The year of Dances With Wolves-The sequel

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THE URBANE INDIAN

It's no secret that movies tend to be produced in cycles. No industry feeds on itself better than the film industry. Certain years have certain themes. Remember the year of Armageddon and Deep Impact when earth-destroying comets were box office boffo? And Dante's Peak and Volcano gave geological pimples a certain cache in Hollywood within months of each other?

To me as both an avid movie watcher and a member of Canada's First Nations community, this habit of movies with identical themes trying to one-up each other reached a level of ridiculousness a few years back when two different studios produced films about Christopher Columbus discovering the Americas. Again, speaking as a First Nation person, living though the discovery the one time was traumatic enough for most of us. Witnessing it two more times was just downright sadistic.

Judging by the Academy Award nominations, it seems last year's gay and trans-gendered stories were what got everybody all hot and bothered. Witness the success of Brokeback Mountain and TransAmerica. Nothing like gay cowboys and a cross-dressing man to make an artistic statement, though most of us in the Native community have had our suspicions about Tonto and the Lone Ranger for a long time. Sometime when I'm in a good mood, I'll tell you what Kemosabe really means.

But this year it seems like it's our turn once again. In the early 1990s, Native people were "in." Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas and Last of the Mohicans made us cinematically very popular. Fashionably, Indians were the new black. Then we went away for a while. But now we're back, with a vengeance.

There was Terrence Malerick's The New World and Mel Gibson's Apocalypto. I've aseen The New World staring Colin Farrell, and it sort of reminded me of some dates I've had: overly long, dull and occasionally pretty. There's no love story quite like a thirty-something sailor sweeping a 13-year-old girl off her feet. And on a more domestic and Indigenous-friendly level, I've heard rumors floating about that the Dead Dog Cafe's Tom King is out there peddling a movie script he adapted from his hit novel Green Grass, Running Water. Also, the mystical wind is telling me there's talk floating about of Sherman Alexie's fabulous novel Indian Killer becoming a movie, with some solid Canadian participation. I have so many starving Native actor friends, with all this potential work, they can stop going through my garbage.

Just in the last year or so, CBC has certainly been pumping out movies-of-the-week, also known as MOWs. Not that long ago, I remember sitting down in front of the TV with my bowl of popcorn to watch that movie about Shania Twain. I knew almost all the Native actors in that film. I owe most of them some money.

But back to my original point, I also watched Cowboys and Indians, the movie about the police shooting of J.J. Harper. And just awhile or so ago, I watched One Dead Indian about the shooting of Dudley George by the police. Remember what I said about movies with a popular theme being produced quite close together?

Who knew cops killing Indians would become hot? If this keeps up, it won't be long before the Sunday night movie is the dramatization of Neil Stonechild's little run in with the Saskatoon Police.