Event 2

On Tuesday, October 30 I went to the showing of Smoke Signals in the Illinois room at 4:00 pm. This movie was about two Native American teenagers living on a Reserve in the United States. These two boys, who were not friends, go on a journey to Arizona to recover the dead body of one of the boys’ father. These two boys leave the Reserve into basically a different country where stereotypes about Native Americans rule what people think of them. They run into some very interesting characters including a substitute for the Olympics, two very prejudiced white police officers, a drunken abusive man and his wife and their friends, and a friend of the boy’s father. Many of these individuals hold their own views of what Native Americans are like, and treat the boys thusly. Slowly, as the boys make their journey, the stereotypes that many Americans have about Native Americans disappear. This movie ends with the boy recovering the ashes of his father, and coming to the terms with the fact that although his father left him and his mother, he did genuinely love them. The two boys split the man’s ashes and one dumps the ashes into the river, and the other gives the ashes to the mother. The boys form a very strong bond that cannot be broken, even if they don’t remain good friends.
After the movie, we talked as a group about the movie and the stereotypes that many Americans have about Native Americans. We all agreed that this movie had a great balance between viewing Native Americans as savages, and Romanticizing them, like some movies do (like Dances With Wolves). This movie educated all of us about the Native American culture and the stereotypes about them. I would recommend this movie to anyone who was interested in this topic.