INDIAN RELAY RACING

Part of the Native American renaissance on reservations has been due to “re-birthing” the past, bringing back once traditional practices that were suppressed by white overseers.  One of the most stirring returns has been the revival of Indian Relay Racing.  The proof is in the video linked below:

http://www.pbs.org/video/2365111911/

There is personal meaning for me in this phenomenon through a peripheral relationship in the Sixties.  Pairing up with Bob Scriver meant that I needed a horse, so I bought one for $100 from Don MacRae who had used it for pack trips, since it was an old horse with a scabby problem on its head that looked like mange but wasn’t.  It was an old Bullshoe relay race horse, a tall brown gelding probably descended from cavalry mounts.  Diverting cavalry horses and railroad horses accounted for the origins of many horses on the rez, even into the Sixties.

Bob provided a saddle. He wanted me to ride with him early in the morning.  The first morning I woke up in Browning in my little apartment where the windows looked across an alley and then an empty lot at the Catholic Church, I heard the thunder of hooves.  Before I was quite awake, the white legs of a galloping horse — and boots in stirrups — rushed past that window.  I had no idea who it was.  Later I realized it was Bob  By the next summer, when I was still living there, he would lead my horse up to my window and I would rush out --tucking in my shirttail -- to mount up.

The old brown horse’s improbable name was Skeeter.  He was my “learning horse” and would not do anything he thought was unwise or not according to horse protocol.  You could ride him in any direction as far as you wanted and when you turned around for home, he was there in fifteen minutes.  Bob’s policy was only two words:  “Keep up.”  His horse was broke for bull-dogging and had two speeds:  greased lightning and stop.  Skeeter could and would keep up with Gunsmoke, Bob’s beloved white horse.  Skeeter also stopped abruptly, with the goal of throwing off the rider.

My biggest problem was getting on the horse, even though in those days I was skinnier and had more muscle.  If I used an overturned bucket as a step, Skeeter knew just the right time to kick it out from under me so I’d plant my face instead of my keister in the saddle.  I’d line him up with the corral rail fence, and he’d go perpendicular just as I threw my leg out.  But I didn’t have to whip him to make him go faster.  He’d been quirted in races so thoroughly that all I had to do was hold a twig out to the side far enough for him to see it, and he’d go for miles, rocking along.  There were fewer fences then.

I never did fall off (it was a long way to the ground) but I had no pride about how I stayed on, gripping the horn or whatever else came to hand.  I had no thigh muscles and not much balance.  Bob had two pieces of riding advice: “lean back” and “keep your heels down.”  I bought some boots but the first time I wore them in snow, they disintegrated.  Cheap.

In the early Sixties, the one-time fairgrounds were nothing but a short row of a few stalls in a weathered little tumble of shed.  That’s where I kept my horse: no rent, no permission, total ignorance.  I went out daily with water and I must have taken hay, though I picketed him sometimes which was hopeless because he became mercilessly entangled. and then I tried hobbling, which rubbed his thin thoroughbred ankle skin raw.  He wanted to go back to Trombley’s field where the other horses were.  Once at dawn I met him on the highway, intent on going forward with his front legs tied together, sort of rowing along.  People looked at me sideways and shook their heads.  Clueless Napi-ahki.

It was nothing like today’s sophisticated horse culture where people take lessons and ride in circles in big covered arenas.  Today the Browning fairgrounds are a proper regulation racetrack with well-built stands and respectable stables.  I’ve never attended anything there.  It seems like a foreign country to me.

Nor did I understand anything about Bob’s motives and practices.  He was old enough to be my father and trying to reach back to his youth, which was in the 1920’s.  He needed me to be along in case someone had to go for help and because I was so impressed that I trusted him entirely and that gave him confidence.  If he lost his nerve, he got mad at me and that brought it back.  There was little talking.

This PBS video about Indian Relays impressed me in part because these young guys (no female riders) are just like the Blackfeet, Metis, Cree, and mixed tribe (why isn’t there a word for them yet?) kids I was teaching in the Sixties, except these riders are focused and they have strong male mentors, who are handling them as much as the horses.  There’s just enough chaos and chance involved to offer good lessons about how to manage oneself in a world that’s always going cattywampus.  Like a rez, for instance.

