"No More Smoke Signals"

• Film Focus: History and experiences of the Oglala Lakota Sioux through KILI radio station.

• Deprivation: Low services and unemployment, historical injustices.

• Activist Interviews: Featuring John Trudell and others.

• Substance Abuse: High rates of alcohol-exposed pregnancies and related issues.

• Critique: Lack of effective solutions and the influence of Christianity on the community.

  
  

These points summarize the film's exploration of the Oglala Lakota Sioux people's challenges and the broader social and cultural implications.

The film No More Smoke Signals (Bräuning 2009) explores the history and present-day experiences of the Oglala Lakota Sioux people through the lens of a locally run radio station, KILI, operating on the reservation in South Dakota.  The Oglala Lakota live in a remote location, with few services and low unemployment, having been deprived of their sovereign rights, traditional land base, and over half of their population in the Indian wars during the 19th century.  1960-70’s-era Indian activist John Trudell, former leader of AIM, is interviewed in the film, reflecting on the battles at Wounded Knee and Greasy Grass, expounding on this activism and art, and even as a participant with KILI to communicate his work to tribal members.  Interspersed throughout these interviews are the most dramatic moments of the film, images of the rundown shantytowns the once-proud Oglala Lakota Sioux now occupy, communal gatherings where tattooed youth rap unintelligibly at small crowds, and mothers and babies in support groups, or sleeping in the dirt.

In one scene, we are treated to the dramatic stories of women in a seminar discussing drug and especially alcohol abuse among women on the reservation.  One girl tells a heartbreaking story of her mother succumbing to alcohol abuse.  In fact, “Indian Health Service (IHS) reported that up to 56% of pregnant American Indian patients reported drinking alcohol during pregnancy.” (Hansen 2016:1) This results in an unusually high number of infants affected by alcohol-exposed pregnancy (AEP).  Typically, under these conditions, infants are born with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) which can cause “facial abnormalities (i.e., palpebral fissures, thin vermilion, smooth philtrum); evidence of growth retardation; and evidence of delayed brain growth.” (1) The study notes these problems broadly affect Plains groups.  In response, Stanford researchers have adapted alcohol-exposed pregnancy prevention programs involving non-pregnant women for the reservation.  Named the Oglala Sioux Tribe CHOICES Program, the enhanced protocol designed for Sioux women has proven successful in reducing rates of AEP and will be replicated in other, similar reservation environments. (8)

It’s hard not to think back on No More Smoke Signals and the young fathers, tattooed, scarred, and victims of poor nutrition, holding a ream-full of notebook paper full of rap lyrics copied from hit tunes blaring over KILI’s rudimentary FM network.  Are these the victims of AEP?  Will their babies also be victims of AEP?  A viewer might be left wondering if these performing youth had ever read Melville or, even more pertinent, their own ‘voice of the people’ Russell Means?

Trudell, forever unbedecked in a pair of 1960’s Lennon-styled, dark black, small, round sunglasses, declares that understanding and wielding American Indian law has nothing to do with addressing the problems on the Pine Ridge reservation.  His sentiments are not echoed by the writer/academic Thomas King – “Ignorance has never been the problem…[i]f nothing else, an examination…of the present…can be instructive.  It shows us that there is little shelter and little gain for Native peoples in doing nothing.” (King 2013:265) As the film reaches its nadir, and the viewer has watched as the Lakota Oglala Sioux have sat in relative silence as their youth descend into drugs, alcohol, and a disregard for education and as their housing and communities dilapidate, they begin to participate, with white missionaries, in the construction of a church facility.  And so, as King opined, not ignorance but “the unwarranted certainty of Christianity.  The arrogance,” (265) is the problem.  It’s always the problem, everywhere one looks in Indian history, law, and modern culture.  It’s too bad that the community didn’t rally to build a center for administering drugs safely, or a building to expand programs like CHOICES, instead of a church.

References

Hanson, Jessica D., and Susan Pourier. “The Oglala Sioux Tribe CHOICES Program: Modifying an Existing Alcohol-Exposed Pregnancy Intervention for Use in an American Indian Community.” Ed. Mark Edberg et al. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 13.1 (2016): 1. PMC. Web. 21 Apr. 2016.

King, Thomas. Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America. Minneapolis, MN, USA, Univ of Minnesota Press, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web 17 January 2016.

No More Smoke Signals. Dir. Fanny Bräuning. Filmmakers Library, 2009. Online.