November 2006 - Film Series

The famous Navajo Code Talkers, memorialized by Hollywood in the feature film "Windtalkers," were an integral part of the armed forces during World War II. Navajo veterans who fought in the Pacific in World War II, used their unwritten Native American tongue as an unbreakable
code language, essential in the American military intelligence machine. Richard West, President, Museum of the American Indian, says, "Ironically, the U.S. military used the Native American language as a potent instrument of war although the government had prohibited [native] people from speaking their own language for almost a century."

Successive generations of young Navajo men who fought in the elite division of the U.S. Marine Corps, relate their stories in this film. Vincent and his brother enlisted in the 1970's; his brother died in Vietnam. Benjamin, Calbert and Michael are currently training as Marines in San Diego. The film reveals how their strong Navajo cultural identity and spiritual references correlated with traditional Marine Corps values and a passionate patriotism.

The 40,000 Sioux Lakota Native Americans living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota are the poorest inhabitants in America. In this film, they describe the abysmal conditions there, with neither a bank, a store, an industry or technology of any kind. Unemployment has
reached 95%, life expectancy is about 50 years of age and social problems are rife. They are shockingly isolated from the rest of the U.S. More than 90% of the land In Pine Ridge is rented and farmed by non-Indians who do not even live on the reservation.

The closest city offering employment is Rapid City, South Dakota, the economic and financial hub of Western Dakota. It attracts Pine Ridge inhabitants but discrimination, lack of skills and low salaries keep most of them in a state of financial instability. On top of that, they have to endure the humiliation of tourists visiting the site of their historic defeat in the Black Hills.