The Indian Wars:
Chapter Eight: "West of Nazlini"
© 2005, 2008
"What are you doing? I told you no photographs! Stop taking pictures!"
I haven't seen this woman before. For much of the last two days I've been interviewing Native American war veterans at a Super 8 Hotel in Flagstaff. Maybe she's with the music video people. Has to be.
"I already told you once!”
She’s screaming now. Large, overweight, not particularly attractive, madder than spit. Her rage hits me first then spins past me and hits Sonny, a Navajo who is a hundred feet away. He's holding his camera down by his waist. He had been taking shots of the Indian Color Guard. He doesn't move nor speak. The large woman is apoplectic.
"He can't take any photos. Nancy has to be the first to get these images out. He has to stop!" screams the woman.
Wait a minute. Didn't Nancy, the First People Country and Western singer from Canada and her husband, Frank, the man with the money, say yesterday to all of us, to everyone there in the lobby of the Super 8, that we (everyone) owned this documentary, this music video, that they (Frank and Nancy) were going to be very respectful about putting these images out into the world? Did they calm down the skeptical Indians in the group, by saying it was about showing how Indians have fought in all of America’s wars and how Native People needed to be recognized for their bravery and their sacrifice? Now this sounds different than yesterday. This is soundly more like Great Big Ego to me, not about what’s good for the people, what’s good for the tribes. This sounds like what’s good for Nancy and Frank and their careers.
"Look you don't have to yell," I say, " I heard you the first time."
[I was chastised about a half hour ago when I tried to take a few black and white images of some beautiful Native women in fancy-dance dress. Frank yelled at me to not take pictures. First I'd heard of that plan, that he was cock-blocking my photography. I'm on the documentary film crew, one of the team I thought. I yelled to him “Don't you want some unit shots?”, not really intending to do that job, mostly just to see what he would say. He said 'No, we have someone. No photos!' yelling at me again. I don’t do well with being yelled at. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.]
I remember looking over my shoulder at the sixty Native American men in uniforms, in war bonnets, in spit-polished boots, in moccasins. Fuck. They look great. I would love to send 8 x 10s, to all of them, to hang on their walls, to give to their wives and kids but not now. Not with Frank and this fat women yelling at me. It’s become so transparent to me now. They are just using us, using them. Son of a bitch.
I turn and look at the Native soldiers, standing in a semicircle in this back corner of Monument Valley, patiently waiting for the music video cameras to begin filming. Old, young, all starting to sweat in the high desert sun. My anger and disappointment at not being able to photograph them hasn't lessened in the half hour since Frank told me to stop. In fact, it's only grown.
"I heard you, alright," I say to the large Indian woman.
"But I told Sonny before!" she says, slightly quieter. Then she turns on her heel and storms back to the RV that’s serving as a dressing room for the shoot.
Sonny slowly walks up to our little group, huddled by the dirt road just west of the video shoot.
Sonny and his wife were my camera operators yesterday. Or rather I was their interviewer. Both are Navajos from the Rez. Sonny works for the tribe and wants to make a feature film about Navajo reservation life that is produced, directed, and made by an all-Navajo crew. Nice guy but a bit touchy. Easily insulted. Got angry with me for asking what his girlfriend’s name was. 'She's my wife,' he said with great indignation at the time. Whatever, I thought. He later invited me to stay with him and his wife at their house last night, not far from here. Very nice of him. I first considered it but then had a bad gut feeling and declined. Not that they are bad people, just trusted my intuition was all.
Sonny looks pissed, more pissed than usual this morning. Oh, oh.
Quietly he says, "This is my land."
He says it again.
"This is my land. I'll take any pictures I want. I know the head of the chapterhouse for Monument Valley. I can call him right now and close this whole thing down if I want to," says Sonny.
I nod and give a crooked smile. Goddamn right you can, Sonny.
This day began for me, at 1:30 a.m.. I awoke in the Super 8, showered, packed and was on the road by 2:30. Flagstaff is a good three to four hours away from Monument Valley, and Bobby, the documentary director, producer, and full blood Navajo (and a really nice guy) needed us at Monument at dawn. He wanted to begin filming around eight or nine. Supposedly a busload of Navajo Vets was coming in from Window Rock, two hours to the east, before Noon. All four documentary crews (one camera operator, one interviewer per crew) needed to be at the Monument Valley visitors’ center early in the morning, said Bobby. Either we were going to be interviewing Vets or we were going to help with the music video. I was good, both ways.
