:00

I feel like we keep being like, okay, the episode ever

1:32:03

time.

1:32:05

But yeah, people watch the movie

1:32:08

if you haven't, and ask questions,

1:32:10

and ask questions about where you are, and

1:32:13

ask questions if those people have made films

1:32:15

or have been in TV shows, or have

1:32:19

participated in anything

1:32:22

to do storytelling. That's what Native people are

1:32:24

known for. We're storytellers, you know, like every

1:32:26

Native nation has their stories of how

1:32:28

we got to be here why we shouldn't

1:32:30

do certain things, and

1:32:33

there's protocols around that too, which I

1:32:36

guess also varied by nation, because again,

1:32:38

not an infallible fount of all things indigenous.

1:32:40

But yeah, take time, learn

1:32:43

and explore, and it's

1:32:45

gonna make us better as people understand

1:32:48

where folks are coming from, because we can undo what's happened,

1:32:50

but we can always learn new ways of being

1:32:54

absolute.

1:32:54

You mentioned slash Back. Are

1:32:56

there any other movies you would

1:32:58

recommend people check

1:33:01

out by indigenous filmmakers.

1:33:03

I mean there's just there's so there's so many,

1:33:06

Like just as a side note, there's so many incredible

1:33:09

like short films like the Gosh

1:33:12

what it was It? Like the Native American there's

1:33:14

one that I gotta look it up right now. It's gonna it's

1:33:17

gonna kill me. But

1:33:19

there's these like short films that I've been

1:33:22

seeing recently

1:33:24

and they're pretty

1:33:27

amazing. Did

1:33:30

I delete it? I deleted that of

1:33:33

course. But like

1:33:35

the Native American like Film

1:33:38

Festival, they have so

1:33:40

many up and coming Native

1:33:42

artists doing like five minute films, you

1:33:45

know, like just to see things

1:33:47

again through an indigenous lens is so important.

1:33:49

There's so many talented native musicians

1:33:52

and I know, like

1:33:54

the dirty word like TV shows,

1:33:57

but there's so many TV shows now that authorated

1:34:00

bite sized pieces for lack of a better

1:34:02

term, you know, like where you can

1:34:05

just step away for thirty minutes and

1:34:07

just experience proximity to somebody else,

1:34:10

you know, through their language

1:34:12

and their their their lens.

1:34:16

Yeah beautiful. Well,

1:34:18

I say thank you so much for

1:34:21

joining us, for discussing this

1:34:23

movie with us, and for helping us make history

1:34:26

on this show. Yeah, covering

1:34:28

a documentary for the first time, Who's history?

1:34:31

But it was such an enlightening

1:34:34

conversation, And yeah,

1:34:36

I loved this discussion.

1:34:39

Yeah, I'm so glad that you

1:34:41

encourage us to cover this

1:34:43

one specifically because I just I feel

1:34:47

like I have like a list of wonderful

1:34:49

movies to watch. I'm so excited, and.

1:34:52

Honestly, I appreciate it because for

1:34:54

me, again, I don't want to speak as anyone

1:34:56

other than like a mature for Nahio person to

1:35:00

not really talk about like a film that you

1:35:02

know wasn't created or through the

1:35:04

lens of like these people. It's

1:35:07

hard for me to speak to that because I haven't had their

1:35:09

lived experience and I don't speak their language,

1:35:11

and I don't know their stories, so I can't speak

1:35:14

to like the beauty that's behind some of

1:35:16

these films and TV shows and even music

1:35:18

that's coming out. So to talk about something

1:35:21

that I feel comfortable speaking on, which is

1:35:23

how natives have been portrayed, I really

1:35:27

appreciate and value the space to

1:35:29

be able to do that, and for you guys to bend your

1:35:31

rules a little bit and make

1:35:34

space for somebody that's so important.

1:35:36

And not a lot of places do that, even

1:35:38

though we'd like to think we're progressive. So thank you

1:35:40

for making space for me. I really appreciate it.

1:35:42

Gosh happy to do it.

1:35:44

Come back and cover any movie

1:35:46

like drop

1:35:48

Dead fread Hell yeah,

1:35:51

truly like whatever that's it. I

1:35:53

can't imagine the rich feminist discussion

1:35:57

around Drop Dead Friend.

1:35:58

I turned out fine shod all the time.

1:36:03

You know what's mild. I always get the title

1:36:05

of that movie confused with Freddy got

1:36:07

fingered because they both have fred

1:36:09

in it.

1:36:10

Oh my god, I'm realizing that I was

1:36:12

doing the same thing.

1:36:13

No, No, that that is a different one. That's the

1:36:15

Tom Green one that the dropped Dead

1:36:17

fred is the like special

1:36:20

Friend. I don't what are they called imaginary fan

1:36:24

that's way too creepy.

1:36:27

God, is there any movie with starring

1:36:30

a character named Fred who is not scared?

1:36:33

Five Nights Five

1:36:35

Nights of.

1:36:35

Freddy's Wish Finger. I

1:36:39

had a reservation to go see it on

1:36:41

my amc A list stubs

1:36:43

and uh then I looked up it's

1:36:45

rotten Tomato score and I was

1:36:47

like, oh, it's low.

1:36:49

I don't think

1:36:51

that anyone should ever trust a Rotten Tomatoes

1:36:54

score, especially a movie of

1:36:56

a horror movie, especially I have a horror movie directed by

1:36:58

a woman. I was really I

1:37:00

was really stoked to see. This is the

1:37:03

biggest goofiest thing to

1:37:05

start talking about the at the end of this episode.

1:37:08

But it's yeah, directed by a

1:37:10

woman named Emma Tammy who I haven't

1:37:12

seen her work before, but she negotiated

1:37:14

in a percentage of profits.

