#23: Advice from an “Old Mama”

Recently, I had this nugget of insight in my mailbox that I have received permission to share on this site. Maybe it will prove helpful for others, too:

“You are not running with the pack. Pure and simple.

When you work for the government, no matter which agency (they are all the same), to ‘get along with the dogs,’ you have to stay in the pack. If you deviate or take another path or begin to stand out – they are going to attack you, or nip at you or simply turn on you and devour you if you are weak . . . that’s why the corrupted or co-opted ones realize the best way to get ahead is to stay with the pack.

#22: Introduction to Immoral Leadership in Indian Country (Part One)

(NOTE: This is the first in a six-part series of essays that reflect and meditate on the problems caused to us by immoral leadership—and solutions to the greed of these individuals. This essay was originally posted in January 2009; the series will be posted on a irregular basis.)

I.

As a child, I read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. This was in the 70s, and those of us of a certain age remember that the Wounded Knee book was everywhere at that time, dog-eared and worn in everyone’s living rooms, cars, kitchen tables. I was in elementary school when I read it, and it was such a painful experience that for years after I did not open another book on American Indian—United States history until my mother introduced me to the historian, Angie Debo, at a small gathering. I then read several of her works, but some time elapsed before I finally could forcefully confront the tribal histories of our genocide and colonization in print form. In the meanwhile, after a viewing of The Hiding Place, I turned to the cultural and political literature of the Shoah, a genre that I read exhaustively for the next couple of decades. It was only near the end of that reading when I realized that it had provided me an indirect way of studying the histories of genocide, occupation, and militarization (along with culpability, complicity, and denial) on our own families, communities, tribes, and nations.

#21: Notes from The Relocation: The Exiles

(This was originally posted November 2008)

Julia Good Fox

(OMAHA, Nebraska) — “The suspension of disbelief” is impossible, sometimes. This phrase, familiar to students of literary and visual theory, is a simple explanation of audience engagement with the performing arts, including film. Yet, there are times when film is meant to be experienced, not as an escape from belief, but as a historical record deliberately crafted for a specific demographic audience. Consider The Exiles, a documentary that had its original premier in 1961 and then sat in the bin for the next 46 years until it was meticulously restored by Ross Lipman and released by Milestone Films into the independent film circuit this year.

The Exiles, a project of USC film graduate student Kent Mackenzie, was shot and edited from 1958 – 1961 and largely funded by friends, family, acquaintances, and a student scholarship. After its 1961 premiers at the Venice and San Francisco Film Festivals, Mackenzie was unable to secure a major distributor. And so The Exiles became one of those cinematic gems remembered only by a handful of historians, film-makers, and the participants involved in its production.