AI people portrayed in film.

I rented movies this weekend and was surprised to find American Indian people in two of my rentals. Okay, so one of the moves I rented was “Sioux City” so you can’t say I was surprised there, but I didn’t expect to see any Native Americans in the movie “Swing Vote”. This movie took place in Texaco, New Mexico and there were AI people in almost every scene. They worked in the factories, were the camera men for the reporters, were in the crowd of people, and sat in the bar. So I was thinking that perhaps there is a large AI population there, but then I thought… then why are all of the main characters white? Oh wait, the love interest female was hispanic of course, what white man can resist those hispanic women in movies? That’s another thing that annoyed me, why is it that it’s always okay to have a white man and a beautiful woman of ANY ethnicity, as long as she is VERY ethnically beautiful, and yet you never see a white woman with anything but a WHITE man???? Hmmm…. It was interesting to see how they portrayed the AI people though. They all had very long black hair, whether male or female, and some had tribal looking headbands on. The canidates for president were talking about equality among all people and of course they zoomed in on a group of AI men in the crowd, as though the camera was saying “quick, look at the tear in the Indian man’s eye, we hope to bring peace to all!” There is, however, a deleted scene on the DVD extras that shows one of the Presidential Candidates smoking what looks like a peace pipe with a tribe in a tee-pee structure and then seeing his spirit guide. It was strange, and totally out of context with the movie, which is why I guess it was cut.

So then I watch Sioux City, which is seemingly a better example of real AI issues. It deals with stereotypes against ‘Injuns’ as they call them, as well as murder and intrigue. We also have a scene of Lou Diamond Phillips attempting to find his spirit guide in order to solve the murder of his birth mother, who gave him up for adoption to a Jewish family because she feared his white father would kill him for being a bastard of mixed blood. Basically this was a movie about finding your true identity and I think it did a good job of showing how hard life on the reservation can be. It covered many topics we go over in class, such as bad treaties with whites and the loss of culture over generations.