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      In Indigenous Communities, a Divided Reaction to ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

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      The filmmakers’ attention to detail draws praise, but the question of perspective and who gets to tell the story is also at issue.After watching “Killers of the Flower Moon” at a July screening in Tulsa, Okla., Dana Bear emerged from the theater with a complicated mix of emotions.Bear, who is an Osage artist and birth worker, felt the horror of witnessing the murders of her people onscreen. But she also felt a sense of deep relief: For years, Bear had told stories of those murders to her children — tales of poisoned relatives and sleepless nights and charred homes — bearing the burden of that tragic history and passing it on to the next generation.“Now, we don’t have to carry these stories anymore,” she said. “Now, the whole world knows what happened to us.”Bear is one of many Indigenous people who came away deeply affected by Martin Scorsese’s searing film, based on the 1920s Reign of Terror in Oklahoma, when dozens of oil-rich Osage were killed by their white neighbors. The murders were part of a wide conspiracy led by William Hale, played in the film by Robert De Niro. Those he enlisted included his nephew Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a World War I veteran who married Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), a wealthy Osage woman.The film, which garnered seven Golden Globes nominations on Monday, has divided Indigenous viewers: In a dozen interviews, many of them, particularly members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, welcomed the movie, applauding Scorsese for his meticulous portrayal of Osage culture and noting the ways the critically acclaimed drama has broadened awareness of the killings. But other Indigenous viewers said the movie was told from a white man’s perspective and lacked sufficient context about the U.S. government’s complicity in the murders.An oil strike in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Some critics say the movie fails to deal with the role the federal government played in the Reign of Terror. AppleTV+“It still felt to me like it was a story about the white men,” said Tim Landes, who is Cherokee and an editor for TulsaPeople magazine. “It was still framed around the criminals who did the bad deeds.” He said he wished the movie had been created by an Indigenous artist.“There are numerous Indigenous filmmakers, especially in Oklahoma, who are just anxiously awaiting their shot,” he said.There seems to be broad agreement in Indigenous circles that the drama succeeded in accurately portraying the culture and language of the Osage people. Scorsese and his production team took great pains to incorporate Osage feedback into the movie, community members said. In 2019, several years into the making of the movie, Scorsese and his crew met with more than 200 Osage people, discussing tribe members’ concerns about the movie and asking them questions about their lives.“My position always was let’s make sure we’re not going to be stereotyped as Hollywood always does,” said Geoffrey Standing Bear, principal chief of the Osage Nation. “Let’s make sure our story to be told by us as much as possible. And we did a good job of that. This was a movie where you hear the Osage language. You hear the sounds of our music.”In an email to The New York Times, Scorsese said, “We felt a great responsibility to get the story right and this is extremely sensitive territory for the Osage.”Dozens of oil-rich Osage were killed by their white neighbors in the 1920s.The movie was filmed in Osage County and Washington County, Okla., and throughout production, Scorsese and his team worked with Osage experts on clothing, language, art and more. Many Osage people also acted as extras.“The way that they were able to consult and really fold in the community gave it its authenticity,” said Addie Roanhorse, who worked in the film’s art department and is a direct descendant of Henry Roan. (Played by William Belleau, he is depicted in the film as having “melancholy” and is killed by one of Hale’s henchmen.)Scorsese, Gladstone and DiCaprio attended many tribal ceremonies to learn more about their traditions, said Gigi Sieke, an Osage member who appears as an extra in the final scene. She remembers the production team going to her grandfather’s 100-year-old house to measure his table and examine the antiques he owned. When she first watched the movie, she was amazed by how closely the film mirrored the customs of her people, from the way they prayed to the minutiae of their clothing.Still, it was often painful to watch the film. Dana Bear said she was depressed for a month after the screening, saddened by the reality of how Osage members had been brutally treated.Growing up, Bear remembered, she saw an elderly man, known to her as “Cowboy,” at grocery stores or gas stations in Fairfax, Okla. It was not until watching the movie that it dawned on her that he was the son of Ernest and Mollie Burkhart.“It’s not the distant past,” she said. “My grandma lived through that. A lot of families left during that time out of fear and you can look around and see where those families left.”While many of the Indigenous people interviewed approved of the film, others said it failed to reckon with the ways the murders had been enabled by the federal government’s systematic oppression of Indigenous people.The film could have included greater context about how the murders were not isolated events but part of a broader history of colonization, said Elizabeth Rule, a Chickasaw Nation member and a professor of critical race, gender and culture studies at American University.“Violence against Indigenous people unfolded in a systematic way across additional communities in different parts of the country,” she said.The movie also shied away from the federal government’s history of capturing Native American land through the allotment system, making it easier for the properties to be transferred to white men, said Robert Warrior, an Osage professor of American literature and culture at the University of Kansas.