Two Indians : Red Reflections Of Life (1973)

[Music] [Music] y [Music] the E dance to me know I enjoy doing it cuz it just makes me feel good inside know nobody makes me do it nobody pays me for doing it it's just something I like to do for sacred purposes when it comes to music Indian students are KN no different from any other young people I mean music's music to them you know just something they like something they dance to I mean not just one one type of music [Music] [Applause] [Music] no [Music] [Applause] over up over up DJ like the people that here in this class was me and I more less work with them in the class and you can just see by being together you get ideas from each other you know as for boots he's a youth but working with us Robert is from saningo and I'm from zi no and Miranda's from Alaska and Vita is another youth we just pick things from each other you know you know we get ideas and by talking you know even though we you know work we talk you know uh a tablecloth does your mother do weaving uh she works she works at the Indian Hospital like home she's a cook what does your mother do my mother just fishes and Hunt hunts all the time what bears no I don't be that I don't say that things to you do I no okay no what does she really do she fishes in Hunt she fishes in the summertime for salmon and she hunts for moose in the winter time really mhm what does your dad do he works as a um crane operator he in Alaska he worked in am CH CU of you know what this is like from My Tribe what what does it look like a c well it's oh well as I was saying he it's it's like those you know the Kachina dancers have you ever seen them I guess not you're from Alaska thanks kid you know Theo dances yeah but where where wait wait I'm telling you but they're like the they're the Kachina dancers that represent uh the lady dancers and they got this line they usually have that line right there and then the square mouth they do do do they put on in drawing these pots I think of these cachas which represent more or less represent gods and it all comes from Earth so you you paint things which are Gods right there on Earth you paint things you think of and I think this is the way how how come I usually like to use my old designs on this clay work that I do cuz it's the right thing to put on there cuz clay came from Earth too that first time me and my brother you know started planting core and my father just left us out there said he said one of you drive the tractor one of you go behind so he just left us there cuz he had to go to work in the morning and my brother he was younger than I am he wanted to do more stuff than I did did so I let him drive the tractor and you know the way he drove it was you know he went out of line so I just went along with his line panning the corn and when the time came that they came out my dad really laughed at us cuz our lines of corn was just like he was driving while he was drunk you know it was just all swaggering and everything and said well that's pretty good for the first time at least they came out and now we can pick them I feel so good to go home to see my little sisters that's one thing that makes you feel good to go home come here and as for the village I feel that it's really progressed within the modern ways you know we got gas phone electricity piping for watering and inside toilets and everything so you know I don't see as much poverty at our village cuz it's really growing now now we got an industry that came up and a lot of things planned for our village which I know of and I think as well as the other Villages doing they're planning a lot of things for their Village too ah you missed it get here come on it it you were too slow again n again it it hit it like that okay hit it like that okay ready yeah don't hit [Applause] [Music] me well as for the reservation the zi people they they don't have to live there you know it's just all up to them but some of them feel that since that was the land that they lived on since the Spaniards came and everything you know they feel that that's home they can go back to it like some of them go out live into bigger cities and going into better jobs but every time they come back home but that's some place they can call home some place where they grow their corn and where they were born where they were raised to learn their own traditional ways their culture some place you can remember where you roam the hills and where you planted your corn where you just was with your grandfather or grandmother your mom and dad some place where you worshiped your own indan Gods [Music] I Le away [Music] way [Music] like some some of my paintings I guess would you could say I guess would take a kind of a political view but when some people look at it they will think what what's this guy thinking about about me know where's he at why does he paint this way you know um as an artist as an individual and as an Indian the Bia machine is to me as a I got inspired by just two or three different ways Richard do you have any tape yeah sure here you go um first thing like the B machine is like the city in the background and the Tepe kind of a contrast this like got a roll of books in the middle which is education and this is supposingly the way out for the Indian through education when I was in Chicago the Su I seen it it was like the relocation program there which is where they take the Indians off the reservations and bring them to the city when they do this I get the feeling that they're trying to get all the Indians off the reservation and this is the only pieces of land they have left the Indian is the reservation the Indian is more he has more of a chance on reservation than he does in the city I think but the end is just he just kind of loses himself in the city what I seen in Chicago and U he formed his own reservation again right within the city except it's a ghetto reservation like my grandmother who has land and she's had it for for a long time and she's not living on it now and it's way out in the country and she lives far from it but um she still won't sell it even though she's she lives in a bad situation she won't sell her land or just something about the land that she doesn't she doesn't believe in selling land that that you can pay dollars and cents for a land a I don't know it's really an ugly picture but uh I'm not directing all this toward the Bia you know I I think the B the Indians going to need the Bia the be itself I'm not for just tearing a bie down I mean I think you just can't say okay here we are ready the Indian just can't say that here he is he's ready to to get it on and the American stream of Life whatever whatever they call it whatever they're trying to drag us into So I myself would like to get involved in in politics I don't know just how I mean in what way but I do know I want to get involved that's kind of my future plans cuz I I just see a lot of things going on around me you know that that have just been accepted over and over and over they have to change this meeting will now come to order this is the first meeting of the new year um Fred y give the rad call Shob here Linda k Liz