One of the things that I also really like about Indian No More is that in addition to shining a light on a period of history we don’t talk about is what also happens to so many Native kids today — whether that’s moving from their tribal lands out of their community into a public school setting, or moving out of state somewhere else. Again, two-thirds of us live outside of our tribal homelands.
Regina and also Charlene are Umpqua, and so these kids in LA have no concept of how their lives differ, right? They’ve grown up in a diet of The Lone Ranger and Tonto, and westerns in the 1950s, which again, most of these people playing these roles are not even Native. And so Regina immediately is confronting them telling her what it is to be Indian and that she’s not.
And then once she goes to school like experiencing, of course, things like Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving hadn’t even been celebrated that long in the United States before the 1950s, so it was not something that was celebrated on the reservation. And she comes down and they’re doing this play at school, and they’ve got this whole pilgrims-and-Indians thing, and of course because she’s Native they’re going to dress her up.
And they’re putting the lipstick and drawing stuff, and nothing, again, that relates to her culture at all. It’s all this stuff that’s like the Hollywood Indian stereotype, and her mom and grandmother come to see the play, and just the embarrassment that she has as to what they’re doing on the stage, and that her family is witnessing this because it’s completely opposite of anything that she’s been raised with.
My own family moved from Oklahoma to California when I was a teen, and I remember just being treated like I had minus 20 IQ points or something, automatically. And how could I possibly be Cherokee and what was that anyway? And I thought, man, everybody knows who I am, where I came from, and knows my family, what are you talking about? Like, how is this even a question? But, you know, the Native Nations there in the San Diego area were invisible, like no one was paying any attention to them. They were not mentioned in the news, in our curriculum, nothing. So how could I expect these people to know anything about my tribe?
And that’s what you see Regina experiencing — coming from a community where everyone knows who you are, you can’t go anywhere without people saying, ‘Oh you’re so and so’s granddaughter, you’re so and so’s niece.’ You know? That just is like part and parcel of your life. Outside that, you experience ‘we don’t think you’re Native,’ and if you are, you’re definitely not acting like we’re expecting you to act, so that even makes you more suspect.