Last week I started reminiscing about some American Indian music that I used to listen to and of course that led me to Youtube where I found some videos of those songs. This doesn't mean I'm talking about traditional native music with drumming and flutes and so forth. No I mean music like rock and reggae that is performed by native musicians. I must say however that I find music that combines modern with traditional sounds to be the best of both worlds.
Red Thunder (Robby Romero)- Heartbeat
Keith Secola - NDN Cars
added bonus, live version of NDN Cars
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Showing posts with label American Indian Movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Indian Movement. Show all posts
Monday, April 12, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
Thunderheart
This past Easter weekend I had a chance to watch several movies but unfortunately wasn't able to get onto the computer much at all. For the next few days I'll be trying to catch up on movie and book reviews. On Friday I went to see Hot Tub Time Machine and later that evening my wife wanted to watch a movie so I broke out the 1992 classic Thunderheart. She had never seen it before so I explained a bit of what it was about and let her have at it.
Basically, an FBI agent (played by Val Kilmer) who is half Sioux Indian is sent to a fictional reservation for public relations motives where a possibly political murder has taken place. The agent already in place believes he has the case all but solved and all that needs to be done is to find and arrest the murderer. During these events Kilmer's character starts to uncover all sorts of problems and misdeeds seemingly done by the pro-government council with the aid of the FBI. Along with a tribal policeman (played by Graham Greene) Kilmer tries to get to the source of the murders (there are more committed) and goes to a medicine man who foresaw him coming. Kilmer starts to understand the bigger picture and get in touch with his roots and bring down the house of cards built by the FBI and the tribal council. Other notable actors in the cast are Sheila Tousey, Fred Ward, Fred Dalton Thompson, Sam Shepard, Fred Ward and John Trudell.
The movie is loosely based upon events that happened in the 70s on American Indian Reservations between pro-government "progressive" and "traditional" Indians. The traditionals were aided by the militant American Indian Movement (AIM). There were many murders committed without ever being investigated properly or not at all by the FBI. That is until 2 FBI agents were killed in a gunfight on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I had no knowledge of these events and had indeed never read about them in any history book or learned of them in a history class. Something about this preview made me want to go see the movie and I did so on it's opening weekend. After the movie was over (which I enjoyed immensely I might add) someone yelled out "Free Leonard Peltier!" as the credits started to roll. At first I was annoyed by someone disturbing my movie experience. Then I went back to the barracks (I was in the Army stationed in Washington D.C.) and over the weekend I saw something about Leonard Peltier and AIM on PBS.
From there I started learning what I could of the events on the Pine Ridge Reservation and what I believe was the false imprisonment of Peltier. He is still in prison to this day even though the government never proved his guilt as they said they would. The government needed to have someone pay for the deaths of the agents and since two others had been acquitted of the crimes they stacked the deck against Peltier in order to get him convicted.
Perhaps one day soon I'll go into more detail on what happened in this very flawed case. For now though, I have to get ready for work so all I can advise is to watch Thunderheart and to keep an open mind. That and learn more about Leonard Peltier and make up your own mind, just be careful where you go to learn about him.
Basically, an FBI agent (played by Val Kilmer) who is half Sioux Indian is sent to a fictional reservation for public relations motives where a possibly political murder has taken place. The agent already in place believes he has the case all but solved and all that needs to be done is to find and arrest the murderer. During these events Kilmer's character starts to uncover all sorts of problems and misdeeds seemingly done by the pro-government council with the aid of the FBI. Along with a tribal policeman (played by Graham Greene) Kilmer tries to get to the source of the murders (there are more committed) and goes to a medicine man who foresaw him coming. Kilmer starts to understand the bigger picture and get in touch with his roots and bring down the house of cards built by the FBI and the tribal council. Other notable actors in the cast are Sheila Tousey, Fred Ward, Fred Dalton Thompson, Sam Shepard, Fred Ward and John Trudell.
The movie is loosely based upon events that happened in the 70s on American Indian Reservations between pro-government "progressive" and "traditional" Indians. The traditionals were aided by the militant American Indian Movement (AIM). There were many murders committed without ever being investigated properly or not at all by the FBI. That is until 2 FBI agents were killed in a gunfight on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I had no knowledge of these events and had indeed never read about them in any history book or learned of them in a history class. Something about this preview made me want to go see the movie and I did so on it's opening weekend. After the movie was over (which I enjoyed immensely I might add) someone yelled out "Free Leonard Peltier!" as the credits started to roll. At first I was annoyed by someone disturbing my movie experience. Then I went back to the barracks (I was in the Army stationed in Washington D.C.) and over the weekend I saw something about Leonard Peltier and AIM on PBS.
From there I started learning what I could of the events on the Pine Ridge Reservation and what I believe was the false imprisonment of Peltier. He is still in prison to this day even though the government never proved his guilt as they said they would. The government needed to have someone pay for the deaths of the agents and since two others had been acquitted of the crimes they stacked the deck against Peltier in order to get him convicted.
Perhaps one day soon I'll go into more detail on what happened in this very flawed case. For now though, I have to get ready for work so all I can advise is to watch Thunderheart and to keep an open mind. That and learn more about Leonard Peltier and make up your own mind, just be careful where you go to learn about him.
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