“It’s not the distant past,” Dana Bear said. “My grandma lived through that.”AppleTV+Other critics say that the film centered the perspective of white men rather than that of Mollie and other Osage people, and that the story could have been better told by an Indigenous filmmaker.“It would take an Osage to tell the story from the Osage perspective,” said Joel Robinson, an Osage member from Kentucky who wrote a viral review of the movie on Letterboxd. “Someone who has never had to come at it from a place of learning and discovery. Someone who has had it embedded in them.”The fault lies with an entertainment industry that continues to elevate white people’s creative choice over those of Indigenous filmmakers, he said. “In the current Hollywood system, there’s no shot that the studio would come in and be like, ‘Oh you’re Osage, do you want to make this movie? Here’s $200 million,’” he said, referring to the reported budget of the film.Scorsese took issue with the contention that “Killers” elevates a white man’s point of view over an Indigenous one. “I can’t really agree that the story is told primarily from a white man’s perspective,” Scorsese said. “I wanted to create a kind of panoramic perspective. There are many interwoven characters and strands in the story. The majority of the white characters are swindlers, thieves and murderers. That includes Ernest and Bill, of course. I think the picture really isn’t from their ‘perspective.’”But Jeremy Charles, a Cherokee filmmaker, said the movie reminded him how much progress was still needed to improve Indigenous representation in cinema.“We’re telling these kinds of stories predominantly through a white colonizer lens is the main issue,” he said. “What I’ve been working on and what many Indigenous filmmakers have been working on is getting more stories told from an Indigenous perspective into the mainstream.”“The world,” he said, “is hungry for our stories.” More

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      ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ Review: A 150-Year Clash

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      In 1980, the Lakota were offered money for their stolen Black Hills land. They refused to accept the settlement and continue to fight today.Three years after the discovery of gold nuggets on Lakota land in 1874, the Black Hills Act stripped the tribe of most of the acreage in the Dakotas and northwestern Nebraska it had been ceded by treaty decades earlier, making way for droves of fortune-seekers. Ever since, the Lakota people have been fighting to regain that land, a plight recorded in a new documentary, “Lakota Nation vs. United States.”This stunning film, directed by Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli, interleaves interviews of Lakota activists and elders with striking images of the Black Hills and its wildlife, historical documents and news reports, clips from old movies and other archival footage to extraordinary effect, demonstrating not only the physical and cultural violence inflicted on the Lakota but also their deep connection to the Black Hills, the area where Mount Rushmore was erected. (One activist, Krystal Two Bulls, describes the monument as “the ultimate shrine to white supremacy.”) The film covers well known instances of erasure and oppression, such as colonization and Standing Rock, but also lesser known injustices, such as the fate of the Dakota 38, in which dozens of men were executed by the U.S. Army in 1862 for rising up against the government.In 1980, the Lakotas’ case was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted them remuneration for the lost land. But the Lakota people refused to accept the money and continue to do so, even as the settlement’s value has increased to more than $1 billion today. What they are fighting for is the land itself. Phyllis Young, one of the Lakota elders interviewed in the film, calls it their Mecca. “The land and the people,” she said, “are inextricably connected.Lakota Nation vs. United StatesRated PG-13 for violent images and thematic elements and strong language. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      Blackbraid, a Black Metal Musician With Native American Roots

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      Sgah’gahsowáh, the artist behind the one-man band, combines the genre’s traditional heavy sounds with a focus on nature. His new album, “Blackbraid II,” is out Friday.Black metal has long been associated with the gray skies, snowy landscapes and Norse mythology of Scandinavia. Most people know it, if at all, as the musical genre associated with church burnings and gory homicides in early 1990s Norway. (Those events were documented in the book “Lords of Chaos,” which was adapted into a 2019 feature starring Rory Culkin as the misanthropic, occultist musician Euronymous.)But black metal has expanded and diversified, so much so that the genre’s latest success story, the one-man band Blackbraid, hails from the Adirondacks and draws on its founder’s Native American roots rather than Vikings and medieval weapons.“I didn’t want to do something ingenuine or be some Indigenous guy who’s writing about Thor and Odin, stuff I have no personal connection to — I want to make a traditional-sounding black metal album, but write something that I can actually identify with,” Blackbraid’s creator, who goes by Sgah’gahsowáh (Mohawk for the witch hawk), said in a video conversation a couple of weeks before the release of his new album, “Blackbraid II,” on Friday.That record does sound fairly traditional, and relies on black metal’s classic building blocks: shrieked vocals, barrages of ferocious blast beats, guitars buzzing like angry bees.Yet there is also elbow room within those parameters, and on “Blackbraid II” you can hear a delicately strummed acoustic guitar here, a traditional flute there. Catchy riffs, most notably on the single “The Spirit Returns,” coexist with ambitious tracks like the 13-plus-minute “Moss Covered Bones on the Altar of the Moon,” which waxes and wanes like an epic saga.Pretty impressive for a one-man band: Sgah’gahsowáh (mononymic aliases are very black metal) composes the material and plays all the instruments except for the drums, which are programmed by his friend Neil Schneider. (Schneider also recorded, mixed and mastered the new album. Blackbraid expands to a five-piece live.)Sgah’gahsowáh grew up not too far from where he lives now, and started both playing guitar and listening to metal in the late 1990s and early 2000, when he was, as he put it, “barely in middle school.” He did not go for the styles that are popular in the United States, however, like thrash, which is exemplified by Metallica and Megadeth, or death, a brutal assault that came of age in Florida swamps.