Dutch Lunak

An interesting development was the connection of relay racing with stunt riding for the movies during a little spurt of Westerns in the Nineties.  The competitors were longhairs so they didn’t have to worry about their wigs falling off, and they were rodeo hands and ranchers who weren’t afraid of livestock or getting hurt.  The local story was recounted by John Gill in this linked article:   http://www.cutbankpioneerpress.com/glacier_reporter/news/article_5b039cad-f685-58dd-affc-f9c2d74f3461.html  

Jobs were not just stunt riding, but also caring for the horses and teaching the actors how to ride.  Then there were spin-offs, like classes in horsemanship for tourists on the rez or training how to be a stunt double.  When a film is being shot on location, the demand for housing and food are high.  The good part is that the quality of the final product doesn’t matter so much as that the producers, cast and crew have good experiences, which locals know how to do.  A sense of humor is crucial.

These folks far outclass me or even Bob.  But more importantly, the contact with professionals who come to the area, the experiences when locals go on location in other places, and the sudden awareness of the whole realm of film in a place where there was no television in the Sixties and the “show house” burned down in the Seventies, has thrown open local people’s lives to the world.  Horses were the unexpected key.  Now we need scripts with horses in them -- but there’s no need for stereotypical 19th century battles.  You don’t need feathers to be an Indian.  But you might need a horse.  A horse can teach you things.  Like tenacity.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/indian-relay-qa-filmmaker-charles-dye/

ALL THOSE WIND-INDIAN MOVIES

“Windwalker,”  “Windrunner,” “Windtalker” -- we seem to have an inborn idea that the wind and the indigenous population of these American continents are connected.  If you google “movies about native americans” you’ll get a banner across the top of your screen that notes a long sequence of various kinds of movies from cartoons to serious indie films by and about indigenous people:  http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/11/28/11-essential-native-american-films-you-can-watch-online-right-now-158052  They come and they go, stirring our hearts and our hair, leaving us with impressions that are unique or stereotypical or mixed.  Some capitalize on nakedness so there’s always a little thread of sex running through it.  Sometimes there’s the equivalent of dietary fat and sugar -- movie violence justified by revenge.  No one shuts that off.  Then there’s the red meat of combat when warriors get to be warriors again.

“Windstalker,” “Windmocker,” “Windwriter.”

In this windwelter of possibilities it would not be smart to show to kids a movie you hadn’t previewed, whether your own or someone else’s at school.  But here are two films, very different from each other, that are mostly valid and probably won’t make trouble.  

“Windwalker” (1980) is an earnest, idealistic, traditional story in which the only political complaint is that the main character, an old man tipping in and out of death, is played by a white man -- not just that but a well-known English actor, Trevor Howard.  Maybe he was thinking of Richard Harris in “A Man Called Horse.”  Harris was supposed to be a white man captured and assimilated by a tribe;  Howard was supposed to be a beloved tribal grandfather pre-contact.  Both Howard and Harris were highly honored actors, alcoholic, temperamental, and probably inclined to think of American tribal culture as more comfortable than their own constrictive English milieu.  “Windwalker” has all the elements of a primal, idyllic world that suffers and then recovers through heroic struggle with a Christian patriarchal god helping.   The scenery is glorious, though Hollywood can never resist displacing all tribes to SW red rock country. 

In Windwalker all the other actors, esp. the women and children, seem to be authentic enrolled people.  In fact, the comments on the sample on YouTube include a poignant memory from Marie Pratt:  “I'm so glad U posted this Movie. My dad was part of this Movie he played Crow-Hair. I was 7yrs old when this was made, we were on set the whole time.. My mom did all the translation for the Cheyennes.”  Around here, as  in much of the world, Hollywood is the Eden of the imagination and the ground of fulfillment.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afuTRJ89xTc

I think this is Ramus.

