Inhabitants: An Indigenous Perspective

Directed by Costa Boutsikaris and Anna Palmer.

“The more you know about it, the less fear that you have.” Vikki Preston, from the Karuk tribe, says this in reference to forest burning. Controlled burns were a practice of the Karuk tribe for centuries that were used to convert brush to ash to serve as fertilizer and eliminate the brush to prevent the spread of wildfires. In the twentieth century, any forest burning was outlawed, which ironically led to worse wildfires, because there were no controlled burns to eliminate their source of fuel. It also led to the arrests of Karuk tribe members who still adhered to their traditions.

“The more you know about it, the less fear that you have.” That sentence applies to nearly all of Inhabitants: An Indigenous Perspective (https://www.doclands.com/inhabitants/). This documentary functions as a teaching tool about the practices of American Indians for millennia that have maintained their heritage while carefully cultivating their respective environments.

The tribe members interviewed for Inhabitants are from the Hopi, Karuk, Blackfeet, Menominee, Native Hawaiian, and Yurok tribes. Through them, the viewer learns about irrigation-free farming, controlled forest burning, buffalo herding, sustainable foresting, and indigenous farming techniques. They all provide new perspectives and ways to adapt to the environment in which one lives.

Adapting to one’s own environment may sound counterintuitive, but the documentary highlights the many ways in which the white man’s practices have tried to fight the environment, and make it adapt to their own notions of farming and forest maintenance. Worse, with the slaughter of buffalo and the US government forcing American Indians to harvest specific crops in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was not only an example of trying to force an environment to adapt, but a culture as well.

A Hopi farmer explains why he plants his seeds at least a foot deep in the soil. In the drought of the Arizona desert that is the depth which is necessary for the seeds and roots to get enough moisture from the soil. As a point of contrast, most farmers plant corn an inch deep, and it needs frequent watering. The seeds are cultivated differently in different cultures. A Karuk tribe member states the foolishness of fighting fire; he believes fire is a tool that should be used and cultivated so it does not run out of control.

There is also discussion of rebuilding communities and tribes as they readapt to their ancestral way of life. The near extinction of buffalo herds means that older generations of the Blackfeet tribe have never participated in a buffalo harvest while younger generations are researching the traditions and bringing them back. It is an example of hope for the future, but also the tragedy of a way of life taken away from generations.

The greatest strengths of Inhabitants are its gentle educational approach and the equal weight it gives to each of the tribes as various members are interviewed. For a documentary about adapting to the environment to preserve it, it shows the necessity and beauty of just that.