“A lot of black metal is just about being depressed or sadness, and a lot of it is based in the solitude and somberness of nature,” he said, adding that growing up in the woods “and also being a moody teenager,” that resonated for him. “And I just liked the music better,” he said.After a few fruitless efforts on his local scene, he created Blackbraid as a solo endeavor and released his first single, “Barefoot Ghost Dance on Blood Soaked Soil,” in February 2022. Fast-forward 18 months, and Sgah’gahsowáh, an album under his bullet belt and another about to come out, was speaking a few days after playing at the prestigious European festivals Hellfest and Copenhell. Next up is Midgardsblot, a fest held at a former Viking settlement in Norway in August.“I left my job last year, in April or May, so it’s just about a year of me doing Blackbraid for a career,” he said. (He worked as a carpenter.) “It’s kind of crazy.”Black metal’s longstanding interest in history, myths and paganism made it a good fit for Sgah’gahsowáh.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesNaturally, any rapid rise brings out the doubters, particularly in a genre as passionately niche as black metal, where ultra-limited releases are a badge of authenticity.“I read that someone thought he was an industry plant and I was like, ‘Dude, black metal isn’t even big enough to have industry,’” Schneider said, laughing, in a video chat. Blackbraid is not signed to a label and the music is self-released.While it is not remotely mainstream-adjacent, over the past two decades black metal has expanded in the U. S., where the domestic strain is referred to as USBM. Within that, a Native American scene has been percolating with such projects as the California label Night of the Palemoon and bands like Pan-Amerikan Native Front, Ends Embrace and Ixachitlan.“Black metal has definitely become much more diverse in the last 10, 15 years,” Daniel Lukes, co-editor of the recent collection “Black Metal Rainbows,” said in a video interview. “It has become a place where people feel comfortable expressing their identity, whether it’s gender identity or ethnicity. A band like Blackbraid is certainly part of this opening up. On the other hand,” he continued, “a relationship to ethnicity or Indigenous identity or tradition or heritage has been in black metal from the start.”Black metal’s longstanding interest in history, myths and paganism made it a good fit for Sgah’gahsowáh — who picked his stage name to honor the land where he lives rather than a specific ancestry, as he was adopted. (His friends call him Jon, but he is cagey about revealing his last name, allowing that it’s easy to find online; he also is discreet about his town’s location, to protect his family’s privacy.)“There are so many displaced Native Americans all over this continent and it’s a very common misconception that all of us grew up in a reservation and had access to tribal communities,” he said. “That’s kind of how I look at it with Blackbraid — I want to empower those people as well as all the people that are enrolled and living on reservations.”“Almost everything I write is a product of nature,” Sgah’gahsowáh said.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesSgah’gahsowáh also connects black metal with Indigenous traditions via his early use of the highly stylized black-and-white facial makeup known as corpse paint; his current look draws less from Scandinavian designs.“When you look at traditional war paint across the Americas, there’s no difference between that and corpse paint,” he said. “I’ve always thought of it as war paint for Blackbraid anyway. It’s so perfectly intertwined in the black metal aesthetic already.”One of the reasons Blackbraid’s audience is expanding is that he taps into a big source of inspiration for black metal that happens to be very much on many people’s minds: our connection with the natural world and our ecosystems.This has long been a part of the Northern European scene (cue countless songs about winter and videos of men traipsing through snowy vistas) and it has thrived within a segment of USBM, led by eco-minded bands like the precursor Agalloch, Wolves in the Throne Room and Panopticon. “Sacandaga,” from the first Blackbraid album, has lyrics like “The passage of time, it slows to a soft whisper/Like wind in the pines as the creek flows softly by,” and the accompanying video is filled with shots of majestic forests and mountains.“Almost everything I write is a product of nature,” said Sgah’gahsowáh, who describes himself as “a woodsman who likes fishing and stuff,” as well as an avid hiker. “I want to empower Indigenous people, that’s another huge thing, but when it comes down to it, it’s really about nature.”He added: “I want to take that relationship and somehow translate it into my music, let people feel that as well — especially people that may not really get to spend much time in nature, or live somewhere where it’s not as accessible. I really want that to shine through in my music the most.” More

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      ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Premieres at Cannes

