Indian Lives Matter

This weekend I attended my local Port Townsend Film Festival.  The fourth film I saw was the documentary ‘Honor Totem’.  For those of you who don’t recall, or didn’t even hear the story, a man living on skid row in Seattle was shot by a police officer while walking down the street, slouched over a piece of wood that he was carving into a totem.  The man was a Nitinaht Indian, and had been one of the tribe’s most talented carvers before descending into the black hole of alcoholism.  His grandfather had carved the huge totem that today stands in Pioneer Square in Seattle.  His siblings, famous carvers all, led by his brother Rick, decided that rather than be defeated by their rage at what had been done to their brother, John T. Williams, they would carve and erect a 34-foot totem to honor him.  I would have been too angry to see straight, let alone come up with a plan to restore dignity to the life of my sibling.   The film then shows all of the carvers from around the country working on the totem, which was carved from one tree chosen by them and then cut down in the Washington forest.  Several of the carvers talk about the influence  that John T. had on their lives and on their carving as we watch them scrape away slivers of the huge tree, first peeling off the bark, an amazing spectacle to watch.  Once the totem was completed, painted and huge, they then carried it from the docks to Seattle Center, no mean feat in and of itself. I glanced at my fellow audience members and noticed that I was not the only one crying from the power of the film and its message.  As the carvers and their friends lifted the amazing and huge totem with the ropes holding it in place to the post that would anchor it at Seattle Center, and Rick cheered with gusto, I realized how healing the entire process had been for John T.’s family, his fellow carvers, and now the audience in the movie theater.  In a nation that has brutalized Native Americans for centuries, I found the joy at the culmination of this film a symbol of hope for indigenous people here and everywhere, and for the rest of us who feel despair at the racism that still infects this country.  What a marvelous way to say ‘Indianlivesmatter’.  Footnote:  the Seattle Police Department found the shooting unjustified, and the cop resigned from the force with no other consequences.  So what else is new, and how many more totems will have to be built before out nation sees real change?