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• 1 2019-10-23T18:23:51-04:00 "Black Indians of New Orleans" 19 image_header 2020-03-17T21:30:42-04:00

  In this short documentary, James E. Hinton brings life to an educational film by letting a world of dance, color, rhythm, and music speak for itself. The thirty-three minute film provides a very brief historical account of the incarnation of the mixed race (Black-Native) communities in the rural land surrounding New Orleans, Louisiana. Eventually, the voice of narration fades away and is replaced by the voices of chants, songs, and Mardi Gras crowds, which lead us throughout the rest of the visual spectacles.

  The Yatasi, Appaloosa, Chawasha, and Seminole Native American tribes — to name a few — that resided in the Southeastern regions of America became a place of refuge for slaves fleeing French settlements throughout the late 17th and 18th centuries. The descendants of the multiracial relations in these communities lived within identities that were shaped and scorched by the oppressive treatment of both Black and Native peoples throughout the following centuries; as a result, the importance of pride in this unique, Native cultural expression became even more critical for survival in a psychological and communal sense.

  Through the desaturated color of 16mm, Hinton brings his viewers into the world of the Yellow Pocahontas and the White Eagle tribes — two of the few Black Indian (also known as Black Masking Indian) communities still located in the outskirts of New Orleans — during the weeks leading up to the Mardi Gras in February of 1975. 

  “Live out the day…Live out the way..."

  These echoing calls, accompanied by the beating of the tambourine, flow through the heart of the film as the men of the tribes morph out of their everyday attire and into the ostentatious and unforgettable costumes of the Mardi Gras celebration.

  Hinton focuses the first half of the film around the hot, sweaty clusters and rhythms of the neighborhood tribal practices: evenings of dance, song, and celebrations of life, which are led by the men in the tribes and extend from the sentiments of Native prayer songs and ceremonies.

  The second half of the film centers itself on the recollections of Chief Tootsie Montana of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe and  Big Chief, B. Kate, of the Creole Wild West tribe. The families of these chiefs spend the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras sewing feathers, sequins, and beads onto elaborate costumes that will eventually weigh between 60 and 100 pounds and be worn for a single day before only to be destroyed. 
  
  It is precisely the extravagance of the costumes and the painted red of the Chiefs’ masks which transform them from Black men into warring leaders. The hierarchies of the tribes and the authoritative demonstrations highlight the brute masculine energy that grounds the tradition of masking not only in pride but in violence. 

  While the film illustrates the importance of voice and visibility within marginalized communities working their way out of the margins and into larger social conversations, it also portrays how violence can turn natural fierceness and beauty into feigned expressions of power

  The Black community — when committed to the strength of their unique peoples and traditions — is in the position to uplift and empower their voices through demonstrations of abiding cultural tradition. Many of these powerful Black Indian traditions reflect a sense of radicalism in how they break the status quo; however, they simultaneously reflect the aspects of Black Radicalism that are founded in a hierarchy of celebrity and brute masculinity. 

  As is reflected in the submissions of Eldridge Cleaver and George Jackson made throughout their respective letters from prison, many male thinkers within the Black radical movement held onto the belief that the path towards liberation is led by the heterosexual male figure, who was to be supported by his Black woman and defend his people against violence with violence. 

  The theory that violence is necessary in the liberation of a peoples extends further back to the philosophy of Richard Wright and Frantz Fanon; furthermore, Hinton’s explicit depiction of violence within the film, reemphasizes that these ideas carry on throughout generations as men attach their sense of identity to their ability to display brute force and hierarchical power. 

  These practices within the masking tradition perpetuate aspects of sexism and cyclical tyranny which female radicals such as Michele Wallace warn against. Peering deeper into the metaphor of the colorful, lavish mask, one might infer how the act of veiling — transforming into another being — is mimetic of usurping and appropriating the power and force of the oppressor. This threat is suggested by Wallace in Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (1979) as well as James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time (1963), for both thinkers warn against the danger of rebuilding a society in which the Black man is not free but rather commandeering the same tyranny — the mask — of the white man.

  As the bright feathers and the piercing drum beats fade into the last seconds of the film, the voice of our narrator returns, his haunting words reminding us of the cyclical nature of all practices:

  “Carnival day is coming to an end, but there is no end…”

  These words linger as two young children appear on the screen. Each is dressed in the awe inspiring feathers and robes of their respective Chiefs. They battle in dance, asserting their strength, searching for fear and cowardice in the other — each child to one day bear a mask of their own, committed already to their fate.