Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Carlos Castaneda And The Shaman. Tales From The Jungle
This film investigates the controversy that surrounded Castaneda's book "Teachings of don Juan" and explores the practices of today's Yaqui Indians with Dr David Shorter, who has spent the last decade working among them in Mexico. An investigative journalist claimed Castaneda had faked his fieldwork and that Don Juan was merely a figment of his imagination.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Sacred Navajo Sheep called the Churro
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127797442&sc=nl&cc=es-20100620
For as long as anyone can remember, Churro sheep have been central to Navajo life and spirituality, yet the animal was nearly exterminated in modern times by outside forces who deemed it an inferior breed. Now, on a Navajo reservation of northern Arizona and New Mexico, the Churro is being shepherded back to health.
The Navajo Nation is the size of West Virginia, and at last count, 175,000 people live here. Most people are spread out in small clusters that you see off in the distance from the highway. Amongst modern prefab houses and hogans, the multisided traditional homes of the Navajo, are often corrals with small bands of sheep grazing nearby.
"Sometimes you find me, and I just want to sit in the corral with them," Navajo weaver Roy Kady says. "Just find a corner and I sit there. They motivate me, even just to see them; it's that strong to me."
Churro sheep are smaller than most breeds and have a long, wavy lustrous fleece that is valued by Navajo weavers like Kady. He lives near Teec Nos Pos, where he's chapter president — sort of like being the town's mayor. For him, this flock is part of something larger, something he calls "din'e bi iina," the Navajo lifeway. "Din'e" is the preferred name for the Navajo, and "bi iina" means "lifeway."
"Sheep is your backbone," Kady says. "It's your survival. It's your lifeline."
For centuries, the Churro was all these things, providing the Navajo with what they needed to survive in the stark desert: meat for sustenance, wool for weaving clothing and blankets, sinew for thread. It's no wonder the Navajo are grateful, even reverential when it comes to the Churro.
"Sheep is a very important part of this whole cosmology to us," Kady explains. "You know, there are songs to where it refers to 'the first thing I see is the white sheep to the East when I wake up to make my offering. It stands at my doorway.' And that's how we know that the sheep is something that's very sacred to us."
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Reel Injun
Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian
Sunday March 28 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC News Network.
The Passionate Eye is airing the shorter TV version of Reel Injun. Click here for locations and showtimes for the full theatrical version of this film.
Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond takes an entertaining and insightful look at the Hollywood Indian, exploring the portrayal of North American Natives through a century of cinema.
Traveling through the heartland of America, and into the Canadian North, Diamond looks at how the myth of "the Injun" has influenced the world's understanding - and misunderstanding - of Natives.
Reel Injun traces the evolution of cinema's depiction of Native people from the silent film era to today, with clips from hundreds of classic and recent Hollywood movies, and candid interviews with celebrated Native and non-Native film celebrities, activists, film critics and historians.
Diamond meets with Clint Eastwood (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars,Unforgiven) at his studios in Burbank, California, where the film legend discusses the evolution of the image of Indians in Westerns and what cowboy-and-Indian myths mean to America. Reel Injun also hears from legendary Native American activists John Trudell, Russell Means and Sacheen Littlefeather.
Celebrities featured in Reel Injun include Robbie Robertson, the half-Jewish, half-Mohawk musician and soundtrack composer (Raging Bull, Casino, Gangs of New York), Cherokee actor Wes Studi (Last of the Mohicans, Geronimo), filmmakers Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man) and Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals) and acclaimed Native actors Graham Greene (Dances with Wolves, Thunderheart) and Adam Beach (Smoke Signals, Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers). Diamond also travels North to the remote Nunavut town of Igloolik (population: 1500) to interview Zacharias Kunuk, director of the Camera d'Or-winning The Fast Runner.
Reel Injun's humour and star power is balanced with insightful commentary from film critics and historians, including CBC film critic Jesse Wente, author and scholar of American Indian Studies Angela Aleiss, and associate professor of ethnic studies at Mills College, California, Melinda Micco.
In Reel Injun, Diamond takes the audience on a journey across America to some of cinema's most iconic landscapes, including Monument Valley, the setting for Hollywood's greatest Westerns, and the Black Hills of South Dakota, home to Crazy Horse and countless movie legends. Was Crazy Horse the inspiration for the mystical warrior stereotype? In search of answers, we meet his descendants on the desperately poor Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota.
Reel Injun traces the evolution of cinema's depiction of Native people from the silent film era to today, only to find the future of Native cinema in the unlikeliest of places - Canada's North.
It's a loving look at cinema through the eyes of the people who appeared in its very first flickering images and have survived to tell their stories their own way.
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