AGAINST THE CURRENT | A Short Documentary About the Culture of Indigenous People | BYkids

uh [Music] if i asked you to tell me about yourself about who you are what would you tell me would you tell me the color of your hair your favorite song your hobbies who raised you what time you grew up in the schools you went to are your profession [Music] or would you tell me about the god you pray to the language your grandparents spoke the holidays you celebrate your country of origin the color of your skin would you tell me who you truly are let me tell you who we truly are my english name is done at monas rayom i am 17 years old and i live on the omaha indian reservation i wanted to make this film to show the beautiful side of us to show people that i'm extremely proud of where i come from what i come from i wanted to make this film because i wanted people to see and to hear and to know what we go through what it's caused by and how we overcome it [Music] we're going to hawate's gift shop to prepare for my feathering ceremony that takes place on thursday the first day of paul and basically a feathering ceremony is kind of like your rite of passage into the arena alton's the one that's making my centerpiece that's yeah that i'm getting actually yeah i know her mother went to school together so everybody knows each other there's always a connection when are you getting feathered on thursday thursday thursday at 1. i can't wait just talking about it it makes me really excited you know feathers people people just don't put them on they can't just wear them or you know just out of novelty or whatever they gotta they gotta earn the ride or they're given the authority to to wear an eagle feather to a veteran eagle feathers represent fallen soldiers you know so if you were to drop drop a feather you know a veteran is the one that has to come in and pick it up and if he wants to give it back to you he can or if he wants to keep it he can thanks for sharing that yep [Music] life in walt hill is slow we don't have all types of activities for the youth to participate in or we don't have a bunch of job opportunities that the adults can apply for if i'm being completely honest we struggle here it is a beautiful place when you're seeing the right parts but when you live here and this is your day-to-day life it drains you it really does i see not only my family members but people in this community people in our tribe not treating themselves as the powerful and strong people that we once were our people didn't drink every day our people didn't do drugs our people didn't they didn't live like that it hurts my parents didn't grow up being taught our ways of life but they've always supported my interest in it and it encouraged me to advocate for it in my modeling work two three she gets shaky google what's after six seven records that's how you get them go and see if they're up now she was always performing for us when she was little with her little microphone in her wig yeah she used to make her brothers and sisters sit there and watch what she would sing they were her audience so this is like her very first professional photo shoot this one is this is the may issue of teen vogue back in 2016. this is the first time my face ever went public like this and then my grandma and grandpa his mom and dad went and bought like 17 copies for this shoot actually we drove 16 hours and dropped off our boys slept for an hour and then drove into new york city that's just where i'm willing to what i'm willing to sacrifice to make sure that my kids are successful i mean when she did team vogue we were getting comments from like all the elders throughout the country we've been waiting for this whereas it's been it's beautiful i love this um there were even people that were like thanking teen vogue for finally finally putting an indigenous person in a major major magazine i went to speak to shelby who will give me my feather at the feathering ceremony and she is also making my dress for powwow you want the zipper in the front or the back that stars in the background oh yeah it'll be in the front never mind yeah see so this will be her the skirt this is the vision here if you wanna we're a great artist i tried i was in iraq in 2003 2004 during the invasion i was a truck driver in the army when i joined the army i was a single mom of those two children right there so i was diagnosed with ptsd in 2006 and i didn't know i had ptsd didn't realize that i was going through a lot of things that i didn't understand you know i didn't understand why i was so angry i didn't understand why why nobody understood me and i was angry and um you know i turned to you know alcohol it was bad and then eventually i realized you know i didn't want to be that kind of person i needed help and it was hard for me to ask for help do you want to talk about how you use making your regalia or you're doing your bead work or even just smudging like how it helps helps you heal from your ptsd i prayed and i smudged and i i tried to do our you know our cultural ways and you know i i would be and that would keep my mind busy i then i started i learned how to sew so then that would keep my mind busy and then um you know practicing you know our culture helped me being involved in the culture helped me it's hard a lot of my family would say oh you you look so happy you're so happy you're i never would have known you're going through that you know you wear this mask you know you wear this this facade because you don't want no one to know i don't want no one to know the things that i go through the deep dark things that i go through just being in this those situations where you just don't know if you're gonna live and