♪ [bold drums] ♪ ♪ [traditional vocalizing] ♪ ♪ ♪ Ariel: Welcome to Native Shorts presented by Sundance Institute's Indigenous Program.

I'm Ariel Tweto.

Bird: And, I'm Bird Runningwater.

Ariel: And, we are Team Awesome!

Bird: Yeah!

(laughter) Ariel: I don't know why weird stuff just comes out of my mouth!

Bird: I know!

Ariel: We'll deal with it.

How are you doing?

Bird: I'm well!

I'm well.

Ariel: I am, too.

You're lookin' dapper.

Bird: Oh, thank you.

Ariel: You know why this is such a fun project?

Because we get to experiment with our looks!

(laughter) Ariel: I never got to!

I was rolling in dirt and playing in- Bird: I know.

I always have a uniform I wear.

Ariel: Yeah.

Now we get to just play.

Bird: Right.

Ariel: That's exciting.

Anyway, enough about us.

Let's talk about the film.

Bird: Yes.

So, we're looking at two films today.

One is by Sky Hopinka, who we had before on a previous program.

Ariel: Yes!

Bird: You know, he's Ho-Chunk and Pechanga Band of Luiseño.

This particular film is called "Jáaji", which is another- a really nice, experimental doc of his.

Ariel: And, Jáaji means "father"?

Bird: Father, in Ho-Chunk.

Ariel: Okay.

Bird: Yeah, one of his languages.

So, let's watch it and see what we can talk about.

Ariel: Cool!

Here's "Jáaji".

[clacking] VO (man): Jáaji's recording.

April 16th, 2007; 2:45 pm.

(beep) The dream, the time, even the beat.

[radio voice chattering] That's all with us, Pigeon Lake.

Northern Cree and these other guys.

You just wait for that one ce rtain beat to start with, and you want the dancers to dance.

That's the object, is to make the dancers dance.

'Cause once they dance, everything else goes into place with the powwow.

[radio voice chattering] First starts with the singers, then it relays out to the dancers then pretty soon to the audience.

[radio voice chattering] VO: That's what most of these drum groups learn how to do, like, the big, big drums.

[radio voice chattering] VO: Just comes natural, and- [radio voice chattering] then pretty soon songs will start coming again.

If you ever go to a powwow, and I don't know?

Just leaving the powwow and then you're cruisin'.

Like, we'll be startin' to crash out and you're driving.

The noise, the wheel, the sound of the road.

Sounds like a song, then.

(he laughs) Never fails.

Happens that we go powwow people.

[radio voice chatters] (he yawns) [radio voice chatters] (click; radio off) (click) VO: My Jáaji's recordings.

The Layaway song.

December 13th, 2005.

(laughter) Man: Where'd you go?

VO: 9 pm.

(recording of man singing) (truck engine humming) (roaring/whining) (blink-blink, blink-blink...) VO: Jáaji's recordings.

December 22nd, 2007.

An old song from 1977.

(man singing) VO: Now, a Ho-Chunk song.

One instead with a cross fade into my accompaniment.

[click] (singing in Ho-Chunk language) (overlapping voices sing in Ho-Chunk) Man (recording): We'll stop again and get some more.

(click)!

VO: My Jáaji's recordings.

(click) The porcupine traveling song.

June 4th, 2009; 8:48 pm.

(click) (man's recorded voice) [recording of traditional drumming plays] [traditional singing & drumming on recording] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [traditional singing/drumming] ♪ ♪ ♪ [traditional singing/drumming] ♪ ♪ ♪ (stops drumming/singing) (click)!

[electronic hissing of tape reels] [recording of whistling] [recording of whistling] [click]!

Ariel: Well, that was another very...interesting film!

(laughter) Ariel: It's so hard!

Like, I think I have to watch his films a couple times- Bird: Yeah.

Ariel: to fully get it, 'cause there's just so much going on, and a lot of odd things that for a normal, just not a film student?

