>From the outset, I've been quite critical of the Skinwalkers [PBS] film effort. Now that I've just finished seeing the Redford creation, I do know for sure that I was indeed on target. [My earlier post on the matter is contained on this page in our large Lair of Hunterbear website: http://www.hunterbear.org/navajo_witchcraft_and_the_skinwa.htm ]
Some acting was quite good. I always like Adam Beach who played one Navajo detective and did it well. Wes Studi did a solid job as his superior. There were certainly other examples of good acting -- and then there were some that were neither good -- nor believably Navajo. The very large Navajo [Dine'] Nation, with now about a quarter of a million members, occupies reservation land larger than the state of West Virginia. Navajo culture is quite intact and the tribe is making every effort to ensure that that continues in enduring fashion. Navajo traditional medicine -- good medicine -- is very real indeed. A Navajo medicine man often trains for as many as seventeen rigorous years. Very real as well, unfortunately, is Navajo witch-craft -- bad medicine -- and with it the Skinwalkers. These, an integral component of Witchery Way, are profoundly deviant Navajo who, depicted as animals, travel at night -- planting malignant spells and also robbing and plundering. Far less prevalent than the forces of good medicine, witchery and its works -- bad medicine -- is extremely dangerous. I repeat, this is all -- good medicine and bad -- very real indeed. It's not hocus pocus -- and it's not "psychological". It's all one of the many dimensions in the Creation that simply cannot be defined materialistically. Tony Hillerman's novels about the Navajo country and its people are usually well written but there are always very substantial accuracy gaps. Here, his novel Skinwalkers -- quite less than culturally accurate in its own right -- has been greatly changed by the film makers. And for the worse. The plot themes that emerge -- in many respects Anglo mystery in nature despite efforts to give them Navajo clothing -- come off as hokey and hybrid. The Skinwalker situation with its witchcraft nature and context -- even as attempted in this film where it's set forth simply as a cover/pretense used by a conventionally deranged killer in an effort to throw authorities off his lethal trail -- is an extremely complex and sensitive matter which is not openly discussed much in the Navajo setting and even more rarely with outsiders. Here, the whole Skinwalker situation comes off ambiguously, extremely confused. Finally, in many good films and, certainly, in any with a genuine Native theme, the central force is the Land itself -- the Earth. Skinwalkers, was made 'way down in the general Phoenix region -- Sahuaro cactus desert -- and very, very far south of the highly elevated and ruggedly beautiful Colorado Plateau region of Northeastern Arizona and Northwestern New Mexico which contains and always undergirds the vast Navajo Nation. This alone constitutes a signal travesty of the worst sort -- and obviously dooms the project from its very outset. Hunter Gray [Hunterbear] www.hunterbear.org Protected by NaŽshdoŽiŽbaŽiŽ and Ohkwari' _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