Most of the people involved in the documentary and in the music video are volunteering, but I'm getting paid $100 a day. I worked half a day on Friday and most of the day on Saturday. By Saturday afternoon, I was fried. The horror stories didn't bother me. I'm a therapist by trade. That’s why Bobby hired me in the first place, for my skills in helping people open up and talk about things. No, the tales of War didn’t bother me. It was all the talk of dope smoking as a cure for PTSD by the Nam Vets that trigger the fuck out of me. (I haven't smoked pot in 20 years, and when I did, I did with a certain earnestness, so to speak.) Add to that the embarrassingly stereotypical Native American arrogance by many of the Vets, sprinkled with City Indian Republicanism and I was toast by the end of the day.
Funny though. I was truly the only White Person in the whole hotel, but everyone appeared to think I was a Native American too, just from the context. Made me smile.
I’m passing for Indian. God laughs.
Bobby, by the way, is a friend of a friend, and the visionary of the documentary. Supposedly the point of the documentary (and the music video too) is to promote the proposal of constructing a Native American War Memorial in Washington, D.C. and to raise the consciousness of White Americans to the special concerns of Native American Vets. Sounded good to me on the phone. And Bobby is a real sweetheart. One of the nicest people I’ve ever known.
But frankly, in my interviews with the Vets on Friday and Saturday, I found no uniquely universal Indian experience of war. They were as fucked-up or as normal as any other vet. I talked with Vietnam Vets with horrible PTSD, that was so bad they couldn’t go into the tight forests on their own reservations without coming apart at the seams. I talked with young Apache Iraq War Vets just recently discharged from the Marines, who spoke the Bush Administration party line, that 'If we don't fight them in Iraq, we'll be fighting them here in America." I interviewed a kind gentle Air Force chaplain who loved the military and who was a Mattiponi Indian from just a few miles from my ancestral roots in the Northern Neck of Virginia. I listened to a non-combat Vet complain about being discriminated in the service due to being Indian, yet he later admitted that he was dishonorably discharged for striking a Captain, and frankly he was whiter than me in complexion. I chatted with another Indian who liked being called ‘Chief’ in the military, that it made him feels like he was part of the group. I met rich Natives from the reservations with very profitable casinos, who came to Flagstaff on monster RVs. I met poor Indians from rural reservations with few assets, who came in their ratty old cars. I really didn't see or hear a singular Native American war veteran viewpoint. What I heard were the varied issues and perspectives of combat war veterans. Some racial components, yes, but those were not the primary issues with any of the Vets that I spoke with. Seeing the horrors of war and not being able to let go of that, finding a good job in the military and in the government afterwards, being proud to have served, fighting for greater veterans benefits, etc. These were the issues I hear the men and one woman speak of. And these concerns are the same as those of White, Black, and Brown Veterans too.
And I felt a bit out of place, to say the least. My tribe, if I have one, is Clan McLean from the area south of Inverness in Scotland. Sure, 20 years ago, I wished to be an Indian but over time, I recognized that it wasn’t my culture and the last thing most Natives want is another White Boy playing Indian. Granted, I still have affection for their land, their stories, their spirituality, but I also have great love for the stories of my people, the God of my cultural past, and the beauty of the land of my ancestors in Virginia and the United Kingdom.
I like the sounds of the powwow drums but I cry at the sound of the Highland Pipes.
I stopped in the pitch dark, this morning, at Coalmine Canyon on the way to Monument Valley. Never been there when there was no moon. Very eerie. Without my flashlight, I would have easily tumbled into the canyon. I said a prayer and split.
I saw the dawn and cried just south of Monument Valley. Coldplay on the CD player. Hoping for a great day. Appears that dawn might be the highlight of this Sunday.
Frank, the music video producer and husband of Nancy were alone in the parking lot at Monument Valley when I arrived just after dawn. He was wondering where were the buses with the Vets from Flagstaff. (All the Vets from Flag were put on two large tour buses with their uniforms and finery at 3 a.m. I thought, with my side trip to Coalmine Canyon, they would be here before me, but no.) Frank was getting really nervous. Time passed. No buses. A few Natives in their own cars arrived but no buses. A hour went by. The sun rose a bit more. They're losing the Magic Hour light. I didn't say anything. They know it. But then again, everyone was here for free, except me.