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      Martin Scorsese directed this harrowing and deeply American true-crime drama set in the 1920s. Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone star. On Saturday, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Martin Scorsese’s harrowing epic about one of America’s favorite pastimes — mass murder — had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, screening out of competition. It’s Scorsese’s first movie at the event since his nightmarish screwball “After Hours” was presented in 1986, winning him best director. For this edition, he walked the red carpet with the two stars who have defined the contrasting halves of his career: Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio.Adapted from David Grann’s nonfiction best seller of the same title — the screenplay was written by Scorsese and Eric Roth — the movie recounts the murders of multiple oil-rich members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma during the 1920s. Grann’s book is subtitled “The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” while the movie primarily focuses on what was happening on the ground in Oklahoma. The name of the young bureau chief, J. Edgar Hoover, comes up but largely evokes the agency’s future, its authority, scandals and that time DiCaprio played a closeted leader in Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar” (2011).“Killers of the Flower Moon” is shocking, at times crushingly sorrowful, a true-crime mystery that in its bone-chilling details can make it feel closer to a horror movie. And while it focuses on a series of murders committed in the 1920s, Scorsese is, emphatically, also telling a larger story about power, Native Americans and the United States. A crucial part of that story took place in the 1870s, when the American government forced the Osage to leave Kansas and relocate in the Southwest. Another chapter was written several decades later when oil was discovered on Osage land in present-day Oklahoma.When DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart arrives by train at the Osage boomtown of Fairfax, oil derricks crowd the bright green plains as far as the eye can see. Still wearing his dun-colored doughboy uniform from the recently ended war, Ernest has come to live with his uncle, William Hale (Robert DeNiro), along with a clutch of other relatives, including his brother (Scott Shepherd). A cattleman with owlish glasses and a pinched smile, the real Hale had nurtured such close relations with the local Native American population that he was revered, Grann writes, “as King of the Osage Hills.”With crisp efficiency, soaring cameras and just enough history to ground the narrative, Scorsese plunges you right into the region’s tumult, which is abuzz with new money that some are spending and others are trying to steal. The Osage owned the mineral rights to their land, which had some of the largest oil deposits in the country, and they leased it to prospectors. In the early 20th century, Grann writes, every person on the tribal roll began receiving payouts. The Osage became fantastically wealthy, and in 1923, he adds, “the tribe took in more than $30 million, the equivalent today of more than $400 million.”“Killers of the Flower Moon” is organized around Ernest’s relationship with both Hale and a young Osage woman, Mollie (Lily Gladstone), whom he meets while taxiing townspeople around. Much like Fairfax, where luxury autos race down the dirt main road amid shrieking people and terrified horses, Ernest is soon hopped up, frenetic, all wild smiles and gushing enthusiasm. He keeps on jumping — it’s as if he’s gotten a contact high from the wealth — though his energy changes after he meets Mollie. They marry and have children, finding refuge with each other as the dead Osage start to pile up.Gladstone and DiCaprio fit persuasively even if their characters have contrasting vibes, temperaments and physicalities. When she’s out and about, this pacific, reserved woman turns her face into an impassive mask and wraps a long traditional blanket around her, effectively cocooning her body with it. With her beauty, stillness and sly Mona Lisa smile, Mollie exerts a great gravitational force on Ernest and the viewer alike; you’re both quickly smitten. DiCaprio will earn most of the attention, but without Gladstone, the movie wouldn’t have the same slow-building, soul-heavy emotional impact. Ernest is a fascinating, thorny character, especially in the age of Marvel Manichaeism, and he’s rived by contradictions that he scarcely seems aware of. DiCaprio’s performance is initially characterized by Ernest’s eagerness to please Hale — there’s comedy and pathos in his mugging and flop sweat — but grows quieter, more interior and delicately complex as the mystery deepens. It’s instructive that Ernest is frowning the first time you see him, an expression that takes on greater significance when you realize that DiCaprio is mirroring De Niro’s famed grimace, a choice that draws a visual line between the characters and the men who have been Scorsese’s twin cinematic lodestars.I’ll have more to say about “Killers of the Flower Moon” when it opens in American theaters on October. More

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      in Theater

      ‘Thanksgiving Play’ by Larissa FastHorse Comes to Broadway

