Shirley Sneve - Blog

Transcript of conversation with Shirley Sneve

Shirley Sneve: It's really hard for Native filmmakers to tell stories about their own people, because it's like this-- there is still this-- especially in the Southwest, I've been noticing more and more in my travels and as my relationships with tribes, tribal producers get deeper-- is that there's  a lot of stuff that we don't want to share with the world.  And so to walk that fine line between telling Native stories that we can and should share with the world and then keeping those things, those spiritual things-- ceremonies and cultural knowledge-- sacred to the communities, that's really a fine line.  And so there's also that accountability too.  If you're telling a story about your people, it dang well better be the truth.  So there's that high level of accountability there, and I see many of our producers fulfilling that and living that.  And I want to say something else along those lines, and that is the fact that so-- myself, my family, my brothers, my sisters, my kids-- are so concerned about our language-- Lakota language, in my case-- that we continue to use our Native languages as much as we can in today's society. So that reclamation, or revitalization, of Native languages is very important to tribal people, because so much of our cultural knowledge and our ties to the earth are reflected through our Native languages.  It's very important, and I also think that's important for non-Indian people who now live in our traditional lands to realize and to know.