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OPINION: Make your own Native Hollywood in the village

July 12th 1:45 pm | Matt Gilbert Print this article   Email this article   Create a Shortlink for this article

A few months ago, I wrote a letter to Native teens, to Athabascan and Yup'ik teenage boys, who are committing suicide in great numbers.

Then I came back from California. I was in Arcata, which is in the northern part. I had dinner with some people one night there and we talked about Hollywood and the image it puts out to the world through TV and movies. All those movies you watch in your houses depict a life that "you should have" or show people "you should look like," but it's not real. Hollywood is not real. It's fake. I've been there.

I know a part of you wants to kill yourself, because your Yup'ik village or Athabascan village will never give you what you're told you "need" by the media. Even people in California (the same state) don't have what Hollywood wants people to have, and they hate L.A. If you go to L.A. it's full of stuck-up, rich, shallow people.

If you want the life you see on TV so badly, then bring Hollywood to your village, like I did when I was 17. I called a movie producer and hung up on him. (Laughs!) Do what Rachel Edwardson from Barrow does, make movies in your villages and make Natives cool. She's travelled the world because of what she did right in her village. Make your own Hollywood in your village. It's a way of thumbing your nose at corporate media and saying "My culture is just as cool! And I'm going to prove it!" Isaiah Woods and Nick Handson from Unanakleet made amazing village movies with simple video cameras.

Hollywood is coming to Alaska anyways, more and more movies are being made in Anchorage. There are great Alaska Native filmmakers who have moved back to Alaska from New York and L.A. that are making movies here. See? It's not so bad. If my mentor Heather Kendall-Miller were here, she would yell at all of you like she did me: "Stop thinking of yourself! It's about the community!"

Your Yup'ik, Inupiaq, and Athabascan ancestors left you lands that are yours, and that is something no other indigenous teen on this planet have; and you want to shoot yourself? Come on! Your little niece or daughter looks up at you with her beautiful, glistening eyes treating you like the greatest person on earth. Like my nieces treats me. When you shoot yourself, you are taking that person away from her, so it's not about "you," it's about her too. Instead of shooting yourself, pick her up and smile back at her.

Take ownership over your life and village and tell the jerks to go to hell. Build a fancy two-story house, get Internet, make movies, become a correspondent journalist for Alaska Newspapers in your village, take long-distance college courses, take photographs and send them out, start a garden and store food, feed your people, write books, talk to your friends outside on the phone, record your elders' oral stories and find grants or do it for free like I did. Write traditional plays for the school, encourage your college educated Native friends to get their butts back to the village and help you, start healing programs, run for council, the school board, work for environmental groups to protect your land, work for RuralCap to clean your land, travel to tell people about your village, bring visitors, and make connections to other indigenous teenagers.

You see? There's a lot to do! And lot's to live for. I'm just a Native like you. Episcopal Bishop Steve Charleston said, "Us Natives weren't put here for nothing. God doesn't joke around."


Matt Gilbert was raised in Arctic Village. He holds a master's degree in rural development from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

 


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