Blackfella Charlie is out of sorts. The intervention is making life more difficult on his remote community, what with the proper policing of whitefella laws now. So Charlie takes off, to live the old way, but in so doing sets off a chain of events in his life that has him return to his community chastened, and somewhat the wiser.
David Gulpilil was a legendary Yolngu actor, a First Nations person of Northern Australia, born around 1953. The local missionaries gave him his birthdate of July 1, 1953, just as they gave him his Christian name David, although he admits he liked that name from the start. His last name, Gulpilil, was a totem, the kingfisher. He'd never seen a white person until he was 8 when he visited the mission school, but he never really allowed them to teach him anything. David died in 2021. He will never be forgotten.
Dispute in Valladolid is a TV movie released in 1992 and directed by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe, which is a fictionalized account of the real “Valladolid debate”.
The director was Jean-Danielle Veren, Jean-Pierre Marielle played Las Casas, and Jean-Louis Trintignant acted as Sepúlveda.
The Valladolid debate (1550–1551) was the first moral debate in European history to discuss the rights and treatment of an indigenous people by European colonizers. Held in the Colegio de San Gregorio, in the Spanish city of Valladolid, it was a moral and theological debate about the conquest of the Americas, its justification for the conversion to Catholicism, and more specifically about the relations between the European settlers and the natives of the New World. It consisted of a number of opposing views about the way natives were to be integrated into Spanish society, their conversion to Catholicism, and their rights.
Bishop of Chiapas Bartolomé de las Casas, argued that the Amerindians were free men in the natural order despite their practice of human sacrifices and other such customs, deserving the same consideration as the colonizers. Opposing this view were theologian Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who argued that the human sacrifice of innocents, cannibalism, and other such "crimes against nature" were unacceptable and should be suppressed by any means possible including war.
The Last Wave (also released in the United States as Black Rain) is a 1977 Australian mystery drama film directed by Peter Weir. It is about a white solicitor in Sydney whose seemingly normal life is disrupted after he takes on a murder case and discovers that he shares a strange, mystical connection with the small group of local Aboriginal people accused of the crime.
Click on the image above to watch the full film.
Aluna means "conscience ". Enter the last theocratic chiefdom in America, hidden for centuries on a mountain in Colombia. The Kogi have made this amazing documentary to help us understand how to avoid the destruction of the world that they are trying to protect, and of ourselves.
This is the first comprehensive history of six great Indian nations, dramatically filmed on location at their native tribal lands across America, using reenactments, archival footage, maps and original music. The story of the Iroquois, Seminole, Shawnee, Navajo, Cheyenne, and Lakota Sioux nations unfolds in their struggle to protect their lands, cultures, and freedoms. "Stirring reenactments." - Booklist Magazine.
Rolf de Heer’s curious mixture of entertainment and anthropology represented the first full-length Australian feature spoken entirely in Indigenous language. This version has English narration set over the Yolngu dialogue. A fusion of Yolngu and Western mythologies, set in Arnhem Land 120 years ago, the story tells a Yolngu tale before the first white contact.
Presenting a tale within a tale, this Australian film follows Dayindi (Jamie Gulpilil), a young Aboriginal warrior, as he wanders the wilderness hunting for eggs. Dayindi hears a story told by his brother Minygululu (Peter Minygululu), which echoes his own situation. A man who lusts after his brother's wife, the character in the tale kills a member of another tribe and faces dire consequences, with the story's ending reverberating in Dayindi's own life.
Mike Wilken-Robertson, Founder and Director Native Cultures Institute of Baja California (CUNA) explores the native people of Baja California and their use of natural materials.
For 200 years we have said to the Indian people who are fighting for their land, their life, their families and their right to be free: ''Lay down your arms, my friends, and then we will remain together. Only if you lay down your arms, my friends, can we then talk of peace and come to an agreement which will be good for you.''
When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember. And by any interpretation of history, however twisted, we did not do right. We were not lawful nor were we just in what we did. For them, we do not have to restore these people, we do not have to live up to some agreements, because it is given to us by virtue of our power to attack the rights of others, to take their property, to take their lives when they are trying to defend their land and liberty, and to make their virtues a crime and our own vices virtues.
