Depictions of Native Americans in film have existed since the beginning of the film industry and similar depictions existed before film in the form of wild-west shows. Historically these depictions have been created by and for Euro-Americans and, as a result, present a skewed and stereotyped image of Native American people. While Native people have been involved in the film industry for over a century, it took until 1998 for a completely Native American production to arise with a Native writer, director and crew. Smoke Signals premiered at a time when, regrettably, many people thought that Native Americans no longer existed as a distinct culture or people. This essay will explore how Smoke Signals challenged contemporary and historical views of Native Americans in American film. However, before we can understand the significance of Native American depictions in Smoke Signals we must first gain and understanding of how Native Americans have been historically depicted in American films and entertainment and why such depictions are significant. Since the late 19^th century Native Americans have been exploited for the purposes of entertaining Euro-American audiences and it was during the late 19^th century that many of the media stereotypes relating to Native Americans were popularized. These began in the Wild West Show phenomenon, a traveling entertainment show which in equal parts reenacted and embellished upon “renowned battles” from the American frontier (King 12). These shows emerged at a time when the American frontier was essentially considered civilized and the focus on relations with Native Americans had shifted from a militaristic to an administrative nature (King 12). This presented a problem for the American public because it meant that a people who had, historically, been viewed as an enemy or threat were now, effectively under their care. The Wild West Shows “encouraged Americans to grapple with questions of racial difference and cultural evolution, while prompting nostalgic yearnings for nature, tradition, and indigenous communities destroyed by progress and manifest destiny” (King 12). In effect, with the war over, the Euro-American population needed ways to rationalize the treatment and ultimate fate of the Native American people and the Wild West Shows presented them with a set of cultural stereotypes which allowed them to do that. Native Americans were divided into a collection of archetypes; the noble savage, the brutal warrior, the loyal sidekick, the chief, the princess and the squaw (King 5). These early archetypes combined with a handful of narratives (civilization conquering the frontier and progress vs. primitive life were the most common themes) to create what would become the predominate Euro-American perception of Native Americans (King 12).

It is estimated that over 2000 films and over 10,000 television shows have been produced which feature Native Americans since the end of the 19^th century (Churchhill 43). The majority of these productions were created by and for the Euro-American market and perpetuated many of the stereotypes established by the Wild West Shows (the two, in fact, overlapped with the last of the Wild West Shows occurring in the 1930s) (King 12). More than any other culture, the Native American’s image has been defined through film (Rollins ix). The question arises then, how is it that these media depictions can define a people’s image and why does such a definition matter? For one thing, Native Americans represent a very small portion of the American population and, for many Americans, media such as film and television are the primary way in which they are represented (King 6). The ways in which people, places and ideas are presented in the media shape the conceptions of those who access that media (King 7). This is problematic for Native Americans when we consider that while there has there been a huge saturation of media with Native American content, the overwhelming majority of that content works to reinforce negative 19^th century stereotypes (King 7).  This has created a positive feedback loop where the Euro-Americans who had the means to produce this media had been consumers of it all their lives. After several generations of this style of media production the media is completely removed from any truth about Native Americans (or even from a deliberate intention to create anti-Native American propaganda) and relies on simulacra of Native Americans which were created at the turn of the century. Rather than producing films and television shows based on Native Americans, the industry was creating films and television shows based on earlier film and television shows. It is for this reason that Smoke Signals is such a significant film. For first time, Native Americans had the opportunity to represent themselves in film and to challenge many of the stereotypes which had plagued them for the last century. A major departure from the classic treatment of Native Americans, Smoke Signals is an outwardly human story, riddled with subversive political comment. Amanda J. Cobb, a Native American Studies scholar who has researched Native depictions in film extensively, attributes much of the film’s success to its quietly political nature and the fact that its political subtext “never becomes overtly political” (Cobb 213). The narrative is one which many could relate to, with its focus on human relationships and redemption. Two young men, Victor and Thomas grew up together on a Reservation. When the two boys were young there was a house fire on the fourth of July which killed Thomas’ parents and many of Victor’s relatives. Victor’s father, Arnold, saved the two boys from the fire, but was emotionally crippled by grief and turned to a life of alcohol and violence. Arnold eventually leaves the Reservation and, years later, Victor receives word that his father has died in Arizona. Someone must collect the Arnold’s estate but no one in Victor’s family has the money to travel to Arizona, and Victor has little but bad memories of his father. Thomas, who never experienced the alcoholism or domestic violence that plagued Victor’s childhood, idolizes the man who saved him from the fire and offers to give Victor the money to travel to Arizona, as long as he can tag along. On the surface, Smoke Signals is structured as a classical Hollywood buddy road movie, in which two friends or companions travel across the country together. Beneath this veneer of comedy and character development there exists a barrage of references to Native American history and culture (Cobb 210). The Reservation in which Victor and Thomas grew up is utilized extensively by the screenplay’s author, Sherman Alexie, who uses humor and elements of mise en scene to establish the poverty and socio-economic issues which still plague reservation life, while challenging the perceptions that people hold about life on reservations. The first thing we encounter on the reservation is the sounds of the KREZ radio station, accompanied by the housing and local businesses of the reservation. The radio station crosses to its weather and traffic van, which broke down years ago and whose driver\reporter still sits atop of.  This serves a two-fold symbolic purpose. Firstly, the reservation we are presented with is relatively modern, with individual housing, cars and commerce. The Native Americans here are living a comparatively modern existence (no teepees or longhouses). There is, however, a flip side to this modern depiction. Despite the modern veneer there are serious economic problems on the Reservation. We can speculate that while the community has a traffic and weather van, there is so little money that the van cannot be fixed when it breaks down (even after a number of years). This is echoed later when Victor and Thomas encounter their relatives, Velma and Lucy, who are driving a car which only travels in reverse. Anywhere else in the country the car’s gearbox would be replaced but here there is simply no money for such repairs.  Where many film makers would deal with these reservation related issues with heated political debate, Alexie uses strong political statements, “subtly veiled” (Cobb 210) with wry humor. Appropriately, much of the film’s political subtext relates to Native American representations and identity. In a particularly telling exchange between Victor and Thomas it is revealed that the negative impact of inaccurate media representations is not restricted to Euro-American consumers. Thomas, who styles himself as a latter day medicine man and dresses in cheap suits, is berated by Victor for not knowing how to act like a “real Indian”. Victor jeers at Thomas for styling himself as a medicine man and for being too influenced by films like Dances with Wolves. However, when Victor tells Thomas that he should look “stoic” and like he’s “just killed a buffalo”, Thomas counters this by telling Victor that their tribe, the Coeur d’Alene, never hunted buffalo and were fisherman. This exposes both young men as victims of the same cultural whitewashing that has shaped Euro-American’s perceptions of Native Americans through film and television. In this respect Native Americans are not only “objects of popular culture” but also “consumers and participants” in the same media and culture which capitalize on their image (Cobb 216). Ultimately, however, the real symbolic core of Smoke Signals exists in the personal relationships of the characters, particularly those they have with their parents. The precedent for this is established at the beginning of the film, during Thomas’ opening monologue: You know there are some children who aren’t really children at all, they’re just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And there are some children who are just pillars of ash, that fall apart when you touch them… Victor and me, we were children of flame and ash.