Bird: Yeah.

Ariel: You wouldn't catch or wouldn't understand.

Bird: Yeah.

Ariel: So, what type of director is he?

Bird: Well, he applies a lot of different techniques.

He studied as an experimental filmmaker.

But his specialty lies in kind of this- I mean?

Some people would call it "ethnographic" film, you know?

Because he's using language, right?

Ariel: Mm hm!

Bird: Like, he's utilizing sound, culture, song.

Coming from his father, the guy, Jáaji who's the one singing is his father.

But then, he kind of complicates it.

Like I said again.

With the framing, with the tight images, the super saturated colors!

Ariel: Yeah.

Bird: The fluorescence of different things, and- Ariel: And, the text.

Bird: Yeah.

It just kind of impacts you in a different way.

I love the clicks of the recorder- Ariel: Yeah!

Bird: turning on, turning off.

And, him narrating saying- Ariel: Yeah, I like that he narrated it!

Bird: That kind of reminds you of this ethnographic, anthropological study kind of film which I think he's kind of leaning that direction.

But at the same time, he's kind of breaking the rules.

Because like I mentioned before, he respects boundaries.

He respects the different elements of going into a particular space of culture.

Ariel: And, he's from- is he from, like, Seattle?

Bird: He grew up in the Northwest coast, and then he also spent time in Milwaukee and down in the valley here.

Ariel: Because Ho-Chunk, that's around the Dells in Wisconsin.

That area, right?

Bird: Yeah, yeah.

Ariel: OK. You could see he's pretty diverse.

I mean, I feel like he was all over the United States and all over the map.

Bird: And, the text he uses?

Ariel: Mm hm?

Bird: It's called the International Phonetic Alphabet.

And so, it's an international phonetic alphabet!

(laughter) Bird: But, he used that to provide the text of what his father is saying.

And so, that's why it's really- you kind of read?

Like, you can kind of read it?

Ariel: You could figure it out.

It's like, yeah.

Now, you could- you're like 'I know that word'.

Bird: It can be read internationally.

Ariel: Yeah, I like it.

Universal.

Bird: And, linguists- a lot of linguists will use that- Ariel: Okay.

Bird: in order to communicate indigenous languages, and the last speakers, and all these things.

Which, I think he's also challenging that norm as well, because like I said earlier, he's learned this trade language from the Pacific Northwest.

He's been learning his Ho-Chunk language.

I think he's also studied his Pechanga Luiseño language, as well.

So, he's really informed by linguistic study.

Ariel: But should we- well?

We have another film to watch.

Bird: Yes!

Ariel: Would you like to introduce that?

I'll just let you do everything.

I'm gonna sit back!

Bird: OK, Yeah, just sit back!

(she laughs) Well, this next episode is "The Violence of a Civilization without Secrets".

This one is another- it's made by three Native directors.

Two of them, Adam and Zack Khalil, are both brothers.

They both went to Bard College in upstate New York which is really known for its deep, theoretical kind of formalistic training, experimental training and filmmaking.

And then, Jackson Polys who is Tlingit from Alaska.

So, they all collaborate and they made this particular piece which is really kind of- I think challenging, again, kind of like anthropological institutions that have- Ariel: Political?

Bird: kind of boxed us in, and kept us- Ariel: Yeah.

Bird: inside this area of study.

Ariel: Yeah.

It is a little odd.

We could talk about that later.

Bird: Yeah.

Ariel: How we're just, like, studied.

I feel like a museum animal.

Bird: Yeah.

Ariel: All that said, let's take a peek at their work.

Bird: Absolutely.

Here it is.

"The Violence of a Civilization without Secrets".

♪ VO: One morning in 1784, Thomas Jefferson became America's first archaeologist when he decided to indulge his curiosity and unearth human remains from an Indian burial mound.

