Film Reviews

Amiq: The Aleut People of the Pribilof Is- lands, a Culture in Transition. 1983. Pro- duced by Susannt Swibold and Helen Corbett. 58 minutes, color. Purchase $950 (16mm), $280 (video); rental, inquire from Flying Tomato Productions, Box 910 Canmore, Alberta, Can- ada TOL OM0 (4031678-5027). Peter Picked a Seal Stick The Fur Seal Harvest of the Pribilof Islands. 1981. Pro- duced by Susanne Swibold and Helen Corbett. 28 minutes, color. Purchase $480 (16mm), $240 (video), rental, inquire from Flying Tomato Productions.

LYDIA BLACK University of Alaska, Fairbanks

Aleut people, their history, their culture, and their constant battle for survival are poorly known, even in their home state of Alaska. The two films discussed in this review go a long way to remedy the situation, making available to students and the general public a visual record of segments of life in the Pribylov Islands in the Bering Sea today.

The Pribylov Islands, exploited since the end of the 18th century by Russian fur traders for the fur seal pelts, are one of the three rook- eries (breeding grounds) of the northern Pa- cific fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus). The other two are in the USSR. After initial overhunting and depletion of the Pribylov herd in the early years of the Russian American Company (1799-1802), the taking of seals on the Priby- lovs was temporarily halted, resuming in 1810. At that time, Baranov, the energetic and intelligent, but ruthless, manager of the RAC interests in Alaska, moved up to 200 Aleuts, predominantly able-bodied men, and also the families of those who were married (so that the settlers included both genders a n d age groups), to the two Pribylov Islands, St. Paul and St. George. Since that time these islands have been home to the descendants of these first settlers. Today the two villages, one on each island, are the largest and most viable Aleut settlements anywhere in the world. They depend for their economic and cultural survival on the fur seal harvest. Aware of the pressures in the outside world against any en- terprise that depends on hunting animals, they are desperately trying to diversify their is- land economy, but since the islands lack nat-

ural harbors, such diversification is predicated in large part on construction of artificial har- bors. Until then the fur seal harvest is the se- curity blanket of the Aleut people.

The film Amiq (the Aleut name for the is- lands) depicts life in the Pribylovs today: the Orthodox church as the focus of community solidarity and group- and self-identity; depen- dence, to much larger degree than it is possible for the outsiders to realize, on exploitation of their natural environment reminiscent of the old lifeways: fresh eggs are still gathered by young men suspended on ropes over the edge of the cliff and are available for about two weeks of the year; the new: four-wheelers rid- den by the young with reckless abandon over hillocks and ravines, and celebration of the Fourth of July. Amiq also tells of the war-time relocation under the U.S. government act au- thorizing relocation and internment of civil- ians and the Aleut fight for recognition of the wrongs suffered. Community concern for the future and leadership’s efforts to insure that the Aleut communities on the Pribylovs sur- vive are well presented.

Peter Picked a Seal Stick is a documentary, in the best tradition of ethnographic film, of the seal harvest of the year 1981-the next to last year that such harvest took place under U.S. government management. Harvest proce- dures are followed as bachelor nonbreeding males, the sole category of animals taken, are separated from the herd into small “pods,” which are then driven to the killing grounds. Killing methods, skinning, processing of by- products, curing, and packing and shipping of skins are all explained and illustrated. The film ends with the picture of the community parade to celebrate the end of the harvest and the party traditional a t this season.