-Thomas, Smoke Signals

By styling himself as a latter day medicine man, with his incessant stories, Thomas seems to have little regard for hurting others feelings with his tales in fact, it often lands him in a great deal of trouble. In this respect, Thomas is a pillar of flame that burns everything he touches. Victor, conversely, is so emotionally devastated by his past that it is impossible for him to emotionally engage with anyone and, in effect, “fall[s] apart” when anyone touches him.  This is not only a neat metaphor for the psychological profiles of Victor and Thomas, but for those of many Native Americans. Let us consider those living on the Pine Ridge reservation during the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee. The reservation was under the control of tribal chairman, Richard Wilson who ruled the reservation with an iron fist (Iverson 152). Firsthand accounts of those living on the reservation allow us to categorize them into these two loose psychological profiles, laid out by Alexie in Smoke Signals. Many of those who lived in the reservation with Wilson (and his vigilante squads) lived in absolute fear and either became violent themselves (fire) or withdrawn (ash) (Iverson 152). Wilson and those who responded violently to him and the FBI could easily be described as “pillars of fire” like Thomas, “burning everything they touch”, while the more subdued members of the community simply could not. Both the Native American council on the reservation (Wilson) and the United States government (represented here by the FBI) had completely failed them and thus they “[fell] apart when [anyone] touches them”, like Victor whom family, government and ideology have failed. Ultimately, the greatest parallel between the narrative Smoke Signals of and the legacy of injustice between Native and Euro-Americans is the constant theme of betrayal at the hands of a father. Victor and Thomas have both been dramatically affected the absence of Victor’s father. Native Americans have a history of referring to the President of the United States as the “great white father” and this gains a special resonance when we consider Thomas’ closing monologue in the film: “How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often, or forever, when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all? Do we forgive our fathers for marrying, or not marrying, our mothers? Or divorcing, or not divorcing, our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing, or leaning? For shutting doors or speaking through walls? For never speaking, or never being silent? Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths, saying it to them or not saying it. If we forgive our fathers, what is left?“ This final meditation on Thomas’ part is a reflection on the relationship between a colonial power and the indigenous people it takes in its charge. The colonial past of Euro-Americans placed them in a traditionally antagonistic and authoritarian position, i.e. in the role of the father. By the tail end of the 20^th century, when Smoke Signals appears, Native Americans still find themselves subservient to an abusive, neglectful father. How are you supposed to feel towards this father who has alternately neglected and interfered with you? How do you heal a legacy of pain which has existed for generations? Finally, if you do decide to forgive this awful parent, what comes next? It is by virtue of these astounding layers of complex symbolism and political comment that makes Smoke Signals a departure from other depictions of Native Americans in film. While the significance of Native American involvement at all levels of the production cannot be ignored, it is the thoroughly human and emotional level with which Smoke Signals appeals to its audience in order to communicate its message that sets it apart from other attempts. Bibliography

• Churchhill, W. “American Indians in Film: Thematic Contours of Cinematic Colonization”, in Reversing the Lens: Ethnicity, Race, Gender and Sexuality Through Film, Jun Xing and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, eds. Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 2003
• Cobb, Amanda J. “This is What it Means to Say Smoke Signals”, in Peter C. Rollins and John E. Connor, Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of the Native American in Film, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003
• Iverson, Peter. We Are Still Here: American Indians in the Twentieth Century, Illinios: Harlan Davidson, 1998
• King C. R., Media Images And Representations. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2006
• Rollins, Peter C. and John E. Connor, Hollywood’s Indian, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003.

• Smoke Signals Dir. Chris Eyre. Shadowcatcher Entertainment. 1998

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