But there is one thing which is beyond the reach of this perversity and that is the tremendous verdict of history. And history will surely judge us. But do we care? What kind of moral schizophrenia is it that allows us to shout at the top of our national voice for all the world to hear that we live up to our commitment when every page of history and when all the thirsty, starving, humiliating days and nights of the last 100 years in the lives of the American Indian contradict that voice?
It would seem that the respect for principle and the love of one's neighbor have become dysfunctional in this country of ours, and that all we have done, all that we have succeeded in accomplishing with our power is simply annihilating the hopes of the newborn countries in this world, as well as friends and enemies alike, that we're not humane, and that we do not live up to our agreements.
Perhaps at this moment you are saying to yourself what the hell has all this got to do with the Academy Awards? Why is this woman standing up here, ruining our evening, invading our lives with things that don't concern us, and that we don't care about? Wasting our time and money and intruding in our homes.
I think the answer to those unspoken questions is that the motion picture community has been as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing his as savage, hostile and evil. It's hard enough for children to grow up in this world. When Indian children watch television, and they watch films, and when they see their race depicted as they are in films, their minds become injured in ways we can never know.
Recently there have been a few faltering steps to correct this situation, but too faltering and too few, so I, as a member in this profession, do not feel that I can as a citizen of the United States accept an award here tonight. I think awards in this country at this time are inappropriate to be received or given until the condition of the American Indian is drastically altered. If we are not our brother's keeper, at least let us not be his executioner.
I would have been here tonight to speak to you directly, but I felt that perhaps I could be of better use if I went to Wounded Knee to help forestall in whatever way I can the establishment of a peace which would be dishonorable as long as the rivers shall run and the grass shall grow.
I would hope that those who are listening would not look upon this as a rude intrusion, but as an earnest effort to focus attention on an issue that might very well determine whether or not this country has the right to say from this point forward we believe in the inalienable rights of all people to remain free and independent on lands that have supported their life beyond living memory.
Thank you for your kindness and your courtesy to Miss Littlefeather. Thank you and good night.
This statement was written by Marlon Brando for delivery at the Academy Awards ceremony where Mr. Brando refused an Oscar. The speaker, who read only a part of it, was Shasheen Littlefeather.
Tȟašúŋke Witkó (Crazy Horse) of the Oglala Lakota Sioux
Produced by the villagers in September 2009, the video has become enormously symbolic for the Quecha, leading many villagers to once again take up their traditions of nurturing Mother Earth. The significance of this cannot be understated. Even though Quechuan culture has withstood “500 years of invasion and the dictatorship of individualism,” as Hugo Blanco points out, it is today broaching toward extinction, like the cultures and languages of so many other Indigenous Nations around the world.
As “Conversations with the Earth” notes on their campaign website, this became abundantly clear to Quecha earlier this year, when an evangelical Mayor banished Andean Ceremonies and Rituals – including the one you are about to see. “Conversations with the Earth” is an indigenous-led multimedia campaign that helps communities share their stories of climate change. Several more films are available at their website, www.conversationsearth.org.
Mari Boine, previously known as Mari Boine Persen, is a NorwegianSami musician known for having added jazz and rock to the yoiks of her native people. Boine (born 8 November 1956 in Finnmark, Norway) grew up amid the Laestadian Christian movement as well as amidst discrimination against her people. She was asked to perform at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, but refused because she perceived the invitation as an attempt to bring a token minority to the ceremonies. Gula Gula (first released by Iđut, 1989, later re-released by Real World) was her breakthrough release, and she continued to record popular albums throughout the 1990s.
Music and dance from the highlands of Cambodia and Vietnam. Some beautiful images and sounds.
A Musician from Non Lec Village in Cambodia explains: “The Gong, is very important because all my ancestors no matter what they faced, they always had Gongs. Every ceremony we must play Gongs for the Spirits. Without Gongs it’s useless to hold the Ceremony. The Gongs speak to the Spirit and represent our Tribe. They are so important that if we lost Gongs it will be like we lost half of our bodies. Gongs are extremely important.”
