| Skins |
 |
| Directed by |
Chris Eyre |
| Produced by |
Brenda J. Chambers
Chris Cooney
Jeff Cooney
Chris Eyre
Jon Kilik
Jennifer D. Lyne
Eugene Mazzola
David Pomier
Larry T. Pourier |
| Written by |
Adrian C. Louis
Jennifer D. Lyne |
| Starring |
Eric Schweig
Graham Greene
Gary Farmer
Noah Watts
Lois Red Elk
Michelle Thrush |
| Music by |
BC Smith |
| Cinematography |
Stephen Kazmierski |
| Editing by |
Paul Trejo |
| Release date(s) |
2002 |
| Running time |
87 minutes |
Skins is a 2002 feature film by Chris Eyre and based upon the novel of the same name by Adrian C. Louis. The film is set on the fictional Beaver Creek Indian Reservation in South Dakota near the Nebraska border, a place very much like the actual Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the setting in the book and the place where the film was actually shot. Lakota Sioux tribal police officer Rudy Yellow Lodge (Eric Schweig) struggles to rescue his older, alcoholic brother, Mogie (Graham Greene), a former football star who was wounded in combat three times in Vietnam. Winona LaDuke makes a cameo appearance as Rose Two Buffalo.
Plot summary
Rudy and Mogie Yellow Lodge are Lakota Sioux brothers on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Mogie is a severe alcoholic with no job and a high school age son and Rudy is a police officer trying to take care of his brother, nephew and the rest of the town through the hands of law. Rudy tries to help his brother by bringing him food and money and taking him to a picnic, but Mogie is resistant to Rudy's attempts, choosing to drink and make jokes about the depressed state of their people and town. Iktomi the trickster spider appears to Rudy early in the film and Rudy's attempts to help begin to wander outside the lines of the law.
When Rudy is sent on a police call to an abandoned house, he finds the bloodied, dead body of a young man who has been kicked to death. He sees a person in the darkness, but they run away before he can identify them. Chasing after the criminal, Rudy trips and falls head first onto a rock, knocking him more into the confusion that the trickster spider has started in him.
Rudy's friend tells him that rocks are very spiritual and Rudy begins to think that something has gotten into him when he becomes a vigilante. He sees a teenage boy wearing the same shoes as the figure who ran away from the scene of the murder, and secretly follows the boy and his friend. He hears them talking about whether to dispose of a pair of boots that connects them to the murder. Disguising himself with black paint on his face, Rudy sneaks up on the boys with a baseball bat and viciously beats their kneecaps, announcing himself as the ghost of the boy they murdered.
Next, a camera crew visits the town to report on the millions of dollars that a liquor store in a bordering town is sucking out of miserable alcoholic Indians on the reservation. The subject of the news report angers Rudy into going to the liquor store in the middle of the night, again with a painted face, and setting the building on fire. He doesn’t realize that his brother is sleeping on the roof of the building. Mogie escapes and survives, but is burned and severely scarred, and spends some time in the hospital.
Mogie’s near-death accident awakens his family to hospital tests that indicate deteriorating health, including a terminal liver condition. Mogie, his son Herbie, Rudy, and Aunt Helen have dinner when Mogie gets out of the hospital, and Mogie brings up American Horse, an Oglala Indian who testified against the 7th Cavalry. This brings up the story of the Wounded Knee Massacre, which Rudy tells to Herbie.
Wracked with guilt, Rudy tells Mogie that he started the fire, and Mogie replies that the one thing he can do to make up for it is blow the nose off of George Washington's stone face on Mount Rushmore. Rudy calls the idea is crazy, and he won't do it.
Rudy gets a police call saying that a man is stuck in a trap. He arrives at the house to find a dead man (Gary Farmer) caught in a bear trap in a family's yard with the family standing over him. The mother of the family (Elaine Miles) says that they put the bear trap out to catch burglars. The family seems to have no remorse for the man's death. The dead man is Mogie's drinking buddy, and when Mogie finds out the story behind his death, he seeks revenge. He goes to the house of the bear trap family with a gun and aims it at the father of the family, but a child crosses the room, and Mogie does not pull the trigger.
