--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "jeff.evans60" <jeff.evan...@...> wrote: > > Assuming it was a conscious decision how she was portrayed, > I think the message the filmmaker was trying to give was > that the Indians were happy to allow her to live with them > without trying to force their cultural identity on her.
The reality is less altruistic. In an article in the Albuquerque Journal at the time of the movie, Mary McDonnell comments that the decision to not braid her hair was hers, in conjunction with costume designers and makeup artists. They tried the braids, and both women felt that they made her character look too "severe," almost uptight, and that was the opposite of what they wanted to achieve for the character and for the film. So they tried out various looks and decided on the one we see in the film. I remember this because I was still living in Santa Fe at the time, and had several Native American friends who were working on the film. I was trying to lobby them to get me a gig as an extra or a gopher or something. That never worked out, but it did make me tend to pay attention to news items about the movie. The film was "big business" for Native Americans, putting many to work in the film. Humorously enough, very few of them were actually from the Lakota tribe, so Mary McDonnell was in the same classes they were trying to learn the language they had to speak. :-) Graham Greene (who played Kicking Bird) was my favorite. He used to come into my fave bar in Santa Fe a lot. He's actually a member of the Oneida tribe from Canada, but had gotten to know Santa Fe during the filming of "Powwow Highway" the previous year. Great guy.
