Environmental documentary filmmakers Rebecca and Joshua Tickell have turned to narrative moviemaking with their award-winning debut drama, “On Sacred Ground,” about the Indigenous-led struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline that slices through the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota. In doing so, the husband-and-wife team, who also co-wrote the screenplay with star William Mapother (of the “Lost” TV series), have created the first feature film that dramatizes the Native movement to prevent the construction of pipelines that endanger tribal water and land. In the process, “On Sacred Ground” also explores journalistic ethics (or the lack of these), constitutional law and tribal sovereignty, PTSD, police misconduct, the role of allies, and more.
In the 114-minute low budget feature, Mapother portrays freelance writer Daniel McKinney, whose wife Julie (Amy Smart) is expecting their first baby. The couple clash, not only because Daniel is down on his luck as a journalist, but due to the post-traumatic stress disorder that Daniel suffers as an Iraq War combat veteran. Then, apparently from out of the blue, McKinney lands a plum assignment that can solve his cash flow problems: Covering the anti-DAPL protest circa 2016.
Daniel has been handpicked by Ricky, played by actress and activist Frances Fisher (of “Titanic”), and is flown to and put up in North Dakota, where he’s met by a PR flak for the oil companies, Elliot (David Arquette of the “Scream” film franchise). Fisher tells The Progressive via email: “Ricky is the editor of a Houston-based conservative newspaper who hires Dan to go write the article and wants him to write about ‘jobs, money, importance to the economy’ and ‘not some fake news you can get off Facebook.’ Ricky is working in collusion with the slick ‘anti-woke’ oil guy, Elliot, and there are obviously larger oil-backed forces influencing them both.”
Their scheme is for the unsuspecting reporter to infiltrate the activists at Standing Rock and file reports favorable to the oil industry. But plans go awry when Daniel comes face-to-face with the water protectors he is meant to disparage, and learns firsthand about what they are fighting for and why. The sequences at the Standing Rock encampment—a makeshift village, if not a nation in embryo—effectively take viewers inside this movement for environmental and Indigenous rights. Non-natives—including US military veterans repentant over the armed forces’ role in suppressing Indigenous peoples around the globe—join the water protectors. They’re trying to stop construction of the pipeline to carry oil—a prime source of global warming—under the Missouri River on Sioux land, where construction was diverted to protect primarily white communities.
Co-directors Joshua and Rebecca Tickell previously made documentaries about environmentalism and activism, including 2008’s “Fuel” and 2011’s “Freedom.” The Tickells put their nonfiction background to good use in the scenes set at the activists’ Standing Rock encampment, where Joshua shot on location (his footage is intercut with footage lensed by other filmmakers there, as well as with material filmed in studios or sets). “On Sacred Ground” has won awards at New York International Films Infest Festival and the Mesa Film Festival for Best Narrative Feature.
When the down-at-his-heels Daniel realizes he is being used as a propaganda tool for Big Oil, what will he do? Grasping that his credibility as a member of the press is his most valuable asset, will Daniel sell his soul in a Faustian bargain with Big Oil—or will he tell the truth about the anti-pipeline resisters?
Mariel Hemingway (granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway), who was Oscar-nominated for her debut role in 1979’s “Manhattan,” also has a small role in “On Sacred Ground.” But most notably, the cast includes lots of Indigenous talent, such as Inupiaq, Yup’ik, and Cree actress Irene Bedard, who plays Mary Singing Crow and was the voice of Pocahontas in Disney’s 1995 animated movie of that name. Enrolled Oglala Sioux tribal member Kerry Knuppe from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota depicts Mika and her credits include Netflix’s “Ratched” series. David Midthunder of Montana’s Fort Peck Reservation portrays Terry and has appeared in the PBS “Dark Winds” series based on Tony Hillerman’s novels about Navajo tribal police. Marshall Dancing Elk Lucas of the Notoweega Nation portrays Chief Dancing Falcon and has been in many productions, including Terrence Malick’s “The New World” and PBS’s “Jamestown” TV series. Navajo actor/activist Che Jim is Akicita in “On Sacred Ground.”
Nevertheless, the problem with the feature is that main protagonist Daniel is White, as is the character given the second-most screen time, the conniving Elliot. At a Beverly Hills screening of “On Sacred Ground” during the Red Nation Film Festival in November (where it received four nominations in the Best Picture, Directing, Actor, and Actress categories), Joshua Tickell told the audience, which included cast and crew members such as Bedard, that he had concerns about telling this story because he’s a White man.
But Tickell didn’t let this stop him from making a movie which commits one of Hollywood’s biggest recurring cinematic sins of representation: making the lead character White in a story about—or that should be about—non-White people. This is a very common trope in Western filmmaking—even when the white protagonist goes far from “civilization,” he is still the story’s central figure. Meanwhile, local people where the action takes place are reduced to an exotic backdrop for the derring-do of the White stars, who are the big box office attractions.
Consider who the leads are in Britain and Tinseltown’s most famous movies about the Middle East and Africa? The protagonists of both “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Tarzan” are not Arabs or Africans but White Englishmen, just as Kevin Costner—not Comanche—is the hero in “Dances with Wolves.”
As its title indicates, “On Sacred Ground” perpetuates another ethno-trope: that through his encounters with non-White people, a troubled white man has a mystical experience that leads to his becoming ennobled, even enlightened. Think of James Hilton and Somerset Maugham’s novels “Lost Horizon” and “The Razor’s Edge,” which were turned into Hollywood movies that featured this celluloid stereotype. Similarly, Daniel’s adventure with Native Americans seemingly resolves his PTSD and marital problems; his wife’s pregnancy symbolizes a rebirth.
This misstep in the story’s framing is noteworthy considering the recent upswell in Indigenous-led Hollywood projects, including critically acclaimed hits like FX’s “Reservation Dogs” and Peacock’s “Rutherford Falls.” It’s a recalibration Hollywood is still making. Irene Bedard—a gifted artist whose extensive credits beyond mega-hit “Pocahontas” include 1994’s South Dakota-set “Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee” and 1998’s cult favorite “Smoke Signals”—currently plays a supporting role in ABC’s “Alaska Daily,” about journalists investigating missing and murdered Indigenous women, which stars Hilary Swank.
That’s not to say that the Daniel character should not have been in the movie at all—the Tiskells based his storyline on actual vets, White and otherwise, who did go to Standing Rock and support the cause. Veterans suffering from PTSD are certainly a worthy storyline. However, a White character should not be the protagonist in a story purportedly about Indigenous people in a script that is not autobiographical (Mapother never served in the US military).
By zooming in on Daniel’s personal story, “On Sacred Ground” has less screen time to focus on and actually even distracts from the Indigenous characters and their struggle. By doing so, “On Sacred Ground” is largely a missed opportunity, although to be fair it does raise the profile of the anti-pipeline movement. An Indigenous-centered dramatization of the Standing Rock resistance remains to be made. In the meantime, the Keystone XL pipeline leaked approximately 600,000 gallons of oil in Kansas in December 2022.
“On Sacred Ground” can be watched on demand and opened in select theaters on Jan. 13.
Ed Rampell is a film historian and critic based in Los Angeles whose books include “Progressive Hollywood: A People’s Film History of the United States.” This appeared at Progressive.org.
From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2023
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