you know you're like or you're gonna get blown up and i'm just a res girl i didn't ask for that but you know i guess that's what i signed up for so today you know i just i want to do good things i want to help when people ask me to do work and i do it for free because i'm like i'm good you know i have i don't have much but you know here you know it's got good feelings in it it's got love you know i love i love my community i love my my tribe i i love everything about our people and what we are thank you for those words though like not even for the camera like thank you for those words because just out of the good of your heart you wanted to help me and i'm just glad i met you because i don't they make me cry now i know i know how you feel i want my legacy to be shelby was a nice person and she can make omaha much so oh my gosh you there you go you don't move your arms you just do that three years ago i went to speak to students at a local high school and jobly's daughter sydney was there too i never see like native american like role models and stuff well my mom but like someone kind of near my age and it inspired me like to work harder in school and stuff and stay on track you inspire a lot of little girls and other kids like to be better and stuff i wanted to talk with some of my peers about what life was like for them on the reservation my friend jerae has a unique perspective because she is two-spirited which means she identifies as having both masculine and a feminine spirit how do you carry on some of our like traditions and stuff i pray i say to the whole house i just don't say to my one room for me it's more different since i can do either or so because you're two spirit you're able to perform both the man and the woman's voice if i wanted to touch the drum i could have people started treating you differently since you started identifying more as a female yeah a lot of people treated me differently some kindly a lot what hate and negativity but i had to grow thick skin long time ago um [Music] and i had to go through a lot of stuff on my own in the end people grew to be more accepting and open-minded to my choices and stuff so yeah you ready for pow-wow don't say it like that are you ready to dance i'm real ready to dance i haven't finished beating my um my contemporary marks for my jingle dress i have to finish beating those but my omaha mocks are done my relative marissa knows so much about our people and our history we talked about the forced eradication of our culture that happened when the u.s government put children into special boarding schools and how that has contributed to the historical trauma that's passed down in our families for generations what does it mean to you to be an omaha woman so for me being a maha maha it means that i have a beautiful relationship with food with seeds it means that i've delivered my sister's babies it means that i take care of other women it means that i have unconditional love for creation itself it also means being a warrior and being a warrior for our language for a culture to fight for for our people and we have to bring back that way of thinking less individualized i remember as a little girl i did something and i was like dad i did this i did you know i was really excited i i and my dad scolded me and he said no you you don't talk like that you always say we because um in some ways we're always doing things collectively your grandmother went to boarding schools how has that affected you personally like do you believe that historical trauma was passed down to you i think historical trauma does get passed down i also think resiliency gets passed down my grandmother all she knew was our language and her family and then all of a sudden she didn't have any of that as she was told how to pray how to think she had my father then she had two other children a girl and a boy and adopted them out to a white family and in her mind she thought she was doing something good she dealt with a lot my grandmother suffered from alcoholism there was definitely trauma then was passed down to my dad and he was never mean never cruel never abusive um but he had that inner pain that he couldn't get rid of he also um struggled with drinking but i had a really hard childhood too um and i had a lot of privilege too so it's it's a balance but there was a point where i was suicidal and so there was a lot of trauma historical trauma in my family line but what i do know is that i stopped with me how has our practices helped to heal when i go through really hard times i sit with my tobacco and pray and i feel and i sing songs and those songs connect me to creation and then help me heal help me um be able to keep moving forward with love and kindness because that's that's what's hard it's easy to be bitter and cruel to people if someone puts all their pain and hurt because they're hurting they're not well and they put that pain and hurt on me now i carry it and then i put it on you right it moves it has a life it moves among people and that's that's a sickness but if i take what you threw at me sit with it pray with it and let it go out of love then it's gone it doesn't keep moving anymore and that's a form of medicine i kind of woke up with a heavy heart today just because um like i wish all my relatives could be there to witness that for me especially my loved ones that's passed on but that's not that's not the way um creator made for things to go and that's fine because regardless of if i see them there or not i know that they're still gonna be there with me [Music] [Music] you ready to do your hair just before my feathering ceremony took place my grandpa sam marissa and i got into a conversation about a speech