But the public is fickle and, anyway, Hollywood “Indians” are not much like the real people who have that legal claim.  The same people who embrace Sherman Alexie have never heard of the successful main figure in “Windwalker.”  Here’s his “wiki.”  “Nickolas G. Ramus (September 9, 1929 – May 30, 2007) was a Native American actor, best known for his appearances on television. He was a Blackfoot. He appeared as Chief Lost Eagle of the Arapaho in the miniseries "Centennial", Red Cloud in "Son of the Morning Star," the 1993 TNT film Geronimo.  He played Gus Nunouz in the soap opera "Falcon Crest" and Chief Black Kettle in "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." Other TV credits include: "Gunsmoke", "Little House on the Prairie", "Northern Exposure", "MacGyver" and "Walker, Texas Ranger".  He appeared briefly in the film "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" and in the comedy film "Love at Stake" as Chief Wannatoka. He died on May 30, 2007, age 77.    

If he was Blackfoot, he must have been Canadian or from the diaspora, which is pretty likely on the Pacific Coast because of WWII relocation.  (Means is from that group.)  In Canada there is much better support for First Nations theatre so many fine actors begin there.  This is the debut movie for Bart the Bear, a grizz tame enough to act.  He’s gone now but his descendants still appear in films.

Russell Means, in old age

“Windrunner” (1994) about a contemporary boy who plays football, is never mentioned in any of the relentless publicity for “Smoke Signals.”(1998) (It included a sensational attack on Nasdijj who had nothing to do with movies.)  In fact, “Smoke Signals,” a contemporary account of a stigmatized tribal boy, echoes “Windrunner” quite a lot.  This is the flip of “Windwalker” since the people are all evidently white except for the mystical alpha Indian Russell Means.  In real life no one ever takes on Means, the real life American Indian Movement activist since 1968, who began acting in 1992.  He was a violent man with little restraint.  He published his autobiography “Where White Men Fear to Tread “in 1995.  His wiki is at variance with any notions of him being a wise and peaceful old man, but he was prominent enough to get a movie funded and very willing to participate in a glamorous version of himself as the wise ghost of Jim Thorpe.  It’s almost a version of “The Indian in the Cupboard” except that Means was no toy and he had no use for cupboards.  

Margot Kidder

Margot Kidder, an activist and good friend of Means, plays the mother in the film.  She’s also one who has struggled with stability.  In Montana we know her as part of the community around Peter Fonda and Tom McGuane in Livingston.  Her wiki is rather sensational but she remains appealing.The same is true of Amanda Peterson, the vanilla heroine of “Windrunner.”  After much tumult, including religiousity, she died young of an overdose of a prescribed drug.  The plot of this movie includes two fathers in prison, which is what draws the hero and his girl together.  Jason Wiles seems to have done well in real life, turning his hand to production and other backstage roles.

These two movies, so very different, address the conflicted and confusing lives of people who truly suffer and deserve both understanding and reparation, though their experience has sometimes made them so difficult to deal with that their actual careers -- outside the edited and idealized plots of movies -- have been roller coaster rides.  Those who are outside the communities of reservations and Hollywood, apart from political movements that are sometimes violent, can get very much misled about realities.  These two movies will not disillusion anyone, but neither are they disturbingly extreme.

Dutch Lunak, at left, with Bud Connelly, JC Augare and Scotty Augare 

on location north of Santa Fe, working on "Appaloosa"

This reservation has supplied stunt riders, notably Dutch Lunak and his crew.  This story in a local paper is a good reality check.  

http://www.cutbankpioneerpress.com/glacier_reporter/news/article_5b039cad-f685-58dd-affc-f9c2d74f3461.html?mode=story   These are people I know: practical, hard-working, raising families.  They’re only famous among the people who count -- friends, employers, co-workers.  I’ve known them a long time.  Maybe one of Dutch’s daughters will write a book.  People who work with large animals like horses can’t fake what they do and must know their limits. 

During the AIM years one of my Blackfeet students did a summer internship in Minneapolis with the main office.  That fall I asked her what Means was really like.  “Oh, he’s just a big old street Indian,” she said.  But he still needs to be part of the story because it’s about EVERYBODY.  Not just Indians, not just idealized heroes.