# Naturally Native (1998)

### reviewed by
JONATHAN RICHARDS

    IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards

    NATURALLY NATIVE

Directed by Jennifer Wynne Farmer and Valerie Red-Horse

    Screenplay by Valerie Red-Horse

    Grand Illusion     PG-13     108 min.

Naturally Native, the first movie by, about, and starring Native American women, is at its core a story of identity crisis. In its specifics it's about Indian issues, but part of the irresistibility of this maiden effort from co-directors Jennifer Wynne Farmer and Valerie Red-Horse (from a screenplay by Red-Horse) is the breadth of its appeal.

Three young sisters of the California Viejas tribe are adopted by a white woman when their alcoholic mother dies giving birth to the youngest. They grow up in a Presbyterian Anglo world. Vickie (Valerie Red-Horse) is the eldest, and the only one with memories of life on the reservation. She's now 33, with a loving husband (Pato Hoffman), and two kids, living in the pleasant San Fernando Valley suburban house where she and her sisters were raised. Karen (Kimberly Norris Guerrero), the middle sister, has just finished business school, and is living there too while she contemplates a job offer in Chicago. The youngest, Tanya (Irene Bedard), has also moved home to regroup after a failed stab at show business.

Vickie, the only one to have returned to the reservation and talked to their father before he died, has herbal lore that she learned from him. She has recipes for everything from burn cream to shampoo, and the sisters hit on the idea of marketing these products. Armed with Karen's solid business plan, they go looking for a small business loan to get started. But everywhere they turn they're rebuffed - for not being Indian enough, for being too Indian, for being the wrong kind of Indian, or for variations on those themes. The most entertaining of these scenes (and they're all good) involves Mary Kay Place as a spiritualist trading on the vogue in Native American ways.

The movie deals with a range of Indian issues, from alcohol intolerance to casinos to ethnic identity. But it seldom beats us over the head. The filmmakers, not always able to avoid moments of exposition and didacticism, have the grace and skill to skip right by them, recovering with such charm and sincerity that we forgive the moments as soon as they're past.

At the center of this movie, in virtually every respect, is the wonderful Valerie Red-Horse, who wrote and co-directed, and who anchors the story with her intelligently appealing and layered performance as the feisty, indomitable, and sometimes insecure suburban housewife. Guerrero is also excellent as the sweet-tempered business whiz, and although Bedard's flibbertigibbet is annoying in places, she redeems the character as the story progresses. Pato adds a strong anchor as Vickie's husband.

The sisters are genetically Native American, spiritually Christian, culturally Anglo, a mini-lost tribe within a society that sometimes embraces them, sometimes rejects them, and sometimes victimizes them. But significantly, they're strong individuals who take responsibility for themselves. Farmer and Red-Horse have a lot to say about identity and feminism, but they're secure enough to have fun with it, even reaching into the Victoria's Secret catalogue for some playful image-tweaking. They've made an issue movie that is thoughtful without being preachy, confrontational without being angry, a movie that's funny, romantic, inclusive, and downright satisfying.

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