Tantoo Cardinal receives Agua Caliente Film Award during night of profound films

Tantoo Cardinal after receiving her award tonight.
Photo Brenda Norrell

Tantoo Cardinal receives standing ovation, during night of profound films of natural world

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News Exclusive

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. -- Indigenous actress Tantoo Cardinal was awarded the 2014 Richard M. Milanovich Award tonight for distinguished contributions to Indigenous Film.

The late Chairman Milanovich, well-loved in Indian country, was a lover of this festival, the Native American Film Festival of the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum.

Milanovich's son Reid Milanovich presented the award to Tantoo Cardinal, honoring her for her personal determination to become an actress in response to the exploitation of Native people.

Reid said that his father was a big fan of Tantoo's work, including Dances with Wolves and Black Robe. Reid remembered watching those films with his family. Reid said his father would be honored with the selection of Tantoo because of her activism.

Reid said, "We're not savages, we're good people and you wanted to show that." Remembering his father, Reid said, "He was a big advocate of that to correct the portrayal of our people." Reid said Tantoo and his father both wanted to set the record straight about Native people.

Receiving the award, Tantoo said, "I'm so honored, so honored, to be standing here. I come from good people. And that's what I was filled with." She said she had been disappointed to see how Native people were portrayed in films.

"We're just fabulous and I think everyone should just give themselves an applause," and everyone did.

Tantoo thanked all the film fans, those who support the work, and "all the storytellers before us and all the storytellers coming up."

Tantoo received a standing ovation from the crowd in the packed theater.

DNA carries memory. Films, too, carry memory

Following the award ceremony, the spectacular beauty of Quebec on the big screen brought life to the Cahuilla Desert. Maina, a new Native film in traditional languages, is such an extraordinary film, so complex and so amazing, that it is difficult to describe.

Roseanne Supernault delivers an award-winning and stunning performance as an Innu hunter and chief's daughter who is becoming a woman. The actors portraying the Innu and Men from the Land of the Ice all deliver spell-binding performances, including Tantoo Cardinal as the medicine woman.

"I believe in the power of prayer, and healing and spirit," Tantoo said when asked how she prepared for the role. "It has been a part of my world." She also pointed out that the Earth along with its medicines are being destroyed by development such as the Alberta tarsands, and the current trade agreement TPP is seeking to patent traditional medicines.

Tantoo said whatever we need in order to heal is on this earth, and there are people who know how to use it. She pointed out that there is a cure for AIDS in lichen, which is being destroyed by development.

The story of Maina takes place in the Great North in an earlier time, but the issues are timeless. The spoken traditional languages in the film puts it in a category all its own, and the throat singing of the far north is extraordinary.

Maina, with Maina on far left

"I love working in languages," Tantoo said. "It was just delicious."

She said the language she speaks in the film is a dialect of her own Cree. "It just feeds my soul."

"It breaks my heart to see the languages disappearing."

Tantoo received Best Supporting Actress for her role in Maina at the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco.

As for the lead Native youth Maina being a hunter, Tantoo said among her people both men and women are hunters who go into the bush. Praising Roseanne, who is from her own region, Tantoo said, "It is good to see someone running through the bush who knows how to run through the bush." She didn't even get her hair tangled in the tree limbs.

The young boy in the film also delivers a stunning performance. "He's such a bright light," Tantoo said, adding that he plays piano. "He can play beautifully." The heavy hitters in the cast include Graham Greene and Eric Schweig.

The film surrounds viewers with the beauty of the north woods and northern Arctic. Speaking of Quebec, Tantoo said, "It is just magical country. It is just beautiful."

Tucson filmmaker Thomas Wiewandt
Desert Dreams: Celebrating Five
Seasons of the Sonoran Desert

In the Wild, oneness with the world of Creation

Before the screening of Maina tonight, which has not been released yet, there were three shorter films shown. It was an incredible tapestry of films, drawing the audience into the natural world, from the Mojave Desert, to the Blackfeet and Crow mountains of Montana, to the ever-evolving life of the Sonoran Desert.

