About "Skins"

One thing you have to remember is that you can't judge history by today's standards. Was it right, hell no, but we can't change that now.

Also as disgraceful as it is place such a monument on a people's sacred place many people don't think about native people's history when they see the monument. I see it as a big FU by the artist and the government, it seems like it was created as a reminder of who won the "pissing" contest for contested lands.

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I want to amend your message - Skins is an excellent film. It's an extraordinarily realistic "fictionalozed" film about modern-day [Pine Ridge] Reservation life.

The real-life local documentary footage interwoven throughout the film should be a kung pow power punch to all viewers.

Graham Greene was brilliant (per usual), and while many scenes did contain average acting, many other scenes contained above-average acting: the camera sweeping through the dilapidated vistas of Pine Ridge Reservation was a force unto itself, Ruby [Eric Schweig] breaking up the fight between the two teenage Natives, Gary Farmer trying to steal the purse during the football game, the bear trap scene, Herbie [Noah Watts] reminding Mogie [Graham Greene] about his birthday, Mogie - hospitalized for the last time - telling Rudy goodbye when Rudy left to purchase Mogie a few things (Mogie knew he was about to die, and Schweig played it as if Rudy knew he was seeing Mogie for the last time), Rudy talking to the liquor store cashier after the store is newly-renovated/rebuilt [two drive through windows....], and Rudy buying the red paint.

Skins should be required viewing, and not just because it illuminates the continued devastation of the Native American culture and people and landscape, but because their plight resonates with and strongly emphasizes the self-centered complacent narcissistic industrialized materialistic who-cares-about-tradition-culture-roots plight of the United States/Canada/Mexico/Latin-South America in general.

Not only are some of the world's most ancient founding cultures being passively genocided by alcoholism and gambling and political exploitation and political backlash against Indian legal/political successes and cultural marginalization and cultural alienation and cultural assimilation and cultural extermination and continued land theft and intentional poverty and intentional illiteracy and intentional unemployment and intentional lack of health care and intentional historical revisionism, but the essence of the Americas, her landscape, her spirit, and all the people living on her land, are being passively genocided by the same exact elements (and more: keep them doped with religion and sex and tv...), and that extends beyond the borders of the Americas to Europe and Scandinavia and Africa and Asia and beyond.

Modern-day life at Pine Ridge resembles modern-day life throughout most developed regions of Africa and the Middle East, and many regions of the US and Europe, and will eventually become the future of the world unless more of us step up and help - whenever we can and as much as we can - humanitarian/charity/NGO programmes that directly tackle these problems.

Also exemplary about the film was the emphasis on how the earth - the stones, animals, water - is alive, and how all of us need a stone, an animal spirit, any earth-source of power we can channel into. We've all forgotten how natural entities - stones, wind, rock, water, plants, sun, pollen, dawn, hills, myths, dreams etc - have the same consciousness as we human beings enjoy and they breath life into us and clear our vision and guide us (not football or alcohol or money). We've all lost our vision, our morality, our bond with existence, our way...

This is a quote from the film Khadak, about the destruction of native Mongolian culture, which applies to Skins as well:

A girl awaits the death of her mother.
A man awaits the death of his son.
A brother awaits the death of his brother.
Something is wrong here.
A poet awaits the death of his horse.
A woman awaits the death of her soul.
A child awaits the death of tomorrow.
Something is wrong here!
A river awaits the death of its waters.
A sky awaits the death of dawn.
Something is wrong here!