Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma Tribal Elder Joyce Big Soldier Miller and the State Historical Society of Iowa's Cyndi Pederson at the world premiere of Lost Nation: The Ioway in Des Moines. Nearly 200 Ioway people gathered for the event.
[Film review courtesy of the Villisca Review]
A Nation Rediscovered
The Villisca Review - Stanton Viking
Thursday, February 26, 2009
By Judith Ann Moriarty
Kelly and Tammy Rundle mailed me the DVD of Lost Nation: The Ioway, which screened to acclaim throughout the Midwest. You readers know this documentary film duo from their splendid Villisca: Living with a Mystery and I was mighty privileged to sponsor a screening of it in Milwaukee.
The Rundles have moved from Los Angeles and are currently settled in Moline, Illinois, where they continue to develop their careers and add to the list of honors reaped from their efforts. It's good that they are back in the Midwest, primarily because that's where they were born and educated. The heart of their sensitivity seems to be rooted near rivers, plains and rolling terrain
Because their work is primarily funded by various humanities councils (including Humanities Iowa), there is always the danger that their films will be overly sentimentalized through the rosy lens of history, in this case, the Native American as heroic warrior washed in a river of tears. The flip side of that is the Native American as a screaming savage circa John Wayne films. These filmmakers have found the truth somewhere between those extremes.
Filmmakers Kelly & Tammy Rundle and John Palmquist (center).
It's a fine line to walk, for what's not to like about rolling landscapes, grazing buffalo, tall prairie grass, snaking rivers and snippets of observations from the learned mouths of archeologists and historians? Unreeling to the sounds of Amazing Grace interspersed with lusciously verdant flora and fauna, the opening scenes in Ioway veered mighty close to being a promo for the beautiful Midwest.
That said, the filmmakers walked the aforementioned line just fine, thank you, and I think it should be required viewing for all students of American History. Indeed, it does come with a study guide on the elaborate [DVD] menu. The quality of the film is good; the colors lavish but not overblown in a push to magnify effect where none is needed.
It's a straight forward telling of the Ioway, a tribe whose number is variously thought to have ranged from 1,000 to 2,000 souls. Agrarian lives morphed radically when they began to trade with Europeans (enter smallpox) and changed even more when they sold (often without the aid of interpreters) their territory to the U.S. government. The Feds got a real deal on the fertile land which stretched from far north to southern Missouri.
The most moving segments are interviews with those who remain Ioways forever even though their past has all but been erased. They hang on via Powwows, the preservation of their language and the re-invention of their [traditional] crafts. They hang on by visiting family burial grounds almost lost in soybean fields.
A grove of trees conceals an Ioway family cemetery.
Yes, there are tears here, but the Rundles don't let their camera look away. Some would say this is an "invasion of privacy," but documentaries record genuine moments and it is those moments that breathe life into the best of them.
It's to their credit that the film is empathetic but never smarmy. Stanton resident, John Palmquist, inspired the film, and in fact, he is an honorary member of the Iowa Tribes of Kansas and Nebraska and [The Iowa Tribe of] Oklahoma.
This particular DVD is available via http://www.iowaymovie.com/dvd.htm, and is also available at Amazon.com, Borders.com and BarnesAndNoble.com. The Ioway DVD will also be sold in Villisca by the Villisca Historical Society, Inc. (VHSI) at City Hall. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the VHSI. Shown at Villisca's sesquicentennial weekend in 2008, an earlier DVD, Villisca: Living with a Mystery, is available locally at Casey's and Stoner Drug [in Villisca, Iowa].
A note from the energetic Rundles indicates Ioway just screened three times at the February 6-7) Fairfield, Iowa Film Expo, and recently won Best Multicultural Documentary at the International Cherokee Film Festival. Six more showings are currently scheduled for 2009.
As if that wasn't work aplenty, the determined duo's documentary Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg, is due for release in late 2009, and Country School: One Room-One Nation, in 2010.
[Judith Moriarty is an artist and writer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.]
Recent Comments