Navajo

Unusual tale of an Indian boy that rejects the white man's schooling on a Navajo reservation. Most of the actors are real Navajos. Cinematogropher Virgil Miller won accolades for his work on this one.

Francis Kee Teller's father has gone off and is now living with a White women. When his mother and grandfather die, young Teller goes in search of people to help burn them, in the manner of his people. But he is taken to the school run by the White people for children on the reservation.

This was nominated for two Academy Awards, probably a first for a Lippert release. Virgil Miller's black-and-white camerawork well deserves the nomination, with its stark and beautiful images of the Navajo Nation in Arizona and his portrait shots. It was also nominated for Best Documentary feature, and here I have my doubts. It is a story documentary, like Nanook of the North, and that sort of documentary was being replaced by a different form, more anthropological in nature. There's a good helping of that here in writer-director Norman Foster's feature. Still, the images and the glimpses in Navajo mythology is definitely worth your while.

Though this is too long, it's still quite an interesting look at the clashes of culture that saw a young Navajo hunter struggling to integrate, or see the value of any integration, with the society of the white settlers. It's come to the time in his life when he has to go to school, but he doesn't like it much and so like the rest of us at that age, fancies he might just give it a miss. Unlike most of us, though, this youngster has some skills when it comes to survival and so sets off to explore with little thought of any consequences. It's not long before a couple of men are sent out to track him down and bring him back safely and so with those two on his trail, we follow his escapades through an unforgiving Arizona territory that has been their homeland for generations. It's that latter element that is illustrated by the ancient paintings on the wind-worn rocks and the burial grounds built high amongst the rocks and caves. In the end, though, can he stay one step ahead of his pursuers or, then again, can they stay the pace with this nimble and adaptable lad? It's a simple story that makes it point early on and thereafter really only offers us a guided tour of some fairly inhospitable terrain but it does shine a light on the reconciliation of modern attitudes and ancient traditions and sounds a bit of a death knell to the old ways of doing things off the modern-day "reservation".