http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_10269491

Arts and entertainment
Tribal elders guide director's vision

By Jordan Dresser
The Denver Post

Article Last Updated: 08/23/2008 04:25:53 AM MDT

Sitting outside a coffee shop in Boulder, American Indian film director Ava
Hamilton repeats the words a Northern Cheyenne elder once told her that she
will never forget.

"He said, 'Ava, can you bring us together because we need to sit and visit
because if we don't tell each other these stories and share these stories,
our people will be missing out on who we are,' " Hamilton said.

Hearing all these stories has given Hamilton an education you don't earn in
college.

"I really received a really beautiful, well-rounded education from talking
to so many elders of different tribes," the Southern Arapaho tribal member
said. "I have a really good education but no degree."

But holding and carrying such information comes with a price. Hamilton said
she is very careful about what she says and under what context. She doesn't
want these stories to end up in the wrong hands and wants to keep her
relationship with the elders strong.

When an elder requests that no camera be present, she puts hers away. When
she is told to leave, she leaves, and she gives every elder she speaks to a
copy of what they said.

She does this to make sure that they know what they said will be used
appropriately and not misused, like she has seen many non-tribal members
do.

One incident that sticks out in her mind was a website that played audio of
a song used by her people. It made her nervous knowing that somebody could
go on this website and take the song and use it for whatever they wanted.

"It's dangerous," Hamilton said. "It's public domain."

Every tribe having its own people direct quality documentaries about the
tribe's history is something Hamilton strongly supports.

"You want to make sure this information that is collected stays with the
tribe and is tribal property and not individual," Hamilton said.

Not being in the public spotlight and keeping a low profile is how she can
get access to elders others can't, Hamilton said. She lets the
documentaries she directs tell the stories themselves.

In 1992, Hamilton directed the documentary "Everything Has a Spirit," which
deals with issues such as access to and protection of sacred rites, First
Amendment protection and the use of peyote in the Native American Church.
The film premiered at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival and is her most
famous work. Her most recent work was the short documentary "Indians for
Indians: A Radio Program," in 2005.

As a young girl growing up on the Wind River Indian Reservation in central
Wyoming, Hamilton remembers watching films portraying Native Americans in a
negative light and thinking there was more to being Native American than
was being shown.

"I was just seeing films that were about Indians, and I thought I could do
better," Hamilton, 61, said. "Indians were always props."

After moving from Wyoming to Boulder in 1970 to attend college, she started
work for a local film company doing costumes, location scouting and
whatever else came up.

In 1981, she attended film school at the Anthropology Film Center in Santa
Fe. Hamilton remembers that as a difficult time.

"It was real hard for me," she said. "It was scary because I knew the cost
of film . . . that's when I learned time is money."

During that time, Hamilton said, there were very few female Indian
directors. One incident that made this obvious occurred while shooting a
documentary in Arizona.

A lesson in directing

For a part of the film, they needed to re-enact a scene in a hospital, and
all the Native American actors would not take any orders from her and would
only listen to the white cinematographer.

"The Indians wouldn't follow my direction, but they would listen to the
white guy," Hamilton said. She learned to speak up for herself and let
people know she was the one in charge.

At a recent Native American film festival in New Mexico, Hamilton said, she
saw more Native American women film directors than ever.

Michael Smith, president of the American Indian Film Festival in San
Francisco, said the number of Native American women directors has been on
the rise in recent years.

Of the 86 films entered in this year's festival, which started in 1975 and
is one of the oldest American Indian film festivals in the country, 12 have
been from Native American women directors, Smith said.

In Canada, he said, there have always been large numbers of Native American
women directors because of the support from the government that promotes
media arts among the tribal nations.

"We just don't have that over here," Smith, who is Sioux, said.

The history of Native American cinema goes back to the '70s with Native
American filmmakers producing documentaries, Bird Runningwater, associate
director of the Sundance Institute's Native American and Indigenous
Initiative, said. The program scouts for talent to participate in the
institute's core emphases, such as the Feature Film Program.

While today's young Native American filmmakers are still interested in
making documentaries, many of them make films that are very specific to a
certain audience, such as films made in their tribe's language, or they
tell stories that are non-Native, Runningwater, a Cheyenne and Mescalero
Apache, said.

This change from Hamilton's generation of filmmakers, where they are
interested in making only Native American-themed stories, is attributable
to the younger generation growing up in a different time and wanting to
tell stories about issues they can relate to, Runningwater said.

"It goes beyond the Native American label," she said.

Documentaries that tell the stories of their people are something Hamilton
fears will be replaced by this trend of young directors producing
non-Indian feature films.

For director Georgina Lightning, feature films are the only way for Native
Americans to reach a larger audience and showcase their talent in front of
and behind the camera.

"(With documentaries) your audience is so small," Lightning, 45, said.
"It's a very select group, especially for Native documentaries. If we're
ever going to make an impact we have to make feature films."

Lightning, who is Cree, knows all about the limited opportunities Indians
have in Hollywood. She moved from Canada to Los Angles in 1990 and started
out as an actress. Frustration with the limited roles for Native American
actresses led her to co-found Tribal Alliance Productions.

Her aim with the company is to showcase talent in front of and behind the
camera. She is making the film festival rounds with her directorial debut,
"Older than America," a film about the Indian Boarding School system,
starring Adam Beach.

Despite loving documentaries, Hamilton said she is ready to make her
fiction-film debut.

The story centers on young superheroes who, instead of having powers like
Superman, use their education as their power as they go about the world
cleaning up environmental problems.

Being impressed by young Native Americans today who not only are educated
but also keep a connection to their cultural ties is what helped inspire
the story.

"The power of young people is real clear to me, and they're going to make
sure we exist in the future as tribal peoples," Hamilton said. "I have a
lot of hope for future generations,"

In addition to the project, Hamilton is writing a novel about the Arapaho
set 2,000 years ago. Because the Arapaho have ties to Boulder, Hamilton
said, she believes this is her second home and feels a connection to the
land she can't explain.

"I love that," she said. "It's like I'm supposed to be here."

Hamilton sees the days when she doesn't do films anymore and works to help
find funding for other Native film directors and teaches filmmaking.

All the options American Indians have today and after years of surviving
near-genocide is why Hamilton considers today a golden age for Native
Americans.

"We're just a step over that line of surviving," she said. "To me it's the
best time to be Indian."

Jordan Dresser: 303-954-1503 or jdresser@...