These have been some pretty odd times for the Indigenous community. Especially for those with interests in the arts.
First, there’s the whole Buffy issue, which is still reverberating across not just the country, but also the whole continent. There are many who are still defending her claim to Aboriginal ancestry — so-called defendians. Others, feeling hurt and disillusioned by the fact she is quite probably more Italian than Indigenous, are still wondering what to do with all their Buffy Sainte-Marie CDs and records. Can they be returned and refunded by claiming misleading advertising?
Meanwhile, Buffy herself stays silent, maybe regrouping on her goat ranch somewhere in the islands of Hawaii. Not something a lot of documented Indigenous people find themselves doing. This revelation will take some time to heal from. Whether or not the allegations are true, she had found a place of love in the Indigenous heart for almost 60 years. That’s at least two, possibly three generations, so it runs deep.
It’s like finding out a venerated and honoured war vet had spent most of the war hiding in a Tim Hortons.
Now there’s an argument about whether all the work and magic she accomplished as an artist and activist can dull the pain of the disclosure. Alas, this needs a “to be continued” — the dust has not settled fully on this yet.
Less shocking but interesting in its own way is the discussion around the new Martin Scorsese movie, Killers of the Flower Moon. It’s a brilliant movie, typically Scorsesian (if that’s a word), about the Oklahoma Osage community back in the 1920s. There’s money, sex, violence, and Indigenous people. Should be a hit. But, as usual, there’s some interesting discussion surrounding this picture… about the larger picture.
The portrayal of the Osage people in this movie is supposed to be spot-on. An accurate and honest telling of a tale in which Indigenous people were rich, then dead. And a true story — with many Osage technical advisers hired to keep the storytelling authentic. The only problem is that this story about the Osage people is told from the settler perspective. Specifically, the Leonardo DiCaprio character. Spoiler alert: Leonardo is not Osage. With a name like DiCaprio, I would wager a guess that he’s Italian.
Evidently, like Buffy.
To add insult to injury, the movie is based on a book by a white writer, instead of on the Pulitzer-nominated Mean Spirit written by Indigenous writer Linda Hogan. They both explore the same topic.
Of course, this is very common in the film world. Many (if not most) stories exploring other cultures and nations from around the world are told from the settler perspective. There’s Dances With Wolves (of course), the American Civil War epic Glory, the South African biography Biko, any Tarzan film, the western Geronimo, and let us not forget a recent addition to this tradition, set far in the future: Avatar. The list could go on and on.
Yet many Indigenous filmmakers, including those who worked on Killers of the Flower Moon, find themselves in an odd situation. Any movie made with Indigenous participation that explores the travesties and tragedies inflicted on Indigenous people is a good thing. This is, after all, Martin Scorsese. Many of us are waiting for Steven Spielberg to give the Oka Crisis the Saving Private Ryan treatment — especially the film’s first 20 minutes.
It's just… it would be nice to have some of these films about the Indigenous community feature an actual Indigenous perspective. It may come as a surprise, but: we do have one. Several, in fact. Indigenous theatre and literature show that they could and would be extremely popular in the mainstream world. Think of the possibilities. Make us an offer we can’t refuse. (Actually, never mind. That always happened during treaty negotiations.) Or: You had me at Ahniin. Maybe: Toto, I don’t think we’re in Attawapiskat anymore. There’s no crying in lacrosse.
Well, as they say, hope springs eternal.
As I stated earlier, the past few weeks have been weird and difficult. The arts are supposed to be freeing. They’re supposed to make life understandable and bearable. To ground ourselves, my partner and I went to see Waubgeshig Rice last night, in Peterborough. He’s on tour reading from his new novel. It was quite lovely to just sit in the audience of more than a hundred people and listen to the man read from Moon of the Turning Leaves — a sequel to his amazingly popular Moon of the Crusted Snow. Sometimes listening to a good story, well told, can soothe the soul.
And perhaps this is the best way to tell the difference between settler and Indigenous culture. There was no killing of any moon, crusted or flowered, last night.
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