The short films were Mountain Memories: Spirit Mountain Wilderness, focused on the Creation Story of the Mojave; Before There were Parks: Yellowstone and Glacier Through Native Eyes shares the stories of many Native American elders.
                               
Desert Dreams: Celebrating Five Seasons of the Sonoran Desert is a phenomena in itself, with time-lapse photography revealing the exploding red fruits of the cactus, which is breathtaking, and the creatures which make this desert their home, from the turtle and bat, to the deer, javalenas and spiders. Clouds and rain are another incredible explosion in this tapestry whose only sounds are the awakening sounds of the natural world.

Tucson filmmaker Thomas Wiewandt
Desert Dreams: Celebrating Five
Seasons of the Sonoran Desert

During questions at tonight's film festival, Tantoo was asked what is her favorite work that she has done. She said that this is a little like asking which of your children is your favorite. There's something good in each of them. But, she said, if she had to choose one tonight it would be Where the Rivers Run North, filmed in Vermont. She said she not only likes the story, and strong acting, but the way the film was made. For instance, shares were sold in the film and two guys at the local gas station each bought part of a share together. Michael J. Fox also chose to be in the film.

The film included vintage cars, so locals with vintage cars came by. "They got a free lunch" for the use of their cars in the film.

Tantoo said she is looking forward to working in theater in Victoria. "It's Rez Sisters, seven women from the rez and the trickster."

"I'm looking forward to a fun play."

Tanto receiving Best Supporting Actress Award
for Maina at American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco

Tantoo was recently a judge in the Rights of Mother Earth Tribunal in Ecuador which heard expert testimony on the ravaging of pristine lands and waters, from Australia's Barrier Reef to the Amazon, and destructive mining and fracking in the US. The Rights of Mother Earth movement began in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2010. Ecuador and Bolivia followed by enacting the Rights of Nature into their country's laws. Tantoo continues to be a voice against the Keystone XL tarsands pipeline, and the tarsands mining that is destroying
her Cree homeland in Alberta, Canada.

The films at the Agua Caliente Film Fest continue on Sunday, March 9, 2014, with seven short Indigenous films. The feature film is Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, in Dine' (Navajo.)  


Also see: 'Rage in the Desert: Tantoo Cardinal on Finding Voice'
by Brenda Norrell, Censored News, at the Agua Caliente Film Fest
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/03/rage-in-desert-tantoo-cardinal-on.html

Copyright Brenda Norrell 2014
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Rage in the Desert: Tantoo Cardinal on Finding Voice

Tantoo Cardinal courtesy photo

Live from the Agua Caliente Native American Film Fest

First Nations Voices in the Cahuilla Desert Tonight

For the 50,000 children who never came home

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News Exclusive
March 6, 2014

Tantoo Cardinal in Palm Springs
Photo Brenda Norrell

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. -- "Rage" is not a word that most filmmakers and film festivals are comfortable with. Tantoo Cardinal was not afraid to use the word "rage" tonight. The Agua Caliente Native American Film Festival was not afraid to present a feature film tonight that centered on rage.

Rage is what Tantoo Cardinal felt as a young person in high school. Everywhere she looked, she saw Native people being abused and exploited. That rage fueled her drive, fueled her to find an outlet for that rage. In that quest, she found her voice in acting.

Rage is the message that flows through Moose River Crossing, the feature film tonight at the Agua Caliente Native American Film Festival. It is the rage of young girls and boys in Indian residential schools being raped by principals and priests. It is the rage against the tiny crosses that mark the graves of the 50,000 Indian children in Canada who never came home from residential boarding schools. It is the rage against the flashbacks of the abuse that take hold of peoples lives and come back like rivers, like floods. It is the rage of scars from leather straps on the back, the rage of looking and seeing those now drowning in addictions, alcohol addiction and sex addiction.

When the drama of First Nations voices and films came to the Cahuilla Desert tonight, there were no fairy tale endings in the cinema tonight.