♪ VO: Since that day archaeologists, anthropologists, amateur explorers and hobbyists have collected and sent thousands of boxes of indigenous human remains to museums and universities, often in the hope that they would become the objects of scientific study and help prove widely held beliefs about indigenous racial inferiority.

Or, to prove insight into an alternate history that the first people in the new world were in fact European.

♪ Reporter: It was one of those things no one ever doubted.

The First People on this continent were the Indians.

Period.

No reason to believe otherwise.

But two summers ago in the town of Kennewick, Washington a skeleton turned up that could turn out to be the missing link between what we thought to be the truth and what actually is the truth; a truth, if it is the truth, that the Indians are not happy with and would just as soon leave well enough alone.

The story of Kennewick Man started out like an ordinary murder mystery.

[sirens wailing] Reporter (man): Two young men made news when they found a skull on the bank of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington.

Suspecting foul play, they called the police who thought the skull looked very old.

They were right.

Anthropologists excavated the area and found the full skeleton, and determined it had been carefully buried along the river 9,000 years ago.

♪ Reporter: One of the oldest intact skeletons ever found in North America, a scientific treasure.

♪ VO (reads): " Pro-so-po-poeia.

"Prosopoeia.

"Prosopopoeia.

"Noun, a figure of speech in which "an abstract thing is personified.

"Noun, a figure of speech in which an imagined or absent person or thing is represented as speaking".

♪ VO: Human remains are the kind of things from which the trace of the subject cannot be fully removed.

♪ VO: Their appearance and presentation in the courts of law and public opinion has in fact blurred something of the distinction between object and subject, between evidence and testimony.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Scientist (man): You could put this one in a crowd of Native American skulls.

Meaning, you could put it in with a hundred of'em and you'd still pick him right out of the crowd.

His skull shape falls way outside the range from modern Native Americans.

Reporter: But I'm asking about the central question of concern: "who was here first?"

Doesn't he already challenge that?

Scientist: He challenges it.

Reporter: He challenges it.

Scientist: He does.

♪ Man: Misplaced guilt is too he avy a rucksack to carry about.

And, our ancient roots on this continent give us position as good as or better than any, one that is not a settler mentality.

That we are not newcomers; that we are not interlopers; that we are not evil, conquering Europeans.

But, that in fact, we have ancient, ancient roots here that give us a right to say 'we too are native peoples.

'We too are first peoples.

We too are indigenous to this soil'.

We have our roots here.

We will not surrender.

We will not be swept from this place, and we will instead sink those roots deep in those roots; not be transient but instead truly inhabitant of this place.

[audience applauding] ♪ VO: Forensics is of course not simply about science, but also about physical objects as they become evidence, things submitted for interpretation in an effort to persuade.

Since objects do not speak for themselves, a person or a technology must mediate between the object and the form to present it and tell its story.

In U.S. Court, the remains of the Kennewick Man are considered objects; each bone, another piece of property was contested ownership.

And only forensic anthropologists have the authority to speak for them, to tell their story.

♪ VO: But for the Columbia Basin tribes, the Ancient One is an ancestor.

His bones were unearthed from Indian land, so they speak for themselves.

♪ Man: We know what happened 10,000 years ago.

I know what happened 10,000 years ago at home along the Columbia River because my teachings from my older people tell me how life was 10,000 years ago.

And, the scientists cannot accept the fact that just because it's not written down in a book, it's not fact.

It's fact to me because I live it every day.

♪ ♪ ♪ VO (whispers): The wrath of a violence towards all secrets.

The violence of a civilization without secrets.

♪ VO: The museum functions as a trophy case to exhibit the settler-colonial powers' most prized possessions.

Everything is turned into an object and a display no matter what it is, no matter if it is a piece of the earth, an ivory tusk, the shell of a tortoise, or human remains.

[electronic humming] VO: The entire museum's practice speaks of the terrible impulse of domination, a sort of indiscriminate domination.

