Analysis Of Smoke Signals

The film industries over the years involving Native Americans tend to display various myths and negative portrayals of indigenous people. However, some films like Smoke Signals and Rabbit Proof Fence show real experiences and lifestyles of indigenous people. In the film Smoke Signals, the director Chris Eyre shows the audience how story telling played an essential role in Native American culture. Throughout the movie, Thomas is always telling stories with passion and humor, which Victor hates due to the fact that most of the stories were good memories with Thomas and Victors father. Being that Victor and his mom were abused and abandoned by their father when Victor was young, therefore he had mixed feelings about his father. However, the movie would not have been the same without the story telling of Thomas. In This is What It

Cobbs states “Thomas…. is a story teller… he was really the vehicle, he’s the natural character in order to make a movie (pg224). Thomas story telling is one of the things that made the movie more relatable to its audience. The only thing that made me wonder was if the stories were actually true or was it just Thomas making up stories to entertain his audience. When Thomas was telling a story to Victors fathers neighbor in Phoenix, victor claims that his story was false. Smoke signals is also an act of sovereignty given the fact that this was the first major film directed, acted and written by Native Americans themselves. It gave the Indian audience a sense of hope and joy being that this was not a film that negatively depicted them or had Indians as the bad guys. Also in the film, there was a scene that humorously referenced one of the movies that portrayed Indians negatively, which was when Thomas and victor were on the bus singing about John