Mayel Lyang Sut Lom is a 20 minute documentary by Tapas Majumdar and Souparna Lahiri that shows the campaigns of the Lepcha community in Sikkim, India, against the construction of large dams in their homeland. The film shows the Lepchas struggle against the damming of the Teesta River and the destruction of the Dzongu region.
Dzongu, on the banks of the Teesta, overlooks the sacred Khangchendzonga the worlds third highest mountain and is home to red pandas, snow leopards, and the famous Khangchendzonga National Park. The Lepcha are waiting in apprehension for the harbingers of development the giant bulldozers, the heavy cranes, the polluting crushers. The film asks whether the dams being built in the name of development will destroy the Lepchas culture, identity and socio-economic fabric. It questions whether the construction of dams on the Teesta will leave the Lepcha homeless and disconnected from their mountains and hills, their sacred rocks and springs, their forests and streams. The film seeks to uncover who loses and who benefits from this kind of development.
The impacts of the Teesta Stage V Hydropower Project, the first big dams being built in Sikkim, have forced the people to come out of the Mayel Lyang (the hidden land) to manifest their apprehensions and concerns in peaceful protests. The film follows the Affected Citizens of Teesta and their protests against the planned dams. It tells the story of the Lepcha people and their supporters, who are not staying silent amidst the plans of the national government to dam their river and flood their land.
Forest Mountain Voices is an indigenous community media project in Ratanakiri. Staff entirely by young Tampeun, Jarai and Kreung indigenous people, FMV makes media in indigenous languages about culture, community and the essential connection between the indigenous people of Ratanakiri and the land
Anyone who knows the writings of Antonin Artaud knows he spent time with the Raramuri people of Sierra Madre;also called Tarahumara by outsiders. This video is about the Tarahumara as runners. If you are unfamiliar with Artaud, here is an online text, The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud (PDF 109 pages)by Jacques Derrida and Paule Thvenin, which may help.
The first work of the Theatre of Cruelty Artaud initially intended for the stage was entitled The Conquest of Mexico, a work based on the Aztec religion and other primitive cultures of the Americas. Partly to escape his numerous failures in Paris, Artaud left for Mexico in 1936 to do research for this play and live in a land where he believed "a new idea of man [was] being born." Unfortunately, Artaud encountered a culture heavily influenced by the same European ideas he was fleeing. The playwright encountered Communist inspired political unrest and an intellectual coeterie of writers and artists, such as Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and JosÎ Clemente, who were adapting modern European styles to depict their own culture. Since Artaud was trying to escape these European styles and ideas, he found himself alienated from the Mexican artists and intellectuals and, unable to speak Spanish, soon felt isolated in a land that he hoped would provide some form of salvation for him. Perhaps as a consequence, he spent much of his time in Mexico City searching for drugs. He did befriend LuÏs Cardoza y Aragon, a surrealist poet Artaud had initially met in Paris. Aragon helped Artaud financially by arranging lectures and translating articles for the Frenchman.
Strangely, Artaud had no interest in the Aztec ruins nearby, which had become tourist sites by this point. Artaud yearned to witness authentic culture untouched by Western influence. Accordingly, Artaud arranged to visit the Tarahumaras, an isolated tribe in the Sierra Madre of Northern Mexico who made use of peyote in their religious rites. During this arduous journey, Artaud experienced a painful bout of drug withdrawal. Once there, however, Artaud participated in one of the peyote rituals. What else happened during this visit, we have only authorís own reports. Many of these reports were written or revised several years after original visit and were shaped to conform to Artaudís belief system at the time, so their veracity is questionable. These pieces were published posthumously as the A Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara. In this work, Artaud describes a world full of syncretic symbols - crosses, faces in stone - a perfect blending of primitive symbolism and nature, which, for Artaud, typified the lost pre-Renaissance understanding of the world. He also described the peyote ceremony, during which he experienced the ìswirling energies of the earth below. (From Little Blue Light)
There are currently about 50,000 Tarahumara living in the Sierra Madre Occidental in northwestern Mexico. They live in small isolated clusters with most the population concentrated in the Barranca del Cobre, or the Copper Canyon. The Tarahumara indians are part of the Uto-Aztecan indian lineage and are closely related to the Apaches of the Southwestern United States. The area of Northwest Mexico that the Tarahumara lives in is very rugged and unforgiving. The Barranca del Cobre is a chain of five very deep canyons surrounded by very tall mountains that reach almost a mile and a half above sea level. Three of the five canyons are deeper than the Grand Canyon of the United States. The area is different though because it receives much more rainfall and is covered with more vegetation. The terrain is very rugged, so much as to lead to the fact that the area has never been thoroughly mapped or explored (Lutz 66). The area is one of th e coldest in Mexico and soil conditions are very poor. It is because of this that the Tarahumara are semi-nomadic and are cave dwellers for part of the year. ( Running Feet by Art Beauregard)
Apr 4, 2008 - As Tibetan protesters take to the streets in the biggest and most bloody challenge to Chinese rule in nearly 20 years, Dispatches reports on the hidden reality of life under Chinese occupation after spending three months undercover, deep inside the region. Dozens are feared dead after the recent clashes and crackdown by Chinese troops, but with reporting so rigidly controlled from the region little is known of living conditions inside Tibet. To make this film, Tibetan exile Tash Despa returns to the homeland he risked his life to escape 11 years ago, to carry out secret filming with award-winning, Bafta-nominated director Jezza Neumann (Dispatches Special: China’s Stolen Children).
