In the film The Exiles, written and directed by Kent Mackenzie, a group of Native American adults are shown to be attempting to live in Los Angeles. The theme of these people not belonging in Los Angeles or their homes is interweaved throughout the film as most of the action is driven by a sense of the characters seeming lost. Even though the film is shown through the lens of Kent Mackenzie, a White man, there are still some progressive aspects. The film holds the potential to provide meaningful insight into the plight of Native Americans, not only historically, but today as well. The film reflects aspects of both inauthenticity as well as authenticity as shown through the director and the actors. Although the scenes were re-created and perhaps dramatized, the actors were mostly portraying themselves. As John Patterson describes in his article The lure of the night, “To add texture and verisimilitude, Mackenzie asked his actors to speak of their own lives.” The fact that the actors were mostly representing themselves and drawing from personal experiences shows that this aspect of the film is authentic in portraying the struggle of young Native Americans living in the city. …show more content…
Some characters disregard their heritage, while others have some relics of the past. One character looks at a picture of his parents from home and then goes back to a night of drinking. There is no structure to the night that these group of people spend together, and the ending continues the cycle of aimlessness in which a group walks down the street after a night of drinking, getting ready to do the same that night. The central problem of the film is that these young Native Americans have come to the city to get away from their Native families, and yet they still do not find what they are looking
Drugs and gang affiliation influence the youth in the communities with resources to escape for better things being so limited. This film shows issues that coincide with the class as well, we have pushed the indigenous people off of their lands and limited them so much that this is the life that they are forced to live. Environmental issues with these problems include drugs going into the water streams and waste, old furniture being disposed of by burning it. The conditions of life for the people living on this reservation is very bleak and the director does an astonishing job at showing
It is not out of line to expect Native Americans to live like their ancestors, and I agree with the way that O'Nell made the government look like the wrongdoers. She talks like "indians" are just part of stories or like they have not kept up with the times. This book points out many of the problems for native americans by bringing out problems in identity, culture, and depression dealing with the Flathead Tribe in Montana. The book is divided into three parts to accomplish this. Part 1 is about the American government's policies that were put on the reservations and how it affected the culture of the Flathead Tribe attached to that reservation. This is the base for is to come in the next two parts, which talk about how lonliness an pity tie into the identity and depression.
We see scenes where Mae is happily conversing with her mother in both English and Wampanoag in the car as they pass through a town of Wampanoag named streets. This visual imagery urges the viewer to wonder how these familiar representations of Indian words and sayings work to hide how the indigenous people live in modern times. With the lack of presence of local Native peoples in the forms of mass media, people have started to believe the myth of the disappearance of the Native peoples in places such as New England. The film also briefly gestures, through interviews, that people have started to dismiss Indians as being long gone from the world, and that non-Natives see them as “invisible people” in order to justify the Euroamerican absorption of indigenous regions. The film encourages us to understand that, even with the impact of history, Native peoples still live here, and that they are still connected to their native land, that their homeland is one of the most important relationships. Jessie explains, “I lost my land rights” Translated into Wampanoag is “I fall down onto the ground,” because “For Wampanoag people to lose one’s land, is to fall off your
As a result, both films represent Native Americans from the point of view of non-Native directors. Despite the fact that they made use of the fabricated stereotypes in their illustrations of the indigenous people, their portrayal was revolutionary in its own times. Each of the films adds in their own way a new approach to the representation of indigenous people, their stories unfolding in a different way. These differences make one look at the indigenous not only as one dimensional beings but as multifaceted beings, as Dunbar says, “they are just like us.” This is finally a sense of fairness and respect by the non-native populations to the Native Indians.
The story chronicles situations that illustrate the common stereotypes about Natives. Through Jackson’s humble personality, the reader can grasp his true feelings towards White people, which is based off of the oppression of Native Americans. I need to win it back myself” (14). Jackson also mentions to the cop, “I’m on a mission here. I want to be a hero” (24).
The film stays in line with classic noir in many ways. The usage of dark sets and high contrast lighting, which creates heavy shadows on the actors faces, makes the movie feel like it all happens at night and in dark alley ways. The story focuses on the inhumane parts of human nature. Each of the main characters experiences some kind of tragedy. For Vargas his tragedy was in dealing with Quinlin who has set out to frame him and his wife. For Quinlin his entire life represented a man consumed with darkness who lives his life with a “Touch of Evil.” Menzies was a hopeful man who looked up to Quinlin but was let down. For the viewer, film noir represents truth, even if it is not a truth that all people would like to hear.