In this time, when the seal harvest of the Pribylovians is subject to widespread contro- versy and emotional attacks by extreme ani- mal protectionist groups, this production serves a very useful function, informing the public of the facts of the situation. If the film has a drawback, it is the lack ofexplanation of conservation measures in force, under which, as mentioned above, only bachelor nonbreed- ing 24-year-old males are taken. More stress could also have been placed on the conditions under which this controlled harvest is con- ducted in the U.S. and USSR and on the fact

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that the harvest is conducted under the Inter- national Convention for the Protection of the North Pacific Fur Seal, signed originally in 1911 by the United States, Canada, Japan, and Imperial Russia. The convention has long since expired, but until now all signatories ex- tended its terms under special protocols. At the moment, such an extension, recommended by the Departments of State and Commerce and the U.S. Fish and Game Commission sup- ported by game biologists and responsible en- vironmentalist organizations such as the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, Friends of the Earth, and others, is before the U.S. Congress. Unfortunately, members of the Senate and Congress are overwhelmed by emotional mail, and the Pribylovians are outnumbered. Re- cently the Commerce Department building was surrounded by thousands of demonstra- tors with anti-Aleut banners and an enormous balloon in the form of a giant Aleut clubbing a tiny seal floating overhead. Peter Picked a Seal Stick goes a long way to counter such emotion- alism.

These films were done with great sensitivity and insight, the filmmakers visiting the islands for long periods of time between 1981 and 1985. Both are scripted and narrated by Aleuts: Amig by Illarion Merculieff, until re- cently President of the Tanadgusix Corpora- tion of the village of St. Paul (the corporation created under the Alaska Native Claims Set- tlement Act of 1971), and Peter Picked a Seal Stick by the (traditionally) two foremen of the harvest.

Both films are highly recommended for use in teaching anthropology: culture change, for- aging economies in the modern world, cultural survival, ecology, and general cultural anthro- pology.

Citizen Carney. 1980. Produced and directed by Waltcr Thomas and David Nugent. 28 min- utes, color. Purchase $300, rental $35 from Walter Thomas, 31 Warren St., New York, NY 10007 (2 12/M6-4099).

GEORGE GMELCH Union College

This film is about carnival life in America, portrayed mainly through the words of a half- dozen “carnies” (itinerant carnival workers). Citizen Carny also shows scenes of a typical carnival-workers assembling rides, cus- tomers trying to win a glass plate or a stuffed animal a t games of chance, young women with snakes draped around their necks, a showman

luring people into a sideshow to see fireaters, “the ugliest man in the world,” a stuffed two- headed bull (the real one died), and other freaks. But the focus of the film is the inter- views with carnival workers. The interview- ees, without direction from the filmmaker, talk mostly about how they came to join the car- nival, what they like about it, and how it is dif- ferent from life on the outside. For them the attractions of the carnival lifestyle are the ex- citement and change that comes with travel, the opportunity to earn more money than they had at their mostly blue-collar jobs before they joined the carnival, and the romanticized identity of being a carney. One carney sings a song that goes to the heart of the carnival workers’ identity of themselves:

Wo, Wo, Wo, yea, yea, yea, I am a carney. I travel around-It’s my only way. I move from town to town; I never stick

I am a carney. Wo, wo, wo, yea, yea, yea.

Individuals shown in the film do not con- form to the stereotypes most viewers have of carnival workers. These carnies are not the in- articulate, shiftless characters that we have seen, or at least think we have seen. In fact, most of the interviewees have such poise and camera presence that I wonder how repre- sentative they are of the carnival population.

In a written statement that came with the film, the filmmakers claim Citizen CUMV is about all Americans and it offers a “more lu- cid perspective of man and society.” They maintain that the central concept of the film is the irony in which carnies, on one hand, reject the outside world, while, on the other hand, passionately embrace the ideals of the very so- ciety they reject. Those ideals, according to the filmmakers, are the Protestant work ethic, rugged individualism, and manifest destiny.

I can see how someone who has reviewed the footage dozens of times and who has inti- mate knowledge of the subject might arrive at this conclusion, but this is much deeper than what the average viewer will see. Most audi- ences, I think, will find in Citizen C a r n y only a useful documentary offering an inside view of an unusual subculture. It’s too bad the film- makers feel the need to claim more.

Although the interviews are superbly done, and the interviewees fascinating characters, the film has some limitations. It reveals very little about the socioeconomic organization or community life of the carnival, and with the exception of a carney wedding, a silly affair presided over by a carney dressed as Santa Claus that takes place on the ferns wheel (the couple spend their honeymoon night at the top

around.