<+>=<+>KOLA Newslist<+>=<+>
 

[forwarded by Pat Morris. Thanks...]

Fri, 28 Jan 2000
http://www.seattletimes.com/news/entertainment/html98/heal_20000128.html

Movies

Silent film about a tribe's healing powers works a cyclical miracle of its own

by Mark Caro
Chicago Tribune

PARK CITY, Utah - Members of the Cly family have been in
movies for longer than just about anyone else at this year's
Sundance Film Festival, though they never actually saw
themselves on screen until a couple of years ago.

That was when Chicago filmmaker Jeff Spitz, 41, and Barrington,
Ill., builder William Kennedy, 58, traveled to Monument Valley,
Ariz., to unlock the secrets of a silent film called "Navajo Boy"
that Kennedy's late father, Robert, had made in the early 1950s.
The 28-minute film, which portrayed the tribe's healing powers
and was narrated at each screening by the filmmaker himself,
featured unidentified members of a Navajo family.

Robert Kennedy died in 1980 before his son could get him to
record his live narration, and William Kennedy never stopped
wondering who these people were and what exactly they were
demonstrating on film. So he called Spitz in 1997, and they set out
with a small film crew to locate the Navajos.

Little did they know that their work would result in the Cly
family's reunion with a brother, John Wayne Cly, whom
missionaries had taken away at the age of 1. Or that their research
would touch on uranium poisoning, which killed John Wayne's
mother. Or that because the Clys were among the few Navajos
willing to pose for pictures and to be filmed, they became
probably the most photographed Indians of the region, appearing
on countless postcards and in travel brochures, tourist photos,
industrial films and Hollywood movies such as John Ford's "The
Searchers."

Especially unlikely was the prospect that the Cly family, many of
whom still live in Monument Valley without phones, would be
taking a trip to a place where cellular phones are considered
mandatory accessories: the ski resort town of Park City for the
Sundance Film Festival. Spitz's documentary "The Return of
Navajo Boy" is screening in the Native Forum section. The
documentary debuted Sunday with a showing for the family,
filmmakers and festival guests at the Sundance Institute, Robert
Redford's idyllic resort and film center about 40 miles from Park
City.

"It's great," John Wayne Cly said of seeing his family's story told
to an audience. "It was really heart-filling to see everybody there.
I had people come up to me and congratulate me and tell me the
film was great, so it really made me feel good."

On Monday morning about 20 members of the Cly family -
covering three generations - plus Spitz and Kennedy and
members of their families gathered in a Park City diner for a final
time together before most of the Navajos returned to their
Arizona and New Mexico homes. A sister and brother, ages 15
and 11, acted as junior documentarians, aiming Spitz's
camcorders at anything that moved.

Older family members, including Elsie Mae (Cly) Begay, Bernie
Cly and their long-lost brother John Wayne Cly, now 45, enjoyed
what amounted to a second family reunion, the first having
occurred two years earlier when the youngest brother
reappeared.

"I'm happy that I got this opportunity to get together with my
family to watch the film for this occasion," Elsie Mae Begay said
through an interpreter, the film's co-producer, Bennie Klain. "I'm
thankful to everyone who was involved in the production because
really that's what triggered the return of my little brother, and it all
started with Bill Kennedy, when he showed up with the old film."

Kennedy and Spitz were able to track down the Cly family after
showing "Navajo Boy" stills to various people in the Monument
Valley area.

"When I first came to Monument Valley and met the Native
Americans who were in the movie, I was very taken aback by the
fact that they were so warm and so open to me and so willing to
share with us, though a little bit fearful of what another white man
was going to do to them," Kennedy said. "But once they
understood that I had no malice and what I wanted to do was
know about my father and this movie he did, they were very
helpful."

Here's the story: In the 1920s a man named Harry Goulding
moved to Monument Valley, opened a trading post and became
the region's biggest booster. Among those he encouraged to visit
were filmmakers such as Ford, who shot "Stagecoach" there in
1938.

Goulding befriended Willie and Happy Cly, the grandparents of
Elsie May, Bernie and John Wayne, and they agreed to pose for
pictures. Not only did family members appear in various
photographs and as movie extras, but in the early 1950s an
energy company shot an industrial film called "A Navajo Journey"
that promoted uranium mining on the reservation. Happy and
Willie Cly starred as quaint, contented Navajos.

A few years later Elsie Zina, their daughter, died from a
respiratory ailment that became common among Navajos who
worked in the uranium mines. Her illness was cited as the reason
that missionaries were able to take young John Wayne Cly and
raise him until the age of 18 in New Mexico.

"Navajo Boy," the elder Kennedy's film, was an attempt to offer a
rare look at the healing rituals of the Navajos. Jimmy Cly, a cousin
of the three siblings who didn't make the trip to Sundance, stars as
a boy who, after his family becomes sick, rides a donkey to fetch
the medicine man, who provides the appropriate treatment.

William Kennedy said his father, a young filmmaker who
eventually settled in suburban Chicago to become a builder, used
to travel around the country showing the film to various
organizations, and it even aired on television once in the
mid-1950s.

The Clys never saw "Navajo Boy" until Spitz and Kennedy
arrived in Monument Valley.

"When I saw myself as a young girl in the old film, I felt like I was
young and vibrant all over again," Elsie Mae Begay said. "Seeing
the old film helped me to remember things that I otherwise would
have trouble remembering, things that happened when I was a
little girl. I also liked it because I saw other family members, other
relatives. It helped me to remember my family members from a
long time ago, and it sort of brought them back to life for me."

A newspaper wrote a story about Spitz's documentary in
progress, and John Wayne Cly, who was living in New Mexico,
read it. His tearful reunion with his family is captured in the film,
which Spitz said is tentatively slated to air on PBS in November.

How fitting then that the family was reunited again at Sundance. A
movie brought the Clys together, yet photographic and filmed
images also played a role in tearing them apart.

"I don't think John Wayne the actor would have been in
Monument Valley without pictures attracting his crew and John
Ford and all the productions that came through there," Spitz said.
"It was photography that drew people into Monument Valley. The
missionaries who came to find a baby who they could give a
better life were charmed about the idea of taking a baby named
John Wayne.

"So you had pictures that had been used by outsiders to define
that area. And John Wayne Cly comes back into the fold through
pictures. I can't begin to pull apart all of those layers of meaning.
All I can say is that it's a miracle that I was fortunate enough to be
part of the process that brought him back and not part of the
process that pulled him away."

---
Copyright © 2000 The Seattle Times Company

<+>=<+>
KOLA Information: http://users.skynet.be/kola/index.htm
KOLA Petitions: http://kola-hq.hypermart.net
KOLA Greeting Cards: http://users.skynet.be/kola/cards.htm
<+>=<+>
if you want to be removed from the KOLA
Email Newslist, just send us a message with
"unsub" in the subject or text body
<+>=<+>