Risking imprisonment and deportation, he uncovers evidence of the “cultural genocide” described by the Dalai Lama. He finds the nomadic way of life being forcefully wiped out as native Tibetans are stripped of their land and livestock and are being resettled in concrete camps. Tibet reveals the regime of terror which dominates daily life and makes freedom of expression impossible. Tash meets victims of arbitrary arrests, detention, torture and “disappearances” and uncovers evidence of enforced sterilisations on ethnic Tibetan women. He sees for himself the impact of the enormous military and police presence in the region, and the hunger and hardship being endured by many Tibetans, and hears warnings of the uprising taking place across the provinces now
Nobodies from the Rainforest (Anonimato) is a short documentary about the Hupda indigenous People from Alto Rio Negro, northwest Amazon (Brazil).
Produced last year by Orlando Lemos, the film reveals a precarious health situation among the Hupda — one that’s been caused by outsider contact and a lack of access to clean water — as they struggle day to day with little resources, assistance, or even hope.
As for the health problem, the film primarily looks at Trachoma, which is a leading cause of infectious blindness in the world (8 million people, mostly in so-called developing countries, are visually impaired every year by Trachoma). There are however, numerous other health problems facing the Hupda.
Underlying this “modern life” is a story of one Hupda Woman, Lucia, who, mistakenly stepped on a poisonous snake after going almost blind from Trachoma.
After being bitten, Lucia wasn’t sure what to do, so she hid away. With her leg untreated though, it got infected and eventually developed into a necrosis. Lucia knew that if she went to a hospital the Doctors would want to take her leg away. She could not accept this.
Eventually however, she was sent to a city hospital. With her husband at her side, the doctors told her what she already knew. She escaped before they had the chance to take her leg.
After returning home, she was encouraged to see a western doctor working in the region. The doctor asked for the help of a traditional medicine man—and together they cured the necrosis without having to remove her leg.
Throughout all this, Lucia lost touch with her husband, who she lost touch with after she ran from the hospital. For months she thought the worst, that she would never again see the love her life.
Fortunately, it turned out he just got lost in the city. Lucia and her husband are together again, reminding them — and now even us, that even in the worst of situations, good things still happen. We just have to trust our hearts, take care of ourselves, and never ever give up.
The Hupda people live in the region bordered by the rivers Tiquié and Papuri, tributaries joining the left hand bank of the river Uaupes in the Upper Rio Negro region of the state of Amazonas in Brazil and the departament of Vaupes in Colombia. They are known as being part of the Maku linguistic family and have been in contact with the frontiers of colonization since the 18th century; there are records of countless epidemics of measles, smallpox and influenza which decimated the population. Currently they are distributed in approximately 35 villages (local groups) estimated at a total of 1500 individuals. The Hupda villages are, in general, close to areas of Tukano, Tariano, Tuyuka and Piratapuia population, populations which speak languages of the Tukano linguistic family, living nears the banks of the streams and rivers which make up the hydrographic basin of the Uaupes river.
