The World In Film
Older Than America
Film reveals atrocities at American Indian boarding schools

-- Leah Otto Johnson

Older Than America, the newest film from Native Media Network, began filming mid-November in northern Minnesota.

The film will focus on the deep secrets and atrocities of the American Indian boarding school system.

"It is my intention to bring about healing and awareness," said Director Georgina Lighting, Native Media Network founder, who will make her directorial debut in this film.

"Cinema is a powerful tool that enables us to educate and inspire viewers around the world."

According to the film’s Web site, Older Than America is set in a town that at one time hosted a boarding school. Not only will a local mayoral contest uncover the town’s origins, but it will also uncover the children forced from their homes to attend boarding schools, that went missing and that were abused—physically, mentally and sexually.

"So many people don’t know what happened; they don’t know what many of our elders went through," said Rocky Wilkinson, marketing director for Black Bear Casino, where the cast and crew will stay during filming.

"The emotional and mental abuse was very bad," said Dr. Negiel Bigpond, Sr., president of the Rivers Native American Training Center in Oklahoma in his personal testimony to the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 2005.

"We were made to feel that we were nothing."

In 1879, Captain Richard H. Pratt opened the first federally sanctioned boarding school in Carlisle, Penn. Pratt’s boarding school concept would have officials take children as young as three years old to boarding schools, sometimes miles away from their families, to assimilate them into white culture.

Children were virtually imprisoned in these schools. For speaking native words, children’s "mouths were scrubbed with lye and chlorine solutions," said Richard Monette, Native American Bar Association president.

According to findings by the Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada in 2001, the death rate for children at boarding schools averaged 50 percent. For further information into these and the other gross human rights violation cases, visit http://canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org.

Lightning’s work on Older Than America began nearly two years ago, but the story has been in her heart for much longer, she said.

"My dad was an Indian boarding school child," said Lightning, whose father hung himself when she was 18.

It wasn’t until she visited the very boarding school her father attended as a child and saw its graveyard that she finally understood, she said. "These were children who were buried there," said Lightning. "I couldn’t see the far end of that cemetery it was so vast."

Lightning told The Pine Journal that the healing ceremony to begin the film is signified to represent "who we were when we were older than America — a strong, vibrant people with a lot of pride and power."

According to Producer Christine Walker (American Splendor), the film will likely screen on the film festival circuit before it secures distribution; she hopes the film will be released in theaters within 1–2 years.

To learn more about the boarding schools, visit http;//www.amnestyusa.org/amnestynow/soulwound.html. For further information about Lightning or the film, visit http://web.mac.com/tribalalliance.

Send film comments and suggestions to ottole@go.metrostate.edu.