1:37:18

Then the movie has made over two hundred million

1:37:20

dollars. I was like, you know, I

1:37:24

just like, well, so,

1:37:26

even though it very well may fucking suck,

1:37:29

everyone's seeing five Nights at Fred

1:37:31

Dropped Dead Fred.

1:37:32

Five Nights at Freddy Krueger's

1:37:37

Justice for Fred's No

1:37:43

John's and Fred's are out. I'm sorry, true,

1:37:45

It's twenty twenty three almost twenty

1:37:47

twenty four, I'm like, are.

1:37:49

We if and ultimately this

1:37:52

is this very well may revive Josh

1:37:54

Hodgerson's career, And how do we feel about

1:37:57

that? I don't know. I don't know.

1:37:58

Fine with me?

1:38:00

Are we? Do we in two twenty twenty

1:38:02

three need to revive Josh Hunterson's

1:38:04

career? A fair question.

1:38:07

Let's ponder that one and then get

1:38:10

back to each other through yes.

1:38:12

Email

1:38:15

as I thank you so so much for joining

1:38:17

us.

1:38:19

Does the Bechdel test

1:38:21

and the nipple scale even apply here?

1:38:25

Well?

1:38:26

I think, I like,

1:38:28

like you were saying earlier, essay, it does app

1:38:30

I mean, I don't think we can really do a nipple

1:38:32

scale for this because it's like you,

1:38:35

but all three of us have kind of alluded

1:38:37

to the fact that this documentary

1:38:39

is incredibly valuable. I'd never seen

1:38:42

anything like it. I learned a ton, and

1:38:44

I think we all sort of seem to feel

1:38:47

that women were not the way

1:38:49

that Native women are portrayed, and

1:38:52

the number of women included in the

1:38:54

documentary left something

1:38:56

to be desired.

1:38:57

Yeah, yes, I mean, there's always room

1:38:59

for provement. We can never think that the thing

1:39:01

we do is finite and perfect.

1:39:04

You know, so again catalyst.

1:39:06

Right, Let's take it as a catalyst and think

1:39:09

about if any of

1:39:12

the young Native female

1:39:14

directors out there saw this at

1:39:16

some point and said, hey, I want to I

1:39:18

want to change things up. You know, That's

1:39:21

that's all we can hope for for a film

1:39:23

like this to educate and inspire.

1:39:26

Definitely.

1:39:27

Yeah, so no nippies,

1:39:30

but not

1:39:32

yet.

1:39:32

Yeah, this is this is a this is

1:39:35

a this is an n slash a as far as

1:39:37

I con certainly not applicable.

1:39:40

Although there are I will say that it's

1:39:42

uh, there are some graphic scenes, especially

1:39:45

with the photos and stuff like that, that are quite triggering

1:39:48

or agitating. With some of the imagery

1:39:50

of natives being harmed or like

1:39:53

from both film and then

1:39:55

the photos that were shown that those always

1:39:58

can be jarring.

1:40:00

Yes, yes, indeed, Yeah.

1:40:02

Jenna Side is daring y'all.

1:40:06

Where can people check

1:40:09

you out on social media?

1:40:12

Check out your work,

1:40:14

et cetera.

1:40:15

On the interwebs. You can find

1:40:17

me on Instagram at

1:40:20

at Lawrence Welch and w

1:40:23

And then I have one of those invaluable

1:40:25

link trees with all of the other things

1:40:27

on them that you can find stuff

1:40:30

about creepy teepee which

1:40:33

is.

1:40:34

Yeah, tell us more about it.

1:40:35

Yeah, creepy Tepe is kind of amazing.

1:40:38

Talk about native storytelling. So my

1:40:40

friend I Vana yellow Back, and I

1:40:44

get together through the Internet

1:40:46

and do live streams where we tell spooky

1:40:49

stories from our nation. We're both Cree, so

1:40:52

we'll still tell stories of our people and the

1:40:54

spooky stuff that goes bump in the night, and

1:40:57

then our own personal experiences. And we're looking

1:40:59

to do a series next where

1:41:01

we have guests on that we'll be telling spooky

1:41:03

stories from their nations, keeping

1:41:06

it creepy, putting

1:41:08

the Kree and creepy, I guess.

1:41:12

Perfect.

1:41:13

And then yeah,

1:41:15

and that's a lot of

1:41:17

fun, and we're building that up slowly but surely.

1:41:19

And then yeah, with traditions.

1:41:23

Again, I've said a few times that I'm not

1:41:25

an infallible fountable things indigenous. I

1:41:27

don't really like pen indigenity. As we've

1:41:29

seen from the way I've spoke today,

1:41:32

not all natives are the same. We're not a modelith

1:41:35

and so I created this art

1:41:37

project to really showcase

1:41:40

the differences in tribal

1:41:42

nations through art as the

1:41:45

outlet. And so yeah, be

1:41:48

doing shows and different

1:41:50

events with that to just kind of celebrate

1:41:52

the diversity of indigenity

1:41:54

on this land mass. So

1:41:57

that's pretty cool. But yeah, you find

1:41:59

me on Instagram, I'm at Lawrence

1:42:01

Welsh Northwest NW and

1:42:04

then online

1:42:06

at tradish Hyphenish dot

1:42:08

com and yeah,

1:42:11

that's that's where I'm at.

1:42:12

Amazing. Thank you again so

1:42:15

much.

1:42:15

This has been We'll see you on the drop

1:42:17

Dead Fred.

1:42:20

It's like we just did just do

1:42:22

like snippets of like every Fred movie ever,

1:42:25

like just include Fred.

1:42:30

Fred Molina.

1:42:32

Okay, oh that's true. Who goes by

1:42:34

Freddy? Sometimes it's complicated.

1:42:37