above: Hangin,’ 2007, IAIA animators
with some of their characters: Stephanie Emerson (Dine), Tyrone Headman
(Dine/Ponca), Anthony Deiter (Plains Cree/Ojibway and Erick Nakai
(Dine).
It was halftime at a basketball game at Ryal Public School near
Henryetta, Oklahoma in the Muscogee Nation. The gymnasium was packed to
capacity: wall-to-wall Muscogee Indians. It was the perfect setting for
the world-premiere screening of Greedy, a stop-motion clay animation
film created by the school’s sixth- and seventh-grade students, which
tells the traditional story about a woman who continually refuses to
share bread with a traveler and, as a result, is turned into a
woodpecker. The film was projected on the gym’s center-court wall. The
combination of the children’s narration in their Muscogee language and
the playful movements of the colorful characters captivated the
audience. They were immediately hooked; their sons and daughters had
become animation artists and were telling their story.
Digital animation has arrived in Native American communities. More and
more Indigenous people are turning to digital animation to tell
contemporary and traditional tribal stories. Native animation artists
are bringing tribal stories back to the forefront of the contemporary
Indigenous imagination and providing a means for a generation of
Indigenous youth to relate their contemporary experiences through the
moral and cultural compass of tradition.
Indian Animation Capital
The Cherokee Nation capital of Tahlequah, Oklahoma might have more
animation filmmakers per capita than any other community in the United
States. And it’s a uniquely talented group of artists. The animation
films of Joseph Erb (Cherokee), Nathan Young (Pawnee/Delaware/Kiowa)
and Roy Boney, Jr. (Cherokee) have screened at film festivals
nationally and internationally and have received numerous awards. Erb
is the pioneer of the local animation scene, having trained and
mentored both Young and Boney.
Erb is a visual artist turned animator who discovered 3D animation
while working on his master of fine arts degree at the University of
Pennsylvania. “With animation I was able to create that tactile feel of
a place and time, and express that sense of color and movement that is
unique to Cherokee culture and so important for Cherokee stories,” Erb
says, reflecting on his experience. He quickly became fixated on the
medium’s potential for telling traditional Cherokee stories and
expressing the intricacies of the Cherokee worldview.
He wanted to share his knowledge and experience with other Native
artists and youth in and around his community. This eventually led him
to Wathene Young (Cherokee/Delaware), the founder and president of the
American Indian Resource Center (AIRC) in Tahlequah. Young worked with
Erb to develop a groundbreaking program which utilized animation
training and traditional storytelling as a means to combine language
and cultural education with art and technology education. Together,
they have introduced hundreds of Cherokee and Muscogee youth in
northeastern Oklahoma to the process of animation filmmaking, including
the students of Ryal Public School. Erb now heads up a similar program
on behalf of the Cherokee Nation.
above: Hero, by Joseph Erb with Roy Boney Jr. and Matt Mason, 2007.
Recently, Erb teamed up with Boney and Matt Mason (Cherokee), another
of his trainees, to create Hero, a 3D sci-fi animation series about a
Cherokee named Runner who is leading a group of Cherokees fighting to
retain their rights in the post–fossil fuel future, where the good guys
speak Cherokee and the bad guys speak English. The first installment is
visually rich, the narrative is insightful and well paced, and the
production quality is as good as anything on the Cartoon Network. Erb
is hoping that Hero will make it onto television screens locally and
nationally.
IAIA Program
If Anthony Deiter (Plains Cree/Ojibwe) has his way, the Institute of
American Indian Arts in Santa Fe will be the central hub for emerging
Indigenous animation artists. Deiter is the chair of visual
communications at IAIA. His experimental animation film
Younghawk
Seven, which utilizes a rich combination of digital photography and 2D
and 3D animation, was featured in the National Museum of the American
Indian’s exhibition Who Stole the Teepee and is exemplary of his
creative vision. Deiter encourages his students to approach animation
as fine artists and to focus on the art of digital animation, rather
than the technology. “You don’t need to be a computer scientist to be a
great 3D animator. You need to be a great artist. The software is
merely another artistic tool, like any other artistic medium,” he says.
There are 14 students at IAIA working toward earning their associate of
arts degree in 3D animation. “The students who are coming through IAIA
in the past two years are the strongest and most talented students I
have ever worked with,” Deiter says. When he talks about the program
and his students, it brings to mind the excitement and innovation IAIA
inspired in the 1960s. “It’s happening here in Santa Fe. These students
coming out of here are the first generation of the field to be trained
from an Indian perspective. There is an evolution going on here. This
is the beginning of something bigger than all of us. Everyone investing
in this knows it. The time is coming.”
Oneida Nation
The Oneida Nation has been investing in media for years and has
established Four Directions Media, which operates Four Directions
Productions (4DP). Through 4DP, the Oneida Nation has developed the
premier HD video and 3D animation studio on the East Coast, as well as
Web and interactive projects. Dale Rood, the director of studio
operations, assembled the best team of animation and digital-effects
artists he could get his hands on. The goal was twofold: to produce
work that captures the imagination and to develop a generation of
Oneida animators.
