FILMAKERS LIBRARY
Anthropology
The Earth is Our Mother (Part I)
The Journey Back (Part II)
Directed by Peter Elsass
- "Offers great insight into the Indian's perceptions of white men's
values." - EFLA Evaluations
Anthropologist
and psychologist Peter Elsass studied two Indian tribes in Colombia and Venezuela
over a 16-year period. In his film, The Earth is Our Mother (Part I),
we see their different ways of dealing with encroaching white civilization.
The Motilon Indians in the lowland of Venezuela gave up their traditional ways
and became dependent on the Catholic missionaries who converted them. They became
spiritually and economically impoverished. The Arhuaco Indians, in the mountains
of northern Colombia, threw out the missionaries and maintained their cultural
integrity. They have an abiding spiritual attachment to their land.
In
The Journey Back (Part II), the filmmakers return after several years
to show the original film to the tribes and learn how they feel about their
representation. This follow-up film concentrates on the Arhuaco Indians who
continue to maintain their strong spiritual and cultural identity in the face
of wide ranging attempts to grab their land, torment their spiritual leaders,
and make their independent lifestyle untenable. The Arhuaco are unimpressed
with the earlier film even though it attempts to plead their cause to the outside
world. Physically small, garbed in pristine white with box-like headdresses,
pain smolders on their faces when they speak of the injustice they have suffered,
including the assassination of their spiritual leaders. The Journey Back gives
voice to the ravages of their colonial history.
Native American Exposition Award, Santa Fe, 1996
Each : 50 min. Video or DVD. Sale $295. Video rental $75. If purchased together $495.
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