Shefveland's larger research project examines the relationship between Native peoples and the colonial government of Virginia during the "tributary period," when Anglo-Virginians converted thousands of Indians either into tribute-paying subordinates or chattel slaves. One of the bright young scholars researching Indian slavery, Kristalyn Shefveland, spoke last week at my university on the interrelationship between indigenous slavery and gender politics during Bacon's Rebellion.* Prof. Knowledge of Indian slavery has even begun to spread into the mainstream Slate Magazine recently ran a cover story on the Indian slave trade and on Indians' enslavement of African-Americans. In the decade since then, studies of indigenous enslavement in North America have multiplied, as many innovative ethnohistorians turned their attention to a once-unknown institution. The publication in 2002 of James Brooks's Captives and Cousins and Alan Gallay's The Indian Slave Trade brought the bare fact and some of the dynamics of Indian slavery to the attention of scholars for the first time. Ticket information: quite recently, few modern Americans, even historians, knew that many thousands, if not millions, of Native North Americans once lived and died in slavery. 14, 1:15 p.m., Rafael Film Center and Oct. 6-16), at the CinéArts Sequoia Theatre in Mill Valley, Oct. “Town Destroyer,” a documentary by Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow, will have its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival (Oct. I can’t really imagine doing a film alone. The Berkeley residents, who Kaufman jokingly described as a “corporate merger,” don’t so much finish each other’s sentences as converse as a tag team, much like the way they collaborate on filmmaking, as with their other feature-length documentaries, “Blacks and Jews” (1997), “Secrets of Silicon Valley” (2001), “Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water” (2004) and “Company Town” (2016). It took 17 years of working together and being together before they got married.ĭirectors Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow with cinematographer Vicente Franco at George Washington High School. San Francisco native Kaufman, who grew up in the Sunset District and graduated from Lowell High School, was the director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) before she started making films with Snitow, who was a broadcast journalist at KTVU-TV and KPFA radio. Kelley, professor of History at UCLA, summed up the film’s ambiguous point of view. One of the experts interviewed in the film, Robin D.G. You want people to walk out of the theater asking questions.” “We did not intend to make an advocacy film, and it was the right decision. “I became more sympathetic to everybody,” Kaufman added. The idea is to really try to listen to people, even if they are extremely angry.” “We weren’t interested in making a film that was about taking one side or a position. “Our views kept changing as we learned and went through the process,” Snitow said. Ultimately, the board reversed its earlier decisions and are letting the murals stay – for now. Some time later, they compromised to have them covered, rather than destroying the art, because many in the community, including Native artists, made a strong case for preserving history and not censoring art. Initially, the board voted to paint over the murals. Snitow and Kaufman captured the heated arguments and tearful pleas of parents who believe the students were being traumatized by the imagery. The film opens with one of three 2019 school board meetings focusing on the issue of what to do with the murals. The visual may be too real and graphic for some viewers. The most incendiary image shows a life-size dead Indian, face-down on the ground, being ignored by the armed white men in the painting. He became known among Native leaders as the “Town Destroyer” after he directed the bloody seizure of Native lands. But he was also a slave owner and land speculator. president and the country’s military leader. The 13 panels, painted on the walls in the hallways of George Washington High School in 1936 during the Great Depression by politically leftwing immigrant artist Victor Arnautoff (who was influenced by muralist Diego Rivera), are polarizing, particularly in this city and in the current political climate because they depict Washington’s life in its flawed entirety. The film will have its world premier at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October. Alan Snitow (left) and Deborah Kaufman produced a film exploring the controversy over the “Life of Washington” murals on the walls of George Washington High School in the Richmond District.
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