In Moose River Crossing, by Cree filmmaker Shirley Cheechoo, there is a clarifying voice at the conclusion: The victims of residential school abuse must come together, tell their stories, and share their stories.

There is also this pointed conclusion: Speak the truth, speak one's own truth from Spirit, and this is where the power comes.

Tonight, the voices of the far north came to one of the hottest places in North America, the southern California desert.

Tonight's short films at the Agua Caliente Native American Film Festival featured some of the first films for First Nations that turned the industry around, Tantoo Cardinal told a large crowd tonight that appreciated both the humor and sorrow woven into those early films.

Three short films featured festival honoree Tantoo Cardinal, Indigenous actress from northern Alberta, Canada, who spoke of her early days, of both searching and acting. All three films are compelling, weaving complicated issues, and revealing the wide range of Tantoo Cardinal's acting and her own strength.

Blood River

When Tantoo Cardinal was asked what called out to her from those early films, she said it was the filmmakers themselves. Tantoo said Shelley Niro is an amazing artist, and Kent Monkman, Cree, has an incredible sense of humor. Shelley Niro directed Honey Moccasin and Kent Monkman directed Blood River.

In Blood River, Tantoo portrays a white adoptive mother, sporting a blonde wig.

"I think it is hilarious that I'm playing a white woman. It was a laugh," said Tantoo, pointing out that this was a turning of the tables on the whites who were always playing Indians in films.

Blood River, with its humor, also conveys the struggle of an adopted Native child searching for her mother, and the trauma for Indian children growing up in foster homes.

Memory directed by Cedar Sherbet, Kumeyaay, shown tonight, reveals an elderly alcoholic aunt, portrayed by Tantoo, returning for the memorial of a child who has drowned.

The issues of survival -- and the complex issues of family, forgiveness and rebuilding lives -- in the films are set against one underlying reality that Tantoo Cardinal described tonight.

Tantoo said that through their ancestry, Native people knew the truth. "We have known it was about the land."

Whether it is in the United States or Canada, the situation is the same. "It is the same animal," Cardinal said.

"Every government has tried to get rid of treaties, remove us, thin us out."

Now, people are coming together in the fight to protect the water, she said.

"Water is fundamental. If we don't have water, we don't have life," said Tantoo describing the threat of fracking to the water.

As for the rage that fueled her, she said being raised by elderly led her to avoid violence of any kind in the protest movements of the '70s.

As for the exploitation and abuse of Native people all around her, she said she barely made it out of high school, she felt so much rage and was so passionate.

"I heard a voice that each of us has been given a gift." It was then that she began her search, persevering in her quest to discover her own gift. In 1977, she turned down the first role offered because of the dialogue. When they agreed to change it, it was no better. Eventually, they removed all the dialogue.

"I was so happy," she said.

In the films that followed through the years, she portrayed a wide range of characters, including the owner of the Inukshuk Cafe in the off-beat and unpredictable Honey Moccasin, directed by Shelley Niro, and shown tonight.

"The reason I got into acting was to develop a voice."

The voice is not just her own, but an ever-evolving voice for Native people. It is this voice that sounded through the Cahuilla Desert tonight.

The Festival

The Agua Caliente Native American Film Festival is presenting important new Native feature films this week, including Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope, Dine' language with English subtitles, and Maina starring Tantoo Cardinal joined by an incredible cast of Native artists. A lecture by Chiricahua Apache Nancy Marie Mithlo, PhD, opened the festival on Tuesday night. Mithlo's talk was "Can You Hear Me? Silence as an Indigenous Representational Strategy in Film."

Richard M. Milanovich, the late chairman of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, was a lover of film and each year attended the Native Film Fest. The Richard M. Milanovich Award for Distinguished Contributions to Indigenous Film establishes in his honor those who have distinguished themselves in Indigenous film.

The 2014 Award will be presented to Tantoo Cardinal on Saturday evening, March 8, during the 8 pm screening.

Indigenous films continue on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Camelot Theaters, beginning at 5 pm each day.

Film schedule: http://www.accmuseum.org/2014-Native-FilmFest

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