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The tribes fight back with Native Spirit

Source: guardian.co.uk Film

Nov 08, 2009

Summary

Sick of being portrayed as helpless victims, indigenous peoples are now picking up the camera themselves. And the results, as seen in the Native Spirit film festival, are remarkable

Cinema's relationship with indigenous tribal peoples has not been a happy one. Native Americans helped get the movies up and running by providing handy resistance to the winning of the west – which proved dramatically invaluable in cowboy movies. In return, they were portrayed as feathered and painted savages, hungry for scalps and blind to the essential decency of the men who were stealing their land.

In these more enlightened times, things are different, but not much better. When indigenous people appear at all, it is usually as helpless victims of oppression, in thrall to quaint but silly customs. The recent La Terra degli Uomini Rossi, released here as Birdwatchers, painted the Guarani-Kaiowá tribe of Brazil as hapless remnants of a lost people, making a futile stand against encroaching agribusinessmen. It ended with an appeal for support.

But many of the indigenous people of the

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