On Herbie's 18th birthday, he visits his father to find him drunk and in very poor condition. He and Rudy take Mogie to the hospital. Mogie is discovered to have pneumonia, and he must stay at the hospital. Rudy, Herbie, and Aunt Helen stay with him.
Mogie dies, and a ceremony is held. Rudy receives a letter, written to him from Mogie before he died, asking him to take care of Herbie.
Rudy finds out that the liquor store is being rebuilt to be twice as big with two drive-in windows. He buys a large can of oil-based paint and drives to Mount Rushmore. He climbs to the top, and standing on the head of George Washington, makes a tribute to Mogie by throwing the can of paint so that it drips down the side of George Washington's nose, almost like a rivulet of tears.
Skins is a powerful tale of the bond between two brothers and the undeniable effect that the destruction in Native American history has had on their lives today. Through his sometimes extreme attempts to help his family and his people, Rudy explores his reasons for his actions and the reasons that his people and family are in a condition that needs such help.
Cultural Background
The Lakota originated from the Great Lakes region where they were called Dakota. After they were pushed west by the Ojibwe People (Chippewa), they became a fixture of the Plains. Following the enormous herds of buffalo for the subsistence, the Lakota were nomadic in nature. Today there are about 70,000 Lakota, 20,500 of which speak the Lakota language.
Mogie and Rudy are Oglala Lakota which most residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation identify with. Pine Ridge, the reservation where Skins takes place is the largest reservation South Dakota but poorest reservation in all of the United States, with unemployment at around 80% and 49% of its approximate 28,000 live below the poverty line. These statistics have increased from 2002 when the movie was filmed.
The harsh living condition and high rates of alcoholism and violence of this particular reservation is very apparent in the film. Mogie’s door is falling off of the hinges and every one of Rudy’s police calls involves either intoxication or violence or both. Unfortunately, the fictional film is a very realistic depiction of life on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Pine Ridge was originally part of the Great Sioux Reservation established by the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868, but after several wars, including the Black Hills War, the reservation was divided into seven reservations, one being Pine Ridge. The Black Hills were very sacred to the Lakota and the conflict between them and the United States originally started because the Lakota did not want mining to happen in the Black Hills, but the U.S. persisted when gold was found there. The Black Hills are mentioned in "Skins" when Rudy's friend is telling him how sacred rocks are ("like the Black Hills"). On December 29, 1890, while the U.S. 7th Cavalry was moving the Oglala to Pine Ridge, 300 Oglala and 25 members of the U.S. 7th Cavalry were killed during what has now been named the Wounded Knee Massacre.
Mogie and Rudy tell the story of Wounded Knee over dinner with Herbie and Aunt Helen. “At that time, all Indian religious ceremonies were banned because [white soldiers] were afraid of them” Rudy tells Herbie. It is obvious through Mogie’s anger during the story that the injustice of the Wounded Knee Massacre still haunts him. Through the rest of the film, Mogie’s satirical humor makes it clear that the white man’s power still looms over Pine Ridge through the faces of Mount Rushmore that ironically watch over the reservation, and that he hasn’t forgotten the past.
In more recent history, 1973 was the year that the American Indian Movement (AIM) led the Wounded Knee Incident, resulting in a 71 day stand-off. On February 27, 1973 AIM members and a handful of Pine Ridge residents seized the town of Wounded Knee to bring to light numerous murders, crimes and charges of corruption committed by the Pine Ridge Tribal Council and the Chairman, Richard A. "Dick" Wilson. As a result FBI agents, the U.S. Marshall's Service, and the National Guard on the other side blockaded all entrances and exits leading from Wounded Knee.
After Wounded Knee 1973, the persecution, illegal arrests, prosecutorial misconduct and numerous unsolved murders continued against various members of AIM and several residents of Pine Ridge. No action was taken by the federal government, not even the cursory investigation, against Dick Wilson. Wounded Knee 1973 was the culmination of the violence that swarmed the rest of the decade at Pine Ridge, naming it the “murder capitol of the United States” with up to 170 murders to every 100,000 people in 1976. While no reservation in Canada or the United States is without cases of extreme violence, poverty, substance abuse, and hopelessness, Pine Ridge stands alone in the misery index.
