1 post tagged “indigenous”
So. Anna Paquin has been nominated as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie this year. For some reason, I feel compelled to write about it. Not that I've seen the HBO movie, read the book, bought the bonnet, or can even remember the lyrics to the Buffy Sainte-Marie song of the same name.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has long been part of my understanding of the US, largely because, in the 1970s, the country I grew up in underwent what was termed a renaissance for the indigenous population there. The renaissance was centered on the university I misrepresented my home circumstances to get into in 1971 so that I could learn the Māori language and become a teacher. Back then, it was the only university in the nation to offer those courses, despite Māori being one of NZ's two official languages.
::Some potted Kiwi history::
At a time roughly contemporaneous with the Western expansion in the US that saw make-and-break treaties, if not outright genocide, as a way to obtain land for settlement, the Māori in Aotearoa/New Zealand were becoming somewhat p'ed off by the lawless bunch of whalers and escaped Australian convicts who were making the islands home. Māori leaders decided that a parallel system of laws enforceable on the newcomers would be a useful thing, so they asked Queen Victoria to appoint a governor. (Or so the story goes.)
The 1840 Treaty of Waitangi was an attempt to have two legal systems--and the people of the cultures that abided by them--exist as a partnership, with no loss of indigenous land or other rights or customs. As the online encyclopedia of New Zealand succinctly puts it: "In later years, differences of interpretation between the English and Māori texts [of the treaty] complicated efforts to redress breaches of the treaty."
::And the s**t goes on::
It was astonishing to me, when I moved to the States in 1999, to realize how invisible the native populations are here in the US. Not only are they a statistically small part of the national population, but their contributions to the culture and understanding of this part of the American continent are consistently treated as a footnote even to daily life, let alone history.
In a sense it's because they're nations within the borders of a bigger nation, a concept that was also foreign to me. But the kinds of struggles they experience in having their culture respected are instantly recognizable. An example is the current court battle surrounding use of the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, AZ, which are sacred to 13 tribes.
The peaks are part of the Coconino National Forest, and have been the source of land-use conflicts since the late 1800s. A recent Ninth Circuit US District Court decision blocking further expansion of the Snowbowl ski resort there is being appealed by the Forest Service. Snowbowl wants to use wastewater from Flagstaff in the creation of artificial snow. That would be comparable to a tanker truck driving up to your local place of worship and spraying it with sewage. The case against expansion relies in part on the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978.
::Back to the movie::
Which brings me back to the effect Dee Brown's book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (subtitled, An Indian History of the American West) had on US culture and institutions in the 1970s. Eyes were opened. Laws were changed or newly made. Today, that's all ho-hum as this NYT review of the Emmy-nominated movie attests:
This project was doomed to overreach and to sermonize. To begin with, it’s about American Indians, who ever since Sacheen Littlefeather declined Marlon Brando’s Oscar in 1973 have scared the chutzpah out of Hollywood, forcing the showoffs who invented westerns into defensive crouches and sorry offerings that look more like cut-and-paste Sunday school atonement projects than filmmaking.
Second, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” is a television movie. The red carpet premiere and credible stars (Aidan Quinn, Anna Paquin) that HBO supplied can’t conceal that this is a movie of the week — a form as eternal, indigenous and sacrosanct as the Black Hills of South Dakota. Simple-minded, blocky, smug, uplifting, always in a major key. Easy to sing along with.
Which makes it sound like Paquin has been nominated for her role in something that might be called The Pianola.
::Potted Paquin::
Born in Canada but raised in New Zealand, Anna Paquin was 11 years old when she won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in The Piano, filmed in New Zealand and directed by Jane Campion. She remained in New Zealand to finish some of her schooling, but then moved to Los Angeles with her mother after her parents divorced.
Her studies at Columbia University are on hold while she continues a movie career that has included the role of Rogue in the X-Men series. She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award and won a Theatre World Award for her performance in The Glory of Living at the MCC Theatre in New York in 2001. That year, she also became a New Zealand citizen.