Nothing escapes the collector's impulse, as if our entire linear and accumulative culture collapses if we cannot stockpile the past into plain view.

[dull electronic humming] VO (whispers): Memory's not a container for information but a perpetually emerging process.

[dull humming] ♪ [dull humming] ♪ [humming] ♪ [dull humming] ♪ [humming] ♪ [dull humming] ♪ [music fades] Ariel: Heavy stuff.

Bird: Yeah!

(laughter) Ariel: Yeah!

Like I was saying before, though, it is crazy how we're studied.

But then, I guess I'm not.

I haven't been to too many museums.

But then, I have been to one and I went to the Native American section, and I literally saw my ancestors.

Bird: Oh!

Ariel: Or, my people.

I was like, 'man, I look like her'.

And then, I was looking at the names.

I'm like, 'that's my great-great-great-grandma's picture!'

Bird: Ohmigod!

Ariel: Yeah.

It's crazy, though.

But, yeah.

Anyway-?

(he laughs) The film!

Bird: The film!

So, this film was actually filmed, I think, if I remember, correctly, the Museum of Natural History in New York where they have all the- you know.

The mammoths, and the dinosaur bones and everything.

Ariel: Yeah.

Bird: So, it's kind of a social commentary on the Native collections that are still held in these natural history museums.

And, probably not feted and honored and respected, and whatnot.

However, but I kind of like the omniscient voiceover of somebody commenting about that story of the Kennewick Man.

Ariel: Yeah.

Bird: And, his remains being found and being challenged, and the Native tribes losing basically their rights to claim that ancestor that they felt was theirs.

And, kind of challenging these notions of indigenous history and science versus Western history and science.

And then, you have the white Aryan guy speaking to the claiming of those remains.

I don't know?

It's got so many tensions.

Ariel: Conflicts.

Bird: Conflicts going on.

Ariel: What do you think the melting of the face meant?

Bird: Yeah.

You know?

That's such an interesting artistic choice.

Ariel: Yeah.

Bird: I think it was just them making a social commentary about being contained in those spaces.

Ariel: Well, I wonder what else you would do, though, to show- I mean?

In some aspects, I'm like 'oh, that's cool that people are interested in us'.

But, I guess there's so many different ways you could go about it, and be like 'look how amazing these people are!'

(he chuckles) Not just showing our bones, and whatever.

Bird: But, in the end, I feel it worked- the film works towards building this amazingly strong case towards the support of Western, European, American anthropology, and ethnography, and the containment of indigenous people, and the loss of rights in the end.

But then, with one small little text at the end, it flips everything where due to the genetic testing- Ariel: Yeah.

Bird: the tribe was right, and they can rebury the ancestor.

And then, boom!

All of that case that they just built is completely undone!

(laughs) I love that!

Ariel: Yeah, that is pretty cool.

Bird: In the end, the Indians won.

Ariel: Arrr!

Bird: Here, here.

(laughter) Ariel: And, in the end- Bird: That was a pirate!

Ariel: I know!

(laughter) Ariel: But, in the end, we're all humans.

We're all animals.

We all have a heart.

Bird: Right!

Ariel: We're all- it's just like 'why do we still bicker all the time about everything?'

Bird: Well, sometimes we have to.

Ariel: Yeah, we do.

(laughter) And so, yay.

Go humans!

Bird: I know.

Ariel: Go indigenous people!

Bird: Well, thanks to those guys for that film.

Ariel: Yeah!

Bird: If you want to watch the short again, you can go to fnx.org/nativeshorts, or-?

Ariel: Or, you could download the app for free!

FNX app.

I recommend everyone do that 'cause you just have all this information at the palm of your hand.

Bird: Exactly.

Ariel: Click!

Bird: Indigenous content, on demand.

Ariel: Okay!

Bird: Bye!

Ariel: Bye!

(he laughs) [bold drums] ♪ ♪ [traditional singing] ♪