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      As Larissa FastHorse worked with the Broadway cast of “The Thanksgiving Play,” which centers on four white people trying to put on a “culturally sensitive” holiday production, one of the actors, Katie Finneran, spoke up in a rehearsal with a suggestion: Perhaps she could drop a swear word during one of her more exasperated lines?“I’m the drama teacher!” Finneran’s character exclaims as her plan to make a socially progressive elementary school play begins to fall apart.FastHorse politely declined. From the work’s conception in 2015, she had intended it to be curse-free, in the hopes of finally having a widely produced play. Her other work — including the play “What Would Crazy Horse Do?” — involved Native American characters, leading producers to call them “uncastable.”So, FastHorse wrote one with white characters, while still focusing on contemporary Indigenous issues. If the play were littered with profanity, FastHorse decided, some theater producers or audiences might reject it.Larissa FastHorse instructs children dressed as turkeys on their choreography for the films, which were made at a school in Brooklyn. In the play, the films are shown between scenes.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“Being from the Midwest, there are people who won’t go to a play with swearing,” said FastHorse, who grew up in South Dakota. “And those are some of the people I want to reach.”Her gambit worked. After “The Thanksgiving Play” had its Off Broadway debut in 2018, it became one of the most produced plays in America, as it found homes at universities, community theaters and regional groups. In 2021, a streamed version starred Keanu Reeves, Bobby Cannavale, Alia Shawkat and Heidi Schreck as the quartet of bumbling thespians. FastHorse has even heard from people who have read the play aloud on Thanksgiving with their families, turning the activity into a yearly tradition.Now, “The Thanksgiving Play” has made it to Broadway, where it is in previews and is set to open on April 20 at the Helen Hayes Theater. This production, directed by Rachel Chavkin, includes a multimedia element not seen in the Off Broadway version: a series of filmed scenes, featuring children who act out cutesy Thanksgiving pageantry — think feathers and pilgrim attire — while also giving voice to some of the casual brutality with which white American culture has long portrayed Native Americans.In one of the films, older children dressed as pilgrims pretend to shoot down younger children dressed as turkeys. (Lux Haac designed the costumes.) The adults instructed the turkeys to “take a nap” when it was their turn to fall.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesFastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, will be among the first Native American artists to have their work on Broadway. It’s the kind of achievement that the theater world likes to applaud, while perhaps also cringing at the fact that it has taken this long.The play’s skewering of the performative progressivism of the white theater world adds another layer. Its central characters tie themselves in knots trying to stage a play for Native American Heritage Month without actually including any Native Americans. They fret over fulfilling the requirements of a grant, sweat over gender stereotypes, debate the merits of colorblind casting and employ terminology like “white allies” and “emotional space.” To make this production even more of the moment, FastHorse added an exchange about pronoun sharing and references to the “post-B.L.M.” world.“Even though it does openly poke fun at a lot of the folks that I work with who are more on the liberal side,” FastHorse said, “I was really trying to make it so everybody can kind of see each other.”The play’s avatar for the more conservative audience members is a newcomer named Alicia (played by D’Arcy Carden), a hired actress who is unfamiliar with the language of social progressivism.What distinguishes Alicia is a complete lack of concern about so-called political correctness. The others are eager to prove themselves as “enlightened white allies,” including the loudly vegan drama teacher (Finneran), her yoga-loving boyfriend (Scott Foley) and a know-it-all history teacher (Chris Sullivan) who likes to preface his insights with, “Actually …”Rachel Chavkin, the director of the Broadway production, with some of her young actors ahead of filming. Chavkin envisioned this video as embodying the “colonialist narrative” that many American students are taught.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesOn Broadway, as in many industries, the anxiety around screwing up was magnified three years ago, after the murder of George Floyd prompted a wider reflection on racism and inequity in myriad industries and fields. In the theater world, that re-evaluation led to the publication of “We See You, White American Theater,” a document calling for an elevation of works by playwrights of color and more people of color in leadership positions, among other demands.So when FastHorse asked Chavkin, the Tony-winning director of “Hadestown,” to oversee the Broadway run of “The Thanksgiving Play,” Chavkin first wanted to make sure that the playwright wouldn’t prefer a person of color to direct.FastHorse said she wanted someone on the creative team — otherwise made up of people of color — who understood what it was like to be a “well-meaning liberal white person.” In other words, someone who has felt the urge to say all the right things and appear as progressive as possible.“She said, ‘I need your expertise,’” Chavkin recalled.FASTHORSE, 51, has had a winding path to Broadway. She started out as a professional ballet dancer, before an injury led her toward film and television. After she became exhausted by that industry’s handling of Native American issues, she switched to theater, where she observed that people tended to be more open to doing the work necessary for sensitive and accurate portrayals, she said.Around the same time that she started writing “The Thanksgiving Play,” she co-founded a consulting firm called Indigenous Direction that began advising arts groups on Indigenous issues.From left, Henrik Carlson, Ruhaan Gokhale and Christopher Szabo prepare for their scene. The adults directing them explained that they were demonstrating the troubling way that Thanksgiving has been discussed in schools.