Themes
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is depicted in the film in numerous ways, and as such is an exploration on the topic of alcoholism present within Native American culture. On the Pine Ridge Reservation alcoholism is nine times the national average, and life expectancy is nearly half of that in the rest of the country. The liquor-selling border town portrayed in the movie is representative of the town of Whiteclay, NE, also known as "little skid row on the prairie"[1]. Mogie suffers from alcoholism, as many on the reservation do, and is diagnosed with a terminal liver condition as an effect of his drinking. Skins explores the tragedy and depth of despair caused by alcohol amongst indigenous peoples of North America, and brings the issue to the forefront in its almost brutal depictions of the disease. The lineage of alcoholism is also explored when it is revealed in flashbacks that both Rudy and Mogie were abused by their father, an alcoholic in his own right.
Western Expansion and Massacre
The theme of western expansion and the devastating effect this had on Native Americans is most prevalent within the setting of the film. The Pine Ridge Reservation is in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, a gigantic monolith of American expansion and the desecration of sacred tribal grounds. America's founding fathers were carved into a mountain sacred to the Sioux, highlighting the lack of respect by Euro-American cultures for Native Americans. This theme becomes especially prevalent in the final scene, which takes place with Mount Rushmore hovering ominously in the background.
Another aspect of western expansion explored in the film is the fact that the location of the Wounded Knee massacre is only a short distance from the Pine Ridge Reservation. The mention of the massacre and the proximity of the reservation is a not so subtle dig at the suffering Native Americans experienced at the hands of Euro-Americans during their western expansion.
Justice for Native Americans
One of the most intriguing themes explored is that of the white justice for indigenous Americans. The policies of the American government towards indigenous peoples are explored via Rudy becoming a vigilante and pursuing his own idea of justice. The anger that Rudy feels towards businesses selling liquor when welfare checks are released, by taking advantage of the alcoholism present on the reservation leads him to burning down one of these businesses.
Critical reception
Critical reception for the film has been mixed. Metacritic has an aggregate score for the film of 57 out of 100 based on 19 reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, citing, "To see this movie is to understand why the faces on Mount Rushmore are so painful and galling to the first Americans. The movie's final scene is haunting." Mark Holcomb of the Village Voice is not nearly as positive. " Like his popular 1998 debut, Smoke Signals, Chris Eyre's follow-up, Skins, is a humorless slice of family melodrama that functions as cut-rate ethnography."
Adrian C. Louis
Skins is based on the novel of the same name by accomplished author Adrian C. Louis.
Born in norther Nevada in 1946, Louis is the eldest of twelve children. Of mixed heritage, Louis is of Lovelock Paiute descent. He moved from Nevada to South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, the basis of location for both the novel and film.
Louis graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor's and MA in Creative Writing. From 1984-1997 he taught English at Pine Ridge's Oglala Lakota College. Louis was also a former journalist and along with being editor of four tribal newspapers, he was the managing editor of Indian Country Today. Louis also co-founded the Native American Journal Association.
Louis's writing of both poetry and fiction have garnered him much recognition and awards. He has ten published books of poetry and two novels and many works in the pre-publication stages. His work has been praised by some of the other notable modern Native American writers, from Sherman Alexie, M. Scott Momaday, James Welch to Leslie Marmon Silko. In 1999, Louis was added to the Nevada Writer's Hall of Fame. In 2001 Louis was awarded the Writer of the Year by Wordcraft Circle of Native Writer's and Storytellers and the Cohen Award for best published poem in Ploughshares. He is also the recipient of the Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Bush Foundation, the South Dakota Arts Council, the Nebraska Arts Council, the National Endowment of the Arts and the Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Foundation.
Since 1999 Louis has taught English within the Minnosota State University systems.
References
- ^ Magnuson, Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder
Sources
Awards
External links
