The “genocide” of indigenous peoples “continues” in the United States, accuses the new indigenous film star Lily Gladstone, in a fiction film that borders on a documentary on the disappearance of a woman from a tribe in Oklahoma.
Having become world famous in 2023 for her role, which earned her an Oscar nomination, in “Killers of the Flower Moon” by Martin Scorsese, Lily Gladstone is the centerpiece of “Fancy Dance” presented last year at the Festival du independent film from Sundance, but only released Friday in a few American theaters.
Screened in preview this week in New York — where AFP met the team of indigenous director Erica Tremblay — the film will be on Apple TV+ from June 28.
For Lily Gladstone, the strength of this fiction which has everything of a documentary – written, directed, produced, performed almost exclusively by indigenous women – is to “reflect our needs as indigenous women, particularly in the face of epidemics of disappearances and murders of indigenous people.
For the 37-year-old actress from the Blackfeet reservation in Montana (northwest), these never-solved disappearances and homicides are nothing less than the “genocide” of indigenous peoples which “continues” in the United States since the arrival of the first European settlers in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Alone and poor woman
In “Fancy Dance,” which she also produced, Lily Gladstone plays Jax, a single and poor woman, a member of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation in Oklahoma (south) – one of the descendant tribes of the Iroquois peoples – and whose sister has disappeared.
Faced with the indifference of the federal police (FBI), and the lack of investigative means from her reserve police officer brother (played by Ryan Begay), Jax sets out in search of her sister, helped by her younger brother. niece (Isabel Deroy-Olson) who hopes to reunite with her mother for a big powwow, a traditional gathering of the First Nations.
In the state of Oregon (northwest), these cases of disappearances of indigenous women were elevated to “emergency” status in an official report in 2019.
But more than four years later, progress in the investigations remains “limited”, denounced last week the American investigative magazine InvestigateWest.
American federal and regional authorities have become aware over the last ten years of the disproportionate number of disappearances and murders of indigenous people, particularly women, underlines this investigative media based in Seattle, in the state of Washington in the north. west.
Using official estimates, InvestigateWest suggests that across the country, “thousands” of cases of missing or killed indigenous people remain unsolved.
And for women aged 1 to 45, homicide is one of the leading causes of death.
Homicides of indigenous women
Documentary director Erica Tremblay, 44, a member of the Seneca-Cayuga nation and whose “Fancy Dance” is her first fiction, is also alarmed by the fact that “the United States is currently experiencing an epidemic of disappearances and assassinations of indigenous people.
“A genocide only stops if it achieves its objective or if we put an end to it,” she analyzes.
Erica Tremblay also denounces a “genocide still underway in America today [mais dont] we don’t talk”, particularly because of the “jurisdictional” incapacity of indigenous nations to “pursue these crimes”.
And, Lily Gladstone proclaims, “the situation will not improve until these jurisdictional gaps are filled, sovereignty is restored and indigenous peoples are not in a position […] to resume [leurs] land”.
The young actress Isabel Deroy-Olson is delighted with “what “Fancy Dance” does so well: telling such a real story.”
“It’s a work of fiction but it’s so true for our communities here in North America,” she whispers, smiling.