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesAlong with Ty Defoe, an artist from the Oneida and Ojibwe Nations, FastHorse began working with an important company in Thanksgiving — Macy’s — on a question not unlike the one at the center of her play: How could they make it so the Thanksgiving Day Parade, a celebration of colonialism to many Native Americans, was not causing continued harm?Under FastHorse and Defoe’s counsel, the 2020 parade included a Wampanoag blessing and a land acknowledgment recognizing that Manhattan is part of Lenapehoking, or the land of the Lenape people. Last year’s parade added a float designed in consultation with Wampanoag artists and clan mothers.Macy’s also agreed to make a cosmetic — but, to the consultants, important — change: Tom Turkey lost his belt-buckle hat, and in its place appeared a top hat. He is no longer portrayed as a pilgrim, Defoe said, but a “show turkey.” A Macy’s spokeswoman said the change was part of their “re-evaluation of potentially upsetting symbolism.”On Broadway, it is perhaps unsurprising that the process of staging a play about white people discussing Native American representation can start to mimic the script itself.“We’ve had a lot of questions: a lot of questions about Larissa’s life experiences, a lot of questions about what she wants to accomplish,” said Sullivan, who portrays the history teacher. “I’m coming awake to all of the things I didn’t even realize I needed to be thinking about.”There tends to be some guilt, FastHorse said, in the rehearsal room over a lack of knowledge of the horrors perpetrated against Native Americans, including the Pequot Massacre in 1637, which figures prominently in the show.Though it is first and foremost a comedy, the play does not shy away from violent imagery and rhetoric, even when the actors involved are children.TO FILM THE VIDEOS, which are shown between the live scenes, Chavkin and FastHorse gathered two dozen children and teenagers in February inside the auditorium of the St. Francis de Sales School for the Deaf in Brooklyn. Some were dressed as flamboyant turkeys and others wore stereotypical pilgrim costumes, with belt-buckle hats and wooden guns.For the New York City-based elementary and middle school students dressed as pilgrims for the video, Thanksgiving pageants are an unfamiliar relic of history.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesThe vision, Chavkin said, was to chart the course of how young people are taught to understand Thanksgiving, from 5- and 6-year-olds singing a silly song involving pumpkin patches and teepees, to high schoolers discussing the 1997 police crackdown on a march of Native Americans in Plymouth, Mass.“You watch young people move through the educational system,” Chavkin said. “What we’re trying to do over the course of these four films is make that arc really palpable, starting with sort of obediently following a very nationalist, colonialist narrative.”In one scene, four Indigenous children, some flown in from across the country, perform a punk rock version of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” complete with a dummy of Theodore Roosevelt with a plastic saber stuck in him.Of course, if you’re asking 12-year-olds to sing part of “Ten Little Indians,” a 19th-century nursery rhyme that includes disturbing lyrics involving the death of Native Americans, you need to explain why.FastHorse told the children before filming that she had found these lyrics (including the couplet, “Two little Indians foolin’ with a gun …. One shot t’other and then there was one”) in a student activity posted online for teachers.“We want adults to be aware that this isn’t OK,” FastHorse told them. “The song actually exists and is still being put out into the world.”The young actors nodded that they understood. For them, as elementary and middle school students in New York City, Thanksgiving pageants are an unfamiliar relic of history. These days, they said, their teachers mostly avoid the subject. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Imagining the Indian’ Review: Fighting Offensive Imagery

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      This documentary, subtitled “The Fight Against Native American Mascoting,” argues that Native-themed sports team branding fits into a history of systemic racism.In July 2020, the National Football League team in Washington announced that it would shed a name that was long considered a slur against Indigenous people. The decision was a victory in the campaign by Native American activists to eliminate disparaging sports team names and iconography.“Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting,” a straightforward and often repetitive documentary, spotlights this movement by arguing a handful of key points: Native-themed mascots and branding are offensive. They fit into a national history of systemic racism. And the sustained use of stereotypical images has material consequences for Native people.To deconstruct these tenets, the directors Aviva Kempner and Ben West call on a raft of experts, historians and Native activists, including Suzan Shown Harjo, a trailblazer for the cause. The sources share their personal grievances and act as guides through the annals of racist American imagery, from “The Lone Ranger” and Bugs Bunny cartoons to footage of sports fans in headdresses. The effect is a frenzied slide show of sorts, set to galvanizing music that echoes the passion of the speakers.The marriage of talking heads and troubling material from the archives is a familiar documentary format, and “Imagining the Indian” rarely breaks free from the generic quality of its structure. The speakers introduce a few fresh ideas, such as the notion that football, in which teams use violence to compete for territory, mimics white land-grabbing. But in tuning the project to the key of advocacy, the directors have created a film to nod along with, not one that unpacks complexity.Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American MascotingNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Music

      An Oklahoma Town’s Rescue Plan Has a Big Name: Reba McEntire