The Oneida Nation’s Youth Work/Learn Program and 4DP internship program
help younger Oneidas learn about animation. “We want our Oneida
children to know that there is a whole host of opportunities and
mediums that the Nation is involved in. We want to impart the message
that Oneidas can be anything. You don’t have to be an ironworker. You
can also be an animator,” Rood says.
Raccoon & Crawfish, 2007, by Four Directions Productions.
The first project for 4DP was the short 3D animation Raccoon and
Crawfish, a traditional Oneida story about the evils of boastfulness,
which had its world premiere on April 18 at the Syracuse International
Film and Video Festival. The animation and story are beautiful and
compelling, and the production quality is impressive. It clearly
demonstrates that 4DP is ready for the big time. They are currently
working on another project based on an Oneida tribal story, and many
more will follow.
Canada Ahead—as Usual
Unfortunately, in the United States there hasn’t been a lot of
opportunity for Indigenous-produced content. American media is
notorious for its lack of diversity. The U.S. doesn’t have anything
resembling Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN).
American media executives “are quick to draw a line in the sand that
Indigenous content is only for Indigenous people,” says Chris Keintz
(Cherokee), co-creator of Raven Tales, a 3D animation series produced
in Canada. As a result, the Native-media movement faces a significant
hurdle: It lacks entry into the biggest media market in the world. If
Indigenous-told stories are ever going to make it into popular culture,
they will have break into the American media system.
Raven Tails by Chris Kientz and Simon James
APTN might be a gateway. In Canada, APTN has played a significant role
in supporting animators and exposing them to a broader audience. When
Raven Tales aired on APTN, it went from having an audience of a few
thousand through the film festival circuit to having a potential
audience of more than 1 million. The series retells lighthearted
versions of Northwest Coast trickster stories through the characters of
Raven, Eagle and Frog. Simon James (Kwakwaka’wakw), one of the
co-creators, is committed to keeping Raven Tales grounded in tradition,
which for him means a lot of humor. “I grew up with potlatch ceremonies
and I remember nothing but humor,” he says.
James and Keintz also credit the National Geographic’s All Roads Film
Project for exposing Raven Tales to an international audience beyond
North America. “Raven Tales isn’t compartmentalized in Japan and
Europe, as it is here,” Keintz says. “Raven Tales, like all tribal
stories, is about universal truths, shared by all of humanity. Their
message is just as beneficial for non-Natives as it is for Natives,” he
adds. Both Keintz and James would like to see Raven Tales reach the
silver screen.
A Rising Star
Joseph Lazare (Mohawk) is hoping to join the ranks of APTN. He is the
up-and-coming rock star of the Native animation movement. At the age of
19, in 2004, his film Might of the Starchaser, produced by Laura
Milliken of Big Soul Productions, had its world premiere at the
Sundance Film Festival. In the film Lazare uses multiple animation
mediums—live action, stop-motion clay, computer-generated image (CGI)
special effects and 2D—to tell the story of young space officer trying
to save his planet from being destroyed by an evil baby lizard
attempting to repopulate his species. Lazare credits Bird Runningwater
(Mescalero Apache/Cheyenne), the Sundance Institute’s programmer for
Native American Initiatives, for bringing him into the festival and
introducing him to world of heavyweight filmmakers, producers and
industry players.
By The Rapids, by Joseph Lazare and Big Soul Productions.
Lazare and Big Soul Productions have teamed up again to create a
30-minute pilot for the comedy series
By the Rapids on APTN. The
Mohawk-language 2D animation series is based on his hometown of
Kahnawake (which means “by the rapids” in Mohawk). It’s an ensemble
comedy that reflects “the humor of day-to-day life in Kahnawake, the
people and all the strange things that happen in a small town. I want
to share the funnier moments with them and give people something to
laugh at. It’s a South Park type of comedy with social commentary,”
Lazare says.
Like other Indigenous animators driving the movement, Lazare loves his
art form. He states, “Animation is the one medium where you can truly
say the possibilities are endless. It’s the one medium where I can get
my ideas on paper that close to what I see in my head. It’s the only
time where I know that my idea will come across just as I imagined it.”
Fortunately we’ll continue to see Lazare and many other talented
Indigenous animators realize their vision through this dynamic medium.
The movement is just beginning, and there is a lot of optimism in its
wake.
“With animation we see the opportunity to enter the popular culture in
a big way. It’s a medium by which tradition can connect to the most
current moments,” says Elizabeth Weatherford, director of the National
Museum of the American Indian’s Native American Film + Video Festival.
Hopefully Indigenous animation will be the medium that brings tribal
stories into the imagination of popular culture.
Kade L. Twist (Cherokee) is a poet
and visual artist. His book Amazing Grace received the 2007 Native
Writers’ Circle of the Americas First Book Award for Poetry. Twist’s
multimedia installation The Way the Sun Rises Over Rivers Is No
Different Than the Way the Sun Sets Over Oceans will be included in
Remix: New Modernities in a Post-Indian World, co-presented by the
Heard Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian in the fall
of 2007.
