In Shari Hundorf’s book, Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination she questions why Native Americans can never be shown as modern in film. Chris Eyre, a Native American film director attempts to fill this neglected genre through his two films Skins and Smoke Signals. I would like to discuss the movie Skins in my blog. The movie attempts to show a modern experience on a reservation in South Dakota. This depiction is the only mainstream film to my knowledge that attempts to approach the subject of Native American life through a modern lens specifically concerning their experience on the reservation and family dynamics, in order to educate the rest of the American population and dispel stereotypes commonly believed to be true about life on an Indian reservation.
The movie was not met by critical acclaim by movie critics; instead it was criticized for its lack of development of the characters and the subversive subject matter is never even touched upon. The professional analysis of the films neglected to see the positive attempts to finally attempt to write a neglected story in the American present.
It is also interesting to remember that the director was a Native American, which in the majority opinion gives him more agency to write this particular narrative since it is assumed that he has witnessed or experienced certain events first hand, but even this does not give him credibility in the public’s eye.
My question is what will it take for an acceptable story concerning the current conditions on Native American reservations to be written and then viewed by a majority public instead of relegated to an obscure audience only? Rosa Linda Fregoso (meXicana encounters) also wonders who is allowed to write the history. Will only a Native American be able to write such a history? Can one ever be written?
Movie Trailer
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