Other incidents like these include the unjust treatment Bonnie receives from the police, the lack of regard Buddy receives as a Vietnam veteran, and the reveal that the police plotted against Buddy and his sister. This posits the police who conspire with the resource stealing corporation and representative of white capitalism that created and maintains white, hegemonic values as the “bad guys.” These realistic portrayals that occur to the hundreds of Native tribes across the states and millions of Native residents present Buddy, Philbert, and Bonnie, individual representatives of Native American communities, as victims of racial profiling, gentrification, and police brutality, all major components of racism. It is these portrayed issues that the audience of the film is instructed to empathize, “placating viewers wary or weary of “white guilt” and documenting realistic, legitimate political and cultural struggles of Native peoples “(O’Connor & Rollins, 2011, pg.
In Assimilation, readers can see a lack of community. In Assimilation, Mary Lynn, struggles with cultural identity of her children and the question of whether she has a “white family or an Indian family” (Alexie 13) with her white husband. Disturbed, Mary Lynn’s husband disregards her question, telling her they have a “family family” ( Alexie 13), only reinforcing her feelings of isolation. The theme of white America’s blindness to the assimilation of the American Indian is prevalent in this passage, as in the rest of the book. This shows a lack of community because she doesn’t know where she should be placed, as in she doesn’t know if she coincides with white people or Native Americans. In Assimilation, Mary Lynn cheats on her husband because he is white and not Indian and she wants to make love to an Indian man. This shows readers that she has a broken family, and the reason why she cheats is because her husband doesn’t please her in the way that she wants to be pleased. Lack of community also coincides with broken families, characters living of the reservation or characters that continuously move around. In The Toughest Indian in the World, the main character loses his father and is then left alone. He has a job but not many friends to conversate with. The main character has a broken family and due to not living on his reservation he is lost and seeks to be saved by a man that is known as “the
In this movie, one may observe the different attitudes that Americans had towards Indians. The Indians were those unconquered people to the west and the almighty brave, Mountain Man went there, “forgetting all the troubles he knew,” and away from civilization. The mountain man is going in search of adventure but as this “adventure” starts he finds that his survival skills are not helping him since he cant even fish and as he is seen by an Indian, who watches him at his attempt to fish, he start respecting them. The view that civilization had given him of the west changes and so does he. Civilization soon becomes just something that exists “down there.”
In a desperate attempt to discover his true identity, the narrator decides to go back to Wisconsin. He was finally breaking free from captivity. The narrator was filling excitement and joy on his journey back home. He remembers every town and every stop. Additionally, he admires the natural beauty that fills the scenery. In contrast to the “beauty of captivity” (320), he felt on campus, this felt like freedom. No doubt, that the narrator is more in touch with nature and his Native American roots than the white civilized culture. Nevertheless, as he gets closer to home he feels afraid of not being accepted, he says “… afraid of being looked on as a stranger by my own people” (323). He felt like he would have to prove himself all over again, only this time it was to his own people. The closer the narrator got to his home, the happier he was feeling. “Everything seems to say, “Be happy! You are home now—you are free” (323). Although he felt as though he had found his true identity, he questioned it once more on the way to the lodge. The narrator thought, “If I am white I will not believe that story; if I am Indian, I will know that there is an old woman under the ice” (323). The moment he believed, there was a woman under the ice; He realized he had found his true identity, it was Native American. At that moment nothing but that night mattered, “[he], try hard to forget school and white people, and be one of these—my people.” (323). He
Change is one of the tallest hurdles we all must face growing up. We all must watch our relatives die or grow old, our pets do the same, change school or employment, and take responsibility for our own lives one way or another. Change is what shapes our personalities, it molds us as we journey through life, for some people, change is what breaks us. Watching everything you once knew as your reality wither away into nothing but memory and photographs is tough, and the most difficult part is continuing on with your life. In the novel Ceremony, author Leslie Silko explores how change impacted the entirety of Native American people, and the continual battle to keep up with an evolving world while still holding onto their past. Through Silko’s
When a native author Greg Sams said that the reservations are just “red ghettos”, the author David disagree with that. He thinks there must be something else beyond that point. After his grandfather died, he somehow changed his mind. Because he could not think anything e...
The film discusses themes surrounding the stolen generation highlighting the anguish experienced by mothers whose children were taken in an attempt to breed out the indigenous culture,
The story relates of the value that the Native Americans put on nature and the spirit world and that if one is not right with the spirits and the land then their life might not be to the expectation of
The main character in this story is a Native American who lives on the streets of Spokane, Washington. The author has exaggerated all the stereotypes that exist of Native Americans in this story. He does this to show a point in the story; and if a person looks deeper into the story past the main plot, they will see the hidden meanings and signs that the author puts into the story. Some of the stereotypes that the author shows are homelessness, drinking, smoking, and gambling.