Here are some quotes from the movie, just off the top of my head: "We're more like Tonto and Tonto," "Where's my favorite little Indian,""We're Indians, we're supposed to Barter,""What kind of Indian are you," etc. Now I have never even been to a reservation, so I have no idea if that is what real "Indians" talk about, but in the film I believe it served the purpose of illustrating how even today there is such a rift between Native Americans and the United States Government, and even between Native Americans and the rest of the population of the United States! I believe this rift is also shown through the way white people are portrayed in the movie. All of Victor and Thomas's encounters with white people ended with them being lied to, framed, cheated or gawked at, except at the very end when a kind white woman told the truth to the police after a traffic accident to keep Thomas and Victor from getting into trouble. First, let's take a look at the driver of the bus that takes our two heroes to Phoenix. As soon as they step on the bus, the driver drops his jaw at the boys, staring at them even as they pass him to sit down, as though it were so rare to see two Native American boys, and on the border of a reservation of all places! This is the first white man encountered in the movie, and he seems to be just as stupid and ignorant as they come.
The second white person we meet is a woman who looks like she's nearly in her 30's who swears that she was an alternate gymnast on the 1980 U.S. Olympic team. She proves this by doing all kinds of complex stretches and twists while talking to Thomas on the bus. When Victor points out that if she was such a big-shot gymnast she wouldn't be riding a bus, Thomas realizes that this woman has been stretching the truth to him and he's been sitting there gullibly believing her. So the second white person we meet is a liar! The third and fourth white people steal Thomas and Victor's seats on the bus after a rest stop. Thomas tries to be polite but they don't budge. Victor tries his "warrior face," and the men told him to go "have a powwow somewhere else". Just our luck, the third and fourth white people we've met have been racists and, judging by their clothes (the best way to judge Ôem in movies!) they're also rednecks! We're 0 for 4 so far, it's not looking good for "Indian" relationships with white people!
The next time Victor and Thomas come face to face with a white person is near the end of the movie. Victor is yelling at Thomas and not watching the road and he bangs into a car that is stopped in the middle of the road. It seems that both drivers are at fault, but the white man who was driving the car picked a fight with Victor and said that Victor had tried to kill him, said Victor was drunk, and later told police that the entire accident was Victor's fault. Luckily. this is when we meet our sixth white person, the angry man's wife, who tells the police that Victor wasn't drunk. The police believe her and the sheriff even gives Victor a ride to his truck which is at a mechanic.
As you can see, only 7 white people are really highlighted in this movie, and only 2 of the 7 (the angry man's wife and the sheriff) weren't total asses. This goes to show, especially in the case of the white woman tricking Victor and Thomas, that when white people and Native people mix, trouble arises. The animosity between "Indians" and white people is shown in a flashback scene, where Victor's dad is drunk and talking to a 10-or-so-year-old Victor, and saying how if he could, he would make "all the white people disappear and go back to where they came from... England, France, Russia...".
To sum up what I've been trying to get across so far, it seems as though the director of this film, Chris Eyre, was trying to show that no matter how much time goes by, "Indians" are never going to forgive white people for their past transgressions (there are nearly as many General Custer references scattered throughout the movie as there are "we're Indians" references), and that they will never conform to the general way of life that most of us are living outside of the reservation. How can "Indians" and white people ever get along if only 28% (I got this figure by dividing 2/7) of their interactions aren't marked by deceit or ignorance on the part of the whites?
Aside from this depressing undertone though, the real theme of the movie was of forgiveness, more specifically forgiving your parents if they screwed up on you when you were little, and I found that to be much more uplifting.
I believe that this piece would fit under the "Inquiry and Critical Thinking" category becuase I really had to question a lot of the things that were said and done in the film, as well as try to anylize those things without straying too far from the directors intent in my speculation. I had to stop many times in the writing of this essay, and just think about the argument that I was trying to make, trying to put it into words and rationalize it so it was valid.
People interested in reading this essay would include people who have already seen Smoke Signals, but are curious on other people's takes on it. Also, people who are interested in Native American relationships with the rest of the country might be interested to see what kind of stance this film takes on those issues. I know that I would be interested in having the director of the movie read my essay, because I'd like to know if I am completely off the mark in my arguments.
If I had the opportunity to rewrite this piece I would take out or shorten a few examples of Victor and Thomas's interactions with white people and use the space to talk about other relationships in the movie, like the one with Thomas and his grandmother, or of Victor with his mother. I'd also anylize the fire that killed Thomas's parents because I'm sure that has to mean something.