Our Fires Still Burn: The Native American Experience by Audrey Geyer (review)

Filmmaker Audrey Geyer's documentary Our Fires Still Burn has much to offer folklorists, students, and a general audience. In less than an hour, Geyer's film illuminates the history and contemporary lives of members of several Native American tribes in the Upper Midwest, including the Ho-Chunk (also known as the Winnebago) and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan. It should be noted that the Ho-Chunk are part of two federally recognized tribes, the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin. Geyer uses dozens of interviews conducted for the film project in addition to historic photographs from personal and archival collections to provide historical and present-day context.

Divided into 13 sections, Our Fires Still Burn begins by providing a brief introductory history of Native Americans in the United States. Archival images of tribal leaders representing some of the most recognizable tribes in North America are contrasted with statistics that illustrate the devastating genocide of Native Americans by explorers, white settlers, and the government. The film frankly addresses stereotypes often associated with Native communities that have been perpetuated by outdated and inaccurate textbooks. This static image often represents the totality of the Native American experience for those outside the community. Consequently, Geyer's comprehensive documentary quickly moves away from these stereotypes of Native Americans to explore community-identified challenges.

Geyer masterfully frames the relationship between language and culture that she weaves throughout the production. Beginning with "Living in Two Worlds," sections operate on a literal and metaphoric plane to present a cohesive whole rather than simply a sum of 13 disparate parts. The film addresses a myriad of issues faced by the Ho-Chunk and the Saginaw Chippewa. Topics include maintaining Native American culture when raised in a non-Native home; the impact, myth, and reality of reservation casinos; the battle against alcoholism; the importance of spirituality; the role and significance of the pow-wow; living on reservations; and the preservation and ritual of song and drumming.

Geyer's research includes an interview with tribal member Scott Badenoch, who uses the Ho-Chunk language as a way to remember stories and lullabies from his childhood. He shares a memory of his mother tearing family pictures apart to represent the severing of the white and Native American worlds. Some viewers may identify this action as the "twoness" that Badenoch senses, an observation reminiscent of the concept of double consciousness identified by W. E. B. Du Bois at the beginning of the twentieth century. For Du Bois, many of the psychological struggles that African Americans faced arose from trying to acculturate into the larger society. This is still something Black Americans and many other groups struggle with today, as Badenoch's comments reveal.

The unsettling segment "Kill the Indian, Save the Child" addresses the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century practice of relocating Native children to federally funded boarding schools. In selected interviews, tribal members recount the disturbing history of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and other facilities, as well as their generational impact. Native American children were moved to the school in an attempt to "educate the Indian out of them." One contributor asks, "How do you kill the Indian?" He then responds to his own query, stating: "Kill its spirit. Take away the language. Take away the culture. Take away their traditions." Overwhelmingly, members of the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe attributed not just cultural erosion to these boarding schools. They believe, and many in the medical and social science fields agree, that problems with violence and alcoholism may have had their origins in the mistreatment of Indian children and the distortion of their communal values at these institutions.

The title Our Fires Still Burn reflects the film's exploration of the symbolic representation of fire in the Ojibwa community. While Ojibwa elders demonstrate the simplicity of lighting a physical fire, they explain that community members maintain the sacred fire (metaphorically) to ensure the preservation of tradition. A fire...