Whale Rider and the Fight for Indigenous Films

Stefan Lovgren in Los Angeles
for National Geographic News

November 18, 2003

Editor's note: The National Geographic
Society is now accepting submissions from filmmakers for the All Roads
Film Festival; the deadline is May 31, 2004. See the sidebar at right
for further details along with information on how to apply for a seed grant.

Whale Rider, a New Zealand film that tells the story of a Maori girl who must challenge her grandfather and a thousand years of tradition to fulfill her ancient tribe's destiny, became an audience favorite this year.

The movie, which was recently released on DVD and video, ended up earning more than U.S. $20 million at American box offices. With its native theme and an all-Maori cast, Whale Rider was surely a boon to indigenous filmmaking.

Well, maybe. Bringing the story to the big screen still required a pakeha (the Maori word for a New Zealander of European descent), in this case acclaimed director Niki Caro, who also adapted the screenplay from Maori writer Witi Ihimaera's novel.

Truly indigenous films are still few and far between.

Now, recognizing the challenges that native filmmakers face in having their voices heard, a new National Geographic Society initiative, called the All Roads Film Project, will provide seed grants and venues for indigenous filmmakers around the world.

A kick-off event in Washington, D.C., on October 30, gathered ten indigenous filmmakers. The program will host film festivals beginning next year in Washington and Los Angeles; award six to ten seed grants in 2004; and offer production classes and networking sessions with studio executives. It also aims to fund minority filmmakers who are under-represented in the mass media in their countries.

"These are narratives that have the power to last for centuries, yet they are not being told," said Mark Bauman, who is co-directing the project for the National Geographic Society. "Our goal is to reflect the rainbow of faces that make up our cultural universe, and inject a broader range of experiences into mainstream culture."

Native Backdrops

Indigenous subjects and themes are often pushed to the margins or end up serving as a backdrop for non-native storylines. It could be called the Dances With Wolves syndrome, a reference to 1990's Oscar-winning movie that explored Native American culture through the eyes of a white Army officer, played by actor Kevin Costner.

"There's a market for the romanticized native image, and one of the challenges is to break out of it," said Bird Runningwater, who heads the Native American program at the Sundance Film Institute and also serves on the All Roads Film Project advisory board. "The only way is for native peoples to make their own films, because there's a nuance and subtext that can only be conveyed by native filmmakers."

That's easier said than done. Even in the world's most vibrant indigenous film communities, such as Australia and New Zealand, native filmmakers are treated with suspicion.

"It has to take a non-indigenous producer, broadcaster, or film company to ratify a project before the general film community goes, 'Oh, yes, this is good,'" said Bain Stewart, an Aboriginal producer and founder of Bungabura Productions (the word is Aboriginal for "blue crane"), which he runs with Leah Purcell, a well-known Aboriginal actress-director. (Both also serve on the All Roads Film Project advisory board.)

Five Years of Self-Representation

But there are signs that indigenous filmmakers are getting more opportunities to tell their stories. In recent years, Native Americans, in particular, have achieved some success.

It started in 1998 with Smoke Signals, a movie about two young American Indian men who go on a soul-searching journey. Directed by Chris Eyre, who is of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, Smoke Signals won both the Audience Award and the Filmmaker's trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. It went on to gross more than U.S. $6.5 million in the United States.

Last year, three Native American films got theatrical distribution in the United States: The Business of Fancydancing; Skins, Eyre's follow-up to Smoke Signals; and the critically acclaimed Atanarjuat ("The Fast Runner"), the first Canadian film written, produced, directed, and acted by members of the nomadic Inuit people.

"After 100 years of American cinema, the fact that we're celebrating five years of self-representation says a lot about our national cinema and even our own country," said Runningwater, who is Cheyenne and Mescalero-Apache. "Native Americans…exist… in a world that [was] transplanted and grown around them, and lived within systems that haven't always supported them, but have historically oppressed them."

The problem, says Runningwater, is that Native American filmmaking doesn't reach down to the grassroots level. Traditionally, most Native Americans don't see themselves as filmmakers. That, however, could change.

"We didn't have beads at the time of the Europeans, but we took the beads into our lives and reinterpreted their use, and now they're an amazing craft that exists with native people," said Runningwater. "I don't see why filmmaking can't become a creative tradition with native people as well."

The Importance

All Roads aims to reach out not only to native groups in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, but also to native filmmakers who are even more marginalized: African tribes, people of the Amazon jungle, and hill tribes in Southeast Asia.

"Indigenous stories are really the last uncharted territory for fresh stories," said Runningwater. "There's a mine of wealth out there."

Bauman, too, believes the world has a lot to learn from indigenous stories. Native films, he says, can even be an avenue for peace.

"Injecting a broader range of experiences into popular culture is always critical," he said. "Given international events on the Korean peninsula, in the Middle East, in parts of Africa, it's very, very important right now that [people] have venues in which we can listen to each other's stories without having to feel any fear."