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A lot of students in the U.S. just never learn that much about Native Americans in school. In recent years, some states have worked to include more Native perspectives and lessons. A new animated film is being offered as a resource for teachers, a way to talk about contemporary Natives with their students. NPR's Kadin Mills reports.
KADIN MILLS, BYLINE: The film starts out in an old-school pixel video game animation style. It follows Jake, an aloof boy whose family is dragging him to a powwow.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "POW!")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Hey, big Jakester (ph). The powwow is about to start. Why don't you put that game away and get ready for grand entry.
MILLS: His dad wants him to participate, but Jake really can't be bothered. In fact, he barely utters a word in the film. Instead, he mostly communicates through scoffs and grunts. The powwow feels more like his parents' thing, and he just wants to sit in the bleachers and play video games.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MILLS: That is until his battery dies, and he's stuck searching the powwow for an outlet. And along the way, Jake gains perspective about what it means to be a part of his community.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MILLS: "Pow!" is an animated short film being distributed to more than 20,000 teachers through Education Amplifier, a nonprofit that offers free teaching materials and lesson plans. The film's creator, Joey Clift, hopes students who watch it will be able to relate to the main character regardless of their background.
JOEY CLIFT: A lot of the work that I do is trying to create the sorts of Native representation that I wish existed when I was a kid.
MILLS: Clift is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, and he's a comedian and TV writer. He says, when he was in school, often the only time Native people were mentioned was around Thanksgiving.
CLIFT: Usually, the context was the teacher, you know, wheeling out this big old TV and playing, like, the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special or something.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A CHARLIE BROWN THANKSGIVING")
STEPHEN SHEA: (As Linus) Pilgrims held their first Thanksgiving feast. They invited the great Indian Chief Massasoit.
MILLS: With his new film, Clift hopes students can get a better sense of what Native American life looks like today.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "POW!")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) The sounds. The sights. And, of course, the fry bread.
MILLS: The team behind the film was mostly Native, including an all-Native voice cast, and they worked with consultants from various communities to get each detail right, like dance moves and regalia, to the point where animators were literally drawing over footage of real powwow dancers. Here's Clift.
CLIFT: I tried to make it feel as much as possible like this is an actual powwow that, you know, I attended as a kid.
MILLS: While the film mostly follows Jake, it also stars his grandma. She's a boarding school survivor who was taken from her family at a young age. Like Jake, she's checked out from the powwow.
CLIFT: As we progress in the film, we learn why it is that she doesn't feel comfortable participating in her culture.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHURCH BELLS RINGING)
MILLS: Her story is told through tearful flashbacks.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "POW!")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) I might not know our songs, our dances or any of that stuff, and that's OK.
MILLS: Grandma's flashbacks are animated to look like ledger art. The style emerged as the U.S. military forced Native Americans onto reservations and white settlers pushed westward. They brought paper with them, often in the form of ledger books, which Native people in the Great Plains started using as a canvas.
CLIFT: That was the only paper they had. So they were literally using art to heal their trauma.
MILLS: Clift says he hopes the animated ledger art will get students thinking.
CLIFT: Like, oh, why is this animated in this way? And I hope that kids watching this ask their teacher, what is a powwow?
MILLS: Cherokee film producer Jessica McEver advocates for better Native American representation in media.
JESSICA MCEVER: It was really refreshing to see not only the diversity of Indian country, but just to have a really human experience in a modern context.
MILLS: She didn't work on "Pow!", but she says she thinks it will be a useful tool in the classroom.
MCEVER: This film is well done and I think will plant some really expansive seeds in people's mind that might challenge the narrative of who is Native American and what Native Americans can look like and what our experiences are.
MILLS: At the end of "Pow!", Jake has a change in attitude. He never was able to charge his video game, but along the way, he learns instead what it means to be a part of his culture, with or without his console.
Kadin Mills, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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