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      The country-music star is trying to revive her childhood home in Oklahoma with a restaurant, concert stage and lots of Reba memorabilia.ATOKA, Okla. — Year after year, eight million vehicles drove through this sleepy town just off U.S. Highway 75, which stretches from Texas to Canada. Almost none of them stopped.Atoka had fallen on hard times: Residents had moved away, and downtown buildings were decaying. Carol Ervin, its economic development director, began to plot how the city might lure even a small fraction of those drive-by travelers to visit.In the past two months, half a million guests have come to this southeastern Oklahoma community of 3,000. The reason can be summed up in four letters: Reba.Reba McEntire, the country-music star, grew up in Atoka County, and in January, she made good on a pivotal investment here. In a once-dilapidated former Masonic temple, she opened a restaurant, Reba’s Place — a 50-50 partnership with the Choctaw Nation, whose reservation includes Atoka. Upstairs is a gift shop selling Reba shot glasses and her clothing line for Dillard’s. Front and center is a concert stage, where Ms. McEntire headlined the grand opening with a performance of her greatest hits.In coming years, if all goes according to plan, Atoka will get an airport, a small water park, an amphitheater and boutique hotels. Several manufacturing and green energy companies are already setting up headquarters here.No one was more skeptical than Ms. McEntire when Ms. Ervin and her team broached the idea of a restaurant as a means of reigniting the local economy.“I thought it was a pipe dream,” the singer said over the phone from her home in Nashville as she prepared to kick off her 2023 nationwide tour. Yet “you have got to dream big to make it big.”Ms. McEntire signed on to the project because she thought it would help spur Atoka’s struggling economy.Choctaw NationCall it a convenient convergence: a music superstar, a well-resourced tribal nation, a heavily trafficked highway and an ambitious local government. “I put my money in on them,” Ms. McEntire said, “and they made things happen that I never thought could have happened.”The project is not so far-fetched in Oklahoma, which has a number of other celebrity-fronted businesses. In Pawhuska, where the Osage Nation is headquartered, the Pioneer Woman Mercantile, a restaurant opened seven years ago by the Food Network star Ree Drummond, draws about 6,000 guests a day. The country singers Blake Shelton and Toby Keith own bars within a two-hour drive of Atoka.But Ms. McEntire, 67, is arguably a bigger attraction than the others, with a 47-year career and 24 No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. She has starred in films, Broadway musicals and several TV series, including her own hit sitcom, “Reba.”On a Saturday afternoon this month, that star power was on display in downtown Atoka. Crowds of McEntire fans — many of them dressed in glittery tops and tasseled jackets to mimic her signature style — lined up outside a stolid three-story brick building whose only trace of glitz was a tall red electric sign reading “Reba’s Place.” The wait time for a table was four hours.Inside was a shrine to the singer. Under a soaring ceiling, diners packed into booths made from old church pews and gazed at posters showcasing Ms. McEntire’s albums, movies and shows, which have traded on her friendly, just-plain-folks image.Dresses from Ms. McEntire’s most famous performances are on display in the restaurant.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesOn the third floor, guests can shop for all manner of Reba T-shirts.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesMemorabilia from Ms. McEntire’s concerts, movies and television shows cover the restaurant’s walls.Zerb Mellish for The New York Times“Reba is about faith, she is about family, she is about culture,” said Gary Batton, the chief of the Choctaw Nation, the third-largest tribe in the United States. He knew Ms. McEntire from her performances in Choctaw casinos, and jumped at the chance to partner with her again.Diners lucky enough to snag a table dug into slabs of chicken-fried steak slathered in a pleasantly sweet gravy, and pinto beans served with a towering wedge of cornbread — Southern foods that reflect Ms. McEntire’s life and career. They ogled the bedazzled red dress the singer wore on her 1995 tour, one of several outfits on display. Onstage, a local musician, Wyatt Justice, crooned country songs next to a wall-size American flag.“I saw the big sign and then kind of slowed down,” said Donita Clay, who had driven about 90 miles from Broken Bow, Okla. “I am a Reba fan. Who isn’t?”Down the street, Boggy Bottom Antiques & Collectibles was filled with customers browsing “Dolly/Reba 2024” T-shirts while they waited for a table. Tracy Jones, a co-owner, said sales had at least doubled in the last two months. At the Vault, a wine bar across the street from Reba’s Place, Saturday sales had quadrupled, said the owner, Janny Copeland.“We are getting a Starbucks,” she said. “I don’t care what anybody says, we wouldn’t get a Starbucks here if Reba’s wasn’t coming here.”Atoka wasn’t always a small town. In the 20th century, it was home to a booming coal-mining industry and a stop along the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway. In the 1970s, the furniture retailer Ethan Allen and the Wrangler jeans company opened factories in Atoka, but closed them in 2006. The city lost almost 600 jobs. Last October, according to census data, nearly one in five Atoka County residents lived in poverty.“A city is a living, breathing entity,” Ms. Ervin said. “It is either growing or it is dying. And we were dying.”She said she tried to persuade companies to set up shop in town, but they told her, “We need a place where our people will want to live, and that is not Atoka, Oklahoma.”A downtown street is named for Ms. McEntire, who grew up in Atoka County.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesSince opening in January, Reba’s Place has attracted 500,000 visitors.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesCarol Ervin, Atoka’s economic development director, saw Reba’s Place as the first step in an ambitious plan to redevelop the city. Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesAbout five years ago, Ms. Ervin and other city officials, including Mayor Brian Cathey, began working on a plan to revive downtown. Then the pandemic hit. Ms. McEntire moved home to take care of her mother, who was dying of cancer, and spent several months here in quarantine.The singer had a history of helping out locally. Starting in 1987, she staged several concerts in nearby Denison, Texas, to raise money for the Texoma Medical Center, whose rehabilitation clinic is known as Reba Rehab. Now she was looking for “a legacy project,” Ms. Ervin said.Presented with the proposal for Reba’s Place, Ms. McEntire agreed to put up half the money, and the Choctaw Nation provided the remainder. The total investment was “several million,” said Kurtess Mortensen, the restaurant’s chef and the Nation’s executive director of retail, brand and merchandising. Any profits will be split between the Nation and Ms. McEntire, but Mr. Mortensen said, “This is not going to be a big moneymaker.”Ms. Entire concurred. “I know it is a very tough industry.,” she said. “There is more to life than money.”The Choctaw Nation draws most of its revenue from its 22 casinos throughout Oklahoma, and plans to spend the earnings from Reba’s Place on health, education and housing initiatives for the reservation. In Atoka, the Nation has already established housing, a health clinic, a community center and opened franchises of chain restaurants, like Chili’s.At Reba’s Place, about half of the 134 employees are members of a federally recognized tribe. The restaurant also serves beef raised and slaughtered on the Choctaw Nation, and its gift shop will soon sell items made by tribal members. Mr. Batton, the chief, said he hopes to open more locations of Reba’s Place in other parts of the reservation.Gary Batton, the chief of the Choctaw Nation, said Reba’s Place is bringing jobs and revenue to the reservation, which includes Atoka.Choctaw NationThe city has also invested in the project. The Atoka City Industrial Development Authority bought the building for $200,000 in 2020, then turned it over to the restaurant in return for an equal value in payments and services. Reba’s Place also receives rebates on a portion of city sales tax. (Ms. McEntire provided the restaurant with her money, name and memorabilia, but is not involved in daily operations.)Mr. Mortensen, the chef of Reba’s Place, is no stranger to bringing a big-time restaurant to a small town. He ran the Pioneer Woman Mercantile for five years.With the Mercantile, he said, “we were creating Disneyland, Main Street U.S.A.” But many Pawhuskans were unhappy with the sudden surge in traffic. In Atoka, Mr. Mortensen has held several community meetings to allow residents to voice concerns.“I have been yelled at and thanked and everything in between,” he said.One of the restaurant’s signature dishes is chicken-fried steak, a favorite of Ms. McEntire.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesThe charcuterie comes with country ham and boiled peanut hummus, and is served on a board shaped like Oklahoma.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesThe cooks at Reba’s Place make well above the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesMany people worried that there wouldn’t be enough parking. But others were excited by the prospect of jobs that paid more than the state and federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 an hour. At Reba’s Place, servers start at $8 an hour, cooks start at $14 and every full-time employee is eligible for health benefits.Before she was hired as a server at Reba’s Place, Christy Pittman ran a spa that she had to shut down when the pandemic started.“I went to college, I had the degrees, I had everything I needed,” she said. But in Atoka, “there just wasn’t enough quality jobs.” She now makes enough to get her nails done.Wyatt Delay, who works in the gift shop, said he was amazed by how many people had traveled from outside the state to visit. “We have had somebody from the Virgin Islands, New York, Michigan, Oregon, Washington State.”Holly Gleason, a music critic in Nashville, said she wasn’t surprised, as Ms. McEntire has one of the widest audiences of any country star. “Everybody agrees on Reba: Black, white, Native American, Asian, L.G.B.T.Q., Bible-thumping Christians,” she said.And while other country musicians have collaborated with national corporations to open their establishments, Ms. McEntire chose a local partner in the Choctaw Nation. “She is really making it a tried-and-true, this-is-who-we-are experience,” Ms. Gleason said.Still, several locals said they can’t afford to eat at Reba’s Place. “Unless there were more cheaper prices for us common folk, I won’t be going over there,” said Ruby Bolding, a retired artist. She was eating dinner at Cazadorez, a Mexican restaurant where steak fajitas cost $12.99. At Reba’s Place, the chicken-fried steak is $27.“But that doesn’t mean I am not glad it is here,” she added, “because it does bring in a lot of people. I love Reba, and I so relate to her.”The illuminated sign for Reba’s Place is visible from U.S. Highway 75. Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesMax Lane, a retired teacher who was attending service at Cornerstone Church — where Ms. McEntire’s brother-in-law Mark Eaton is the pastor — said a “fancy” spot like Reba’s Place didn’t attract him. “I would rather go to the Dairy Queen.”Ms. McEntire defended the restaurant’s prices. “It is not quick, out of a bag, throw it in a microwave — it is quality, handmade food,” she said.Plenty of others agree. In February, Reba’s Place made about $130,000 a week in revenue, and since the restaurant started taking reservations in early March, “people have been calling pretty constantly,” Mr. Mortensen said. This month, a speakeasy will open on the third floor.Could Reba’s Place grow to become the next Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s Tennessee amusement park? “I don’t know if I could ever touch that,” Ms. McEntire said.Ms. Ervin, who helped hatch the project, is more optimistic. “I think Reba’s could be bigger than Pawhuska or Tishimingo,” she said, referring to Ms. Drummond’s and Mr. Shelton’s businesses. With the highway running through it, Atoka already has more drive-by traffic than those towns.And most important, she said, it has Reba.Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More