Sometime in that hour, Frank showed me on an old wooden map on the wall of the visitor’s center where they will be shooting today, way in the backcountry of Monument Valley on a one way loop road. He also bragged of shooting at John Ford's Point yesterday. A Native man raving about shooting at a place in Monument Valley named after a famous Hollywood director who made Westerns that stereotyped the Indians. Hmmm. Too much irony for too early in the day. Before too long, Frank said he's going down to the site where they are shooting and asked that I tell the bus drivers where to go. Sure, I said.
So it's just me. Smoking a Camel, drinking a Coke Zero.
Then I saw the buses. Two huge behemoths with Bobby in his Chevy Blazer leading the way.
“Hey Stu," said Bobby.
"Hey Bobby," I said, " Frank has gone down to the site."
"Do you know where it is?" he said.
"I think so.”
"So let's go. We'll follow you."
I hopped in my Pathfinder, and led the parade on a dirt road that descended into Monument Valley.
A note about the road into Monument: It's dirt, it's dusty, and it’s really steep and winding in places. Most passenger cars have no problem, but I have two tour buses in tow.
"Wow. There's an image, " I said out loud when I looked in my rearview mirror to see a Greyhound inching around a rocky hairpin turn.
A half hour later and we were in the back loop road of Monument. I found a good place to park the buses in a side pulloff but Frank nixed that idea and instead had them park in the middle of the road, hence blocking the way of any tourists who may come in their cars. Frank seemed to be all about himself, and not particularly open to suggestions.
So here we are.
10 o'clock on a Sunday morning, in the back forty of Monument Valley.
Sonny's pissed off with someone telling him to stop taking pictures.
Other people in the documentary crews look confused at best and angry at worst.
I'm pretty irritated at this point, both for my hands being tied from taking pictures and Frank's foolishness in parking the buses in the middle of the goddamn road. The young kid who is working security for the Park isn’t happy either.
"We can't block the road," says the Navajo Security Kid, “ People pay good money to be able to drive this loop."
And at that point I see our first car approaching. I quickly walk toward it. I'm one of three white guys here. Maybe my smiling white mug will calm the tourists a bit.
Inside are a man and a woman, both white.
"Hi," I say, "Sorry to tell you all this but they are making a movie about Native Americans war veterans just up there, and they have the road blocked and you all are going to have to turn around. I'm really sorry.”
"What? We have to turn around?" says the white man. He’s not happy.
"Yep. Afraid so. Frankly between me and you, I had those two buses parked right over there," pointing in the direction of the wide pull off 50 feet behind us, "but the powers that be didn't like that idea. Kind of ticks me off, frankly." I shake my head.
"But you know what? I'm not in charge,” I say with a smile on my face.
The white man immediately softens, now that he knows I'm as pissed if not more so, than he is.
"Oh, that's alright. We'll turn around. A film, eh?" he asks
"Yep, about Indian war vets. Quite something to see, actually."
"Can we go and take a look?" the couple asks.
"Sure, just don't get in the way, and don't take any pictures," I add.
"We won't," they say.
A few minutes later, I was talking with Sonny about how I'm disarming the tourists' anger by subtly letting them know that I'm more pissed off than they are.
"I would have told them, sure, go on down and take all the pictures you want," says Sonny.
Everyone in our little group of frustrated documentarians laughs. Even the Navajo Security Guard smiles.
[Note on the above image: The accompanying photograph to this story was taken west of Nazlini, Arizona, on the drive home. I have no photographs at all of the video shoot in Monument Valley or of the interviews in Flagstaff. I really wish I had taken some pictures of the veterans I’d spoken to, but I had other things on my mind at the time.]
[Postscript: All the names have been changed in this story for fear of getting sued. I won't put it past Frank or Nancy or even Sonny for that matter, to try and get a piece of my hide in court. Bobby, on the other hand, is a very good man and a real sweetheart. For two years, Bobby tried to get Frank and Nancy to pay me my $100 a day. They never did. But Bobby still has the interview footage, and hopes to do something powerful with it someday soon. He feels embarrassed about my getting stiffed. I told him, those two jerks don’t reflect on how I feel about him. He understands completely.
People are people. Some are assholes like Frank and Nancy. Some are kind and generous like Bobby. And it doesn’t have a thing to do with the amount of melanin in their skin, nor who their ancestors were.]
