Dell on Native Identities

Ron boated over to the camp last night and was out of here at dawn with a sky that threatened to empty all over him. He was home about an hour [gave me a head's up using the two-way radios]  when the sky let loose with rain that formed a wall of water moving across the lake. Intellicast [my trusted online long range weather forecast] had noted thunder-storms were possible. The generator is outside doing its thing, so I'm good to go.

What I want to share today is something Ron and I were talking about last night. Have you been following the CBC National? This week they featured stories from Canada's Four Nations' survivors of residential schools: they suffered because of government policy at the time that attempted to eradicate the native culture and replace it with the "white man's" ways: they suffered emotional, physical, spiritual, and every pain known to man while most folks looked the other way. Ron and I got talking about the native identity.

Ron reminded me about Long Lance. Now there's a documentary you might want to watch. Canada's National Film Board has archived, and continues to add to its archive, projects produced over it's lifetime [a great use of the tax dollar].

Long Lance [55 mi.] , a documentary by Bernie Dichek, based on the book, Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance: The Glorious Impostor by Donald Smith, is the story of a young man who hid his black heritage behind a native identity. He became so well known, following the 1928 publishing of his autobiography,  that Long Lance starred in  Silent Enemy a 1930 movie that almost didn't make it to release, because Paramount was told one of its stars was not native but in fact of black descent.  Long Lance: The autobiography of a Blackfoot Indian chief had plenty of truth in it, but it wasn't Long Lance's history. He had taken the true tales of a Blackfoot and made them his own identity.

The original movie, Silent Enemy, had a voice over introduction and depicted the life of the Ojibway native. It was a box office failure in 1930: talkies were the latest thing; however, many who have seen the remastered movie, believe Silent Enemy may well have influenced the making of Dances with Wolves : Kevin Costner's 1990 award winning movie. Canadian native actor, Graham Greene, was nominated for an Oscar for his role in the film.

The social and cultural issues surrounding identity are thought provoking material and, to my way of thinking, should be discussed in Canadian schools. Now that Canada's National Film Board is finally making its documentaries available to the public for purchase, I have put together my own collection on the subject. My experience has been "It's hard to see where you're heading in this world, if you don't know where you've already been."

I've got to stop here. One perfect cup of coffee is waiting for me.