Acceptable Assumptions

There's something that I tended to talk about often, an experience years ago when my Uncle brought me to a reservation, Navajo I believe. (We traveled to a few that trip, it could have been Apache, I forget)

He went inside to a store, and I went across the street to look at the jewelry a family was selling. I was young, maybe 9, 10 the most, and I started talking to them. Asking how they were, if they made the jewelry, that it was beautiful, and they asked where I was from, how I liked being in the middle of a dessert instead of NYC.

A van pulled up and tourists got out, (there is a BIG difference between tourists and travelers) and came over, a family- I'm not sure where they were from. They started talking to the family I was talking to, except like they were savages out of some old movie.

"HOW. ME DAN, YOU?" (Name changed to protect the idiot who's name I actually don't care to remember)

Now, these people had been speaking English just as well as any other American a moment before. I was expecting them to say "My name is so-and-so, why are you talking like an idiot?" (Ok, not the idiot part). Instead, I was shocked when the family played into it. "HOW"ing them back, making the extreme hand gestures made popular by those old movies. They went back and forth for a while, until the tourists bought some jewelry and drove away.

It hit me then that the family didn't really have much of a choice. If they had spoken normally, they would have embarrassed the tourists. They also knew that those tourists had no interest in buying jewelry from ordinary people in the middle of nowhere. They wanted to interact with the "Savages", and if they wanted to make any money for their family, they would need to give the tourists what they wanted.

When I went to Australia, I found the same to be true. The Aborigines from different tribes would perform their music half naked, and covered in the white paint all over their bodies. People wouldn't just buy music being performed by dark people in jeans and t shirts, they wanted that show.

They the tourists go back home, and they tell their friends those "savages" are really like that, backwards, probably running around in the middle of nowhere half naked hunting rabbits, not knowing most Aborigines live in apartment buildings and driving trucks, and most Native American Nations were given such horrid land they just don't have the resources, like running water and electricity in many cases to improve on them.

I'm dying to do a documentary, to go out with my video camera, to talk to indigenous people and, well, everyone else of different countries.

What do people think of the indigenous people of their country? Americans tend to look at the different Native American Nations as 1 group, instead of many, and tend to think "alcoholic, gambling, unemployed, lazy people". Australians look at the Aborigine tribes the same way. I want to travel the world to places where there are indigenous people- Here in the states, Australia, New Zealand (Who has a very unique relationship with the Maori), Japan- and more, to see what the "regular" people think of the indigenous population.

Then, I want to go and find out what the indigenous people think of the people who make up the majority of their country. See what assumptions different people of the different NA Nations think of us, see what various aborigine people from the different tribes think of Australians...

Interesting point. Many Americans have negative thoughts of Native Americans, meanwhile, they think the way Australians treated the Aborigines (If they know about it) was atrocious. Australia feels the same way about how we treated the Native Americans. I'm curious to see what people who dislike the indigenous people in their own country, think of indigenous people of other countries.

Want to talk to the heads of as many nations/tribes as possible to go into the challenges facing the people as a whole, in addition to giving the indigenous people the same word association "test".

At the end, I want to end on footage showing people of all nationalities giving non-racist, non-bigoted remarks to show not everyone jumps to those conclusions. Maybe start right before the credits, then play through as the credits roll.

Just a thought, just an idea... something I've been cooking around for a while now, even started up a production company for it (Uncarved Block Production, LLC- which is why this blog goes by that name, so every time I log in, I see it, and a part of me focuses on it, visualizes it... wants it even more.)

I will do this documentary one day. I swear I will.