that i'd given at the united nations in 2017. would you talk a lot oh i think like i spoke about that 606 um like suicide in indian country and like the missing invited indigenous women alcohol why do you think that that's a struggle for us in indian country and for the youth i kind of feel like a lot of us just lost touch with you know our home base like who we were as the people lost touch with our ways of life it's all tied in because they dismantled our belief system and our way of life and those original teachings that we're talking about that have been lost they outlawed our ceremonies they outlawed this way of life the only time that we could practice our ceremonies was here and we had to do it in front of white people so the people tried to put all these ceremonies into this one time of year um and then mask it so that white people didn't know what they were doing you know all these things changed and and then it wasn't no gradual change like something was quick like that and we had to forget who we are small people and being able to find a little bit of piece of yourself is a huge accomplishment and you're doing it i'm proud of you for that just keep going you're going to stumble you're going to fall you're young it's going to happen and you're human you know if it wasn't if we didn't have these troubles in our lives that we wouldn't have you know ceremonies to help us feel we wouldn't need those ceremonies you know growing up on a rest you know i've seen those things and i'm a product of a lot of abuse you know and for me one of those things was being sexually abused as a kid and um being burned by my own father at eight months old you know you look at all those things i should be a a serial killer or something like that you know but for some reason creator you know said no i don't want you to be that way you know but i'm gonna give you some some things that you have to look at you have to go through to be who you are today but it's good what you're doing proud of you [Music] we did not film my feathering ceremony because of how sacred it is my granddaughter here has some gifts that she wants to give out i was so excited and overwhelmed and happy when shelby gave me my feather [Music] it was such a beautiful moment that i will never forget [Music] right now we're at powwow and we're about to have the first grand entry of the weekend that's where all the dancers are sold into the arena for the first time it's exciting for me because i finally get to dance with my father [Music] our powwow our annual hirawachi is our harvest celebration but a lot of us see it as a homecoming that's when everybody comes home to celebrate together you know seeing all of our our tiny babies dancing or seeing our golden age dances still dancing it's a beautiful sight the feeling that you get in your heart it's kind of indescribable so [Music] [Music] you spend a lot of time on the jump so explain what the drum is so the people who are watching know what it is to us the drum what it means is this like it's the heartbeat of our people in our nation and creator wakanda he gave it to us to use for him he made us his dancers and his singers then through that drum the drum beat we have our our melodies our footsteps our footwork our our rhythms like my spirit the shields are lifted once i hear the music and when i have everything on i feel like it's like a shield to me like nothing can harm me in any type of way then i'm not the best dancer but i try my best in my every time i get out there give it all my artist like it's my last time dancing [Music] on the last day of powwow we always have a feast we place our food on the ground to make a connection with mother earth and to thank her for what she's given us we begin serving people sitting to the east and then everyone eats together [Music] [Music] [Music] wakanda our creator he blessed me with the connection to our people to our ancestors to our homelands it was hard to find at first but when i found it it was a feeling that no photo shoot no runway no crowd could ever give me i won't be held back by what they call historic trauma it won't hold me back because i will have properly healed myself from it i'm trying like i'm trying to learn how to heal myself from not only things that i've been through but things that everybody in my family has been through you know i can only heal what's in my heart but i can also pray for everyone else's trauma everyone else's pain to be lifted from them to be a native american is to be challenged it is to be strong it is to be intelligent it is to be resilient being native american is not to be silenced but to be heard to be a native american is to be powerful to have a powerful voice for those who have lost their ability to speak we need more fearless people who are willing to make a change when you don't hold your words in when you speak your mind amazing things can happen [Music] with a gooseberry sibling they call me shooting star and i am a native american [Music] [Music] uh [Music] hey [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hey [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] yes [Music] hey [Applause] hey [Applause] bye you

Channel: BYkids

Views: 305,407

Keywords: BYkids, BYkids films, against the current, full documentary, full film, indigenous, indigenous culture, indigenous movie, indigenous movies, indigenous people, indigenous tribe, indigenous tribes, native american, native american movies, omaha tribe of nebraska, short documentary, short film, student documentary, student films, student stories, native american documentary

Id: BrIO1ZXmBK0

Length: 26min 44sec (1604 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 08 2022