The scene is of a native man being chased by a bunch of other native people. It comes from Mel Gibson's new film, Apocalypto -- or it could be me being chased by a bunch of other aboriginal people, after I admit that I've gone to see it. This movie supposedly detailing the downfall of the Mayan empire has generated perhaps the greatest buzz in Indian country since the cancellation of the Kelowna Accord. All this fuss over just an okay movie.
Granted, the photography and production values are phenomenal. Other than that, it's an old-fashioned film, a car-chase flick with no cars. "I've never done a chase movie before," Mel Gibson reportedly commented. He just decided to start the chase 500-plus years ago.
In the film, the Mayans are amazingly brutal. Picture Nazis with big brown noses. It seems they are so busy ripping the hearts out of sacrificial victims and tossing their headless corpses down the steps of a pyramid that it's hard to believe they found the time to discover the concept of zero, centuries before Europeans did.
Understandably, many native people feel that the movie is an insult to indigenous people across the Americas. In fact, on the Internet, Minneapolis-based Navajo playwright Rhiana Yazzie is urging natives and non-natives alike to boycott the film.
"Its appalling representation of indigenous people presents a chance to think about just how deeply ingrained the hegemony of colonial thought is among the mainstream, and even in us as native people," she said, referring to the choice of the Chickasaw Nation River Wind Casino in Oklahoma to have an official opening of the movie on their reservation.
She went on: "It's no longer acceptable to usurp voices from native people and reinforce the image that indigenous people are not human. This film is an assault not only on my culture but also on my life as an indigenous writer."
Apocalypto is the newest battle in the cultural-appropriation wars.
As an indigenous writer myself, I empathize. I don't think there's going to be any lovable stuffed Mayan dolls being sold for the Christmas rush this year.
However, I felt it necessary to see the film. I was intrigued by how Mr. Gibson would tackle such politically volatile subject matter -- and seriously, how can you criticize anything with a sense of confidence without having seen it?
I remember the controversy in the 1980s when The Last Temptation of Christ was released and many Catholics and fundamentalist Christians urged a public boycott of the film, having never watched it.
I saw the movie on the night it opened in Banff. I was working on a project with Santee Smith, artistic director of Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, located at the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario. She is putting together a dance-theatre interpretation of the Iroquois creation story, with yours truly writing the narration. So we (she, the dancers, a designer and myself) were in the mood to see something indigenous-themed that night. Seven of us -- six native, one not -- trudged down the hill from the Banff Centre for the Arts to the movie theatre.
After all the soft drinks and popcorn, the consensus was that we knew about four of the actors in the film (standard post-film discussion for native people who work in the arts). And that, over all, it was pretty bloody and gory. Kinda fun too, in its own way. And quite silly.
There was the one skinny Indian, with an arrow wound running completely through his body, outrunning, outfighting and outsmarting eight burly, muscular well-armed Mayan warriors. Not to mention the final image of Spanish conquistadors landing on the beach at the height of the Mayan civilization. Historically that was a bit wonky -- wonky being an ancient Mayan word meaning wrong. There's about a half-century between the two events.
And don't get me started on the little seven-year-old girl who is dying of what appears to be smallpox (before it was ever transmitted to this continent), suddenly becomes incredibly well spoken, intelligent, and clairvoyant -- a little-known side effect of the disease -- and predicts everybody's death.
Still, I found it telling that it was the lone Caucasian woman with us who uttered the phrase, "If I was Mayan, I'd be very upset." The rest of us were laughing too much.
"Mel depicted the Mayans as psychos," Santee Smith observed. "He's trying to make a comment about contemporary society, but I think the movie was more a reflection of him than of any indigenous people or nation I know." (Mr. Gibson's views on cultures and beliefs other than his own have of course come under more than a little suspicion lately.)
Just last week, I returned from a writer-in-residency at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where I was co-teaching a course called Introduction to Canadian Native Theatre. We discussed arranging a class trip to see the movie, but one young woman, who was very politically active, expressed reluctance. "It would be like going to see The Tempest," she said.
She was referring to the production by England's Royal Shakespeare Company, which had just ended a two-month residency at the university. The Tempest, starring Patrick Stewart, was one of three plays they were performing, but this young lady wasn't interested in seeing Captain Picard as Prospero.
She believed that the play was a prime example of colonialism, Eurocentrism and several other "isms" thrown in for good measure. Specifically, Prospero's control over the island's original inhabitants ("spirits" and "monsters") made her uncomfortable as a native person.
I would have loved to see it, for two reasons: Captain Picard (I am currently in treatment for Trekism), and the fact that this particular production was set in Siberia, with towering spires of ice and snow. In it, Arial and Caliban are representatives of the Yupik Nation, an indigenous tribe that inhabits the far north of Siberia -- a unique interpretation if nothing else.
Alas, tickets were sold out months before I got to Ann Arbor. But one of the best Tempests I ever saw was staged in Toronto years ago, where it was set on the Haida Gwaii islands, with huge rotting totem poles scattered on the set and Caliban running around with a tattered cape covered in West Coast designs.
The beauty of the writing -- Shakespeare's, not Mr. Gibson's -- is unarguable. Still, there is the discomfort factor. Most native people know what I'm talking about.
As a writer, I hate being told or being in a position to tell people what they should write or see. As a native person, I would prefer to ensure that non-native people get a fairly accurate representation of who we are, past, present and future.
Over the years, the dominant society has viewed us with too many misconstrued ideas, making us eager to police inaccurate or unflattering portrayals in the media. The proverbial two masters to serve -- artistic freedom versus political correctness. To some it's cut and dried. To others like myself, the edges are a little blurry.
Do I feel oppressed when watching The Tempest? Not really.
Do I feel oppressed by Apocalypto? It was so over the top that I relegated it to the same category as Animal House as an accurate representation of my time at the University of Michigan.
Most experts don't argue the fact that there was some bloodletting and beheading in the Mayan empire.
But the image in the movie is of its being a pervasive, integral part of a typical indigenous day: Thursday, 10 a.m., take kids to medicine man; 11 a.m., cut beating hearts out of 30 captives, barbecue them; 12 p.m., lunch; 1 p.m., turquoise-coloured arts and crafts; 2 p.m., ritual beheadings; 3 p.m., drop off feathered headdress at dry cleaners.
Truth be told, some day, I would love the chance to adapt The Tempest from an aboriginal perspective. Picture Ariel as a vegetarian women's-bookstore owner and Caliban as a disgraced Bay Street broker. Would you feel threatened?
I also take great comfort in the irony that Pocahontas, when she was living in England as Lady Rebecca, saw the original production of The Tempest in 1611. Of all the plays for her to see -- "O brave new world: That has such people in't!"
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any records of her reaction. But I doubt she found it offensive.
As for Apocalypto, I don't think it really matters. In six years, it will all be moot. According to the Mayan calendar, the world is supposed to end in 2012.
Drew Hayden Taylor is a playwright, humourist and filmmaker from Curve Lake First Nation, near Peterborough, Ont.