Anderson getting Indians into the B is just like me at the school here it's an all Indian School and president the student body then my whole platform more or less you could say I guess is is more student involvement at the school determining what we want to do do we have the minutes from the last meeting an informal meeting of the student Senate was called to order by President Richard Quitman on December 17th the student Senate discussed a semiformal dance to be sponsored by the student Senate Refreshments were discussed and decided upon for campus bands were to furnish the music [Music] student body president like you know I I try to I want you know all the people all the Indian students here I want them to get on the Indian Road and there's a lot of them that have their own views of the Indian Road there's lot a lot of disagreements have to respect what they have to say you know especially like an Indian power you meet some some Indians that are really reserved people okay that's all you need you have to recognize what they have to say and you know you just can't say well this is the way it is I mean this is the way we got to do it it's it's real easy to try to to push your your your trip off on on them you know which really isn't part of being a leader you know like like you said there's a gap between the Young Generation and the older generation seems like to to me what I've what I've heard what I've read and well well generally what I've observed is that the older people they want to cling to the memories of the past and they want something done about it but they really don't know how to to do it because uh they feel that they're really Indian they have this indianness inside them and they think the white won't listen to them but yet the young people they want they want they want them to listen to them and they'll do it through through this red Power movement I think they can and this um National Youth uh Indian Council national Indian youth council is trying to get more young people involved in this movement to try to speak up and uh not be afraid of the whites is that the thing between the the young and in the hold on just it is there right I mean yeah on a lot of on a lot of different things like they say like I my grandparents tell me this they say you're you're getting too white and I says no I'm not I'm still Indian and yet they say um why why do the whites treat us like this why do they uh say this and but yet they do another and then I tell them and somehow I guess to them it sounds like I'm speaking for the whites but then yet I'm not it's it's just this great controversy of old things and new things and the way things work and it's really a bu Tri for old people I guess well uh both my parents are part Indian and it's been kind of well it's been hard for them and for me to see them going through their hangup it isn't hard for me as it is for them I mean still there's a few people that I have problems with you know but then I realize what you know they've gone through why they dislike me you know maybe if they got to know me it' be a lot different and off the reservation like we live in a city it's a lot different because the people don't think we're Indians but then they don't know what we are like sometimes some people say well are you French well what are you you know it's kind of fun to watch them hassle their own minds trying to figure this out cu a lot of people I don't they think they're more inan than someone else you know they I don't know they really lay their like a traditional trip on you know about you know if you don't dance or sing you know with them you know then they're more ined than you are well it isn't so much like uh I have to dance and sing it's uh like uh they don't really care if I do or not you know like um well that's kind of their thing and they'd rather have it just for if they're really on an Indian Eagle trip and they don't want any light people coming in like the blacks and the whites we have a color thing too them amongst ourselves but like as for myself I really don't feel this way well like I have similar problem I guess like Indians are minorities and I'm like a yuchi and everybody nobody's ever heard of yuchi and I'm like a minority indan you you know cuz I guess I'm about the second you just ever been in this this school you know and we're just a real small tribe you know and I'm just hard to tell people that I'm a UI Indian you know they they what yeah they can't pick up on the FI you know so this where are they from you know all this and I always have to explain to them and go through this like a whole thing with him you know a film here you know and had all these Indian guys out there you know there's this big white guy out there showing them how to shoot a bow like a lot of times in my room guys in the same dorm they all come to my room you know just sit around and just kind of just rap about everything we talk about everything but then it comes right back down to to the end in problem and I don't know just maybe a lot of loose talk but it's good to talk uh I get a lot out of it you know but I think as far as Indian problem is concerned a lot of Indians are really realizing young Indians especially that if they don't do nothing about this you know I mean get involved some way that they're just very very much part of the indm problem is you know but simply by not getting involved just standing back and I think all the endan really wants and all he's been saying all along is uh um Let me let me as an endan decide how much of your culture I want instead of having it forced just laid upon him he should you know that's that's I think a whole part of the Indian power too is within that [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] way [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] way all [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] when there's a rock dance you know this the in you know the students you know know they have an enjoyment of getting together dancing it's just something that comes usual anywhere you know where there's Indian students involved or just Indian people involved and so they go out and have another dance you know it just goes from Rock dance to round dance cuz they have a feeling of wanting to be with each other and to dance the enjoyment of it [Music] I feel you know being an Indian doesn't I'm just like any other young person it happen to be an Indian I'm proud of be an Indian but that don't put me above anybody else or below anybody else I don't think I'm just trying to make it too endedness to me is when you just have a feeling inside yourself that you have something to look back to something that you can feel with inside you that you know that you're an Indian I mean you don't you don't have to have long hair to be an Indian you don't have even have to have short hair you don't have to wear moccasins you don't have to wear beads it's just all within you it's it's just the feeling that you have that you are an Indian that you know you are an Indian and that you're proud to have a real good culture behind you something to be proud of [Music] [Music] he [Music]