Imagic Moments: Indigenous North American Film by Lee Schweninger (review)

Much has been said over the years about the lack of Native Americans in the movie business. Iconic classics like Dances with Wolves, Little Big Man or A Man Called Horse have Caucasian men as the central character. Through their eyes, we get a glimpse into Native American culture, but it is through the lens of the outsider.

Lee Schweninger’s text Imagic Moments gives deep context into fourteen Indigenous North American films from the last fifty years. Nearly all the films that Schweninger selects are directed or written by Native people, and all but one are feature films rather than documentaries. Each chapter delves deep into a single film, but the author weaves these movies together through themes and comparisons to early representation of Natives in cinematic history.

Visual sovereignty is an important concept for the Native and non-Native reader to understand. As Indigenous people, we are the most qualified to tell our own stories. It’s our own interpretation of history and the events that shape our lives today.

For students, the twenty-five-dollar price tag is a relief, but finding all these films outside the classroom will be a challenge. I located only half of them available for purchase, rent, or download.

Worth noting is that solely one of the films is directed by a woman and features female leads—Naturally Native, codirected by Valerie Red-Horse (Cherokee) and non-Indian Jennifer Wynne Farmer. It was released the same year as Smoke Signals (1998), directed by Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapahoe) and written by Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene). A “Hollywood” movie, it was released by Miramax, and sixteen years later is the last Native-directed film widely distributed to a theater near you.

Schweninger brings up several important contrasts about these two films. The only thing they have in common is that Natives control the creative aspects of production. While Naturally Native brings viewers teachable moments about culture, Alexie’s writing sets up many “trapdoors.” Quoting Alexie’s interview with John Purdy, “I load my books with the stuff, just load’em up. I call them ‘Indian trapdoors.’ You know, Indians fall in, White people just walk right over them” (169).

That’s the beauty of these essays on visual sovereignty. We see how these directors and writers have been influenced by the cowboys and Indian stereotypes but take giant steps in claiming the genre as their own.