Representing Truth and History in Native American Documentary: Indigenous Efforts to Counter Mass Media Stereotypes

Leuthold | Representing Truth and History in Native American Documentary Steven Leuthold School of Art and Design, Syracuse University Representing Truth and History in Native American Documentary: Indigenous Efforts to Counter Mass Media Stereotypes hy has documentary emerged as the most common genre of indigenous media? Though one attraction of documentary to native directors is its financial accessibility, the attraction of the documentary medium extends far beyond the shaping factor of economics. The place of documentaries in education, the relation of electronic media documentaries to traditionally oral cultures, and the desire to document disappearing cultural practices have influenced the adoption of the documentary genre by Native Americans. Natives hope that through electronic media they can present role models to young Indians and expose non-Indians to cultures they might not encounter otherwise. I talked to one man today; he's a teacher and some of his students have been in the public schools eight or nine years. They have yet to see a native teacher. And education is an area [that] many people have gone into because we need that, but the other part is that we know about white culture all over ... we watch white TV, we learn about white culture, but we never have that opportunity to explain our culture to our non-Indian audience. That's whatwe're looking for ... thatwe can try to find people that can put together movies. We may notbe able to do it right ... because we lack the funding; we lack the resources; we lack equipment, but we can put together images. We can put together stories and, for many Indian nations, our oral historywas the tradition. That is the same tradition here, whether radio, television or film. We have that ability. We have that power and knowledge to put things together and explain ourselves to manynon-Indian people.1 Many native directors desire to counteract popular culture's influence on Indian youth. Instead of learning about the meaning of symbols, colors, images, and myths through the traditional channels of tribal communication, Native American youths imitate movie portrayals of Indians, a case in which life imitates fiction. "In our tribe, we have certain customs now that actually have been transformed by film ... We're doing stuff out offilm now: face painting, for instance. Youths ... are painting their faces, not in the traditional waywe did that—by clan, by family, by color—but they're doing it out ofwhat they see in the damn movies."2 From the perspective of some native directors, documentary acts as a form of truth speaking, a way of accurately recording and presenting both history and contemporary lives in contrast to the fictive world portrayed in popular imagery. Another way to describe documentaries as true is that they are empirically verifiable records of reality. A documentarían, like a scientist, makes 30 I Film & History The American Frontier in Film | Special In-Depth Section the implicit claim that 'ifyou would have been there, you would have observed the same events or relationships that I did.' The assumption that documentary records the truth about native cultures , as seen from a native perspective, underlies its educational and cultural preservational capacity . Simply put, if viewers did not believe documentary accounts to be true, the educational and cultural function of the films and videos would be lessened or undermined altogether. In this paper I examine the assumption that native produced documentaries portray native lives and history in a way that is more real or 'truer to life' than non-native mass mediated forms.3 1 explore the reasons why natives may consider documentary a form of truth telling and consider this position in the light of recent critiques about the capacity of documentary to truly represent 'reality'. Though modern theorists have argued against a view of documentary as a true record of 'reality,' I will contend that the efficacy of documentary depends upon the assumption by viewers that what they are seeing is more real than what is produced in other media forms. Similarly, the attraction of documentary to native producers and directors is that it portrays native realities, in contrast to the distortion and stereotypes found in the mass media. A major...